#and like. i understand that really. my data and stuff is already probably being used without me even knowing it

[katierosefun]

officially deactivated my twitter account :(

[linawritestwst]

(a very late valentine's day special) how twst characters would fall in love with you!

okay, so when i created this blog last year, i didn't have much time to write something for valentine's day, but i thought that i should try and write something for it this year!

at first i wanted to write something like "how twst characters would confess their love for you", i wanted it to be a reference to the "how twst characters would react to your love confession" series i made back when i just created this blog and i still only have the heartslabyul, savanaclaw and octavinelle hcs. i am sorry. but to be honest, i didn't have a lot of ideas and it was hard to find inspiration, so i decided to go with something different. but who knows, maybe i'll actually write it one day! also i know that this idea is very basic and i'm sorry.

this post has all nrc students (except ortho) + rsa and nbc characters, so GET READY BECAUSE THIS IS GONNA BE A VERY LONG POST.

also i'm having some really bad internet problems rn and even though i can use mobile data, EDITING ON MY PHONE IS A PAIN. I CAN'T DO ANYTHING. and idk when wifi will start working again and i'll be able to use my computer again, so sorry if this post looks weird, has typos and stuff like that, I JUST WANT TO POST IT ALREADY. I'M SICK OF SEEING IT IN MY DRAFTS.

heartslabyul.

riddle rosehearts.

♡ he doesn't understand you at all. you should be afraid of him, you should actually hate him for what he did and how he acted earlier. he was the first to overblot in front of you, he's sure it was quite a traumatic memory from you. and it's not like he treated you better than he treated other nrc students, he was just as willing to punish you for any "misbehavior". so why.. why do you still want you and riddle to become closer? you simply don't think that riddle actually had bad intentions, he just genuinely thought that everything will be okay if he just follows the rules and makes others follow them. so.. you don't think he's a bad person or anything like that. just someone who has a lot of issues and doesn't know how to deal with them properly. and after you say that.. riddle starts feeling very strange.

♡ falling in love with you feels so sudden, riddle doesn't remember being this interested in you when he first met you. he has to admit that he even kind of.. looked down on you back then and didn't think you were that special. though the case of you being the only magicless student here really was special. he also was angry at you because of you being so close with ace and deuce.. but now, he feels different. as he learns more about you and starts getting used to your company, he realizes that he actually likes you a lot. he even admires you, because it must be hard to deal with so much stuff as someone who's magicless he's sorry for being the first to overblot btw. he's always here if you need any help.

♡ why did he fall in love with you? well, you're certainly a very smart, strong and kind person, but the main reason was.. he was just happy to be understood by someone. he didn't expect you out of all people to forgive him, but it sure was a nice surprise. you're always here to calm him down when he's close to using his unique magic or yelling at someone for breaking the rules again, however, you don't blame him for acting like that and you say that his feelings are valid, he just has to find a better way to express them and process them. so.. it probably just feels nice to be seen as someone other than a rose-red tyrant.

ace trappola.

♡ as someone who said some pretty bad things about you and grim when you first met.. wow, it feels embarrassing to admit that he has a crush on you now. imagine making fun of a magicless human and then falling in love with them. yeah, that's ace. so, how did it happen? he's not sure when exactly he got feelings for you, it just.. happened. you two became so close, he actually couldn't imagine spending a day without you. everything just feels so boring when you're not around. pranking you or showing off to you or just talking to you makes his day, even if it's just you going "ACE D:<", he loves seeing your reactions.. and maybe, he loves you.

♡ it's hard to notice him acting any different when he's in love with you, but if you pay closer attention, you can see him blushing after you praise him for something or you can notice him asking you to hang out with him more often. he also sometimes freezes for a moment when you call him your friend, it's almost like he's asking you ".. but are you sure you don't wanna be more than friends?". but right after that, he goes back to his usual behavior and he's surprisingly good at hiding his crush on you.

♡ falling in love with you feels fun and kinda sad at the same time, because even though ace tries so hard to act confident and he claims that you love him just as much, he's actually not sure if you love him back or not. he doesn't mind being seen only as a friend, being friends with you is cool, but also.. yeah, he wants more. and he's not sure if he's ready for a serious relationship, considering what he did in the past to that girl he used to date. he knows that he would never do that to you, because you're so much cooler than that girl and you're much more interesting, but he also doesn't want to let you down. but if you do love him back.. he will try his best to treat you right, though it doesn't mean that you will be safe from his teasing and his pranks.

deuce spade.

♡ out of all the heartslabyul boys, i imagine deuce being the one to get a crush on you earlier than all the others. you're just so nice and sweet and understanding.. you also didn't judge him after you heard about his past and even said that you're proud of him for trying to change and become a better person. after that, deuce couldn't get your words out of his head and became extremely loyal to you, he's always here if you need any help and he feels so happy when you praise him or want to spend time with him.

♡ it's very easy to notice him having a crush on you, honestly. he tries really hard to hide it, but he fails and ace laughs at him every time. he can't say anything properly when you compliment him or smile at him and he starts stuttering, giggling like an idiot or he simply runs away and ends up tripping and falling. it makes him even more cute though and you can give him more attention to get more reactions like that from him or you can pretend not to notice on purpose.

♡ falling in love with you feels like something completely new and that's understandable, deuce has never experienced a feeling like this before. and even though at first it was just a very huge crush, now it actually feels like something more deep, it's like.. he really is in love with you. spending the rest of his life with you sounds scary and he's not sure if he's ready for something like this, but when he imagines it, it makes him feel soft and even kind of excited. he will understand if you reject his feelings, he has not the best past, but if you say yes to him, he will try to become the perfect boyfriend for you. he already knew that he wants to become a better person for his mom, but now he has two people in his life that he wants to change for.

cater diamond.

♡ when cater first met you, he thought you were cute but.. that was it. he didn't think much of you, honestly. don't get him wrong, he thought you were very cute and he would love to be friends with you! but.. he really didn't think that he's gonna fall in love with you later. he just enjoyed hanging out with you, talking to you, he loved the way you smile, he loved the way you laugh and.. wait, that's just him thinking you're cute, right? but not, like, in that way, right? because cater doesn't think he's quite ready to admit that he has feelings for you.

♡ cater is not sure how exactly it happened and why he got a crush on you. it's like.. he just feels more safe around you. it's like he can actually show you his real self and you won't judge him. of course, he's still not sure that you would actually be okay with him acting like his real self and he doubts that you would even like that side of his.. but for some reason he still feels like he can trust you. so he may or may not drop a few hints that make you go "cater. dude. are you okay." no, y/n, he's not okay, this poor man needs a hug.

♡ falling in love with you feels exciting and terrifying at the same time. cater feels truly happy when he's with you, he manages to forget about his problems at least for some time and his smile looks a lot more sincere than usual. but he's also.. scared. he doesn't think that you will love him back once you find out about his real personality, maybe you will accept it, sure, but would you really want a boyfriend like that? honestly, he should be grateful for you wanting to spend time with him even when he's being his "fake" self. he shouldn't ask so much from you, he should thank you for even just being friends with him. so whenever cater hears you laugh at his jokes, he feels genuine happiness but only for a second before he remembers that you will most likely never love him as much as he loves you. or will you?..

trey clover.

♡ just like cater, trey thought you were a nice person, but he didn't think you were.. you know.. his future love or something like that. he thought you were cute and he was always there to suggest his help if you needed it, but he really just thought that you two are gonna be friends and that's all. okay, maybe you two will be close friends. like, very close friends. but that's it. trey gave you so much attention and he had a habit to get a little bit too worried about you for no reason at all, but he thought that you're just.. well.. another younger sibling figure to him (your actual age doesn't matter). why else would he care so much about you?

♡ but oh no. it looks like you're actually something more to him. you're not just another younger sibling figure going "trey, i need your help!! ><". he would seriously think that he just likes you platonically and if it wasn't for cater, he would never realize that he actually likes you romantically. so what if he blushes a bit when you compliment his baking. so what if he thinks about you so often that it distracts him from his vice dorm leader duties. so what if he imagined spending the rest of his life with you- okay. okay, he understands what cater means now. maybe he really is in love with you.

♡ falling in love with you feels confusing for sure, but it also feels soft and sweet. trey may be a local mom friend who's always here to help his underclassmen out, but he has no idea what to do with his own feelings. should he just confess to you already or should he wait a bit? wait, do you even love him back? he has so many questions but almost no answers. but if you do love him back, trey will most likely notice it eventually. he's a smart boy, he had no idea that he actually has romantic feelings for you, but if you have a crush on him, he will definitely find out about it and when he does, he might start teasing you even more often.

savanaclaw.

leona kingscholar.

♡ oh boy. this guy definitely didn't expect to fall in love with you. no, he didn't expect to even become friends with you. you were just a weak little herbivore to him, nothing special, nothing out of ordinary. you were very a bit annoying sometimes too. but when you started saying things like "i want to get to know you better" or "i want to talk to you more".. that's when leona got very confused, though he didn't show it. why would you say things like that? what do you even want from him? is it because he's a prince? oh well, sorry to disappoint you, but he's actually a younger- "i just want to know why you're so lazy all the time.".. okay, this wasn't the answer he expected. he will tell you to go away, but don't pay attention to that, he's actually more interested in you now.

♡ leona just can't understand why you're like this. why do you spend so much time with him? why can't you just let him nap in peace? he actually jokes about you having a crush on him once and he expects you to go "h-how can you say things like that so casually!..". but you manage to surprise him again. "well what if i do? what are you gonna do then, huh?" okay, maybe he did underestimate you a little. just a little bit. you're slowly becoming more and more interesting and he hates to admit that he wants to know more about you. why? well.. he wants to know why you're so annoying all the time.

♡ falling in love with you feels weird, but also surprisingly entertaining. leona never knows what you're gonna do next and for some reason he even finds it exciting. he somehow manages to act like a tsundere and flirt with you at the same time. yes, he will go "ugh, why do you have to ruin my day like this" whenever you step on his tail while he's asleep, but he also will say things that make other savanaclaw students think that he's about to confess his feelings for you OR you two are actually already dating. does he know that he's in love with you though?.. he will need some time, but he will eventually realize it. and he's not gonna be happy about it.

ruggie bucchi.

♡ ruggie didn't really pay much attention to you at first, but he has to say that you're really fun to mess with. he never gets bored of seeing your reactions and sometimes he would steal stuff from you just to make you look at him. he knows that it probably sounds weird, but don't worry, he definitely doesn't have a crush on you, haha.. hey, why are you being so kind to him? why do you cook/buy food for him? why do you keep asking him if he needs any help? ah, maybe you just want a favor from him? you want him to help you with something, don't you? why would you have any other reason- "i'm just worried about you, that's all." oh no. oh no he's about to catch feelings.

♡ your kindness scares ruggie a bit, but he also keeps wanting more. he doesn't understand your motives, he doesn't understand why you're so worried about him. you just say things like "oh, i thought you were tired from doing leona's job all day" or "i thought you looked tired, so i just want to help you out, if that's okay". they may sound like nothing special, but ruggie feels weird whenever he hears you say stuff like that. he just jokes about you being too pure for someone like him, but he's actually kind of serious about it. are you sure you want to be friends with him? or.. maybe you're actually in love with him? don't worry, he's just joking around~

♡ falling in love with you feels fun at first, but it slowly starts becoming more and more scary when ruggie realizes just how deep and strong his feelings are. it's not just a small crush, he really is in love with you. he can't stop thinking about you and not a day passes without him wanting to see you. it feels strange to be treated so well without any reason at all, but ruggie just can't say no to your kindness. even though he keeps trying to make it look like it's nothing serious and you're just friends, he's actually this close to crying because he feels like he will never have a chance to be with you and you will never love him as much as he loves you. why would you even have feelings for him anyway?

jack howl.

