#also i don't really make content i create works ^-^'

[riansdiary]

"I HAVE IT ALL NOW" vaunt made using Chatgpt

Dearest Gentle Readers 💎

I have a little something different for you today but I hope this really helps you as much as it helped me. I was experimenting with Chatgpt when I thought of this idea. This vaunt or monologue helped me feel it real and understand that I already have it all now and it's done. I started tearing up as I read it naturally and it made me feel so amazing and it helped me accept that it's all here now. It also made me persist better in the new story.

I don't want you to read this like any other post. I want you to put yourself in the shoes of the version of you who has manifested everything they ever wanted. Act it out if you want to act it out as long as you do it the way that's most natural to you like how you naturally talk. Really internalize that it is already here and you're that version of yourself already. Feel the feeling and knowing that it's done and how it makes you feel.

Here is exactly what I asked it to generate for me. I went with the first one it gave me and then a more casual and simple version.

"Chatgpt make a law of assumption or manifesting cheat for me. Create a monologue for me that I would possibly say in the state of having my desires. Something that can bypass my mind into thinking it's already here because it is"

Here’s a monologue that could help you slip into the feeling of already having your desires. Imagine saying this to yourself in a calm, knowing tone, as if you’re recounting an experience you’ve lived through many times before:

“It’s amazing how effortlessly everything flows my way now. I’m always in the right place at the right time, and things work out better than I could’ve planned. My life has become a series of perfect moments, one after another. The people I meet, the opportunities that come my way—all of it aligns so naturally. I’m living proof that things I once dreamed of are real now, part of my everyday life.

I feel so deeply content and fulfilled. Everything I desire just shows up in ways that are better than I even imagined. I have this unshakable confidence now, knowing that my life unfolds exactly how I want it to, and I don’t need to chase anything. I radiate ease and joy, and others see it too. My energy is magnetic, drawing in the best experiences without me even trying.

“It’s crazy how everything I want just finds its way to me now. I barely even have to try—things just work out. I’m always in the right place at the right time, and it all just clicks so easily. Life feels smooth, like everything’s lined up perfectly for me.

I feel so calm and happy, I’ve already got everything I wanted. I know I deserve it, and I know it’s mine. People notice it too—they see how confident and happy I am. I don’t chase after anything; things just come to me.

Every day, I’m grateful for how good my life is. I have everything I wanted, and it feels amazing. I can trust that everything is working out in my favor, and it’s only getting better from here.”

[weaselandfriends]

What makes prose good unto itself (and not just as a delivery mechanism for plot/character)? Despite being an English major I never really grokked this, beyond basic advice like "use significant images."

I would break down prose quality into two major parts, each of which is very broad and can be achieved in many different ways.

Part 1: Is it good aesthetically?

This is very simple. Does the prose sound good? This is usually achieved via a lot of high school English test terms, stuff like assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme (internal or not), meter, repetition, etc. but can also be a factor of syntax and word choice: "dismal" is generally a more evocative word than "bad," for instance, though given context one of those words might sound better than the other. Bad is shorter, harsher, more abrupt, compared to dismal which has the S and L sounds that glide. Dismal also sounds more British, which comes with its own array of connotations that can affect how the reader reacts to the word. Compare "I pray you burn in the flames of eternal damnation" to "I hope you die in a fiery death."

Punctuation, sentence length, sentence structure all make some kind of change to the way a sentence reads. Parentheticals, abrupt stops, sentence fragments. They influence the aesthetic experience of reading the text, and the best prose wields all these tools (and more) strategically to create the greatest aesthetic impact. If someone is specifically trying to make their prose unobtrusive to the semantic content of plot and character being conveyed, they are surrendering aesthetic control.

Part 2: Does it contribute meaning?

It's one thing to craft a beautiful sentence, but if it's beautiful simply for the sake of being beautiful it can often come across as needlessly indulgent. (The purple prose criticism, though in my experience most truly purple prose is aesthetically bad.) The best prose is also contributing to the meaning of the work through its aesthetics. The most obvious way this is done is through tone. Tone is how a story feels, and in many ways is far more important to a work than plot or character. A horror story has a certain tone. A comedy has a certain tone. To an extent tone can be conveyed via plot (i.e., a story where people are murdered will innately have a different tone than one in which they are not), but most of the heavy lifting on this front is done by the prose: a dark, oppressive atmosphere will put a reader on edge, even before someone is slashed in the attic.

Beyond tone, prose can provide insight into character (especially in free-indirect discourse, AKA close third person, which is extremely popular in contemporary literature) or theme. Symbolism, metaphor, various other literary devices can be used to this effect, or even simply more mundane elements like sentence length. Cormac McCarthy wrote two novels about brutal, violent journeys through utter waste lands - Blood Meridian and The Road - but the vast differences in the prose of those two novels make starkly different statements about what that violence means. Blood Meridian being a work of excess, of hedonism, while The Road is a work of restraint, of emptiness, of lack. And this is even with both works doing many of the same of McCarthy's goofball punctuation gimmicks.

I don't think anything I said here is very deep or difficult to grasp, and in other artistic mediums correlated concepts are taken for granted. In film, if you want to convey information in the easiest-to-understand method, then just do shot-reverse shot as two characters talk. It's simple, basic, and if what the characters are saying is interesting, nobody will notice. But the best films use blocking, dynamic camera angles, and varied shot length and composition to subtly make statements about character, setting, tone, and theme, while also simply looking more aesthetically pleasing. That's what prose can do for a work of literature. And the truly best prose stylists, the people pushing the boundaries of what can be done with language, will come up with prose compositions that I would never even expect.

