As others have pointed out, I too reject "token straight friend Rose Walker" and instead give you "bad taste in women Rose Walker"
The first time it happens, Hob doesn't say anything. He doesn't even acknowledge, outwardly, that he noticed it at all. Between the Inn and his teaching job and, oh you know, just several hundreds of years of being around children and young adults, he can confidently say he has at least some modicum of knowledge on how to interact with them.
So, the first time, he doesn't say anything. He's cool like that.
He also doesn't say anything the second time.
But the third time he watches Rose Walker making figurative heart eyes at Johanna Constantine, of all people, he can't help himself. He also can't really pretend he doesn't see Rose so busy gawking that she misses the rim of her glass and splashes cider onto her jumper. She's sitting right in front of him at the bar, after all.
"Doing all right there?" he teases, passing a few napkins across the bar.
Rose grabs the proffered napkins quickly, visibly flustered while she dabs at the damp spot on her chest. "Just, uh, clumsy, I guess."
Hob snorts softly. "Or distracted," he says, lifting his eyebrows when she jerks her head up.
"...I don't know what you're talking about!"
Hob makes a little "sure you don't" humming sound and picks Rose's glass up to wipe it down for her while she deals with her jumper. "It's cute," he insists, even though he knows from experience that most young adults don't like to hear it. And judging from the face Rose makes, she's no exception.
It almost makes Hob laugh -- Dream makes a very similar expression when someone tells him he's cute.
For Rose's sake, he swallows down that particular amusement and sets the cider back in front of her. "It is! But you might want to work on being a smidge less obvious with the staring."
Rose clears her throat, passing the damp napkins back across the bar when he motions for them. "...It's that obvious?" she asks slowly.
"Little bit, I'm afraid," he says, smiling apologetically.
Rose groans at that and drops her face into her hands. Hob only just makes out the muffled, "Do you think she noticed?" that follows.
Hob glances to the corner of the Inn where Jo has roped some sorry sap into a game of darts. It's not going well for the lad if the jeering of his friends is anything to go by. "Mmm...she's a little distracted, so probably not this time."
"This time?!" Rose repeats, lifting her head out of her hands to balk at him.
"You've been very obvious about it, poppet."
"And you didn't tell me!? I can't ever come back here!" Rose hisses.
Hob bites back his amusement -- poorly, judging by Rose's narrow expression. "I promise it isn't that big of a deal."
"What is not that big of a deal?"
The next few seconds are spent by Hob and Rose startling, someone bumping the glass between them in the process, and then both of them frantically trying to catch said glass before it spills more cider over the bar. When the glass is upright again and they turn accusatory stares on the King of Dreams, sitting at the previously empty barstool at Rose's side, his expression is nonplussed if not vaguely amused.
"You know, one of these days you're actually going to give me a heart attack or something. And then you're gonna have to explain to Auntie Death why she's here," Rose points out.
"I will take that under advisement," Dream drawls, more obviously amused by then. And when Hob leans over the bar, he obligingly tips his head a bit to accept the kiss dropped against his temple.
"Hello, love. Please don't give any of my patrons heart attacks at the bar."
"I will endeavor not to," Dream assures him. But the scuffle over the cider has not distracted him, and he repeats, "What is not that big of a deal?"
"Nothing!' Rose says quickly -- too quickly -- before Hob has a chance to deflect with a bit more tact. "Hence, not a big deal," she adds, snatching the glass off the bar and taking a long drink.
Dream watches her for a moment, no doubt taking stock of the damp spot on her jumper and the blustering, before turning to Hob, expectant.
But Hob has not been a snitch for many, many years, and he is not looking to revive that particular character trait this century. He flashes Dream a smile and leans back from the bar, already grabbing a cocktail glass. "How about we try a French 75 today?"
Dream purses his lips, though Hob suspects it has more to do with his question being very obviously ignored and less to do with their ongoing game of "make Dream try a new cocktail every time he comes in until Hob finds one he actually likes."
"Hob."
He hums to acknowledge he heard him, considering the gin he has on hand.
