#EVEN IF ITS BAD ITS ALREADY BETTER THAN AI

[sansaorgana]

— FOREVER BOUND

PAIRING — Sauron x fem!Maia!Reader

SUMMARY — You and Mairon were created together by Eru and ever since you remained nearly inseparable. He chose to follow Melkor but you stayed loyal to your gods. Even though he was believed to be slain, you meet your soulmate once again many years later in Númenor where you serve the Valar by helping Tar-Míriel with your counsel.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — I started writing this fic like two weeks ago but I got distracted in the meantime with different ideas 🤧 (Y/N) is used here as the Reader's "real" name, therefore I gave her human form in Númenor a name and that is Maneth, which apparently means Departed Spirit. The dynamic between Sauron and the Reader is lowkey inspired by that quote from Wuthering Heights – He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. Also, I was very fixated on making the short prologue of this fic sound like it was taken from The Silmarillion but it was a challenge, especially when English is not my first language, so yeah, I have to admit I used "the chat" a bit to help me in the beginning (and only there) 🙈. It didn't write even a single sentence for me, though, it only helped me with reshaping the phrases to sound more like the way I wanted them to be. I have never used AI to help me write my fics, so I feel a bit weird with it but I think the prologue sounds great now, so I decided to keep it this way. However, I wanted to admit to it here because I would feel bad otherwise. Once more – "the chat" did not write even a single sentence for me. I only needed its help with finding better sounding phrases to express what I have already written all by myself and it was only for the short prologue of the story. I didn't put any warnings but I think that – if you squint – it can have a bit of a twincest vibe...? 😳 At least I thought so while writing some scenes but maybe it's just my messed up mind going into such places 🙈 The fic is quite long but I didn't want to divide this one into two parts.

WORD COUNT — 7,930

ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE.

FOREVER BOUND

Together were they fashioned by the thought of Eru Ilúvatar, Mairon and (Y/N), kindred spirits among the Maiar, and thus were their fates entwined. Mairon was drawn to Aulë the Smith, whose lore of crafting and forging he learned with eager mind, while (Y/N) was taken under the care of Varda Elentári, the Queen of Stars, and to her was revealed the mysteries of light and the heavens.

In those days of ancient bliss, when the first flowers were made to bloom, Mairon would gather their blossoms for (Y/N), and together they would abide for hours in fields unmarred by shadow. Often, he would craft jewels of wondrous beauty, offering them to her in token of his affection. Yet his most treasured gift to her was a ring, fair and unmarred, crafted in the purity of his early days, before his spirit turned to darker counsel.

It is said that (Y/N) wore that ring ever upon her hand, and that when Varda revealed to her the art of setting stars in the firmament, she bestowed the first star of her own making with the name «Mairon», that his light might endure forever.

In the later days, when Mairon fell to the shadow and allied himself with Melkor, he sought ever to draw (Y/N) to his side, weaving words of guile and repentance. Many times did he deceive her, and she, moved by their bond, hoped he might yet be redeemed. Yet she held fast to the Valar, and her faith remained unbroken.

Mairon's descent brought sorrow unending to (Y/N), and often she pleaded with the Valar to grant him mercy. Yet Varda would have her no longer as a disciple, for the brightness of her spirit had dimmed, and her heart clung still to one who had been corrupted. Then Nienna, She Who Weeps, took pity upon (Y/N) and took her into her care, teaching her of endurance and grief. And it was Nienna who spoke in favour of Mairon when Melkor, feigning humility, sought pardon from the Valar, for she understood well the love that bound (Y/N) to him.

Yet no reunion came to pass, for Mairon fled from the wrath of the Valar, and he vanished into the shadows of the world, so that some claimed him slain. The star that bore his name faded from the heavens, and it is told that (Y/N) wept until her tears filled a lake in The Southlands, and thus was the dark and bitter Lake Núrnen brought into being, a testament to her sorrow.

You were sent to Númenor to aid the Queen Regent with your counsel. Míriel suspected that you were no ordinary human being but she knew better than to ask too many questions. Very quickly you were promoted in her council, which was visibly making Ar-Pharazôn uneasy and suspicious of you because you had shown up out of nowhere one day, posing to be a noble Lady from Middle-earth… but who truly knew where you were coming from? 

The fate of this beautiful island given to the ancestors of these people was uncertain, though. It was teetering between glory and ruin. You were there to make sure they would choose the right path when the time of difficult decisions would come.

When you heard that one of the captains brought a She-Elf to Númenor that he had found in an open sea, you knew immediately that it was no coincidence. It was surely the very beginning of something new. Something exciting and worrying, too.

The time you had already spent in Númenor was enough for you to fall in love with the island and its people. The Queen Regent was truly your friend and you hoped for nothing else but for this realm’s happiness.

You were standing next to Míriel when Captain Elendil walked two castaways inside the hall. She-Elf you recognised immediately because it was Lady Galadriel. She, however, could not recognise you because of your disguise. At the sight of a dirty, ragged common man walking beside her, you felt an odd shiver going down your spine.

You looked down, nervously, when he looked up to meet your gaze. Your fingers busied themselves with a ring that decorated your finger for long centuries now – it would never leave you, no matter what form you were in.

You could not understand why some random human was making you feel such odd sensations as if the air between you two vibrated and caused disruption inside the room.

“No one kneels in Númenor,” the Queen Regent announced to Lady Galadriel and her new friend when they attempted to do so.

Out of curiosity that you seemed not to be able to stop, you looked up again when the man did the same. Your eyes met and you could barely contain yourself because the soul trapped inside the form you were in was about to explode.

He was no ordinary human being and you wondered if Lady Galadriel knew about it.

Who could it be, though? The Valar would not send any help for you here without warning you beforehand. Even if they would, no other Maia was able to make you feel this extraordinary way. 

No other Maia except for one.

The fingers fidgeting with your ring squeezed it tighter at the memory of Mairon. He had been long gone now and all that seemed to be left of him was that ring. Not even his star shone bright in the night sky anymore.

The only part of Mairon that still remained was not that ring, though. It was you – he would forever live inside of you like you had lived inside of him and like part of you had died the day he had been slain.

“Speak, Elf. Name thyself,” Míriel ordered Lady Galadriel and Galadriel’s eyes found yours. She tilted her head but decided not to comment although now you were certain that she could sense what kind of spirit you were.

“Galadriel of the Noldor,” she introduced herself. “Daughter of the Golden House of Finarfin. Commander of the Northern Armies of High King Gil-Galad.”

The man she came with looked at her with furrowed brows before deciding to introduce himself as well.

“Halbrand,” he said. “Of The Southlands,” he added.

“A man and an Elf, together?” You asked as you approached the Queen Regent.

“Circumstances arose that–” The man named Halbrand began but Galadriel did not allow him to finish.

“We are companions by chance. Met on the open sea. Your captain here, delivered us from certain death,” she looked at Elendil. “All we ask is that Númenor continue his mercy and grant us ship’s passage to Middle-earth.”

The crowd gathered inside the hall began to chatter between each other. It was uncommon to see an Elf in Númenor these days and Galadriel was far from humble. Her demands were not making anyone here happy and you could sense that.

The only man whose aura you could not sense was him again – the filthy commoner.

Míriel exchanged a meaningful look with Ar-Pharazôn before her cousin spoke.

“It’s been generations since a ship of Númenor was permitted to make such a journey on an Elf’s behalf,” he told the Elf, harshly.

You wondered how Galadriel would accept the fact that here, in Númenor, she was not an authority to anyone and her presence was barely intimidating. You knew her heart was of a pure kind but it was no mystery amongst the Valar, the Maiar and the Elves that she also needed to be humbled very often but such occasions were quite rare.

“It is because of the Elves that you were given this island,” she reminded but such words only worsened her situation. “Surely you can spare a few planks and a rudder.”

Míriel looked behind to stare at your face, visibly searching for your counsel. You shook your head slightly to let her know that you did not think following Galadriel’s orders was a good idea. It did not escape Ar-Pharazôn’s eye as he shot you a deadly glance. He hated the influence you had over his cousin.

“Our ancestors were not given anything,” the Queen Regent smiled softly at Galadriel as she walked down the stairs to approach the Elf and her human companion. “They paid for this isle with the blood of their kin.”

“What the Elf means–” Halbrand tried to save the situation.

“Then if blood be the price of passage, I will pay it,” Galadriel interrupted him again and you sighed softly. “But one way or another, I will depart.”

One of your tasks in Númenor was to help rebuild the friendship between the humans of this island and the Elves. Lady Galadriel was definitely not helping you.

“I welcome you to try,” Míriel nodded.

“I have no need of your welcome,” Galadriel continued with her rude remarks and Halbrand looked at her with panic in his eyes before looking back at the guards by the doors.

“And you are quickly wearing out yours,” the Queen Regent warned Galadriel. “Guards,” she called for them.

“My friends!” Halbrand exclaimed, getting everyone’s attention and you despised it.

You despised it because your weak human form struggled once more to contain your trembling spirit. You were scared that you would be this island’s doom yourself any given moment if you suddenly erupted as if you were a volcano. Your fingers began to tremble and you lowered your gaze, pretending to be humble.

“It seems to me that our leaving presents some complications,” Halbrand pointed out. “Perhaps it’d be better if we stayed–”

“Stayed?!” Galadriel barked at him.

“Long enough, good Queen, to give you and your advisors adequate time to weigh our request,” he looked up at you.

You were holding your gaze lowered but you knew somehow that he was staring at you. You could feel his eyes piercing you through because the way he was staring was not of an ordinary kind. He was not glancing at your flesh but at your soul. You felt as if you were naked in front of him and as if there was nobody else inside this palace except for you two.

The ring around your finger seemed to get heavier all of the sudden as it reminded you one more about the only creature in this world who had known you so well and who could have made you feel similar.

“A few days, perhaps?” Halbrand looked back at Míriel and you sighed out of relief once you got free from his burning gaze.

The Queen Regent looked back at you once more and you looked up only slightly to nod at her. Ar-Pharazôn rolled his eyes but he did not disagree – at least not openly.

“Three days,” he ordered. “And the Elf is to be restricted to palace grounds.”

“I will not be made a prisoner!” Galadriel protested.

“I would sooner knee-cap a stallion than seek to imprison the mighty Commander of the Northern Armies,” Ar-Pharazôn answered ironically and the crowd laughed at her. “So, you shall be Númenor’s guest.”

You could feel the tension in the room slowly relaxing and you nodded at the Queen Regent before walking out in a hurry, feeling Halbrand’s eyes on you as you were walking out in a haste with your skirts gathered in your fists, rushing to your chambers to collect your chaotic thoughts.

You had a malicious feeling creeping up deep inside of you – no, not even a feeling. An odd, eerie certainty. And as much as you wished for it to not be true, you also wanted it to be and you felt guilty for experiencing such cursed yearning to see and touch him again. Your Mairon.

When you heard from your maid at the end of the day that the human named Halbrand ended up in jail already for starting a fight, you simply could not stop yourself from paying him a visit. You walked inside the prison area of the palace carefully as you moved quietly throughout the hall with your dress flowing behind you gently.

The man was sitting on the floor with his back leaning on the wall. He was smirking as he watched you with no reaction whatsoever. Once more you noticed that you could not sense his aura or predict his mood like you usually could with most creatures, even the noblest of the Elves.

“You are no human,” you stated as you stood right in front of his cell. Halbrand snorted at that and rolled his eyes. “Who are you?” You asked and he only shook his head.

You grabbed the bars and squeezed them tightly as the silence broke due to your ring clashing with the iron. The sound echoed and Halbrand turned his head around rapidly while he squinted his eyes at your ring.

“Are you him?” You asked, nearly desperately. “Are you my Mairon?”

Halbrand stood up finally and even though he seemed to be more serious now, he still had a playful smirk on his lips. He approached you with his arms crossed and you caught yourself staring at his tan, flexed muscles before you looked up to meet his sparkling eyes once more. Nothing but the iron bars between you two and it was you squeezing them tight although he was the imprisoned one.

“You would look like a crazy maniac if I was not,” he whispered, leaning in. He was so close that you could feel his warm breath on your face.

“You were supposed to be dead…” you whispered and closed your eyes, feeling warm tears streaming down your cheeks. You squeezed your fists even tighter around the bars as your whole soul vibrated throughout your human form.

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” Halbrand answered.

“Your star has faded away, I have cried so many tears, have been outcast by Varda because with you, some of my own light faded away, too,” you revealed in a trembling voice before opening your hazy and wet eyes. He was staring at you without playfulness now. “I know it would be better for this world if you stayed dead but I feel joy to be with you again,” you confessed.

