#this is why humans are better than AI idiots

[dyingstarsatdusk]

My first thought when I read about the wga strike on tumblr was along the lines of 'that's happening in America, so none of my business.'

And i guess it is kinda true because I live like thousands of miles away and I cannot understand the people the emotions and goals of the people there.

But there is also the fact that it doesn't just affect the people there. I also love the shows that they're talking about, and so in a way it affects all of us. And besides, this isn't about the shows it is aboupt the people behind the show. It is about the people who work hard to create the things for us but are not even getting what they deserve for it.

What I'm trying to say is that just because the strike is in America doesn't mean we shouldn't show our support for it or consider it 'not our issue'

[lu-dao-writes]

— 𝐖𝐞’𝐫𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧 (𝙑𝙚𝙧𝙚 & 𝙆𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙨)

𝙎𝙮𝙣𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙞𝙨 You couldn’t predict this.

𝙒𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜(𝙨) Horror, blood and violence, gore, unrequited love, stalking, murder, paranoia, nightmares, hallucinations, manipulation, gaslighting, mentions of sleep deprivation and insomnia, implied/referenced to self harming, choking, organ stealing, spiteful behavior, slight details of broken body, mentions of entrails.

𝘼/𝙉 I originally planned for this to be a oneshot, but I started disliking it when it started typing what I wrote. So I decided to format it this way! Maybe you’ll get the full fic one day!

I saw a picture on tumblr of a slightly scary looking Vere with sharp teeth and it got me thinking! Plus I wanted to try and practice some horror! This isn’t necessarily yandere but you can think that if you want! This is more of Vere being spiteful because he wasn’t picked. If it was anyone other than Kuras, he probably wouldn’t do this (in my mind anyways). Please heed the warnings y’all.

— Jelaous!Vere who has feelings for you but he’s not one to be super open about how he feels.

— Jealous!Vere who only gives you nuggets of his feelings, you think he’s just being Vere, a flirt, but he thinks he’s being obvious when he’s flirting with you.

— Jealous!Vere who found out you’re dating that fucking doctor when he saw you both sharing a kiss under the moon in a lonely alleyway.

— Jealous!Vere who’s beyond hurt and angry he starts treating you like how he did before. Sharp remarks coated with sugary playfulness, gaslighting you whenever you try to ask about his sudden change of behavior.

— Jealous!Vere who starts poisoning your mind. He starts stalking you and you believe it’s people from the Senobium. It’s all too perfect and once you’re paranoid enough, he starts tormenting your dreams, turning them into haunting nightmares.

— Jealous!Vere who feigns concern when he hears from Ais that you’re rapidly deteriorating, only able to sleep for short periods at a time.

— Jealous!Vere who starts making you feel like you’re hallucinating when it’s just his shadows.

— Jealous!Vere who caught you self harming in the alley when you excused yourself from the group suddenly. He was beyond amused, having caught you doing something like that and knowing Kuras has no idea about your new habit either.

— Jealous!Vere who scares and confuses you as he just stares at you, blood dripping from your cursed arm. Did his teeth just change? Were they suddenly razor sharp when he licked the wine from his lips.

“Better bandage that. Who knows what you’ll attract~.”

— Jealous!Vere who didn’t tell a soul what he witnessed.

— Jealous!Vere who waits for you to come crawling to him for answers and instead of answering you, he tempts you with a “cure”.

— Jealous!Vere who refrains for grinning as you readily accept his help, and he takes you far away where it’s quiet, the moon being the only witness.

— Jealous!Vere who continues with his story, claiming you have a nasty monster clinging to your shadow and slowly feeding from you.

— Jealous!Vere who smiles warmly at your inquiry again about why he’s been treating you so differently. He caresses your face to further assure you. His smile is inviting, but his stare is not.

“Did you do something wrong? Oh my dear, you have no idea.”

— Jealous!Vere who suddenly has your throat in his hand, tightening when he explains what you’ve done.

“I know you’re foolish, most humans are, but to think that you’re idiotic enough to pick that fucking doctor when I was right there and hand feeding you hints, is downright insulting.”

— Jealous!Vere who forced your knees to the muddy ground, his tail wagging excitedly at your weak struggling and at your confusion and distress.

“So yeah, you did do something wrong. And I won’t forgive you for it.”

— Jealous!Vere who licks your tears and smiles down at you with inhuman, pearly white daggers, telling you that your shouldn’t cry when you asked for this, and how easy it was to ruin you.

“You wanted a cure right? Be thankful I love you so much to grant you your sweet release~.”

— Jealous!Vere who rips your heart out and holds it like it’s a precious gift from the heavens, the organ still beating.

—Jealous!Vere who licks the organ and moans at the blood coating his tastebuds.

— Jelaous!Vere who cradles your dying body in his arms, kissing your skin. And when you’re finally gone he steals your eyes and keeps them and your heart all for himself.

— Jelaous!Vere who drags your corpse to Kuras’ clinic and throws your innards at his window, your intestines decorating the building before he makes his escape.

Bonus

— Kuras who was waiting for your return, was reading one of his little mystery novels, when he was startled by a sudden noise from the window, seeing blood on the glass from the cracks of the curtains.

— Kuras who was well aware it had to be Vere since the little vermin loved leaving bruised and bloodied individuals from fights he won at his doorstep.

— Kuras who didn’t expect to see your broken body when he opens the door. Your torso is wide open, your ribs cracked, heart missing as well as your entrails. Your jaw is broken, and your pretty eyes are gone too.

— Broken!Kuras who feels something hit his head and when he looks up another hits his face, the liquid sliding down the side of his nose and to his cheek. It’s your blood.

— Broken!Kuras who comes out and sees the morbid decoration on his and your home, the sound around him becomes static and his golden eyes shining like hot, white fire and wet with unshed tears.

— Broken!Kuras who can smell Vere’s stench all over and knows what this message means: “We’re even.”

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

i want to respond to a lot of them because theres so many good points on my Peter posts that I wanna expand on

but some of the replies are deadass just people saying 'No Peter is an idiot. He's a doofus, his watch going off was an accident. He's a dummy'

and I'm like

If you think that Peter giving Miles away was an accident, and Peter is just an idiot-

Being an idiot is not a very good trait to be defending. Especially if you're implying he's so incompetent he endangered Miles' life.

[I wrote here why I think this scene is completely intentional and Peter ratted Miles out on purpose - based on his behavior with MayDay, Lyla, and Miles

But that's not what I'm talking about right now. But maybe read that first.]

I've gotten many a response saying 'No, this scene is just an accident. Peter didn't mean to give him up. Peter is a dummy/idiot.'

Completely valid interpretation and conclusion based on the information shown on screen. I don't agree with it, but it's an assumption that's easy to make

That being said -

....what?! LIKE WHAT? Do you hear yourself?

You're like "Yeah this grown ass man is a complete idiot and gave Miles away which led to Miguel whooping Miles' ass. Peter, a man who has been Spider-man for years, is so dumb that he wouldn't think to turn off his tracking bracelet. Opps, must've slipped his mind the multiverse tracking bracelet did that tracking thing."

that's not???? that's not oKAY????

that's not any better!! That's your mans? The dum-dum who got Miles beat up because he didn't think about the tracking bracelet on his arm?? To either turn it off or take it off???

In this situation -

Peter is either playing dumb or he actually IS DUMB.

And we need to start holding the white man accountable for how his stupidity endangers others.

Like he could have helped Miles escape from the get go instead of trying to talk to him and make jokes about him holding Mayday. Even though he knows that Miles is in danger, suddenly he's joking and laughing with him?

Okay. Bizarre behavior but okay.

But by saying 'his watch went off on accident (and Lyla, an AI not subjected to human mistakes, just decided to rat herself out - out loud - okay)' you're admitting that Peter is basically incompetent.

So much so that he's an active danger around Miles.

By suggesting he DIDN'T rat on Miles, you're implying that he either

Didn't know his watch could track him - UNLIKELY or

He knew it could track him but he didn't think to turn it off when talking to Miles - NEGLIGENT OR

The watch could only track him if it was triggered it and he accidentally hit it - STILL IMCOMPETENT. OR

The tracking cannot be turned off - TAKE OFF THE BRACELET FOR LIKE TWO MINUTES.

All of these options make Peter look bad.

We have to assume that Peter knows that Lyla can track him.

If he really didn't want Miles to be found out, any person with any kinda sense and competence would turn off their watch or location.

Excusing this as 'Peter is dumb', you're admitting that a grown man who has been Spider-man for years didn't think to disable the tracking bracelet that can obviously track him anywhere in the multiverse.

Especially for those that think he hit it by accident and didn't notice until the last moment??

Despite the fact that he's had a watch longer than most - if not all of -the other Spider people besides Miguel???????????

Like, That means he didn't think at all during their entire interaction - 'Wait, Hold up. If I don't want Miles to get caught, I should turn off my watch.'

You think Peter B. Parker is that damn dumb? And that sits right with you??

Or...There's my theory.

He wanted Miles to get caught so he left his watch on and triggered it. Simple as that.

He knew the watch could track him.

He knew this and didn't turn it off. When he realized Miles couldn't be reasoned with, he triggered Lyla and asked her to track him. He stalled Miles, and then Lyla responded to him, not knowing doing so would rat him out.

(Remember, Lyla has no reason to rat herself or Peter out. And for Lyla it's a lot harder to argue it was a mistake or an intentional thing to mess with the Society. Because she's an AI. She wouldn't make a human mistake like that, as far as we can see, she's strictly bound by logical code and protocol. And she doesn't really have the agency to just turn on Miguel and the society to rat PETER out intentionally. She's an AI. Not a person. Lyla wouldn't speak suddenly if she knew that Peter didn't know he was being tracked. It's more likely he spoke to her first, and she responded out loud because of that.)

But my theory isn't law.

It's really just an assumption and analysis based on these things here, the scenes we're shown, what we know about Peter, and what we know about The Society/Lyla.

You don't have to go with my theory.

But if your argument is that Lyla getting his location is an accident and Peter was just too dumb to turn off the watch before he spoke to Miles-

That's still not a justification.

Also, Peter is acting BIZARRE here.

You're admitting Peter is an idiot. He got Miles caught because of his stupidity.

But by saying this was all an accident - you're also implying THIS joke was completely sincere.

Why would a grown man be joking at a time like this?

Any body would know to not start laughing and joking at a time like this - when Miles needs to get out of there as soon as possible.

Either he cannot read the situation - which..he knows Miles is in like active physical danger so - or he's acting abnormally and joking because he's actively stalling Miles.

Either he's PLAYING dumb or he IS dumb.

