#Monolithic Power Systems

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

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🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

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2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

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3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

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4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

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5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

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6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

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7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

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📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

[bethanydelleman]

You really enjoy romanticizing women’s suffering

Use your face if you want to insult me, you coward.

But I'll reply anyway, because it honestly is kind of annoying how many people don't understand what I'm saying in my arranged marriage post. I assume you haven't really read anything else I've written because a whole lot of it is pointing out how women are oppressed and harmed in Jane Austen's works and begging people to stop hating on abused 16-18 year-old fictional girls.

My point in that post is that women would have different reactions to arranged marriage because a lot of people buy into oppression. That is how oppression is perpetuated. Right now, in our world, people are convincing women that the only natural form of childbirth is epidural-free and they aren't "real mothers" if they don't go through that. Mothers will tell you, sincerely, with a straight face, that you should have a "real natural birth" and that's it's a beautiful experience. That is complete and utter bullshit, and I know that because I've birthed a freaking baby. So if I write from the perspective of one of these women, am I "romanticizing women's suffering?" No. I'm showing how people can buy into things that persecute them. I'm telling a story about how someone can embrace something that harms them.

It's actually a better indictment of the arranged marriage system to show someone excited about it whose entire worldview crumbles after facing the reality. But it would also be interesting, and good fiction, and acknowledgement that people in the past had different ideas about love and marriage, to show women who want to climb socially, or be richer, or gain power, happy with their arranged partner because he's rich, powerful, or socially savvy.

"Stop writing women as Modern Girlboss Monoliths who all have the exact same worldview" ≠ "romanticizing women’s suffering"

[insanity6666]

Molten hearts

You receive a gift from Vulkan, and you panic. (A little)

“Vulkan? You called for me?” You spoke up as you entered his workshop, the words had taken a moment to form as you had to consciously keep from adding ‘Lord’ before his name. Like breaking an old habit. You tried, though, because he had asked and always seemed a little sad whenever you addressed him title first.

You didn’t expect the large man with glowing fiery eyes to be capable of the ‘sad puppy’ look, but you also didn’t expect to be chosen as one of his personal remembrancers, let alone to become his friend.

‘At least,’ you think as you wander deeper inside, nodding at a few of Vulkans sons as they mingled in the workshop as well, ‘I’m fairly certain we’re friends. Probably.’ It would certainly be presumptuous, but more than anything it would be embarrassing if you turned out to be wrong. It didn’t help that he was kind and polite to everyone, but you liked to think you got special attention sometimes.

The thought made your cheeks warm, but the heat of the forge covered that up nicely. Thankfully. You breathed in the heated air, tasting the ash and the tinge of metal, the smell of molten alloys and sweat that seemed to fill the room more than air. You sensed it before you even caught sight of who you were looking for, towering over his sons like a great burning mountain. But instead of the terrifying aura of power and sense of impending, inescapable death, it was comforting. Like nothing could touch you as long as you stayed close, not danger, not cold, not even the cruel words of others.

“Ah! There you are.” His already glowing eyes seemed to burn all the brighter when they caught sight of you. “I didn’t pull you from anything, did I?” He asked, seemingly genuinely concerned. You smiled up at him, his concern for you warming you more than the forge ever could.

“I was just finishing up when you called,” You said, giving a customary bow. He looked disapproving, but you gave him a cheeky grin. He may be happy to waive social etiquette, but you refused to forgo at least the basics. Especially because he is, technically, your boss and most definitely your superior in all other things.

“I’m glad, I would hate to be scolded for interrupting your work again. You are a terrifying force when agitated.” he spoke, a rumbling laugh blooming from his chest. You gaped at him, straightening up and crossing your arms, formality forgotten.

“You scared me! I was handling molten glass! You of all people should know how dangerous that is.” You huffed, more flustered than irritated. You remembered when he had entered your own workshop, back on your home planet, and had managed to sneak up on you while you had melted the sand and minerals to attempt to create something new. You had been so absorbed in your work you hadn’t noticed the giant stranger standing far to close just behind you. You fell deeper into the memory, sinking into it like a soothing bath.

So, when you had turned, you had been rightfully startled, and nearly caused a small fire and did cause you to lose what you had been working on. He hadn’t even had a chance to apologise before you had all but verbally ripped his throat out for being so careless, risking not only the safety and well-being of both of them, but ruining your project and causing damages. As you had to wait until the glass cooled enough for you to clean up and had to go through your safety checks, that had essentially ended your work day, which had cut through your good mood quicker than any weapon ever could. You had been in the zone, too!

It took far too long until you paused long enough to realise the person you were eviscerating was not only a monolith of a man, but also the hero of your home system and an incredibly powerful and important person within not only your own system, now, but also the entire Imperium they had recently joined. You had expected to be reprimanded, or killed, or suffer some terrible punishment for daring to speak out against him.

But Vulkan, as he had introduced himself some time later, only apologised. His head bowed not only because he had to, to better look at you, but also from the proper abash of a well-earned scolding. He looked truly ashamed of himself, and implored that he must do something to make up for it. Figuring he wasn’t going to kill you, but unsure what to do, you said the first thing that came to mind.

‘Help me clean up this mess’ You had told him, and to your surprise he hadn’t said a word against it, only nodding eagerly and together you set to work. As you instructed him on the proper procedures of cleaning up glass, he had begun to ask questions about your craft, which you had happily answered. It hadn’t taken long before the mess was cleaned and you had worked through the paperwork. To your mounting surprise, he had stayed, and invited you to a meal as an apology. When you had tried to argue, he had already helped clean up the mess, he had simply shaken his head and spoken with all the seriousness that one would speak for battle.

“That was simply righting my mistake for the damages, I owe you a proper apology for scaring you.” You hadn’t really understood, but had agreed. A few weeks later, he had asked you to join his people as a remembrancer -an artist and recorder of deeds, as you understood it- and shortly after you had your own room and workshop aboard his ship.

You rose from the memory as his laugh echoed through the room, his head tilted back, showing his throat as a bead of sweat trailed down the cords of muscle and tendons, following the collarbone before disappearing from view underneath his tunic.

Quickly, you forced your gaze up to his face as he returned his own to you, and you pouted. 

“For someone you consider so scary, you seem to take great pleasure in teasing me.” You said, grabbing a hairclip and moving to put your hair up. You had let it down on the walk here, but now you realise you should have left it up.

“While I would dare not try to displease you, I can admit I admire your strength of spirit, and the fire in your eyes that does not dim in my presence.” He spoke the words gently, and you let the smile bloom on your lips even as you lower your eyes, choosing to focus on securing your hair rather than the flutter of your heart. You knew, had seen time and time again, how baseline humans and even his own sons had recoiled and withered when standing before him. You seem to be one of the few who had little to no issue treating him like… well, a person. A powerful person who is technically your superior, yes, but a person nonetheless.

“You flatter me.” You say, lowering your hands from your hair and looking up at him again. So busy you were with your hair, you didn’t notice his expression before he managed to school it into something cooler and calmer. “Now, is there a reason you called? Or did you just miss me?” You teased, causing a bright smile to light up his face, and breathe out another soft laugh.