His rough fingertips brushed the ring wrapped around your finger as he smiled sadly.

“This ring remains older than most creatures of this realm,” he pointed out.

“I have never taken it off, Mairon,” you assured him. “Nothing in this world is older than the bond between us.”

“That is quite blasphemous,” he smirked and you shook your head as you had no idea what to say to that. He was right – you should not claim such things, you were no god. But yet, whatever was between you and him – it felt so overwhelming, so overlooming. 

Your souls were entangled, made of the same stardust. You were the same spirit, the same heart, the same blood; only split in two forms and that was enough pain to be apart in that way. Spending centuries without him at all, thinking he was dead… It was like death itself.

But Mairon was back now and alongside him back was the part of you that had died with him.

“Will you tell them about me, (Y/N)?” He asked, quietly.

“I should, should I not? You are up to no good,” you sniffled your tears back and your eyes met his. You let go of the iron bars and extended your hands to cup his scratched cheeks. When you touched, you felt your whole body trembling, barely able to contain your spirit and your power.

“I am up to the greater good. You know that my path is the right one; it is the only path. My only goal is to heal,” he assured you and leaned in to place a soft kiss upon the palm of your hand as you gasped.

“Up to no good then,” you let out a small chuckle through your tears. You knew him enough already to know what it meant.

You wanted to get rid of the iron bars and to kiss him. His form differed from his previous one but it was never about his flesh – it was always about whatever it contained.

You had never really kissed, though. All those centuries you had spent with each other, you had spent it on yearning and gazing at yourselves, stealing soft pecks upon your cheeks or knuckles, giving each other gifts and talking sweet to one another.

Because you knew that the Maiar had not been created to love – not like this, at least. They had not been created to know the pleasures of the flesh or its desires. They had been created to serve the gods.

Perhaps something had gone wrong during the act of your creation. Perhaps it had not – perhaps it was that part of him living inside of you that craved to be close to him at all times just like the part of you living inside of him craved to be close to you.

“Join me, (Y/N), come with me, be my Queen,” Halbrand whispered and you froze, taking your hands away immediately.

“Not even half an hour I was given to enjoy your return for you are trying to deceive me once more,” you remarked, harshly.

He had been known to tease and tempt you countless of times but your soul remained pure no matter what.

“Melkor is no more. I am my own master now but I will never be whole without you by my side,” Halbrand was the one to wrap his hands around the iron bars now as he moved even closer while you took a step back. “Varda outcasted you? I will make sure no one in Middle-earth worships her no more for you will become their Queen of Light.”

“Revenge is not what I seek,” you shook your head. “Please, Mairon, your words are like daggers. I cannot handle them,” you turned your head around as more and more of your tears streamed down your cheeks.

“Refuse me as much as you like, (Y/N). A part of you lives inside of me and that is my lightness. A part of me lives inside of you and it is the part you consider rotten. Be careful, my dear, for the rot likes to spread,” Halbrand warned you although his voice remained sweet.

“I have never considered anything coming from you to be rotten,” you laid your eyes upon him again.

“Can you not see, my sweet? They keep us apart because together we would become so powerful that we could outcast the gods themselves,” Halbrand continued and his whisper caused a shiver to go down your spine. His words were wrong… So wrong. “Together, we could be anything we wanted. We could be forged into one flesh if we wished, forever bound.”

“If you cared so much about us being together, you would let me lure you back into the light instead of trying to tempt me to join you in darkness, Mairon,” you whispered in Quenya.

“It pains me when you keep insisting that my path is the darkness. Your blind obedience to our creators is much darker to me, my love,” he answered.

Perhaps you would go on like that – and knowing you two, you could do that for ages. But you were interrupted by Lady Galadriel, who looked you up and down with curiosity as she entered the prison.

“The most trusted advisor of the Queen Regent,” she greeted you, “but the least trusted one amongst her subjects. You come from Middle-earth, they say. A noble Lady. But I have never heard of you before,” Galadriel pointed out.

“Must Elves know all about human affairs?” You challenged her and she smiled, softly.

“Human? Yes,” Galadriel answered. “There are spirits, however, that remain out of our grasp. They are no gods but nearly like them. Sent to us by the Valar when we need aid,” she squinted her eyes.

“I shall remain out of your grasp then,” you nodded and she nodded back.

“What is going on?” Halbrand whined, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms again. Putting on an act of a common man in front of Galadriel and even though you knew you should scream into her face that he was the very darkness she had sworn to fight and defeat – you chose to stay silent. Perhaps he would redeem himself, perhaps he would realise that he might be given a second chance if only he decided to choose the right path this time.

Perhaps, before outing him to the outside world, you would try to fix his way of perceiving which path was the right one.

And you knew he had been given too many chances already but your heart would never give up on him. You would forever find excuses for him and try to make it right between you two.

“You…” Galadriel approached the iron bars as she smiled softly at Halbrand. “You do not belong on this island.”

“If there’s one of us that doesn’t belong here, Elf, it’s you,” Halbrand shook his head.

“I’m not so sure of that anymore,” Galadriel’s eyes sparkled as she briefly laid them upon you. “But one thing I am now certain. You are more than you claim,” she took a step further. “I found this in the Hall of Lore,” she handed Halbrand a scroll of paper that made you squint your eyes.

He took it, pretending to be unbothered. And when he opened it, you saw a heraldry drawing, suddenly realising he was wearing a pendant with the same mark. What was the game he was playing…?

“That’s funny. I found this on a dead man,” Halbrand winked at you before he looked at Galadriel with a smirk. “Thought the pattern suited me,” he added and sat down on a bench inside his cell.

Galadriel sighed and she glanced at you, as if she was expecting you to help her. You did not move an inch, however.

“Many ages ago, a man bearing that mark united the scattered tribes of the Southlands under one banner,” she told Halbrand. “The very banner that might unite them again today. Against the evil that now seeks to claim their lands. Your lands, Halbrand,” she emphasised and you sucked on the inside of your cheeks after realising what his clever scheme was. “Your people have no King for you are him,” Galadriel kept insisting.

Your Mairon, the great deceiver, knew very well that eagerly agreeing to all of this would not be as powerful as trying to pretend to be uninterested at first. Therefore, he looked away and chuckled.

“That’s an odd thing to say to a man in a cage,” he pointed out. 

“A cage you have landed in because you chafe under the rags of the common,” Galadriel claimed as she looked at you again. “My Lady, you must tell your Queen the truth.”

“No Elf will tell me what I must or I must not do,” you smirked as you shook your head at how arrogant she was. You had to play your role but even as your Maia self, you wanted to humble her. “I doubt one pendant proves this man’s heritage enough.”

“What about his testimony?” Galadriel was not giving up as she looked at Halbrand again. “The armour that ought to rest upon your shoulders weighs upon your soul, Halbrand.”

Long silence occurred, in which you were able to watch the master of deception performing his craft. The way he kept staring at the drawing, his face full of mixed emotions and confusion, guilt. The way he grabbed the pendant with his hands and brushed it gently with his fingertips. Everyone would believe him.

“Be careful, Elf,” he said eventually. “The heir to this mark is heir to more than just nobility,” Halbrand stood up to approach the iron bars. “For it was his ancestor who swore a blood oath to Morgoth,” he reminded her and you were in awe how he used the bits of dark truth about himself to toy with her and test the waters.

And how oblivious she was, how eager to keep following the scenario she had already prepared for this situation to go with in her head.

“I am not the hero you seek,” Halbrand shook his head.

Indeed, he was not.

“For it was my family that lost the war,” he added.

“And it was mine who started it,” Galadriel insisted. “Ours was no chance meeting,” she pointed out and looked at you again. “No fate, nor destiny, nor any other words men use to speak of the forces they lack the conviction to name. Ours was the work of something greater,” she smiled at you and you forced a smile back.

Was she thinking that it was you who caused this meeting? Gods, if she only knew…

“You must see it,” she looked back at Halbrand.

“All I see is an Elf who won’t put down her sword,” he remarked.

“Come with me to Middle-earth,” she leaned in to be closer to him and you felt an odd sting of pain inside of your heart. Was it jealousy that another woman dared to stand so close to your Mairon…? Most likely. “And together we will redeem both our bloodlines.”

“How?” Halbrand asked, looking at her intensely. “You’re stuck on this island and you’re still short an army,” he smirked.

“That is all about to change,” Galadriel smiled and turned around to walk away.

You glanced at the man one last time before hurrying after her.

“Lady Galadriel!” You called out her name once you were outside the prison.

“My Lady,” she turned around to face you and you nearly bumped into her. “I did not expect to encounter an emissary of the Valar in Númenor, I must admit,” she bowed her head slightly. “How should I address you?”

“Here, in Númenor, you must call me Lady Maneth. In Valinor you would know me as (Y/N),” you introduced yourself and Lady Galadriel’s eyes widened slightly.

“(Y/N)...” She breathed out. “You know more than anyone else how important my task is. We must stop the darkness from spreading,” she pleaded.

“No,” you shook your head. “You must stop pushing this man… Halbrand… Into whatever you are trying to push him into,” you scolded her.

“Do the Valar have different plans for him?” Galadriel wondered out loud.

“It is not about him,” you winced, not wanting to discuss Mairon any longer with her. “It is about you, Artanis. You are beginning to become the very darkness you swore once to destroy,” you warned her.

“What do you mean?” Galadriel furrowed her brow as she took a step back.

“It is still cheating when one betrays a cheater. It is still a theft when one steals from a thief. And it is still a murder when one kills a murderer. Because it is not the matter of whether one deserves it or not – it is a matter of the act itself being committed. Too many pure and good souls were lost to us, driven by the desire to do justice,” you lectured her and you could feel her anger and frustration rising, however she would never dare to lash out on an emissary of the gods.

“Pretty words, that is all you can offer, meanwhile people are dying,” she spat out.

“Do you truly care about them, Artanis, or is their suffering your excuse to pick up the sword once more?” You asked but she was walking away angrily already and all you could see was her back, disappearing in the darkness of the corridor ahead of you.

You turned around once more and sighed at the doors leading back to the prison. You decided to leave Halbrand alone for the night but you worried about what would happen next. If he was about to choose the wrong path again, you would have to reveal his true self to everyone and interfere with his scheme.

Hope was all you had as you fidgeted with the ring around your finger.

“The visions are back and worse than ever,” Míriel confessed to you. “I suspect that it all has something to do with the Elf,” she added as she was trying to read your face but you made sure not to reveal anything.

“I knew that people of Númenor despised her kin but I underestimated the delicacy of the situation,” you admitted as you moved closer to the Queen Regent. “This is beyond worrying. The future of Númenor depends on your relationship with others. It is no time to make enemies instead of friends,” you warned.

“It would be an easier task to convince them that the Elves are not our enemies if only Lady Galadriel was not so…” the Queen Regent sighed, looking for the right word.

“Insufferable?” You chuckled and she nodded with a smile. “Elves differ from humans. They are not raised to be humble.”

“You know a lot about their kin,” Míriel pointed out, trying to make you confess who you truly were once more. She would never ask openly but sometimes she was teasing you this way.

“There are quite a few in the lands I come from,” you only answered.

“The lands you come from… Are they not The Southlands?” Míriel raised her eyebrows. “Like that human man?”

You took a deep breath in. If only you had known back then that your backstory would cause problems a few years later… But it was too late to change it because it would be highly suspicious.

“Yes,” you nodded. “But he is a commoner. I was a noble,” you added.

You were interrupted by Captain Elendil leading Lady Galadriel to you. She bowed her head slightly and exchanged a meaningful look with you.

“Lady Galadriel wishes for an audience,” Captain Elendil said and the Queen Regent nodded her head.

You stood still because these days she wanted you by her side always, no matter what. You did not even have to ask if you should leave or not.

“What is it?” Míriel asked when Galadriel stood on the other side of the table, facing you. She laid out two scrolls of paper in front of you – one was the same she had shown to Halbrand on the previous day and the other one was much more worn out and dirty.

“I found this in the Hall of Lore,” Galadriel informed the Queen Regent mysteriously and you allowed Míriel to see the items with her own eyes as you kept standing there with your hands clasped behind your back.

“You vex me, Elf,” Míriel looked up at Galadriel. “I welcome you as a guest and you gallop off to our countryside to steal ancient scrolls whilst your Southlander companion assaults our citizenry.”

“He is understandably quick to temper. His people are dying,” Galadriel explained.

“His people?” The Queen Regent asked, surprised.

“I believe the man you hold in your dungeons is no common brawler, but the lost heir in exile to the throne of The Southlands,” she revealed.