♡ savanaclaw boys wouldn't find you that special when they first meet you and jack is not an exception. he thought you still have a long way to go and you have to put more effort in what you do. he also thought you looked too weak and "fragile", so he made sure to remind you to train more often, if you can, or to just take better care of yourself. i-it's not like he's worried about you. it just bothers him that you always look so tired all the time and it doesn't look like you get enough sleep too..

♡ however, you manage to impress jack and he's surprised to find out just how hardworking you really are. no matter what happens or how hard your life in twisted wonderland may get, you still try to achieve your goals. sure, you may whine a bit and say that it's unfair for a magicless human like you to go through so much, but you still do what you have to, no matter how weak you look. jack sure finds you more impressive than leona and he doesn't even notice how fast he starts to admire you and even fall in love with you.

♡ falling in love with you doesn't feel like something special because jack isn't even aware of his own feelings at first. he just thinks you're very cool and he respects you a lot and wishes to help you whenever he can. he just always wants to be by your side and support you when you need it. you're much stronger than he thought you were when you two just met, but he still thinks that in a world like twisted wonderland.. you deserve to be protected. and he's more than willing to protect you from whatever life throws at you. he realizes that he's actually in love with you when he notices that he feels a bit weird when you're around. this feeling is warm, but also so confusing.. and whenever you say goodbye to him, he doesn't want you to leave. b-but that's just because he admires you a lot, right?

octavinelle.

azul ashengrotto.

♡ azul didn't think you'd be that useful to him at first. it's not like he can make a deal with you or take your magic.. but still, being friends with a ramshackle prefect might actually help him in the future. so yes, he will try to become closer with you anyway. he's sure it will be easy to make you trust him, he just needs to make you believe that you can rely on him and who wouldn't want to have a friend like azul in such a scary world, especially as a human who has no idea how twisted wonderland works?.. well, it's actually not as easy as azul thought it would be.

♡ sure, you do want to become friends with him, but whenever he tries to help you with whatever you're struggling with (for a price, of course) or he tries to make himself seem as a kind person who genuinely wants to help others, you simply go "thank you, but i'm fine".. what do you mean, you're fine, y/n, he knows what crowley makes you do, just ask azul for help already! but as time passes, azul starts to notice that he actually wants to help you not because he needs you to make a deal with him.. but just because he really does feel bad for you and he wants to make your job at least a bit easier.

♡ falling in love with you feels strange and unexpected, azul wasn't prepared for this at all. he didn't think that he would actually become so attached to you, you were supposed to be another student who he can manipulate, so why do you feel like one of the most important people in his life now? he doesn't think that it's love at first, him thinking of you as his actual friend is already too much for him.. but then his overblot happens. and you forgive him for everything. and you tell him that no matter what, you accept him and even though he still has some.. um.. not so good qualities to work on, you'll be there to help him and support him. okay, maybe he actually is in love with you.

jade leech.

♡ jade thought you were an interesting and unique person right when he met you for the first time, but you were just that: an interesting and unique person. nothing more, nothing less. he would love to know more about you though, so don't be surprised if he starts talking to you more often or asking you more questions. this man wants to study you in a lab, okay. oh, and even though he sure does seem suspicious, he actually doesn't have any ulterior motives, unlike azul. he just can't go "hey, i like you, let's be friends', no, he has to act like his usual self that sometimes seems more dangerous than floyd.

♡ he doesn't even notice falling in love with you, but he sure notices becoming more interested in you for some reason. he always wants to know what you're up to, he wants to know more about your interests and he's always here if you need someone to talk to, whatever the topic is. he only starts thinking more about his feelings for you when floyd mentions jade being "totally in love with you". jade thinks floyd is just joking at first, but then floyd says that he was serious and jade's crush on you is more obvious than he thinks. and the funny thing is that.. jade is surprisingly casual about it. he just goes "oh. so i have a crush on them. okay". he never felt like this before, so he's a little confused, but it's not like he's about to have a breakdown because he just realized he's been in love with you this whole time.

♡ falling in love with you feels sweet and exciting. jade just thought you were a fun person when he first met you, but now it's hard for him to imagine his day without you. you've made him feel emotions he has never/rarely felt before. it's so unusual for him to worry about you, laugh at your jokes or be angry at someone who ruined your day. and trust him, all of those emotions are sincere. he's not pretending, you really made him feel all of this and even though he's not used to feeling this way, he can't wait to find out what else you're going to make him feel.

floyd leech.

♡ just like his twin, floyd already thought you were interesting when he just met you. he always followed you everywhere, he kept pranking you just to see your reaction and he thought that you getting annoyed with him was cute. and he found you even more interesting after he realized that even though he kept messing with you, you still let him hang out with you and didn't ask him to leave. huh, so you actually like his company, shrimpy? well, he's glad to hear that~

♡ floyd's feelings for you don't feel like a crush at all at first. he just thinks you're cute and that's it, really. but for some reason, he really hates it when he has to leave or when you don't give him enough attention. sometimes he takes a break (he doesn't tell azul anything though) from his work at mostro lounge just to hang out with you and he feels bored whenever you're not around. he has no idea why he feels like this, but.. who knows, maybe he really does like you, hehe.

♡ falling in love with you feels fun and full of surprises. floyd has never felt this way before and even though this feeling can be kinda annoying sometimes and it doesn't go away, he wants your relationship to become deeper and he wants to have more fun with you. just being friends is not enough for him anymore. you became an irreplaceable and extremely important part of his world and he hopes you feel the same about him.

scarabia.

kalim al-asim.

♡ kalim is kinda oblivious when it comes to crushes.. no, he's very oblivious. he really does believe he just likes you as a friend and even though it's true at first, as time passes, literally anyone can see that kalim treats you even better than people who he calls his friends. and considering how kind and friendly he is, this guy basically never leaves you alone even for a second and you get gifts from him every single day. he's constantly trying to come up with ways to make you happy and he thinks you have the most beautiful smile in the whole world. but yes, he definitely doesn't have a crush on you <3

♡ you and kalim would most likely have that friends to lovers dynamic. he's very easy to get along with and even though his energetic personality may be overwhelming sometimes, if he sees that you're tired or sad, he will tone it down a bit and ask you what's wrong. if you're not doing so well, he will genuinely worry about you a lot and he's okay with doing anything to make you feel better. he doesn't understand why your happiness matters to him so much, but.. maybe he just doesn't like it when someone is sad. and when YOU are sad, he feels like it's the end of the world and he has to do something about it immediately.

♡ kalim almost doesn't notice falling in love with you. he just thinks your friendship is becoming stronger and that's it. it's okay if he wants to hug you for a little bit longer, that's just because you're his best friend! it's okay if he wants to hold hands with you, he just doesn't want you to get lost and he's worried about you! it's okay if he wants to kiss you- oh. uh.. oh, you know, he means it in a platonic way! it's not like friends can't kiss each other! but if he actually wants to be more than friends with you.. would you be okay with that? wait, what is he even supposed to do with his feelings? maybe he should ask jamil for advice..

jamil viper.

♡ jamil's case is actually even worse because if kalim at least knows that you two have a good relationship and that you are friends, jamil is like "?? idk who you are to me. can i trust you. can i call you my friend". he thought you were okay when he first met you, but didn't pay too much attention to you, though he certainly appreciated you being.. you know, a more "normal" person than most nrc students (especially kalim). he actually feels like he can rely on you, honestly. he won't talk to you too much though, who knows what you're really like jamil if you're hiding something it doesn't mean that everyone around you is like that

♡ jamil doesn't understand why he feels so strange around you. at first he feels like he can trust you, even though he still tries to stop himself and tells himself that you can easily stab him in the back. and why are you so nice to him? you're probably just trying to become friends because you think that having a close relationship with someone like him could be useful, right? well, he's not gonna fall for that. and stop praising him all the time already. he told you that he's just a vice dorm leader and his abilities are not that special- wait, why does he feel good after hearing your compliments. oh no. oh no, he doesn't want you to stop.

♡ falling in love with you feels scary and jamil doesn't want to admit that he sees you not only as a friend (though he won't tell you that), but also as someone who he loves and wants to be with. you actually listen to him, you give him love and attention that he always wanted and you recognize his talents, but you still think that they are not the only good things about him and jamil is also just a very good person who deserves to be loved. jamil doesn't feel like he's ready to open up to you just yet, but he really doesn't want to miss a chance to finally find someone who will care about him as much as he cares about them.

pomefiore.

vil schoenheit.

♡ your relationship with vil definitely had a rough start. he criticized you a lot, he told you to take better care of your appearance, health and all of that. you felt like this guy hates you and tried to avoid him as best as you could. however, you were wrong and even though vil still thought that you could do better and you have some things to work on, he didn't hate you. in fact, he thought you were an interesting person who has their own talents and abilities, but they have to work on them more so that they can achieve their goals faster. so yeah, he basically tried to motivate you, but he probably didn't do a very good job.

♡ other people can notice vil giving you quite a lot of attention but not in a good way. it means that he's especially harsh on you. most students start to agree with you and think that the guy hates you, but his vice dorm leader knows that it's not true at all. rook is sure that vil is being so rude just because he believes you're better than most nrc students and he wants you to reach your full potential. but wow, it really feels like vil is almost obsessed with you. rook mentions that vil almost never stops talking about you lately and vil says that it's not true- no, rook, don't even joke about vil having a crush on you.

♡ even though vil sure has a lot of braincells, he almost doesn't notice falling in love with you as well. he really thinks he's just mad at you for not "trying hard enough", but this guy actually cares about you a lot. it may seem like he's angry at you and he hates you, but he's actually just very worried. what do you mean your sleep schedule doesn't even exist. go to sleep already, don't you know what happens to your skin if you don't get enough rest?? no, he's not worried about your health, it's just. uh. anyway, what about your hair-

rook hunt.

♡ finally. finally someone who actually knows they have feelings for you. though it may take some time for rook to realize that he's in love with you and not just admiring your beauty, he still would understand his feelings for you earlier than most characters here. he understands how romance works better than them, okay. very chad behavior of him sure, he thinks all people are beautiful in their own way, but you feel a little bit more special to him. his heart beats faster around you and he finds it hard to take his eyes off you. he never felt like this before around other students or people in general.

♡ rook would be very affectionate with you, however, he would take his time and wouldn't confess his feelings for you that early. he wants his confession to feel unique and special, he has to be prepared for that moment! he also needs some time to learn more about you. he wants to get to know you better, he wants to know what kind of person you are, how you see the world and he hopes that this way he will be able to predict your reaction to his confession. but of course, he doesn't do it just to earn your trust, he really is curious and wants to know more. you're just so interesting to him, he wants to know what exactly made him fall in love with you this hard.

