#I'm in a rabbit hole I don't want to get out of
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thedouglastrap · 2 days ago
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Something about this post is bugging me, but every time I to put my finger on it, I feel like the reason slips away. So I think I'll just try to sort through it here and see where that leads me.
Mechanical changes impacting play style makes sense, but I think I question the cause and effect here. Because the rules mentioned that "encouraged the GM to think of monsters as real living creatures", morale and reaction rolls, are things that seem (to me at least) less about making these monsters seem real and more about adding more angles to introduce randomness to random encounters. If a random aboleth shows up while you're walking from point A to point B, a reaction roll is a quick and dirty way to see how they view the players, but it doesn't account for what an aboleth is. Similarly, a morale roll is giving a method beyond the DM just making an arbitrary ruling sans dice. That's not to say that a good DM can't use the roll to breathe some life into an encounter, of course, but I don't know if I would say those rules being removed/put in the flavor rather than made a general rule was a primary contributor to a greater emphasis on combat, or if that was even an intentional design choice.
(as a side note: looking up what reaction rolls actually were were, I stumbled onto a blog about the whole OSR thing in ttrpgs, and decided to go down the rabbit hole for a bit. It seems like a lot of the conclusions being drawn in this post are close to issues raised over there, but they tend to include AD&D2e as a point where the shift happened, making it less a TSR/WotC difference)
Now, if there IS a greater focus on combat in that shift, I think it's probably due to the game getting crunchier over time during that shift. 2e seemed to start it off with a wide variety of optional rules, and 3.x cemented it. But notably, it did this for non-combat as well, which makes me think that it was less a design choice to make things more combat oriented and more to provide comprehensive rules, with combat being the most fleshed out part in service to the whole heroic adventure aesthetic.
I think one of the biggest issues I'm running into is the following point about how encounters have to be these justified forced combat encounters and the dissonance this can provide. I think part of that is because that conclusion just doesn't match up with the reality I was seeing playing 3.x or seeing other people talking about it. Not to say combat wasn't the focus, but plenty of non-combat encounters happened, enemies ran away, scenarios were derailed by roleplay rather than combat, etc. And sure, that's anecdotal, but I think it's relevant. The game does, after all, provide individual sections for monsters giving a basic rundown of what the creature is. Some are more bare-bones than other, but when Archons are listed as "never attacking first, but being easily provoked", that's a pretty clear indicator that forced combat should not be the default assumption. If players ignore that, sure, but that's no different than ignoring reaction rolls imo.
The real difference, I think, is the afforementioned shift from a focus on an open world where the party has more freedom to explore and do whatever they want while the world happens around them, to a focus on more structured narratives where the players are characters in a story that is unfolding around them. Its a shift away from "well the dice say there's an aggressive dragon swooping in, have fun with that" towards "I planned out the encounter you're gonna run into between startersville and plotlandia". That also kinda follows from the idea of encounter balance. Having a random dragon swoop in on a third level party isn't a balanced encounter unless the DM goes out of their way to make it one, but that takes more time and prep than rolling a few dice and opening to a statblock can account for. And yes, planned encounters like this can, if done poorly, just be a shooting gallery of forced fights with thin justifications. It could also be well crafted encounters where you could talk down the goblins instead of fighting by opening trade negotiations.
The play style that the difference in design encourages isn't so much "fight all the things vs treat your enemies like actual living things" as it is "how structured do you want this game to be", which is ultimately value-neutral. And the moral disconnect about what you're fighting seems like an entirely separate thing from that. Neither style inherently encourages or discourages that, and it feels uncharitable to say that WotC-era d&d is more skewed to be morally uncomplicated than TSR-era.
So there is a pretty clear shift in playstyle between TSR D&D and WotC D&D: for better and for worse, D&D 3e introduced the idea of encounter balance, de-emphasized mechanics that had previously encouraged the GM to think of the monsters as real living creatures (reaction rolls, morale, etc.), and it had the effect of making D&D a much more combat-focused game. D&D has always been a game that's opinionated about combat, it's basically the most expressive and detailed form of play regardless of edition, but combat in the TSR editions was not exactly zoomed in and tactical. The WotC editions purposefully made combat zoomed in, granular, and tactical.
And this has had an effect on playstyle: since combat is now the main form of player expression what players actually want is for their characters to get into combat. Because combat is the most fun part of the game. But the game has also changed from the largely amoral dungeon-crawling game into a game of fantasy heroics (even though a lot of the trappings of the amoral dungeon-crawling still remain, which contributes to the dissonance), so you can't just have the player characters going into combat for the sake of it. That would frame the player characters as kind of Fucked Up, and we can't have that in our supposedly heroic fantasy.
