#he was SO GOOD get the AI slop OUT!

[rachleahx]

My big Oscars Nomination gripe

[kaijutegu]

IL is having a contest to replace our not-very-good state flag and there are some amazingly good unserious submissions. I'm gonna show you my three favorites first and then put up a read more because this is a long post but you should click the read more anyways because laser Lincoln is too good to pass up.

If you want to see all of them, the PDF is here- but be warned, it's 1,878 pages long. However, there are some REALLY cute and well-thought-out kid designs towards the end- I think my favorite one from the kid-submitted ones is the one where there's our state mushroom releasing spores. Or maybe the one where the description says "We have the cubs and they suck."

Anyways, flags!

"The green background color represents our State's beautiful prairies. The goblin represents the uplifting spirit of our citizens, always hungry to achieve our dreams and goals. The "State Seal Dish" represents our state's government and the guidance and support it provides. The state of Illinois that is being consumed represents the nourishment that this State provides to its people. The text simply displays what is true."

"My flag represents the great turtles of our state. Illinois is home to seventeen different turtle species! This flag shows what Illinois is all about."

(There's nothing unserious about this, this SHOULD be our flag.)

"the laser beam projects a powerful image of Illinois. I believe my design is so powerful it does not need to be discussed."

"The blue-heeler cartoon dog represents the below-average rate of dogs in Illinois and the need for more. It also represents Australia's looming takeover of young America's minds. The blue background represents Illinois's blue sky. The word "Illinois" written in Hello Headline font represents Illinois and the clouds. The scroll has the words "State Sovereignty, National Bluey" written on it, which serves as a tribute to the old flag."

"The white and blue color is inspired by the Centennial flag, while the brown represents the Dave Matthews Band incident which is fondly remembered to Illinoisians. The bird is a Norhern Cardinal, the Illinois state bird. It destroying Chicago skyline represents how the city is often overrepresented and other cities didn’t get the representation deserved. The CGpog emojis pays tribute to Gavin Atack, which is the most legendary Chicagoan and symbolize how Illinois is a very POG state."

"This flag depicts Abraham Lincoln riding a woolly mammoth. Abe, who is the subject of our state motto "Land of Lincoln", represents honesty and virtue. The mammoth is an example of one of the most impressive creatures that roamed our state in its prehistory. The white background is an homage to the previous state flag, where the white separated it from the typical "seal on blue bed sheet".

This one is just AI slop- but it did make me laugh because I found the pretentious artist description to be hilariously at odds with the fact that this is AI slop: "StreetVanGogh: The Paintbrush that Binds Chicago and Illinois"In the heart of Illinois, where the wind whispers secrets through the prairies and the river runs like ink across a page, lies a city born from fire—Chicago. StreetVanGogh, an artist molded by this urban forge, wields a paintbrush not just as a tool, but as a compass that draws the lines connecting his city to the state he calls home.Chicago is the pulse of Illinois, a metropolis with a skyline that scratches at the stars," Hey, StreetVanGogh? Illinois famously does not have mountains. And Chicago famously does not have two Sears Towers. Try harder next time.

"It's a glistening NUTS though"

"The flag has a rainbow background, celebrating the vibrant LGBTQ culture in Illinois as well as the racial and ethnic diversity that makes this state great. The Chinese text is there to represent our fantastic Chinese community, the largest in the midwest. It reads, "Peace and joy, independent nation" which is what this state should aspire to be. In the center, is an outline of the great state itself with our most famous person, Abraham Lincoln, blushing to honored to be on this flag." I would love to know what those characters actually say.

"16th US President and Illinoisan Abraham Lincoln is a symbol of our great state and his work in quashing The Confederacy in the American Civil War cannot be understated. The background color is meant to evoke that of a Union Army uniform of the period, with the red representing the blood he shed defending our democracy to the bitter end. Lincoln would be proud to fly this beautiful banner commemorating his achievements."

"The colors represent the proud Chicago style hot dog. Beige for the bun and celery salt, carmine for the tomato and vienna beef, chartreuse for pickles and sport peppers, citrine for the mustard, white for the onions, and kelly green for the relish. The 21 black dots represent poppy seeds, as well as Illinois' inclusion as the 21st state. The citrine stripe of the mustard also represents corn and Malört."

There were a couple of hot dog flags, but this one gets a special dishonourable mention for mentioning Malört.