[nadas-dirthalen]

A Veilguard Achievement Icon Opened My Eyes on 15 Years of Lore... but Was I Right?

— PART ONE —

Hello again, friends and travellers. Now that I've beaten Dragon Age: the Veilguard, I wanted to go through all those 30,000 words of predictions that I wrote in the ~11 days leading up to its release. I'd seen an achievement icon that pieced together a lot of Dragon Age lore for me.

But, I hadn't played Veilguard. All I had was the footage from September 19, the achievement list, and anything else BioWare had released.

So... was I right? And if so, how much was I right about?

This is your warning: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Dragon Age: the Veilguard, and all Dragon Age content made before Veilguard.

(no, this screenshot isn't a spoiler, I just like it.)

Welcome Back for Round Two. >:)

Stating right off the bat: I have only played Dragon Age: the Veilguard 1.5 times and so this collection is very, very incomplete. There's no way for me to learn every codex before they're even all on the wiki. If I've missed something, let me know!!

I don't know how many parts this is going to have. This has been a very fun, but very sleep-deprived week. Expect no sensible organization here; we're letting the ADHD reign!

That said, here's what I'm going to attempt to do:

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

Early Signs Veilguard Added to My Theories

A Recap of My Grand Theory: Solas was the Blight's Beginning, and Mythal was Responsible

I really don't have space to go in depth on what amounted to 30,000 words of theorycrafting (which still boggles my mind, how did I do that and still find time to sleep). Instead, I'll link every post and make a bullet point list of what big guesses I made in each.

Part One: Solas was creating from spirit and lyrium, crafted in one of Mythal's lyrium coffins that we see both in the Temple of Solasan and Trespasser. That means that some part of him was part of a Titan, once. There were hints about this across all three preceding games, and these hints re-contextualize those games and their place in the Dragon Age narrative. The Titans are likely the Forgotten Ones, because Fen'Harel walked among both the Forgotten Ones and the Evanuris in his legends.

Part Two: The Mythal lullaby in Trespasser is the story of Solas' creation, specifically. Da'durgen'lin refers to 'little stone boy.' Solas' twice-used phrase Ar dirthan'as ir elgara, ma sula e'var vhenan is him speaking to lyrium itself, which he does both with Sera (ancient elvhen? andruil memory? people go into more depth on this than I ever do) and the Eye of Kethisca. Elven phrases and pieces of writing/song from everywhere point to Solas' backstory and are all possibly written/sung by Solas. The codices in the Temple of Solasan are also referencing his backstory. There is a larger narrative at work happening in the random elven literature we find, and it suggests a lot of things about the world.

Part Three: The Titans are definitely the Forgotten Ones—at least, part of them (more on that later). They have all been sundered. One part remains in the Abyss; the other in the Fade. The Fade, in fact, is every Titan's consciousness, all sundered by Fen'Harel. This is the "leg" that the wolf chewed off to "escape the trap": Solas' connection to ir sa tel'nal, isatunoll. This is why he loves the Fade: he's reconnecting with the consciousness he broke himself apart from. This is also why he has Titan/Stone magic. This is also why lyrium grows both in the Abyss and in the Fade.

• Oh, and spirits seem like they might be the thoughts of Titans.

Part Four: The Chant of Light tells the story of the Evanuris, from their manifestation as spirits to their mining of lyrium and war with the Titans to the Makers' creation of "everyone else." The archdemons and Magisters Sidereal are also explained in its verses. The Chant also suggests the Maker is a Titan whose mind and body are sundered, and that Andraste's hearing the "voice of the Maker" is her hearing the Titan's song.

Part Five: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 1/3: Mythal is known to have mined people from lyrium. Elgar'nan probably sundered spirits, notably Dirthamen and Falon'Din. Falon'Din seems to have wanted to attack Titans that "belonged" to other Evanuris to gain more "worshippers" (lyrium people; slaves) for himself.

Part Six: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 2/3: Sylaise probably made the Scaled Ones. June probably is responsible for not just lots of inventions, but the invention of the geas. Dirthamen's "secrets" are "thoughts" (spirits) forced into the bodies of his worshippers... and animals... and trees (AKA, he made a lot of abominations).

Part Seven: The tragedy of the Evanuris, part 3/3: the blight seems to be the Titans' defence against repeated attacks. Crucially, all of the Evanuris made the Titans this way... but Mythal made them that way first. The reason the Titans are "forgotten" now is because Mythal tried to erase all memory of them so that none would find the blight again. (She failed. Thanks, Andruil and Ghilan'nain).

Part Eight: The story of Solas, part 1/3: Solas came from an un-sundered world where both "mage magic" and "Stone magic" were the same thing. He was created in the Temple of Solasan, where "icy terror" became the first blighted Titan. Solas' existence was significant to the Evanuris because it suggested that one can survive the blight, and his moniker (the Dread Wolf) comes from the fact that he was a wolf (elven general) that came from the terror Titan (dread).