"What are you not telling me?"
Hob grabs one of the bottles. "That I don't think you're going to like the French 75."
He turns his back to fetch the champagne and to hide a grin when he hears an annoyed little huff from the other side of the bar. Dream would deny huffing, of course, so undignified. But he huffed. He was huffy.
"Rose Walker."
"No," Rose says shortly, setting her nearly empty glass back down. "Look, no offense Uncle Morpheus, but it's seriously not a big deal, and it's also not something I wanna talk about. Okay?"
It is not, apparently, okay. Hob can tell the second he turns back around, spots the telltale sheen of emotion in Dream's eyes. Rose probably did too, which is why she's very pointedly looking down at the last of her cider rather than at her Uncle. Because they have come a long way since the rocky start of their relationship, but Hob knows better than most how fiercely Dream wants to nurture this relationship with his niece and nephew, almost despite himself.
And bless him, but jumping straight into teenagers and young adults, nevermind the complications of a crush, is a tall order for anyone, much less the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. He definitely hasn’t had as much hands on time with young humans as Hob. Or if he has, he’s…rusty, to say the least.
"You were comfortable to discuss these things with Hob, but not with me?"
Rose groans outright and turns on her stool, however reluctantly, to face Lord Shaper. "No, actually, I didn't want to be talking about it with Professor Gadling, either. So if we could all stop talking about it and pretend this never happened, that would be great!" she said, shooting a pointed frown in Hob's direction for good measure.
He holds his hands up in as placating a gesture as he can manage with a lemon twist between his fingers, and Dream glances between them for a moment before, with obvious reluctance, inclining his head.
"Very well," he says. "It is not my intention to make you uncomfortable."
"Thank you," Rose says, less terse, and Hob sets another cider in front of her at the same time he passes Dream the French 75. Dream eyes the cocktail with no small amount of distrust and Hob can’t help but laugh.
"Oh, come on, don't make that face before you've even tried it."
"Yeah, they're not bad. If you don't like it, we can switch," Rose offers, and while Dream does not look anymore convinced that he'll enjoy the beverage, or that he'd prefer Rose's cider, Hob can tell some of his proverbial feathers (well, currently proverbial, but sometimes more literal?) have settled.
Heaven help him, but he does so adore this impossible, mercurial creature.
At their encouragement, Dream does eventually take a sip of the cocktail. And while his reaction is not quite as strong as it had been to the martini from last week or the Alabama slammer which, admittedly, Hob had only made as a means of getting Dream to say Alabama slammer, he is clearly not impressed.
"What do you think?" Rose asks, amused.
"It is...palatable," Dream says after a moment, and Rose laughs when he lifts it for another reluctant sip.
"Don't drink it if you don't like it!" she protests, waving for him to put the glass back down, which Dream does with something not unlike relief.
"Starting to think gin might not be your thing," Hob says, glancing over when the bell over the door jingles. He smiles and waves a hand that way. "See? Cor can use the door."
"Didn't you say he broke into your apartment through a window last month?" Rose asks, smirking when Hob shushes her.
But, by that point, Corinthian is close enough to hear. And to reach around Dream to pluck the French 75 off the bar. "And guess who finally got the damn locks on his windows repaired after that?"
"That is not a good reason for breaking into my flat!" Hob protests.
"It's a perfect reason for breaking in! I could've stabbed you in your sleep!" Corinthian argues.
"You have stabbed me in my sleep!"
Corinthian chuckles over the cocktail, half draped against Dream's side, who shifts subtle to make room for him there. "I have done that," he agrees.
"You've what?" Dream says, turning a frown on Corinthian who waves a dismissive hand.
"Metaphorically," he lies, before sidestepping out of the conversation by leaning around Dream again to flash a smile down the bar. "Well, hey there, Rosebud."
Rose, whose attention had drifted back in the direction of the darts game -- new bloke trying his hand now and losing just as spectacularly -- turns quickly back around. "Hey! Where's Jed?"
"Dropped him off at the movies with a couple friends."
Rose frowns. "...What movie?"