“And missing you is not reason enough?” He returned, before his smile turned bashful and he turned to pick up a simple, flat wooden box from the table he stood near. “But to answer your question, I made a gift for you. A token, to express my admiration for you and gratefulness for your company.” He held out the box, and you couldn’t blame the forge room for the heat in your cheeks. 

Feeling flushed and an unexpected rush of timidness, among something else, you carefully reach out to accept the gift. The box itself was plain, but well made, stained and polished to a shine. You idly trace along the edge, sending a quick, grateful smile up towards him before you opened to see the contents-

And froze.

Sitting, nestled innocently in velvet, was a circlet. A thick gold band, a complete circle that would sit perfectly upon your head, over your hair. A mix of Nocturnean style and your own cultures, a perfect balance. A beautiful blend. While the overall design was simple, it was still ornate, the patterns, jewels and inlays were exquisite and made more opulent than anything any of your people -not even the royal family- could ever dream of possessing. 

It was also a symbol of marriage.

‘Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.’ you chanted as you stared down at the offering. Tilting the box slightly, as though changing the perspective will somehow turn it into anything other than what it clearly was, but all it did was make it catch the light and make it look even more wondrous. ‘Don’t. Panic.’

“Is it not to your liking?” Vulkan’s voice, usually so calm and warm and strong, was now quiet and fragile. If you didn’t know any better, you would think he was afraid.

Your head snapped up, eyes wide as you looked at him, and saw his expression. The way his expression fell... The disappointment was bad enough, but you swore you saw something akin to heartbreak in his face.

‘Panic.’

“No! That’s not-” You rush to comfort, to abolish those thoughts, the words scrambling just as you did, stepping forward to rest a hand on his forearm. “I just- this is…” Stars above, do you tell him? That he had essentially asked for your hand? No, not ‘essentially’. He had. By your own culture. Not his. You know that, but does he? You don’t think so. He didn’t say the words, or court you, or anything like that. Not even by his own culture, or the Imperial Way, as you had checked in idle curiosity (and no other reason) and by all accounts this did just seem like a genuine gift. 

“I’ve never been given… anything like this.” You explain, looking down at the gift. Wondrous and damning. “You’ve caught me quite flustered. I don’t… I don’t have the words for how special this is.” You look up at him again, and you let a genuine smile lift your lips as you shove all the implications into a corner of your mind to be dealt with later. It’s just a gift. Just a brilliant, lovely gift with implications only you know. 

“It’s perfect.” You admit, far too close to being an acceptance of the proposal. If anyone from your home had heard you, they would immediately assume (correctly, in any other circumstance) that you had accepted his offer and were now engaged.

‘Though…’ you look down at the cause of your internal struggle, lifting your hand from Vulkans arm to trail a finger along the velvet near the circlet, not even daring to touch it. ‘This could be considered both an engagement circlet and marriage diadem in the same breath.’

You shove that thought away along with the others, and the quickly piling realisations, implications and possibilities of what is happening right now. You suppose you will just have to let your heart quietly break after this, but for now you can manage.

“It is?” He perks up, and the joyous smile he gave you… you decided then that it was worth it. “I have seen many of the women of your planet adorned in similar headwear, I was worried it was not to your style, as I had never seen you wear one.”

His words confirmed your suspicions. That confirmation was accompanied by the shattering of your hope, and your heart. Foolish and traitorous, both.

He stepped forward, closing the small space you had managed to gain with your retreat. Carefully, gently, he reached over your shoulder and felt a small tug on your hair as he removed the hair clip you had used to put up your hair. Then, delicately, with something you could almost call reverence, he plucked the circlet from its bed and softly placed it upon your head. You stood frozen, unable to wrangle your emotions into some form of compliance as your mind reeled at his actions and their unspoken meaning. A meaning only you knew, only you understood, and so the meaning was nothing even as your heart cried otherwise.

“I was worried it wouldn’t fit,” He hummed, looking over his work and you in equal measure, before smiling. “It suits you. You look,” you swore he almost paused, “beautiful.”

“It sits well.” You said quietly, your whole existence buzzing and numb all at once, “It’s perfect.” You say again, sealing your fate.

“Perfect.” He agreed, with a soft smile. You returned it, and hoped that you hid both the awkwardness and the pain in the knowledge that his actions and his intent were far disconnected to what you knew and associated with the gestures and words.

“I have nothing to give you!” You say, with a sudden, horrified realisation. It is also a relief, as it is a change in subject and something she can focus on instead. Vulkan, the bastard, only chuckled at your panic and rested a hand on your shoulder, though it practically engulfed it.

“No need. I made this with no intention of anything in return.”

‘What you said could be either incredibly romantic or incredibly rude, you know’ you think, almost delirious with the whiplash of emotions and heel-point-turns of the mood in the last few minutes. You give a slight scowl, which only makes his own smile widen.

“Hm… well, I shall endeavour to make you something in turn, regardless.” You declare, practically daring him to refute you, all the while ignoring the implications of your own words, determined to remain friendly and behave properly. You can break down later, in the privacy of your room. For now, you just need to get through this.

“If that is what you wish, then I shall look forward to whatever you give me.” He said, and stepped back. It gave you breathing room, whether he realised it or not. Either way, you were grateful. 

“On that note, I really should get back to work…” You say the words, but make no move to actually leave. You knew that they were fast approaching another conflict, and despite feeling off kilter with everything, you were loath to leave your Primarchs company so quickly.

“I should as well.” Vulkan agreed, also making no move to actually return to work.

‘What are we, teenagers?’ You thought, biting back a chuff of laughter.

“How busy will you be?” You ask, taking the initiative. He gave his workbench a considering look at your words, a considering hum rolling from him.

“If all goes well, I should be finished in time for a late last-meal.” He declares, looking a little disappointed. You masked your own, and gave a nod. War waits for no one, and you will not be so selfish as to make him choose between preparing for battle and keeping you company, would not let your own petty desires risk not only the success and safety of the Primarch, but his sons and the people they seek to save as well.

“Then how about a drink afterwards? If you are not too tired.” You offer instead.

“For you? Never.” He declares, but you raise a brow at him.

“A bold declaration. You would risk your health right before battle? Sleep deprivation is nothing to shrug at.” You warn, your concern for him warred with the joy that he would be willing to risk it to spend time with you.

“You forget, my dear, that I am a Primarch. I can stay awake for days without any loss to my mental faculties. And you did offer.” He retorted as he leaned against his workbench and crossed his arms.

“At your discretion, I would not have you risk your own well-being just to indulge me.” You counter, a grin breaking your attempt to be stern. He gave another of his sweet, deep chuckles, and straightened as he stepped forward. For one mad moment, you thought he was going to reach out to you. For what, you daren’t imagine and pretend to have no idea as to why.

“Very well. I promise that if I am tired, I shall send you a message to reschedule. Agreed?” He asked, and you rewarded him with a bright smile and nodded your agreement.

“Of course. I shall hopefully see you later, then.” You stepped back to give a bow, careful of the new weight adorning your head. Once you straightened, you gave a quick wave as he offered his own farewells, and you calmly walked to the door.

