#I could go in forever

[secretlyafiveheadeddragon]

Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words

[Image ID: a screenshot of the Wikipedia for queerbaiting. The first picture on the page is of Sherlock and Watson from BBC Sherlock. End ID]

[dimeadozencows]

My personal understanding of the situation

[trashy-greyjoy]

sometimes, it's not so much about the romance as it is about the devotion. the adoration.

[pidgydraws]

✨ together ✨

continuation from part 2...

[kimjunnoodle]

World's messiest divorce™

[unraveling-plot]

The Murderbot Diaries was like here's a person. The person doesn't feel like a person.

The person is starting to believe it's a person, and its pronouns are still it/its. It's uncomfortable with eye contact, it hates being touched, it doesn't like social interaction, it doesn't have great control of it's facial expressions. And the person's friends all know this and respect it, and it can show affection how and when it feels and it's ok if it isn't "normal." It isn't questioned or doubted in its care because of this.

The person processes emotions through media, and uses it to figure out what to do in social situations. It has complicated feelings about what it was meant to be and reconciling that with who it wants to be. It doesn't always feel like a person but it's starting to accept that it is one.

Also it has laser weapons in its arms.

[saint-hymn]

mercy, mèrci

[xxplastic-cubexx]

personal happiness or what the fuck ever

bonus:

[secretly-a-trekkie]

these three are besties. it's just canon

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[angelsdean]

"You're my guys....Those other toys, they don’t…spark joy."

[thelesbianluthor]

I know some people think that Emily's desire to play another character instead of Fig was the reason why she was so all over the place and lost, especially in the first half of JY.

But I honestly feel like her arc was actually incredibly needed and necessary to close her character evolution in a satisfying way. (While still leaving open doors for possible future plots with the Dawn and Sandra Lynn stuff)

Fig has been struggling to find herself since the first moment. She has had to come to terms with being a completely different race than what she thought before and deal with all the consequences of that. She had to grow out of the toxic habits that were born out of her deeply rooted insecurities that finding out about her identity and lineage caused. She had to learn to be kinder to herself. I love sophomore year, it's my favorite season for so many reasons, but I feel like Fig's arc in JY was actually her best one.

Fig being so lonely at the start of the show and her innate devotion made her becoming so focused on holding others' needs over her own an inevitability. She was always aimlessly moving through life, so talented and gifted in many ways but with no real purpose outside of being the protector.

The way JY explored her struggles with introspection and her need to devote herself to others to such an extent that she ignored a curse on herself for far too long was beautiful.

Finding Ankarna, becoming a paladin of dawn and justice and coming to a point where she could let herself choose what felt right instead of what her friends needed was incredible to watch.

I feel like Junior Year gets a lot of criticism because the overall vibe from the IH was lighter and they were having a lot of fun throughout, but the story of the season was actually beautiful to me and the overall character work was so interesting.

[teaboot]

you're so like. inspiring. or i wish i could be inspired. you reblog that post with the blue critter and you're like "im glad i was born on this planet". how do i manage to get that mindset. how do i manage to not want the pain to stop at any cost and enjoy what's still possible to enjoy

It's my first time here and I'm never coming back

[chrisbangz]

Happy Bang Chan Day (2024) ♡ insp / template

[ninamodaffari]

okay you guys got me started on dishonored (the series) fucking IMMACULATE art direction. I'm going to try and sum it up but I'm honestly better with art than words so I'll try my best.

dishonored is fucking unparaelled when it comes to art direction. from when you first start the game, each level has a distinct style, color, and vibe. dunwall is dominated by cool greys, towering, imposing structures like dark sentinels watching over the land. twisting, rotting trees and an ever-present smog that overtakes the city. dunwall is inky blue darkness.

HOWEVER, from a gameplay perspective, there are visual points of interest still that stops you from getting lost in a wash of blue. dishonored is a master of using lighting and color to lead you to areas that it wants you to go.

for example, in the corner of a window you might see glowing purple lighting. these are void shrines - where the outsider will appear and share knowledge harass you. usually around shrines there are walls of writing, strange twisted words that lead you further into the mystique surrounding what the outsider is and what he *does*.

you might think the game is just awash in dull colors, but its not. one of the most beautiful and striking levels takes place in lady boyle's mansion, and it's INSANE how different it looks, because it's supposed to be a stark contrast. surrounding her mansion are the remains of a dying city destroyed by a plague. within her mansion, however, is decadence and debauchery gone awry.

it's amazing with a game that was made TWELVE YEARS AGO how this still holds up and looks fantastic. this is because they went for a stylized art direction. it's stylized, almost painterly. it looks fantastic. here is some of the amazing character design

(this is from dishonored 2, done by Sergey Kolesov )

LOOK AT THIS ART. IT'S SO FREAKING AMAZING AND THE THING IS THE CHARACTERS LOOK SO CLOSE TO T HIS IN GAME. its a masterpiece. if you haven't played dishonored, please play it. all of them.

[twelvemartha]

i guess that our being together was never meant to be but martha, martha, i love you, can't you see?