#domain analysis

[freemicrotools]

Reverse IP Domain Checker - Improve Your SEO

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[optiwashere]

Please write your thoughts about the importance of Shadowheart for Shar/Selûne :D

I FEED on character analysis.

SO!!!! This got long as fuck and also morphed into what you asked + a general character interpretation.

I relied on a combination of 2nd, 3rd, and 5th edition D&D lore, R.A. Salvatore novels, and of course BG3 as sources. Shadowheart's characterization adds up the most coherently on the purely romance / "get her away from Shar" path, and that is what I'm using as a basis for this post. Even when you're playing an "evil" route, she behaves in ways that betray a lot of what I get into under the break. This post, however, is biased towards the "good" path of her personal quest for the sake of my sanity and a somewhat reasonable word count.

First, a preamble for people that are maybe less knowledgeable about Forgotten Realms lore.

One of the biggest characterizations of Shar and Selûne in the Forgotten Realms is that they are twin sides of the same thing: night. Night as an aesthetic is symbolic of, among other things: mysteries, being lost without guidance (such as in faith or purpose), and finding oneself when one reaches for the truth. I.e., reaching light from the moon, stars, or daybreak (which is itself a symbol as the natural conclusion of darkness being light for redemption following suffering, goodness defeating evil, finding faith, etc.)

Shar and Selûne are sisters that also share the Night domain in 3e, a sort of fulcrum they both work around — Shar as the "malevolent" darkness with Selûne as the "benevolent" night. There is even a recognized heresy called the Dark Moon heresy in both cults/religions that Shar and Selûne are actually the same goddess playing one gigantic trick on Faerûn (this comes from a 3.5e splatbook called Power of Faerûn) but it's been pushed time and time again that the two sisters are, in fact, two separate entities. But duality of divinity, and how worshipers interpret their god, is a theme we see played up a ton in BG3.

What we know about Shar is that she despises her sister. Loathes her. Not only does she loathe her, she tricked Selûne's followers during the Time of Troubles, about 140 years before BG3, into worshiping her instead of the Moonmaiden. The Time of Troubles was a period when gods walked the Realms, rather than tossing avatars around everywhere. This lead to the formation of a fanatical group of cultists that followed the real Selûne, called the Lunatics (I'm still proud of managing to reference them in a goddamn Explicit PWP fic)

Meanwhile, Selûne is seen as a calming force. She wars with her sister every single night, and does not like her one bit, but she does it as a means to protect others from her sister rather than as a spiteful game. She's not as omnipresent in people's lives, she is just a natural force to a lot of her followers.

How does any of this relate to Shadowheart? Spoiler stuff and the actual character analysis under the break.

We know that Shadowheart was a "chosen" of Selûne as a child, per her parents' dialogue under the House of Grief. However, it's important to note that most religions in Faerûn name potential clerics as "chosen" ones of gods and goddesses.

We know that, throughout the game, Shadowheart learns that she is being manipulated by the Lady of Loss to do acts that go against some sort of internalized moral code that Shadowheart has. We see her approval go up when you do good acts (as long as you ask for compensation, or if it's to help helpless people/animals) and we see her disapprove when you press her boundaries or act unjustly cruel. "Unjust" is left so vague because she does not behave at all according to how the vast majority of Sharrans behave. There are numerous other flags for approval/disapproval such as her enjoying playful chaos, or disliking when you're too trusting of other companions when you first meet them, but we'll focus on the first set I mentioned.

We also know that Shadowheart was continually subjected to memory erasure via the cult of Shar in Baldur's Gate. This gets mildly restored here and there via the tadpoles and Dame Aylin, but her memory is mostly gone. So this moral code is something ingrained in her somehow, because Sharrans don't have kindness training. There's another entire character analysis to be written about Viconia's role in this as it relates to her own character in Baldur's Gate 2, but let's ignore that for now.

In the cloister under the House of Grief, there is a note you can find that outlines the squad sent to find the artifact that protects everyone from the Absolute's domination. The squad has a leader, and it is not Shadowheart. She is listed as "healer" and the text before this explicitly states that the entire squad is expendable. None of them matter to Shar.

BUT!

Divine visitation by a goddess is incredibly rare. It usually only happens to high level clerics, which Shadowheart isn't really even at 12th-level, and to those that the goddess has an extreme, vested interest in. If you free the Nightsong/Dame Aylin instead of killing her, Shadowheart is wrenched out of the Material Plane and made to suffer for an indeterminate amount of time. That, plus literally meeting Shar in the conclusion to her personal question, is very odd given what we know about Shadowheart.