You walked, calmly, out into the halls, through the corridors, down the passageways, and calmly, calmly, walked into your private quarters. You focused on locking the door. Then, you turned and walked over to your desk. Carefully, calmly, take the diadem off your head. And carefully, calmly, put it back into its velvet bed. You took a few steps to your bed. Calmly, calmly, sat down. 

You grabbed a pillow.

And screamed into it.

______________________________________________________________

A gift for @kit-williams, @beckyninja, @bleedingichorhearts, @jaghatai-khock, @pluvio-tea, @moodymisty, @thethronezone and all the others who got me into the 40k romance and AU part of tumblr. You bastards.

[infinitepunches]

Monolith's Wonder Woman game has been cancelled.

I’ll tell you why this is a terrible tragedy.

It would have been an open world single-player game set on Themyscira.

It would have involved Diana returning to Paradise Island to protect her home from an attack from an army of monsters. This would have created an interesting dynamic between Diana and her sisters, as she is now assumedly a member of the Justice League and very familiar with the world of men. Perhaps they would doubt her loyalty at first after her time away from home.

You would have been able to recruit other Amazons to fight alongside you in battle, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood style. The concept art shows one of Diana’s allies using futuristic armor and weapons. It’s unclear whether or not these are other Amazons who have returned from the outside world or mortal women coming to the aid of the Amazons.

You would have fought manticores, orcs, Minotaurs, and various other creatures all being controlled by the evil goddess Circe. Concept art also shows Cheetah allying with Circe.

We would have likely learned about Circe’s history with Hippolyta and the Amazons and why she would want to destroy their paradise. After coming more into the public eye in Creature Commandos, this game could have shown the scale of threat that Circe represents as she conquers a nation of superpowered immortals.

This game would have been made by Monolith, a company I’ve loved since they made Tron 2.0 in 2004. They are most famous for making the Lord of the Rings game Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow of War, which in in my top 3 games of all time. These games have beautiful open world maps that give us a bit of an idea of what Themyscira may have looked like. One of the coolest things I’ve ever done in any video game is to tame a dragon and ride it around an open world Middle-Earth.

The most unique thing about Shadow of War is the Nemesis system. Every villain you encounter is procedurally generated with unique aesthetics and abilities and immunities. Any time a villain defeats you, he gets a name, he grows more powerful, and he moves up in the ranks of the hierarchy of the enemy’s forces.

Killing enemies merely opens up their spot for another enemy to fill. But defeating them nonlethally and forcing them to pledge loyalty to you allows you to take control of all the forces under their command. The Wonder Woman game would have implemented the Nemesis system for Circe’s army.

Citadel strongholds are where the most powerful enemies fortify themselves. With the former enemy commanders and armies under your control, you lead assaults and take over these citadels, assigning one of your own commanders to be its new leader.

The combat system of Shadow of War is somewhat similar to Arkham Knight. Fast-paced and combo focused. Taming creatures also adds a fun layer to fighting large groups of enemies. It has my favorite sword combat in any video game and it would have been interesting to see how they would have incorporated the Lasso of Hestia into the gameplay.

We would have likely seen skins and customization for Diana.

Ferdinand the Minotaur could have been your first new ally to abandon Circe.

Kangas could have been a tamable creature type you could ride around the open world.

The Invisible Jet could have been used for fast travel.

We could have gotten some great exposure for some of the lesser known characters in the Wonder Woman mythos.

Rocksteady killed Wonder Woman unceremoniously in their suicide squad game. (And then said every other character who died was just a clone.) The failure of that game and the $200 million profit loss that it caused is the primary reason why Warner Brothers decided to kill Monolith Productions, a company that has been producing games since 1997.

Meanwhile, Rocksteady gets to make a Batman Beyond game.

This is one of the most regrettable missteps in gaming history.

[nismo-omsin]

Redefining Antisemitism: Why All Semitic Peoples Must Be Included

For over a century, the term antisemitism has been narrowly defined to refer exclusively to prejudice and hostility toward Jewish people. While that usage is rooted in a very real and painful history—particularly the horrors of the Holocaust and the persistence of anti-Jewish sentiment across the globe—it is time to interrogate and expand the term’s definition.

Because Semitic people are not a monolith. And antisemitism, if we are honest, should not be either.

The Linguistic Truth

The term Semite refers to a broad group of people who speak or descend from speakers of Semitic languages—Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, and others. This includes Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and more. The linguistic origin is clear. But over time, the term antisemitism has been exclusively applied to Jews, erasing the Semitic identity of millions of others who have also faced historic and ongoing oppression.

This isn’t just an academic oversight—it has serious ethical and political consequences.

A Weaponized Definition

Today, we see a dangerous misuse of the term antisemitism. Defending Palestinian rights, exposing war crimes, or criticizing the policies of the Israeli government can result in being labeled “antisemitic”—even when these critiques come from Arabs or other Semitic people themselves.

It is not only inaccurate to call Semitic people antisemitic for criticizing their oppression, it’s also morally absurd. The term has been twisted into a tool of suppression, used to silence legitimate resistance and shield systems of violence from accountability.

The Case of Palestine: Occupation, Apartheid, and Silence

Let’s be clear: what is happening to Palestinians under Israeli occupation is not a misunderstanding or a “complex conflict.” It is the deliberate displacement, surveillance, imprisonment, and dehumanization of an indigenous Semitic people.

• Gaza has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Today, it resembles a death camp.

• Between 500–700 Palestinian children are kidnapped by Israeli military forces annually, often taken from their homes at night, denied legal representation, and held in military prisons without charge.

• Palestinians are taxed by the occupying power, yet denied equal rights, legal protections, or meaningful political representation.

• Illegal Israeli settlers routinely attack Palestinian civilians under the protection—or participation—of Israeli forces.

And yet, when Palestinians speak out against this, they are told their resistance is antisemitic.

This is gaslighting at a global scale.

Expanding the Definition: A Moral Imperative

If we are going to fight antisemitism, then let us fight it in all its forms—against all Semitic peoples.

• Let us condemn the hatred and demonization of Jews wherever it occurs.

• But also condemn the dehumanization of Palestinians, Arabs, and other Semitic groups who are treated as second-class citizens, occupiable, bombable, and disposable.

This is not about minimizing Jewish suffering—it’s about recognizing that antisemitism cannot be a one-way street. When we exclude Arab Semites from the protection of this term, we reinforce a hierarchy of whose lives, whose languages, and whose lineages are worth defending.

Toward an Inclusive Framework

It is time for our language to reflect our values. The fight against hate must be principled, not political. If antisemitism means the hatred, marginalization, or violent erasure of Semitic people, then Palestinians must be included in that struggle—not criminalized for surviving it.

Reclaiming the full scope of antisemitism is not just about semantics. It’s about justice, solidarity, and truth.

And no liberation movement is complete if it erases others along the way.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Often when I post an AI-neutral or AI-positive take on an anti-AI post I get blocked, so I wanted to make my own post to share my thoughts on "Nightshade", the new adversarial data poisoning attack that the Glaze people have come out with.

I've read the paper and here are my takeaways:

Firstly, this is not necessarily or primarily a tool for artists to "coat" their images like Glaze; in fact, Nightshade works best when applied to sort of carefully selected "archetypal" images, ideally ones that were already generated using generative AI using a prompt for the generic concept to be attacked (which is what the authors did in their paper). Also, the image has to be explicitly paired with a specific text caption optimized to have the most impact, which would make it pretty annoying for individual artists to deploy.