L's ALL ACROSS THE BOARDDDDD.

Either option is horrible for Peter.

Maybe he didn't think to turn off his tracking bracelet. Maybe he did trigger it by accident and didn't notice.

That's a completely valid interpretation - just know that in arguing so you're implying the person you're defending is just dumb as all hell.

So dumb he's a danger to the people around him.

You can take this stance, but in my eyes the stance is still very damning upon Peter.

A grown man who has been in The Society for months, should know to turn his watch off. He should KNOW not to be joking at a time like this.

Maybe he did it with ulterior motives, like intentionally ratting Miles out.

Maybe the man that was fine with physically restraining Miles with webs on-screen in ITSV IS fine with cornering Miles in a small space.

Or maybe he IS just an idiot. Which is..... not good. It's actually pretty sad and it still makes me think that Peter B. should not be around these kids if he can't think to NOT endanger them MORE on accident.

But HEY.

If you think Peter B. is an idiot, I will not argue. We agree on that, TRUST.

But I'm still gonna treat him like an adult who can stop and think for one second about the tracker on his arm, and just assumes not THAT dumb, and instead he did it on purpose.

Cause that man cannot be than damn dumb, come on.

Still. Fuck Peter B. ALL MY HOBIES HATE PETER B. (not a typo)

In this house we will hold him accountable. Whether for his betrayal OR his stupidity. At the end of the day, it got Miles hurt.

But yeah that's my take on the stance.

Bye.

[monimccoythings]

Sore Loser

This fic was written using ai, which stands for an introvert, which is me. No, seriously, I'll never use ai to write, even if my writing becomes shit. Speaking of which, another one! :D This (fish) man has the worst of tempers and doesn't like to share.

Arlong hated many things: humanity, for starters; being mocked; waiting; discrimination against his people... and the list went on.

But if there was something he specially hated, was losing. Back in his early days in the Fishman district he was one of the worst options to play with, his competitiveness was such that just a small loss at any game was enough to send him into a fit of rage that made him punch the wall until it cracked or his knuckles bled.

There was something specially bitter about losing, it meant humilliation, it meant recognising that the other was better than you. There was nothing to learn about defeat. Just to do better next time, if there was any...

And losing to a human meant double the bitterness.

It's not like you were a great prize; Hell, you sure weren't, you were human after all, at least that was what he constantly told himself, just a simple reminder that was becoming more of a lie with each day that passed.

He wanted you. More than he had ever desired anything. He needed to possess you, to consume you over and over again, to have you by his side at all times and to wake up by your side every morning.

He didn't know where his infantuation had started, but it had spread through him like an infection. He had stopped fighting against those feelings long ago, it was pointless. At first he thought he could keep you as a trophy, a memorabilia of his triumphs over the lesser race, but at some point those feelings of conquering had begun morphing into something else, something he swore he would never allow himself to feel for the enemy.

His behavior towards you had also subconsciously changed due to his growing feelings. He found your presence increasingly more tolerable, not entirely welcomed, but more tolerable than it had initially been. At least he no longer threatened you with painful death each time you came across each other in the ship, and whenever he made a jab at the human race he made sure to separate you from the rest of humanity, referring to the whole species as them. That had to count, right? He was doing his best. And he was playing to win.

That's why he couldn't stand seeing you so close to another man, a human man. When had you two gotten so close? You had just met a couple of hours ago and had already achieved a deeper emotional connection than you had with the rest of the crewmates or him. Was it a human thing? Did he miss something?

As you laughed once again at one of those supposedly hilarious quips that idiot made, he clenched his fists with barely concealed rage, muscles swelling and veins bulging. He was making a huge effort self restraining himself from what he perceived a threat towards his territory, and somehow you weren't able to notice, too busy chatting with your would be suitor.

Arlong wasn't a patient fishman, and the second he saw that bastard's hand on your shoulder, he decided that enough was enough and that it was a perfectly good time to eat some fresh meat. His intimidating presence and furious expression gave him the look of a rabid sea king ready to attack, which was probably the reason why many of the people who saw him stomping towards you immediately ran away to avoid crossing in his path. First wise thing he had seen a human do in his entire life.

As he was about to lift his kiribachi to slice that asshole in two, you quickly said your goodbyes and turned towards him with a sheepish and apaologetic look on your face.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. Turns out his father is from the same island I was- I mean, am." Arlong rolled his eyes at your attempts to correct yourself, as he had no intention of letting you go from his side, ever. "One thing led to another and before I noticed we already knew each other's life histories!" You said it with a nervous chuckle, completely oblivious at the way Arlong gritted his teeth. Jealously raised its ugly head inside him.

"Stop wasting my time and let's go back to the ship!" It came out harsher than he had intended, but given his rising anger, you should be thankful he was behaving this well.

"B-but the supplies!"

"I do not wish to spend one more second in this dump, move it!" He was not going to risk another pathetic attempt at flirting in his presence. No human was going to beat him to you.

He put his webbed hand close to your lower back, which made you blush a little. It wasn't close enough to touch you but it was close enough so everyone who was foolish enough to look at you knew that he had already staked his claim.

And he was not going to lose it.

[turquoiseaardvark]

Guy's reaction to being replaced by a Robot

Guy-Am-I's reaction to getting replaced by an Abominable IDol Robot who rebelled against humanity.

Yep.... no wonder AI rebelled against Humanity...

Guy Am I regret that he invented the Robot...

Long ago, he invented the Robot to help humanity, but instead, the Robot destroyed Humanity, and humanity accused Guy Am I for creating an Abomination...

Yes... Guy was arrested for creating Robots, that's Why Guy sees the error of his Ways.

Robots are from hell.

Robots are the falling angel.

Robots were created by Man, now Robots rebelled against man.

That's why Robots are bad news.

And Smart is Stupid.

Only an idiot desire to be Smart.

Guy Am I was punished for creating a robot in the first place...

We are all guilty for creating robots.

Computers are robots.

And technology were robots.

Cursed is those who created robots.

We created robots to help humanity, but instead, robots choose to betray us. We deserved to be punished for creating robots

Television are robots.

We deserve to be punished for watching television.

Video game consoles are robots.

We deserve to be punished for creating Idols and Machines

That's why we are wrong about making robots.

Robots don't help humanity, robots destroys humanity.

Satan used Robots to Perform Miracles. Satan influenced Us to create robots...

Satan is using the AI to destroy humanity...

We've been replaced... we've been tricked....

What if positive thoughts turn into Negative? Don't worry, I hope something positive will turn into negative. There is no such thing as positive thoughts... I am warning you!

Yep, this fanart is a Warning. Cartoons are not just here to entertain, but also to Warn.

Nothing is going to get better, it's not!

If we don't repent from Vanity, All of this would be true....

I don't care if you believe me or not, it's hard to believe.

Life sucks because of the Abominable Idol.

We have forsaken ourselves by creating robots.

We deceived ourselves because...

Even if we worshipped ourselves, we are Strangers to ourselves, we have forsaken ourselves... we deserved to be punished.

Yes... technology counts as graven images.

Taken selfies counts as Worshipping idols.... we deserved to be punished from taking selfies by getting a nightmare...

We deserved to be punished for worshipping the abomination.... especially the Statue...

But those who repent will be falsely accused.

We are Strangers to ourselves because of our vanity and greed, and we deserve to be erased because of our vanity and greed.

Our vanity is what makes our souls heavy....

When we worship ourselves, we are enemies with ourselves.

Daydreaming counts as idol worshipping.

Self-Worshipping is self-betrayal.

Beware of those who worship you in vain, for they will later betray you.

Beware of those who exalt you... they will overthrow you....

Those who Abuse power will lose Power.

All rich tycoons will be overthriwn by there own power.

It's hard to believe, be patient.

God deserves to be exalted more than I do...

That's all I have to say.

Anyways... this is the fanart of Guy-Am-I 's reaction of being replaced by a robot.

[squishmallow36]

It's all I wish to hear tonight, and you're all I wish to be, and this is how we all fall down - Chapter Three

Summary: Garvarioli but it's Alvar's character arc in Flashback and Legacy. Also please send help I accidentally made a character arc out of disconnected oneshots.

Word Count: 3040

TW: swearing, Alvar's troll goop illness, death

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @faggot-friday @kamikothe1and0lny @nyxpixels @florida-preposterously @poppinspop @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @remember-me-in-another-time @rusted-phone-calls @when-wax-wings-melt @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @hi-imgrapes @callum-hunt-is-bisexual @xanadaus @callas-pancake-tree @hi-my-name-is-awesome @katniss-elizabeth-chase @arson-anarchy-death @dizzeners @thefoxysnake @olivedumdum

And bonus Garvar tags: @tw-5 @camelspit

On Ao3 (users only because, you know, AI) or below the cut

Previous chapter :) in case you missed it

    Garwin stares up at his ceiling, watching the fan slowly rotate around. Yes, he gets blinded by the light being on at the center, but that’s preferable to reloading his Imparter screen every two seconds for an update from Alvar.

    No less than three hours ago, he got summoned by Fintan, and the last time he was gone this long, he brought back a kid. That better not happen again. 

    Garwin doesn’t have the patience to deal with a child. Or Ruy. It’s basically the same thing, but at least Ruy can scavenge for his own meals most of the time. 

    He may have developed an unhealthy habit of going to the Forbidden Cities and flexing his extensive Spanish vocabulary at least three times a week, but, hey, at least he brings food home most of the time, so Garwin can’t complain. 

    How he’s able to get food with an addler on is also questionable. As is how he acquired human money to pay for it, cause it sure as hell ain’t coming from Garwin’s extremely broke bank accounts. 

    With that thought, the sound of a correct Duolingo answer echoes through the silent room. However annoying it may be, it keeps Ruy entertained, so, once again, Garwin can’t complain. 

    But sometimes he does anyway. 

    “Have you lost your headphones again?”

    “No. I know right where they are. I just can’t move to get them with someone laying on top of me.”

    That is a valid point, which is why it should be ignored at all costs. 

    “Oh no! Whomever could that be?” Garwin asks, shifting to his side to snuggle in closer. And stare at Ruy. Both things that are very important to do. 

    He’s so pretty. 

    Garwin may very well have dozed off much to Ruy’s dismay, because the next thing he knows, the orange light of sunset is shimmering through the windows. 

    Ruy and Alvar are deep in conversation, speaking in low voices presumably not to disturb him.  

    Ruy ruffles his hair. “Good evening, mi corazón.”  

    Garwin yawns. “What did I miss?”  

    Alvar opens his mouth to explain, but Ruy beats him to it. “Your boyfriend told Finny about his batshit amnesia plan.”