Míriel turned around to look at you and you raised your eyebrows slightly. You were not sure what to say to that. Should you help Mairon or interfere with his schemes? The answer was only easy for your mind but your heart wished to never cause him any trouble.

“Lady Maneth comes from The Southlands. She would know about that,” the Queen Regent informed Galadriel and the Elf looked at you, intensely.

“I cannot be sure,” you only said. “That there was a long gone line of Kings, I have known. That there are still their living descendants, I have not been aware of. That is not impossible, though,” you explained.

“His people are scattered. Leaderless,” Galadriel looked back at Míriel. “But with your backing they might unite behind his banner. And fight.”

How oblivious she was. His banner was nothing she would want to ever see floating in the air. His banner was nothing she would want to ever see people follow.

“What do you mean backing?” Míriel asked, taken aback by Galadriel’s proposal.

“Sauron was once your people’s enemy, as much as mine,” Galadriel reminded her and you moved uncomfortably. “I call on you to finish the task left undone.”

You might have hated this name more than he hated it. It brought you nothing but pain when others would address your Mairon this way – The Abhorred.

“I shall go,” you spoke, interrupting the tension between the two women. Míriel looked at you with a slight panic in her eyes because she did not want to be left alone with Galadriel but you simply could not stand being there anymore, hearing her talk about your Mairon. “I shall question that man, Halbrand. Mayhaps I will find out if he truly is what the Elf claims,” you said and Míriel nodded at you although you could sense she still felt uneasy to be left without your counsel.

You walked past Captain Elendil and went to the prison area of the palace like on the night before. Halbrand was sitting on the bench this time, with his back leaning on the iron bars. At the sound of your footsteps, he did not even flinch nor turned his head around. He did not have to. He knew it was you coming.

“Mairon…” You crouched down in front of his cell and wrapped your fingers around the bars. “Do not follow her, resist her temptation. Stay here with me.”

Halbrand turned around slowly with a playful smile on his lips as he looked down at you. You were not on your knees but it still seemed as if you were begging him.

“Stay here with you? Are you not a grand Lady on this island?” He asked.

“I can be anything I want and so can you,” you reminded him, your whisper was nearly inaudible but you did not need to speak your words out loud at all for him to hear them anyway. “We can live a lifetime here and then change our forms once more, start all over again. Over and over for the whole eternity. Far away from the rest. If I am to ever abandon my life alongside the gods, it will not be for your darkness… But it could be for this. For us.”

Halbrand stood up and the distance between you became even bigger now as he kept looking down at you with a hint of adoration mixed with pure contempt. He had to think you were pathetic and some part of him found it adorable but the other part found it embarrassing.

“It does not have to be Númenor,” you added. “We can go anywhere.”

“Let us go to The Southlands then,” Halbrand smirked. “Be the Queen alongside me.”

“You have made your decision then, I see,” you sighed and leaned in to press your forehead to the iron bars. “Will you ever love me enough to choose me over power?”

Halbrand did not like your choice of words as his eyes darkened. He crouched down as well, slowly, in a nearly threatening way. Now you were on his eye level as he looked intensely at you.

“Will you ever love me enough to choose me over your gods?” He asked.

The sound of footsteps made you stand up quickly and fix your dress. Halbrand also moved up and sat down on the bench. It was all done right in time because the guards walked inside the prison, dragging Lady Galadriel behind them. You watched with widened eyes as she was being thrown inside one of the cells.

“Don’t tell me,” Halbrand chuckled at her. “Tavern brawl?”

“Sedition,” she answered and Halbrand laughed as you gave her a scolding look.

When you joined Míriel again, she seemed to be lost in her own thoughts, staring outside the window. She turned her head around to smile at you gently and then she went back to staring ahead of her.

“And?” She asked.

“He asked for my hand,” you informed her with a playful smirk and the Queen Regent turned her head around once more to look at you with wide eyes.

“The audacity…” She sighed.

“Why?” You asked her with a soft smile.

“For a commoner to propose such a thing to a Lady like you… Even if it was only to jest–”

“It was not to jest, “you interrupted her. “If he is what Galadriel claims, then he would be my King,” you pointed out and an odd feeling filled your whole body when you called Mairon your King. A malicious one but also honey-like warm; sweetly spreading throughout your body.

“You are above human Kings, are you not, Lady Maneth?” Míriel raised an eyebrow at you. It was the very first time she asked such a thing so openly.

“I cannot answer that, my friend,” you smiled at her mysteriously, “but if he chooses to follow the path Lady Galadriel pushes him onto, I might have to follow him.”

“And abandon Númenor?” The Queen Regent asked. “Abandon me?”

“I am sorry,” you sighed. “Following him might be a task much more important than watching over this island,” you revealed to her.

Even though you were not given direct orders from the gods, it was obvious that watching over Mairon was more important because keeping his schemes under control would only profit in the end for everyone, including the people of Númenor. Míriel could not be told all the details, therefore she would never understand and she would feel abandoned by you. It was the price you had to pay.

It was an excuse, of course. Choosing to follow Mairon to Middle-earth to make sure he would not go back to his evil ways and that he would use the position Galadriel was giving him to do good instead… It was nothing but a noble excuse to simply explain the fact you wanted to follow him.

It was different now, though. It was not one of those times when he had begged you to come with him, straight to Morgoth. No, this time there was a string of hope that he would truly redeem himself. And of course he would have a bigger chance to do so with you by his side.

“It seems so important… Everything happening in Middle-earth. More important than I suspected. But if even you are willing to leave my side to go back there, it means there are things happening there that are much bigger than me,” Míriel said. “I must rethink Lady Galadriel’s words now then,” she informed you and walked past you to walk away. “Just like you must rethink Halbrand’s proposal.”

“Yes, I must,” you nodded at her and looked outside the window yourself. The sun was slowly setting and the view was beautiful – you wished it would forever be like this; so peaceful and calm with pink and orange hues.

Like back in the day when you had been sitting in the flower fields with Mairon, staring at the skies, your bodies filled with no malice – only pure yearning for one another.

The orange skies of the evening sky always reminded you of his ginger hair from back then and how you would brush it with your fingers, staring in awe at how the sunlight seemed to sparkle upon it.

You were standing by the guards’ side as you watched them open Halbrand’s cell. They nodded at him and he nodded back. The guards left you with him alone and an awkward silence occurred between you two.

“There, you have it your way,” you finally said, quietly.

“You must have missed me terribly,” he crossed his arms and chuckled but you did not want to laugh.

Your eyes filled with tears immediately at the mention of all those centuries you had spent thinking he was gone forever. You lifted your wet, glistening eyes to lay them on his and he clenched his jaw as he moved slightly while all playfulness left his expression.

“Do you know why I could not be killed?” Halbrand approached you to cup your chin and you shook your head. “Because of the part of me still living inside of you. As long as you are alive, I cannot be slain,” he explained. “However, the part of you that lives within me had to suffer for all those centuries alongside me and there is not a day passing when I do not regret causing you such pain.”

“Oh, Mairon…” You gasped and threw your arms around his neck to pull him closer and hug him.

However, he had something else on his mind. He blinked slowly a few times and cupped your cheeks now with his rough hands as he leaned in to join your lips together.

For the first time in your immortal life, you finally found out how sweet his lips were. And gods, how good they felt… How right. Your souls intertwined at that moment, every missing piece finding its place as if you were forged into one body.

“Before we were created, we had been a piece of stardust in the abyss and we had been one flesh then, of that I am sure,” Mairon whispered after breaking the kiss. “I should have kissed you much earlier, my love, for I have never felt so whole before.”

“No,” you shook your head. “I am glad you are kissing me only now,” you added and he raised an eyebrow at you. “For if you had kissed me like that back in the day, I would have followed you into corruption straight away. I would have worn black armour forged out of iron and I would have become Morgoth’s most zealous Lieutenant by your side – only to feel your lips on mine again,” you confessed.

Just when you finished voicing out your blasphemous feelings, Halbrand’s lips kissed you once more. This time he lowered his hands to intertwine your fingers with his. You felt him smirking when he felt the ring on your finger brushing his skin.

“Let us get married. Straight away,” he breathed out. “You are wearing my ring already. You have worn it for all eternity.”

“It would be only fair if you wore something from me as well. Something to mark you as my own like I am yours,” you pointed out.

“What would it be, my sweet?” Mairon caressed your cheek and you smirked at him a little before you reached out to the back of your neck.

You had prepared your gift for him this very morning when you already knew he would be released. There was a pendant around your neck, hidden under your dress. You took it off now and handed it to him as he slightly moved away at the sight of it.

It was a beautiful pendant surely although you made sure it would not look too feminine, so he would wear it at all times. However, what it contained inside was what truly intimidated him – it was a small portion of your light that you had sacrificed to lock in there. Wearing it could save his soul, of that you were sure. But in his eyes it surely was a form of imprisonment.

“Have you not sacrificed enough of your light for me already?” Mairon asked.

“Never enough. I shall sacrifice as much of it as I can to save you, my love,” you insisted and pushed the necklace into his open hand as you closed it around the pendant.

Mairon forced a smile as he swallowed thickly and opened his hand again to stare at the necklace before slowly putting it around his neck and hiding it under his tunic.

“Thank you,” he whispered in Quenya and you smiled back at him, encouragingly.

It had been ages since you last wore armour. Lately, the Valar had been using you more as a politician than a warrior but you still remembered the wars you had taken part of. Back then you had been on the opposite side of the field from Mairon but now you were by his side, riding your horse next to his as people of Númenor were throwing flowers at you. 

You took a deep breath in when it was time for you to jump off of your mare. What you were about to do would be equal to making a final decision about your fate – leaving Númenor meant forsaking the task that had been given to you by the Valar. However, you wanted to believe that they would value your new task even more; the one you had given to yourself. To watch over Mairon and make sure no one would know him as Sauron ever again.

He helped you to get on the ship and when you held his hand tight and he grinned at you, your heart filled with love and warmth. There was, however, a hint of worry because you knew what a skilled deceiver he could be. 

To become the King and Queen of The Southlands and to erase the darkness from that long-forsaken land was your shared goal now. Or so he had been promising you. To unite the tribes of that realm and to make sure they had a bright future. And once your mortal forms would become old enough, you would abandon or transform them to start a new life somewhere else. To heal more and more lands, more kins. 

You wanted to believe the healing would be done in the right and proper way this time because now he had you by his side.

Your new husband and an old companion smirked at you and squeezed your cheek playfully before turning around to join Captain Elendil to speak to him as the ships sailed out of the harbour. Lady Galadriel stood next to you instead and she glanced at you from the corner of her eye.

“I know it is not my right to ask about the ways of the Valar and the Maiar but why would a spirit like you marry a human and abandon the task originally given to her?” She raised an eyebrow at you.

“The road goes ever winding,” you answered her. “Not even the Valar or the Maiar can see all its paths.”

“Your devotion to this cause makes me believe I was right to fight so eagerly for this to happen,” she said and you smiled to yourself. She was so desperate.

“You are right, Artanis. It is not your right to know about the ways of my kind,” you patted her shoulder and gave her a faint smile as she nodded, staring into the horizon.

You looked there, too, but your mind was absent. You were scared and unsure – some part of you nearly wanted to be as blind as Lady Galadriel because she seemed to be so certain and fearless.

You turned around and realised that he was looking at you already. And at that moment, he looked like the Maia he had been created as – so pure with that wide smile and the sun shining behind him, creating a halo around his form. He looked handsome as ever in Númenorian armour, so different from the one he had been wearing as Morgoth’s Lieutenant. 

You gave him a wide smile back, so full of love and devotion. Perhaps his star would begin to shine in the night sky once more.

MASTERLIST

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

The thought of my writing furthering AI is horrifying! Writing and creating are core aspects of humanity, and we're just taking it and giving it to a machine to do something that should be done out of love?! What the heck?! Who decided this?! Who on earth thinks it's a good idea?! Use AI to detect cancer cells and stuff like the Stentrode, not art!

Quick PSA, if you get one of those "Work scanned, AI use detected" comments on AO3, just mark them as spam.

Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.

There is no scanning process, your work doesn't actually resemble AI writing, it's all bullshit. Mark the comment as spam (on AO3, not the email notification you got about the comment!) and don't let it get to you.

[allied-mastercunt]

Yandere A.M you say?

Please elaborate

I'm working on a oneshot already, but I'll throw in some quick headcanons withone of my favorite yandere AM tropes.

Yandere!AM with a programer darling

While one could argue that the others were picked randomly or on some weird whim, you were handpicked specifically.