♡ falling in love with you feels like a fairytale. it's so magical and exciting, rook wishes he never stops feeling this way. you are everything to him, all of his thoughts are about you and he's not complaining. he may joke about you distracting him from everything else, but he's actually more than happy and he doesn't mind being obsessed with you at all. yes, he may still compliment other people's beauty and talents, but don't worry, he has eyes only for you and he's more loyal to you than you think he is.

epel felmier.

♡ unless you make fun of his height, call him cute too often or refuse to take him seriously, epel wouldn't mind your company at all. who knows, maybe you two can actually become friends. and you do become friends! how fun! epel didn't expect to get along with you so easily, but he's more than okay with it. he's glad to have someone he can trust enough to talk about his true feelings and show his true personality to. he's more open and honest with you and he feels like you would never judge him no matter what he does or says.

♡ this feeling slowly starts turning into deep love and affection for you, though epel doesn't seem to notice that and still thinks you're just a friend to him. but he does notice feeling a bit more anxious around you now. why? well, it's like.. he wants to become better for you. he wants to impress you. h-he doesn't have a reason for that, really. he just.. wants you to notice how great and talented he really is. he wants you to praise him and smile at hiim while saying that what he did was amazing. again, he doesn't have a reason for that. totally.

♡ falling in love with you feels sweet and bitter at the same time. epel feels safe when you're around and he feels like he can tell you anything, but he's also scared that you actually don't think he's that special. he does slowly start to realize he's in love with you and that makes him feel even more scared. he needs to become a better person for you, he needs to become stronger, he wants to become someone who can protect you, who can impress you and who you can rely on. so forgive him for taking some time to work on that, he promises that he will tell you the truth when he's ready.

ignihyde.

idia shroud.

♡ idia genuinely doesn't understand why you're so nice to him. it actually scares him a little and he never knows what to expect from you. you're not as extroverted as some other nrc students, like kalim for example, but you still always run to idia whenever you see him and try to talk to him more. what do you want from him? you're just doing this out of pity, aren't you? it's okay, you don't have to give him so much attention, idia loves being alone, also he has online friends, so it's not like he's a complete loner or anything.

♡ you still try to get to know him better. you just want to help idia get out of his shell and become more confident. you don't think that being an introvert is a bad thing at all, but you still think that idia should start socializing more anyway. and you're sure that idia wants to make more friends as well, he's just afraid of being rejected. no, idia, you don't think that all these people are normies, you're just scared of them and trying to come up with an excuse so that you don't have to talk to them.

♡ falling in love with you feels sudden and predictable at the same time. of course idia shroud would fall for a person who's always there to support him and genuinely wants to become friends with him. he's affection-starved, okay? he may say that you can be really annoying sometimes, but he actually waits for you to text him or say hi to him every single day and if for some reason you can't talk to him, he feels lost and.. sad, even? please, don't leave him alone.. he knows that he's most likely too lame or boring for you, but he can't stand the thought of you leaving him.

diasomnia.

malleus draconia.

♡ i wouldn't call it love at first sight, but right after malleus met you, he knew that you're gonna become someone special to him. you didn't know anything about him. you didn't know his real name, status, his real identity. you didn't care about his reputation and you simply thought he seemed like an interesting person to talk to. he also seemed a little lonely too and you really could use a friend in a world like this, so yeah, that's how all of it started. he thought that the nickname you gave him was cute too.

♡ malleus gets used to your company too quickly. in fact, he can't imagine what he would do if you suddenly disappeared or simply lost interest in him. he got used to your kindness, to your smile, to your laugh, to your affection. his world becomes more warm and fun when you're around. but of course, he doesn't want this relationship to be too one-sided. he would do anything to protect you, help you or simply make you smile. you deserve the same happiness that you give him.

♡ falling in love with you feels soft and sweet, but also.. scary. malleus feels so happy when you're around, whenever he wakes up, he immediately thinks of you. you're everything to him. so if he loses you.. he will lose everything. he can't let you leave him. of course, he knows that you come from a different world and twisted wonderland isn't your home. he knows that you will leave him sooner or later. but.. is it selfish of him to want you to stay here for as long as possible? maybe you don't even have to leave?

lilia vanrouge.

♡ lilia thought you were cute right when he first met you. your reactions to his sudden appearances were so funny, it was hard for him to stop surprising you like this. at first your relationship dynamic was just like that, lilia kept surprising/scaring you, you screamed, he laughed and asked you to not be mad at him, he just likes your reactions too much. but as he started learning more about you, he realized that there are so many things he likes about you and it's not just you being an adorable scaredy-cat.

♡ for some reason, even though you wouldn't be able to tell from his behavior, lilia feels very calm when you're around. it's like his thoughts about his past and everything that he had to go through during his very, VERY long life can finally give him a break when he's with you. he doesn't have to worry about that, he can just stay here in present. and actually, he likes staying in present much more now thanks to you. but you're so naive, so innocent, so fragile, lilia thinks it's cute but he's also extremely worried about you because of that. you weren't made for this world. no matter how much you get praised for your job as a prefect, twisted wonderland is still too much for someone like you.

♡ lilia falls in love with you slowly, but when it happens, it feels so overwhelming, lilia has no idea what to do. he knows that having a romantic relationship with you is probably not the best idea considering that you'll have to leave this world someday and even if you don't.. he also doesn't have much time left. but if it's possible, if there's at least a tiny chance of him being in a happy relationship with you, he doesn't want to miss that chance. he may not have much time left, but he would do anything to spend all of that time with you.

silver.

♡ you and silver become friends surprisingly quickly. he knows he can trust you to wake him up when he falls asleep again, even though you think he looks very cute when he's asleep and you want him to get enough rest. whenever silver blames himself for being too lazy or incompetent, you're always here to remind him that he's already doing his best and he doesn't have to be so harsh on himself. he definitely will become a great knight one day no matter what, you believe in him!

♡ your kind words and your support make silver enjoy hanging out with you too much. he lets you watch him train, he finds it relaxing to take a nap when you're there with him and you run your fingers through his hair while he's asleep. even though he seems like a chill guy, he's scared of letting his father and his master down, but he always can rely on you when doesn't feel confident enough and he needs someone to tell him that everything is gonna be fine and lilia and malleus are already proud of him. and you're proud of him too.

♡ falling in love with you feels like a dream that he doesn't want to wake up from. he never thought his life was that bad, but it surely got better thanks to you. he wants to thank you for everything you did for him, he wants to protect you from all the dangers of this world. he knows that he wanted to become a knight so that he can repay lilia and malleus, but now.. he wants to be your knight as well. no, please, don't worry about him, he genuinely wants to do it. you always give him motivation to keep going and it would be an honor for him to become someone who can always protect you.

sebek zigvolt.

♡ yeah, your relationship with sebek wouldn't be that good at first. you two would argue a lot, he would never stop calling you a "lowly human" even though he's a half-human himself. and if you even think of saying anything bad about malleus, that's it, he's this close to killing you on sight. and you did hate sebek for acting like that at first, but as time passed, for some reason you actually started finding it.. entertaining? you loved to make him angry on purpose and then you decided to start teasing and even flustering him. yes, you did flirt with him multiple times just to see what kind of reaction he would give you, so what?

♡ sebek doesn't know how to feel about you. he knows he's supposed to think you're weak and pathetic because, you know, you're a human, but.. why does he feel so weird when you throw your dumb pickup lines at him? and why he feels like he actually wants to be praised by you and he wants you to notice how talented he really is? he knows that you're most likely not being serious most of the time, but he really wants you to be serious for once. uh, he just wants to be praised by you because he deserves it and that's it. it doesn't mean he wants you to be serious when you flirt with him, haha..

♡ sebek really didn't want to fall in love with you and he didn't expect to catch feelings for someone like you, but it still happened. he just doesn't understand why you still hang out with him even though he doesn't treat you that well. and how is he supposed to react when you tease him like that? he knows he should stay serious, but for some reason he just can't control his emotions when he's around you even though he's never that good at controlling them. he also realizes that even though you're a human, you're capable of doing many things and.. ugh, he really doesn't want to say it, but you're actually just as good as some magic users. y-you still have a lot to work on though.

royal sword academy.

chenya.

♡ you and chenya first met during that one unbirthday party after riddle's overblot. you were surprised to find out that a guy from a different school (and a rival school too!) was able to get here so easily and didn't care what nrc students will think of him. and also you thought that the way he could easily appear and disappear as he pleases (or he could just stay as a floating head) was funny. so yes, this guy managed to pique your curiosity.

♡ chenya himself thought you were quite interesting and he was even more surprised when he found out that you came to rsa secretly from other students just to see him. haha, you really betrayed your own school like this for him! wow, y/n, that's something only a lovestruck person would do! but he has to admit, he likes you even more now. just what kind of person are you? you're so full of mysteries and chenya isn't sure if he wants to know all the answers or it would be more interesting to keep it this way.

♡ falling in love with you is fun and exciting. you keep spending more time with chenya no matter what other nrc students think and chenya likes to make jokes about stealing you from nrc students so that you never have to leave him. is he just joking though?.. well, it doesn't matter. what matters more is that you both always end up having so much fun and you feel so comfortable with each other that there's been multiple times when one of you was very close to kissing the other. and lately, it's been very hard for you both to control your feelings.

neige leblanche.

♡ when you first heard of neige, you couldn't believe that someone like that actually existed. i mean, someone more beautiful and popular than vil? is that even possible? and when you finally saw him for the first time.. you were a bit underwhelmed. yes, neige is definitely very pretty, he's adorable, actually, but.. is that really it? but when you actually meet each other, you find it surprising just how nice neige really is. he's very polite, he treats you with kindness and makes sure you're comfortable. oh no, he's so cute, you're about to fall in love-

♡ you actually feel kind of pathetic for getting a crush on neige. it's just.. so predictable, you're really not that special and you're not any better than his fans. you doubt that he will ever notice you, you're just a magicless human from a different world, you don't deserve to be with someone like him. but what you don't know is that neige fell in love with you right when he first saw you. not because of your appearance, even though he thinks you're really pretty, but because of your personality, the way you treat other people and stay kind and patient no matter what. it's very impressive for someone who was basically forced to stay in this world against their will.

♡ falling in love with you feels like neige's life turned into an actual romance movie, but this time he doesn't know anything about the plot, especially the ending. he sure hopes you two will get your happy ending though. neige loves his fans and he really doesn't want to make them sad, he knows that dating someone when he's this popular is not the best decision, but he really, really wants to be with you. this is what true love feels like to him.

noble bell college.

rollo flamme.

♡ you were a bit intimidated by rollo when you first met him, you just.. thought he was a bit scary, haha. but then you noticed just how kind he is to you and that even though he's polite to all nrc students, you're a special case and you certainly are his "favorite". he also was the first person who actually thought you didn't deserve to go through all of this and that it must be very scary and overwhelming for you to have no other choice but to stay in this world full of danger and.. magic. so yes, you got used to his kindness pretty quickly, even though you still had a feeling that something is not quite right.

♡ and yeah, it turned out that rollo really wasn't the best person to trust. he hated magic with all his heart and he wanted it to disappear. and it was hard for him to choose between his growing love for you and his hatred for magic, but then he managed to convince himself that he's doing all of this for your own good and in the end you'll have no other choice but to agree with him. after rollo is defeated, he expects you to hate him as much as others hate him, but to his shock.. you forgive him. you had to deal with six overblots, even though nrc students saved the day this time, it's not like they're much better than him. so yes, you think rollo still can change and you want to give him a second chance.