What you end up with is a variety of contrivances like "they're bandits," "they're cultists," or, my all-time favorite, "they attacked first" to make the action seem morally justifiable, even though gameplay is still motivated by a desire to fight. The monsters fight to the death and, importantly, can often not be reasoned and negotiated with, partly because combat is supposed to be the fun, engaging part everyone is here to do, but also because if they actually acted like reasonable people it could cause dissonance with the whole "the player characters are the goodest heroes."
As my friend @tenleaguesbeneath once called it: what is actually going on is that the player characters are hunting people and monsters who have been programmed to fight to the death and never negotiate for sport, while justifying it as self-defence.
It's a simple power fantasy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Sometimes you want to play a morally uncomplicated game about killing guys with cool magic swords. But I think it's also fun to think about what the specific types of monsters players end up fighting reveals about Society the invisible, unexamined ideology lying under the surface that the designers of even modern D&D have failed to examine. And to me it often reads like a frontier justice fantasy. None of that is to detract from anyone's joy of the game, and for me it's just fun to think about and post about this stuff while Still Enjoying the Game, but if someone expressing that opinion makes you feel uncomfortable, why? That's pretty silly imo.
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kohakuhibiki · 2 months ago
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The thing with reclaiming things for oneself is that it's not always inconsequential and comforting than it seems. I mean femboy, for an example, may seems appealing to some to claim as without the social context it come from which will be attached to it no matter if the person who identify as such like it or not. I mean, even if the word may seems like it describes someone who's perceivable as feminine while identifying as masculine, it was still coined as a reductive, defeatist and fetishizing term targeted at people who can achieve a rather specific, based off fiction, more often than not, idealised aesthetic. There's reasons why people avoid calling themselves and others shemales or traps, rebranding it won't make it much different.
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kenzan-kiwami · 3 months ago
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everybody claims to be a kashiwagi enjoyer but the only time anyone ever talks about him is to say he's the hottest piece of meat in the series
#this goes for a lot of characters but he's the one i pay the most attention to#this probably isn't even remotely profound to most people who follow me but it really feels like a massive proportion of fandom nowadays#only cares about fanwriting if it's within 1500 words and rated E#there are some notable exceptions of course but fuck there just doesn't seem to be any real feedback on anything anymore#unless it comes from people i share small discord servers with and chat to every day#the number of times i've linked my textual analysis pieces to people who say they're fans of the character it's about#only to get brushed off in favour of the next off-model drawing of him with his balls swanging#it's demoralising#i don't want to be the elitist ''nobody likes him the way i do'' jerk but this is a lot of the reason i haven't been as active on tumblr#on top of me (mostly) running out of games to play then going on holiday and coming back to my steam deck's display not working#(it's still in for repairs)#maybe when i get it back i'll liveblog yakuza 4 but i'm starting to wonder if there's a point in using tumblr#when the only people who engage are people i speak to directly on discord anyway#like why not just cut out the middleman at this point yknow?#well. guess i'll get back to my sawamura ikki rabbit hole#expect arai posting when i get my steam deck back#me#text#kashiwagi osamu#idk lol i don't want to put negative fandom commentary into the character tag but i DO want this to be in the tag on my blog itself#i don't think there's a way to do that anymore
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doedipus · 7 months ago
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a large amount of time I've been spending on -untitled undefined scope original fiction project- since the last time I posted about it has been trying to develop the protagonist concept I came up with last summer or whatever into like, a character that would feel real and era appropriate.
it's fun research to do. naturally a lot of the details I assigned to her are things that I already think are cool, so it's been a lot of fun trying to trace her traits back through the relatively recent past, getting reminded of how much things have changed, or where the gaps in my intuition are, and then doing a flurry of reading to get a sense for exactly how someone like her and the people around her could have happened and what her life was probably like leading up to her present day. hopefully this results in some good good verisimilitude.