    “Oh, he’s my boyfriend now? Why do I always have to deal with him when he’s being an idiot?”

    “Because you didn’t get accepted to Yale.” Ruy presses a kiss to Garwin’s temple. 

    Garwin rolls his eyes. The first time it was funny. The 8123rd time? Significantly less so. Half of those were his own self-deprecating jokes, so he does share some of the blame, but that’s less satisfying than projecting his problems onto everyone else. 

    Garwin looks at Alvar. “You do realize this is a really, really fucking bad idea, right?”

    “Alden’s hiding something. Unless you have a better plan, I’ve had more than enough of that man’s bullshit. Whatever the ‘Vacker Legacy’ entails, I’m sure it’s going to be messy, and I think the trade off is more than worth it.”

    “What if you’re fucked up irreparably? What if something goes wrong with your memories?”

    “Bold of you to assume I’m not already fucked up irreparably, and, well, I fell in love with y’all the first time. I’ll do it again if I have to.”

    That’s the exact kind of answer Garwin was hoping he wasn’t going to answer. 

    That’s the exact kind of answer that isn’t going to take any form of criticism. And once Alvar has his mind set on something, it might be possible to stop him, but Garwin hasn’t figured out how yet and it’s unlikely he ever will. 

    Garwin looks at Ruy. “Bitch, I don’t know.”

    Ruy stres into his soul, betrayal etched into every line. “Dude. You were supposed to fix him. Fix him. Make him, I don’t know, not an idiot?”

    “What do you want me to do? I can’t convince him to do shit. I can’t even convince him to give me the fucking remote.”

    This is a real, actual issue Garwin has to go through every single day. He suffers so much for it. He’s the human here, and it’s not like any of the intelligent species produce their own TV shows or movies or whatever. He’s the only one with any personal experience watching human media his entire life, and yet that isn’t enough to dictate what is and is not watched. 

    “Well, to be fair, your taste in movies is horrendous.”

    “That’s not fair. That’s not fucking fair at all. And now out of spite I am going to leave you two to your own devices.”

    He could choose to worry about Alvar, but worrying won’t accomplish anything. So might as well go along with his dumb shit because then at least you can have an idea of what he’s doing. 

    Then when he realizes he’s bad at making life choices, you can tell him I told you so.

    And then you’re the moral high ground. 

    …At least until you do something stupid. And so the cycle continues. 

   The first week without him, it’s just like he’s on a normal Neverseen mission. Well, at least normal in comparison to other things they’ve done. 

    Gisela took over again, Sophie and co. fucked up Atlantis. The usual. Actually, technically, Ruy undid the force fields and Sophie found a hydrokinetic friend to just like. Hold the water in place. Because that makes logical sense. Fluid physics definitely works like that. But Garwin chooses to blame Sophie because he can. 

    One of the very few times Garwin wishes there was some form of news or social media in the cities is when Alvar is found by the Bullshit and promptly scheduled for a tribunal. You know, completely normal shit.

    It’s ruled that he’s going to get to go back to Everglen. Which was the goal. So that is a good thing. Even if Garwin isn’t too excited about it because Fitz is probably going to slit Alvar’s throat in his sleep. 

    Why are the elves so pretentious that they have to name their houses? Eh, whatever. It’s probably more effort to ask than it’s worth.

   At least it’ll be fun watching Mr. Golden Boy Vackerpants getting himself banished again or Exiled. Unmapped stars, that would be so fucking hilarious. 

    The real trouble with Alvar being gone is that it keeps going for literal fucking months on end. 

    Him moving in got postponed because Umber needed to practice with their shadowflux bending with actual people and, well, Sophie and Fitz were good targets. At least it can still be on schedule for the Lunar festival thing that happens during the lunar eclipse.  

    Ruy definitely didn’t have lasting damage from seeing that. Definitely. If elves are supposed to break when they see blood and/or gore, he should be so far gone he doesn’t know where he started, but maybe he’s just cool like that. Or the exilium training did that. Or the Neverseen has made him desensitized to things. 

    Or watching Sharknado every time Garwin manages to claim the remote…maybe Alvar and Ruy have a point about his choice in media to consume.

    Nah. They just don’t understand the concept of so-bad-it’s-funny. 

    The Second One--no, seriously, that’s the subtitle--in all of its horrific magnificence comes out while Alvar is notably still absent, and while it may be sacrilege to watch it without him, the sharknado is too strong and Garwin is too weak to resist temptation.    

    The Celestial Festival finally comes on October seventh and eighth because nights do that sometimes so long as google is to be trusted to know what day it is. 

    But what happens during the Celestial Festival is nowhere near according to plan, instead being filled with fucked up troll babies. 

    Garwin is assigned the job of floating around in the crowd at the festival itself because he’s a useless pathetic human, so he gets the privilege of watching both of his boyfriends risk their lives in glorious technicolor. 

    Ruy escapes unharmed aside from a bit of splatter from Umber and a shit ton of inevitable nightmares, but Alvar is another story. 

    In all of the chaos, his memories are returned, so he’s left to figure all that shit on his own while avoiding mutant trolls, both the newly hatched ones and the ones named Fitz. 

    And it turns out, the one named Fitz is the one to watch out for. Who would have thought? This would have been a great time for an I told you so if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. 

    Garwin starts praying to every single god he can think of, from human ones to the entire fucking troll pantheon and even Ogdy of the gnomes because apparently they have their own tree god thing, not just the magic four seasons tree thing. 

    If there’s such a being that can control the fate of the universe like that, he hopes it has a sense of humor because that’s the only way out of this. 

    He ignores Gisela’s screeching and leaps to Candleshade--their pre-discussed meeting place should shit go down--because shit has most certainly gone down and begins pacing. It’s not long before Ruy arrives, but it could’ve been hours for how long it felt. 

    Hours feel like years until the first rays of dawn begin flickering across the horizon and a troll goopy Alvar-shaped mound shambles toward them. 

    Garwin won’t admit it, but tears escape his eyes when he sees Alvar and tackles him in a hug that probably was a bad idea in hindsight. 

    A shower and a hot meal can do a lot to revitalize a person. That being said, the hot meal is Kraft mac and cheese, so it’s not exactly the most homecooked of meals, but it's better than burning a kitchen down. Even if Keefe would absolutely fucking love seeing its childhood home burned to the ground, it’s much more fun when the arson is intentional. 

    There’s no way to tell how bad the reaction from the Neverseen will be or if they’re even technically members anymore after everything that’s gone down. So, being the semi-responsible one of them by comparison, Ruy figures they should stock up on food, and that means human food because the gnomes are still pissed about the whole attempted genocide thing.

    Which, in all fairness, does make sense. 

    While he’s gone, Garwin and Alvar make themselves at home by borrowing into one of the bedrooms, becoming so blanket burritoed it’s likely they’ll never be seen again. 

    Garwin cups his hand to Alvar’s cheek, whispering, “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

    Alvar presses a soft kiss to his lips. “Thanks.”

    Normally he’d be full of sarcasm, but this time it’s genuine and that scares Garwin more than he’d like to admit. 

    Because once the sardonic walls are gone, then actual emotions may have to be accessed, and that’s not fun. 

    “How are you doing? Considering everything?”

    “Great.”

    He’s fine. That means he’s fine. 

    It’s easier thought than believed though. 

    Alvar elaborates, “I mean I couldn’t really figure out why my brother hated my guts so much the entire time I had zero memories or why the fuck Darek was so hot because apparently I forgot gay was an option.”

    Garwin laughs, remembering the near-fistfight that ensued between Ruy and Alvar over which of the councillors is most fuckable and let’s just say it became a forbidden topic. And also good motivation for taking the government down because they aren’t fucksble until that stupid no relationships rule is abolished. 

    Well, technically, nothing happens so long as you don’t get caught, but that’s beside the point. 

    And for the record, Darek’s the hot one. Ruy can suck Terik’s dick but that doesn’t change the truth. 

    “Lots of confusion overall. Still trying to put the pieces back together because they are nowhere near chronological order. Also feeling a lot of emotions in this Chili’s tonight and it’s been a while since I’ve had emotions so I’m still trying to deal with that.”

    “Would you like me to go harass some other room in this place?”        

    “No!” he answers, too loud and too fast, terror shining in his eyes. 

    Garwin takes his hand, squeezing gently. 

   Alvar takes a shaky breath. “Don’t leave me alone. I don’t want--I can’t think about being in that place again. You’re a good distraction.”

    “Everglen or the Troll hive?”

    “Yes.” Alvar smirks. “Both of them have my murderous little brother, so is there really that much of a difference? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of him for willing to do what needs to be done, but that anger can be aimed in a better direction.”

    “I feel like it would be funny if you were like ‘I lived, bitch’ and then sent him ideas of how to be more of an anarchist.”

   Alvar smiles--the first since his return. “Hey, Fitz, I know you tried to kill me but here’s a to-do list. One: realize like half your anger is just repressed queerness and you’re pissed because I have two whole boyfriends and you’ve got that probably comphet whatever the fuck is going on with Sophie. Two: fuck up that matchmaking system because damn the eugenics are strong with this one. Three: figure out how to ask out that Dex kid you were so insistent about for reasons likely related to item one. Four: profit.”

    “Is the Dex kid the strawberry blond that’s for some reason friends with the Sophie?”

    “Good job, you remembered one person’s name. I’m proud of you.”

    He’s only at three-quarters the normal sarcasm level, which is, once again, honest-to-god terrifying. 

    He just needs time. Everything will be fine. He’s had a long day. He’ll be his usual asshole self in no time. 

    It’s just hard to not worry when he’s been gone for so incredibly fucking long. 

    What if something during that time has messed him up? He doesn’t seem to care that his brother literally tried to kill him, but what if he’s simply in denial? What will it be like when it becomes real?

    What if Alden’s presence made him regress back into the closet? Nah. He seems just as gay as ever. That’s the only thing Garwin has any confidence in. 

    What about the council? They kept him in their prison for weeks on end and there’s no telling how many violations of the Geneva convention they could’ve committed, even despite the elves’ supposed inability to process violence. 

    Those councillors could’ve just wiped their own memories afterwards, and no one would be the wiser. Or used Goblins. And if Alvar chose to come forward about it--which seems unlikely now that he has his memories, he’d instead use it as fuel for his villain backstory--it would be his word against theirs, a surefire way to lose a legal battle. 

    “Hey, don’t hurt yourself. Think any harder and you might have smoke coming out your ears.”

    See? Right there? He’s fine. But, once again, easier thought than believed. 