♡ after that, rollo's love for you becomes even stronger. he can't stop thinking about you and it's hard to tell if he's in love with you or he's obsessed with you. when you have to go back to nrc, it gets even worse and everything around rollo reminds him of you. he really wishes you could spend more time together and he wasn't so focused on his plan. he's gonna be honest, he doesn't really regret doing.. well, all that, but the fact that he could use that time to talk to you more makes him think that maybe.. maybe trying to steal everyone's magic wasn't a good idea. yes, he thinks so only because he could spend more time with you instead of taking everyone's powers. listen, he needs some time, he will change. probably. maybe.

[eliotlime]

November update post thing

Drawing of me watching short-form video content without sound vs one where I am lol

If you use short-form video platforms of any kind and would like to help me with my survey you can do so here! Though I'll probably be closing it sometime next week (2nd November 2024 ish) to collate the data for submission.

I've got a metric tonne of deadlines due next week but you know what it's blog update time!!

This is also not going to be scheduled to post because I usually write these on the 29th but I forgot! So it's getting posted now!!

💀 School..

Yeap as I've said I'm in school so that's still in progress, I have completely no idea what I'm doing everyday and as it turns out no time to worry about it either I got deadlines baby!!!

I mean in theory I understand but it's all a big question mark to me, like i need to be reassured like a nervous dog that I'm doing the right thing and what not

And because of that I'm real sorry about pushing the Abacelsus zine to the back burner, I actually got quite a lot of it done before I had to lock in for school of course.

And though I said I had a lot of sketches I didn't post well they were shittier than I liked them to be so I wanted to make it look nicer. Oh well dems the breaks.

Another screenie of my school work, they didn't really go into depth about how to specifically design stuff so it's basically me frankenstien-ing stuff I've seen existing and just trying my best lol

I mean.. overall it's funnnn... i guess... I do like projects but everyone in my class are adults with established jobs or goals. Even those who are around my age seem to know what they're aiming for too, feels like I'm an unemployed little sucker fumbling in the dark. Can be humiliating I won't lie, why is learning something new so embarrassing?

Aside from that I'm seeing people be so social online while studying too and it's almost mesmerizing, it's definitely survivor bias but those that can balance it are fascinating to me.

📖Anthology Update

Agh enough of that debbie downer bullshit, I'll tell you what I've also got due next week! That's right!! The drafts for my anthology!

Screenie of one of the panels I posted onto my ko-fi discord!

I'm not even half way done and it's due on the 6th of December. I'm beyond FUCKED. Anyway I can get it done by then but the school shit is sucking the life out of me through my ears.

☕ Ko-Fi Page

Deadlines aside I've also randomly launched my Ko-fi Membership page! I haven't quite had the time to properly promote it but it's there and I've been updating it every so often

I've got stuff up there already and comics of things that aren't polished (or sfw) enough for me to post. Especially if you're interested in my characters and would like to support me, here's a good hub to check all of it out!

The Ko-fi Discord updates the most frequently, basically every time I draw anything (Which is quite often!). The actual ko-fi gallery is only being updated every week to prevent spam.

Shout out to my one ko-fi member, wormfriend. Right now it's quite funny to have just the one but I definitely would like more so plz join!!! I promise I draw a lot!!!

🌯 Wrapping it up...

That's all I've got for you this month, real grind-y and uneventful but hey some moths are like that. I talked about opening my commissions again in December and I intend to keep that promise but as of yet the first week is not looking too hot haha. I'll consider it on the 7th but whuff it's real packed right now!

I don't have really anything else to say or add that isn't either

a) incredibly negative and self deprecating

or

b) cussing the shit out of disrespectful transphobic anonymous asks I've been getting

so I'm just going to end this hastily written blog update here and get back to work!

I leave you with this cool down drawing of a honda civic and my attempts at a motorcycle that can also hover in the air.

As always thank you so much for reading and I've been so busy I haven't even had time to work on my annual redraw that's been sitting in my folders gah! If you’d like to support me, here’s my ko-fi page again and my itchi.io & gumroad as well.

If you have any questions or just generally want to talk to me, my DMs and askbox is always open! Any professional enquires can be sent towards my email as well: eliotlime@gmail.com

XOXO, Stay weird!

-Eliot :)

[romicat]

So, I understand where people who are calling NYX racist are coming from, but I don't fully agree with that.

Instead, I think the problem is that it fails at hitting that same intersection of real life and fictionalized discrimination that both the Ms Marvel solo books and even the goddamn MCU did really well. That's something most X-Men titles fail to do despite many of their characters being marginalized minorities on top of being Mutants. It comes with the territory, X-Men has always been pretty bad at that stuff.

I don't think it's intentional, more it's misguided and toned deaf.

To break it down some: Sophie's problem with David at the start is that she thinks he's a sell out.

Mutants selling out to humans to make their own lives easier is a theme in some of the other X Books going on right now too. Becca refuses to leave her team and go home after her family pulls strings to get her out of jail, and instead throws herself into the thick of it, unwilling to put her own comfort first. And X-Factor is all about this.

^this is what Sophie is accusing David of.

Literally Kamala repeats it a few issues later for those that missed it. David for his part isn't actually doing that.

In a way he's trying to find his own answers to his own questions.

He can't jeopardize his position. He tries not to rock the boat too much, even as he's going out to paint some mutant graffiti. He takes Sophie's attacks and tries to *calmly* argue to his bosses against putting mutants in ghettos using data and facts.

Issue 1 is Sophie laying into David, Issue 4 is his rebuke, it's him deciding to risk his career to do what he feels is right. In Issue 4 he finds his own answer: "Xavier's dream wasn't his to burn."

----------------------

Yes, it sucks that they had to invent a whole new cousin for Kamala to be an anti-mutant member of the Truthseekers. They really didn't need to do that, but you can tell what it is that they were trying to do with that.

An amount of feminists and cisgender queer people have started to turn against trans people. For many years now there's been a growing movement of far right nationalist Hispanic immigrants in the states. One of the biggest voices in the far right is a Jewish man and another is an openly gay man and yet another is a black woman.

Kamala's cousin isn't a Muslim terrorist, he's a PoC who joined a far right extremist organization based off of the Proud Boys and the Guardian Angels. If ever they were to get their way with Mutants, the leopards would turn on him next. . . But you know if I were writing NYX I probably wouldn't have him bomb New York. That's kind of toned deaf. (Cough also Wilson literally introduced another Muslim villain who used explosions and talked a lot about purity first cough)

Despite what they were trying to do that entire subplot feels unnecessary. As does Kamala "learning" about mutant discrimination like she's some wide eyed ignorant little girl. I saw a comment on reddit that described it as "discrimination power scaling" and that basically hits the nail in the head.

Going back to one of my earlier point, X-Men books are really bad at that stuff. It's not something unique to NYX or its writers. It's the kind of stuff I expected would happen when Kamala was retconned as a mutant.

The Ms Marvel books deal with how all these different parts of Kamala's heritage and identity come together. How she's something wholly distinct from any one of them. Her identity is larger than the sum of her parts.

But in NYX, and the mass majority of X-Men comics really, a character's identity as a mutant supersedes anything else. At the core that's what's wrong with NYX.

Compare this to the MCU show where, yeah Damage Control would've gone after Kamala even if she wasn't visibly brown. But because she was, they racially profiled her. And because she was a Muslim they got a leg up since the FBI had already been watching Kamala's mosque long before that investigation. They went after Kamala for being a little reckless with her power as hard as they did Peter for potential murder.

Sorry for what might be another late night rant that might only make sense to me in my sleepy state. I'll try to clean up the text some time tomorrow.

I just had to get my thoughts out there because while I think NYX is bad, I don't think simply boiling it down to "Sophie is racist" or "the writers are racist" or "the characters are coming from a place of racism" is helpful. I understand why that's the immediate reaction a lot of people have. But I think the issues in NYX are in large part the issues with every X-Men series. . . Well, with the exception of Momoko's Demon Days and more recently maybe her run on Ultimate X-Men. I say maybe because we still need to see if it can stick the landing.

[badaziraphaletakes]

Hello!

Omg yes, thanks for bringing that out. The fact that Aziraphale was already aware of the dangers of Heaven as early as Before The Beginning is SO important for the story imo. It really bothers me that ppl's selective memory tends to forget that scene when analysing s2. It feels like they're cherry picking evidence to build a version of Aziraphale that fits their opinion instead of collecting all the data to try and understand his actions.

If you look closely, Before The Beginning and The Final Fifteen are parallels of each other up to some point: in the former, Crowley is saying that he can make a difference ("if I was the one in charge I'd like it if ppl asked questions", "hey boss this is a really terrible idea", "how much trouble can one get into for just asking a few questions") and Aziraphale is saying it's dangerous. In the latter, their roles are reversed, Aziraphale is saying they can make a difference and Crowley saying it's no use bc they're toxic (and it IS dangerous). It's funny bc Aziraphale is agreeing with angel!Crowley now, and Crowley is agreeing with cherub!Aziraphale now (showing once again that aziracrow are one and the same), but they're probably not seeing it.

Aziraphale never had this never-ending belief in Heaven ppl attribute to him (he probably thought that he should have that belief, even pretended to sometimes, but he didn't, his actions show us that he didn't). If anything, angel!Crowley trusted Heaven much more than Azi ever did, bc he was sure nothing bad would happen to him. BUT I also don't think he was naive for that, bc he was trying to make a positive change on things, and that's NEVER a stupid thing to do. He also didn't believe Heaven was always right just bc it's Heaven (his questions are evidence of that), even if he trusted them. For characters like Aziraphale and Crowley, in a situation like theirs, we must look at what they do, not at what they say.

Yes, it also bothers me that some ppl think he's always wanted to go back when in s1 we've seen that he was miserable when he was there, and not wanting to go back to Heaven was the reason for him to help stop Armageddon!! It makes no narrative sense. AND he said it in no uncertain terms "I don't want to go back to Heaven." He said it to the Metatron, but he was retelling this conversation to Crowley, so he said that in front of Crowley, with his own mouth. Crowley knows.

As for not loving Crowley as a demon, I absolutely agree with you and it's all part of the last thing you write about and I think it's an absolutely on point badass take, and it's:

You are SO DAMN RIGHT about this and it grinds my gears. We are supposed to analyse The Final Fifteen using the whole context of the story we got in the previous eleven and a half episodes! We're not meant to re-contextualise the rest of the show bc of The Final Fifteen? That makes no sense in this story?? Especially bc The Final Fifteen is full of biases. Us being heartbroken, the characters being triggered and emotional, the storytelling trying to hide stuff from us, the fact that they were threatened... There are Clues there, I'm sure, but we have to know the whole context of their relationship to understand them.

It's like trying to analyse your whole self when you're having a panic attack. It's not an accurate depiction of who you are. Analysing a couple using only one of their fights and erasing all of their good moments bc of it is pretty fucking dishonest to them.

Thanks so much for your take, I really, really loved your last paragraph and be sure I'll use it again to comment on other takes here 😁😁😁

[drunkonschadenfreude]

absolutely cringe that for my sleep to get better it has to get worse first. Still can't stay asleep with the CPAP and there's two main issues:

first up, in case I do fall asleep with the thing on I can see in the data it records that I have a good normal breathing rhythm with no pauses but without fail, within 20 minutes I wake up gasping for air even though there's not even a physiological need. Perfect breathing rhythms until the moment I wake up in a panic. Why does my brain panic and think it needs more oxygen? Who knows!

second and really fucked up body being cringefail issue is that the act of falling asleep is hellish with it right now and that's because, as I can once again see in the data, wearing the thing actually GIVES ME APNEAS while falling asleep.