Part Nine: Since Solas' origin story is the start of the blight, then all of Solas' story from that point is not the story of just him, but the story of the blight. This signifies his place in Dragon Age's entire narrative, and also spells out what the overarching Point™ of the series is. Backed into a proverbial corner where none of the Evanuris would stop the things that angered the Titans, Solas' only choice was to sunder the Titans from their consciousness. He misses the Stone, also.

• He also imprisoned the Evanuris in Stone, something called "gangue" in Hissing Wastes codices.

• His ultimate goal is to return consciousness to the Titans, fixing the "wound" he made when the Veil went up.

Part Ten: The Inquisitor is special because their spirit is from the same Titan as Solas. The Breach is a threat because if the Veil comes down too soon, all the Titans will come back blighted and angry. The Veil disintegrating means all the Titans are waking anyway, little by little. The Dread Wolf shape is actually an aspect of Terror that can kill people with fear. The Evanuris who've been killed before have potentially had their spirits "recycled" and might be reincarnating into mortal people now. Oh, and a bunch of predictions on the companions, Solas/Mythal, etc, that I'll go over again down below.

How I Made My Predictions: A Study in Context and Pattern Recognition

I've had a lot of people ask how I... y'know. Did that. How one person could write 30,000 words of guesses in the week and a half before Veilguard, citing so many sources, and... not be that far off, probably.

Honestly the short version of this is, "I read the Chant of Light as it appears in World of Thedas, not with the canticles out of order like they are on the wiki, has anyone else done that?"

The longer version of this sounds even shorter, at first: I started playing Dragon Age games in March 2024, and I have ADHD.

Oh, and I'm a writer who's always been interested in game development, with dreams of maybe one day working in games or on video game IP. That helps shape my understanding of what games might need to accomplish, narratively, and the mechanisms they might use to accomplish those goals.

I was able to play all three games this summer. In fact, I finished Inquisition for the first time after Veilguard's first trailers this year, on June 26. What that means is that my first real experiences learning the finer lore of Dragon Age were all this year, and had the context of Veilguard's trailers. We knew we were getting a narrative followup to Trespasser, and so where did I center my focus? Trespasser. Everything I learned about Thedas, I tried to make sense in the context of Trespasser. Every piece of lore had to fit with Trespasser. Not just the environment of the Crossroads or the companions' banter, but what Trespasser was trying to teach us.

And most of its codices are about the Evanuris warring with the Titans. The Titans, who we'd just seen in Descent. The storytelling point of Trespasser was to make us question the nature and morality of Fen'Harel by giving us context about the Evanuris and their own history, then letting us ask for Solas' perspective on it.

That's the thing about Dragon Age. Very little of it is there pointlessly. Every level, every DLC, every codex, is there to teach you something. Even the smaller codices, which don't seem to mean anything tremendous, are there to teach you how to parse the voice of all the other codices. So even beyond the games, I asked myself: what is Tevinter Nights trying to teach me about how Thedas works? What is The Masked Empire teaching me? Is it the same? And what about World of Thedas, volumes 1 and 2, written from the perspective of Thedosian historians, deliberately written to misdirect the reader with the historians' biases?

Whatever I found had to work with what was promised in Veilguard: a controversial Solas. New understanding of the Evanuris. Harding's new magic. Regions of Thedas we never explored, and why those places would all matter.

Knowing the three act structure, as a writer, and knowing that ensemble casts all need to bring a puzzle piece of the grander theme into the main plot through their own personal quests, I had a vague skeleton of what I would need to find. The shape of the information I found would have to fit the world and the relationship dynamics advertised in the Veilguard. Origins would have to matter to the Veilguard; same with DA2; same with Inquisition. Despite the series being disconnected by featuring different leads, the worldbuilding is very much connected between instalments, and so Veilguard would have to be one logical step past everything that developed in Inquisition. (Nevermind a whole host of other criteria that honestly deserves its own post).

It's very hard to describe how the pattern recognition in some ADHD brains works. What I will say is... I noticed something. Every mistranslated elven codex where it deliberately says it has been mistranslated is an invitation for you, the player, to try and figure out what is correct. Everywhere that World of Thedas says that something must be preposterous to the historian narrating it is an invitation to ask yourself: could this be possible? How would that work?

Things like the linguistic overlaps between the elves and the dwarves are intentional. Words that are phonetically similar are far more often intentional than simple oversight. Every scrap of lore holds some significance.

Because in Thedas, every perspective is right, to some degree. Including the Chant of Light. Including ancient elvhenan. If you try and make them all reconcile with each other, and you've also done so in the context of the Veilguard, and you've also got ADHD and a near-photographic memory that is strongest with emotional memories and rules/systems? Well... You get me. You get 30,000 words of "one single picture of lyrium-spirit Solas cracked all of Thedas for me in the span of one mind-blown week while I power-read World of Thedas to check all my facts and essentially lived inside the Dragon Age wiki."

(AKA, you get Bellara in human form. Sorry, Bellara. It's rough out here. But now you, reader, know the reason that this blog was renamed nadas-dirthalen in late September—and why I, when I embraced my nonbinary identity, chose the name Lore for myself.)

And what was promised in Inquisition, as well as in Veilguard's marketing? The Evanuris, Titans, and the blight. They would all have to tie together—and they did.

What Did I Actually Get Right? (An Overview, Anyway)

I'm going to try and categorize this. Oh god. These are going to be such disorganized posts, but I want them done before much information comes out, so bear with me.