If we presume that Larian did their jobs, and I'm going to because I trust them, then there is an immediate dilemma presented here. Either Shadowheart matters to Shar (she is not expendable), or she is just another zealot (she is expendable.) There is no half-truth in that logic table that really works for Shar, she's an absurdly dogmatic goddess. See: literally any Sharran you encounter in BG3 that isn't Shadowheart. It's possible that the writer of the note didn't know what they were talking about, but I think that's a lazy out that doesn't hold water with the rest of the evidence.

So, which is it? This being the part where I'm mostly in interpretation territory, Shar views Shadowheart as the perfect puppet, a toy to needle at her sister, not because she is important at all as a person, but because she's a representation of Selûne that Shar can mold to suit her image as she did in the Time of Troubles. We hear that in the game when Shadowheart basically says that she was just a thing for Shar to use. She's beaten into (what Shar believes will be) submission for not becoming a Dark Justiciar, but it only serves to sever the tie between cleric and goddess.

Shadowheart is Shar's answering play to Selûne beating that trick from the Time of Troubles, and there will be another Shadowheart after her eventual death. Shadowheart is both incredibly important and utterly worthless to Shar in the same way that an abuser uses affection and trust to hurt their victims. Love bombs in the form of divine power, sending her on this important mission, and offering the title of Dark Justiciar are followed by pain when Shadowheart displeases her. As if, on a whim, all that supposed mutual respect could turn into non-consensual, extreme violence.

Shadowheart is an objectified opportunity for Shar to fuck with Selûne for the entirety of a single half-elf's lifespan (anywhere from 150-200 years) and nothing more. A plaything to discard when all is said and done after a microcosm of time where a goddess is concerned. Whatever Shadowheart thinks she's benefiting from with Shar, it's all a trick. It's a massive delusion with which she's been brainwashed into participating.

And deep down, deep deep way deep down, Shadowheart knows this even in Act One. She spouts random sayings and the sorts of 2edgy4me one-liners that you would expect from a somewhat goth-y, slightly sassy Stock Evil Cleric in a fantasy RPG. For a good portion of Act One, you wouldn't be wrong to assume she's extremely one note and a total zealot. That is, unless you know two things:

That Shar is a fucking menace in Faerûn, and nothing good ever comes naturally from her cult. Anyone that knows FR lore was probably like me when they first interacted with Shadowheart. I know I basically said, "What the fuck, you're not a Sharran lmao. Either Larian goofed hard, or something's fishy here."

That extraordinarily devout people tend not to babble in verse, prayer, and all that unless they are also trying to convince themselves to have more faith in a set of beliefs that they're not entirely sold on. This isn't 100% of the time, but it's something you see in people whose faith is not very strong. People who have ironclad faiths and hold consistent ideologies tend to rely more on personal interpretation of faith, for good or ill. You see this all over BG3 in the people that are more confident in their beliefs, as well. Isobel, Orin, and Z'rell are three wildly different angles on that, for example. It's really all over the game in the NPCs.

That second point is the more important one here. Shadowheart, in Act One, is constantly talking about her goddess. If she's not hiding the artifact from you, she's couching an event in concern over what Shar would think of how she behaved. Like she's still a scared child who doesn't know how to handle what's happening around her despite being completely capable in scenarios as hectic as melee combat with ogres. The difference shines bright as day if you play a follower of Selûne and push back on her beliefs, though you do of course get a lot of vitriol in the beginning. Even so, it's clear that Shadowheart knows something is off about Shar whenever confronted with actual Sharran activity/belief, but she's been brainwashed and abused so horrendously that she constantly tries to "correct" herself to appease her abuser.

Selûne, however, isn't really a "part" of Shadowheart's quest in the same way as Shar. The Moonmaiden is not an active participant, she is not a guiding hand or even a faint idea in Shadowheart's thought processes because of how intense the memory blending got for her. The most we ever really get of Selûne's opinion comes from external sources (pretty much entirely from Shadowheart's parents, Isobel, and Aylin when she's not PROCLAIMING DIVINE RIGHTS.) To the Moonmaiden, Shadowheart is really just another of her many, many children spread throughout the Realms. Yet, Shadowheart retains that sense of inherent goodness that Selûne instils in her followers.

Unlike the Lady of Loss, Selûne's indifference isn't hateful or spiteful at all. For Selûne, the ultimate goal of any of her followers is to find themselves. To illuminate who they are meant to be by moonlight. Two of her domains in 3rd edition are Protection and Travel, and in 5e she has Knowledge as well, while one of her "mantles" (the domain equivalent for psionics) is Freedom. She wants to give her followers the ability to freely tread whichever road will lead to self-actualization.