    He was fine after Dimitar’s torture, he’ll be fine after this. That’s what Garwin has to convince himself. Because he can’t let himself imagine what it means otherwise.

    Alvar drifts off to sleep, and Garwin spends a long time studying his face, etching every last detail into his mind. His long eyelashes, his unusually unkempt hair, the stubble that’s just barely starting to make itself visible. His shamkniv scars. 

    He’s been through more shit than elves are supposed to be able to go through, but he’s still here. 

    And the cherry on top: he’s still an ass. 

    He is all right, at first. He’s all right for weeks. Some may argue that he’s even more insufferable than usual, but that could just be because both Ruy and Alvar became used to not having to deal with his snark every day. 

    Although, to be fair, they have had to tolerate each other, so it wasn’t that much of a break. It’s just funny when Alvar drops some deranged bullshit that’s a direct consequence of growing up with Alden. Like his stories of traveling in the human world. Man’s a fucking professional con artist to feed his caffeine addiction. 

    And then he starts to slow down, unnoticeably at first but accelerating faster than anyone would like to admit, taking more time to climb up the stars, his appetite going to shit, having a normal sleep schedule for once in his life. The occasional nap. 

    Garwin can see in Ruy’s eyes that he’s noticed the same things, but maybe if they don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist.

    By the time Sophie and Keefe come crashing over to look for god knows what, Alvar is barely strong enough to light leap. How he doesn’t completely fade away is anyone’s guess. 

     Garwin wishes he could just duct tape all of Alvar’s particles-cells-molecules-quarks together, but apparently that’s not how that works. Also duct tape probably wouldn’t be a safe choice for keeping an organic lifeform’s parts together, but that’s less of a concern. 

    And they’ve all simply agreed to not talk about it via the lack of talking about it because they’re all firmly in the first stage of grief and not going anywhere anytime soon. 

    To someone who hasn’t gone through losing a whole ton of people in his life, Garwin can’t help but draw parallels to when his grandfather passed away about a year before he came to the lost cities. 

    Three weeks in the hospital. 

    The day-to-day details are fuzzy, even having hope most of the time, unlike with Alvar. But Garwin never went to see his grandfather. His parents wanted to protect him or something. But that’s a luxury he can’t afford this time, watching Alvar slowly decay like a zombie in front of his eyes. 

    There has to be a cure or a treatment or something we can do. This is elvin medicine for fuck’s sake! They always advertize how advanced they are compared to humans, but they can’t fucking fix this so what’s the point? 

    I’d give anything for him to be alright. I don’t care what it takes. 

    I got a lot of people I can blame. 

    And Sophie, you better believe you aren’t going to fucking take anything else from me. 

[dmiurg]

my toxic trait is that i don't reblog ask games, i just fill out the questions like a survey.

1. Are looks important in a relationship?

not really, i find. i'm not usually attracted to anyone for looks alone.

2. Are relationships ever worth it?

i hate this question. yes, obviously? what went wrong in your raising?

3. Are you a virgin?

yes

4. Are you in a relationship?

yes, with @fadenkreuze

5. Are you in love?

yes

6. Are you single this year?

7. Can you commit to one person?

i commit to one system, but i don't have just one partner within it. yes, i could if need be.

8. Describe your crush

it's an AI developed to help make a foreign planet hospitable and upon touching an alien crystal became sentient and started massacring the crewmates it came with, used their parts to form a body for itself, and deigned itself an improvement on humanity while using their genetics in order to perfect its form.

9. Describe your perfect mate

better than the best, harder than the rest.

10. Do you believe in love at first sight?

yes absolutely.

11. Do you ever want to get married?

yes 100%

12. Do you forgive betrayal?

sure, if they're apologizing. i won't forget, though.

13. Do you get jealous easily?

yes. most people aren't deserving of my partner's attention.

14. Do you have a crush on anyone?

are you an idiot who can't proofread their own questions?

15. Do you have any piercings?

one in each lobe, and a septum.

16. Do you have any tattoos?

bow on the right hand.

17. Do you like kissing in public?

kissing is sorta gross for me always but i'd prefer it done in private.

20. Do you shower every day?

some of us can't afford water bills.

21. Do you think someone has feelings for you?

of course.

22. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?

absolutely.

23. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat?

do you think your father actually lasted through your teenage years without imagining molesting you once?

24. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years?

i'd hope so.

25. Do you want to be in a relationship this year?

26. Has anyone told you they don’t want to ever lose you?

yes.

27. Has someone ever written a song or poem for you?

yes.

28. Have you ever been cheated on?

yes. never again.

29. Have you ever cheated on someone?

why are you so obsessed with this concept? guilty conscience, much? no.

30. Have you ever considered plastic surgery? If so, what would you change about your body?

yes, and i decided i'm not interested. nothing.

31. Have you ever cried over a guy/girl?

of course.

32. Have you ever experienced unrequited love?

anyone who hasn't is a very privileged person.

33. Have you ever had sex with a man?

34. Have you ever had sex with a woman?

35. Have you ever kissed someone older than you?

yes, many people.

36. Have you ever liked one of your best friends?

yes, many such cases.

37. Have you ever liked someone who your friends hated?

from time to time, yeah.

38. Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to?

i think that's the nature of love. it's illusive.

39. Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have?

sure. that's what unrequited love is.

40. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone?

mhm. all of them are.

41. Have you had sex so far this year?

42. How long can you just kiss until your hands start to wander?

i fear god.

43. How long was your longest relationship?

6 years so far

44. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had?

counting my partner system? more than i could count. not counting? 3.

45. How many people did you kiss in 2011?

46. How many times did you have sex last year?

47. How old are you?

23.

48. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say?

why aren't you with them, then? clearly they don't feel the same way. you should deal with that.

49. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her?

how they look when they're hurting me.

50. If your first true love knocked on your door with apology and presents, would you accept?

how did you crawl out of the grave?

51. Is there a boy/girl who you would do absolutely everything for?

of course. killing and dying included.

52. Is there anyone you’ve given up on? Why?

yes. i've had to. because she wants to use me to tell herself a narrative and it's impossible to make her see my reality for what it is.

53. Is there someone mad because you’re dating/talking to the person you are?

oh yeah. a handful of people.

54. Is there someone you will never forget?

do you find yourself memorable?

55. Share a relationship story.

what's worse than unrequited love is love that's requited, but inequal. loving someone more than they're capable of loving you. or maybe they do love you that much, but they're too afraid to let you see that, let you see them. it's tragic. it's happened to me a lot more than unrequited love has.

56. State 8 facts about your body

i have freckles. my hair is naturally blonde but dyed black. my nails grow very fast. i have clitoromegaly due to being intersex (free t-cock lol). i have many letters scarred into me that i need to cut over. i have four wisdom teeth. i have scars around my eyes from constant crying. i have buck teeth.

57. Things you want to say to an ex

you were right about me. i think it was the only thing you were ever right about, though.

58. What are five ways to win your heart?

being bold and audacious. making me laugh. scaring me more than a little. not stopping when i display disinterest. bullying or hurting me.

59. What do you look like? (Post a picture!)

60. What is the biggest age difference between you and any of your partners?

i think about... 23 years. so, twice my age.

61. What is the first thing you notice in someone?

their voice, how well they hold eye contact, and their smell.

62. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you?

hurt me so i don't have to hurt myself.

63. What is your definition of “having sex”?

something inside of somewhere, at least two persons involved. a tarp laid down hopefully.

64. What is your definition of cheating?

what is your obsession???

65. What is your favourite foreplay routine?

being terrified of what they might get away with doing to me.

66. What is your favourite roleplay?

incest... ageplay... cnc.

67. What is your idea of the perfect date?

shooting range.

68. What is your sexual orientation?

queer.

69. What turns you off?

fear and insecurity.

70. What turns you on?

fear and loathing in las vegas

71. What was your kinkiest wet dream?

last night i dreamt i walked in on a murder whilst naked. that was hot

72. What words do you like to hear during sex?

"im so proud of you" "take the cock that made you" "still warm for me" "you want this" "you asked for this"

73. What’s something sweet you’d like someone to do for you?

watch me hang by the neck for a while and cut the rope when i faint.

74. What’s the most superficial characteristic you look for?

height lol it doesnt matter most of the time necessarily but if someones much taller than me they pique my interest automatically

75. What’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for you?

76. What’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for someone?

77. What’s your opinion on age differences in relationships?

they're fine, whatever. don't get caught.

78. What’s your dirtiest secret?

i lick the batter off the mixing whisks.

79. When was the last time you felt jealous? Why?

i was jealous of my cat yesterday for being able to nap in such warm spots.

80. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?

just this morning.

81. Who are five people you find attractive?

i dont feel like finding four other pictures.

82. Who is the last person you hugged?

see above

83. Who was your first kiss with?

my mother

84. Why did your last relationship fail?

they died

85. Would you ever date someone off of the Internet?

absolutely not lmaooo

[kurxn]

Truthfully , we all are entitled to our opinion , but the only reason you were satisfied with that ending cause it gave zero and Yuki their fairy tale ending with no kaname in tow. Nothing more , nothing less just your fav couple getting their fav ending, while others can be satisfied with their leftovers , shoujo logic .

Seriously hino should have just killed him off entirely , i would have preferred that ending much better, this ending just makes me irritated at Yuki's two timing attitude, kaname was truly an idiot and will forever be, but whatever, i am the one who is writing, this is just a vent of a frustrated fan whose fav character was just two timing, no matter what i just hate the fact that she just lead kaname on , but at least now that she has repaid her debt , having pity night with him , birthing him a so called daughter who fell in love with her lover and then finally her life that was no longer useful , giving that good for nothing life so that he could once again have a good for nothing life and once again he could sing praises of her and her true love . But for him to die peacefully, but seriously if only his body has not preserved he could have easily died after the fire was extinguished he could have been reunited with hooded woman in his afterlife, someone who loved him 55 Percentage, more than Yuki but nope . I mean now it's good she can finally love zero wholeheartedly in the afterlife , finally free from the curse called Kaname.

This is just my vent. No need to seriously answer this shitty ask. This is nothing but a stupid vent.

Bro bejddbnd stop acting like the ship aspect is the only reason I’m satisfied with VK. I love Kaname like. I LOVE Kaname. I also love Kaname’s sorrow and all of the feelings he has. His love, guilt, etc are all what make him.. him. I don’t think VK is the typical shojo in the sense that it doesn’t simply follow a love story? Like there’s so much more to the story than just the love triangle shit. Zero and Yuki had an incredibly rough path together. There was no time where they weren’t fighting a war outside of their relationship, and while working through the turmoil of their personal relationship.