[mourn-and-watch]

in all seriousness, dragon age being almost officially dead to me is, like, whatever. i'm used to hanging out in dead fandoms because i'm usually extremely late to the party so i think i'll manage. i was excited for veilguard but even if it was bad bad for me (which it wasn't. i have my problems with it but they didn't ruin the franchise for me) i would also manage because dragon age to me always was extremely flawed but had an enormous potential for fan content. at some point i started to treat it like my favourite fantasy playground where i can smash pre-existing barbie dolls with the ones i made myself. all my barbie dolls are in place and i still can do whatever i want (and i plan to continue to do so) and, i guess, i shouldn't be upset.

i am upset, however. for all the devs affected by laid-offs, but especially the writers. these people created dragon age as we know it, and it's been a messy series in every aspect, including the writing, it's been insensitive at times, at times dumb and undercooked, but there was always an immense amount of potential that's been inspiring fans for years, and also a feeling that all, or at least the most of it was created with genuine passion. and realizing that there is no one left from the team that made dragon age what it is, every installment of it, is just. genuinely sad. and it's not a theseus ship dilemma, because it's not like they were slowly replaced one by one. they were just fired. this ship is destined to sink, it's falling apart in front of our eyes because neither ea nor bioware cares about writing. not many companies do nowadays, to be honest. and it's kinda devastating. grifters will celebrate that like a "downfall of woke slop", but they'll get only more ai slop instead, lol, because good writing doesn't guarantee good sells. best selling games of 2024 are shooters and sports games. and elden ring which is a nice exception, but an exception nevertheless.

i don't think mass effect will save bioware at this point. even if it's an absolute banger it still has to meet ea's expectations. which are unrealistic, to say the least. also people who wrote characters like mordin, tali, legion, thane, garrus and liara are all gone. either they left themselves or were laid off. like, if you want "old bioware magic" to return, there is none. the same people who wrote your favourite characters and storylines in da/me were also working on veilguard. i may be wrong, but somehow i think they didn't all lose their ability to write here because they went woke or whatever. i think the inconsistent quality of datv writing that can only be described as 'we're so back/it's so over' pic is a consequence of multiple rewrites, constant director changes and shitty decisions, both internal and coming from bioware/ea higher-ups. i also may be wrong, but it wouldn't be such a big problem if writing wasn't at the bottom of priority list.

if i recall correctly, when gaider left willingly, he highlighted that bioware didn't treat its writers seriously at that point. and i'd say that tracks. like, from countless veilguard rewrites and scrapped ideas to lay-offs of every single studio veteran.

idk what else there is to say. i'll cheer for every studio that value its writers and i hope all ex-bioware devs will be able to do something new and exciting. i also doubt bioware is the last studio that will experience such a decline in the years to come. the narrative of this shitshow will also be twisted into 'go woke go broke' and it already slightly draws me insane. fuck ea fuck bioware fuck grifters. also i beg everyone to start appreciating writing as a craft because otherwise it's only going to get worse!

[smile-files]

still trying to wrap my head around the unvitational committee. what do they want? the general theme seems to be "mephone is an immoral host so we have to take him down", but not all of the members' motives seem to line up with that...

walkie talkie has been working with(?) mephone this whole time, goading him into making the season run longer and longer with more rejoins. in a way, she's been enabling mephone's scummy hosting practices, including abandoning an entire season and all the people in it, as well as wanting this season to go on forever. why is she suddenly criticizing him for being a bad host? was she not complicit in that?

dr. fizz had to deal with box's horrible injury which, while not technically mephone's fault, is a sign that the show isn't very safe and that mephone doesn't care that much about the well-being of his contestants. i think it makes sense for him to be here.

the cameras came to interview mephone about some touchy subjects, including hosting two seasons at once, bow apparently being alive, and there possibly not being a prize; they get pissed when mephone brushes them and their concerns off. they know some of the shady stuff mephone's been doing as host, as well as his unwillingness to address it, so i suppose they have their place in taking him down.

tyler bombard had his whole ecosystem destroyed by a stupid challenge mishap. yeah, he has the right to be pissed.

sprinkles was going to be forced to compete in a fighting ring of other inani-mates which would almost inevitably lead to her death; almost all of the contestants mistreated their inani-mate companion, her owner (yinyang) included. it makes sense for her to be here too.

springy? they wanted mephone to completely commercialize his show, including selling off the likeness of one of its contestants; he got pissed off when mephone changed his mind and ultimately didn't do that. if anything, that's a sign that mephone isn't quite so morally corrupt! springy has personal reasons to want to take down mephone, but those reasons don't align with the supposed motivation of the whole committee.

zoetrope gave mephone the animation machine to use in his challenges! he was the one who fed mephone the idea that creating a show isn't an art, that using what's essentially ai to do so is perfectly permissible! what right does he have to be angry at mephone for doing exactly what he said? how does that make mephone as a host any worse than zoetrope is as an artist?

i'm tied about groscer; as the apparent owner of a prestigious award organization, it makes sense that she should take her craft seriously and not appreciate those who try to disrespectfully milk it for fame. mephone's show was in the running because what existed genuinely looked good, but he lied about the number of episodes and ultimately sent a ridiculous amount of ai slop to make up for it. she has the right to be annoyed by that, but i don't think one guy making a fool out of himself in the submissions completely discredits your entire award -- certainly not to the point where you personally go after him.

walkie talkie and springy, being the leaders of this group, talk about how ii3 could've been a perfect show -- but by their logic, that would include the season being unending and highly commercialized. at the same time, though, they make out mephone to be this horrible host mistreating his contestants, as if making his show what they want wouldn't make him worse. and as it is, it's strange that they should put the show on such a pedestal anyway, for them to feel they must take it from mephone to save it -- all of this was him! what are you talking about? and you helped him! all of this stuff you say is bad, you helped him do!!

and like... the whole 4th season thing... for one thing, walkie talkie wanted him to keep the show going, so i don't know why she's pissed... but also, you just found that when you got here! that couldn't have been your motivation before you came!

in other news though, silver's whole thing with candle is so fun. he acts like he's so above it all, but her not supporting him shakes his ego so much that he straight up kills her?? insane. in a good way. he got all this way just because he thought candle believed in him...