What I Got Right:

Solas and Mythal: Yep. He caused the blight; she made him do it. He created the Veil and wounded himself. They weren't romantic; they were trauma-bonded. She wasn't a paragon of good. They both tried to stop the blight anyway.

Sundered Spirits: The sweet, sweet vindication of learning that Dirthamen and Falon'Din were sundered all along. Thank you, BioWare. We also learned that this happened to the Titans (more on broader implications in the last category in this section).

Titan Stories In Elven: Bellara sang "Ir sa tel'nal Mythal las ma theneras" and my heart soared. :) My ego swelled. :) That's all the confirmation I need right now that I hit the nail on the head with the elven lullabies and Solas' backstory.

The Chant of Light Told the Story of the Evanuris: The demons that would be gods. We know now that all the Evanuris manifested physically from their original spirit forms. The Chant called it.

Mythal, Andruil, and Ghilan'nain's Roles in the Blight: Mythal created it, but wanted it sealed away; Andruil found it again; Ghilan'nain made it grow and grow.

Taash, a little? I hypothesized that fire-breathers might come from the Scaled Ones or otherwise have been engineered by an Evanuris. I know they were engineered for the purpose of war, but not by whom (I... think. Needs a replay to confirm).

Davrin: Yes! Davrin was the one who connected that Solas feels responsible for specifically the blight and conveyed that to the rest of the team. He questioned the nature of the Grey Wardens and helped to choose a path forward without any archdemons left.

Harding: Yup. Titan connection. Yup, our narrative path to finding out about angered Titans.

"Do We Win?/Do We Stop the Blight?" Well, in Solas' good ending, we do get what I thought we would: the Evanuris all gone, the Titans on a path to restoration.

What I Definitely Did Not Get Right:

VARRIC?!?! When I said, "If you know, you know. Lyrium dagger, dwarf. If you don't know, close your eyes and pretend you read nothing" — GUYS I THOUGHT VARRIC WOULD GET MAGIC HE REALLY HATED AND I CRIED LIKE A BABY WHEN I SAW WHAT HAPPENED :(

Lucanis: I really thought Spite would be a Forgotten One. However, it's stated a few times that Spite is not a run-of-the-mill demon, and Lucanis is not your average abomination. I wonder if there's banter I'm missing, or if something will happen with that in DA5. Poisoned fruit, and all that.

Emmrich: I really thought Emmrich would do world-changing "give all the spirits back to the Titans" stuff. I think my error with most of the companions is that I forgot how much information actually can feasibly fit into a game without it being 300 hours long or melting the brains of its players.

Neve: Nothin' happened with gangue mentions, or Archon mentions! I was way, way off with Neve.

The Eclipse: It did not have anything to do with the Bird Boy Evanuris™ :( But Elgar'nan moving the sun and moon was badass as hell, and I honestly loved Elgar'nan far more than even my highest expectations.

What I Haven't Gotten Right... YET:

Bellara….?????? Guys I thought there was a Dirthamen connection and they put a codex in the game that says specifically that Dirthamen held a fondness for frogs, same as Bellara. And then they gave her a brother who... ya know... was... presumed... dead... AKA, on the other side of the Veil... for a while... And then they gave that brother a sundered piece of Bellara's own vallaslin. John Epler, where are you going with this please I wanna KNOW, the Bird Boys™ occupy my mind at all hours. (But also? Surprise Forgotten One mention with Bellara, and surprise Anaris mention specifically, and I'm going to pat myself on the back for being so oddly focused on Anaris in my predictions.)

Chant of Light Confirmations: I actually have yet to see a single Chant of Light verse in Veilguard. I think they're saving that one for later, keeping it up their sleeves for the next games. The needle didn't move with confirming/denying anything in the Chant except for the Evanuris as spirits that manifested into physical shape and then sought to conquer the Titans.

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones: For a time, I thought they disproved me on this, showing Anaris as a spirit, the "eighth" while the "sixth and seventh" roamed free. Showing Anaris craving a body to wreak his evil (?) machinations upon the world. But then I got to thinking, and I realized: they never said the Forgotten Ones are spirits, they just showed one being a spirit. What did they say about spirits in general, or the Titans' relation to the Fade in general?

Titans-and-Fade Connection: I theorized that the Titans' consciousness is the Fade, and the Veil is what keeps them all sundered. I theorized that spirits are thoughts, either floating around in the Fade or held in lyrium. For a long time in Veilguard, I thought I was being disproven. Solas' memories don't say that the Veil sundered all Titans, and they don't say that Titans' consciousness is the Fade, either. But, as I went through Veilguard, I realized... they also didn't not say it. And that's when I knew.

I have to go digging again. And after 8.5 days, here's what I think I've got. It's a start, but a promising one.

Early Signs Veilguard Has Added to My Theories

Remember how I said that there are very few in things in Thedas that are there for no reason? Well, Veilguard has given us plenty of tie-ins to previous material already, just with the stuff I remember off-hand from the past week, no wiki entries to go by yet.

(Please bear in mind that I have had this game for 8 days and this is just barely scratching the surface of its content!)

Let me re-examine some of the things I mentioned above:

Titans-as-Forgotten-Ones

The Nadas Dirthalen's very first word is Sulahn'nehn. Remember how I said many things in Thedas are there intentionally, and that World of Thedas is a book made up of invitations to solve puzzles? This is no exception. World of Thedas states that, translated literally, this common word for "rejoice" actually means "sing again."