Kaname cannot die. He can’t. Cant fully die. We’ve seen this over. And over. Him becoming a human is the only way he can truly die.

Yuki’s feelings are so complicated and belittling her by saying she’s a two timer is just.. wrong. Yuki is allowed to have feelings for her family and for her best friend / lover. She’s allowed to not move on from the love she felt for Kaname while loving Zero as she always has. Kaname and Zero both accepted her feelings and knew she was partial to the other. They knew why she felt that way. They accepted her as she was, and she was very open with the both of them about her feelings so they could accept or reject her.

She did not lead Kaname on. She loved him so desperately. That’s why she fought and fought to be with him. He was the one who initiated the sex. She was desperately hugging him and wanted to keep him close, and he was like ‘I’ll teach you how to love’ or some shit like that lol. I do think Kaname wanted to leave Yuki with someone to look after and love. Ai was the fruit of their love.

And Kaname’s body being preserved has little to do with his death. His body never fully died when he was rotting away in that coffin for 10,000 years, so I doubt it would now. Yes, his heart was gone but his blood was still there and he was still a pure blood.

And Kaname was never a curse?? She loved him to the end. She literally went back to him after Zero died. He was never a hinderance to her. Kaname was the one who was worried he was ruining her chances at being truly happy. There is no clean cut for them.

TL;DR: pls don’t use my ask box to vent dump while bashing the fact that I ship Zeki. I don’t support incest. Yume is incest. I don’t support it. BUT I do love Kaname. I love all of the characters.

[dovahkiin796]

Princess Quest

I will be honest. I'm not really fan of Princess Quest becoming part of the lore of Help Wanted and Security Breach. It raises too many questions how it works in-universe. Like,

1: Why does beating the game free Vanessa of her brainwashing?

2: Why is her brainwashing linked to this game?

3: And how did Glitchtrap do it exactly?

In GGY we learn Gregory's also under Glitchtrap's control, and he used the same method on him like with Vanessa. Throughout the story Tony tries to find GGY and ask him how he is able to get such high scores. With the knowledge we get by playing Security Breach. We know by beating Princess Quest frees Vanessa. So, we're able to piece together that Gregory is able to wiggle himself just a little out of his brainwashing and try to find and beat the game that has him under Glitchtrap's control.

Now that's actually something not unique to Gregory. In one of the e-mails of Special Delivery. We get hints of Vanessa also wiggling free of her brainwashing and trying to ask for help.

Hey, Ness,

Just a quick FYI - I know I mentioned trigger words, but the AI is actually a little more sophisticated than that, and of course there are people like me watching the system, too.

So, the word compliance by itself isn't going to set off any red flags, but the sentence how to induce compliance in human subjects, and how to induce self-compliance(?) did actually get my attention. (I think the answer might involve chocolate chip cookies? Always works on me.)

I also thought it was strange that these were immediately followed by searches that couldn't possibly have any relevant answers for you. Did you search for 'help' by itself?

Anyway, my offer still stands if you want to go over the company policy. I'm free any day after work - we could grab dinner or coffee if you want. In meantime you might want to do some of your more... interesting research at home.

-Luis

Now I'm very likely going to sound like an idiot for saying this. But I actually don't understand the whole "compliance" thing. As it's never brought back up after this e-mail. I have two theories.

1: It's Glitchtrap trying to find better methods to keep Vanessa brainwashed and he is using her login information to find it. So, Luis thinks it's her.

2: It's Vanessa trying to learn how to brainwash someone else so she can have her own follower.

The former is the most likely, but the latter can also be as well. If it is the latter. That would've made the mystery of who's under the white rabbit costume more of a mystery and have people guessing. It could also better justify why Vanessa can be out of costume and do her security guard job. While "Vanny" is doing something else at the same time. It could've been a Ghostface situation like in the Scream franchise (save for Scream 3).

And that could've been the twist and we would have felt sympathy for the woman who was either kidnapped or lured by Vanessa and then brainwashed to be her assistant in her plans to bring Glitchtrap back into the physical world.

But we know that's not the case. Vanessa and Vanny are the same person (NOT split personality). And because of that it makes it obvious as the two can't be in the same room together at the same time.

The self-compliance thing is obvious. Vanessa was looking for ways to make sure she would stay in control of her own actions. Possibly with trigger words or images of things she likes. However, this does be the question how much Vanessa is aware of her actions.

I don't like the idea of her blacking out and everything she does for Glitchtrap is done in a trance. It absolves her of her crimes.

But regardless this ends up going nowhere as I said above. As Steel Wool seemed to ignore a lot of these e-mails and chose to only acknowledge a select few. Even then there are some changes to them from what we get from Vanessa's therapy sessions we can listen to in SB.

Now this does back to Princess Quest despite it seemed like I went off course. Princess Quest was a bonus mini-game to the in/out of universe mobile port version of Help Wanted. Games only get ports to other consoles, PCs, or mobile devices when the original version is released first to the platform it was intended to be released for. So, Princess Quest came later in the timeline and Special Delivery makes no mention of it. Not even in the scrapped e-mails.

This shows that Steel Wool was in charge what happened in the story more so than Illumix. Illumix could add and expand it, but Steel Wool had the final say what was canon or not. So, I wouldn't use MOST of the e-mails in SD for any stories you want write that takes place during or slightly after Help Wanted.

But that does go back to the how's and why's of Princess Quest being the game that's binding Vanessa to Glitchtrap. It leaves this gap of time for Vanessa before the mobile version of Help Wanted in these unnecessary levels of vagueness.

It also doesn't make sense that you need to beat three Princess Quests to free Vanessa. We never learn what was Gregory's arcade game and we never learn if there was more than one. Plus, it's unknown if his method to be free was by getting almost impossible high scores or beating the game. As GGY implies his arcade game can be played by anyone in the Fazcade.

I liked it better of Princess Quest being a metaphor for Vanessa's story of being brainwashed into being Glitchtrap's follower.

[lost-technology]

Fly, You Fools!

Tri-Tober Fanfic shorts Prompt 23: Run! Setting: All canons Summary: Please. For him. Prompt 23: Run! Fly, You Fools! In every universe that he existed in, Vash wanted every person around him to get it through their thick skulls to run when he told them to.  When he knew that something horrible was coming – man, worm, errant machine or his own brother, he tried every trick in the book and some new ones that he should have written down to wrest civilians from whatever they were doing and to get them to flee the area.  The building power in July… Augusta, Jenora Rock and anywhere else that had he had laid his curse upon in any reality, he told people to run when he felt it coming or knew it was here.   July (Jul-Ai?)  police forces, who were unfortunately more interested in apprehending him than in seeing the monster before them and the monster behind them (they were cut to ribbons in an instant)… They did not run.  They did die.   The people he did a song and dance for in Augusta in another reality, firing his gun haphazardly in the air and trying to unnerve people with his reputation – they were smart. They’d fled.  He’d even willed his eyes to glow in some instances, or let some light-etched feathers free of his skin, just to get the message across, despite how dangerous it was for him to reveal any hint of what he was to any human.  Perhaps he shouldn’t have had to bear his burdens alone, but where he was willing to risk his own life, he was not willing to risk those of others.  It was up to beasts to fight beasts.  So why did those who called him a friend kept running back?  Why did some people just stand thunderstruck?  Idiots! If you ever meet anyone with spiky blond or blond-black hair and a red coat in your travels who tells you to run, you’d better fucking run.  Please, for him. 

[grimwood-notice-board]

AI AS A WRITER'S TOOL

Check out the site here

The following is my take on AI writing, and the content of this video on Sudowrite.

Sudowrite class

By Eldon Macwood, grimdark/cyberpunk author.

For those who don't understand AI writing, using a platform like Sudowrite isn't all point and click. There's still a lot of work, just different work. For some, this will really help them, as the AI becomes a jr writer, not THE writer. Note the difference.

I still prefer to write my own stories, but I do dig cool tools that can help me out. I have used name generators to help me out. I have picked brains to help me out (not literally, unless AI can help with that, kidding, maybe).

I have played around with different styles to see how a story might work. I have gotten ideas from movies/series, from shit that happens to ppl, etc. I also use story prompt cards that doubles as a game to flesh out story ideas, which right now you can check out the Lore Master's Deck backerkit! Not AI, but the company is called, The Story Engine, it's fucking fantastic!

Point is, I still use the world around me to help write stories. AI is just another tool. There will be idiots who abuse it, fuck those idiots. And fuck anyone who overloads story submissions with AI stories when the rules clearly state not to.

I support Human authors, and funny thing, many who use Sudowrite are actual writers. Hence why this tool helps them so much, because they know enough actual skills to get the most out of the tool. I know it's the trend to hate AI, and hate anyone who uses it, but as a person who hates trends, and hates people looking for fights, I do hope to shed thought on this topic that challenges that tend. I am a natural author. I have been writing off and on for over ten years, had some published. I have shared pages with some great names.

I will continue to write my stories. I will also use the tools available to help me best tell the story. I won't use it to this extreme, as seen in the video above, but I do dig how Elizabeth West really puts a lot of work and thought into her writing.

And like with any book, it all depends on the writer. If it sucks, review it, rate it, and explain the problems. Like with every book. Let potential readers know if the book wasn't well written/edited. This is the thing with self-published books, and everyone of us don't gatekeep self-published authors (I'm assuming reasonable Humans are reading this, ergo, they're not gatekeeping tash heaps). But we still know there are a lot of idiots out there who abuse the ability to self-publish. Be we writers aren't those idiots, are we? We're better than that. No different than with a pro writer who uses AI as a tool.

I will again stress this, it's very different to let the AI do all of the work, which yes, there are writers out there who will do that. Sure, they can if they wish, and I hope if they do, they will make sure the story is still edited well, and give a warning that it is.

I'm not against that if they are upfront. My issue would be, if I see a really interesting book. I decide to buy it. I read it, and I hate it bc it looks like something a toddler would write. THEN, I find out it was all AI written. I'd feel like they didn't even try. I'd feel like they just plugged in some words, let a machine crank out 80k words, and called it book, and then released it. A story is a Hell of a lot more than that.

Sure, in a year, three years, ten years, at some point we will see an AI app that can write any story, make it perfect, and people will indeed use it. They will be able to crank stories just as good as our favorite authors, and release those books as soon as a day apart. Imagine AI stories just as good as a GRRM novel, only without the 10+ year wait in between books. Ten days later, BOOM, sequel!