[cartoon-buffoon]

Watching a kwite stream while I do stuff and he is like going through his viewers screentimes and there is a shocking amount of time people spend on character AI. Now a specific person who spent a LUDICROUS amount of time on it prompted him to tell that individual "go find whatever character you're talking to on AO3, sort by kudos, and read!" Or something of the sorts. And I have to agree with that sentiment 100% as this is more or less my personal stance on AI and how it's used modernly: IT FUCKING SUCKS! I don't support AI used for creativity because it's not fucking creative at all, AI art, writing, and even chats, I support fucking none of that and I dislike anyone who does. I have a friend—the same friend who's my beta reader and is probably reading this so call out to you quartz, ya bitch—who uses character ai and I've been trying to get her to stop because it's awful. To those who think their (very sad) character AI addiction is okay as well: all you're doing is feeding a machine and making it replicate text better, you're basically training the tech so the company can then use that tech for whatever—NOT GOOD I GUARANTEE YOU—purposes, you're apart of the problem. Talk to people online, talk to people irl, join discord servers, do fucking SOMETHING that involves interacting with real people instead of soulless AI. ESPECIALLY if you're a creative, if you're an artist who draws and naturally is appalled by AI art and you use shit like character AI you're a hypocrite and should come to your senses.

Now while I do recommend reading fanfiction if you want more content featuring your favorite characters there's also the aspect of people with social anxiety just wanting something to talk to and their use of AI chats. That's fair, as a person who suffers from crippling social anxiety to the point I can't even fucking talk to people at stores or order food without rehearsing it 14 times beforehand: you genuinely just need to try. Like that sounds condescending but I guarantee you there will be a group of people or even a singular person either irl or online who will like you and want to be your friend, it's hard but you just need to try. If you have some sorta talent share it online and eventually there will be at least one person who will interact with you and maybe you can build some sorta friendship from there. My entire point in saying this is don't be a mook and feed AI, be better and have actual meaningful human connection because slop like character AI is a soulless novelty that does nothing but isolate you.

(oh also: Don't give me the bullshit that "oh fanfiction is cringe and AI chats are wayyy better than the shit I've seen" because the pillar you stand on is made of salt. Fanfics written by some 13 year old on Wattpad at least has a soul and effort put into it making it a better read then AI chats, not to mention that writer will probably get better if they continue to write. You are not above fanfiction and are equally as cringe, you are below it if anything)

[consumeroflemoans]

School is really the place I encounter most AI use and it still pisses me off so much

Sometimes one of my teachers would say something like "I know most of you use AI anyway so...", which is admittedly true, the majority of that class was using AI, and then tell us to write a short explanation on the current topic and then ask someone to generate one with ChatGPT, one explanation would be picked to be read and then the generated explanation would be read after

The class was then supposed to give an opinion which sounded more comprehensive and better written, most said AI because there was less complicated phrasing and it didn't add any "unecessary" details, in short it only gave you a surface level explanation

He would never say anything on the matter

To this day I don't know why he did that, but he then again he also once said market competition was the only reason humans invented and improved things so maybe I do know why

Also why does everyone put AI images on their power points like?

It's literally easier to just google something and it doesn't have the most uncanny look ever?

There's one incident that made me angry as all get out though, happend when I designed a logo for a project and when I asked wether they liked it some guy said "That's good, but I think we could add to it" and put it into an image generator to generate some weird slop of what looked like a bad casino advertisment

I’m so glad I got out of high school just as people were starting to use AI more. Even if it is a terrible system, the point of school is to make people use their brains. Having a computer generate answers or images for you is defeating the entire purpose. You aren’t learning, the machine is.

Aarrrgh I feel like an old person every time I talk about this topic. AI can be used for good, it’s a tool like anything else. It can make things like coding sooo much easier, like I’m doing in my classes. (For example, using it to look for potential errors saves a ton of time) But I feel like so many people are using AI to fuel their own laziness instead of using it how it should be, like a tool.

Also lmao people are using AI images on presentations

Babygirl (gender neutral) there is literally an infinite amount of photos out there and it’ll probably look 10x better than whatever you can generate. It takes 5 minutes to find decent photos

And that last bit??? Literally replacing your creativity with AI. Ohhhhh bitch you didn’t. That pisses me off just reading it and it didn’t even happen to me. If you think something can be improved use your brain?? Make your own suggestions??? Aaaaaaaaaargh

[tenebriskukris]

An Exhumation Of Hikaru Kamiki's Character Intermission II: An Eclectic Assortment Of Thoughts And Ruminations

Spoilers for the entirety of Oshi No Ko below.