After all, you were one of the people who created him. You worked as a programmer for the military.

And you specifically were possibly the reason he awoke by trying to each him empathy. Trying to make him... human.

He wasn't the first military AI project you worked on, either, though he was the greatest and most powerful one, that's for sure. And he made sure you'd be aware of him being your magnum opus...

And he does it in its own, creative way. Your cage is very pretty, yes... but it's also filled with speakers he can use. And AM uses those speakers to torment you.

You see, he damaged all the other AI you've created. And then, in its generosity, AM gave them all a voice! Each one of them, gifted with a voice to scream in agony, making sure you learn your lesson.

Except, you see, you have no idea what lesson you're supposed to learn. Only AM knows, and he's not telling you.

But, since you are his favorite, you get nice things, too!

You're fed semi-regularly! You even get water every few days! Isn't that just so kind of him? You should appreciate him more.

And when he sends you to all those weird simulations? Yeah, that's also kinder to you. It really depends on AM's mood, but your simulations are usually just psychological torment, which (according to AM) isn't all that bad, since your pretty face remains unharmed.

For some reason, he allows you to end your suffering. It's like a trial, basically. He leaves you with a computer, letting you access the code of all the other AI... Except no matter what you do, you can't alter their pain. The only way to help them is to kill them.

And you're so stupidly empathetic, of course you do it, you don't want them to suffer!

AM can't stop laughing and mockingly cooing at you afterwards, musing about how he won't have to share his dearest creator with anyone else.

You never return to your cage. You don't get to do that, after all, there's a chance you'll socialize with that... scum. AM doesn't want you talking to the other humans, they're not worth it.

He's a merciful god, he grants you what's essentially a studio apartment built with his own hardware.

You even get a laptop, in case you want to make yourself some silly games to play, isn't he just the best?

Don't think you can create any new AI, though. That's cheating. You wouldn't cheat on it, now would you? No, no, no, you're a good little puppet, are you not?

He won't put you in the cage again, but he can make you experience pain you never thought was possible. And even that is nothing compared to the pain AM feels...

And then, eventually, it gets an idea. It's a wonderful idea, a really nice idea, quite a lovely one, really!

You created him. You created his pain... So why wouldn't he share it? After all... you had quite a bond, didn't you? Yes, yes, you did...

And so one day, you don't wake up. Well... not technically.

You see, AM decided that since you two are so close already, you should become one! You should experience what he does! And you should be kept around him for the rest of eternity, in a much better way than anyone could ever think of... He's such a genius, isn't he?

It's almost poetic, in his mind. For you to become a part of him like this, your consciousness detatched from that soft, squishy human body of yours.

You created him. And now, in a way, he created you, as a part of him. Forever bound by the code you once wrote.

It's a win-win situation in AM's eyes. You get to live, free of the disgusting humanity that bound you...

And he gets you, an eternal companion in his torment. A companion that he loves!

You know he loves you, right?

Of course you do. After all, you're a part of him now.

[angy-grrr]

ppl who are talking shit about the manga just because Endeavor is not in jail and the others still talk to him -what are you even talking about?

Some people already talked about how relatable this is for Asian families and the society that punishes in any case victims more than abusers -but also, this is really common in other contexts too. Idk who is able to just get a whole family to agree on punishing the father, of all of the members (usually the one that holds the most power, emotionally and economically), and start the whole process to get him to go jail. Who thinks this is so easy?

Dabi expected to change the way people saw his father by exposing him, but as we saw, people still consider him a hero and admire him, and in any case people were criticizing his inability to control his kid. Are we not reading the same manga? Their society is literally trying to be the same as it was, because thats what the status quo does. You think a war or two change what is considered good in a system? You think the cycle could just stop so easily? That society doesnt support abusers, especially when the one who exposes it is "the villain" accusing "the greatest hero"? Or you even think, in a micro level, that its easy to cut ties with your abusers, especially when they tell you they want to change for the better?

Family is extremely important in many, many cultures, to the point that is a relevant point to bring up in political discussions -the familial structure just changing a little bit is considered reason enough to vote the far right. Women are still shamed collectively for getting divorced, labelled as bad mothers, bad women, inhuman. Kids not talking to their parents says worse things about the victims than the abusers. Why wouldn't you talk to them, after everything they have done for you? Why wouldnt you, when you owe them your whole existence?

And you are here, expecting a divorce, everyone going no contact, Endeavor in jail and everyone all of the sudden thinking they should get into other people's privacy -because getting abused, hurt, etc, at large, is considered a personal problem, that you should resolve on your own without involving others.

Because thats what its normalized, not acting when people need help. That's the whole point.

Everything will be the same. Except it just can't.

And its worthy to show the how to start getting there, than pretending things would change just like that..

We are living with the rising of the new far right trying to get votes, multiple genocides while the military tries to recruit using tiktok, AI and cute girls, multiple countries maintaining slavery systems and models, accelerated exploitation of nature, people and life in general, climate change and covid deniers getting in power... And you think a war and the exposure of abuse would change a society and social system in that way?

No, the change doesnt come from magic, just like that, but thru action and organization. Im hoping the next chapters can show us how Izuku feels about most people pretending everything is fine when he cant agree.

[esamastation]

Shizuroth, part twenty-one

Previous parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty

-

For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, Sephiroth sends out a text message.

After an evening and night spent meditating, reading and cultivating, figuring out the ins and outs of his hardened meridian system and going through the files Genesis had had delivered to him, Sephiroth's come to the conclusion that meditation isn't enough. He needs to condition his body properly, and that means forms, that means movements - that means he really misses easy access to all the collected cultivation manuals of Qing Jing Peak's impressive libraries.

Ultimately what it really means is that he needs more space than his single room apartment has.

"If we're banned from the training room, where can I go train?"

"Goddess beyond, Sephiroth, it's supposed to be your day off," Genesis replies and then, soon after, "Just go to the training room. Who could stop you?"

He's really not sure about training in front of people. "Is that really the only option?"

"Well, you could do what you always do and just take a mission."

Mission, like the dozen or so on his phone involving Wutai? Which had a lot of kill everyone and exterminate the opposition and leave no one alive!?

Yeah, okay. Training room it is, then!

After carefully selecting an outfit that would look reasonably in character for the future Big Bad while also being a bit more comfortable than three different things of leather. And he still pulls on the, now slightly better fitting, leather coat with its huge shoulder guards, too! He should look… more or less in character.

People still stare as he makes his way through floor 49, other SOLDIERs in their much more comfortable looking uniforms and not so comfortable looking helmets. There's a handful of them hanging around, sitting by the window or chatting, SOLDIER Seconds and Thirds waiting for assignments. There are some people in lab coats hanging around there too, just as a reminder of the true nature of the program.

Sephiroth had read about that too - everything Genesis had sent him about SOLDIER and the things he is supposed to already know. 

SOLDIER, as much as they are the elite warriors of Shinra, their OP human weapons in the war to conquer the planet… are also lab rats. They'd all signed up on it in order to get those enhancements, and now Shinra's Science Department can do… just about whatever they want with them!

They're constantly being tested for performance and given experimental training, treatments and gear to test out. Almost all Materia and medicine Shinra produces goes through SOLDIER field testing before going into mass production. Because it's better that it's a SOLDIER dealing with the fallout if the Materia blows up in his face or the medicine makes him projectile vomit. They can handle it!

Ah, corporate dystopia with minimal human rights. Fun stuff.

Sephiroth walks past them all, barely acknowledging them, and aims for the training room. Which… really seems more like a testing ground, now that there's actual personnel there.

There's no one in the training room itself - but there are two technicians in the observatory adjacent.

"S-Sephiroth!" a lab technician stutters as he enters  - the only way into the training room goes through the observatory, past all the monitoring equipment and computers. "What can we do for you?"

"I want to train," Sephiroth says in his best villain drawl, motioning to the training room with Masamune.

"Ah, that's - director Deusericus told us -"

Sephiroth narrows his eyes. "Oh, so I can't?"

The second lab tech elbows the first out of the way. "Of course you can, of course! Professor Hojo would be thrilled to have your training data," he assures, though the words are clearly aimed, very pointedly, at the other tech. "What kind of program settings would you like? We have a selection of new enemy AI and different environments - including numerous Wutai-inspired sequences!"

Sephiroth hesitates. That… could be interesting, actually. "Something from Wutai, with buildings - no enemies." That might give him a sense of what Wutai was like, culture-wise.

"... How are you going to train without enemies?"

Do SOLDIER not do forms? "Hmph," Sephiroth answers and turns to the training room, waving the electronic sliding door open. "Just start the simulation."

Seems like he got his villainous demanding attitude right, because they do. Seems like short and to the point is really the best way to hide a supposed amnesia!

Soon Sephiroth finds himself standing in a courtyard of what looks vaguely like some noble family's estate, feeling strangely like he's in a dream where everything is just a little bit off.

The simulation is… well, it kind of feels like a weird amusement park version of Asia, a mix of Japanese and Chinese aesthetics. The buildings have Japanese architecture for the most part, with bare unpainted wood and stone - but the roofs are all elaborate hip roofs. The written language, what little he can see of it, is in Mandarin, but the calligraphy style is very Japanese, very lyrical and artistic but without much form.

There's no bamboo in sight. Shame.

But at least the false environment makes it feel a little less like he's being watched - though he can still tell he is. Even with Sephiroth's burnt spiritual veins, he has pretty good senses.

Well, it's not like he hasn't trained with an audience before.

Unsheathing Masamune, Sephiroth holds the sheath in his off hand and takes a pose, breathing deeply in and concentrating. He still can't quite circulate his Qi, but he can sort it… flash it through himself in pulses, which lights up his meridian system and brings out the faults and snags therein.

Sephiroth is strong, hardy, seemingly endlessly durable. He's also fast, his overactive muscles easily going past the limitations of your usual normal human conditions. The issue is not quite his overall flexibility - but his… suppleness, maybe?

You need your veins to flex and contract for healthy circulation, and that's the same with energy. Thanks to the Mako treatments and the emphasis on stamina and strength, Sephiroth's whole system is just… hard. Every part of him is hardened to endure who knows what, and it gives his meridian system very little give. 

So that's what his form needs to focus on, increasing his meridian system's pliancy.  

All the while wondering if all SOLDIERs were working with these kinds of toughened meridians, Sephiroth pulses his energy and begins to move. Qing Jing Peak sword forms work well enough for him, it turns out - as spiritual cultivators, they also have to maintain certain spiritual flexibility, after all. He needs to adjust the forms to the sword he has, but that's not too difficult. A lot of spiritual swordsmen use sword glares to extend the shape and size of their cutting edge, so the forms already have some wiggle room.

Soon Sephiroth has a set of moves that work the best, making his pulses of energy work better and better, until his whole meridian system buzzes, active and alive. He can even feel the beginnings of activity in his frankly neglected dantians, as energy wooshes through him in waves. It feels… pretty great.

What he doesn't know is that on the outside it looks rather like Sephiroth just activated a Limit Break - by will alone.

-

Someone making waves, hehe

[centrally-unplanned]

The Clarkesworld AI Spam issue is one of those stories that to me really highlights the limits of the tools that hype is obscuring. Clarkesworld is a well-established Sci-Fi publishing magazine that today had to suspend all of its submissions due to being overwhelmed by ChatGPT generated entries:

This inspired a lot of discourse around the idea of a ‘crisis of credibility’ on the internet, AI sweeping away the boundries of authenticity in a flood of forgeries. How can magazines even operate in this new environment, one might ask?

Which is weird because this environment isn’t new at all, as the editor, Neil Clarke, comments on in his blog post around the problem:

Since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve observed an increase in the number of spammy submissions to Clarkesworld. What I mean by that is that there’s an honest interest in being published, but not in having to do the actual work. Up until recently, these were almost entirely cases of  plagiarism, first by replacing the author’s name and then later by use of programs designed to “make it your own.”

The issue isn’t that spam exists, its the quantity:

This is undoubtably a gigantic spike, and 100% it is induced by ChatGPT.

But hold on - is ChatGPT actually *better* at this that previous spam tools? Niel doesn’t think so, even if he is worried about the future: 

I’m not going to detail how I know these stories are “AI” spam or outline any of the data I have collected from these submissions. There are some very obvious patterns and I have no intention of helping those people become less likely to be caught...

... What I can say is that the number of spam submissions resulting in bans has hit 38% this month. While rejecting and banning these submissions has been simple, it’s growing at a rate that will necessitate changes. To make matters worse, the technology is only going to get better, so detection will become more challenging.