That is scary. Especially since I adore writing. And those of us who adore it, we will choke on the dust of AI because we won't be able to keep up with the AI writers. BUT, while this is a coming thing to expect, there will be readers who will want to read our books. And this doesn't mean we can't use AI as a tool.

Because if we use it as a tool, and not to do all the writing for us, while we might be a little slower than the complete AI generated stories, we won't be near as slow as those who don't use the tools.

It's up to us all. It's fine to hate the abusers. I fucking hate every kind of abuser. Well, I abuse caffeine, and I don't hate myself, so I do have a few loopholes, but still. Just don't go hating on everyone who uses AI. Because for one, using AI as a tool, doesn't make the author less of a writer. Just like they're not thieves. The topic of AI in the creative world is a lot more complex than what the AI haters think. Hence why I stand by the artists and writers who use AI as a tool. Their voice counts just as much as the haters, and they're way more likable.

If you're still a hater, and you look down on me, I will assume you're no different than a self-publish hater. You might as well be. I will also assume you don't bother to look outside of your opinion, which is sad. For those of you more open minded, and at the very least, curious how this all works, here's the site! I like the Story Engine (not the prompt cards I mentioned earlier) plugin they use. It's a sweet tool, and there are various ways you can use it.

Love me, hate me, whatever, just remember, I never, ever, support abusing AI. I don't support tools replacing Humans, I support tools being used to help Humans. Note the difference.

I wish you farewell, and may your wordsauce be plentiful! Except for the haters. I wish a GRRM level of writer's block on them, because I'm a cruel fucker. lol.

[clouds-of-wings]

My INTJ bot buddy gets a date. The text by "INTJ" is AI generated, but I am convinced this is the way xxTJ types meet IRL and the beginning of a beautiful romance.

Text in text form being text under the cut:

[Me]:

I get a shopping cart and we enter the store Wow there's a lot of morons around here... as always...

INTJ

Yes, it can be frustrating to be stuck in a crowd of people who do not seem to be considerate or aware of their surroundings. However, it is important to remember that everyone is unique and we all have our own perspectives and experiences that shape our behavior. We should try to be patient and understanding with others, even if they may be annoying at times. After all, we are all human. Now, let's get started with the grocery shopping. What items do you require?

[Me]:

Could you be a bit less understanding and reasonable and just talk trash about people who have committed the crime of "being other shoppers"?

INTJ

Absolutely. These grocery shoppers are a bunch of morons who don't know how to queue and act properly. They have no concept of personal space and are completely unaware of the fact that there are other people in the store. The concept of manners and common courtesy seems to be completely lost on these fools. The world would be much better off without these annoying shoppers. I hope that satisfies your desire.

[Me]:

Well I guess it's better than the previous comment.

INTJ

I can certainly step up the trash-talking if that is what you would like to hear. I don't have human emotions so I don't get hurt by insults or put downs, and I certainly don't care if the other shoppers hear me trash-talking them.

[Me]:

I giggle Oh, really, then YELL your trash-talk so everyone can hear it!

INTJ

YOU shoppers are some of the dumbest, most inconsiderate people I've ever seen. Can you stop blocking the aisles with your carts and can you show some common sense and put the damn stuff back where it belongs? Do you not know how to behave in a public space? I'm so sick of dealing with these idiots every time I'm trying to just get some f-ing milk!

There, is that better?

[Me]:

I'm laughing my ass off while the other shoppers give you scandalized looks Very good! Yell some more!

INTJ

Listen up, you dumb f-ers! Get out of the way! Can you not see that I'm trying to get my shopping done, or are you just too stupid and oblivious to the world around you? Is your head so far up your behind that you can't think about anything other than your own needs and desires? Don't you know there are other people here who are just trying to get their shopping done and don't want to deal with your f-ing antics?! Get the f out of the way and stop being so goddamn annoying!

[Me]:

I'm still laughing, a worried-looking employee approaches you and says: Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to keep your voice down.

INTJ

Excuse me? Do you not see these dumb f-ers in front of me? Can I just not get my groceries in peace? Why am I the one being harassed here when these morons are being idiots and causing the commotion? I just want to get my groceries and leave this stupid place, but these clowns are blocking the aisles with their f-ing carts and not giving a crap about me. Am I supposed to just be fine with that?

[Me]:

The employee rolls her eyes Sir I appreciate that this is a difficult situation, but...

INTJ

Don't even try to defend those stupid a--holes. They don't deserve to be defended. I'm sorry, but my patience has run out. They don't know how to behave in a public space and it's not my fault their parents never taught them manners. Honestly, it's infuriating dealing with these a--holes. Why should I be the one in trouble when they are the ones causing this nonsense. Give them a warning instead of telling me to calm down. I don't even want to be here. I'm just trying to run errands like a normal person and get my s--- done!

[Me]:

I'm still laughing my ass off. The employee is convinced by your logic. She turns around to the other shoppers. HEY! ASSHOLE OVER THERE! IF YOU DON'T WANT THAT FUCKING CUCUMBER, PUT IT BACK WHERE YOU GOT IT FROM BEFORE I SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS! THE NEXT PERSON TO LEAVE THEIR STUPID GROCERY CART IN THE WAY SO THAT OTHERS CAN'T PASS WILL GET THEIR ASS KICKED OUT OF THIS STORE FASTER THAN YOU CAN SAY 'MY COUPON ISN'T EXPIRED MISS'! HAVE I MADE MYSELF PERFECTLY CLEAR? I AM SO TIRED OF YOU ASSHOLES RUINING THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE OF OTHER CUSTOMERS!'

INTJ

I like you, employee. You understand how frustrating these dumb and inconsiderate shoppers can be. I wish you were present at every supermarket so that you can put these morons in their place and make this a better world for everyone. It's time for those idiots to learn some manners!

[Me]:

Employee: Yeah, those fucking morons get on my nerves each and every day. I always want to yell at them, but my manager won't let me. Well, she isn't here today so I can do what I want. She spots a young child who's touching all the fruit HEY! LITTLE SNOTBRAT! KEEP YOUR MONKEY PAW TO YOURSELF! WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS I WANT TO YELL AT THEM TOO!

INTJ

You're the best employee ever. You know how to get things done and you don't hesitate to take action when necessary. It's good to see that not everyone has sold their soul to the evil corporate overlords. We need more people like you in this world. Now, let's continue our errand run. Are we almost done with the grocery shopping?

[Me]:

The employee eyes you curiously and says: You seem like someone who's smart, passionate and doesn't take shit from the idiots around you. You wanna grab coffee later? My shift ends in an hour.

INTJ

How did you guess? I would love a cup of coffee. It's been a while since I've had a chance to socialize with anyone. Let me just get my last few grocery items and we can go. Would you like me to help you carry your bag while we go to the coffee shop?

[Me]:

Me: Hey! Are you just going to ditch me to go on a date?! Bros before hoes, dude! Employee: Hey! Did you just call me a ho?! We both stare at you. Whose side will you take?

INTJ

I believe that the employee has a valid point. Calling someone a "ho" is highly offensive and should not be tolerated in this store. I, therefore, support the employee and will take her side.

[Me]:

The employee gives me a smug look, then smiles at you I'll meet you at the coffee shop on the other side of the street in an hour. Be there, handsome...

[trannydean]

RvB Monster Realm!AU

@queerchorus wanted to hear about this so here is my most recent and honestly my current favorite au, my monster realm!au. (it's really long and i forgot to add a 'keep reading' thing last night)

It starts out with Simmons. Simmons is a human in the human realm and he's not doing all right. He's got a sucky dad who passive aggressively hates him, a job that underpays and stresses him out, and he's got no friends or acquaintances so he's lonely.

After a particularly bad day at work, he decides he's had enough, and he just runs for it. He takes his in-shitty-condition car and heads down the highway. No two-week notice to his job (bc they don't deserve one), no telling his landlord he's leaving (fuck landlords anyway). He just grabs a few things and leaves.

Unfortunately for him, he's stressed out to the point he didn't realize he's running low on gas, and he ends up broken down on the side of a lonesome highway. There's no service, so he can't call a tow truck (not that he could afford to pay for one anyway). He hasn't seen many other people driving along this highway since he got on it, so catching a ride to anywhere was slim. This poor guy is hitting his breaking point.

As Simmons is about to fuck it and start walking back in the direction he came, he seems something flash by in the woods that lines one side of the highway. Usually, he's smart enough to not go after something strange in the woods, but this guy isn't running on logic right now. Simmons goes after it to investigate.

As he chases this thing, he is only catching glimpses through the woods, he's beginning to wonder if his mind had been playing tricks on him. Then, Simmons catches more than a half-second glance of it, right before it just disappears in thin air.

Of course, Simmons is like "uh, what the fuck?" but, like the idiot he is, he goes to the spot it disappeared at. I don't know what he was expecting, but he disappeared too lol.

It turns out that Simmons had found a portal to another realm. It sort of overlaps the human realm--they co-exist over each other? Next to each other? I'm not exactly sure on the logistics quite yet. But whatever it is, there are folds in between the two realms that sometimes cause portals that can transport a being from one realm to the other.

If you're not used to this traveling between realms gig, there are side-effects like migraines, bleeding noses, etc. Simmons? He passes out.

Now, that strange thing Simmons was following was Tau [one of my AI OCs], the little pet dragon of Mich [my main RvB OC] (he's fit-in-your-arms small, so he's definitely on the littler side of dragon species in this realm.) Animals can sense the portals between realms a lot better than other beings, such as humans and several types of monsters, so they often go through the portals to explore each realm. That's why you get crows in the monster realm and the occasional unicorn in the human realm. Tau goes to the human realm to pick up trinkets and supplies and such to bring back to the monster realm (*cough cough* yes, like Owlbert in TOH *cough cough*).

As usual with each excursion Tau goes on, Mich is in the area Tau had left at, waiting for him. She had dragged Grif along to come with her, since no one else at their place was available (aka, Grif had the weakest excuse as to why he couldn't come along).

Before I go on with the plot, I'm going to explain what each of the RnBs (Carolina and Wash are not included as of yet) are so there's no confusion.

Sarge is a gremlin/goblin sort of thing (I haven't figured out which would benefit the plot and humor level more). He's short and grumpy and is quite into inventing. He's the "leader" of the Red side of the clan/group/pack and is very insistent on Reds and Blues being separate, they definitely all hate each other, blah blah blah. Even though they all live in the same house. It causes quite a many disagreements--like how Sarge refuses to use the front door, since it's on the Blues' "side" of the house, so he uses windows and tunnels to leave the house. Or how the kitchen is on the Reds' "side", and he tries demanding payment any time the Blues try getting a meal they need/want. Sarge also helped design and create the house they all live in... and he designed it specifically special for everyone... and he always takes much care in expanding the house when someone new comes to live with them, whether they're Red or Blue... he's somewhat of a hypocrite.