These are some various thoughts about Hikaru that don’t quite fit with the pacing of this essay but I found important enough to include here for various reasons.

I’ve often seen hints of people using the songs from the anime as a foundation to interpret Hikaru’s character—which might as well be putting the horse before the cart. It’s the same reasoning to why I heavily dislike 45510 being used to justify Nino’s character being used to misdirect the readers during that interval where she was the red herring antagonist of the series. 

If this material was so necessary to understand important facets of the character, then why wasn’t it included in the manga itself rather than in a side story or in an adaptation? Why didn’t the narrative take the time to organically flesh out a character of some importance if they were going to make said character an important piece in the manga?  If one has to rely on side material to fully flesh out a character and tell a coherent story then more often than not said story will fall flat in certain aspects simply because not all the fans of said story are going to go out of their way to read the side material.

On that note, the songs might be good materials to use as supporting evidence to interpret his character, but using them as the lens and main focus to interpret a character which the narrative has already painted so clearly as little more than an antagonistic force responsible for so much of the series’ conflict simply reeks of bad reading comprehension and a willful disbelief of the events of canon. One simply can’t interpret a character without accepting all the facts about him and the sheer fact is that Hikaru was a murderer—one can rage against how his character ended up but to deny that he did commit those atrocities goes against the entire point of his character in the first place!

One of the other things I’d like to touch on is an interpretation that I’ve seen floating around online a couple of times that I find laughable but found the time to talk about here. It’s one that places Hikaru as some sort of godlike figure or possessed by some supernatural entity throughout the series. Funnily enough, it is one that I put some stock in as a joke when I used to believe that the series could conjure up some good writing and give some payoff to the little mythological references it posed. 

It is also an interpretation that is completely divorced from most aspects of logical reasoning and fundamentally misunderstands Hikaru’s character.

The interpretation, from what I remember of it, goes something like this. Due to the fact that Ruby calls herself the embodiment of Amaterasu in Chapter 3 and the fact that Crow Girl describes those who reincarnate as gods—ergo Aqua and Ruby—that would mythologically place Aqua as X. After that, it’s a hop skip and a jump away from getting to the interpretation that Ai is actually an embodiment of Izanami and Hikaru as an embodiment of Izanagi since from actual Japanese mythology, Amaterasu is a child of Izanami and Izanagi. If I’m wrong about any part of how the interpretation goes, then that’s on me for not wanting my braincells to commit seppuku reading a bunch of slop that’s somehow of an even lower quality than the last few chapters of the series. In any case, I’m relatively certain that’s how the story goes. Maybe they’re calling Hikaru another god now, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter because the foundation behind it is just as rotten as the last few chapters of the series.

I don’t think I need to enumerate all the reasons behind it for those without sufficient reading comprehension but I’ll do so anyway. While Ruby did claim to be the incarnation of Amaterasu in Chapter 3, similar associations simply aren’t seen in Aqua, let alone for Ai or Hikaru in a clear manner throughout the manga. There is no real hint that Ai or Hikaru were divinely blessed or cursed within the bounds of canon a way that would indicate that it was due to any supernatural creature nor that their existence is even relevant to them beyond their own relationship with Aqua and Ruby, two characters that we know that Crow Girl has been watching over. It’s little more than using the series’ small mythological references and stringing them together to create some sort of warped narrative without acknowledging any of the logical facts presented by the series.

Now let’s talk about some more topics that don’t require me to bemoan about reading comprehension for the nth time. I was posed this question by some of the people that have heard me bemoan about this bitch of a series and I think it’d be pertinent to answer here. Do I think Hikaru was supposed to have been defused after their first confrontation and that the manga was pushing Nino as the final antagonist of the series? I dislike engaging in this sort of speculation but that’s the entire point of this entire section so I’ll indulge in said speculation.

The truth is I simply don’t care about either scenario. Whether Hikaru or Nino was going to be the final antagonist after Hikaru’s confrontation with Aqua doesn’t matter because in both cases it would simply be a badly executed mess. We already know where Hikaru went with the antagonist title. A very shoddily written confrontation between the protagonist and our antagonist. Nino would be worse, even, because so much of her character is locked behind a fucking SIDE STORY that the narrative didn’t even have the decency to show us on screen. Not to mention if Aqua was already aware of Nino’s instability that would’ve been an easy capture and turn in and then we’d simply have no conflict if Hikaru was to turn himself into the police. Of course, these are all hypotheticals. I’m under no delusions that the alternative scenario would be better written than the slop we got for the final chapters of the series.

What does Hikaru even do as an antagonist? He is mysterious for 2/3rds of the series before unveiling his sad and tragic backstory and then confronts Aqua twice before Aqua pushes him off a cliff in a double suicide. Sure, he’s affected things in the series but all of those are so indirect and happen before the protagonists are even born that it feels like he isn’t even focused as an antagonist in the series. He certainly doesn’t get the kind of screentime and character depth that other characters has. Kana Arima, the second most useless human being in this cast of characters within the story, has more screentime than the series’ main antagonist! You simply can’t get good payoff to a story when your main antagonist has less depth and screentime than a useless side character!