"One that I'm certain Jed and his friends were able to buy tickets to themselves, of course," Corinthian says breezily. Rose narrows her eyes a little further.
"If Jed has nightmares all week, it's gonna be your fault."
Corinthian makes a little noise of disagreement over his drink, and Hob starts wiping down the bar to keep himself useful while they bicker. And to avoid letting Dream pull him into any further interrogation about the whole stabbing thing.
"Technically, that would be My Lord's fault, wouldn't it?" Corinthian says, motioning at Dream between them, whose suspicious expression has not wavered.
Rose rolls her eyes. "You know what I mean!"
"Uh huh. Didn't know you were so into darts, Rose."
Hob pauses his cleaning to glance up between them, Rose visibly flustered and Corinthian's eyebrows lifted high above his sunglasses while he sips Dream's drink.
"What?" Rose eventually says, and Hob doesn't wince but it's a near miss. Poor thing, she's usually better toe to toe with Cor in one of his more meddling moods.
"You know what I mean," he drawls, and Rose snatches her cider up to chug. Again.
Rose knows what he means. And Hob knows what he means, even if he's not entirely sure how Corinthian himself knows. But Dream, sitting between the three of them, clearly does not, and he misunderstands rather wildly.
"Would you care to play darts, Rose Walker?"
"That's a great idea!" Corinthian insists while Rose coughs around her drink. "That gal in the corner seems like she's pretty good, I bet she could talk you through the rules."
And then Dream turns his head and his attention alights on the darts game already happening. "Johanna Constantine is here?" he asks, looking back to Hob for confirmation.
"She's a regular these days, yeah," Hob says, and he'd argue that Dream doesn't stand from the stool so much as he pours himself from it, too liquid in his movements for the human shape he wears.
"Then I shall have to introduce you, Rose," he insists, and Rose only manages a token, squeaked protest before Dream is ushering her towards the darts game.
Hob swats Corinthian with the towel he'd been wiping the counter with. "That wasn't necessary," he points out, trying very hard to tap down on his own amusement.
"Sure it was! This way Dream can figure it out himself, and then he can be the one to tell her there's no way in hell we're gonna approve her trying to date Johanna fucking Constantine."
Hob laughs despite himself and leans against the bar, smiling when Corinthian takes up Dream's abandoned stool to meet him halfway. "She is a grown woman, you know. We can't stop her from trying to date who she likes."
"We can sure as hell try."
"We can do that," he agrees, leaning in to return the quick, sharp kiss Corinthian dips in for. "Does he know how to play darts?" Hob asks, glancing towards the corner when Corinthian leans back.
"I have absolutely no idea."
[ ← prev ] [ next → ]
185 notes
·
View notes
like. i still wouldn't want someone to copy and paste my fics into a large language model like chatgpt but it's not so much bc i'm worried abt my work being stolen (seems unlikely that an LLM would spit back out my exact words considering how it works, and even if it did, i doubt any individual would be able to like. publish and profit from those words, based on the nebulous status of copyright law when it comes to LLMs like chatgpt. and having my words fed into the LLM really isn't going to make much of a difference when it comes to corporations profiting off the tool in the first place; plus in instances of corporate exploitation i think there are more effective ways to organize than like...arguing for strengthened ip laws or trying to like make ip laws for fanfiction spaces). it's more because i'm wary of what that says about how a person is like...approaching my fic specifically + fanfiction more broadly. in two main ways:
1. i think it is just. basic respect to check with a writer before u take their work off ao3(or whatever fanfic-specific place it's been shared) and put it somewhere else. and like, this applies to lots of things outside chatgpt--reposting fics to other sites, posting them on goodreads/storygraph, printing + binding fics, etc. if u are treating fanfic writers as people who u are in community with, who are generously sharing a gift with u, then it seems like basic kindness to check in and see if they're alright with u taking that fic outside the space it was posted to do something else with it.