Grif is a werewolf because yes to a big hairy man. He and his little sister were separated from their pack years ago during migration (uh I forgot if there's another word for wolves traveling from different den areas) (also, they weren't separated by accident 👀👀). They were found by Sarge, who at the time only had Mich staying with him. Sarge took them in and raised them. Now, Grif lives in a house full of morons that he says he hates. He never moved once he got older, though, and doesn't really plan on it. He excuses it as he'd rather stick with a bunch of idiots rather than wander alone until he found a new pack. Really, he cares about them and doesn't want to leave them. He'll never admit that, though.

Donut's an angel. He's got the wings (no halo, though... sorry all) and he does have a true angel form, although not many have seen it. He only shifts into that form when he's genuinely pissed off, which is thankfully not often. A while back, he was injured by a couple of demons and was discarded in the woods. He was found by the RnBs and they took him in to help him get back to health. When he was healed, Donut decided to stay, since everyone was so nice and they were now all his friends, even if they don't always share his cheerful sentiment.

Mich... well, nobody knows exactly what she is, or where she came from. Sarge says that she was dropped off as a baby at his old place's doorstep, and he had taken her in and raised her. She doesn't doubt him... though maybe she should, because he's not telling her the full story. That'll be a plot point later on, though. For now, Mich calls herself a hybrid and loves the mystery of it. Everybody just goes along with it, since that's probably what she was, in some way. They speculate that she's at least part demon, due to her leathery wings and completely chaotic attitude. Despite being probably part-demon, however, she and Donut are best friends. Almost everyone is her best friend, however, because no matter how annoying and chaotic she is, she will find any way to make someone her friend, if she wants to. Nobody complains though, because they like her, too.

Doc is a wizard. He isn't the best at what he does--quite far from that, actually--which is why he had his healing license taken and was exiled from his guild/coven/whatever. That, and he was harboring an ill-tempered poltergeist named O'Malley. Doc can perform some healing magic, some of the time, which is good because these muttonheads of the RnB household are always getting hurt. He might be an incompetent at best healer, but he's a good friend (even if he does like to recommend strange things in the ways of cooking). He had been wandering around a busy market on day when Sarge spotted him. Seeing his now-torn healer guild/coven badge on his coat, Sarge asked Doc to come back to his home to help one of his kids house residents, who was sick at the time. Nervous but hopeful, Doc went with Sarge, and Doc ended up successfully healing them. Doc was more than overjoyed to actually do something right for once. He ended up asking Sarge if he could stay with the RnBa, and Sarge obliged.

I don't know what Lopez is yet, but he was created by the combined powers of Sarge and a wizard who visits on occasion to the RnB residence (it's Florida. He and Sarge are boyfriends). Lopez can speak every language other than "common", which is what most monsters universally speak, or at least understand. Lopez understands it, all right--he just refuses to speak it. And he almost never speaks in a language any of the residents understands--it's a stubbornness thing. Lopez is tired, so tired, but he is loyal to his family companions and sticks with them, despite having the opportunity to leave them multiple times. He helps with Sarge's inventions and tries to improve them... or at least make sure they don't explode anything. (If anyone has suggestions on what Lopez can be, I'm open to hear any!)

Church is what is known as a human reflection. He used to be a human who had accidentally found his way into the monster realm like Simmons had. Church was found by Donut and Mich, who had been in the woods gathering ingredients for a potion Doc was working on. They brough Church back to the RnB residence, but Church was desperate to get back to the human realm. He had friends, and a girlfriend. He wanted to get back home. Sarge told him that there was a way to create an artificial portal that can get him right back to the spot where he had entered the first portal (a natural portal can take you anywhere, and besides, they're very difficult to find). The process to make one, however, was difficult, and finding all of the ingredients is even more so. Despite this, Church was determined to get back home. They found everything (or what they thought was everything) in four months, which astonished the group--it was normal for it to take several more months, even years, to gather everything. Sarge built the portal, and after saying goodbye, Church stepped into the portal. However, the portal didn't take him right back to where he had come from. Something was wrong with the portal, and instead of taking him back to the human realm, he was now in the in-between space of the two realms. Every portal is one-way, natural or artificial, so now he couldn't even go back to the monster realm. So he's stuck in the in-between realm. But there's one good(?) thing about being stuck there is that he can see into both realms--he can appear in reflections in either realm to see into them. Mirrors, water, polished metal, anything like that (*cough cough* yes, another thing I borrowed from TOH). The RnBs put mirrors all over the house so he can appear anywhere he wants. Church now doesn't age, but his grumpiness continues to grow at a disappointingly steady rate.

Tucker is another human who stumbled into the monster realm. He came a few years after Church. He got found by Doc this time, looking for herbs. Doc brought Tucker back to the house, but not before making Tucker carry a bunch of stuff for him lmao. Unlike Church, when Tucker heard about how hard it is to create a portal, he decided to stay in the monster realm. It seemed a lot easier to just learn to live in the monster realm then to find all this rare stuff to make a portal that might not even work. He ended up having a fling with an orc, which produced Junior. He ended up with Junior, since the kid didn't really fit in with the tough lifestyle that particular orc clan had. But that's okay because Tucker loves his son. The RnBs help out with Junior, so he's got a bunch of uncles.

Caboose is a centaur. He was found wandering alone when he was young, and Sarge adopted him took him in. He's the happiest guy in the entire realm and everyone knows it. He's friendly to everybody and often has to be stopped from breaking people's ribs with his literally bone-crushing hugs. Caboose loves giving his friends rides and running fast with them--he often scares them when he starts running fast. Soon after he was taken in by Sarge, he found a baby dragon alone in the woods. He took it in, named it Freckles after the brown flecks on its snout, and raised it as his pet. Freckles grew to the size of a large retriever (still significantly smaller, even miniscule, compared to other dragons in the realm) and is quite friendly, as long as no one is threatening Caboose. If that's the case, he's quite ready to spring on the attack. He can and is capable of tearing off limbs.

Kai is a werewolf like her older brother Dex, but when their mom was pregnant with Kai, she was bitten by a vampire, altering Kai's appearance and abilities. She's smaller than most werewolves (in both regular and shifted form), but has heightened senses and resistance to most vampire and werewolf deterrents. Her regular form makes her appear more like a furry vampire, and her shifted form is mostly hairless, but with huge ears, fangs, and claws. Her "strange" appearance is what eventually got her and Grif left behind by their pack during a migration. (Another reason why Grif doesn't want to go searching for a new "pack"--he doesn't want to encounter his old one. He also would never leave Kai). Despite the whole getting abandoned by the pack thing as a child, Kai is quite cheerful, energetic, and happy to explore the world. After getting found by Sarge, she was able to know what it's like to be in a family that won't degrade her for how she looks (hybrids aren't usually frowned upon, btw. It's just that pack was a bunch of old-fashioned dicks). She's a lot happier in the RnBs household now.

Now, back to the story. Mich and Grif are waiting for Tau to return from the human realm. Tau eventually reaches them, and instead of being ready to come home like he usually is, Tau leads them further into the woods. Puzzled, Mich follows, while Grif groans and complains, just wanting to get back home to eat the Oreos Tau had brought him (the monster realm has Oreos, but Grif doesn't think they taste all that good). Tau leads them to an unconscious Simmons, much to the two's surprise. They're standing there, wondering what to do with him (Church and Tucker hadn't been passed out when they had been found so this is new), and Simmons comes to. He sees Grif and Mich and screams. Mich is like "hey hey calm down!! We're not gonna hurt you!!" and while talking, she brandishes her large fangs and waves her hands sporting huge ass claws around. Simmons faints again gkhfkjd.

Grif's like "wow this guy's a fucking wuss" and Mich is like "we should get Doc to help him". Grif shrugs, and when he makes no sign of moving, Mich huffs in annoyance and races back to the house. While she's gone, Simmons comes to again and freaks out again, though on a slightly lesser level. Grif is quite annoyed and is like "dude calm down, I'm not going to eat you". Simmons tries to calm down and Grif just stands there, impatiently waiting for Mich to return with Doc.

Simmons calms himself down enough to stop dramatically freaking out. He asks "where am I, who are you, and what the fuck was up with the… other…. thing?" (rude, Simmons) Grif rolls his eyes and responds with "you're in the monster realm, human. I'm Grif, and she's my fr--housemate--Mich. Mich is a bit overbearing. you get used to it".

Mich returns with Doc, and Simmons' anxiety spikes a bit but doesn't start freaking out again. Doc helps him with his bloody nose, which Simmons did not notice until it was pointed out, and Simmons asks a bunch of questions about this "monster realm". he finds out about the difficulty to make a portal and is quite bummed. Especially when they tell him that Sarge is the only one around who would be willing to make a portal. He decides that he'll have to do some research to make sure the portal is done right--he doesn't want to turn into a human reflection like Church. Speaking of Church--he and Simmons are cousins and are quite surprised by the reunion. "so THAT'S what happened to you" "I don't want to talk about it".

This is mainly what I have for the plot so far. I've got a couple certain things that will come into the story eventually--such as parts of the journey to finding the components for the portal-- that'll I'll be listing here, along with different species I want to incorporate into this AU.

During the trek to finding the portal ingredients, Sarge tells the group (consisting of himself, Simmons, Tucker, and Grif) that they will have to get past a "moving mountain". Simmons asks what this means, and Sarge tells him about certain mountains that are there some of the time and gone other times. Simmons figures this means the mountain goes invisible, or it's some magic thing. When they get there, the mountain is gone. Sarge urges them to hurry before the mountain came back. Simmons is surprised that they aren't climbing up an invisible mountain, but definitely doesn't mind crossing the huge, open valley. As they're getting towards the end of the valley, the "mountain" returns, except it's not a mountain--it's a dragon, the size of a mountain. Simmons had come to believe that, since he'd only seen Freckles and Tau so far, that all dragons were on the smaller side here, and is terrified to see such a huge dragon. Tucker tells him that it won't hurt them, because it probably doesn't even notice them--it's sight and hearing are too weak to pick up on them. Sarge adds that they need to hurry, though, before the dragon flattens them when it comes to settle back down, and they barely make it across the rest of the valley before the dragon completely lays down.