While the intent of Nightshade is to have maximum impact with minimal data poisoning, in order to attack a large model there would have to be many thousands of samples in the training data. Obviously if you have a webpage that you created specifically to host a massive gallery poisoned images, that can be fairly easily blacklisted, so you'd have to have a lot of patience and resources in order to hide these enough so they proliferate into the training datasets of major models.

The main use case for this as suggested by the authors is to protect specific copyrights. The example they use is that of Disney specifically releasing a lot of poisoned images of Mickey Mouse to prevent people generating art of him. As a large company like Disney would be more likely to have the resources to seed Nightshade images at scale, this sounds like the most plausible large scale use case for me, even if web artists could crowdsource some sort of similar generic campaign.

Either way, the optimal use case of "large organization repeatedly using generative AI models to create images, then running through another resource heavy AI model to corrupt them, then hiding them on the open web, to protect specific concepts and copyrights" doesn't sound like the big win for freedom of expression that people are going to pretend it is. This is the case for a lot of discussion around AI and I wish people would stop flagwaving for corporate copyright protections, but whatever.

The panic about AI resource use in terms of power/water is mostly bunk (AI training is done once per large model, and in terms of industrial production processes, using a single airliner flight's worth of carbon output for an industrial model that can then be used indefinitely to do useful work seems like a small fry in comparison to all the other nonsense that humanity wastes power on). However, given that deploying this at scale would be a huge compute sink, it's ironic to see anti-AI activists for that is a talking point hyping this up so much.

In terms of actual attack effectiveness; like Glaze, this once again relies on analysis of the feature space of current public models such as Stable Diffusion. This means that effectiveness is reduced on other models with differing architectures and training sets. However, also like Glaze, it looks like the overall "world feature space" that generative models fit to is generalisable enough that this attack will work across models.

That means that if this does get deployed at scale, it could definitely fuck with a lot of current systems. That said, once again, it'd likely have a bigger effect on indie and open source generation projects than the massive corporate monoliths who are probably working to secure proprietary data sets, like I believe Adobe Firefly did. I don't like how these attacks concentrate the power up.

The generalisation of the attack doesn't mean that this can't be defended against, but it does mean that you'd likely need to invest in bespoke measures; e.g. specifically training a detector on a large dataset of Nightshade poison in order to filter them out, spending more time and labour curating your input dataset, or designing radically different architectures that don't produce a comparably similar virtual feature space. I.e. the effect of this being used at scale wouldn't eliminate "AI art", but it could potentially cause a headache for people all around and limit accessibility for hobbyists (although presumably curated datasets would trickle down eventually).

All in all a bit of a dick move that will make things harder for people in general, but I suppose that's the point, and what people who want to deploy this at scale are aiming for. I suppose with public data scraping that sort of thing is fair game I guess.

Additionally, since making my first reply I've had a look at their website:

Used responsibly, Nightshade can help deter model trainers who disregard copyrights, opt-out lists, and do-not-scrape/robots.txt directives. It does not rely on the kindness of model trainers, but instead associates a small incremental price on each piece of data scraped and trained without authorization. Nightshade's goal is not to break models, but to increase the cost of training on unlicensed data, such that licensing images from their creators becomes a viable alternative.

Once again we see that the intended impact of Nightshade is not to eliminate generative AI but to make it infeasible for models to be created and trained by without a corporate money-bag to pay licensing fees for guaranteed clean data. I generally feel that this focuses power upwards and is overall a bad move. If anything, this sort of model, where only large corporations can create and control AI tools, will do nothing to help counter the economic displacement without worker protection that is the real issue with AI systems deployment, but will exacerbate the problem of the benefits of those systems being more constrained to said large corporations.

Kinda sucks how that gets pushed through by lying to small artists about the importance of copyright law for their own small-scale works (ignoring the fact that processing derived metadata from web images is pretty damn clearly a fair use application).

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sigal Samuel at Vox:

There’s a dominant narrative in the media about why tech billionaires are sucking up to Donald Trump: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, all of whom have descended on the nation’s capital for the presidential inauguration, either happily support or have largely acquiesced to Trump because they think he’ll offer lower taxes and friendlier regulations. In other words, it’s just about protecting their own selfish business interests. That narrative is not exactly wrong — Trump has in fact promised massive tax cuts for billionaires — but it leaves out the deeper, darker forces at work here. For the tech bros — or as some say, the broligarchs — this is about much more than just maintaining and growing their riches. It’s about ideology. An ideology inspired by science fiction and fantasy. An ideology that says they are supermen, and supermen should not be subject to rules, because they’re doing something incredibly important: remaking the world in their image. It’s this ideology that makes MAGA a godsend for the broligarchs, who include Musk, Zuck, and Bezos as well as the venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. That’s because MAGA is all about granting unchecked power to the powerful. “It’s a sense of complete impunity — including impunity to the laws of nature,” Brooke Harrington, a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College who studies the behavior of the ultra-rich, told me. “They reject constraint in all of its forms.” As Harrington has noted, Trump is the perfect avatar for that worldview. He’s a man who incited an attempted coup, who got convicted on 34 felony counts and still won reelection, who notoriously said in reference to sexual assault, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” So, what is the “anything” that the broligarchs want to do? To understand their vision, we need to realize that their philosophy goes well beyond simple libertarianism. It’s not just that they want a government that won’t tread on them. They want absolutely zero limits on their power. Not those dictated by democratic governments, by financial systems, or by facts. Not even those dictated by death.

The broligarchs’ vision: Science fiction, transhumanism, and immortality

The broligarchs are not a monolith — their politics differ somewhat, and they’ve sometimes been at odds with each other. Remember when Zuck and Musk said they were going to fight each other in a cage match? But here’s something the broligarchs have in common: a passionate love for science fiction and fantasy that has shaped their vision for the future of humanity — and their own roles as its would-be saviors. Zuckerberg’s quest to build the Metaverse, a virtual reality so immersive and compelling that people would want to strap on bulky goggles to interact with each other, is seemingly inspired by the sci-fi author Neal Stephenson. It was actually Stephenson who coined the term “metaverse” in his novel Snow Crash, where characters spend a lot of time interacting in a virtual world of that name. Zuckerberg seems not to have noticed that the book is depicting a dystopia; instead of viewing it as a warning, he’s viewing it as an instruction manual.

Jeff Bezos is inspired by Star Trek, which led him to found a commercial spaceflight venture called Blue Origin, and The High Frontier by physics professor Gerard K. O’Neill, which informs his plan for space colonization (it involves millions of people living in cylindrical tubes). Bezos attended O’Neill’s seminars as an undergraduate at Princeton. Musk, who wants to colonize Mars to “save” humanity from a dying planet, is inspired by one of the masters of American sci-fi, Isaac Asimov. In his Foundation series, Asimov wrote about a hero who must prevent humanity from being thrown into a long dark age after a massive galactic empire collapses. “The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one,” Musk said. And Andreessen, an early web browser developer who now pushes for aggressive progress in AI with very little regulation, is inspired by superhero stories, writing in his 2023 “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” that we should become “technological supermen” whose “Hero’s Journey” involves “conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.” All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or übermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.