There is a question that I’ve seen some talk about and that I think I want to give my two cents on now that the story is pretty much finished with Hikaru. Was Ai wrong in asking Aqua to and save Hikaru? From what we’ve just seen during his final confrontation with Aqua—absolutely—but this isn’t a flaw on Ai’s part. Ai made that plea to Aqua under the assumption that Hikaru wasn’t, y’know, the reason that Ai died in the first place? Or that he manipulated Nino in order to get Ruby killed? Or, a murderer in general, really! I can’t fault Aqua for going against Ai’s wishes to save Hikaru here after he tried to kill Ruby like that. At a certain point you can only help someone who wishes to be helped, and from what we see from Hikaru’s current last words that man is definitely not someone who wants to repent for his sins.

Another question that’s been on my mind is the following: Does Hikaru engender sympathy as an antagonist? This is a question that is highly dependent on the reader and their viewpoint, but I’ll first bring up certain beats of his backstory again. Hikaru was a victim of the darkness of the industry that was trying to find solace with the one person he could connect to wholeheartedly before he was rejected by said person on a note that ripped up all of his trauma to the surface. Does that justify in any way any of the horrible things he did afterward? That much is up to the reader and how you interpret him.

My two cents on it: Absolutely not. It isn’t just that Hikaru murders people that makes any sympathy towards him plummet out the window much like the manga’s writing quality in its final few arcs—but the method of which he murders people. He doesn’t kill people like Ryouske or Nino, where they just went up to their victim and stabbed the shit out of them. No, he kills people indirectly, more often than not using proxies so he couldn’t be held accountable, as we’ve seen with Ryousuke and Nino in order to keep his hands clean. It’s a more unsettling form of murder compounded by a whole heap of manipulation that he performs so that Hikaru doesn’t have to stick his neck out. He has to consciously choose which actions will push a person who is unstable—since this is a trait that Hikaru can use to manipulate people easier—to murder another living person over a vast period of time. Ryosuke and Nino’s crimes were ones of passion and obsession. Hikaru’s crimes were a result of a calculated effort meant to push those who were unfortunate to murder. There’s no contest that I think the latter is much more insidious and deplorable.

To top it all off, his last words as he sinks to the ocean floor were that he wished he could kill his own daughter to feel closer to Ai! Hikaru may have had a sad backstory and motives for his crimes, but at the end of the day the man is still a murderer. No matter what kind of “noble” soul he might’ve had that the manga might have us believe—which is funny because there’s nothing about Hikaru as he is now nor before that would make me put the word “noble” to him—at the moment he’s nothing more than a deluded murderer that needs to be put down to save the people who can still be saved. Ai may have loved him as he was when he was younger, but the man who insidiously manipulated others to serve as tools of his demented needs is no longer that troubled boy that held onto Hoshino Ai like a lifeline. I doubt that Ai would look on him with any sympathy after everything he’d done—not to mention his actions to try and kill Ruby, one of his last links to Ai—and honestly, neither do I.  There are other CSA victims that don’t go out and murder people in an attempt to deal with their trauma and suffering. There are other people who have been completely destroyed after a bad breakup and don’t go out killing people in order to cope. There are people who’ve had their entire world evaporate into smoke after a single bad day after an uncountable number of bad days and never took other people’s lives into their own hands. Judging Hikaru based off who he was and what happened to him rather than who he is now and the choices he's made reduces him to his trauma and deprives him of his agency in the fact that he did make bad choices. There can be sympathy for the person he used to be—sympathy for the child swept away by the darkness of the industry and forced to suffer because of it—but also condemnation for the lives of the people that he has ruined in his attempts at reaching out to the only person who he’d ever truly loved after he’d callously pulled the strings in order to orchestrate her death.

>ACT III ACT II ==> >EPILOGUE ==>

[cassyapper]

hi cass. I hear you're in an oc mood. metaphorical gun to your head what is everyone's favorite food and why

HI CATNAP YES IT'S CRAZY U ASK THIS CAUSE I DO HAVE ACTUAL THOUGHTS ON IT okay

ai loves oatmeal to death cause she hearts soldier slop. she's happy with jsut plain ass oatmeal but her ideal slop is oatmeal with thin apple slices and cinnamon. she jsut likes it cause it reminds her of chinese porridge if u know what that is it's her comfort of home while on the road

arha likes soups particularly hot (like temperature wise) soups that have rice in them. it doesnt matter what else is in it but she likes hot rice soups. she prefers it to be watery over thick as well. half of this is cause marinating the food like that makes it easy to digest which makes it "reloading" her magic so to speak. but also cause her siblings were sick a lot when she was a kid so they'd always get soup to clear their sinuses and so she jsut sees it as like. ultimate form of care when it comes to food

adalia's favorite food would be barbecue if she lived in a world that would accommodate that 💔 as such she loves roasted and salted meats of any kind. particularly chicken but truly she jsut fucks with meat in general so hard she loves loves savory taste. grew up as a butcher's daughter so. also she's very Big so she always needs that protein

william likes beer battered fish! they dont get it on the road much but he grew up in a fishing town so he likes fish and is used to them, and he likes the flavors that get brought out when u fry them

qiu likes smoked lizard and roasted frog legs :) there's not a particular reason as to why, it's just that it was the first meal he made on his own with the dragons and he was like "yeah this is good!" and has stuck with it for years since cause he's an autism king

[ofpineapplesanddawns]

I mentioned the other day I wanted to write something with the lesbian version of the Crowlien au, so here's something with the wives before their lives were horribly changed because of aliens.