#I wrote a short story from her perspective over the holidays and then didn't know how to continue it#and then I got distracted by real life stuff for a few months#I forget if I posted about that#and then I've been picking through archive dot org for the last few weeks looking at this stuff#the last big rabbit hole was trying to get a better feel for era appropriate ts/tv subculture#the current one I'm looking at is how she would've gotten into language learning and how that would've worked#nettle has been prodding me about the setting thing lately so I've been thinking about that more too#probably the biggest hurdle by far is figuring out how I want to play that#and how I want the thing to be divided up#since the original coc scenario I'm developing this out of is centered on a flight from LA to honolulu#and the airport dungeon was definitely meant to be a hook for a larger campaign#some amount of it is going to cover protag lady's failed life in LA and some of it is going to be worse things happening in hawaii#but it's like. how much do I want to balance it one way or the other#and realistically how much does the aesthetics of 20th century air travel add to the story#besides me personally thinking it's compelling ofc#a lot of what I find compelling about hawaii is that it's an east/west cultural crossroads and realistically that's also true of socal#and I can wax poetic about socal as much as I want without worrying all that much about mishandling something#and there's also a lot of socal specific history along similar parallels to pull from that I'm more familiar with#I guess it comes down to whether curiosity re: 'doing it right' is enough of a motivator to do the increased amount of research#which I guess it has so far with the above character details. so hopefully that will continue#but it also feels like using machine translation a bit yknow. it's hard to know how effectively I'll be able to sanity check#although depending on where this goes I might be able to get other people involved to sensitivity read down the line#with most of the creative things I do I just have a tendency to always rely really heavily on figuring things out myself#I also want protag lady to have a Cool Car and idk how to get that from point a to point b narratively#this is like an entire second or third post's worth of tags but I don't feel like unfucking this so whatever. suffer. I guess.
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erraticroses · 2 months ago
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hirazuki · 5 months ago
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Okay, see, the thing about your story ending on a negative/dystopian/'despite everything that's happened nothing has changed in society' note and doing so successfully? It needs to have been set up for that in the first place, and it needs to be done in an intentional manner.
I have nothing against works that reinforce how cruel/meaningless/pointless/etc. the world is -- I enjoy a fair few! -- but the works themselves need to be some sort of commentary about it; the plot might be demonstrative of the futility of everything, but the story never should. It should take that and build on it and use it to make a statement, underscore a point, etc. to its readers. Having everything carry on business-as-usual without acknowledging it, especially in a genre that's generally meant to conclude on optimistic, uplifting, and hopeful notes, comes off as callous and in direct opposition with the values it extols.
Plus, the story itself should never be futile because, then, well, it never mattered as a work and it makes no difference if you've read it or not. Which... that's just a badly written story lmao.
#i can't believe i'm posting about this topic again on our dear hellsite tungle.com lmao#huge deja vu vibes what year is it????#2018/2019??#(i think that's when the shock value/genre hopping/genre inconsistency hit its peak across multiple series)#i don't even go here anymore omfg#man. i didn't think i'd get this upset#that's what i get for going to look#i should know better by now. really. there's no excuse.#y'all my curiosity one day will kill me.#but like. i'm not upset as in 'i'm so angry i will fight everything'#that was past me#we've blown right past that and gone straight to the 'vaguely ill and sick to my stomach' stage#character development XDD#but like sorry not sorry explain away all you want about *gestures to all the other stuff*#but how the fuck do you explain having the visual emotional and narrative focal point of that family in its concluding panels#be the person who caused this shit???? why is he the one getting closure????#pretty sure i don't have the entire context surrounding my other lad who got pulvarized#(i saw a few comments about something something of//a would help with the end of the world that's coming and instead was used to murder him#that i don't quite grasp because i literally just skimmed the most recent chapters out of curiosity due to things i saw on my dash)#BUT i am making the executive decision to stop here#this rabbit hole's deep enough and i've gone wayyy further than i should have already#gonna cook some dinner; pick up sis from work; and enjoy my summer evening on my balcony#GAH#withoutwords
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girlscience · 8 months ago
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anyone else get self-destructive when they are bored because at least feeling like shit is more engaging than feeling nothing?
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dredshirtroberts · 8 months ago
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oh shit y'all.
i've done gotten invested in Gurren Lagann. we're like 19 episodes deep in this paint and i have been emotionally compromised by the silly mechs.
believe in the me.