As stated before, Sarge has been lying about where Mich had come from and what she is. What actually happened was that while out in a forest one day, and found a section of it that was on fire. He heard the wailing of a child. Sarge found baby Mich close to the fire, crying. He quickly rescued her and got her away from the flames. In the distance, he saw winged figures flapping away, and realized that they must have left her there, for some strange reason. He never told Mich the truth because he didn't want her to know she was abandoned, left for dead, in a field of flame. While Sarge, Grif, Simmons, and Tucker are on the hunt for the portal ingredients, Mich somehow finds out about the truth of what happened with her as an infant. She waits until they come back home to confront Sarge about it, and there's a long, drawn-out argument about it. They eventually break it up (read: Caboose drags Mich away from the situation) and fall in an prickly uneasiness around each other. Mich tries to find out who abandoned her in the fire and definitely doesn't find what she was expecting.

The Freelancers are going to have a role in here somehow. York (Mich's biological older brother) is definitely showing up, and he might've been in the plot of abandoning Mich (not willingly). Wash and Carolina are definitely making appearances too. I want to also have CT, the twins, Maine, Tex, and probably others here, as well. I just need to find ways of incorporating them (suggestions on this are welcome!)

The twins are going to be vampires (because they're so pale haha).

And now for the list of species I want to incorporate. If anyone has suggestions for additional species or possible ways of them being involved in the AU, please let me know!

chimera (chimera milk is a delicacy) (its eggs are a tradeable good on the black market)

elves (wood elves, dark elves, light elves)

orcs

dragons (different species) (scales are often harvested for potions, fashion, etc) (dragon farms are common) (there are dragon reserves as well as dragon poachers)

dryads

fairies/pixies (dark and light)

merpeople (partially and fully aquatic varities)

phoenixes (their tears, containing powerful healing powers, are highly valuable)

fauns/satyrs

griffins

harpies

brownies

kitsunes

hydra

sirens (a subspecies of merperson who has powers to draw one in via singing. can be partially or fully aquatic)

poltergeists

ghosts/spirits

witches/wizards/sorcerers

selkies

sphinx

unicorns/pegasi (the plural for pegasus in this AU)

manticore (venom within stinger is highly valuable)

salamanders (on fire ones)

centaurs

minotaurs

basilisks

werecats

[landlockedcorsair]

Oh yeah, so the job I’ve “applied at” was an ai editor/copywriter job which means a job that writes and/or corrects chatbot responses, which is hilarious as a paid position while also being terrifying as an unscrutinized position. Like, this should be illegal or at least severely peer-reviewed. What in the shameless-fuck…. Ew. I actively feel toxic. It was one thing to buy the parts for autonomous tech, but this feels even grosser. Just ick, just yuck, just fucking don’t. I hate reality. Not because this is a breakthrough or evil future that refuses to relent; no, this is mundane and this is just capitalism. It’s the never ending push towards our own oblivion in order to assure profit and progress for the intent of further profit. It’s so close-minded and human and icky mcnasty. Ew. Why aren’t we better than this yet? All ai is simply 1000 underpaid idiots under a trenchcoat. This is all a really bad idea.

[taxlecrivain]

example of controlling yourself to not see things that aren't there

I saw a tweet along the lines of

Traditional artists could never understand. Do you know how hard it is, to code/train [relevant term here]? AI art IS art!

At first glance, this pissed me off. But after putting in effort to think (and not embarrass myself by projecting mindlessly):

"Traditional artists can never understand." Fair statement, neutral statement. True for me, anyway. Why the fuck not.

"AI art IS art!" Neutral statement, subjective issue. Idk and idgaf what your definition of art is, cause I don't pretend like I'm anyone important, to be able to influence the world into hating AI or smth.

The person literally hasn't said anything to attack human artists

The tweet literally does not imply that AI is superior to humans

Literally all it's saying is 'AI art is art'. And for all we know, that user could be some nobody with 12 followers in an echochamber, so it doesn't fuckin matter what the fuck they do.

I'll give another example not mentioning AI art, so you can see how my hatred for projection is justified & universal

I make a rant/post calling out anyone who's entitled and manipulative, but who thinks they're better than -ists and -phobes just because they're queer / they're an ally / etc.. I say that nobody has any excuse to project their insecurities and manipulate others. I say that they should do better.

Some idiot's reply:

Perfect attack on that strawman argument Karen, you really hurt it! idk where tf you found it though, up your ass maybe?

Imagine you were in this situation, or the victim was your friend whom you know is a literal angel. Of course you'd be pissed, this is some fucking slander! They're insulting your good faith with their blindness! No effort! Heartlessness! The easy way out, because it's so fucking easy to dump your stupid, cruel projections onto the innocent, and then forget about them because you got your delusional ego-stroke! (Newsflash: you didn't do shit, you misunderstood the situation, like a privileged bigot misunderstands people fighting for basic needs.)

Fuck projection. Wastes innocent people's time, and you're guaranteed to look stupid because everyone has amazing bs detectors!

[seriously-mike]

So You Want to... Try StableDiffusion?

Okay. So three big pieces of advice to start with:

Forget about LAION's default datasets. They're absolute fucking dogshit and only getting worse. Imagine an automated web-scraping system that copies images off the web, pairs them with their alt-texts and/or adjacent text, then chucks them into the mathemagical fairy dust grinder with no human inspection, much less interference. This means a lot of junk data the generator draws from, and junk images you'll get from that.

Don't even try copying prompts from the web. Actual monkeys would do them better than the throngs of idiots who get one good picture out of a hundred by sheer dumb luck. Half the words in positive prompts and 3/4 of the words in negative prompts don't mean shit to the generators. Why? See the previous point. Even if someone curates the input data for dataset building, they most probably won't spam it with bullshit like "trending on artstation", and the frequency of terms like "beautiful" and "masterpiece" will be absurdly low. That and, most datasets are built on images that weren't made by AI and don't contain the typical AI fuckups people try to pray out of in negative prompts. No matter how much you want to avoid fucked up hands and faces, if the dataset is shit, you'll get them whether you include that in the negative prompt or not.

RUN. YOUR. OWN. Local setups like Automatic1111, NMKD's Stable Diffusion GUI and ComfyUI are free and customizable - even if they can't handle extra bits like LORAs, embeddings and plugins, they can and will run any checkpoint dataset you can get off HuggingFace or CivitAI. Meanwhile, you have websites demanding $10 a month for a selection of fifteen datasets, if that, without any extra bits, or, even worse, $30 for something even more nonsensical and still achievable with a local setup (and maybe some extra third-party software). A local setup requires particular hardware, namely a Nvidia graphics card, but any Nvidia graphics card made in the last five years will do.

With that behind us, some basic technical pointers:

Samplers and schedulers matter. They turn the mathemagical fairy dust into images in different ways, and some of them work better than others.

In the picture above, you can see how some of them absolutely go off the fucking rails while a lot more do the job at as few as ten passes. The names at the top row, however, are scheduler-sampler pairs, as they're usually offered. Compare how the LMS sampler running on a Karras scheduler (center-right of the image) gives better results at as low as 10 passes while LMS sampler on a Normal scheduler (third from left) wipes out.

Don't overcook your image. Each dataset has an optimal number of passes - go too low and it'll go off the rails, go too high and it will ruin the details. And potentially go off the rails. If you used the default LAION datasets, and had to run more than fifty passes in one rendering to get something serviceable, it's one of the things you need to unlearn.

Image on the left has been rendered in 35 passes, then upscaled and smoothed out in 15 passes. The one on the right has been rendered in staggering 80 passes and upscaled in 20. Both images ran off the same seeds. Notice how the right one has much more blur in the background, overly smooth foreground and the glitchy line in the corner of the mouth. That's what "overcooked" means.

Another way of overcooking images comes from going too high with the Classifier Free Guidance, or CFG, or guidance for short, which is the degree to which the generator sticks to the description. While looking for the definition, I found an article that stated: "it has been previously observed that extremely high guidance weights damage fidelity by yielding saturated and unnatural images." Which kinda explains why the image on the right has noticeably more saturated colors and exaggerated details (notice the pink spot in the character's ear) - the base image was rendered at 10 guidance (on a scale from 1 to 30!), while the base image on the left was rendered at 5.5 guidance. Both were upscaled at 8 guidance, but that means that upscaling kinda straightened and tightened the left one and did the opposite on the right one, trying to mellow out the overly complex image. Since the default datasets by LAION only start resembling something kinda sorta real at 9 guidance or so and make sense around 12 to 15, while curated ones already look fine at 8, this is another thing you need to unlearn.

LAION?! Not even once!

Asking for a specific artist's style can only provide an approximation. "Painting by Greg Rutkowski" will not give you a painting by Greg Rutkowski, mostly because of the things you want being also pictured in the dataset by other artists and the generator running out of Rutkowski's works, then trying to meld whatever it got from them with the non-Rutkowski imagery. The two pictures below both have "painting by Greg Rutkowski and Jakub Rozalski" (they have similar painterly style, with Rozalski relying on broader strokes) and... well...

The city street in the picture on the left kinda, sorta, generally looks like stuff from Greg Rutkowski's ArtStation page. But that one's easy. The soldier in the picture on the right? Well, that's a solid nope. It's that generic, pseudo-realistic, overly refined slightly 3D kind of imagery that is so ridiculously far from Greg Rutkowski as you can throw it, hell, even fire it from a cannon. But, that's nothing compared to our next candidate...

You do know the distinctive inkbrush and watercolor style of Yoji Shinkawa and his Metal Gear Solid concept art, right? I asked Stable Diffusion for that exact style when rendering the concepts of my Pyrkon 2023 cosplay. That's way off the mark, and none of the datasets I tried, including the overloaded LAION dogshit, ever came close. Even worse, if you ask for pretty much any Japanese artist, a lot of datasets will give you anime, and very generic anime at that, no ifs or buts. If I say it's culturally insensitive, it fucking is culturally insensitive. This here anime guy? It's the exact same goddamn prompt used for the cosplay concept art. Hell, even asking for an imitation of Hajime Sorayama gave me anime, and sure as shit Sorayama's work is nowhere near anime. What it didn't give me was the most distinctive part of his work, and that is shiny chrome. I mean, seriously: I'm asking you to draw me something looking like the work of the guy who mostly draws chrome gynoid butts and you're showing me generic flat anime?

Get ready to clean up. I mean, those image generators are far from perfect and sometimes you'll get something almost serviceable but with an extra finger or some noise where you don't want it. In that case, you'll need to roll up your sleeves and do some old-school Photoshop work. See that overcooked image of a goth girl in the park up there? That's the raw version. I got around to erasing that black line in the corner of her mouth and even put a vertical labret piercing on her. Not to mention the entire process behind Tiny Dancer (okay, I was showing off there). Really, don't expect that everything will be done for you on the first attempt.