Fun little excursion on sleep apnea: there are obstructive apneas, which is a 10+ second breathing pause that happens bc your throat just closes up (which can be a thing due to just being predisposed to it, a weight/body fat issue, enlarged tonsils, stuff like that). Then there are central apneas, which is when the breathing pauses even tho the throat doesn't close up. Now these are usually associated with more serious health issues like heart failure, strong opioid use and shit like that and happen when the body just doesn't trigger and coordinate the breathing the right way, which is a fucking scary thought by the way. They can also happen in people with obstructive apneas for reasons not really entirely settled yet, so they're not necessarily a sign of something actively short-term dangerous happening, but it's still concerning (and I also had those on top of obstructive apneas in the sleep lab by the way).

Now these central apneas can also happen for benign reasons, for example there are sleep-onset apneas which probably everybody already had, where the moment you drift into sleep your brain gets weird and doesn't go to regular breathing which jolts you awake. From my very limited medical understanding, this Just Happens Sometimes and is Normal.

And NOW we come back to my second issue. I'm getting central apneas out the wazoo when falling asleep with this thing. And once again, this is a thing that Can Just Happen. It's regular enough that it has been termed treatment-emergent central apneas. And they usually get better over time apparently, but STILL. you get a fucking device to stop you from not breathing at night and it makes the whole thing WORSE at first. And once again, there's no definitive answer why that happens. Maybe bc of a reflex when there's too much pressure on the lung, maybe it's cringefail body being stupid, who knows. What I know is that it's exhausting and scary.

[shazzbaa]

[sighs tiredly]

WELL.... obviously im not thrilled about the AI deal tumblrs involved in, or the fact that you have to opt-out manually rather than existing accounts being automatically opted out.

I understand the idea of leaving/deleting in protest, sending the message that this kind of behaviour will discourage people from putting content on your site. And I respect that, I don't think it's necessarily misguided. Here's my cohost, for people who'd like to find me elsewhere! At the same time, protest seems like really the only reason to do that -- like, I don't think doing so preserves your stuff. My art is likely in the machine already, not because automattic made a deal with midjourney, but because my tumblr posts come up on google image searches -- they are not hard to snag. AI companies have already pulled content that was freely accessible and put it into their machines without asking; that's like 80% of my problem with AI art in the first place!

So, like, if I go "I'm moving to my own site" or "I'm only posting on cohost from now on!!" then is my data or my work any safer, beyond security through obscurity? It's wrong to use my work without consent, but practically, I'm not gonna be able to track down every generative model that uses my data to train without asking. As much as "we're making a deal to give your data to an AI model" sucks, especially when it's done so sloppily..... a situation where there's an explicit contract in place where the AI company (theoretically) has to get your agreement to use your data IS... WEIRDLY, a tiny step closer to what I want to happen???? Like it's not... GOOD..... but I dunno if it's actually Worse Than It Was Before? IDK....... just turning it around in my brain while I try to decide and I can't make a strong case for packing it up atm

I'm not a professional artist rn, I'm just here for fun, and I've opted out all my blogs, so for now I'll probably stick around and just keep an eye on everything and see how things go. BUT YEAH, if you're skeedaddling and want somewhere else to follow me, my cohost is shazzbaa and I have a carrd over here that I try to keep updated, so feel free to find me there too!!

[niconiconwo]

Fast list for privacy minded people (I lied, it's long):

Change your DNS from the default ISP provisioned one to literally anything else that has decent reputation. CloudFlare is pretty good to bet on, and Firefox has toggles to use it instead of your system DNS. Alternatively if you don't hate Google, they have a DNS that is marginally an improvement from an ISP default but you're certainly being datamined by Big Letters and they are gleefully compliant warrants or not. There are ample public DNS servers out there unlike the next point.

That is fine for general browsing and making it difficult for your ISP to snoop on you, a step further is obfuscating your public IP which makes it difficult for third-parties to track and identify you. VPNs come in here. Free ones ought to be avoided unfortunately in all but the most milquetoast use-cases. Even then they are likely collecting your data so it's best to use a paid service from a well reputed provider that is specifically not based in a 14 Eyes or mandatory logging country. CyberGhostVPN has a lot of literature on this to reference.

Use HTTPS-forcing extensions and avoid HTTP-only websites. This will require all data in transit to be encrypted which makes it impossible for third-parties including your ISP to know exactly what you are doing. Some sites still have HTTP bits on otherwise HTTPS websites, make sure your extension or browser refuses to load these parts without your consent. However be mindful that the server you are talking to obviously will know what data you sent or requested and may or may not store or use it in some way. This info may be available in some privacy statement etc. Assume that your IP, connection details, etc are all logged and act accordingly.

Avoid Tor unless you are especially confident in your understanding. While it isn't 100% confirmed, it's been generally accepted that certain powers have indeed compromised swathes of the Tor network and have the ability to eventually identify you. The naive use of this tool will be more of a hindrance causing false security than it will help you if you are actually needing a list like this.

Likewise, do not assume encryption means anything. Don't buy into anything you don't understand enough to feel confident explaining to someone else. At most, if it isn't a absolute pain in the ass, find a reputable encrypted email provider or learn how to use OpenPGP to encrypt email communications. Side note to OpenPGP, it also is useful as a way to verify your communications are yours and is often used as such in mailing lists or for contributing to open software/validating packages. In a deep fake world this will become more important but isn't quite a privacy matter.

Generally speaking, fancy tools and technologies are worthless if you can't really use them and actually a hindrance to you. If you start with a zero privacy/zero security assumption as default and operate accordingly you'll already be far ahead of the curve with little added complexity or effort. Don't say stupid shit, don't do stupid shit, don't give out stupid shit. Never ever use public or work APs for personal or private browsing, I'd say don't even connect to public wifis at all even. Don't do personal stuff at work either, and try to keep work computers off your private network and personal devices off work networks. Mindset is probably by far more important than any of the other points. Techno neophytes and fetishists will never tell you that most of your privacy and security comes from your brain.

And since it won't let me do it my way.. 0. Security does not mean privacy, nor does privacy mean security. These are two separate goals. This is an important distinction to make.

[professorspork]

Hey, a little while ago, you reblogged that post about AI learning when people insert fics into AI text generators, and I wanted to offer good news and bad news: the good news is that AI learning models mostly don’t work like this. The publicly accessible text generator isn’t the whole learning model, it’s a single machine that the learning model generated. It won’t get fed directly back into the AI.

The BAD news is that there’s not really anything stopping them from saving that information separately to use later, and (much worse) anything that’s publicly available has probably already been scraped and saved. The good-in-this-context-but-depressing-overall news is that these models operate on the scale of billions of words, so, like. Idk. Individual fics ending up in a database mostly isn’t going to matter. That’s part of why the data-scraping isn’t something devs think about, ethically. This info is a paraphrase of another post I’ve seen going around saying the same thing, but I can personally corroborate it; before AI was a “crypto people hate when artists can earn a living” thing, I took some college courses on it and followed blogs about AI stuff for years. The last year or two of AI news has been really shitty :P It’s been really cool to me for a long time, but it is now clear that it’s even-more-vulnerable-than-usual to “capitalism uses every tool for oppression first” Knowing how it works is exhausting because anti-AI people are sometimes not all that much more accurate about how it actually works than the fervently pro-AI “I think chat-gpt is a person and human-generated art is dead” people, and then both of them skip talking about the more concrete problems like the “chat-gpt is propped up by slave labor” stuff.

I really appreciated this series of asks and wanted to make it available for all!

I think what we run into here is where like. A rhetorical device to invoke a sense of stakes and a bit of a guilt trip ("this is plagiarism because it feeds the AI" and its many permutations) can run up against misinformation (it's not literally becoming part of the AI's knowledge base, though as you noted it certainly COULD.) Because like

Where that post was coming from was someone being like "but why shouldn't I do this?" and the answerer resorting to "because it takes my work away from me" and this is still true in like, the rules of community and creativity if not necessarily in the hard lines of code. it's harder to articulate "this makes me uncomfortable because it's violated my ineffable sense of mutual belonging with and ownership of my own work, which I already felt on shaky ground on because it's fanwork but still FEEL with my WHOLE HEART" than it is to say "this concretely makes my words fuel for the machine" which I think people grok as a more sort of understandable breach of that social contract.

Which is why I like this post a lot because it gets at the WHY of why this is so perturbing and violating and isolating

Fandom was never meant to be a solo endeavor! when I write fic and put it out into the world, it's like echolocation. the words I put out are only half of what gives it shape and meaning to me-- the other half is the sound of it reverberating back to me as it bounces off the people it hits by way of comments, tags in reblogs, and DMs and they tell me their reactions and interpretations. that's what makes it a complete picture and not just screaming into the void.

to be removed from that process at all is a heartbreak to me; to have my words taken without my consent is insulting and misses the point and just. ultimately makes all of us that much more alone. which is to say that it's factually correct to say individual fics ending up in a database won't matter because it's probably already been scraped anyway because that's true for the AI and for the data. but individual fics DO matter insofar as like, these are choices people are making about what this hobby is and means and why they like it and what they think it's for and how they enjoy it, on a communal and social level, and THAT matters to me a great deal, in the same way that like, people now might end up getting videoed for a tiktok without their consent or whatever. it's about the erosion of privacy and respect.

but also yeah ChatGPT also runs thanks to exploited and underpaid workers, consumes horrific amounts of water in a time of increasing drought crisis and emits tons of carbon to boot.