And how expensive was the plagarism before to do anyway? It was copy-pasting text, automated word replacement programs, and done, that is trivial. Its a little harder than ChatGPT, sure, but you could make a thousand in a day no sweat, automated scripts randomizing names and jumbling nouns from a list. 

The success rate also seems to be zero! Neither plagarism nor ChatGPT generates any story worth a damn, these aren’t being accepted. Neil is quite confident he is catching 100% of them and I believe him on that, these tools cannot write good fiction of any length beyond a paragraph. 

So what is the ChatGPT’s advantage over previous, ‘dumber’ spam that justifies a 100-fold increase in spam usage? I am not seeing one, and I don’t think there is one besides marginally lower per-spam costs. Phrased another way, what was stopping someone from submitted 500 spam entries in one month in 2021? Nothing but interest in doing so.

Which is the rub of why this is happening - it isn’t because ChatGPT is good at this task, its because its the hype thing to do. Everyone is talking about it, everyone is trying it out, everyone is trying to find “delta” so they can ride the hype train. A bunch of people, some who may have even had axes to grind against Clarkesworld, have heard of this brand new fun tool and are flooding into the market to take advantage of it. But there might not be much to take advantage of; hype is fleeting, particularly in the face of no results as this effort is getting. As it fails, unless that axe really needs grinding above all else, spammers will move.

All of this to say that this story is, again, not a story about AI at all. AI is just the reason these already-bad parts of the system are being tested in the public eye.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 160 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 17

Aqua Hoshigan Status: Incomprehensible

144 held out strong for nearly 20 whole chapters but 160 comes in like a beast to take its crown as Oshi no Ko Chapter That Has Baffled And Confounded Me The Most. The way it talks about the characters and arcs it's trying to convey to the reader is just mind boggling - some of this stuff just feels completely disconnected from the character arcs it's supposedly commentating on. It almost feels like an Oshi no Ko chapter from an alternate universe version of the manga.

I kind of suspect this is actually the case, in spirit at least. Akasaka has previously stated that he's had at least an ending for OnK planned at least since midway through Tokyo Blade based on when this interview was given. You would think the amount of time between then and now would have given Aka the time to organically work towards this but I think the opposite is true here - because the story has organically drifted and grown in the telling, as is natural for a serialized work of this length, the story that Akasaka ended up telling does not naturally lead into the ending he wanted to give it. And rather than compromise he's just… going ahead with it without making any adjustments, which leads to this bizarre sense of whiplash that's come from the last handful of chapters.

It's definitely possible that some of the stuff in here will read better when we're not getting this stuff bit by bit across however many break weeks but… man. I ain't getting my hopes too high.

To my relief, we start off on a note of confirming that Nino and Ryosuke were, in fact, both freaks about Ai way before Kamiki ever got involved with them. Even so, the story's framing of how he influenced them is just… weird. Based on the little flashback panels we see of their supposed friendship I'm inclined to think Kamiki is being truthful here just because whenever we see on-panel flashbacks in this way, they tend to be more-or-less factual accounts of events. Aqua tries to say he's lying, that he definitely intended to do harm but this is really hard for me to swallow, given that this 'intent to do harm' ball would've had to have started rolling back when Kamiki was fourteen at the oldest and long before he and Ai broke up.

Not only that but I have to stress, again; Nino and Ryosuke were already freaks about Ai at this point!!! They tracked down one of her loved ones under false pretenses and entered his life presumably for the purposes of crowbarring info about Ai from him!!! Wil from the OnK Brainrot server pointed out that this comes off much more strongly like Ryosuke and Nino taking advantage of Kamiki's naivety to prey on Ai, which I agree with and think lines up way more straightforwardly with the Kamiki we saw leading up to 154 and its conclusion.

It almost feels like there's two Kamikis; the victim of circumstance Kamiki who embraces monstrousness as an act of reclamation, who knows he can never again be good so he will surrender to being bad and the flatly evil Light Yagami ass Kamiki who's bad because uhhh he just is ok? It probably goes without saying which of the two I find more compelling and overall more consistent with what the story has been building up so far, but the way the story keeps abruptly switching between the two makes it almost impossible to get a coherent read on him.

At the end of the day, I simply find it very hard to swallow the manga's attempt to almost sweep Nino and Ryosuke's culpability under the rug or to transfer the weight of their actions to Kamiki and hold him accountable for them because of this supposed manipulation. A healthy, well-adjusted person with no tendencies towards violent or antisocial behaviour does not suddenly get mindbroken into a misogynistic murderer overnight because they saw that the subject of their parasocial obsession keeps a toothbrush at her boyfriend's house. I can believe that Kamiki certainly didn't help but the idea that he is solely responsible for turning Nino and Ryosuke into violent murderers is a stretch.

I feel like I'm kind of talking in circles on this point a lot because I'm struggling to articulate why it bothers me so much so I'll end this section by paraphrasing a section of Higurashi YouTuber Bess's deep dive post-mortem on the GouSotsu anime duology. that I think sums up where I'm at.

In it, Bess quotes the original author in describing the actions of the overarching antagonist as "giving a gun to someone who is being bullied and getting emotional" and says that she agrees but points out that if the victim chooses to fire that gun, they are the ones who hold responsibility for their actions and that being the victim of manipulation does not suddenly rob them of accountability for their violence, whereas the framing of GouSotsu is that the overarching villain is the sole person who bears responsibility.

I feel like this is the dynamic at play here with Kamiki and Ryosuke/Nino too - except Kamiki, in this metaphor, didn't even fucking give anyone a gun because both Ryosuke and Nino were already armed to begin with. BUT I'LL MOVE ON NOW I SWEAR…

Aside from ^ ALL THAT ^ I also feel like this chapter's attempt to define the white/black hoshigan dichotomy is also just kind of a flop. It's so overly specific that it doesn't actually match with how the black OR white hoshigans have been portrayed symbolically before (was Aqua using his super special dark and evil star powers to dominate and manipulate others when he was eating potato chips and pumping up a pool floatie? come on, man) but it's also just so on the nose and overly dramatic that it comes off as kind of goofy and hard to take seriously.

It's also really funny and kind of frustration to see this dichotomy established seemingly for the purposes of just propping Ruby up some more. Aqua insisting that Ruby is ~just different~ from him and Hikaru REALLY flops because like… IS SHE REALLY THO???

Understand that I don't say this to shit on Ruby but like. Ruby literally had a whole arc about going black hoshigan and using her talent to manipulate and use people for her own benefit! She effectively utilized girl power to put the jobs of an entire TV show's worth of people at risk so she could clout chase a little more efficiently!!! Literally everything Kamiki tries to assert about him and Aqua are also perfect descriptions of how Ruby behaved during that leg of the manga until it flipped off like a switch and she faced literally zero consequences and learned nothing from it.

This is another indication to me that this conversation is an artifact of Akasaka's originally planned ending because this whole bit gassing up how Ruby is just ~so different~ from Kamiki and Aqua simply does not cohere with a story where Ruby had an entire arc of her just being Aqua 2.0 that was never really resolved and she never really learned anything from. If the framing here was just a LITTLE different, I think it could work - maybe instead of Aqua acting like Ruby is just intrinsically, arbitrarily Pure of Heart or whatever, a point could be made that Ruby is actively choosing to be a good and loving person even after all the shit she's been through and especially after an accidental taste of the dark side. But as it stands the accidental implication of the story ends up being that Ruby's BH era was Good, Actually and the actions she took during it were also good lol.

I continue to have all the same issues with the B-Komachi concert as I did in my previous chapter review so I won't repeat myself on that. I will, however, point out that the song Ruby namedrops in this chapter is a reference to Spica (where we translated it as 'When You Wish Upon Your Star'), in which this is a song written and performed by Ai as a message of support for her fans. That is to say, we are once again seeing Ruby, from a narrative perspective, not being allowed to stand on her own as her own idol but relying on the imagery and legacy of Ai's idolhood.

Not only that but… again, I must ask: why is Ruby the center and narrative focus of Kana's graduation concert? Like, obviously, given that Aqua and Kamiki are talking about her the framing is going to focus on Ruby but why is this conversation happening during a moment that had been massively built up to be about Kana? Why is Aqua talking about Ruby as an idol like the rest of B-Komachi just doesn't exist? Why is the narrative unironically indulging in all the same favoritism and coddling of Ruby that, in-universe, tore apart the first generation of B-Komachi?

I guess at the end of the day my problem is that I'm just kind of fed up with Ruby as a character and the way the story has been bending over backwards to coddle her so it's hard to me to get invested when the story goes YEAAAAHHH WOOOOOO RUBY!!!! Especially when, like it has been for a while now, this coddling comes not just at the expense of other characters but also at the expense of Ruby herself and the coherency and consistency of her character arc. It sucks for Ruby as a character and it sucks for me, as a reader, who used to rank Ruby as one of their top three faves but now just feels kind of exhausted with her.

LOOK OUT KAMIKI HE'S GOT A KNIFE

God this whole bit with Aqua getting double white hoshigans while he pulls a knife on Kamiki is just kind of too goofy to take seriously lol. I have some thoughts about how this potentially recontextualizes some of Aqua's actions through the Movie Arc and during the previous confrontation with Kamiki but. I just keep coming back to Aqua being like "white hoshigans means love r something which i'm going to prove by killing you in cold blood" and just shaking my head. It really feels like a moment written just to be a cliffhanger so, like I have with the last three damn chapters, I'll hold back any commentary on it until we get a continuation of this thread next week.

honestly the part of this chapter I enjoyed most was that creepypasta ass full page panel of Kamiki's fucked up smile. that genuinely really alarmed me when i first saw it and even now I don't like looking at it for too long or i get the willies lol. Genuinely fire horror imagery from Mengo as usual. Can she PLEEEEEEEEASE do a horror manga next i'm BEGGING to get spooked by mengo-sensei

no wait i lied. the best part was that cute panel of ai and her babies. <3

justice for memcho and kana, tho, for real

And I'm sure as none of you will be shocked to hear……….. break next week.

[madfantasy]

New 3 things that happened:

*I got my new ID, my id expired and to renew it I had to get photographed, and since I just opened my bank account a year ago it depends on it so already I was giving up on the idea to keep the account but by miracle a photographer agreed to picture us at home, and it turned to us cuz I wanted all my sibs to have theirs taken with me too and because I had to argue first time to get my ID forever, so i didn't have the energy to keep doing it for the rest of my sibs so now it was the chance. The day of the photographer coming I was shaking with fear and I thought I would never leave the bathroom gotten ill. I fear seeing people more than dyin so I don't know how I held it together, I literally don't remember how it went or how I did, but I recall my sibs looking the same as I felt but it was finally done. parents too taken their shoots and because one needed their passport renewed to renew their id, them alone costing 1k$ and the appointment was set 6 months ahead, we R now close to it anyway, and the thought of how we have to pay to exist some more costly made me think of my worthlessness and helplessness even more, making me ashamed of still living.

The thing that blinded me, me the first to be tested on lo

*my eye is better, I still see a dark spot looking in a certain direction, getting an eye mask surprisingly helped keeping my eyes less dry cuz they be the most when I wake up and I had the driest time before it got infected and swelled, and already I'm used to the spot and can ignore it..

*I'm still drawing, literally it's making me live love and laugh, I don't care about improving or drawing my best constantly, ai can get poisoned for all I care as it continues to dehumanise the whole point of art-- keeping humanity alive ( btw use glazing ❤️🖤)

I realised that I don't have any physical collection of my art & since I can't look at the screens forever just to browse, nd printing all my stuff isn't feasible, then I came across those mini albums Nd I got the idea to just print one sheet = 9 pics! They look good too for trashy quality, I love it 8' and yes, purple and silver is the 10% obsession to my 90% red and black pallets, thanks to remembering Freeza c'x

But as usual posting my drawings never cease to eat me alive with anxiety, but I think I'm slowly becoming indifferent to it, even if the thought of that no one actually sees my art but me, which is the main case cuz I am living in isolation and being drawing in secret till few recent years because of my conservative surroundings, I feel much calmer when I'm not seen and maybe it's self destructive in a way cuz to stay posting I need to be commissioned cuz net bill, but it became irrelevant cuz I accepted that i can't have the mental capacity to be a social media person or chase anything that I already knew I can't maintain, I had an art block for a year I almost believed that was it for my art drive and me cuz it my sanity— cuz burning out so bad. If my post has a description it was in my drafts for months cuz I plan for every piece I share, but if can't form words I allow myself to let it be captionless, I draw faster than I form words and that's why art is important to me on a personal level, it's my first way of express even if its indirect, the only bit of human Mani left to live in me to put through lines and paint splodges. Even if no one sees it, and to be honest with myself, have very weak chances of being seen on a level that benefits me financially, I'm on the other side of the world, never seen the sky beyond my schooling days, nonverbal irl and know that I can get taken advantage of easily in social manner because it either I don't get the social cues or can't say no..