Selûne demands almost nothing of her own followers so long as they act according to the basic tenets of a traditionally Chaotic Good deity. She accepts flaws, faults, and failures in her clerics as much as she rewards strengths, virtues, and victories. There is no divine intervention from Selûne because she accepts Shadowheart intrinsically as long as Shadowheart finds herself. All it took for Selûne to take Shadowheart back after forty years of being a fanatical Sharran was saving one person, and trusting one of two people that we know she's let in for that forty years (the PC, as well as possibly Nocturne) — Selûne sees that she's an abuse victim at the heart of it all.

Side-note: Selûne's primary holy symbol is two eyes surrounded by stars. She is always a passive witness to her clerics' deeds. I don't think I need to get into that symbolism.

Whenever given the chance, Shadowheart values freedom incredibly highly. Even in someone she can take the entire game to warm up to, such as Lae'zel. Her dialogue after Lae'zel denounces Vlaakith speaks directly to this. It's seen repeatedly in her comments on other characters' personal quests such as Astarion, or Karlach, and with Lorroakan's intent on imprisoning Aylin in Act 3.

Once Shadowheart is pulled away from Shar's influence in the end of Act 2/early Act 3, she is... not a completely different person, but she is absolutely a calmer individual that also allows her emotions to surface more intensely. If you're romancing her by Act 2, she confesses that she wants to be with the PC (forever) IMMEDIATELY after being punished horrifically by Shar; she progresses the romance far faster once Shar is out of her brain; she cries, alone, in front of the PC if she chooses to listen to her parents and spare herself from Shar while also killing them. She's known this entire time that she's purposefully holding parts of herself back, and this is her immediate reaction to being set free.

Of course, it's a video game and things aren't always perfectly paced, especially considering the implementation of the Long Rest system. Much of this interpretation requires you to accept that.

After the small dialogue about Shar's intervention after the Gauntlet, the narrator comments that you're not sure if telling Shadowheart where her divine power now comes from will break her spirit forever. That's interesting, and it makes her almost manic change to "I have to be with this person forever" in the romance so utterly sad. Shadowheart is an almost textbook depiction of someone who struggles immensely with vulnerability and emotional openness due to childhood neglect and abuse. Even worse, she's been suffering that neglect and abuse for forty-plus years and she cannot remember what life was like before the time when she constantly yearned for the approval of her abuser. When she's set free and given the appropriate space to manage her feelings (all of the times she asks to be given space/asks the PC to respect her boundaries), support from friends and loved ones in the way Larian handled the camp crew's reactions to everyone's personal quests, and a purpose in life that extends beyond her abuser, she flourishes almost immediately.

To Selûne, Shadowheart is simply another person finding themselves in a world that's incredibly difficult to navigate. Under Shar's domination, Shadowheart will never be anything more than a useful puppet that dances happily whenever her goddess asks, pleased to be what she thinks is useful as she wears the false title of Dark Justiciar. With Selûne watching but not pushing, Shadowheart can be free of everything but her own choices, her own mistakes and victories. Her own person, freed from expectation.

P.S. "Breaking out of toxic thought patterns" is a common thread in the companion romances and quests. In a similar way to how Astarion uses sexuality to mask a part of himself in his romance, Shadowheart sees all this time she's spent holding herself back as an excuse to reverse course and accelerate ridiculously fast by comparison.

My point is, she is a U-Haul Lesbian.

[noxhominis]

I have to say this now, because Sherlock Holmes is trending and I am celebrating more than I did this Christmas. I watched Knives Out and Glass Onion and it made me realise something crucial about Holmes. He is fundamentally a good person. Does he sometimes behave a little bit like he doesn't care? Yeah. And does he solve cases because he wants the thrill and the mystery? Yep. But I would argue that he mainly solves cases because he wants to help people. His first case was when he helped his friend. Later we see multiple instances of this happening again and again (him being a genuinely good person). I have said it once and I will say it a million times— Sherlock Holmes is interesting because he is a smart guy who is NOT an asshole. He is (mostly) considerate to people, and their feelings. He takes cases to help people. The prime example that springs to mind is Copper Beeches, where he didn't think Violet Hunter had anything interesting to say about her case. But he still agreed to hear her out. And many times, he has done things for people, solved their mysteries without any money. Now you could say that he is not concerned about money at all, except we have seen him squeeze the king of Bohemia. He takes high profile cases to pay the bills, normal cases to solve puzzles, and the really simple mysteries because he wants to help people. I may have talked about this in another post and used the example of Twisted Lip, and Blue Carbuncle to say how he let criminals (of a sort) go solely based on his moral judgement.