with chatgpt and similar LLMs specifically, a lot of people are wary because there's still so much unsettled in regards to how copyright laws might shake out, and most people (myself included) are unsure of how/whether our writing/data might be stored and used by these corporations that own the LLMs. i don't think ai itself is something that should be mythologized as like ontologically evil technology, but anytime a corporation is introducing us to new tech like this we need to be wary of where it's coming from and how it could be used--people have already pointed out a lot of very serious issues with the way this technology is being developed and how it could/likely will be/already is being used exploitatively--which, again, is more a matter of organizing against corporations than railing against ai tech itself, but is still a valid reason for writers (again, myself included) to be wary of having their work fed to LLMs without permission.
and like. sure, u don't have to care abt writers' feelings + boundaries and can just take their stories and do whatever u want with them. but to me that says u aren't treating fanfic as a community space, but rather a content farm in which fics are products that u are entitled to do whatever u want with. and i just think that's shitty! and if that's how ur treating fanfic then i'd rather not have u reading my fic at all
2. i honestly think it's a strange way to engage w storytelling by treating endings this way. like. story endings are usually v important + intentional, and can completely change the entire tone, themes, messages, etc of a story. i understand going to the writer and asking them abt what they had in mind for the story ending if ur looking for closure, and i understand imagining ur own story ending or even writing ur own ending to an unfinished story. what i don't understand is plugging a story into chatgpt and having it spit an ending out for u.
and like. maybe this is bc we've all been calling these LLMs ai, which evokes an impression of like. a sentient robot creating something. but that's not what these programs do! the first article i linked explains how they actually work really well, but essentially--chatgpt and similar LLMs cannot create new ideas. they can't take a story and synthesize its themes or pick apart its tone to then come up with an original idea for an ending. at the same time, they aren't just plagiarism machines that are ripping text directly from other writers and spitting it back out.
instead (to my understanding), what they're doing is compressing vast amounts of information by running statisical analyses to just save the most common trends, patterns, recurring info, etc, and then plugging that in to fill the gaps. it looks like it's writing something new, but it's essentially just paraphrasing already-existing information pulled from the internet. so i'd imagine that if u fed an ai a fic and said "write an ending," the ai would basically compare the fic to whatever similar stories it has saved and then spit out an ending that is most commonly found on the internet for that type of story. [not an expert here tho--this is just my best guess based on the bit of research i've done].
my point is--you won't be getting a new ending inspired directly by the story u put in. you'll be getting a paraphrased version of the most commonly recurring type of ending for similar stories on the web. and i just....don't see how that would be satisfying in any way. it seems, again, like a way in which someone would be approaching fic like a product, something that needs to be finished + complete bc ur entitled to it, rather than viewing fic as a piece of art with its own unique themes, message, and story that can't just be plugged into a one-size-fits-most ending generator. and like, i'm trying to avoid mysticizing writing as some sort of ethereal art form that would be blasphemously degraded by having someone plug in a shitty ending paraphrased from a conglomeration of various similar stories--i don't think someone creating a shitty ending for a story is like. a horrible evil thing. but i can understand where the satisfaction is coming from if you're writing your own shitty ending, where you get to come up with where u think the story would go + where u get to synthesize the themes u picked up on etc. but ai isn't even doing that--so again, i don't understand where the satisfaction is coming from aside from just going "well every story i read needs to be finished," which. makes me wary bc it just feels like a completely different way to approach stories and storytelling than i would hope to find in fanfic spaces, one that treats fic less as a creative place to explore and more as a transactional space where u are entitled to products.
anyway. feel like my thoughts + feelings abt ai keep changing the more i learn abt it + i'm sure they could change again, but rn my impression of this whole situation is like. i find the fact that some people are plugging fics into LLMs less concerning re: ip + ownership rights, and i don't think it's useful to exaggerate or mythologize abt what ai actually does (i think even calling it ai has kind of misled a lot of people, myself included). what concerns me more is that plugging fics into LLMs to write endings feels symptomatic of a broader culture in which people treat fanfic as an informal profit economy in which fics are product or content that a consumer-audience is entitled to, and i think that sort of approach leads to a whole plethora of other issues + makes fandom a more hostile space.
73 notes
·
View notes