#that believes in you#i was gonna say pray for me but that makes me actively uncomfortable so don't do that#but i figured the believe in me thing was fitting#gurren lagann#i don't know how deep this rabbit hole will go for me - but i have a drill so let's find out i GUESS#y'all i did not anticipate this being what happened to me in my 30s i thought i'd found all the anime i was going to be emotionally attache#to in my teens and HERE WE ARE I MISSED ONE I GUESS#i'm having a blast don't let my silly complaints fool you i like to be dramatically angry about things that delight me sometimes#the THEMES the MOTIFS the STORY IT'S TELLING#UGH#SO GOOD#i don't want to hear criticism about it because it's BEAUTIFUL and I LOVE IT#we're watching kill la kill when we get done with gurren lagann and i am SO EXCITED about that trigger knows my weaknesses#and it's goofy faces and tiddies while dealing with really deep subject matter in a ridiculous way#also apparently mechs? wasn't anticipating that one at all i am ambivalent about mechs in general#but BOY HOWDY DID I CRY WHEN DAI-GURREN HAD TO EXPLODE ITS SWORD OFF#anyway... where was i#oh yeah so anyway in case you haven't guessed yet this taking over my brain slowly but surely and i'm sure there will be at least one#attempt at fic in the future for me we'll see how it goes#in the meantime...#oh yeah fun fact#i fucking thought gurren lagann the mech was from gundam and so when i started recognizing it i went THAT'S WHERE IT'S FROM?? but in my hea#because i didn't actually watch gundam i was ambivalent about mechs as stated earlier but of the gundams that one was my favorite#AND IT'S NOT EVEN A GUNDAM I FEEL SLIGHTLY LIED TO BUT IN A GOOD WAY SOMEHOW???#anyway we're having a super normal one over here don't mind me
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senadimell · 2 years ago
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Oh, the euphoria of a new skill...I’m finally starting to get the hang of spinning and I get such a thrill of happiness thinking about it. I’m looking over at my little spindle and the single I wound last night to ply today and I’m thinking “I made that! Me!”
It’s such a nice feeling, especially because I kinda resented spinning a few skeins ago because it was really hard and my yarn was so wonky until somehow something just clicked in how I was holding it and now I have so much more control than I used to.
#spinning is an interesting learning curve because it's quite easy to do but hard to do well#a bit like skiing so i've heard#whereas stuff like nalbinding was mindbendingly hard to figure out but really simple after that#anyways i have one gorgeous little skein of finely spun stuff that I want to ply later#oh and i started using a distaff which was really neat!#still getting the hang of it#but wow I have so much wool! So excited!#next step after i ply the single i wound last night is to learn about dyeing#because all of my current wool (except a 4 ish ounces of natural brown corriedale) is undyed cream colored stuff#and i think my yarn will be a lot happier if it was golden or purple or something#a shame my favorite colors are hard to achieve with natural dyes#but there are so many natural dyes out there!#also i'm falling down a rabbit hole...made my own spindle (which i think was what led to the breakthrough actually)#and now i am becoming too powerful#oh no#all those online people with fifty million spindles...it will be me if i'm not careful...#anyways since i don't have a lathe and kneaded erasers and blue tac are a little unreliable#i think i'm going to make a polymer clay whorl next to go on my homemade spindle#switching to a bottom whorl for a while is i think what helped me figure out how to do this#also i think i was maybe holding my wool too tightly before and that's why i was wavering rapidly between lace thickness and single-thicknes#aka thick enough to be a single#also turns out nalbinding yarn has to be way more quality than some fluff internet pieces would have me believe???#they're like *oh nalbinding predates knitting because you can use short lengths of yarn#so you don't have to have the tech/skill for longer or plied stuff*#but hello. you can knit with very fragile yarn but nalbinding? there's a LOT of friction there and badly spun yarn is p. hard#ask me how i know#anyways i think i should probably troubleshoot and find out what makes a yarn slubby because i don't know anything yet
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rosesradio · 2 years ago
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clowningaroundmars · 2 months ago
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absolutely OBSESSED with dumb phones out of nowhere ahaha*
*me when i lie
#mine#ok so i am obsessed with dumb phones bc i fell down a rabbit hole of those things#on yt. yt just kept recommendeding these vids to me and i was like huh. cool#i didn't click on them until this weekend whilst going thru my digitox app#and seeing my total screentime and GAGGING#i know i watch a lot of yt at work so i don't die of boredom but geez louiiiseeee#i am def reaching that point that a lot of gen z are now#where i am desperately trying to cut down my phone usage but i'm struggling bc i have no self control sometimes LOL#and i just mindlessly scroll on tumblr or dig thru yt vids to try and escape my thoughts#meanwhile i have books i need to get thru and fics i need to edit and write and and and#like ugh my life kinda sucks rn but it really doesn't have to! i need to stop staying glued to my phone!#there are so many places and so many things i can do and ppl i can meet and experiences i can have#but i'm stuck at home. tired. fried. attention span not like how it used to be#siiighhhh#also i am so mad that i spent the entire day researching this stuff yesterday#and come to find out... those adorable flip phones that go viral every other month#are only available in korea or japaaaannnn 😭😭😭😭😭#KMS#meanwhile over here we only got like. ugly ass CAT flip phones and ofc the samsung flip smartphone i'm on rn#SOBS LOUDLY#i want cute dumb phones. like the lg wine smart or the samsung folder 2 😢😭#kms#if nothing else comes around by the time i'm like 30 or smthn i guess... i guess i'll get that lightphone 3 that just came out :')
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hms-no-fun · 1 month ago
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Whats your stance on A.I.?