[...]

The broligarchs — because they are in 21st-century Silicon Valley and not 19th-century Germany — have updated and melded this idea with transhumanism, the idea that we can and should use technology to alter human biology and proactively evolve our species.

Transhumanism spread in the mid-1900s thanks to its main popularizer, Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist and president of the British Eugenics Society. Huxley influenced the contemporary futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicted that we’re approaching a time when human intelligence can merge with machine intelligence, becoming unbelievably powerful. “The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems … and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future,” Kurzweil wrote in 1999. Kurzweil, in turn, has influenced Silicon Valley heavyweights like Musk, whose company Neuralink explicitly aims at merging human and machine intelligence. For many transhumanists, part of what it means to transcend our human condition is transcending death. And so you find that the broligarchs are very interested in longevity research. Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Thiel have all reportedly invested in startups that are trying to make it possible to live forever. That makes perfect sense when you consider that death currently imposes a limit on us all, and the goal of the broligarchs is to have zero limits.

Vox has an insightful article on the disastrous vision that broligarchs like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg subscribe to.

[quinnred]

Slaver Ant A piece done for the Farm Haven section of the art zine "Visions Unveiled" published by BobTheSeagullKing in collaboration with Logan/Tachyon , CrabdominalPain , and Luke Baker.

"In a world remade in layers of endless bug-shell, man is no longer the only kingdom maker. The hills of the giant ants are monoliths, rivalling anything in human history. Tunnel cities branch out like a circulatory system pumping from colossal formicary hearts. These grand ant colonies are powered not by intellect but by honed swarm instinct and ravenous dedication.

The Enslaver colonies consist only of a Queen and Soldier caste, lacking any true workers, relying completely on raiding other species and fellow ants to survive. Their bodies are built for butchery, with a mutation of duplicate specialized mandibles, a small pair for grabbing, and a larger folded back pair for a powerful snap. Enslaver onslaughts are brutal, with the shock-wave of dismemberment cracking like chitin lightning, stunning their surrounding opponents as they chop and chop. Their goal is less the slaughter of the enemy, as much as the complete thievery of their larvae. Though some will be eaten, many will be raised as servants for the Enslavers, doing the task they cannot.

Enslavers, however, can be too successful and eliminate all foreign colonies, or can be too weak to fight and raid, and so alternatives are sought....

The Myrmiluk people are the result of several generations of kidnapped and reconditioned human beings, the defiant ones instinctually culled by executioner's mandible and the rest kept in check by barbed whip antennae. Clothed in ancestral rags and larval silk, the Myrmiluk duties involve tending to their master's offspring and spotting nest parasites invisible to the primarily scent driven ants. This work scars their sunless skin with red blotches of formic acid, but the rewards of security and consistent food have made them loyal.

Though most only ever know the organic light of the fungus grown for food and visibility, some sneak off with the ants to scout the surface world and feel their ancestor's sun. These Myrmiluk scouts are revered back home for their hauls and stories, impressing their peers with chitter-tongue tales of strange lands and antless wildmen.

Much of what is known of the Myrmiluk comes from captured scouts or those whose ancestors escaped the burrows of a dying colony. Most enjoy their free lives on the sun blessed surface, but some have halcyon memories of the tunnels and the safety brought by ant masters."

[blackstarlineage]

"We Are Not a Monolith" – The Double-Edged Sword of Black Individualism from a Garveyite Perspective

From a Garveyite perspective, the phrase "We are not a monolith" is both true and problematic. While Black people, like any group, have diverse cultures, ideologies, and perspectives, the failure to unify around core collective interests has weakened Black sovereignty, economic independence, and political power. Other groups—despite their internal differences—are able to operate in a unified, strategic manner when it comes to protecting their collective interests.

Garveyism teaches that Pan-African unity is non-negotiable. While Black people should never be expected to think identically, there are foundational principles that require monolithic agreement to ensure the survival, empowerment, and sovereignty of Black people worldwide.

1. The Problem with the Phrase "We Are Not a Monolith"

In many discussions, the phrase “we are not a monolith” is used to justify disunity, lack of accountability, and acceptance of behaviours that undermine Black progress.

While diversity of thought can be beneficial, the problem arises when Black people:

Reject collective responsibility and act as individuals rather than as a unified group.

Use individual success as a reason to ignore the need for community empowerment.

Defend harmful behaviours or ideologies that weaken Black advancement.

Fail to mobilize collectively in the same way that other groups do to protect their interests.

In contrast, other communities understand that while internal diversity exists, certain principles must be universally upheld to maintain collective power.

Examples of Groups That Balance Internal Diversity with Collective Unity:

Jewish Communities – Despite differing religious and political ideologies (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Zionist, anti-Zionist), Jewish people worldwide have a strong collective identity, mobilize to protect their historical narratives, and ensure economic, political, and cultural security.

Chinese Communities – Whether from mainland China, Taiwan, or the diaspora, Chinese people prioritize economic nationalism, investing in their own businesses and keeping resources within their community.

Arab and Muslim Nations – Even with sectarian differences (Sunni, Shia, secular, religious), they unify on key geopolitical, economic, and religious matters that affect their global standing.

White Europeans & White Americans – Though divided by nationality, they collectively uphold Eurocentric dominance in media, finance, and global governance.

Garveyite Takeaway: Other groups disagree internally but understand when to be monolithic to protect their collective interests. Black people, however, often lack this level of strategic cohesion.

2. What Black People Must Be Monolithic On

While Black people do not need to think alike on every issue, there are fundamental principles where unity is non-negotiable for the advancement of Black people worldwide.

1. Economic Power & Self-Sufficiency

Black communities must prioritize economic cooperation instead of being dependent on external systems.

Black money should circulate within Black communities before being spent elsewhere.

Black-owned businesses and industries should be protected, supported, and expanded.

Example: Koreans, Chinese, and South Asians dominate the Black beauty supply industry, yet Black people still spend billions supporting non-Black businesses.

Garveyite Takeaway: No other group allows outsiders to control their economic infrastructure—Black people must be monolithic in reclaiming economic independence.

2. Control of Black Narratives & History

Black history should be taught and controlled by Black people, not by outside institutions.

The false narratives of colonialism, slavery, and the distortion of African history must be dismantled.

No Black person should excuse, justify, or downplay historical oppression or defend anti-Black forces.

Example: Jewish people have laws against Holocaust denial. Meanwhile, Black history is constantly rewritten, downplayed, or erased.

Garveyite Takeaway: There should be no “different perspectives” on whether Black history deserves preservation.

3. Political Unity & Collective Agenda

Black people must vote and organize based on a collective interest, not party loyalty or personality politics.

Any Black leader, organization, or system that does not work toward Black self-determination must be held accountable.

No Black person should support policies, laws, or politicians that harm Black people globally.

Example: Many Black people support leaders who have done nothing for Black communities, while other groups vote based on group interests, not individual preferences.

Garveyite Takeaway: Politics is about power, not emotions—Black people must move strategically, as other groups do.

4. Pan-Africanism & Global Black Unity

The division between Africans, African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Afro-Latinos must be eliminated.