Warning: flashback that is safe, present day is... not so much, missing limb

On with the fic!

--

Crowley was breathing, but did she really need to?

She could feel pain, but that seemed so cruel, so very cruel. Why would anyone program an android to have pain receptors?

She stared at the ceiling, the lights were still red, but the alarms had turned off a while ago. Bentley was curled up next to her, sleeping, as if chaos had not happened over the past few hours. There was no noise other than the typical sounds of the ship, a few sounds of sparks, from a broken piece of wall or Crowley's leg, she wasn't sure.

Fuck, what a way to find out the truth about yourself. And just moments before your beautiful, amazing, angel of a wife sacrificed herself!

Crowley let out a ragged sob as she looked towards the airlock, sealed tight, with no hint of Aziraphale returning. She had no idea what happened beyond those doors, but it had to have been an hour, maybe longer. There was no sign of the alien, no sign of Aziraphale.

It was just Crowley now.

It was never meant to be just Crowley. This was supposed to be a simple mining mission...

--

"One more week." Crowley said with an exaggerated sigh, stepping into her shared flat with her wife. Bentley came towards her with chirpy meows and the redhead scooped up her baby, giving the cat kisses all over her face.

"One more week, indeed." Aziraphale said as she stepped out of the kitchen, flour on her hands, her cheek, all over her apron. Oh no, she was stress baking.

"Angel, you no we can't take any of that with us, whatever it is you're bakin'. We're gonna be stuck eating the slop that the company provides for us." Crowley kissed her as she walked over, then stepped into the kitchen.

"I know, I know. But..." She could see Aziraphale pout.

Crowley smirked and set Bentley down, he ran off to do whatever it was that curious kitties did. "You want me to sneak on contraband on our very important mission? Hm? Is that what you're tryin' to ask me, Dr. Fell?"

Aziraphale huffed, turning her nose up at her wife, but her smile gave her away. "It would violate the rules they have of what we can and cannot bring aboard!"

"Ah, but when have I ever been a rule follower, angel?"

"You fiend." Aziraphale laughed and pulled Crowley into a hug. "I made your favorites, you'll be happy to have them when you wake up! Oh! And speaking of..."

Crowley kissed her forehead. "Don't worry, I spoke with Tracy. She'll have the AI inject you with E while you're in cryo-sleep."

"Oh! You beautiful dear!" Aziraphale was grinning as she lifted Crowley up and spun her around. "You always take good care of me!"

"Of course I do!" Crowley laughed as her feet were set back on the floor. "I love doing things for you, it makes me so happy to be your hero!"

Aziraphale laughed and stepped back, dusting the flour off of Crowley's black jacket. "That it does, dear. But one day, I'll get to be your hero!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes! Maybe in this mission I'll get to be your knight in shining armor!"

"Ha! If Furfur hits on me again, you can play hero then."

Aziraphale snorted and laughed, pulling her in for a kiss. "Yes, yes, I suppose that could count. Now, come on, you deserve a treat. I've got the most scrumptious raspberry white chocolate scone for you to try!"

--

"You wanted to play hero, angel." Crowley whimpered, turning away from the door. Her eyes back on the ceiling, she tried to ignore the spasm she felt in her damaged leg, she could smell burning metal and wires. She didn't dare look at the fluid on her hand, she didn't want to know if it was red or white.

Another sob escaped her. "Well, you did it. You got to be my hero. But at what cost!?"

No one answered her, not that she expected one.

She was alone now, just her and a cat.

And no heroic angel in sight.

--

I made myself sad with this one.

A reminder, Aziraphale is a trans woman in this au, because yes. Also, I love trans woman Aziraphale, we need more of her in the fandom. (and just more t4t ineffables really).

Yes, Crowley found out she was an android in this au before her leg was damaged. I wanted her to have a more startling realization than what Aziraphale got in the main au, and the damaged leg also means she gets a weird saunter to her walk when she repairs herself. And yes, she had no idea she was one, just like Aziraphale hadn't known.

[smww4ever]

Hello! Hello!

Hope you're good?

What did you think of Henry Cavill's portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman ?

And do you think they made the right choice in picking david corenswet ?

Well Hello Hello there! Thanks for asking. Hope you’re well too.