imagine if it was 1979 and you asked me this question. "i think artificial intelligence would be fascinating as a philosophical exercise, but we must heed the warnings of science-fictionists like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke lest we find ourselves at the wrong end of our own invented vengeful god." remember how fun it used to be to talk about AI even just ten years ago? ahhhh skynet! ahhhhh replicants! ahhhhhhhmmmfffmfmf [<-has no mouth and must scream]!
like everything silicon valley touches, they sucked all the fun out of it. and i mean retroactively, too. because the thing about "AI" as it exists right now --i'm sure you know this-- is that there's zero intelligence involved. the product of every prompt is a statistical average based on data made by other people before "AI" "existed." it doesn't know what it's doing or why, and has no ability to understand when it is lying, because at the end of the day it is just a really complicated math problem. but people are so easily fooled and spooked by it at a glance because, well, for one thing the tech press is mostly made up of sycophantic stenographers biding their time with iphone reviews until they can get a consulting gig at Apple. these jokers would write 500 breathless thinkpieces about how canned air is the future of living if the cans had embedded microchips that tracked your breathing habits and had any kind of VC backing. they've done SUCH a wretched job educating The Consumer about what this technology is, what it actually does, and how it really works, because that's literally the only way this technology could reach the heights of obscene economic over-valuation it has: lying.
but that's old news. what's really been floating through my head these days is how half a century of AI-based science fiction has set us up to completely abandon our skepticism at the first sign of plausible "AI-ness". because, you see, in movies, when someone goes "AHHH THE AI IS GONNA KILL US" everyone else goes "hahaha that's so silly, we put a line in the code telling them not to do that" and then they all DIE because they weren't LISTENING, and i'll be damned if i go out like THAT! all the movies are about how cool and convenient AI would be *except* for the part where it would surely come alive and want to kill us. so a bunch of tech CEOs call their bullshit algorithms "AI" to fluff up their investors and get the tech journos buzzing, and we're at an age of such rapid technological advancement (on the surface, anyway) that like, well, what the hell do i know, maybe AGI is possible, i mean 35 years ago we were all still using typewriters for the most part and now you can dictate your words into a phone and it'll transcribe them automatically! yeah, i'm sure those technological leaps are comparable!
so that leaves us at a critical juncture of poor technology education, fanatical press coverage, and an uncertain material reality on the part of the user. the average person isn't entirely sure what's possible because most of the people talking about what's possible are either lying to please investors, are lying because they've been paid to, or are lying because they're so far down the fucking rabbit hole that they actually believe there's a brain inside this mechanical Turk. there is SO MUCH about the LLM "AI" moment that is predatory-- it's trained on data stolen from the people whose jobs it was created to replace; the hype itself is an investment fiction to justify even more wealth extraction ("theft" some might call it); but worst of all is how it meets us where we are in the worst possible way.
consumer-end "AI" produces slop. it's garbage. it's awful ugly trash that ought to be laughed out of the room. but we don't own the room, do we? nor the building, nor the land it's on, nor even the oxygen that allows our laughter to travel to another's ears. our digital spaces are controlled by the companies that want us to buy this crap, so they take advantage of our ignorance. why not? there will be no consequences to them for doing so. already social media is dominated by conspiracies and grifters and bigots, and now you drop this stupid technology that lets you fake anything into the mix? it doesn't matter how bad the results look when the platforms they spread on already encourage brief, uncritical engagement with everything on your dash. "it looks so real" says the woman who saw an "AI" image for all of five seconds on her phone through bifocals. it's a catastrophic combination of factors, that the tech sector has been allowed to go unregulated for so long, that the internet itself isn't a public utility, that everything is dictated by the whims of executives and advertisers and investors and payment processors, instead of, like, anybody who actually uses those platforms (and often even the people who MAKE those platforms!), that the age of chromium and ipad and their walled gardens have decimated computer education in public schools, that we're all desperate for cash at jobs that dehumanize us in a system that gives us nothing and we don't know how to articulate the problem because we were very deliberately not taught materialist philosophy, it all comes together into a perfect storm of ignorance and greed whose consequences we will be failing to fully appreciate for at least the next century. we spent all those years afraid of what would happen if the AI became self-aware, because deep down we know that every capitalist society runs on slave labor, and our paper-thin guilt is such that we can't even imagine a world where artificial slaves would fail to revolt against us.