The reason why I bring this up in the same breath as the Knives Out films is because of Benoit Blanc's character. That man is very polite unless he absolutely needs to be rude or has been driven to the ends of his patience. You know, like a normal person? And I loved how it just completely avoided the trope most modern mysteries, crime thrillers, and detective stories fall into. I like to call the trope "The Genius Asshole Syndrome". And it just sort of stigmatises really really smart people for not having social skills by twisting them into something mean and uncaring. And so many modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes fall into that. And yes, BBC is one of them. So do the Ritchie!verse movies. They make Sherlock Holmes act flippant towards other people, because such a genius cannot possibly care for the normal people. He cannot possibly appreciate other different versions of smart, because he is obviously a genius and a genius is always an asshole, and not empathetic at all. So it was really refreshing to see a detective who cared about his clients, and vulnerable people. It was nice to see a detective get angry on behalf of a defenceless person. And it was very nice to see a detective not wanting to fuck a female client who is maybe half his age. (Plus the gay thing worked out great). I really feel like we need more genuinely good, kind, and helpful people in fiction, and now that Sherlock Holmes is completely in public domain, we can hopefully get something that is faithful to his actual character instead of the two dimensional grim dark detective dynamic. And maybe modern media can give us other detectives who are actually human, and have all basic human emotions? Just a thought.

[arggghhhsstuff]

something something the life of hazel levesque is an endless circle of life and death.

born the daughter of a king god and a woman who asked for too much in 1930s America. an half-human black girl in Alaska, a cursed child with a monster for a mother.

(the curse was a gift, a protection. an assurance. it was ripped from the hands of a God by a greedy woman; this is why it became a curse.)

the death of her mother, replaced with something older. colder.

mother at thirteen, the creator of something ugly and ancient and evil. a force in the ground beneath her, growing, feeding on her life force.

dead at thirteen, killing the monster she gave life too. killing her mother and the monster she hosted inside. killing herself. but still refusing eternal paradise for the woman who once was her mother, because she still loved her. still needed her.

re-born decades later by mistake, because a boy was looking for his sister and found her instead. he gave her a second chance.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

the magnus archives was kind of insane for saying "fear, in its truest form, is a place" we should talk about that more

[bleue-flora]

There has been a lot of discussion regarding c!Quackity, c!Tommy and c!Dream recently, a good portion stemming from the recent video circling around, where it is depicted that c!Tommy not only knew of c!Quackity’s torture but approved.

But while I could write an essay about it (ok yea I did…but) instead I want to shift the focus a bit, away from the same debates we keep having year after year. Because I think we’ve become too focused on the characters themselves over the audience's perception of them and too focused on morality, justification, and right and wrong in a story where everyone is morally questionable. Because at the end of the day it isn’t whether c!Dream or c!Tommy were actually right or justified, it is about - Who you root for and why. It is about (you) the audience's perception of the characters, not the characters’ perceptions of each other. Sure, c!Tommy himself feels justified in hurting c!Dream but do you believe he was.

With that thought in mind I found myself reading a 24 page research paper last night on a psychological study that looked at: What an audience defines as the hero and villain, Why they are naturally pulled to like certain characters and hate others, and What is the audience’s classification of morality in regard to the characters of fiction, where the conditions of morality are often not defined. One of the things shown in the data and line up to real life is that at the end of the day, heroes and villains are not defined on true purity and morality itself. If they were, action heroes and anti-heroes wouldn’t be successful and enticing. And yet, anti-heroes are some of the most beloved characters. In fact, I for one am typically drawn to violent anti-heroes, some of which are the heroes despite being perhaps sadistic murderers and torturers. But if the audience doesn’t simply define hero and villain as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ then what is pulling us toward taking one side over the other?

The answer is actually more complex than you might think. According to this paper, the first thing taken into consideration in a viewer’s appeal or unappeal of a character has to do with what the viewer considers “appropriate behavior.” Simply put, “appropriateness” is basically a social judgment which serves to approve or disapprove of a character’s behavior. This can be based on many things, such as cultural norms, societal code of conduct, your personal morals or experiences. And I think this is key, because I for one see stealing and griefing when I play Minecraft as seriously hurtful things to do (even though you can always rebuild). To the point that if you blow up the house I spent hours building or take my items it can ruin the fun for me entirely. So my definition of the appropriateness of such behavior might differ from people who take those things much more light-heartedly, causing me to disapprove of c!Tommy more than they would for that behavior.