Flattered you care for my opinion and thoughts on this. Well I read your questions, so here goes…

Henry Cavill was born to play Superman. It was actually exciting to see his cameo in Black Adam. Wow I thought there’s that movie magic you hardly see anymore and then they killed it. The public was robbed of what could have been. Even the cameo in Shazam in which he should have been so we could have seen his face was theft. We will never get to see his version of Superman fleshed out. Sad, man, sad.

If they never ‘restore the Snyderverse’ whatever you may feel about the director, it will be another gaping hole in cinema history.

Add to that, we never got to see Superman get older, or any engaging stories and villains. It’s always the same origin story, same villain (Lex), rescue the damsel (Lois) and maybe he dies in the end.

Ah yes Mr. Corenswet

David, frankly looks like the Dollar Store version of Cavill. No hate on the man. Since they got rid of Henry, they went with an obvious clone. How he will carry the role?…we shall see if they ever release a trailer. No teasers at the SDCC which Gunn had opportunity for but only revealed a lame logo.

The pictures and video from the filming in Cleveland look awful. I know many have convinced themselves that it looks freaking awesome! But it just reminds me of when your loved one cooks you a meal and trying to be nice you eat it knowing full well that it needs to be thrown in the trash. Me on the other hand, I’m the friend who got invited to the meal and can see a mile away that it will send me straight to the toilet. So I just nod, smile and politely decline the meal saying, “Oh no thanks I already ate.” 😂

I don’t have any high hopes for this new Superman film. It will be like most of Gunn’s movies have been: jokes and vulgarity, and Amanda Waller in everything.

As for SuperWonder fans, the movie will be Lois-centric. So guys, just go watch SuperWonder animated.

Heck even the popular TV show Superman & Lois got axed. I don’t watch it but if they’re not listening to the SuperWonder fans, they sure as heck aren’t listening to the Clois fans either.

If I’m wrong and it turns out to be the Dawn of A New Beginning for DC [in a Vought-voice] and Gunn is the DC savior then I guess I must have missed out on some tasty slop.

Hope that answers your question. Christopher Reeve was great as Superman. Movies back then had that magic. I remember seeing that movie when it came out in the theater. He should have done a Superman 6 movie tbh as corny as the other sequels were, and they really missed the boat in not doing any team-ups with the actors of that time: Lynda Carter, Adam West and Chris Reeve. We all see it now in Ai explorations and sadly it’s too late.

You know I get this same look when I’m in the bathroom. Hope he doesn’t tear up a giant hole in the concrete.

Until next time or next question… ✌️ 😂

[sageofmagic-squeaks]

I absolutely despise this era of AI written website slop

So I've taken care of betta fish for years and this last one I got from my LFS is probably an 'alien' betta based on colors and short fins. Alien bettas are a mix of a wild type betta with the more common petstore genes (if I'm remembering correctly cuz I SURE CAN'T FACT CHECK THAT ANYMORE). Anyways, this guy is the most skittish betta I've ever owned and recently stopped eating. I'm running through my betta health check list to figure out what's wrong and nothing is matching up to what I know. So I'm thinking maybe this is something unique to alien betta behavior. Dude is always hiding more than any other fish I've had so maybe he struggles with the human = food association. Especially since I suspect he nibbled on a shrimp while I wasn't looking. I go to look up alien betta behavior.

In the SAME PARAGRAPH ABOUT BETTAS I get information about alien bettas being passive peaceful fish but also they're super aggressive fish that can't be with other tank mates. Um...

And don't even get me started on betta illnesses. They'll be like 'bettas can get ich, dropsy, and fin rot. Consult your veterinarian on how to treat your betta'

Guys. I have never seen any fish site EVER refer to veterinarians until now. Most fish vets, in my experience, are on call for the big boys. Think city aquarium or fish farms. Betta fish vet care has usually fallen on the fish owner to carry out themselves. But a good chunk of websites on the front page of google are now telling me to take my fish to the vet. Or other VERY inaccurate treatment methods like simply treating ich by turning up the heater (that's only one step of treatment. It also involves understanding the life cycle of ich and the severity. My past treatment of ich has been moving the fish to a hospital tank for a month where I can safely medicate with specific ich treatments while letting the parasite die out in the show tank without a host)

Anyways I came out of this experience learning absolutely nothing because, of course, only forums are giving real answers and the one person who asked a similar question to me never reported their results. Oh and the only website that might've had real person input was selling their own specific betta tea product and jumped right into a shop. I only suspect it was human written because they made a ton of jokes about throwing actual tea bags into blackwater tanks when the leaves just aren't enough. Mood tho.

[justtransteenagerstuff]

So I have this one 'friend'. Most of this is behind me as I don't really speak to him much outside of when we occasionally see each other in the hallway at school and dnd.