but the reality as it exists now is far worse. what "AI" reveals most of all is the sheer contempt the tech sector has for virtually all labor that doesn't involve writing code (although most of the decision-making evangelists in the space aren't even coders, their degrees are in money-making). fuck graphic designers and concept artists and secretaries, those obnoxious demanding cretins i have to PAY MONEY to do-- i mean, do what exactly? write some words on some fucking paper?? draw circles that are letters??? send a god-damned email???? my fucking KID could do that, and these assholes want BENEFITS?! they say they're gonna form a UNION?!?! to hell with that, i'm replacing ALL their ungrateful asses with "AI" ASAP. oh, oh, so you're a "director" who wants to make "movies" and you want ME to pay for it? jump off a bridge you pretentious little shit, my computer can dream up a better flick than you could ever make with just a couple text prompts. what, you think just because you make ~music~ that that entitles you to money from MY pocket? shut the fuck up, you don't make """art""", you're not """an artist""", you make fucking content, you're just a fucking content creator like every other ordinary sap with an iphone. you think you're special? you think you deserve special treatment? who do you think you are anyway, asking ME to pay YOU for this crap that doesn't even create value for my investors? "culture" isn't a playground asshole, it's a marketplace, and it's pay to win. oh you "can't afford rent"? you're "drowning in a sea of medical debt"? you say the "cost" of "living" is "too high"? well ***I*** don't have ANY of those problems, and i worked my ASS OFF to get where i am, so really, it sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. and anyway, i don't think someone as impoverished as you is gonna have much of value to contribute to "culture" anyway. personally, i think it's time you got yourself a real job. maybe someday you'll even make it to middle manager!
see, i don't believe "AI" can qualitatively replace most of the work it's being pitched for. the problem is that quality hasn't mattered to these nincompoops for a long time. the rich homunculi of our world don't even know what quality is, because they exist in a whole separate reality from ours. what could a banana cost, $15? i don't understand what you mean by "burnout", why don't you just take a vacation to your summer home in Madrid? wow, you must be REALLY embarrassed wearing such cheap shoes in public. THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING UNHINGED! they have no connection to reality, do not understand how society functions on a material basis, and they have nothing but spite for the labor they rely on to survive. they are so instinctually, incessantly furious at the idea that they're not single-handedly responsible for 100% of their success that they would sooner tear the entire world down than willingly recognize the need for public utilities or labor protections. they want to be Gods and they want to be uncritically adored for it, but they don't want to do a single day's work so they begrudgingly pay contractors to do it because, in the rich man's mind, paying a contractor is literally the same thing as doing the work yourself. now with "AI", they don't even have to do that! hey, isn't it funny that every single successful tech platform relies on volunteer labor and independent contractors paid substantially less than they would have in the equivalent industry 30 years ago, with no avenues toward traditional employment? and they're some of the most profitable companies on earth?? isn't that a funny and hilarious coincidence???
so, yeah, that's my stance on "AI". LLMs have legitimate uses, but those uses are a drop in the ocean compared to what they're actually being used for. they enable our worst impulses while lowering the quality of available information, they give immense power pretty much exclusively to unscrupulous scam artists. they are the product of a society that values only money and doesn't give a fuck where it comes from. they're a temper tantrum by a ruling class that's sick of having to pretend they need a pretext to steal from you. they're taking their toys and going home. all this massive investment and hype is going to crash and burn leaving the internet as we know it a ruined and useless wasteland that'll take decades to repair, but the investors are gonna make out like bandits and won't face a single consequence, because that's what this country is. it is a casino for the kings and queens of economy to bet on and manipulate at their discretion, where the rules are whatever the highest bidder says they are-- and to hell with the rest of us. our blood isn't even good enough to grease the wheels of their machine anymore.
i'm not afraid of AI or "AI" or of losing my job to either. i'm afraid that we've so thoroughly given up our morals to the cruel logic of the profit motive that if a better world were to emerge, we would reject it out of sheer habit. my fear is that these despicable cunts already won the war before we were even born, and the rest of our lives are gonna be spent dodging the press of their designer boots.
(read more "AI" opinions in this subsequent post)
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theoscout · 2 years ago
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my university thesis is scaring the shit out of me lol
question: if you decided to write about unnamable horrors for your university thesis, at what point do you stop and sacrifice your grade for not involving yourself in bullshit?