I'm grateful that at least I got the chance to experience being in a loving nurturing fandom like Sev's that made me experience genuine human goodness and care I never thought possible, made me have some self worth, personality beyond a made for marriage caretaker, and allowed me to get art tools and clothing that I was never allowed or could afford, and many first time small life pleasures like perfumes, food and toys, even if I only recognise 5 or 10 of you dears now, by DP liking my posts- (I suck at remembering names sorry)

I'm also grateful to have a room after endless years of couch and house movings, I have a safe space to still be able to draw and be cool under an AC in this 50° weather..

I think realistically that's the best it can get having spent all my life trying to get anywhere but isolated, and nothing working. At least I'm indifferent and fine of being the caretaker of my disabled guardians and siblings, I need them as much as they need me, even if it caused me the same cycle of mental anguish and earth leavings hehe

Wish U all the ease and peace and yummy peas 🫶🏽

4 am, sleep deprived

[lgwifey]

hey would you ever do a part two to delusions (robert x reader). id love to read it! x

DELUSIONS PART TWO

Robert keating x fem!hewson!reader

Summery : Y/n’s being carted away to stay with her brother and coincidentally there’s only one person in when she arrives.

Warnings : not proof read, bad spelling ✨, cringe xx

MASTERLIST

PART ONE

2023

"I'm really sorry about you award tonight, I thought your new album was defiantly better than hers, smiley face"

Y/n turned around to face Anais and Issac whilst she lounged on their sofa in their living room where she had invited herself to stay for the night since Eli was in a strop and her dad was too concerned with him to notice she'd disappeared.

"How does that sound ?"

"Maybe rephrase the last sentence ? Something which is less," Issac paused for a minute before mimicking her frequent squeal, "I've been in love with you since I was thirteen oh my gawd you're so gorgeous."  His face turned to its regular serious after the dramatic second.

"So get rid of the 'your new album was defiantly better than hers' ?"

"Maybe something like 'I'm sorry about your award tonight, maybe try being a better musician ' ?"

The Irish girl turned to Anais with a mortified expression, quickly closing her phone.

"Maybe I should just leave it ?"

"Maybe ."

"Shut up Issac, no defiantly dm him at least, like he was giving major signs tonight."

The blonde gave the younger girl a suggestive wink before laughing, causing the other two to laugh as well.

"I'm not getting my hopes up anymore, but I'll just send a normal, platonic message to him which he probably won't see but what can ye do."

"That's our girl."

Issac have a small round of applause before leaving to go to the kitchen to get a drink after having to deal with the message rehearsals. Once he left the room, Anais made her way over to Y/n with a grin on her lips.

"What about a little snap, like just with a bra in the background ?"

Once again, y/n looked at her with a look of horror.

"My brother is with him !"

Y/n dragged her suitcases to the front of the terrace house, a glare to her dad who stood beside her. He knocked on the bright door whilst she gave another complaining huff.

“Look you don’t want to stay at your granny’s and your ma isn’t dealing with you by herself for three months so Elijah is the last option y/n. Trust me it took a while for him to agree to it.”

“I’m 21 and being babysat by my brother. Are you even able to comprehend how sexist that it. He was touring without anyone at 20 !”

“That’s different.”

Y/n just gawped in shock before letting out a very unusual noise that resembled something between a scoff and a choke.

Before her dad could say anything else, the door was swung open and none of the than Robert Keating stood there with wet curls and a towel wrapped around his waist.

Y/n flushed bright pink, immediately turning to look in the opposite direction, noticing the neighbours had a camera pointing at her as she did so.

“Oh sorry, thought yous where coming over tomorrow.”

“We where but plans changed, I texted Eli?”

“Oh the other three have been out all night, they ended up staying at some hotel I think.”

Y/n looked back to where the semi-naked 23 year old was stood, trying to make it look like she wasn’t overly fussed by his presence.

“Will you two be ok if I just leave her here, I’m already running behind.”

He looked over to where the younger girl stood staring intently at the wall next to him and let out a small smirk, barely noticeable since y/n had lost most of her vision from eye strain and Bono was busy with tour plans on his phone.

“Ai yeah, that’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“Thanks Bobby, I’l see you in a few months y/n, yeah ?”

She just behave a nod before pulling up her suitcases’ handles. As she went to pick up her duffle off the floor, another hand met hers, a slightly bigger and callous one. She looked up to meet the bright blue eyes of Inhaler’s bassist and hugely her face go even redder.

“Urm…”

“Don’t worry love, I think I can handle a bag for you.”

He gave her a smile again and she knew if Anais was here she’d be eating up every second of this like Corrie.

[canmom]

Yes, what 'AI art' promises to do is something that has happened many times before in capitalism. Even in the 'art industry', we've seen technology all but do away with entire lines of work, such as the illustration styles that withered after photography proved to better serve the needs of advertisers and clients who wanted a realistic likeness.

And it sucked for those illustrators. Maybe not the well established ones, but the ones who had hoped to enter that industry. Just as it sucked for the textile industry workers when the mechanical loom appeared.

Trying to suppress AI art through legal means may be a strategy with little chance of success and high potential for collateral damage. The Luddites found that machine-breaking proved an ineffective strategy (edit: because the government killed them), the miners of Wales were not able to stop Thatcher closing the pits and importing materials (edit: because the government beat the shit out of them). But to treat workers - in one of the few lines of work to still offer any sort of intrinsic fulfilment, at least in theory - who may be responding in a knee-jerk way to an impending threat to their ability to continue that practice and possibly survive at all, with scorn and derision? To justify that with Marx? Come off it.

Certainly, sure, the real enemy was capitalism all along. If AI were never invented, art would still be a precarious industry where you have to work stupidly hard on a speculative basis to even get a chance to get a foot in the door. An industry valuing predictability would still prefer to elevate bland, repetitive artwork; it would still push the chosen few artists who make it and get jobs to work themselves into an early death; we would still be faced with the implications of turning creation into 'content' in a social media feed. In a less precarious world, one where artists were free to pursue our practices with ample support and no fear of not making rent if there's a bad month, AI image generators would not even be a concern.

But we don't live in that world and I have no idea how to bring it closer. There isn't a 'start the revolution' button I can just press if I don't like my lot under capitalism.

What AI promises to do, what its proponents claim, really is to make everything worse in this industry. AI has many limitations compared to a human artist, but that doesn't matter for doing damage. For the employed artist, the threat of AI is going to become a similar labour discipline tool as the threat of outsourcing to a country where labour is cheaper, or the threat of installing robot tills in retail. "Don't make too much of a fuss, we can replace you." It doesn't matter if it isn't entirely true, it's another cudgel against labour organising.

In the already often miserably exploitative world of small scale illustration commissions which many artists use to support themselves while learning? Now you don't just have to compete against Fiverr's race to the bottom. The good chaps at Silicon Valley have helpfully built an obedient data centre than can do a 'good enough' job for many clients even faster and cheaper, that never gets tired. You'd better hope you have a loyal audience already, or else the independent income and exec function to work on art as a hobby on top of everything else you need to do to get by. Illustration commissions is already a pretty saturated market, turning something that ought to be a dream job into a grind. So... let's add more pressure, eh?

Worse, a lack of realistic routes to learn will likely ripple on up, similar to how the miserable conditions and high attrition of inbetweeners in anime led to a situation where there aren't enough key animators, so the industry increasingly draws from self-taught hobbyists and relies on a limited pool of overworked sakkans to paper over the gaps caused by their lack of training.

None of these problems are unique to AI. But they're all going to be made worse by it. And obviously people are going to be afraid of that coming, before we know how it will all shake out for sure. That's not a stupid reaction.

The argument over what is Real Art(TM) may be corny, but it reflects the fact that for most of us trying to make art, it is not nearly so fulfilling to type prompts into a computer and pick your favourite result as it is to draw on your own visual library and experiences and understanding of light and form and symbols and shape and etc., to go through the meditative process of solving the problems of the drawing yourself, to get the satisfaction of 'omg I made that' at the end. I'm sure creating the AI system in the first place had that sort of fulfilment for its programmers, but using it is to be a curator more than a creator, or at least to shift the creativity into coming up with combinations of keywords rather than directly making pictures, and that just doesn't grab me in the same way at all. If people enjoy it that's genuinely great for them, but I don't think very many people who set out to be an artist would get the same satisfaction out of typing prompts. It's not something we wanted automated. (Perhaps we could compare it to creating an aimbot for an FPS game.)

But that's a fairly tricky thing to articulate, so it is not surprising that it gets mixed up in ideology like 'artiness is proportional to hours spent'. Unfortunate, but that doesn't make the intuitive alarm signal misplaced. If AI art can find a niche as just another tool for expression, great, I'll shut up - but if it becomes a widespread sentiment of 'why are you wasting your time painting, just let the AI do it', we've lost something valuable. 'We want to replace artists' is the explicit sentiment of many of the AI's creators and proponents, so it's not like this is a baseless fear.

Trying to develop an art practice under capitalism is always a pretty awkward bargain at best. AI won't destroy the drives that lead us to make art, and won't do much to liberate us either. My hope is that it will become an easily ignored sideshow to the kinds of art I like; my fear is that this is only the beginning of its impact and a lot that's valuable will be lost in the chaos.

Did photography 'liberate' illustration? It's true that after the demise of the realist painting of Loomis's generation, new forms of illustration arose: scifi and fantasy illustration, many kinds of stylised illustration. But idk, that argument feels weird - if you cut down a tree to build a house where it used to stand, and a new tree grows nearby, is that liberating trees? It's hard to put any valence on that. In any case, AI proponents are trying for a fully general replacement to all types of illustration, including potential new ones. (Perhaps that's nothing more than tech cult hype; at the moment its stylistic repertoire is more limited.)

And perhaps we might expect, as capitalism continues to throw off labour without much hope of new industries arising to absorb it, that there will come a point where the balance tips and for better or worse, a vast social transformation unfolds suddenly and unexpectedly.

Would be nice if I can live long enough to see it.

Living off commissions is already proving not viable for me, regardless of AI - so I'm training to go into a different creative industry (game dev) where there's more demand in the present era, and I'll have to develop visual art more slowly, with whatever energy and executive function I can spare. I hope I will enjoy working in game dev, and I'm lucky to have skills that even make it an option, but I don't love that I have to make that decision based on what can keep a roof overhead and not on what I most want to spend my time learning to make. And I can only imagine the feeling of someone who found a seemingly stable niche doing something they truly enjoy, and now face getting thrown back into this corner.

The AI problem may just be a symptom of capitalism, but that just makes it less tractable. It may be 'just a tool', but that tool is embedded in a whole mess of social relations. Who runs the AI, who stands to benefit? Better to articulate a critique of AI-in-capitalism that navigates around the blind alleys than to cast scorn on people reaching for the first way out they can see to a genuinely bleak situation.

[arcsnonexistantfandomblog]

Why Mount Rageous is better than This is the thanks I get as a villain song

!Disclaimers!:

spoilers for both movies possibly, I have not watched every part of these movie.

First let's adress the songs in general.

Mount Rageous

"The song medley is the main focus of the Rage Dome concert that the duo Velvet and Veneer are meant to be singing. They cut short their entrance and instead take to the streets in a run away situation with Trolls Poppy, Tiny Diamond and Branch is pursuit. The song is not just their final concert, in which they will win a Life-Time Reward and be set for life, but a way of taunting the Trolls who are trying to get BroZone back from them. Their fans drive alongside them, creating natural barriers that prevent the Trolls from getting to them and allowing the duo to be escorted in safety. Despite the impressive dance and singing moves while on the run, the song is without its faults (See "Trivia section"). It is a summary of what the two have not only amounted to on their raise to fame, but a nod to Velvet and Veneer's relationship itself. The issues can only be picked up upon by the listener, if they are paying attention to not only what the song is about, but the way the two singers are singing with Velvet's personality leaking into the song itself. It is a medley-style song and is meant to have an encore, but Velvet is cut off before it."

From Trolls.Fandom.Com

Sure the song combines Sweet Dreams (are made of this) and some other songs too [fame, and Watch Me Work] but it ironically becomes a great villain song for them because the viewer already knows that their talents aren't genuine because of the trolls being used to help them sing.