Black people must reject tribalism and national divisions that prevent global economic and political cooperation.

African resources must be controlled by Africans, not foreign nations or corporations.

Example: The European Union operates as a bloc despite national differences, yet Africa remains divided and exploited.

Garveyite Takeaway: Black people globally must recognize that their struggles are interconnected and unite accordingly.

5. Rejecting Anti-Blackness in All Forms

Black people should not excuse, tolerate, or participate in anti-Black behaviour.

Colourism, self-hatred, and internalized racism must be eradicated.

No Black person should support media, policies, or ideologies that degrade Black identity.

Example: Other racial groups do not tolerate internalized hatred, but in Black communities, self-hate is normalized and even rewarded in mainstream media.

Garveyite Takeaway: There is no room for “diversity of thought” when it comes to rejecting anti-Blackness—this must be a non-negotiable principle.

3. The Consequences of Not Being Monolithic

The failure to unify on non-negotiable principles has led to:

Continued economic exploitation (other groups profit from Black spending).

The loss of Black political power (disorganized voting, supporting leaders who do nothing for Black people).

The control of Black narratives by non-Black people (history distorted, culture stolen).

Global disunity between Africans, Caribbeans, and the diaspora (which weakens Black global leverage).

Conclusion: Balancing Individual Thought with Collective Strategy

From a Garveyite perspective, Black people do not need to think alike on everything, but they must be monolithic on key issues that determine their survival, power, and liberation.

Economic self-sufficiency must be prioritized.

Black history must be controlled by Black people.

Black people must act as a political and economic bloc.

Pan-African unity is not optional—it is necessary for global strength.

Anti-Blackness must be rejected universally.

While internal diversity is inevitable, no other group allows their differences to keep them from controlling their own destiny. Until Black people realize that collective unity is the key to sovereignty, the cycle of disempowerment will continue.

Garveyism teaches that we must rise above individualism and unite strategically, just as African kings, queens, and revolutionaries once did. Anything less is self-destruction.

[katakaluptastrophy]

The Nine Houses must be absolutely terrifying to fight.

And not just because their invasions start with a drop ship full of pimply 14 year olds inexplicably armed with zweihanders whose entire remit is to cause a mass casualty event for necromantic purposes...

We're mostly introduced to the schools of necromancy at the beginning of GTN, before we have broader context beyond "ooh, new magic system." But if you think about it in light of what we later learn about the Cohort:

Second House: they can literally drain your life force to power up their cavaliers. "It’s said they all die screaming"

Third House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're being used as a power up. Also, someone's just rearranged your face; your arse is on backwards.

Fourth House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're bombs now. And if you corner a Fourth House necro, they're a bomb too!

Fifth House: at best, they're the weird technicians for the Houses' horrifying blood and monolith based FTL system. At worst, it doesn't matter if you kill yourself to avoid capture or if you hold out under interrogation until you expire, they can still interrogate your ghost.

Sixth House: drop a cigarette or shed a hair on a clandestine operation? These guys now know your age, shoe size, and approximate location. They know what you had for breakfast. They know what you held in the last 12 hours.

Seventh House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're armed and marching on you now.

Eigth House: why is he glowing? WHY IS HE GLOWING?!

Ninth House: the guy next to you's bones just became an IED.

[mariacallous]

It has come to this: we are now in Ministry of Truth territory. In Washington DC, the Smithsonian Institution, the US’s ensemble of 21 great national museums, last week became the subject of an executive order by President Donald Trump. “Distorted narratives” are to be rooted out. There will be no more of the “corrosive ideology” that has fostered a “sense of national shame”. The institution has, reads the order, “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” that portrays “American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”. The vice-president, JD Vance, is, by virtue of his office, on the museum’s board. He is charged by Trump to “prohibit expenditure” on programmes that “divide Americans based on race”. He is to remove “improper ideology”. The order is titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. George Orwell lived too soon.

The move is deeply shocking, but predictable. After Trump’s insertion of himself as chair of the John F Kennedy Center and his railing against the supposed wokeness of the national performing arts venue, the federally funded Smithsonian was bound to be next in line. Those who imagined the Kennedy Center was a one-off, attracting the president’s ire for personal reasons, were deluding themselves about the scale of Trump’s ideological ambition. Picked out for opprobrium in the executive order are the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for celebrating transgender women (the museum, it should be pointed out, has yet to be built); the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and an exhibition titled The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the American Art Museum.

I visited the Museum of African American History for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It is a vast book of a museum, heavy with text. It was full, when I visited, of mostly Black families seeking out an encounter with a narrative that has long been a footnote to, or erased completely from, the main national story. You could spend days absorbing the web of stories that the museum offers, beginning in its basements with the transatlantic slave trade, where one of the most moving objects is, unexpectedly and profoundly, a piece of iron ballast that took the place of a human body after a ship’s cargo of enslaved people had been disgorged on the triangular route between Africa, the Americas and Europe. The whole strikes a fascinating balance between an unflinching gaze on systems of oppression, and a sense of Black achievement and cultural richness that has nevertheless effloresced.

Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the museum, gave a talk at the House of Lords in 2011 about the institution, which was still in the planning, and would open five years later. I can still recall how moving it was to hear about the difficulties of making a museum – a place where a story is told through objects – from communities traditionally poor in material things. The institution had put out a call for loans and donations. Precious, carefully treasured objects – a bonnet embroidered by someone’s enslaved grandmother, for example – were arriving into the new collection.

Fast forward to the present, and Bunch is in charge of the entire Smithsonian Institution. This is a man who believes, as he told Queen’s University Belfast last year, that history can be used to “understand the tensions that have divided us. And those tensions are really where the learning is where the growth is, where the opportunities to transform are.” That compassionate vision of the past, as a means through which the citizens of the present can better understand each other, is completely opposed to the monolithically triumphalist spirit of Trump’s executive order, in which history is reduced to “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness”. How much easier it is, to sink into this pillowy, comforting notion of glorious progress than to grapple with the kind of knotty, often upsetting and confronting history that the Museum of African American History offers its visitors. But it makes me wonder: can the museum survive this government?

I visited, too, the American Art Museum, whose show The Shape of Power is targeted in the executive order as emblematic of the Smithsonian’s decline into “divisive, race-centered ideology”. The exhibition, which was years in the careful making, points out what is surely obvious, once it has been given a moment’s thought: that race is not an inherent and prepolitical category, but rather a constructed set of ideologies that served (and still serve) a set of economic and political interests. (One way to tell that race is a socially constructed category, in fact, is by looking to the Greeks and the Romans – the people who established, in the minds of many on the US right, “western civilisation”. They were xenophobic in their own way, and enslavement was a fact of their societies. But as is obvious from their literature, whiteness and Blackness were for them simply not operative categories.) The exhibition is an eye- and mind-opening look at how race ideology has translated into and been reinforced, or deconstructed, by sculpture – that peculiarly lifelike and thus “truthful”-seeming artform.

The catalogue quotes Toni Morrison, who once wrote that “I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World.” Such intellectual adventuring is not what is wanted by the White House now. Trump’s world is more like Viktor Orbán’s, under whose government the school history curriculum has been rewritten to glorify Hungary, or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, where the novelist Elif Shafak, as she recalled in a Guardian Live event last week, was prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness”, her lawyer obliged to defend in court the views of her fictional characters. The Smithsonian and all who work there have an unenviable choice, one that has already been put before other great or formerly great institutions such as Columbia University: to comply with Trump’s dark demands; or to find ways to defy them.

