#this may be very bad

[arsontastic-fandom-takes]

It was an average day in the Devildom. (at least this version of it)

MC had shown up to the HOL and did whatever the 7 brothers needed them to, with the compulsory antics ensuing, as was customary. They were having fun, and it was all going well.

Until it wasn't.

The signs that they should rest their eyes started at around 14:16, and, like a stubborn idiot, they ignored them. The brothers would be here to take care of them, after all.

They didn't realise that they weren't in their timeline until their eyes were burning and they were rushing to their room, looking for eye drops, only to realise that it wasn't their room yet and their eyedrops were in Cocytus Hall, with Solomon.

As much as they loved the dumbass, they wouldn't trust him with this. And, while he could deal with joint pains and fatigue episodes, he couldn't deal with them constantly rubbing their eyes to try and alleviate the searing pain. He was an extremely powerful sorcerer who had even the strongest demons in his league, but he couldn't deal with people massaging their eyes. Or putting in eye drops.

Another thing about this timeline: none of the brothers trusted them yet. They're a weird demon to them, newly fallen angels, and asking them to look after them while their head hurt too much to think was downright stupid at this point in time.

As they were lamenting about their unfortunate circumstances, the door to the room opened behind them, and as soon as they heard who it was, MC knew they were fucked.

Their back still to the door, MC took a deep breath in and closed their eyes.

"What are you doing in here?" Lucifer asked, his voice threatening. One wrong move, and they'd have to deal with his anger, which, even on a good day, was unpleasant.

Heaven's sake, how do they even reply to that question without getting into trouble? They didn't think they could.

They willed themself to turn around, towards the light that was making them want to claw their eyeballs out, and open their eyes. Might as well be facing him when he kills them.

He was far away and blurry. Fuck, they weren't wearing their glasses. That's probably why the world itself seemed to hate them.

"... Well?" Dangerous. That was how they would explain this situation before them, were they asked. Even though they struggled to make out his face, it didn't take a genius to figure out he was challenging them.

He flips the light switch on, and all they can do to defend the attack against their corneas is to fall to their knees and cover their eyes, crying out. They suddenly felt very nauseous. Why does their eyes hurting always cause them to feel nauseous?

Nausea was one of the things they hated most. Naturally, behind burning pain and feeling useless. They were experiencing all three of those, but who truly cared? They'd dealt with this bullshit before and they'll probably survive, so they just have to wait it out and hope it feels better.

.....

Are their eyes getting worse, or are they just overexaggerating the problem? Either way, the backs of their eyes were feeling as if they had been dipped into molten lava and they had to keep an arm over their mouth to feel like they wouldn't puke. When was the last time they ate? Most of the food they had been able to eat didn't exist yet or weren't available in the Devildom yet, so they'd just been ignoring the growing pain in their stomach.

Oh shit. What if they starve to death?

That was unlikely, they knew, but it was still horrifying. Starving was one of the worst ways to die, other than dehydration, drowning, suffocation, and being burned alive. The thought of their stomach acid slowly eating through it's container, days worth of lacking nutrition and sustenance making their body turn against them, was causing them to hold their arm closer to their mouth, mostly in raw fear.

They was so caught up in their thoughts that they didn't notice Lucifer crouching down next to them until the feeling of a gloved hand on their head brought them out of their spiral.

They startled, opening their eyes despite the pain. He was close enough that they didn't need to be wearing their glasses to see him properly, and had concern etched onto his face, the earlier danger nowhere to be seen.

"Are you okay?" He asked, his hand returning to his side now that he'd caught their attention.

"Honestly? Not at all." They gave a humorless laugh.

"May I inquire about what's wrong?"

"Oh, just being plagued by visions. Y'know, the usual." They spoke the term they were used to. Back in their time, they had started referring to their eye problems like this to lighten their mood, and it just stuck.

Lucifer raised his eyebrow. It took them a second to realise that he hadn't encountered this yet.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. You probably don't know what I'm talking about. My eyes sometimes start burning, and I started calling it being 'plagued by visions' a few years ago."

"Ah. Burning, you say?"

"Yeah, it's usually, like, this searing pain at the backs of my eyes. Light usually makes it worse."

"Okay. Why were you in this room, though?"

Shit. They couldn't say this used to be their room. What excuse could they make to explain this? Maybe they could say half-truths?