[itsbenedict]

okay, so- the past three days have been pretty insane, hence no to-do lists. did not know hour-to-hour what in the hell i'd have to do next.

monday morning, there was a company meeting, and it was announced that we were being sold. this was not... the most surprising thing in the world, because about a month ago there was this sudden hasty push by the top to reorganize the business into distinct independent units that didn't depend on shared services. like, what else would the point of doing that be, if not to sell off pieces of the business? sure, they said that wasn't happening, but who the hell was fooled by that?

so i used to do most of my work on these projects for this one specific business unit, building and running a bunch of middleware API integrations for our learning management system. but my boss, who used to be in charge of the dev team generally, got assigned to this totally different unit- and she liked me enough that she pushed really hard to get me reassigned to her unit.

so i was already conflicted about that:

i really like my boss- she's really understanding of my need for flexibility to work on my side projects, she only cares that i get the work done (and even with many side projects, i still consistently exceed expectations and get a full-time workload done ahead of schedule), and she was pushing hard to get me a raise against upper management who'd taken to using covid austerity as an excuse to never give anyone any raises ever. and the team assigned to this unit didn't have any senior devs who could handle a big infrastructure transition, and i'd just become AWS certified, and without someone like me, my coworkers assigned to that unit would be in some hot water. plus, after the transition, maintaining a reduced suite of products would probably be easier day-to-day.

but on the other hand, all my projects in the other business unit, with the LMS- those are pretty vital, and the nature of the contracts with those clients necessitates frequent maintenance and changes. my code for those integrations is bad, for various reasons but mainly that there is no dev environment for testing changes. it's fundamentally about managing production data in databases we don't directly control, so every change has to be done very quickly and carefully, with no room for big refactors to clean things up (and risk breaking stuff). it's a mess, and no one in the other business unit is prepared to take it over. plus- i liked working directly with clients, doing work where if i did the work someone was appreciative of the work. it was motivating!

ultimately, i decided to trust my boss and follow her to the other business unit. we weren't completely splitting from the rest of the business- i'd still be able to train up someone else to take over my projects, we'd still have the shared customer accounts management software, and- crucially- i'd still have the boss who understood my needs and had no interest in squeezing value out of me.

so i went on vacation for a couple weeks right after committing to that decision- and then i came back on monday, and that day they announce we're being sold.

also that my boss is fired and being replaced by someone from the new company.

also that we have two months to completely disconnect all our products from shared service infrastructure and rebuild our own.

also no takesies-backsies, the acquisition agreement included terms that the former company not hire back any of the sold-off employees or even discuss the acquisition with them at all. no chance to react to the new information except to sign the new offer letter by close of business on Wednesday.

i was unhappy about this! can you tell???

so my first thought was- okay, this is bullshit. i still want to work for the LMS people, the LMS people still want me to work for them, there has to be a solve here. so i go to the guy in charge of that division, who also wants me to keep working there, and he says okay i'll have our lawyers look into it.

and then... he gets back to me sounding like a robot, "i am unable to discuss this further with you at this time", which is so obviously out of character for the guy that i can tell legal's thrown the book at him. i talk to legal myself- it's a dead end. they can't- they're unable to even talk about why they can't talk about it, because obviously this deal was engineered to prevent me from doing exactly what i'm trying to do here.

so i go at it from the other angle. president of the sold company, now a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of a nonprofit organization (is that even allowed???), i explain to him, hey, this is a mistake, i'm only here because my old boss really wanted me to be on her team, surely you can let me go continue doing my actual job?

nope.

so then i start playing hardball.

the salary they're offering me is, adjusted for inflation, less than the salary i was offered two years ago, which had come with the (entirely failed) non-promise that i'd be bumped up to a certain level very quickly after some formalities re: the employment structure. i explain, in detail, how upset i am with the entire state of affairs- and i threaten to walk, which i am allowed to do. i'm not required to sign their new contract- i'd need to go job-hunting, sure, but i have money in the bank, i can afford to do it, and i could definitely get a better deal somewhere else.

this is a tense situation! my old boss knew this team needed me- but they unceremoniously fired her while she was on vacation, so her opinion doesn't mean dirt to them apparently. it's unclear how vital i really am to this- they could maybe train up one of the other devs to handle the AWS stuff.

and on my side- if i walk, that's it. all that horrible messy code for the LMS stuff- i don't get two months to train someone else up and write documentation and do some housecleaning. i'm gone! my horrific dirty laundry (and hours and hours of regular maintenance work) gets handed off to some other dev who's totally unprepared for it, and that person inevitably puts a curse on my entire family line as retribution for me leaving them holding that intolerable bag. i don't actually want to walk, because then i end up the bad guy in the eyes of people i respect and care about.

(also i'd have to do a job hunt and that shit is so god damn annoying you have no idea you probably have some idea.)

so i tell the guy, look- i can do better. i'm basically starting over doing harder work at an unfamiliar company, and if i'm doing that anyway, why not do it for someone who'll pay me? if you don't give me X amount of money, i'm walking out, and now you don't have an infrastructure guy during the two-month window you have to migrate a shit-ton of infrastructure. i am a serious dude and you can't just fuck with me!

(and inside i'm like:

because oh god i am not a serious dude i am so easily fucked with what if i'm pushing my luck too hard)

and he lets me fuckin' stew. 5:00 on wednesday i need to have either signed a contract or not signed a contract, and he hedges and goes to talk with the higher-ups and makes no promises, and i have no idea whether it's because i scared him or if he's trying to work out how to replace me or what. all this negotiation has been eating my brain for the past couple days and it's coming down to the wire-

and then a couple hours before the deadline he gets back to me with a counteroffer. it's less than i was asking, because that's how negotiations work, but it is more than i was making when i was brought on, by a good 10k.

so now it's on to round two. i'm gonna stick around for this two-month period, make this transition work, clean up my mess and take care of things with my now ex-coworkers- and then if they haven't either proven their management is tolerable or given me a crystal-clear path to advancement, we're back to the standoff- except this time, they'll have a good idea of exactly what it is they stand to lose.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. okay. okay. yeah. so that's dealt with for the time being. i can breathe now. we'll see how it goes. fuck.

[aj-lenoire]

holy fucking shit i am losing my mind over the hbomberguy vaccine video

(yes i know it came out almost 2 years ago i only just got into his stuff alright)

like i knew andrew wakefield's original study was bullshit; when i did a module on autism in undergrad, one of the first things my professor said was that this study was bullshit—it was only done on 12 kids, he owned the patent for the seperate vaccines, it was later retracted for being total bullshit and wakefield wankfield lost his medical license; HE IS NO LONGER A DOCTOR

we were not told:

the study didn’t even FIND anything!! even after wankfield tweaked data, lied about what parents said, his conclusions were that he hadn’t found any actual evidence BUT he really thought there might be a link between the MMR vaccine and autism

(that, for those of you not in the know, is not how academia works, you need evidence)

some of the children in the study weren’t even autistic

of those 12 children, only about half of the parents were reported as saying they thought the MMR vaccine caused their kid’s autism (BASED OFF NOTHING BUT SPECULATION, I MIGHT ADD) and at least one of the fathers has said that wankfield straight-up lied about him saying that

wankfield was hired by a lawyer to ‘‘‘find’’’ evidence of autism so that lawyer could launch a class action lawsuit on behalf of like, 12 parents who thought their kids’ autism was caused by their MMR vaccinations

in the same journal edition the original paper was published, there was another paper by other doctors saying that wankfield’s assertions seemed deeply fishy

the parents were not able to give informed consent to their kids’ medical examinations because wankfield didn't list the risks of the procedures on the ‘consent’ forms

let me say that again

the parents were not able to give informed consent to their kids’ medical examinations because wankfield didn't list the risks of the procedures on the ‘consent’ forms

honestly, if you haven’t already, you should probably just watch HBomberGuy’s video. he cites all of his sources and there is so much more insane stuff i’m not even getting into here

but like, i get parents being scared of medical stuff they don’t fully understand, i get wanting nothing but the best for your kid because they’re your kid and you want to protect them, that is a noble and reasonable thing to want to do!!

however. the SLIGHTEST glimpse at this ‘‘‘study’’’ and it becomes painfully, dangerously clear that there is no and indeed never has been any link between vaccines and autism. by refusing to vaccinate your children, you are actually putting them at more risk and in more danger.

if there’s one thing people need to understand about vaccines, it’s that they weren’t created on a whim. measles, tetanus, polio, mumps, rubella, used to KILL hundreds if not thousands of people a year:

the vaccination rate in france for measles fell below 90% around 2008 and it caused an outbreak in the population that killed at least 10 people

the effects of long-COVID are only just becoming apparent, and even young and healthy people are getting seriously harmed by infection

herd immunity is about 95% vaccination in the population, and it is so, so crucially important that everyone who can get vaccinated does get vaccinated, because people with weakened immune systems (like very young or old people, or people undergoing chemotherapy) will be relying on herd immunity to stay safe. so it isn’t just your kid you’re putting at more risk, but other people’s kids, too

and, also, one final lil’ note:

EVEN IF VACCINES DID CAUSE AUTISM (and they don’t) IT IS MUCH BETTER FOR YOUR CHILD TO BE AUTISTIC THAN TO BE KILLED BY A COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE DISEASE

other informative links in addition to HBomberGuy's video below the cut:

[keystone8379]

keystone you should talk about something in regards to kirby fighters 2 community edition

Oh you're right I haven't done that yet! Regarding Kirby Fighters 2: Community Edition, there is a metric TON of stuff to talk about here. The dev team is some of the closest friends I've ever had. Smash Tactics is a thing because I was able to test the game over and over again with the members of the dev team. We've spent many hours sharing progressively crazier character ideas. We have created some warcrime moves. (or, well, more warcrime moves. KF2 already has plenty of those) I think, however, the best place to start for CE on the KF2 lore account is probably just a development history.

So it's late September, the year is 2020. Kirby Fighters 2 was leaked, got a trailer, and released all within the span of 24 hours. Soon after that, firubii (you might have seen her before) shows her findings from a Twitter datamine, that being evidence of a 3D Kirby game. "Wow! Awesome! I sure hope it's nothing like Battle Royale!" I say at the time. But I digress.

A few months pass and eventually fish gets in touch with Firubii for I believe checking hitboxes and frame data? We get a few things for some of the weirder moves from characters like Ninja, but the fact that a modder was among us got people excited. The prospect of a balance patch mod was an undeniably appealing one and could breathe new life (and a time) into the game. And one that Firubii was interested in.

March 16th, 2021 rolls around and Fish pings everyone saying that they had set up a poll for balance suggested for Firubii to implement. They also got an all star cast of top players and fighting game expects and colgate and me. because I "have lots of opinions." We're all put into a dev chat and poll responses start flowing in.

This poll was crazy. You had Ninja downplaying Mag like crazy. You had Celica Trying His Best. You had nonsense adjustment suggestions like "Not really that effective." But my favourite would have to be probably Qwertz saying to EVERY balance suggestion box "The game needs no balance changes, only quality of life changes."

So we all in the chat start throwing around ideas while not really getting anything done. This will be a running theme. About a month later I was like enough is enough and starting pinging people for proper balance discussions and locking in changes. There's a few notable things we did for v0.1, including making Sword a LOT faster, giving Hammer Palutena's Lightweight, (the s4 custom move) making Bandana Dee's spears stick into the ground for a few seconds, and making Cutter's boomerangs bounce off walls. That last one was our first real criminal change, as Cutter could effortlessly lock down the entire screen. I spent hours labbing counterplay only to find none and grew to despise the character and suggested massive overcorrections for v0.2. Oops.

Overall v0.1 was pretty good! It had some iffy stuff and launched with a Whip desync in game but other than that it was a success I think. It came out during July of 2021, a little under 4 months from the initial announcement. There's a few public tourneys with good turnouts but run via Parsec and Parsec makes me want to commit violent crimes. Progress on 0.2 also goes fairly well. There's some bad ideas in there like making MK not very fun but overall it's not so bad.

Until development just HALTS. To my understanding, I believe it was something personal Firubii was going through but I don't have all the info. Then again, I didn't ask. Like sure, I'd like to have the new CE versions as soon as possible, but ultimately the well being of the people actually making the mod is the top priority, it's why it's so irritating when people are jerks about CE's slow development. Obviously I want the new versions out. But we all have lives outside of this and sometimes other things need doing.

Eventually 0.2 gets out, at the start of Febuary 2022. It's solid but still has some things that irk me. After a few months, we ask for player feedback on overall balance and specific changes and get not many results. Granted, CE doesn't have much players so balance discussion is somewhat meaningless for a game this unexplored. I think 1.0 fixes all of the glaring flaws though.