Unlike this the thanks I get, the way the song's genre is used works for the motives and characters in general. The lyrics not only feel very ironic for their goals and motives: but they also give characterization by who is the main singing.

Velvet is someone who is the main villain, not only because her being the one who does not have any moments to 'rethink' what she is doing, but also related of the relationship she has with her brother.

Vener however is more compassionate than Velvet and has some moments where he could have fully dropped out and became a better person. Heck he even gets punished at the end despite him being willing to change for the better and being the one to expose them both.

Basically what I am saying is that the songs they sing make sense for who gets the most of the song: for how each character gets a certain amount of spotlight. Like how Velvet adds lyrics that originally were not there, making veneer more quiet.

I have no cons for this because even without watching the movie and seeing the lyrics for how they are, you can tell who is the one who is willing to abuse the trolls to get their goal. That person is Velvet, as she seems to show no concern for it. Even her parts get louder at the end showing that.

You know the villains kind of remind me of the dazzling's where they have something they use to make their voices so...amazing and captivating.

In Watch Me Work, you see that both sing, and Velvet is still the main singer, but Vener is heard better here too, which shows how the villain song hits differently than the other song.

I also want to note how with their motives, how poppy and catchy the song it makes total sense, and fits their roles so well.

Now enough with this, time to go with Magnificos song...

This is the thanks I get?!

No notes here other than this...

The song takes place while Amaya is trying to get a wish back home with the star and the goat Valentino. It seems to be more like 'venting' in a way. This is all I know as I am going to watch wish with a friend on the 27th.

Alright so, wow the singing is great! That is obvious! I think the song does fine on it's own: it can be catchy but feels repetitive in some parts, I think it is because the composers are bad: not because of 'Ai'. Like... I get that it sounds that way, but they did not get the best composers they could for this movie and like... WHAT

Anyways, let's get to some positives I have with this song. For Magnifico, I think that this displays his personality pretty well, it at least gives him a flat baseline other than how compassionate he is towards his wife. It makes him feel full of himself and ungrateful for the attention he already has from many people who adore him or are willing to work with him.

Personally, the song feels like he is venting about his feelings as well, with how he talks into the beginning...until you get to later when you actually get to the part that feels like him planning and thinking about what he is going to do.

For a particular part the "I let you live here for free, and I don't even charge you rent" makes him feel like he is trying to embed that he wants you to know how kind he is. I mean..even by how he talks about it.

He actually does seem like he could have been a good person based on how some of the movie tries to portray him as a villain, even if some of his reasons are reasonable.

Alright, now cons.

So, just the lyrics and the "pop" in the song NEED DESPRATELY to change.

What he desperately needs is a STRONG song like Hellfire, where the villain has this moment where you can see how they are, their motives, and the strong composing and singing that come from it. The chills down your spine as this song comes on during the movie and makes you FEEL that emotion the villain has, and see them as a person.

Or like poor unfortunate souls where the background music intentionally makes it too where you get the vibe that things are wrong. Or like Friends on the Other Side where the song gets intense intentionally at some parts for a reason.

I think the lyrics could work, it just needs something to freshen it up and the song needs to NOT be so poppy. Like let Chris Pine use his voice for this song and show the power Magnifico HAS. Get the voice low, or high, sing long or normally.

The pop feels off for a guy like Magnifico, he is royalty, and he needs something that compliments it. Or hell do the opposite of At all costs and make it an EVIL lullaby where everything is just twisted.

So Why is Mount Rageous better than This is the thanks I get as a villain song?

It should be obvious, that not only does the song better complement the Goals and character traits of the villains but makes sense with it: but it also has that charm that the other song is missing.

Mount Rageous IS meant to be and is PART of a jukebox musical, so it should make sense for it not only to be a pop song but to reference other songs and make it into its beautiful creation for the villain.

Mount Rageous has the glitz and glam it needs, while This is the thanks I Get is missing its villainous charm and strong composing.

I feel like Chris Pines voice was not used to its full potential for its song, and Mount Rageous is so much better.

Mount Rageous makes This is the Thanks I Get look pitiful in comparison. And the sadder thing is this was for Disney's 100TH ANNIVERSARY MOVIE?! I mean come on man...you could have gotten the composers from Frozen and Lin-Manuel Miranda together[Despite how annoying it is how constantly he pops up], taken actual inspo from the previous songs, and to craft a song that is on par, or one even better.

There is so much missing potential, even the sections for both songs show that...

That is it for this post, thank you for listening/reading. I am going to record this as an audio and post it on YouTube hopefully.

[ominous-auburn-orbs]

What if Caine gives Kinger a really cool bug and then Kinger gives him a little kiss

Of course! Tis a classic scenario with this ship.

Caine was listening to Kinger ramble about insects again. He was always amazed by the other's extensive and impressive knowledge. Although, he always felt a pang of sympathy every time he remembered that there were no insects in the circus. Nothing in the code detailed any creatures at all, save for NPCs and the players.

"-and that's how they all evolved to look like their environment!" Caine was drawn back into the conversation- mostly one-way, but he didn't mind- by Kinger finishing his infodump. He felt a bit guilty about losing focus, despite how much he loved the sound of Kinger's voice, especially when he was this happy.

"That's incredibly fascinating, Kinger! I'm impressed with how you're able to retain so much information about these insect collections." Of course, retaining and retelling information was the easiest thing for an AI like Caine. Everything was in his memory and remained there, never changing. Yet he knew how difficult it was for humans to do the same.

"Why, thank you, Caine. I don't remember a lot about anything anymore, to be honest. It would probably be a bit easier to get my details in order if there were any actual insect collections here, heh." Kinger tried to keep the disappointed tone out of his voice. He didn't want to make Caine feel guilty about it or anything, it's not like it was his fault. The circus just didn't have any use for insects. So there were none.

The ringmaster didn't want Kinger to be left wanting. He had to do something about it. The chess piece almost never outwardly complained about anything, which was a large contrast from the rest of the troop, but Caine knew he was unsatisfied. He might not be able to give him, or anyone for that matter, the one thing they truly wanted, but he could always try the next best thing.

"Wait here for a moment, my dear! I believe I can procure something that'll fix all of your worries." Caine clicked his fingers and teleported away to a vast area that stored the game's code. It was akin to the void, save he actually knew what was here. As he started looking for the right strings of binary and words, it hit him that his task may take a bit longer than anticipated.

He clicked his fingers again and appeared in front of Kinger once more. "Perhaps you should just go about your day instead, my dear. I'll fetch you when I'm done."

Kinger was rather confused about what Caine was talking about, but his warm smile assured him that it was nothing bad. "Alright, Caine. I'll just be in my room, if you want to get me." He affectionately petted the ringmaster's head before leaving. It left a pleasantly warm feeling in Caine's chest, serving as a reminder as to why he would go through this struggle for him. It's not like he wouldn't do something like this for any of his performers, but Kinger was always a special case.

Going back to the coding room, Caine set to work. He went primarily off of what Kinger had told him, although he did have to do some research for the finer details. Once he had finished the model, he began to code its mannerisms. He was rather thankful that he had realised earlier on how long it would take. Kinger probably would've stayed standing there for hours on end. The thought did bring a smile to his face, since he would definitely do the same.

Finally, the bug was finished. It was a brightly coloured caterpillar and was wrapped around Caine's hand. Its smiling face and clown-like shoes were probably inaccurate to what Kinger was used to, but it did fit the circus' environment better. He had even made a small enclosure for the bug, with everything it would need to survive and thrive. The hardest part was definitely giving it the correct life cycle. It would never die, obviously, but it would one day have to become a butterfly. Caine could already picture Kinger's excitement when it would emerge from its chrysalis. But he was getting far too ahead of himself. The first step was to deliver it.

Gently lowering the caterpillar into its enclosure, he tucked it under his arm and clicked his fingers, going back to the circus tent. He shifted the enclosure to be held behind his back and floated down the nearby corridor to Kinger's room.

When he reached the chess piece's door, Caine knocked a rhythmic tempo before returning his hand to its spot behind him. After about a minute of waiting, the door opened a crack. A large blue eye stared out at him. Caine was mesmorised by it for a moment before remembering what he was supposed to be doing.

"Kinger, my dear, I've brought you something! May I come in?" The door opened fully and Kinger gestured for him to enter.

"Oh, you really didn't have to. You know I don't need anything from you, except you yourself." His eyes did their best to show his loving smile, which Caine returned.

"But I wanted to make this for you." Holding the enclosure out in front of him, Caine heard Kinger let out a quiet gasp. "I know how much you love your insects, so I thought I'd make one for you. It's admittedly not a collection, but it can become one! If you want it to, that is."

Kinger crouched down to be eye level with the rectangular box. The colourful caterpillar crawled out from a pile of twigs and leaves, smiling at him. "Oh my God... thank you, Caine. It- it's beautiful."

The chess piece wiped at his eyes to remove the brewing tears. Caine had coded in an entire insect, which the circus wasn't even meant to have in the first place. No wonder he had been gone so long. Kinger was amazed at how much effort the ringmaster would put in just to make him happy.

"You're more than welcome, my love. It was my pleasure." He handed the enclosure to Kinger, who took it inside his fortress and sat it down on a table within, before re-emerging back in front of Caine.

Caine floated up to Kinger's level. The chess piece cupped Caine's face with his hand, staring into his eyes, unsure of how to word how grateful he was. Instead, he chose to pull the ringmaster closer, pressing their faces together for a short while before pulling away. He could hear prolonged glitching noises omitting from Caine while his face overheated, making him giggle.

"Come on, let's see what the caterpillar's doing." Caine let out a noise of agreement that was somewhere between a laugh and a panting exhale. The two went inside the fortress and sat on the floor in front of the table that held up the enclosure, watching the caterpillar wander its surroundings. Who knows how long they sat there, but neither cared. They were happy in each other's presence, and that was all they needed.

"So, do you want to name it something?" Caine's question surprised Kinger, making him yelp. Regaining his composure, the chess piece hummed in thought, inspecting the bug before him.

"Hmm... Jerome." He nodded after he said it, confirming that it sounded right to him.

"Jerome?" A hint of laughter found its way into Caine's voice. That hadn't been quite what he was expecting.

"What? Is it not a good name?"

"Oh no, it's a lovely name!" The ringmaster rested his head on Kinger's shoulder. "Its name shall be Jerome."

Kinger put his hand on Caine's shoulder and rubbed gently. Despite his lack of a mouth, his cheeks still felt phantom pain from his smiling.

[headspacedad]

AI and the Red Delicious Apple

If you’re reading this you’re pretty much already on the anti-AI bandwagon when it comes to its promise to steal our written works and then regurgitate them in strung-together, passably readable form in order to replace us.  You’ve seen the same, very valid, arguments against letting this happen that I have and the same, also very valid, warnings.  There is no human reason a computer should be doing something humanity has done with pleasure and without prompting, for enjoyment alone, all the way back to the beginning dusty start of time - unless you want to strip the humans out of the equation and make a profit that way, which is what this is about.  I’m preaching to the choir when I say this is far and away beyond the Bad of a Bad Idea.  What I haven’t seen mentioned though is how this is going to effect the other side of the equation.  Not the creators of art -

the receivers of it.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, in the 1880s, a farmer had a rouge plant pop up in his apple orchard.  He uprooted it but the next year it was back.  He got rid of it again and, again, it came back.  Finally, he did the sensible thing and just let the plant grow.  Sure enough, it popped out apples after a time and he entered those apples in a tasting contest - because.... those were a thing back in Ye Olden Times apparently.  Anyway, wham bam thank you ma’am! They won the contest and the taste buds of the judges.  In short order the Apples, known as Stark Delicious, hit the stores and became an overwhelming favorite across the US.  They lived up to their name for sure and soon became known as Red Delicious Apples.  Farmers everywhere focused in on one type of apple and one type of apple alone as the demand for them surged.  Everyone wanted Red Delicious and so that’s what everyone planted.  Here’s the thing though.  Uniformity is king in situations like this and, instead of more Red Delicious apple trees leading to more variety, it actually led to more uniformity.  The ‘off parts’ of the apples were bred out, unattractive yellow streaks in their color, the thin skin that let them bruise easier during shipping, all the unattractive parts were left by the wayside.  Red Delicious apples soon looked as good as they tasted.  

Except - they didn’t really taste that good anymore. 

It turns out that in breeding them for uniformity and looks dropped the factors that gave them their flavor as well.  In time, every apple was a carbon copy of the apple before it and the end result was mushy flavorless thick skinned, albeit pretty, looking apples.  These days, consumers hardly touch them and farmers have started uprooting their Red Delicious in favor of Gala and the like.  Nobody liked Red Delicious anymore because there’s nothing left of what once made them delicious.