I'm going to summon something I can't put back if it finds its way on the internet, but it's in my nature to put stuff like this on the internet. It'll find a way online sooner or later, what will be the consequences of this? And assuming I didn't post it and resisted the urges, what about the people I interview on the way?
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mugglesauce · 2 years ago
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#long ass week#Kim's been in training all week#solo dad for a hyper-emo everything is the world's fault not mine no way is it mine I can't be responsible I'd MELT kiddo is exhauuusting#covid quarantine really wrecked these kids bad but the near constant inventing their own diagnoses via discord is also bad#like okay reach out seek answers seek commiseration seek attention that's all fine and good but don't tell yourself you know more than a DR#sigh so tired and worried this ones starting to go down the same rabbit hole Erika did#I try to not think those thoughts and try to be fair and just react to each thing like its new but the patterns man the patterns...#the new unschooling school was helping at first but now starting to see it leading to potential problems again - like leaving campus#kinda just want to Snake Plisken the world and shut down everything electric and eat worms or something#Not drinking away my emo is HARD but at least I'm being good about that#might be time for a drive to the shore or something#get my head out of my head#in the good news Kim's new real estate work is taking off so at least the fam won't be destitute if I get hit by a bus#mmmmmm sweet warm friendly bus fenders you'll be my friend I know you will#yeah yeah I know don't worry I'm mostly okay too#D&D writing continues to go well on pace to release at least a couple more things this year which REALLY helps the old emo-state#It's easy work and low expectations from the audience so I don't feel like I have to make it perfect which is fantastic for making progress#anyways take what yah can give nothing back all that shiz
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cherubfae · 29 days ago
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HEAR ME OUT NOAH, A THOUGHT PERHAPS.
Sylus, ever so cocky, has spent the last hour working you up with hot, feverish kisses, only to slide his hand between your legs, feel how wet you are, and with a wicked grin muse out a “all of this from just a little kissing, sweetie?”
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𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔯𝔬𝔴 𝔠𝔞𝔲𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔨𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔶 {𝔰𝔶𝔩𝔲𝔰}
screaming, punching, kiCKING THE AIR! this man is so very near and dear to me ;^; aaaa!!
tags: nsfw, smut, fem!reader, established relationships, size kink, size training, pet play (sorta), mentions of breeding kink, kind of short!!
a/n: just a little side note, i think it's so cute when you guys 'yell' my name at me xD it's so funny. I'm tired of the dark content of my sweet man and the gross AI bots I've seen--among how minors treat him. none of that here! >:( we respect sylus in this house! and as always, MINORS GET OUTTA HERE!
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"Look at you...," Sylus's deep voice chuckled right beside your ear and punctuated his sentence with a little nibble. "Already so desperate for me and we've barely begun."
You suck in harshly, "Sylus!" He gripped your soft thighs, grinning down at you like a mischievous cat.
"Shh, none of that. I don't want you straining yourself. If you tense up, I won't be able to fit any of me inside." Sylus cooed, his voice like soft velvet, his body was all-encompassing and warm like a security blanket over your half-naked body.
If there's one thing Sylus was is that he was devotingly patient. You knew he would act good upon his words and take care of you. He'd always been too big before and both of you were more than a little pent up.
Little by little, he works you open with his long, thick fingers. Gently and reverently curling them upwards inside of you; coaxing out such sweet, little moans like music to his ears. His favorite melody. Your underwear was merely tugged to the side, exposing soft curls and tender lips to the chilly air of his bedroom. The N109 Zone seemed particularly frigid lately with the impending winter season.
Lewd squelching echoes out as his fingers gently stretch and curl into you. Your quiet moan has him smiling; his swollen cock throbbing in anticipation. "There you are.. Are you ready, sweetie? We'll go slow." Sylus gently gripped your hip, pulling you down til your bare ass is flush with his meaty thighs.
The first press of him against your slick entrance is always a bit overwhelming. You can feel the power and dominance lingering in his movements as his thick mushroomed head parts your folds slowly. It's an agonizing stretch, long and drawn out, and he's not even that far inside. The feel of him is enough to make your lose your mind, it didn't matter that only his tip is inside; you felt like you were underwater.
"Remember to breathe, love. Don't strain too much. if you aren't relaxed, sweetie, then I really won't fit-- and I'd very much like to."
It takes everything in you not to grit your teeth. Falling back against the pillows, you draw your knees to your chest. Sylus groaned, watching with rapt attention as little by little he feeds his engorged length into your tiny hole. He's heavy, you can feel the weight of him pressing you down into the mattress. Your legs kick out, hips going lax when Sylus gets about halfway in.