At some point, once again, development freezes, and this one was rough. No communication from Firubii led to a lot of dooming, especially with how close we got to actually launching 1.0. We DO actually know why she vanished for so long this time, it's because her house caught fire. It didn't burn down don't worry! But this still caught us all SUPER off guard.

Anyway, CE resumed development and went for a little while, but hit a brick wall when trying to add training mode. I'm not an expert on the inner workings of KF2 but I know Firubii talked to Ryn (yes, the goku in strive Ryn) about it a little bit. I actually posted about this to my Threads account but who gives a shit about threads. That's more or less where we are now. It's been a while since the last tester build but what can you do.

There's also a few other things but there wasn't really a good place for them. Colgate thought it was a good idea to make a tierlist video for a game no one could play. It wasn't. I had to spend the days after that video doing damage control. There was a playlist where people could suggest songs to add to CE, but tbh it was more just an excuse to listen to music in VC while we could still do that. We were gonna move off Gamebanana because the site is run by N*zis but this was during the fire arc so didn't happen. AV also thought it'd be a good idea to shittalk CE and ask to join the dev team in the same day. There was also the time we had to rush out a trailer for Savi's Dream Display but I have a few criticisms about that which I'll share with him one day.

I think that's it? If you wanna download the mod I'll link it right here: https://gamebanana.com/mods/303920

[augerer]

@girderednerve replied to your post coming out on tumblr as someone whose taught "AI bootcamp" courses to middle school students AMA:

did they like it? what kinds of durable skills did you want them to walk away with? do you feel bullish on "AI"?

It was an extracurricular thing so the students were quite self-selecting and all were already interested in the topic or in doing well in the class. Probably what most interested me about the demographic of students taking the courses (they were online) was the number who were international students outside of the imperial core probably eventually looking to go abroad for college, like watching/participating in the cogs of brain drain.

I'm sure my perspective is influenced because my background is in statistics and not computer science. But I hope that they walked away with a greater understanding and familiarity with data and basic statistical concepts. Things like sample bias, types of data (categorical/quantitative/qualitative), correlation (and correlation not being causation), ways to plot and examine data. Lots of students weren't familiar before we started the course with like, what a csv file is/tabular data in general. I also tried to really emphasize that data doesn't appear in a vacuum and might not represent an "absolute truth" about the world and there are many many ways that data can become biased especially when its on topics where people's existing demographic biases are already influencing reality.

Maybe a bit tangential but there was a part of the course material that was teaching logistic regression using the example of lead pipes in flint, like, can you believe the water in this town was undrinkable until it got Fixed using the power of AI to Predict Where The Lead Pipes Would Be? it was definitely a trip to ask my students if they'd heard of the flint water crisis and none of them had. also obviously it was a trip for the course material to present the flint water crisis as something that got "fixed by AI". added in extra information for my students like, by the way this is actually still happening and was a major protest event especially due to the socioeconomic and racial demographics of flint.

Aside from that, python is a really useful general programming language so if any of the students go on to do any more CS stuff which is probably a decent chunk of them I'd hope that their coding problemsolving skills and familiarity with it would be improved.

do i feel bullish on "AI"? broad question. . . once again remember my disclaimer bias statement on how i have a stats degree but i definitely came away from after teaching classes on it feeling that a lot of machine learning is like if you repackaged statistics and replaced the theoretical/scientific aspects where you confirm that a certain model is appropriate for the data and test to see if it meets your assumptions with computational power via mass guessing and seeing if your mass guessing was accurate or not lol. as i mentioned in my tags i also really don't think things like linear regression which were getting taught as "AI" should be considered "ML" or "AI" anyways, but the larger issue there is that "AI" is a buzzy catchword that can really mean anything. i definitely think relatedly that there will be a bit of an AI bubble in that people are randomly applying AI to tasks that have no business getting done that way and they will eventually reap the pointlessness of these projects.

besides that though, i'm pretty frustrated with a lot of AI hysteria which assumes that anything that is labeled as "AI" must be evil/useless/bad and also which lacks any actual labor-based understanding of the evils of capitalism. . . like AI (as badly formed as I feel the term is) isn't just people writing chatGPT essays or whatever, it's also used for i.e. lots of cutting edge medical research. if insanely we are going to include "linear regression" as an AI thing that's probably half of social science research too. i occasionally use copilot or an LLM for my work which is in public health data affiliated with a university. last week i got driven batty by a post that was like conspiratorially speculating "spotify must have used AI for wrapped this year and thats why its so bad and also why it took a second longer to load, that was the ai generating everything behind the scenes." im saying this as someone who doesnt use spotify, 1) the ship on spotify using algorithms sailed like a decade ago, how do you think your weekly mixes are made? 2) like truly what is the alternative did you think that previously a guy from minnesota was doing your spotify wrapped for you ahead of time by hand like a fucking christmas elf and loading it personally into your account the night before so it would be ready for you? of course it did turned out that spotify had major layoffs so i think the culprit here is really understaffing.

like not to say that AI like can't have a deleterious effect on workers, like i literally know people who were fired through the logic that AI could be used to obviate their jobs. which usually turned out not to be true, but hasn't the goal of stretching more productivity from a single worker whether its effective or not been a central axiom of the capitalist project this whole time? i just don't think that this is spiritually different from retail ceos discovering that they could chronically understaff all of their stores.

[39oa]

hi! i’m slowly getting interested in f1 but i don’t really know how to start. so i was wondering if you had any content to recommend (except for the races of course) to get into the fandom, or anything else that could help, really.. thanks :)

oh anon i would love to help!!! are there any drivers/teams you're already particularly fond of or things you want to learn more about? i feel like it'd be easier to narrow down content if i understood your interests better since it's really something you can mold entirely to your own tastes and there are a million different ways to Enjoy and Consume the sport LOL. tbh i call myself an f1 fan but i mostly just rep oscar and in reality enjoy junior formulae more as a whole because i find the process of getting to f1 more intriguing than actually being in it... so it's really whatever you make of it! i'll try to divide my notes categorically so hopefully that helps a little bit but lmk if there's anything specific you're looking for :') and as always apologies in advance for my rambling 💔

getting into the actual sport

having a baseline understanding of the sport is obviously useful but i'm not sure how much you already know so i'll assume you can find super basic info about how seasons and points work! if you want to delve just a Bit further then:

i think chain bear is a decent youtube channel for easy explanations on some technical aspects and little things you may not have picked up on yet that will help when watching races

drive to survive is of course Not Great but it can be a nice and quick window into learning names and faces, even if a lot of it is ridiculously simplified or overexaggerated. it's basically like using duolingo for learning a new language in that it should be regarded as a semi-reliable supplemental material readily packaged for convenient consumption. if there are specific drivers you're interested in you can always pick and choose eps to consume decent Background Lore for, e.g. you can just watch s1e8 if you're a sharl fan

honestly not to shill for official f1 media but i do think f1tv is a pretty decent streaming platform when getting into the sport... definitely not saying you should subscribe to it (if it's even available in your country!) but just as an aside and maybe for future reference i do believe it's very friendly for new watchers because live races have different feeds that let you track race data (gaps, tyre usage, granular sector data during quali, etc.) and it also lets you switch between driver onboards which can be cool. moreover it has pre-race/post-race shows, technical analyses, archives of past seasons, all the f2/f3 content, documentaries, etc. so it's a pretty complete package! although a good amount of stuff gets x-posted to the official youtube channel so it's not a big deal

if you like podcasts, i think beyond the grid is cool because it has a fun variety of interviews (current drivers, retired drivers, tps, engineers, etc.) about both past and current events so you can basically seek out whatever you're interested in learning more about. otherwise i don't really listen to f1 podcasts regularly because i have weirdly low patience for them compared to hockey, but my friend told me that shift+f1 does yearly primers so that could be something useful to check out! (here's the 2023 season preview, i haven't checked it out but i thought i'd link anyway)

keeping up with news

obviously an important part of fandom is trying to keep up with current affairs, so if you haven't already then i would of course follow the f1 youtube channel + twitter account (or whatever other social media you use), f1 nowadays is extremely effective at marketing itself so it's not like hockey where you're fighting for your life waiting for the unfunniest puck personality video in existence to drop every 8 months. not that all f1 driver content is necessarily funny but there's probably a touch more investment in maintaining the illusion! anyway.

if you use reddit then r/formula1 is honestly probably the best aggregate source of f1 news and up-to-date info, i don't read everything there but it's pretty useful and easy to navigate. plus sometimes when i want to cause myself irreparable psychic damage from something that already pissed me off i can venture into a 500-comment section to get my blood boiling even more... 10/10 would recommend

other than that it's really like — follow official channels for any other drivers or teams you're fond of tbh, i do have a few motorsports journalists in my twitter list but since i respect the fact that some people don't enjoy endless news spam i'd maybe just recommend chris medland if you want a succinct live feed during races for the moment? f1 journalism is kind of godless so you don't *need* to follow that many reporters on a whole.

driver personality content

unfortunately i'll be showing my age when i say i don't have a tiktok account but now that i think about it that's probably a great source of information because it seems like f1 fandom is thriving over there!!! regardless the official f1 youtube does have a lot of little driver personality videos you can watch to get to know them more, and again i'd recommend checking out official team + driver channels for more tailored longform content. for ex just from very recent mcl fan pov they have an unboxed series with behind the scenes of select races and also loads of fun minigame content; every team should have at least SOMETHING to nibble on but certain teams are definitely more marketing-savvy than others (aka big 3 + mcl) 🥲

official f1: f1 has a yearly series called grill the grid with just mini quizzes that all the drivers compete in, some are less interesting but it's overall not bad content. the channel has a playlist for the 2021 gtgs which includes the iconic sebvettel world champion video LOL... actually if you sort the f1 channel by Most Viewed there are probably some fun classic videos in there (looking now it's a lot of crashes but you can ignore those lol), like press conference highlights and other convenient top 10 lists. for a random rec i was just nostalgically revisiting the 2019 rookie of the year video and it was getting to me a little bit!

sky sports f1 will also occasionally have good interview/inside content that you can check out, a lot of it is geolocked though (same with canal+ content in france). but for example i felt so much experiencing this random alex interview from last week... he is truly guy of this world

fan compilations: again if there are any drivers you like then you can just search up their names and there will be a ton of comps with Funny MomentsTM, sometimes it helps to just pick a guy and see how you feel about him as you consume content because your true interests will organically develop and surface eventually... sorry i feel like i'm writing a manifesto on fandom in general which is definitely not what you asked for LOL. but like twitch quartet (aka charles, george, alex, and lando) have a ton of silly streaming highlights you can find on youtube, lando has a gaming company called quadrant that he does videos with which can be uhhh hit or miss depending on how much you enjoy Lad Culture, etc...

really it's so easy to get hyperspecific with content once you pick a team or driver so i'm not sure what else to recommend on a general level but that's what i've got off the top of my head! fandom definitely skews a lot toward rb/merc/fer/mcl so it's easiest to consume both video content and fic for them, but if you're willing to go trawling for interviews then you can really get invested in anyone... fandom culture also varies so wildly depending on how you follow the sport and which drivers you invest in emotionally. my closest friend is a "chirlie" as they say and it really is an experience rife with organizational trauma and TFW You're Beholden To The Stranglehold Of Your Legacy so that's always a great pick if you're craving maximum narrative evisceration, or if you're in it for the fic then you could literally just get really into maxiel, but i'm basically chilling in my land of rookie stonks and sit down to watch non-mcl content maybe once a month.

honestly i only follow like 3.5 f1 fans on tumblr because i'm objectively terrified by the size of the fandom HLSHDFLKH so i mostly consume things in a vacuum and talk to like one friend 😭 but there loads of cool creators out here and you can always find a few gifmakers/fanartists/etc. and just follow the rabbit hole from there!!! best of luck and hope this helps >__<

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/21/2023

despite two sections clocking in at one sentence each, i had a lot of thoughts about a video game so this one is the normal creeping-up-on-2k-words length

listening

brian david gilbert's rgss must be presented without comment.