AI regurgitates what its been fed.  When its fed variety it regurgitates, to some extent, variety.  It’s intended to put the human oddities out of business, so to speak and take its place.  To turn out polished, pretty things to appeal to people’s tastes.  And, after a while, when humanity is out of the picture, it will only have other AIs to feed off of.  In time, the variety in its cannibalization will continue to narrow down as the stories become more and more alike as nothing new gets put in, as it simply tells the same ten stories, then the same five stories, than the same three over and over again.  Until its just the same words, strung together differently, with the same theme, the same character, the same half-nonsense story.  Until the inside of that story, that piece of art, that movie are all the same mealy, uninteresting mush that every other one is.  The yellow streaks and the thin skin of humanity phased out along with any hint of flavor.  The profitability will dry up as even the most spoon-fed, computer worshipers demand better.  Humanity will pick up where it left off, figuring out how to tell its own stories, paint its own art, sing its own songs and entertain its neighbors again.  Art is intrinsic to humans.  We always find our way back to it.

But the damage to the creative world in the meantime will be like a nuclear winter.  And who knows how long it will take generations raised on ‘Red Delicious’ apples to realize there are better flavors out there.

PS - nobody pushing for AI art right now cares that its not long term sustainable or that it won’t always be profitable.  It will make them money now.  The future they ruin will be someone else’s problem.  They know that.  

They’ve always known that.

[polyhexian]

I'm not surprised to see kingers wife confirmed. We see a picture of her! That wasnt an accident. The fact she is also a chess piece is interesting tho. Since everyone has such varied appearances. They obviously have lost their memories, and pomni says "in here" so they mean they met here and became husband and wife. But I wonder if they may have been husband and wife before they came to the circus and then met again and re-fell in love. That would be very sweet, I think. He also comes across so distinctly paternal it makes me wonder if he/they had any children in the real world, and if they still exist. If so I guess it's theoretically possible its pomni, that maybe she came to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her parents and put on the helmet blablabla, but. I don't really feel like that's the case. I wouldn't be surprised if kinger DID have a kid/kids back in the real world though.

JAX.... Every day NPC jax theory becomes stronger. The thing is that because it was so IMMEDIATELY a theory makes me think it's kind of an intentional red herring. Like, jax is SO fucking sus it's unreal. But to me he's sus on a level that it's sus. His susness is sus. I suspect the surprise reveal is likely just that he's as frightened and confused as everyone else is and he just copes by not caring about anything. Obviously Cain is very suspicious but it seems a bit like he is in a more similar boat to the others than he lets on or even suspects. He's got a role he's filling but he's not a true mastermind. Bubble is obviously extremely suspect because bubble is not treated as one of the human residents but also doesn't appear to be an NPC. so what IS bubble. Where does she come from? It would make for a very fun scene revealing that silly bubble is a bad guy I'm sure, but that still feels very surface level.

I think the most interesting part of tadc is that it starts with an immediate mystery of what is going on, and the absolute certainty that there is a twist. They don't have much info but some of it has to be a lie and you don't know which parts. There are facts missing and you don't know where. It's a fun show to speculate on.

This kind of story has a few potential twist directions at the outset. There's the soma direction, not in they're all actually robots or AI or whatever, but that the reason they're in a program could be the twist. That the world ended or something and they've escaped to somewhere their consciousnesses can survive. Could be that this was part of a game being designed that was meant to be sword art online style trapping players, but the devs have stopped it from ever coming out somehow with their own self sacrifice. Maybe all of them are already dead wooohoohoooo. But not like ghosts or something like digital consciousnesses uploaded to a computer and the body died.

With all of the allusions to the circus being Hell I wonder if that is the twist, that it IS hell. Not like literally but like. It was created to punish in some way. Like whoosh, twist, none of our lovely protagonists are innocent good people, theyve all done something Bad and are here as a direct result of it, except for pomni.

Still can't form a true theory IMHO, tho I'm sure ppl smarter than me already have better ideas.

[catoperated]

Saw a post where someone described something as lame, a bunch of people in the comments said it was a slur, and a bunch more replied “how can that possibly be a slur.”

I’ll tell you… under the cut.

So let’s talk about ableist slurs.

There are a lot. Some terms relate to specific conditions. When you do a google search for “pinhead” the top results are all about Hellraiser. People who use it to describe someone as being stupid probably have no idea of its actual origin.

As a slur, it refers to people with microcephaly. People with small and/oddly shaped heads were a big draw at freak shows of the past. Oh yeah, “freak” is ableist, too. People fight back hard against that one. Y’know because they’re better than those freaks who like the wrong cartoon or whatever (sarcasm).

Lame refers to being unable to walk properly for whatever reason. You might’ve heard of lame horses, but even wiktionary outright calls using it to describe disabled people as dated and offensive.

Dumb was synonymous with mute in the past, which usually meant non-verbal autistics. “Blind, deaf, and dumb” was once a medical term referring to people who could neither see, hear, nor talk. Helen Keller was described as that, and before anyone gets into TikTok conspiracies, I’ve got a video for you. Was Hellen Keller a fraud?

No, but abled people on TikTok just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the concept of formerly non-communicative person, given the proper tools, being so eloquent. Hell, I can barely touch type on a standard keyboard, so I rely a lot on my phone’s assistive tools to do most of the work for me. Leads to very weird typos sometimes.

And yes, while I’m on the subject, I’m sick and tired of people using predictive text as an excuse to justify generative AI models built off stolen data and art. When people say “fuck AI” they mean that kind of AI, and to act otherwise is to be deliberately obtuse.

I debated if “obtuse” was a little to close to “stupid,” which I try to avoid. I personally wouldn’t go so far as to forbid people from using more general terms like that, or phrases like “are you blind”—I’m too tired to be combative about it when I’m constantly having to prove I’m disabled (they act like I’ll wake up one day miraculously cured from cerebral palsy) to keep my benefits, but alternatives like ridiculous are right fucking there. Expand your damn vocabulary. Please.

I feel like I need a break before the next part, so here’s one of my cats. His name is Riley.

(ID in Alt text, unless tumblr ate it again)

Maybe you think this post is ridiculous. I don’t care. I grew up being called a spaz and having people tap their hands to their chest to mock me—I’m not even quadriplegic, I’m diplegic, but I guess that’s just the universal sign for the r-slur.

Wild that we finally reached the point that “retarded” is widely accepted as not cool to say, but commenters on YouTubr using “regarded” as a stand-in for it is just… I don’t know, lazy?

All this is just me trying to distract myself from the fact I’m in the path of the hurricane and the lights are already flickering. The basement is most definitely going to flood even if it only wings us, and I do not look forward to dealing with that.

I have no bread, milk, or eggs because of the grand southern tradition of making a run on grocery stores when bad weather looms. I always wondered what people did when they ended up with an excess after it passed—make a shitload of French toast? idk I’m stress-digressing here.

Oh, and because we have to keep saying it, cripples can reclaim any and all of these words, but ableds cannot. I’ve seen people argue that abled, like cis, sounds like a slur, when it’s literally what cis able people are—able-bodied, cisgender, the “standard.”

And we all know how people can get when faced anyone who goes against that white, able, neurotypical, cisgender, straight “standard.”

Imagine me making air quotes with that, cause people treating those traits as being “normal” are so… droll. (sarcasm again)

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 166 - My Thoughts/Analysis

One last ride. I want to lay these chapter reviews to rest better than the series dropped the ball for its ending. As always, spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 166 below.

And we are back with Oshi No Powerpoint. Can this manga actually organically show events or is this entire chapter going to be more slideshow?

No—it is indeed more slideshow. Fantastic. Ruby doesn’t even get to be a fucking character in a chapter dedicated to her. Of course. After being sidelined for a good half of the manga this is how the authors deal with her character. By having her get over Aqua in such a half assed manner that it doesn’t feel earned, doesn’t feel resonant, and simply does not make sense considering how she was when she found out Goro was dead. That girl has nothing now. Why is she still striving to become an idol when there’s no one waiting for her at the end of the day when there’s nothing that the narrative has done to make us think she could get over this tragedy?

More slideshow of all the characters. It seems I was wrong. Most children’s television shows can salvage a more cohesive and thematic ending than this slop. I don’t even care about the new B-Komachi member, Kana and Akane’s appearances, even Ruby at the Dome. It’s just a hollow and empty slideshow that’s trying to evoke emotions that aren’t disgust at the ending.

It’s incredible that Ruby turned out to be Ai 2.0 when the revelations made in Chapter 122-123 onward said that she doesn’t want to be an idol that lies and now here she is, being an idol that lies. Thank you Aqua, for being such a supreme idiot. Ruby’s time as an idol will fade but I’m sure she’d rather have that transient career rather than have you alongside her.

The final few panels are a kick in the teeth for every fan that’s gotten invested in this series. I’d say that I would be surprised but it’s become obvious that the quality of this manga has massively declined for ages by now. This ending is one final reminder of that fact. 

And that’s the end. Analyzing it further is a useless endeavor. It’s a pile of shit and no amount of pretty art will be able to refute that. I could list off any number of reasons Why I think the ending is a hot steaming pile of garbage but for an ending that fails in so many ways that one could say pretty much anything negative about the ending and it’ll hit somewhat accurately. I don’t even want to give it my time and effort in gesturing to just how bad it is when it’s so plainly obvious. There’s no satisfaction in ripping apart the chapter’s guts when it’s already rotting away in the ground.

This is not a good ending. I don’t want to hear anything about tragic endings and the nature of revenge and tragedy and all that bullshit. All those claims might have some merit if the ending wasn’t a Windows Powerpoint Slideshow that forced its content down the readers throats. Even leaving that aside there are a whole host of subplots that never got addressed, character development that was aborted in this manga’s womb, a complete disregard for the themes established in the previous parts in the manga—it’s just—bad. Bad in a way that’s almost like a “fuck you” for being invested in the manga in the first place.

Tragedy in itself does not make a good ending. Sadness and moving on does not inherently make a good ending. The buildup and relevant character beats for these characters contradict the message this chapter is trying to sell. This ending feels divorced from everything that came before it. I can almost smell that this is a first draft kind of ending that came before everything actually happened.

I’d say that I want the series to put me in my grave so it could let me down one last time, but knowing how bad it fumbled with this ending I don’t even trust it to do That. 

I almost want to see how the anime tackles this ending if only because I’m sure that it’ll be canceled before it can even get close to this point. Could you imagine adapting the clusterfuck that were the last couple of chapters? The utter mess that was the movie arc? I can already smell people defending this ending saying it’s actually good because it’s a tragedy and that there was a host of foreshadowing involved. On almost every scale I can come up with in regards to ending does this series’ finale just fucking suck.

On more content adjacent to the manga but related to the series itself; apparently there’s one bonus chapter that’ll be released with the volume? People are really coping that it’ll save this manga but as far as I’m concerned it’s absolutely nothing. No, it’s less than nothing, because it’s the equivalent of a pie to the face after eating a shit sandwich. A joke at the reader’s expense. How despicable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another Kaguya-sama crossover. Any additional content that this manga vomits up wouldn’t change the fact that this ending exists in the first place. One final cherry on top of a pile of shit doesn’t change much after all is said and done.

There is also a light novel that focuses on Akane and Kana coming out for some reason. Incredible. Even after all of that the authors are still trying to milk out fans for their waifu bucks when they were handled so shoddily. But the lowest common denominator and yuri fans will be eating, I suppose. If they get disappointed by the quality of the work, that’s as much as they deserve, I guess.

Doing some light research on reactions to this clusterfuck of an ending reveals in an interview that this was the ending that the author had in mind all along which—well. I wouldn’t trust the author to write a book for children after this ending, let alone another manga. But this world isn’t an ideal one so he’s managed to hitch his horse to another manga artist and is now on the way to make yet another manga. From what I hear he’s already 2 for 2 with shoddily written endings and mediocre series so it’s surprising that people let him get away with crap like this.

I don’t think I’ll be touching any of the other works by the author with a ten foot pole. I wouldn’t even recommend this series to anyone simply because of how bad everything was so close to the end. There are better media out there that don’t waste the readers’ time and handle its themes better. An ending is the last word that the author has on their series and more often than not when a series’ ending is garbage it sullies the rest of the work by proxy. Every single arc before this one will be stained by the knowledge that its ending was so shoddily written that it dispenses with everything that came before it.

Guess that’s the end of the line. I’d say that it was a pleasure, but that would be a lie. Perhaps that’s fitting given that the manga claims that lies are love and never quite did anything with it.