That word might be a rallying cry for the spirits of Titans who'd, I don't know... lost their song. A promise of plot to come, made a decade ago. Why else would they include that word, instead of anything more frequently used by characters/the fandom?

I also noticed: the Nadas Dirthalen looks to be contained in a lyrium crystal, specifically. We already know that lyrium is used to store memories! It may be that the Nadas Dirthalen, the inevitability of knowledge, was Anaris storing his knowledge and memories in an attempt to pre-empt the creation of the Veil. Nadas Dirthalen might be a promise: a promise that the Forgotten Ones will return to sing again, and that their knowledge and memories will guide them to victory.

But if I was going to hazard a guess that this is the case, I couldn't base my theory on just this line of dialogue.

Titans-and-Fade-Connection

First and foremost: Neve and a couple codices say that Solas' ritual to create the Veil went wrong. We all heard Solas cry out in pain at the moment of its creation!

Second: defeating one of the revenants, whose name is something like "The Slaughtered Pillars," made my ears perk up. I noticed in the combat with the Betrayal of Felassan that the dialogue lines are supposed to be Solas' regrets, given voice.

You wanna know what it says when you fight the Slaughtered Pillars?

"Light and song, stolen."

You wanna know what the Chant of Light refers to the Fade as? Three guesses. C'mon. :)))

That's right! Light! But why would the slaughtered pillars of the earth complain about their light AND song being stolen? Well—I'm guessing that their Light is the Fade; their consciousness. And without their consciousness, their dreams, all concept of isatunoll was lost to them.

When I heard this line, I threw out what I thought I had been told about the Forgotten Ones being spirits, not Titans. Now, I have a new idea (one that still needs verifying and much codex-reading): the Forgotten Ones are those sundered spirits that Solas severed from the Titans. The entire Fade being cut off from Thedas was an unintended consequence that hurt him as badly as it did the Titans he meant to put to sleep.

(We don't even know that he was in uthenera by choice, with how often he talks about being weakened.)

Suddenly, "Sing again," makes total sense as a rallying cry for Anaris and the Titans, both. I very much look forward to digging through the minutiae of every codex to see if I can find anything else that backs this up!

Terror/Horror Mentions

I need to really examine this one, ideally with the help of a wiki that doesn't quite exist yet for this game, to get all the exact lines. But I swear that fear is mentioned almost constantly in Solas' memories, and also a lot in conjunction with Anaris and with Harding's Titan.

I'm not letting go of my "Solas was crafted from Terror/Dread" theory. Not yet. Not yet.

Bellara and the Bird Boys™

I think BioWare's favourite game, at this point, is teasing us with sneaky little mentions of Dirthamen and Falon'Din. In Veilguard, we went to Zazikel's skeleton in the Cauldron. In Arlathan, owls were just... glowing. Everywhere. Why? I don't know! Rook also doesn't seem to know! But they mention it many times over, and that is always a cue for us to pay attention and ascertain why.

I don't know what Bellara's sneaky little connection to Dirthamen and Falon'Din could mean for the two sundered Evanuris. I don't know if it means that I'm right, and that Dirthamen escaped Fade Jail when Corypheus and the Magisters Sidereal entered the Black City. I don't know if it means that, when Dirthamen and Falon'Din died, their spirits fused back together (because... Mythal's didn't?).

I just know that this has worsened how I constantly search for the Bird Boys™ in everything. Something is happening here, I just need to figure out what.

What Do I Think This Means?

I think this means that BioWare are about to make good on their promise shown in the Poisoned Fruit post-credits scene. Dragon Age 5: Something Something Something Forgotten Ones, ooohhhh, spooky, Terror Terror Malice Fear Nightmare Time, Featuring Solas (reluctantly or gladly) Helping Heal the Titans. And did we mention that the Forgotten and the Forbidden Ones have always been more closely linked than most of the fanbase thought?

But I can only guess at that for now, and I've got some serious reading to do before I say anything more specific than that.

-----

As always, if you read this far, you're one of the real ones. This has been a jumbled mess of midnight thoughts, but I promise you this: I'm only just digging into Veilguard's finer workings. I'm only just starting to put its many pieces together.

And like every Dragon Age game, I can tell that there is something big lurking between the lines of every one. I just need to read something like 135 mementos and [redacted] codices from everywhere else several times over in order to figure out what it is.

But this is just Part One. I promise: the second it clicks for me, I'll write it all in a rambling frenzy for you, too.

It's still super up in the air, but I think for the next one, I might try and tackle What Dragon Age: the Veilguard Did Narratively—and What DA5's Story Will Likely Do to Follow. We'll see what happens to me 50, 100, or 200 codices from now. :)

[fyeahthaidramas]

(Following a few queries, relaunching this with clearer info.)

Welcome to the third of fyeahthaidramas' Christmas events!!

Sign Up closes on 17th November 2024 to give plenty of time for creating the gifts.

Please reblog this post to help spread the word! 💗

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The Event is open to all tumblr users

exchange day will be 21st December 2024.

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Fill in the form below the cut, and send it to this blog in an ask.

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Info post on the first event 12 Days of Thai Drama Appreciation here. Info post on the second event GMMTV Advent Challenge here.