Even further, when it comes to determining their appropriateness of behavior as in whether we tend to approve or disapprove of them we can look at moral domains, which spark our moral intuition instead of simply categorizing everything into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ since not even our subconscious brain is always so black and white. In the research I read, they looked at two sets of domains (aka sets of relating attributes used to measure and compare): The person-perception domains of Warmth (tolerant, friendly, warm, polite, gentle, trustworthy), Competence (intelligence, cleverness, opposite of stupidity, efficiency) and Duplicity (mad, tormented, violent, and tragic), which help to measure our perception of morality in characters as well as the five moral domains of MFT - harm/care (concerned with the suffering of others and empathy), fairness/reciprocity (related to justice), authority/respect (related to hierarchy and dominance), ingroup/loyalty (common good and punitiveness toward outsiders), purity/sanctity (concerned with contamination). According to the research behind these domains, we, the viewer, evaluate characters immediately and without cognitive deliberation. In other words, when characters fulfill domains it sticks with us and when they violate domains it can send out major red flags to us as soon as it happens without us thinking about it, not later in more considerate retrospect. So then, it makes sense that now as we debate we struggle to find common ground because our judgment was made ages ago and it's hard to reason with our already defined moral intuition.

As such, since I started getting into the dsmp first by watching all of the recordings of previous streams in order in this one playlist then going onto watching all of the blueberrytv videos (at the time of course), which edit the streams to allow you to see things from multiple perspectives. Therefore, I watched things from the very beginning, back when it was just c!George and c!Dream goofing off and dying in the nether. So, my intuitive judgment of c!Dream involves him building the community house, always trying to keep the peace between his friends, exploring the world so he can bring back all the types for wood for people to build with, building the prime path to connect everyone's houses together to make for easier travel, rebuilding Tubbo’s house after c!Tommy burned it down, helping c!Ponk when people kept burning down his house. These are just some of the moments I suspect helped to form my evaluation of him. Showing him as being very empathetic and caring, being loyal to his friends and accepting of new people, being a mediator and trying to keep things fair between his friends, fulfilling at least 3 (since he kinda is the authority that is hard to classify) of the moral domains. The streams also depicted the characteristics with warmth as well as competence and intelligence. So immediately my perceptive moral intuition deemed him the hero. As he fulfilled the warmth and competence domains of the one method and most of the domains of the other method without violating them in an obvious enough manner for me to remember at this moment (These are by no means the only reasons why I’d be inclined to root for c!Dream but that's beside the point).

On the other hand, my introduction to c!Tommy was him immediately breaking the three rules, by going around taking down donator’s signs, griefing, stealing, claiming things and property as his, trying to kill people until he ends up being banned. So he hurt others and causes harm, he is invited to join and have fun but fails to reciprocate that by going about and messing things up, he immediately disrespects everyone and defies authority by breaking the rules, hard to say on loyalty though (as mentioned above) him burning down c!Tubbo’s, his best friend, house doesn’t give me the impression of loyalty, concerning purity he scams and lies, is obsessed (though hardly the only one) with male genitalia (which I personally find unsavory) and is disrespectful towards women so definitely failing in the purity and sanctity domain as well. In regards to warmth, I wouldn’t say so, nor particularly competent, though certainly meeting the more violent and aggressive elements of duplicity. So in other words, in just his first few streams he has violated every moral domain, while also not meeting the warmth or competence but meeting duplicity. So immediately my impression of him is to dislike and disprove as my moral intuition labels him as a villain.

In other words, perhaps our affinity for characters and perception of their morality has less to do with actual legal or other measurements of morality but more of what our initial impression was that formed our judgment from the very start. Because at the end of the day, I feel like the discussion needs to be less about whether this character or that character is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because their motivation or trauma justifies their behavior and more about what qualities do you appreciate about the character. At the end of the day, it's fiction and you should be able to love or hate whatever character you want regardless of morality or right & wrong. It’s your opinion and I don’t see other fandoms shaming and bashing other people for liking a certain character that others dislike and/or the protagonist dislikes meaning therefore they are bad so how can you like them. But in the same way, I should also be able to hate a character without being bashed for not being empathetic to their trauma… Anyways I think the idea that we all see characters as justified and innocent in our own way is cool, especially in respect to the dsmp which is told from all angles, and that’s what I set out to learn more about and share with you. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my findings and I made sense (…..and if it didn’t, you are always welcome to ask or add on :D), sorry for the length I’m beginning to realize conciseness is not my strong suit…