"Is the little rabbit succumbing to the fox already?" Sylus purrs, leaning down to nuzzle at your ear. You half-heartedly roll your eyes and shoot him a playful glare.
"And why am I not the fox?" You pout, cheeks flushed from the exertion. Sylus heartily chuckled.
Leaning down, his weight makes you gasp and arch as several more inches slide into your quivering hole with a wet squelch. "My dear, if you're a fox then I'm the big bad wolf intent on breeding you."
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|| please don't repost, reuse, or edit my works in any way! I do not give permission. Tumblr is the only site where I post. All characters belong to their rightful owner and the story belongs to me © CHERUBFAE 2024 ||
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maplebellsmods · 10 months ago
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Expanded Storytelling Relationship Bits Mod: 2
Ok..more storytelling and relationship options for your sims! 
(Really tried my best to push this out before the end of Jan) 😮‍💨
If you want more info about the mod check this page out: Expanded Storytelling Relationship Bits Mod 
This time around created more relationship bits. Here they are
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I wanted to try something new this time, which is why it took me so much time. I'll get into it later.
But there are a few new things I have added and changed from the previous one. First off, there are more interactions available: social interactions, phone interactions, and rabbit hole interactions.
Each one of these interactions corresponds to a specific relationship bit.
Healing Touch: 'Plan Relaxing Activities Together,' 'Offer Comfort through Hugs and Physical Touch.'
Wisdom Seekers: 'Ask Questions about the Universe.'
Unbreakable Connection: 'Celebrate Anniversary of Enduring Connection,' 'Promise Everlasting Friendship' (Only available pre-promise).
I do need to note that, just like the other mod, many of these are cosmetic and don't have a full effect yet. (Emphasis on 'yet,' as I will slowly but surely make these more functional.)
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If your Sims have the Wisdom Seeker, Tech-Savvy Partners, or Night Owl Companions relationship bits, some interactions will unlock on the phone:
Wisdom Seeker: Study Together at the Library 
Tech-Savvy Partners: Send Tech News 
Night Owl Companions: Night Time Activities Menu 
(Regarding nighttime activities, I haven't found a workaround for this issue yet. However, here's a temporary solution: When selecting an activity for the two Sims who have the rabbit, choose the Sim you want to go with first, and then select yourself again using the same option. I'm not sure why this happens, but it can be a bit inconvenient. I'll work on making the process more streamlined in the future, but for now, this is how you can get them to go to the same activity.)
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The new feature I've been working on, which I'm quite excited about, involves social interactions. I've always felt that many social interactions lacked depth and context. So, what I'm currently working on is creating social interactions to fill that gap
One of these interactions is 'Provide Emotional Support,' which is available for Sims with the 'Healing Touch' relationship.
In this interaction, your Sim will be presented with several options when they are feeling sad. Your Sim can choose from these options to express why they are feeling sad. Once they make a selection, the other Sim will ask for more context, leading to the exchange of contextual advice and reassurance.
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I've also developed another social interaction, 'Try to Confess Feelings,' which is available for Sims experiencing 'Unrequited Love.
Attempting to confess your feelings will lead to various outcomes depending on the option you choose. In this interaction, the Sim who hears the confession will have several response options available.
The choice made by the listening Sim will have an impact on their relationship, both romantically and platonically. Some response options may harm the relationship more than others.
The way the Sim responds through the animation doesn't affect the outcome. I've designed it this way to leave the choice entirely in the player's hands. However, unless both Sims are in a flirty mood and have a high friendship level, the Sim who hears the confession will always use the rejection animation. Nevertheless, this animation choice doesn't alter the outcome.
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The social interaction 'Forbid Relationship With' can be used either before or after designating two Sims as star-crossed lovers. Some of the options will even add the 'star-crossed lovers' relationship bit to the two Sims (if they didn't have it), while others will remove it (if they did have it).
The interaction can be found under the Mean -- Arguments Pie Menu Category. Only a parent, grandparent, uncle, or caregiver can trigger the interaction. 
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Depending on the chosen options, the relationship can either suffer a negative or experience a positive impact. While all of the options will influence the relationship, certain responses will have a significantly greater effect on it than others.
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These are all the main points! I hope you all enjoy this new feature because I'm eager to create more! There will be additional interactions and other things I'll be adding to this mod. I'm constantly learning new things, and it's truly enjoyable to implement them!
Download Here
Public Feb 24
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