[rainstormcolors]

Seto's been betrayed by the system and adults within the system from his childhood, and therapy for a CEO in the mid-90s and early-00s in Japan wouldn't have seemed like the solution it does now -- there was a kind of taboo to mental illness and struggles as it was expected to be kept private, within the family, and could very much be seen as a sign of poor willpower (the West absolutely has issues with the way mental illness and trauma are viewed as well, and no culture or time period is a monolith, but I feel it's worth considering for my personal view of canon and the characters).

Adult therapists are human beings too, prone to biases, flawed, with limited viewpoints like all people. And it's strange how people say we should be wary of those in authority, but suddenly when it comes to therapists we ignore how therapists can make mistakes or sometimes even abuse their power. (Absolutely not all therapists -- but this is in the context of Seto Kaiba and his life, and I do know the reality of therapists making mistakes with their clients.)

For me, the situation Seto's been placed into and the reality of it, and how turning to others seems so weak and self-defeating to him (and to many others) and how it does have a real double-edged blade, are part of having compassion for how much he mentally tears himself apart.

Having read some of KT's ideas behind how he wrote YGO, and noticing the repeated themes within it of how duty and expectation can destroy people even as it binds them to the people they love, I have to take note of how exception and duty and the "need" to be strong and self-reliant are written into Seto's character and what his story is saying to us. I think pretending the answer and road for Seto to good mental health was actually easy and right there the whole time does a disservice to his struggle, which I don't feel fans who want him in therapy believe BUT I have seen people abandon their compassion because they felt the struggle with trauma and mental health had an easy and universal solution in therapy and that, indeed, people still struggling are weak.

[stumbleduponbyaksident]

ME3 created something so unique with the last conversation with Starchild. Usually when the antagonist known for manipulation is like "now I'm coming clean you deserve it now I'm giving you the truth and telling you precisely what's going on", especially if it's the final confrontation, you believe them or at least the game gives you the option to catch them a lie. Nothing like that happens here, you are talking with entity known to create the most elaborate manipulation system ever and you have no option to even acknowledge this is what they might be doing to you. Saren and Illusive Man, before reaching the point of having pain response in case they wanted to resist indoctrination, were manipulated through pure logic and ego and, well, the moment you meet the Starchild, he's having a logical conversation with you, also playing off your ego ("you created a new solution you're the first organic to ever come here previous cycles could not be saved but this one totally can slayyy"). Also Saren, Illusive Man and Shepard all had the same monolith of a goal that is saving humanity and the former ones were indoctrinated through appealing to that goal. And this is precisely what's at stake when Shepard gets to have their shot. Shepard never was officially indoctrinated but it's weird that the game introduces this incredible power to turn your most loyal people against you only to use it on antagonists, random side characters and one politician that was untrustworthy from literally the first moment you met him (if Udina even was indoctrinated). And it's extremely weird you can't really talk about indoctrination with your ultimate enemy before making the ultimate choice at the end of the game. It's very weirdly written scene. And ME3 is a weirdly written game overall.

[radical-revolution]

Here’s a fantastic share on the notion of ‘soft rebellion’, an act that cultivates beauty instead of despair, that disrupts through delight, that calls for tenderness against hardness, and a “deep, embodied resistance—rebellion that does not just fight against but builds towards.” Yes!

“We need a different strategy—one that doesn’t just burn, but smolders, spreads, takes root. One that knows endurance is its own kind of rebellion.

Soft Rebellion is the mycelial strategy of weaving beneath the surface, unsettling rigid structures with slow, persistent entanglement. It does not meet violence with a mirrored fist but with the supple intelligence of the willow, bending just enough to redirect the force and send it spiraling elsewhere. Soft Rebellion is the way water carves stone—not through brute force but through patient insistence, through intimate knowledge of the cracks, through the whisper of time.

Its strategies are those of the trickster, the lover, the root and the reed. It listens before it moves, feeling into the hidden weaknesses of oppressive systems, understanding that no empire, no ideology, no monolith is without its fractures. It knows that control is a brittle thing, and that softness—fluid, adaptable, decentralized—is far harder to extinguish than steel.

Soft rebellion moves through stories, through the slow embroidery of alternative worlds into the fabric of the present. It cultivates beauty in places of despair, weaving small sanctuaries of aliveness that offer refuge and reimagine what is possible. It disrupts through delight, through care, through humor that turns the blade of power back on itself. It does not fight on the battlefield chosen by the oppressor; it shifts the ground beneath their feet.

To rebel softly is to refuse to be reduced. It is to remain tender in a world that would harden you, to insist on connection where division is sown. It is to plant seeds in the ruins, knowing that even in the shadow of collapse, life finds a way to creep through the cracks and bloom.

Soft rebellion is extraction work. It’s the slow, deliberate untangling of the barbed wire we’ve swallowed—hustle culture, internalized oppression, fear masquerading as productivity. It’s the quiet but radical refusal to be a machine, to be optimized, to be ground down into a function rather than a being.

Soft rebellion doesn’t look like a war cry. It looks like walking away. Like choosing to move at a different rhythm than the one demanded. Like reclaiming time as something stolen, not something to be managed. It is choosing pleasure where exhaustion was expected, choosing presence where dissociation was normalized.

Soft rebellion is the mycelial antidote to the brittle, crumbling monolith of power. In the face of a slow-moving coup—where democracy is gutted in broad daylight, where fear is the chosen currency of control—soft rebellion does not play by the rules of the oppressor. It moves beneath, between, beyond. It resists not with brute force, but with the cunning of ecosystems, the resilience of roots breaking concrete.

Soft rebellion understands that the systems tightening their grip on power want us exhausted, divided, reactive. It knows that despair is an instrument of control, that urgency is often a trap. So instead, it cultivates deep, embodied resistance—rebellion that does not just fight against but builds towards.

Soft Rebellion in Action

1. Refusing the Script of Fear

The coup depends on a narrative of helplessness, of inevitability. Soft rebellion rewrites it. It speaks in futures not yet stolen. It refuses to repeat the script that says “we are powerless.” Instead, it whispers: We are vast. We are unruly. We are not so easily governed.

2. Sanctuary Networks

Authoritarianism thrives on isolation, on making people feel like they stand alone. Soft rebellion builds underground networks of care—mutual aid, resource sharing, protection. It weaves safety where the state seeks to unravel it. This looks like organizing community bail funds, housing networks, off-the-grid communication systems. It looks like knowing who in your neighborhood needs help, who has a safe house, who can be counted on when institutions fail.

3. Disobedient Joy

The coup wants you terrified. It wants you brittle and compliant. So laugh in its face. Gather in parks, sing, dance, make art that mocks the strongman and his fragile grip on power. Remember that joy is not a distraction—it is a weapon. It reminds us that another world is possible, that we are more than the violence done to us.