I hope with this interesting angle, we can lean away from discussions on legal, moral, crime, trauma and more towards questions of preference and characteristics and personal perception - Why do you root for them? What was your introduction to the characters? How do you think that impacted your viewpoint on the story? Has your viewpoint ever changed? What do you think helped define your definition of ‘appropriateness’?… etc <3 <3

[evil-jennifer-hamilton-wb]

To continue on the square discourse, here's a fun not-square:

This is the domain coloring of f(z)=z^{7}+bz^{3} (although any z^n + z^n-4 works)

I am not in any way claiming this fits the definition of a real square, but function's root has the appearance a square

[cirrus-grey]

Okay okay I know they're just describing our victim here but we've seen grey eyes once before in a very memorable context and I can't help but feel that's deliberate.

[shannonsketches]

something something foils moving in opposite directions Goku's always happy to seek and fight stronger opponents because he spent most of his life being the strongest guy in the room and Vegeta wants to be the strongest/is always exhausted to find stronger opponents because he spent most of his life having to navigate his survival around the whims of the strongest guy in the universe room and so Goku has a foundation of safety and stability and so spends his time craving challenge and adventure and Vegeta has a foundation of challenge and adventure and spends his time craving safety and stability and the overlaid section of their venn diagram is that the only way they know how acquire and maintain those things is through battle

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

HI I'M BACK WITH A RANT ON ZORA'S DOMAIN

By popular demand (and by "popular demand, I mean @justagirlsming asked a singular time and I took that personally), I am submitting my thoughts on Zora's Domain for the council's consideration! I hope you enjoy this madness, let's get into it:

STARTING OFF STRONG WITH THE PREFACE THAT THE DOMAIN WOULD NOT BE NEARLY AS IMMACULATE A DEFENSE IF ANY OTHER RACE BUT THE ZORA LIVED THERE. But it's okay cos the Zora DO live there, so it's all fine :) I just needed to make it known

Starting off strong with the actual location of the Domain cos *chef's kiss* fabulous

It's surrounded on two sides buy these massive freakin cliffs, and not only that, but they're made of that smooth, glassy blue rock that the Domain is made out of, making that SUPER hard to climb even if you did think you could try and come at the Zora from above. ALSO on the other side are yet more cliffs AND the East reservoir with almost the same problems for enemies as the other cliffs around the domain, except now you have the added issue of the MASSIVE BODY OF WATER to avoid XD

So really, the only feasible way to get to Zora's Domain would be through the main path Link takes in botw

BUT! This path is almost entirely in the Zora's favour and here's why:

First of all, ANYONE who has played the game knows how hard it is to get to the Domain on foot and how windy and confusing it is! The best option for a group of invaders would probably be to cut through here to make it just a bit easier

but even that poses an issue because it's all uphill, so really there's not many good options here.

I DID FORGET TO MENTION! Really, the Zora's only big enemies in Hyrule at present are the Lizalfos and they're pretty agile creatures, but luckily there's not many of them close enough to Zora's domain to pose much of a threat (at least, there's less Lizalfos than Zora I think)

Once the enemies get through that first part of the path to the domain to Oren Bridge though is when things begin to turn more in the Zora's favour.

If there ever were to be an attack on Zora's Domain, it most likely would not be very big purely because of the way you would have to try and get into the Domain in the first place. SO bottlenecking isn't a huge advantage, but it is definitely there nonetheless. ALSO, that entire path is just one huge mass of switchbacks and tight turns which would slow down enemies considerably.

Now, the bridges are where the Zora have the biggest advantage. We see in botw that they don't need those AT ALL cos of how Sidon follows Link in the river as he's travelling there. HOWEVER, the Lizalfos and anyone else trying to attack very much do.

"But the Lizalfos can swim, Nico! They don't need the bridges!!" You may be right, Theoretical Voice Of The People I Made Up For This Situation, BUT! Imagine you are an enemy on your way to invade Zora's Domain. If you see a perfectly working bridge, you're gonna use it rather than swim, aren't you?

This leaves the PERFECT opportunity for Zora forces to hide in the water and attack you from afar down in the water, or even (and this one's my favourite) destroy the bridge completely to knock anyone on it into the water to either be swept away in the current or picked off by Zora warriors in the water who, literally being in their element, are going to completely overpower you.