"I thought my eye drops were in here. They weren't, though."

He eyed them suspiciously.

"Why would they be here? Last I remember, this room was off limits."

Lying to a very powerful demon wasn't that bad, right? Oh well, in for a penny, in for a dime.

"I honestly don't know."

He squinted at them. They squinted back.

After a while of staring at eachother, Lucifer spoke again.

"You said light makes it worse, correct?" A nod of confirmation. "Will you be able to walk home by yourself in this condition?"

They shrugged. "I don't know for sure, but I'll manage."

He scoffed. "If you are so willing to get away from here that you'd put your safety on the line, I don't know what to tell you. I will say that I won't permit our only attendant being run over on their way home, though."

"What do you suggest I do instead, then?"

"I suggest that you let me walk you home."

That caught them off guard. The Lucifer from their timeline never had to walk them home, but he only started walking them to their room after they became close. Maybe this was to do with Lucifer only recently having fallen. Maybe he's still used to his angel ways, as unlikely as that sounds.

Still, a part of their heart fluttered. Him showing signs of caring about what happens to them is currently akin to finding an oasis in a desert. They missed him being affectionate.

"All right. Thank you."

The walk home was nice, even if the street lights made them want to cry and it was quite silent. Lucifer was surprisingly helpful on the way, and now they were both standing at the front door of Cocytus Hall.

Mc turned around, gave a final salute to Lucifer, and then rang the doorbell before screaming. "Solomon, I know you're home already! Get your ass out of here and help your poor apprentice get into their home!"

After what seemed like a second of thought, they added; "And I swear to Diavolo that if you're anywhere near my stove, I will kick your ass."

After a minute, the door opened to reveal Solomon wearing a stain-covered apron. It was, indeed, the case that he had been cooking. "Oh, hello, dear! I thought I'd make you some dinner after your long day of work." At a murmer of "You little- I thought we agreed on you not using the kitchen?", he laughed. Then, he noticed Lucifer and raised an eyebrow.

Before he could question, Lucifer spoke up. "I was walking your, ahem, apprentice, home. I'll take my leave now."

Although the walk home for MC was pleasant, Lucifer's was full of doubts. Why had he offered to take them home? They probably could have made it themself. Also, why did he feeling so.. negative when Solomon called them 'dear'? He knew the two of them were in a relationship, it had been made apparent to him as soon as they could, but why did it irk him so?

He had paperwork to worry about, this was moronic to focus on.

________

Likes, comments, and reblogs appreciated.

[lazylittledragon]

Hello I love your bg3 content and your Dorian is so lovely! Can we get like an alternative reality with Dorian and Ascended Astarion? What would your headcannon be for them? 🙇

something like this, probably

[ohhgingersnaps]

I'm seeing some frustration over fandom creatives expressing anger or distress over people feeding their work into ChatGPT. I'm not responding to OP directly because I don't want to derail their post (their intent was to provide perspective on how these models actually work, and reduce undue panic, which is all coming from a good place!), but reassurances that the addition of our work will have a negligible impact on the model (which is true at this point) does kind of miss the point? Speaking for myself, my distress is less about the practical ramifications of feeding my fic into ChatGPT, and more about the principle of someone taking my work and deliberately adding it to the dataset.

Like, I fully realize that my work is a drop in the bucket of ChatGPT's several-billion-token training set! It will not make a demonstrable practical difference in the output of the model! That doesn't change the fact that I do not want my work to be part of the set of data that the ChatGPT devs use for training.

According to their FAQ, ChatGPT can and will use user input to train itself. The terms and conditions explicitly state that they save your chats to help train and improve their models. (You can opt-out, but sharing is the default.) So if you're feeding a fic into ChatGPT, unless you've explicitly opted out, you are handing it to the ChatGPT team and giving them permission to use it for training, whether or not that was your intent.

Now, will one fic make a demonstrable difference in the output of the model? No! But as the person who spent a year and a handful of months laboring over my fic, it makes a difference to me whether my fic, specifically, is being used in the dataset. If authors are allowed to have a problem with the ChatGPT devs for scraping millions of fics without permission, they're also allowed to have a problem with folks handing their individual fics over via the chat interface.