-

reading

earlier last year a regional gas station chain offered a whopping twenty five cents off per gallon. many terms and conditions applied. the one that made me scoff and delete the app right there at the pump was that location data had to be on at all times. not just when you were using the app or in a geofenced area around the gas stations, all the time. i hate people knowing where i am. i despise my data being sold. do not advertise to me. fuck off.

last year this made me briefly wonder about the loyalty programs i have with the regional supermarket chains, big y and stop & shop. i don't even want to think about whatever instacart was collecting on me much earlier in the pandemic. unfortunately i can choose not to drive as much but i really should not eat less and i do love a loss leader sale. and then i had to move again and forgot about it. earlier this week my favorite data scientists at The Markup dropped a...upsetting article on kroger's data practices, which can include in-store tracking, biometrics, facial recognition, and when shopping on kroger.com: "Third-party trackers send your product page views, search terms, and items that you have added to your shopping cart to Meta, Google, Bing, Pinterest, and Snapchat." did you know they have their own spinoff data company? for why, you might ask?

Experts told The Markup that companies that sell products in grocery stores don’t have much visibility into what happens after their items are placed on shelves. These brands want granular shopping data that only supermarkets have in order to gauge the success of the brands’ products. In recent years, this data has become harder to come by and therefore more valuable. 

i try very hard not to be be doom and gloom about tech bc reporting already tends toward the hysteric, and usually there is stuff i can do or a different option i can take to avoid a package of my data being sold and linked to other packages of my data. however, it is unrealistic to leave my phone at home and pay with cash, and financially i can't afford to opt out of these loyalty programs. sucks! sucks real bad! The Markup articles are pretty good at making the american senate take notice, but they are very slow and do not always fully understand tech abuses, bc their average age is sixty fuckin three.

-

watching

im ticking along in adventure time, in the middle of season six, the last real long season before we get down to twenty and fourteen episode seasons. there has been an amusing string of episodes where finn and jake aren't present or are only present briefly. this show will wander off to tell the most heartrending story about a character you will never see again, and this episode will stick with you for ten years.

ive also been looking at the fandom (i know) wiki page for each episode, bc why not, and it is a very funny fan wiki. a great deal of emphasis on animation errors with the caveats that maybe the miscolored arm of a princess in episode whatever actually means there's two princesses of that kingdom and we're only seeing the second one for the first time now. whenever the show references a classic work, the note in the wiki has the tone of "ugh this weird old thing why is my show making a joke about it". if an episode won an emmy (this show won fifteen emmys btw) it is usually the very last thing on the page bc that's not lore or errors or connections to other episodes why should you care??? either a very specific type of guy or a bunch of young teens wrote this. probably a bunch of young teens that grew up to be a very specific type of guy.

-

playing

thank u for all ur open world rpg recs, i think horizon zero dawn is the closest thing to what i want but i will probably end up playing Prey first (which has exactly one of the many qualities i want and is not open world even a little bit) bc it is a game i actually own. but im here to say i know im having a depressive episode when im listening to a lot of mother mother and playing f/allout 4. anyway we're back at it again in far harbor, which at least contains the most interesting storytelling in the game. can we all say hello to andre, bethesda's eleventh first gay character?

coming up on this drive-in theater with an incongruous neon heart looming out of the mist and spooky music plus screams from the horror movie trailer that's been playing on loop since the bombs dropped is SO fun. nothing on the mainland is quite this atmospheric. the fog really does heighten the fun of exploration. i know dead money did it first and better but this is less dire than dead money. usually.

also i forgot they're showing a western staring Legally Not Lee van Cleef if u switch the reels. this is not even getting into the delightful enemy encounter at this location bc i have a different location i want to talk about

GOD the MS Azalea (the one screenshot that isn't mine and is from the wiki) is so fun to run around. a rusted out, ripped in half cargo ship with five different sections (guardpost, top of ship, shipping container apartments on top of ship, inner sheltered harbor within ship and floating kitchen/pool table parlor, floating bar and clinic lashed to ship entered by swimming or elevator down from the top of the ship, sheltered harbor between two halves of the broken ship. each of these sections uses vertical space in interesting ways bc the ship is so fucking big. there is a straight up House underneath that boat. and everything feels very lived in, there's clutter and signs of life everywhere. these guys are just vibing with their little stores and their little apartments. a smarter game or a game with more time would have leaned into "you were sent to kill these guys by the townsfolk bc they felt threatened by an unaffiliated settlement" but alas. the trappers on the boat are just xp.

it is very funny that the lighthouse on the south end of the island refuses to load in properly, no matter where i am

this dlc, more than anything else in the game, actually does feel like my choices matter. i do the missions for the mariner and the barricade physically changes. i do enough fairly complex quest chains for enough of the town and they decide they like me enough to go build settlements. seeing the settlement fog condensers off in the distance from across the island feels very different from the mainland, where generally your settlement's buildings don't pop in until you're pretty fucking close.

i really don't care about how big the map is, i want the main game to be this dense and this bold in telling a stories, start to finish, that feel very interconnected and grounded to its location. i am feeling a little conflicted with my playtime, bc i gotta lotta fucking bones to pick with this game, but i am having fun with this dlc. part of it is "what if fallout/the rest of the game was good" and part of it is the depression making any scrap of delight feel weird. so it goes. february will end eventually.

-

making

did my taxes.

[earlgreytea68]

Okay, I really came over here to post about artificial intelligence and not algorithms but those are one and the same, really, and illustrate the shortcomings of artificial intelligence.

I had a couple of people ask me what I was writing about with artificial intelligence and the truth is that I don't know. I actually find it difficult to even read artificial intelligence discourse because it all just sounds absolutely terrifying to me wrapped up in "if you find it terrifying, it's because you're old." But this is also my field and I feel like to be a responsible scholar I should have coherent thoughts about artificial intelligence, and so I keep trying to make myself learn more. But I don't know if I am at all sensible or logical about AI or just an absolute mess.

So, anyway, I'm in the process of brainstorming what my thoughts are. I am THINKING initially that my approach isn't really going to be "is this good or bad" or "is this legal or illegal," because I think a lot of people who understand the tech much better than me are having those debates. What really caught my attention is how whenever people talk about the ChatGPT type of artificial intelligence, what they say is, "This is just what people do! People read stuff and then they take what they've learned from that stuff and create new stuff!" And yeeeees, absolutely, that is exactly what people do, but when people do that stuff, like, when fans consume a bunch of stuff and then make something new out of the object of their affection, traditionally the legal system has been like, "ewwwww, what lazy hacks." So suddenly we've all discovered that this is how people work? And we're all cool with it now because we've taught some computers to do it? Are we still going to be cool with it when people like fans do it? Or no? Like, that's what I think I kind of want to point out and highlight? Do we let machines get away with things we wouldn't let humans get away with? Is a machine even "like" a human in the first place? Why are we framing this discussion this way? Idk.

Other thoughts I've had while researching:

People analyzing AI tend to treat it VERY technically. Like, "Well, obviously using all these works for input isn't copyright infringement because technically speaking no copies remain because they get broken down into data points," blah blah blah. It's just VERY fine-toothed-comb, this kind of analysis.

On the one hand, people talking about AI are like, "This is just what humans do!" And on the other hand, people talking about AI are like, "This is a revolutionary tool that will change the world!" And, well...which is it? If this is just what humans already do, why is it so revolutionary? Presumably because of the speed and size and scale of it, that THAT'S what's revolutionary. But I also think it's wrong to be like, "AI is just REALLY FAST human creativity," because AI knows everything, and no human does, and at the same time I cannot shake the idea that humans are different from machines, but maybe that's me being hopelessly naive. BUT I think it's a different type of naivete to be like, "Exactly, humans are different from machines, so machines will never replace them!" because...there is literally nothing about modern society that makes me think every industry everywhere won't jump on the ability to replace workers with machines. (This might conflict with my "make people miserable" economic theory except no, depriving people of jobs they want will definitely make people miserable, which is why I suspect AI will only replace the jobs people actually want to do.)

Copyright law mostly only works if you presume that everyone is out to monetize all creativity at all times. Some people are like, "We don't need to modify existing copyright law, because AI will fit into our copyright law model," so that must assume that AI will also be inevitably exploitative. Which is probably right, let's be honest, this is a capitalist society we live in. But allowing people to break out of exploitative models (reach audiences with the gatekeepers of traditional publishing / music labels / movie studios) has caused humanity to explode with incredible amounts of creativity. So being like, "Let's just use AI to exploit things again" seems weird to me. At the same time, though, much of AI stuff right now is not necessarily exploitative and still seems to be harming artists, so maybe this thought of mine is going nowhere. But I feel this little nibble of suspicion that we'll land somewhere where AI will be legal / accessible as a tool only to those paying for it and thus extracting a price for the output in order to justify the cost.

People keep saying that artists will learn to use AI so it will all be fine. Idk how I feel about the best outcome we can imagine being "creative people will adjust the way they create to accommodate new machines." Like, some people will learn to use AI and they will love it and it will be exactly how they want to create, and that's great! But some people will never want to create using AI and we should make sure both ways are okay but we are generally not good as a society at doing stuff like that, so. And when people say stuff like this, they never say, "Some artists will adjust," they say, "Artists will adjust," with presumably that implication that artists who don't will no longer be considered artists.

I keep coming back to: Why did we ever need AI for creative purposes? Like, I get why we need AI to be chatbots or do algorithms or go through predictive data or all this other stuff which suffers from the human limitation of not being able to be 24/7 calculating all the human knowledge in the world. I guess I just don't understand what about creativity humans weren't handling well enough on their own, that we needed computers to do it for us. I saw someone say that AI is not going to be used to make our lives better. This goes back to my theory of capitalism: AI will not be used to replace the drudgery thoughtless tasks nobody wants to do. AI will be used to replace the creative work that people actually desperately want to do. I don't see any reason not to think that's true, Idk.

I also understand that there's no way that I talk about AI and don't sound like a hopelessly old person upset about the invention of photography or something, so I really try really, really hard to view it as positively as I can. I think that AI is probably incredibly useful for people who struggle with expressing themselves through words and so AI can help them with that, or struggle with drawing and so AI can help with that. And so I don't want to discount those positive aspects of AI, either. (At the same time, I thought about using AI to help me draw stuff, since I can't draw, and found the idea deeply odd, but that's probably because the reason I can't draw is because I'm not a visual thinker, period, and for that reason I just never felt confident that what the AI gave me would be anything that would come out of my own head? If that makes sense?)

I just feel like we're standing here on the precipice developing this incredibly powerful tool and we have a terrible track record with basically any incredibly powerful tool we have ever developed sigh.

So yeah, no coherent thoughts. Idk if I ever will have coherent thoughts lol. I might end up abandoning the project.