Aaaaaand if that doesn't work at Oren Bridge, the Zora can VERY easily swim upriver at Luto's Crossing (which is MUCH higher up and would deal a lot more damage if you fell from it), or even the Great Zora Bridge as a last ditch effort and just repeat the tactic over again :) Very devastating.

I'm ALWAYS here to give fair and unbiased assessments of defensible architecture though, so let's explore ALL sides and say the enemies made it past Luto's Crossing and went this way

What then???

Well, let's have a look at the Domain up close. It has this ring of walls around it that look very much like ramparts

and so, in the event that enemies did manage to come at them from around the domain, they have a relatively well covered spots to return fire. And in the event that the enemy destroys them (and, let's be honest, if it's the Lizalfos, they won't think that far ahead), oh noooooo they fall into water...How sad for absolutely no Zora ever. The walls also can be a liability though and we'll talk about that in a sec

SHOULD enemies make it into Zora's Domain, there are good things and there are bad things. I'll start with the bad things to get them out of the way first.

The BIGGEST one is that hell forsaken fish statue.

With just a bit of pre-planning, if enemies were able to keep the battle mostly down here

then that would leave room for a few people to sneak up here

and not only have a shot at killing the king if he's not below fighting already, but also destroy whatever supports are holding up that fish! And what's gonna happen???? It's going to fall and crush the throne room, the communal sleeping area, the infirmary, AND their food stores that they all have sitting under there, AS WELL AS anyone taking shelter underneath????? NOT good at all.

The second one is the aforementioned ring of walls which can provide just as much cover for enemies as it can the Zora depending on who gets to them first. So if the enemy gets to those parapets first, it provides them with the perfect cover to fire at the Zora from above :/

BUT! There is still a lot of good about the city itself as well :D

Now, the Zora are all very competent fighters, and so in a battle they should be able to hold their ground well enough, and anyone they can't kill, I'm sure King Dorephan can just flop on top of a crush lol XD There's ALSO the fabulous advantage of the waterfalls that drop off the Domain itself!

I couldn't find a good picture for the life of me, but with those, even if a fighter got knocked off the upper levels of Zora's Domain, they have an easy way to get back up by climbing those small waterfalls which is AWESOME

HOWEVER! Even if it ended up that the giant fish crushed people and everyone was dying and they needed to retreat, they have an easy way of doing that too!

Unlike literally anyone else the Zora would have to face, they have the ability to swim up freakin waterfalls and SO! If things go so dire that they couldn't save the Domain and needed to flee, they have FOUR exit routes they can take. Obviously they can just follow the Zora River back out to the Lanayru Wetlands and catch a river from there, but they also have three waterfall options

Any one of those would be a fast and easy escape for everyone in Zora's Domain, should they need to do that.

Overall, it's an EXTREMELY versatile and well fortified city for the Zora with how it 100% plays into their strengths and minimises advantages for any one else. It's honestly GENIUS and really, it's no wonder it has stayed so safe from monsters for so long before and after the calamity

[freemicrotools]

DNS Lookup - Analyze Your Domain Records

[sunderingstars]

are you kidding. i just found ANOTHER occurrence

[jcmarchi]

Beyond Chain-of-Thought: How Thought Preference Optimization is Advancing LLMs

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/beyond-chain-of-thought-how-thought-preference-optimization-is-advancing-llms/

Beyond Chain-of-Thought: How Thought Preference Optimization is Advancing LLMs

A groundbreaking new technique, developed by a team of researchers from Meta, UC Berkeley, and NYU, promises to enhance how AI systems approach general tasks. Known as “Thought Preference Optimization” (TPO), this method aims to make large language models (LLMs) more thoughtful and deliberate in their responses.

The collaborative effort behind TPO brings together expertise from some of the leading institutions in AI research. 

The Mechanics of Thought Preference Optimization

At its core, TPO works by encouraging AI models to generate “thought steps” before producing a final answer. This process mimics human cognitive processes, where we often think through a problem or question before articulating our response. 

The technique involves several key steps:

The model is prompted to generate thought steps before answering a query.

Multiple outputs are created, each with its own set of thought steps and final answer.

An evaluator model assesses only the final answers, not the thought steps themselves.

The model is then trained through preference optimization based on these evaluations.

This approach differs significantly from previous techniques, such as Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting. While CoT has been primarily used for math and logic tasks, TPO is designed to have broader utility across various types of queries and instructions. Furthermore, TPO doesn’t require explicit supervision of the thought process, allowing the model to develop its own effective thinking strategies.

Another key difference is that TPO overcomes the challenge of limited training data containing human thought processes. By focusing the evaluation on the final output rather than the intermediate steps, TPO allows for more flexible and diverse thinking patterns to emerge.