Also tagging some people to help spread the word - thank you in advance if you reblog, it really helps! ❤️💚✨

@girlsloveupdates, @gunsatthaphan, @moonkhao, @thebroccolination, @usertoxicyaoi

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

ID: If you want to participate via a sideblog, let us know the @ here.

Five shows:

Five ships: Please specify if your ships are platonic.

Ten characters:

Three colours:

Nopes: If there are any tropes or themes etc. that give you the ick, or a format such as fanfic or fanvid that you just don't like, please use this section to make your gifter aware.

Maker Notes: If there is a particular format you want to work with, or can't work with, let me know here, so you can be matched to an appropriate giftee.

🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁

[emcscared-whumps]

WiJ 2023 - 17: What Inspires me to Create Whump Content?

WiJ 2023 Navigation Post

Well, I create whumpy works for one very simple reason

Myself :)

As you well know, I can get VERY picky about the whump I enjoy-- needs to have this, needs to have that, the already obscure whump type needs to have hyper-specific stupidly rare tropes in it...

And, well, at the time of creating Pete and Shifting Phases, I had just never come across anything that satisfies my thirst for whump, I barely even knew or understood that I had a taste for whump, or how I did it until I created my perfect whumpee who was by design extremely angsty, cute, and tragic.

I just knew I wanted a certain flavour of angst, and often in life, my solution to problems has been 'do it myself.' If I ever thought I could get or do the thing by any other means, I usually end up going, 'well, this sucks and is disappointing, I might as well have just done it myself, never mind, I'll forget ever asking again.'

So, when I have specific wants which no piece of media I was able to find satisfied (and I was already stupidly bad at finding media), I had this approach, a very literal, "Fine, I'll do it myself :)"

While technically, I was inspired by the likes of H2O and Aquamarine, probably also a bit of Cyber Girl and the 2010 Astro Boy movie, Vampire Knight, and maybe some other stuff I can't think of, especially anything else that had even a HINT of mer or fun non-human secret were my original inspirations, I was inspired more by the lack of what they did, where they fell short, and what they could have done with their lore.

They never put their characters (who were barely even my taste anyway ^-^') through straight up hell lmao

To summarise, what inspires me to create my whump works is the total lack of media that caters to my stupidly specific tastes, and my strong internal motivation fuelled by whumperflies to get that hyper-specific whump :) I'm addicted and obsessed, what can I say? And then ofc when I ramble on and on and on to all of you lovely people about my various ideas and plot bunnies <3 You listen to me and encourage me and I love u for it <3<3<3

I love the satisfaction and whumperflies for myself, and I love inflicting my blorbo upon anyone foolish (affectionate) enough to let me even speak to them <3 The sharing brings me joy :)

[mel-loly]

-Thank you to everyone who is still here liking, commenting and reblogging my content, even though I'm not posting much “fandom stuff” anymore, you're still here! And I really appreciate that.. (and that makes me so happy, that as I showed in the “comic”, it moves me, so- thank you, really!!) :]💛

Also- a tip: there are also many other blogs that don't post fandom stuff, but when they do, they get more likes and reblogs than the original/other content.. So also give love to those people who have your original content, reblog, like, comment, because that's what they need! Recognition for your original content! And I know you won't regret it, and it won't hurt you to do what I said! In fact, you will be doing good and giving such love that many wanted and deserve.

A big kiss/p and a hug! Even for those who only like it when I post fandom stuff, I still love you so much, and I won't stop making this type of content, ok? I just want to give more voice to what I have to give as original, because that's what makes me happy and well ^^

-Melissa, Designer.

[jeremiahthefroge]

yeah ok so I caved. Lit up another bowl, opened a new folder on my Obsidian vault, and I'm gonna rewatch the minecraft diaries and I'm going to take detailed notes on everything plot related I can, separated episode by episode, make observations, and then create a little personal wikipedia of my interpretations of the characters as they appear on the show.

I just did episode one to do what is essentially a "am I capable of watching this" test (I feared since it was 2016 youtube that I was into in the year 2016, a historically terrible year for me, that I would have some HEAVILY BIASED ideas on the quality of this show, and that if I rewatched I would ruin it for myself) and I honestly didn't have too hard of a time with the youtube of it all. Cringe is and has been dead, and I'm looking at this like a fun little excercise in studying how this piece of media tells the story it tells.

Speaking of, I find it so interesting how the machinima of Zenix and Garroth kicks us off and we then have Aphmau speaking as like... a comentary youtuber. The machinima sets up a plot that isn't even hinted more at in the episode, too, but I can see the first 10 or whatever episodes having all been recorded in 1 batch all at once and then cut up. I don't recall how characterized Aphmau gets in this whole thing.

And also I find Aphmau doing the voices for Garroth and Zenix so unironically fun and endears me to the series. Idk why but it made me smile!

I'll probably liveblog more of this experience bc I'm incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[gimmick-blog-bracket]

@hellsitegenetics

I love them

I didn't know I needed to know that the weed-smoking girlfriends post was genetically a wolf, but I did, and I do. Also puts great stuff on my dash.

it’s so fun to be scrolling unhinged posts and then boom. an organism!

so many moths‼ also, unexpected comedy with some of the matches

perfect blend of silly and informative, and makes for an excellent punchline at the end of a long post. puts creatures on my dash. literally what more could you ask for

It's a really unique blog concept and a lot of times the results are pretty funny. It's great when the sequence matches the post content too!