4. Slowing the Machine

Capitalism and fascism walk hand in hand, demanding productivity even as the world burns. Soft rebellion opts out. It works just enough to survive, then redirects energy into resistance, into community, into slowness. It refuses to feed the machine that funds oppression. It chooses to rest when the system demands exhaustion.

5. Decentralized Resistance

The state expects rebellion to be centralized, to have leaders it can imprison, movements it can crush. Soft rebellion is fungal—it spreads, untraceable, leaderless. It moves through encrypted networks, anonymous zines, whisper campaigns. It understands that a revolution with no head cannot be beheaded.

6. Rituals of Rewilding

Fascism thrives on control—of land, of bodies, of narratives. Soft rebellion rewilds. It plants trees in vacant lots. It reclaims stolen land. It teaches foraging and rainwater collection. It remembers that resistance is not just about destruction, but about growing something back.

7. Disrupting the Spectacle

Authoritarianism is theater—it survives on attention, on outrage, on the constant churn of crisis. Soft rebellion learns when to look away, when to starve the beast. It refuses to amplify propaganda, to take every bait, to let the regime dictate the rhythm of our days. It turns its gaze instead toward the work of healing, building, dreaming.

8. Turning Disinformation Into Openings

The coup thrives on disinformation, on turning reality itself into a battlefield. But soft rebellion doesn’t waste energy fighting ghosts. Instead of arguing in bad faith arenas, it uses moments of disinformation as openings—gently rerouting conversations toward truth, planting quiet seeds of doubt in false narratives. This looks like asking questions rather than attacking, offering a story rather than a statistic, introducing facts with the ease of someone handing over a cup of water instead of a hammer. It resists not through force, but through invitation—through giving people the tools to unspool their own illusions.

Soft rebellion is not passive. It is insurgent, but in a way that cannot be easily named or neutralized. It moves in whispers, in laughter, in unnoticed refusals. It weaves a world beneath the one being forced upon us—a world that, one day, will break through the cracks and bloom.”

—-Shannon Willis

Image: Holding a giant Sequoia Semperviren, Coastal Redwoods, Jedediah State Park, California, ©️Sarah West www.sarahwestfineart.com

[iukasylvie]

Selective Obliviousness in Fandom: When You Miss the Point That Hard

So can we talk about how fandoms will actively ignore the core themes of a show to preserve their comfort zone or feed their aesthetic preferences?

Because I'm still reeling over how people can watch a series like Kamen Rider Gavv, where:

Stomach Inc. is literally a drug empire built on colonial violence, abduction, and exploitation of a land's native people (humans)

The Granutes are portrayed as a sapient society, not a monolithic horde of predators

The Dark Treats are banned in Granute society, and even former addicts like Comel Amaruga get redemption arcs by acknowledging the horror of what they've done

And Shoma is the only voice of empathy and bridge between worlds, enduring abuse from a broken, power-hungry family.

...and then somehow come out of it going "haha funny pig-boy fanart because the Granutes see humans as animals."

Excuse me, what show did you watch?

This isn't just Gavv either. It happens across fandoms:

People vilify Tahomaru (Dororo 2019) for being "cruel to Hyakkimaru," completely ignoring that he's a teenage samurai heir caught in the pressures of feudal survival politics, manipulated by a warlord father.

People reduce Goro Akechi (Persona 5) to a "psycho rival" meme while skipping the part where he's the abandoned child of a politician, used and discarded by every adult around him.

People treat Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena) as a sainted victim and ignore how she's also a complex participant in the "system"—one that easily falls apart without her playing along—who actively betrays others like Utena Tenjou before eventually breaking free.

And the wildest part? Fandom loves to scream about "systemic oppression" until a story actually demands that they sit with uncomfortable questions about complicity, inherited trauma, or ideological grooming. Then it's all jokes, memes, and villain-simping.

You cannot consume media about systems of violence and then turn around and embrace the logic of the oppressor because it looks cooler or more aesthetically pleasing.

This isn't "dark academia." This is missing the entire point.

[tlonista]

I wish the conversation over Problematic Relationships In Fiction weren't so heavily framed around individual stories. Because I don't care about some random fucked-up novel, but I do feel like current romance media trends toward a recommendation-fueled monoculture with some frustratingly rigid gender norms, and a lot of "does fiction affect reality" discourse offers no way of talking about it.

Every time I dip my toe outside AO3 (Wattpad, Kindle Unlimited, Reddit, my BookTok experience is limited but that's the vibe I get there) I'm dismayed by how hard it is to find M/F romance that's not implicitly or explicitly about eroticized male-dominated power imbalance. Not just "he's a serial unaliver" dark romance, but the huge focus on hypermasculine heroes taking care of heroines and possessive alpha-male fated mates and nigh-inescapable trends like "good girl" praise-kink stuff.

Obviously this was always common in romance publishing, but a) the internet was supposed to support niches and b) I find significantly more diversity on AO3, so I think it can. It's just that no other platform or online community seems structured to do it. Instead a combination of recommendation feeds, word-of-mouth virality, and fast-fashion self-publishing surfaces infinite variations on a handful of the most broadly appealing industry blockbusters and buries everything else.

So instead of offering an alternative to old monolithic print publishing, online platforms seem even better at elevating male-domination kinks from "a fairly popular dynamic" to an inescapable default of What Romance Is. Even if you're fully aware it's a sexual fantasy, it gets downright hard to articulate desire in any other way, especially if you don't have a fully-formed picture of what you like. Unless you think sexuality simply isn't a "real" component of people's lives, I think this is a reasonable example of fiction in aggregate affecting reality in a negative way.

(It's also obviously not unique to romance lit. I just can't speak to stuff like video porn firsthand, and I don't see a ton of pushback on people criticizing the gender dynamics of Pornhub.)

But if the only available question is "is X book corrupting impressionable young women," then... no, that's silly. If anything, the aggregate system makes individual books feel bad in ways the authors probably didn't intend. Like, in Popular Kink Land, "your feminism says no but your body says yes" tropes are appealing for some women working through a particular kind of purity culture. In Inescapable Dynamic Land they take on this Gorean overtone where all women secretly want a man to take charge of them. The former is not my thing but fine; the latter feels like some kind of weird accidental gaslighting.

To the extent AO3 escapes this, I think it's for four reasons.

A focus on tags and chronological sorting, which helps surface non-popular stuff and gives readers more control

It's strictly non-commercial so there's less incentive to write for the broadest audience or fill the site with boilerplate sludge

It doesn't segregate categories like "romance for men", so there's less gerrymandering of cross-gender niches like femdom

The fourth reason, which is most interesting to me, is that fanfic ships (specifically not X-reader ships) create easily discoverable literary microgenres drawn from a huge range of media outside the tropey echo chamber of Romancelandia Proper.

In my experience it takes hours of scouring Reddit and Goodreads to find non-normative original romance, but one AO3 search and a few clicks to get from "I played Resident Evil and liked Ada and Leon's vibe" to a substantial microgenre about a badass woman making a cute guy stutter, or "I loved Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows" to a bunch of takes on a not-conventionally-masculine hero and a powerful but vulnerable heroine pining for each other. Since a decent number of fanfic authors also write non-fanfic, there's even a chance you'll find somebody who does original characters with a sensibility you like. I have no idea how you'd bring this system outside shipfic, but I'd love to see someone try.