I do want to add that if you've done this to a fic, please don't take this as me being upset with you personally! Folks are still learning new information and puzzling out what "good" vs. "bad" use is, from an ethical standpoint. (Heck, my own perspective on this is deeply based on my own subjective feelings!) And we certainly shouldn't act like one person feeding a fic into ChatGPT has the same practical negative impact, on a broad societal scale, as a team using a web crawler to scrape five billion pieces of artwork for Stable Diffusion.

The point is that fundamentally, an ethical dataset should be obtained with the consent of those providing the data. Just because it's normalized for our data to be scraped without consent doesn't make it ethical, and this is why ChatGPT gives users the option to not share data— there is actually a standardized way (robots.txt) for website servers to set policies for how bots/crawlers can interact with them, for exactly this reason— and I think fandom artists and authors are well within their rights to express a desire for opting out to be the socially-respected default within the fandom community.

[lucabyte]

i think loop teaches bonnie all the swearwords siffrin was too polite to

[followup doodle -> (x)]

[puppyeared]

Odd couple <3

[raetttriestowrite]

Me, an author, side eyeing my WIP: you're not going to do anything weird, are you? We've discussed this. There's a plan. We're going to stick to the plan, aren't we?

The WIP: *presents subplot, presents additional conflicts, presents character development, laughs in my fucking face*

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Game night ruined.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[nosfagratu]

if kim only cares about people's worth if they're in the RCM then why in the fuck was he about to give his jacket to some random ass kid

yeah sure the guy who only cares about other RCM officers if they're good was about to part with the only item of clothing keeping him somewhat warm in a place where there's ice thick enough to support two grown men and a bunch of other shit absolutely

(edit: i'd appreciate it if you take a look at this version instead x it contains way more nuance and some amazing additions)

(edit 2: here's a version with IDs as well x )

[nomlioart]

🥀 when touch averse becomes touch starved 🥀

[tomboyyyaoi]

cutlery

[figmentforms]

Part 237 of  “A Tale of Two Rulers” (Oct 1(ish), 2022)- *updates monthly

★Patreon- https://www.patreon.com/LorIllustration ★

★ Webtoon-  https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/a-tale-of-two-rulers/list?title_no=292453 ★ - I’m still building up this archive weekly

Thanks so much to all my amazing supporters that help make this fan-comic happen! ♥ (If is wasn’t for you it would be a lot harder for me to have time to work on this and keep up with the  bills, so I’m super grateful.)

*** the lovely ASSINATIONS typo has been corrected. XD

*I'm going to try to figure out how to do the archives at the end of the posts again, but it will have to be on another day! I'm still so behind on so many things TwT*

[khaotunq]

i'm your hell, i'm your dream; i'm nothing in between

[sillyfairygarden]

hermit designs for my jazz singer cleo au that's slowly spiraling out of control (1/?)

[samglyph]

I truly believe Will Wood is an incredible musician and songwriter and is one of the top lyricists in the last decade both in and outside of the genres that he chooses to play in with absolutely zero irony. I also believe that you can only fully understand that if you’ve either had a pet die before listening to his music or you have a history of drug abuse and mental health crises. Or you’re trans.

[spaciebabie]

totally not based on something i did when reading @glitchysquidd's fic. nope. not at all. i can totally pronounce this word and didnt hafta look up what it meant at all-

i hadta look up howta write in cursive tho b/c bro-

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

[echoing laughter] Jude: Yeah, well.. at least I’m not scared of water. Levi: I’m not scared, I have a medical condition! Jude: What’s it called, little bitch-itis? [Robin shouldn’t have laughed, especially since Levi had a pretty legitimate reason for being terrified of water; but still; that was a good one] Levi: You can shut up too! Jude: Hurr say something, durr shut up-.. make your mind up. [Robin rolled his eyes and ducked underwater, kicking Jude in the ribs for good measure; they shouldn’t bother] Levi: You just wait until-… Jude: Come n’ get me now if you want-.. oh wait. Coach: Aye, keep running your mouth Moya.. I’m sure your mom won’t have ‘nowt to say about it. [Jude scowled at Levi before turning around, launching as much water as possible in his classmate’s direction] … Levi: Not so tough without your mate, are you? [Robin kicked his locker shut with force enough to rock it; he’d had enough of Levi recently] Levi: Laugh at me again, I dare yo-… [Levi didn’t quite manage to finish his sentence]