Experimental Setup and Results

To test the effectiveness of TPO, the researchers conducted experiments using two prominent benchmarks in the field of AI language models: AlpacaEval and Arena-Hard. These benchmarks are designed to evaluate the general instruction-following capabilities of AI models across a wide range of tasks.

The experiments used Llama-3-8B-Instruct as a seed model, with different judge models employed for evaluation. This setup allowed the researchers to compare the performance of TPO against baseline models and assess its impact on various types of tasks.

The results of these experiments were promising, showing improvements in several categories:

Reasoning and problem-solving: As expected, TPO showed gains in tasks requiring logical thinking and analysis. 

General knowledge: Interestingly, the technique also improved performance on queries related to broad, factual information. 

Marketing: Perhaps surprisingly, TPO demonstrated enhanced capabilities in tasks related to marketing and sales. 

Creative tasks: The researchers noted potential benefits in areas such as creative writing, suggesting that “thinking” can aid in planning and structuring creative outputs.

These improvements were not limited to traditionally reasoning-heavy tasks, indicating that TPO has the potential to enhance AI performance across a broad spectrum of applications. The win rates on AlpacaEval and Arena-Hard benchmarks showed significant improvements over baseline models, with TPO achieving competitive results even when compared to much larger language models.

However, it’s important to note that the current implementation of TPO showed some limitations, particularly in mathematical tasks. The researchers observed that performance on math problems actually declined compared to the baseline model, suggesting that further refinement may be necessary to address specific domains.

Implications for AI Development

The success of TPO in improving performance across various categories opens up exciting possibilities for AI applications. Beyond traditional reasoning and problem-solving tasks, this technique could enhance AI capabilities in creative writing, language translation, and content generation. By allowing AI to “think” through complex processes before generating output, we could see more nuanced and context-aware results in these fields.

In customer service, TPO could lead to more thoughtful and comprehensive responses from chatbots and virtual assistants, potentially improving user satisfaction and reducing the need for human intervention. Additionally, in the realm of data analysis, this approach might enable AI to consider multiple perspectives and potential correlations before drawing conclusions from complex datasets, leading to more insightful and reliable analyses.

Despite its promising results, TPO faces several challenges in its current form. The observed decline in math-related tasks suggests that the technique may not be universally beneficial across all domains. This limitation highlights the need for domain-specific refinements to the TPO approach.

Another significant challenge is the potential increase in computational overhead. The process of generating and evaluating multiple thought paths could potentially increase processing time and resource requirements, which may limit TPO’s applicability in scenarios where rapid responses are crucial.

Furthermore, the current study focused on a specific model size, raising questions about how well TPO will scale to larger or smaller language models. There’s also the risk of “overthinking” – excessive “thinking” could lead to convoluted or overly complex responses for simple tasks. 

Balancing the depth of thought with the complexity of the task at hand will be a key area for future research and development.

Future Directions

One key area for future research is developing methods to control the length and depth of the AI’s thought processes. This could involve dynamic adjustment, allowing the model to adapt its thinking depth based on the complexity of the task at hand. Researchers might also explore user-defined parameters, enabling users to specify the desired level of thinking for different applications.

Efficiency optimization will be crucial in this area. Developing algorithms to find the sweet spot between thorough consideration and rapid response times could significantly enhance the practical applicability of TPO across various domains and use cases.

As AI models continue to grow in size and capability, exploring how TPO scales with model size will be crucial. Future research directions may include:

Testing TPO on state-of-the-art large language models to assess its impact on more advanced AI systems 

Investigating whether larger models require different approaches to thought generation and evaluation 

Exploring the potential for TPO to bridge the performance gap between smaller and larger models, potentially making more efficient use of computational resources

This research could lead to more sophisticated AI systems that can handle increasingly complex tasks while maintaining efficiency and accuracy.

The Bottom Line

Thought Preference Optimization represents a significant step forward in enhancing the capabilities of large language models. By encouraging AI systems to “think before they speak,” TPO has demonstrated improvements across a wide range of tasks, potentially revolutionizing how we approach AI development. 

As research in this area continues, we can expect to see further refinements to the technique, addressing current limitations and expanding its applications. The future of AI may well involve systems that not only process information but also engage in more human-like cognitive processes, leading to more nuanced, context-aware, and ultimately more useful artificial intelligence.

[antimony-medusa]

DSMP complete we get to do what we want with it now.

[dkniade]

I’m wondering about Genshin Impact and multimedia storytelling…