Creatures 👍

Finds beautiful creatures out of the mess of the hellsite

Offers finality AND gives us a creechur.

I love them. English speakers talk like moths

If this blog wins, they could run the text of the winning announcement, and determine the post's genus and species!

They're also very good about tagging the type of creature depicted in the results, so as long as you mute tags of creatures you don't want to see, it's a very fun time seeing iconic legacy posts (and new submissions) being reduced down to a string of letters and assigned a random species of fish or moth or something!

uhh it’s cool

BLAST

There are so many weird bugs in the world

Yippee!!

If, as Haldane said, God has an inordinate fondness for beetles, then surely this blog proves that Tumblr has an inordinate fondness for moths.

Top tier blog as a geneticist, I love seeing obscure organisms and MOTH

Admin got rate limited after trying to blast the bee movie

the knowledge of biology to pull this off (i have taken one biology class in my life) and also the work to find all the strings honestly deserves quite a bit of praise

This gimmick blog has it all: science, pictures of animals, interaction with the text of other peoples' posts, interesting information, and a unique and fun premise. As a biologist, I'm rooting for hellsitegenetics to reach the end and take the tournament, because it is truly a standout among gimmick blogs.

If they win, perhaps this blog too shall become a cool organism :3

@one-time-i-dreamt

people sometimes dont read the URL and think that the dream is something that actually happened. creates confusion and the funny

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

[dreadfutures]

#i'm sad to hear this because it doesn't reflect my own experience #i actually see more fic and art because i'm in discords with people who share those things and ALSO reblog #but my discord circles probably skew toward older tumblr users who reblog stuff - @anneapocalypse

#discord has me so much more connected to my fellow authors and fanartists#it's sad that it's not a universal experience - @inquisimer

This.

There are some servers where it really is a black hole: people will say "look at this" and it's just a piece of art with no source. Those servers suck tbf.

But.

Discord servers -- any community -- will be as crediting, and reciprocal, and engaged, as any other community, based on the people who build the culture in that community; new people joining communities see that culture and either conform with joy, or they get pushed to conform. And when that culture is one of mutual celebration of creativity, then that's what gets fostered in its participants--and it does leak out into other communities.

Every individual who asks for a source or for a link when someone shares their own or someone else's creativity -- that person who asks is spreading that culture of mutual interest. It becomes a norm, and your community will eventually thrive.

There are always people who will take without giving, whether the sharing/resharing/commenting culture is codified in a Rule or not. But Discord doesn't inherently make people less inclined to share, speak of, or comment on, art and fic. That's down to their own awareness and apathy toward that culture -- which everyone, on every platform, has been complaining about seeing a decrease in in recent years. "So much about fandom now is just pure absorption and no actual engagement" is definitely true.

But I have seen people get more brave about commenting, and more aware of how tumblr works with its reblogging feature, after joining our discords and seeing exactly why those things matter and why they make other people feel good and why it's worth them specifically reaching out and commenting/sharing when things cross their desk.

I'm really proud of the community culture that's been fostered in those servers. It's impossible to engage with everyone's works, but everyone makes an effort to make sure their interest and enthusiasm is known both to the author/artist directly (whether the artist/author is in the discord itself or not!), and to the larger internet where applicable.

This isn't directed to OP so much as it's directed to the 1 person who commented on their fic -- be the change, encourage that celebration in everyone, and encourage all your shy folks around you to actually tell the creators they like that they like them! it takes so few spoons to leave a comment or to reblog something, and those are acts of love.

we don't talk enough about discords place in the slow death of tumblr. and i say that as someone who uses and loves discord. but the seperation between reblogging and talking on discord def affected how we communicate here. something i see really often is people sharing gifs and art on discord and being like "how pretty is this!" and still never reblog it. or people will talk about a fic on discord or twitter and then the fic itself barely has comments on ao3, so the creators feel like no one is seeing their stuff, or worse, that no one cares. i remember being completely floored when one (1) person on ao3 said their entire server was talkin about my fic bc if they hadn't had commented that i would never know! so much abt fandom now is just pure absorption and no actual engagement.

[iamthedukeofurl]

I feel like the Hbomberguy plagiarism video has a lot of really good lessons about building an argument. Like, the thesis of the video isn't just "Plagiarism is rife on Youtube", although that point was certainly well made, it was specifically about James Somerton, who isn't mentioned until about halfway through the video. Before then, Hbomb goes through several creators who are already widely discredited as plagiarists, and in each section he introduces concepts that are later incorporated into the final takedown of Somerton, but each section also stands on it's own. Like, he starts with Filip, the game reviewer, which he uses to introduce the format of how he will discuss and expose plagiarists. Specifically, the graphic of displaying the source material while the plagiarist's voice plays, and marking up said source material every time the plagiarist changes some wording slightly. This is the method that Hbomb uses across the entire video. With Illuminaughtii, Hbomb introduces a few major concepts 1) The idea of Insufficient citation. Illuminaughtii "Cites" her sources by putting a plaintext pastebin link in her video descriptions with no indication of how each source was used. Technically, her source is CITED, but not in any relevant or useful way. She has a big list of stuff she read, and a random youtube link in there happens to be the source that she stole 90% of the video from. 2) He introduces the profit motive behind this approach. Putting out a lot of content very quickly is how one builds an audience, and therefore an income, out of making stuff on youtube. Plagiarism of this sort is a way to produce content very quickly and build a following. The Internet Historian section introduces two new concepts:

1) The behavior of an exposed plagiarist, taking down and reuploading videos with minor changes, awkwardly trying to insert credit without admitting guilt. 2) That the plagiarists are stealing not just research, but STYLE. Previous sections go over how the plagiarists are reusing the same words, but this section oozes over how much of the final product's quality was the result of how well the source material was written. TIH didn't just crib the notes from the Mentalfloss article, he created a video heavily dependent on the original author's skill as a writer. When TIH tried his own hand at presenting the same set of facts, it came out much worse. So that when the time comes for the Somerton takedown, Hbomb has already laid the groundwork to bring these concepts back. Somerton takes down and reuploads videos when he's caught, he declares this his video is "based on" work by somebody else without providing proper citation. He's not just stealing research done by somebody else, he's taking their insights and talent as a writer and regurgitating it as his own, and he's doing so to churn out a vast wall of content that he can financially benefit from, and he doesn't need to tell you why this is important, because he's already done so. He already convinced you that Illuminaughtii hiding a line in a pastebin didn't excuse her plagiarism, so you don't need to be told why Somerton saying his video is "Based On" somebody else's book doesn't excuse it.

[the-irrelevant-trumpeter]

i'm also getting sideblog urges AGAIN god i truly never learn from my mistakes

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art on the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is as much of a violation of copyright law as straight up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thing to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition and standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[corkinavoid]

I just found this in my notes

Apparently, I woke up at 5:23 in the morning, wrote it down, and went straight back to sleep. Trust my hyperfixated ass to still be making content even as I'm unconscious.

Anyways, yes,

DPxDC Trust Me, I'm an Engineer

Danny is half-ghost, but he is also a child of two mad scientists who spent the better part of their lives elbow deep in building all kinds of stuff out of all kinds of junk. Imagine what their kid, who loves science and engineering as much as they do, if not more, can accomplish?

When he moves to Gotham, he decides to leave all the heroics behind, hanging up his cape. Surely, he will be fine - Gotham has, like, what, six? seven? ten? vigilantes of its own. They don't need any more, and, besides, Danny is fairly certain he doesn't work that great in teams.

But there's just... so much crime happening.

Danny doesn't want to get involved, not really. He's retired. But he wants to help somehow!

So, he starts building unconventional devices for self-defense. A rubber duck that shoots lasers out of its eyes? A fork that turns into a shocker? A rice cooker that defends your home in case of an attack? A pen that transforms into a gas mask? You name it, he can build it.

It escalates quickly. Someone asks him to upgrade a baby carriage to a full impenetrable robot that will protect the baby inside it, and Danny decides why not. It's for safety. He installs countless safety measures so nothing could be triggered by mistake, and even though by the end the carriage doesn't look that much different, it proves effective in the first serious accident. In fact, it is so effective that it saves a total of five hostages, including the baby inside it, who didn't even cry because there are soundproof shields inside and recordings of the baby mother's voice.

Danny builds more of those carriages. Then he switches to home defenses. Then someone asks him to make brass knuckles that turn into a gauntlet shield in case of attack. Danny does a thorough check to make sure it won't fall into the wrong hands, but he ends up making it.

It doesn't take too much time for him to start making full-on robotic suits for people. Bulletproof, running on clean energy - Gotham has plenty of residue ectoplasm - with built-in defense mechanisms and stuff.

It is at this point that the Bats start taking a closer look at his inventions. Before that, they thought it was just some Rogue in the making, and they kept an eye on Danny, but never once has he created anything with the purpose of offense instead of defence, so they let it slide. But then Tim gets his hands on one of the suits and comes back to Bruce, nearly salivating over it.

A few weeks later, Danny gets an internship at WE. A year later, he is invited to work with the JL.

And that's when it hits him.

M e c h a s.

He can do real, actual mecha-suits for heroes. He can make them fit those heroes perfectly, enhancing their strengths and negating the weaknesses.

No alien invasion fucks with Earth anymore, because when they do, the JL just grabs their Danny Fenton Suits and whatever evil aliens were aiming to take control are annihilated in no time.

Maybe Tucker joins him along the way. Maybe Danny has an arms race with Lex Luthor, maybe Cyborg bonds with him over the mechanical rambling. What I'm saying is, cool robots for everyone!

[inazuma-fulgur]

Bigger, longer videos and essays are something we see disappearing and becoming unpopular more and more with "technological advances" of social media or just about anything.

Fast consumption without thinking, before you even get the chance to log off the next think gets shoved into your face

And like without thinking is something I wanna get at. If everything around you is short and flat and mostly self contained, impossible to compare to other things, impossible to utilize in other contexts and to compare other things amongst each other with. Basically if no nuanced, bigger picture thought and appropriate analytical skill get shown and taught to anyone anymore we will become unable or maybe just too distracted to critique anything in a meaningful way.

If nothing is connected anymore and everything becomes a unique completely individual occurrence there are no trends to criticize.

Even if things aren't unique that doesn't matter much if that is the only way someone can judge and understand the world, so they're unable to find trends and systematic issues. Because those concepts don't exist on short form content platforms.