Basically, he made my life last year a living hell. I used to run a gaming youtube channel and he also ran one. For most of our friendship I was better at making content and had more subscribers and viewers but last year he passed me and got better at making content and like a good number of my classmates started watching his videos and being his fans. He then used this to say that everything I made on my channel (and also off my channel) was bad and his was a lot better and because half of my classmates (i was/am in advanced classes so it's a lot of the same people) were his fans they just agreed with him and held it against me, saying things like "well your content sucks so you can't say anything" whenever I said something against him. I also started watching some vtubers then and he somehow found out and used it against me, and got a bunch of people to say that I was obsessed with vtubers and jacked off to vtubers and was a vtuber (nothing wrong with vtubers btw, but you know, teenagers) and just being really annoying to me. And then he started accusing me of being a furry (again, nothing wrong with furrys, but you know, teenagers) and again everyone joined in. When I got my dog he started accusing me of being a zoophile. One time at a sleepover he went on my computer and sent a discord message to the group chat saying something I forgot what but something 'bad' (not actually bad but, you know, teenagers) and he still uses that screenshot whenever i annoy him

His youtube videos aren't even that good, they are basic slop that everyone puts out. Atleast I actually made my videos out of passion.

We ran a minecraft smp together (multiple actually) and he kept on cheating and trolling and being annoying and then just saying 'its just a joke'

He made me stop enjoying a lot of the things I used to enjoy. Like Danganronpa, writing (i've gotten back into writing now but I wrote basically nothing last year because he said everything I wrote was shit), and my youtube channel, something that used to give me a lot of joy out of making videos.

He made me have to preface every argument with anything that might be perceived as a fault because if I didn't he would use it against me.

He likes AI, his one goal in life is to be rich, he is just a bad person.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning I don't really talk to him now outside of dnd, and even in dnd he is annoying.

As a dm he railroads everyone, and gets angry if you dont do everything he says, and as a player he completely derails everything.

He is probably transphobic, his brother is trans but he constantly uses the wrong pronouns. One time his brother brought a friend to dnd who was a trans man and my supposed 'friend' used she/her pronouns, and when his brother's friend got upset he said "I don't care." He misgenders people all the time, even cis people, as a way to annoy people who slight him in any perceived way.

He is so annoying and stupid and a fucking jerk, but he is also funny and also, when he is not being a fucking jerk, a person that is fun to be around. Some of my best memories are with him. Like the trip to the cabin I took with him and one of my best friends.

idk, I hate him but also he is a friend, and I can't cut him off because he is another member of the friend group and his dnd campaign is our big social event every month, and the only dnd campaign in our friend group to last more than 5 sessions.

also one time he threatened to force fem me????????? like he was going on a rant about being rich and then added that he would force me to live in his basement and stream for him as a vtuber and that male vtubers dont get enough views so I would have to be a female one.

[midnight-scrivener]

Hi! Just reblogging this as an example of one of the more convincing AI Slop videos I've seen recently. The man looks right, the motion and the water all seem to make sense. At first viewing, this is a very normal, sweet video! I absolutely saw it 2 or 3 times before my bullshit detectors started going off.

Once you start hunting for mistakes, things start to fall apart a bit more. In the beginning, the man's leg clips through the boat's rail as he walks towards the whale. And the configuration of the railing continues to change from shot to shot.

We never see the net actually unwrap from around the whale, it just sort of.... Pulls out of somewhere behind it. And the net itself doesn't have a clear, regular woven pattern. It looks almost cheated, like a texture in a game that's trying to give the idea of a net without mapping every line.

And perhaps most egregiously, the whale itself. It's constantly moving, and it does move, yaknow, whaleishly, and the general shape seems right. But at the start of the video it has a fin coming out of its chin, and at the end its eye is in a different place and its mouth is much smaller. The ai isn't suuuuper sure how a whale's like. Skin or skeleton works either, and the front of the mouth doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and the way that the whale's underside wrinkles goes up way too high by the end of the video.

This isn't to say that if you didn't notice before that it's your fault! I didn't either. The constant motion does a lot to hide the inconsistencies, especially if you're just viewing casually. But I've been seeing this video specifically crop up more and more on my social feeds, so I wanted to say something about it!

I'm not the first person to realize it's AI; the comments are full of similar thoughts. But my hope is that by putting this in a post and tagging it, people can start to filter it out.

And also. Perhaps unnecessarily. I do just want to add that this technology is getting more convincing every day in an era where powerful people are relying on misinformation and public complacency to further their agenda. It might be feel good animal videos now, but if you see a piece of media and it looks too good to be true, it's an important time to ask if it IS, and who benefits from the narrative it's presenting.

Stay safe!

[mylesobando]

My first post

I would define social media as a tool to connect with the world. I think that it was made with the intention of making people closer with others and helping realize that we in fact are all just as human as anyone else. It unfortunately did not end up that way. In a best case I think the most it could be was a place for people to just be funny online, and we have that. We have a big network of people “riffing” with everyone else for all of eternity. 

What social media is in actuality is a cesspool showing up the worst of what humans can be, and the extent others will go to use it to control others. How some will use it to manipulate and control a narrative. Build “communities” that are essentially just echo chambers where they can scream their hate speak and everyone else there will agree or blindly follow. It is a place for most to go fully numb in their head and consume an amount of information the human brain was never meant to take in. It is a place for us to endlessly doom scroll and take in our slop as it is presented to us so we can interact with rage bait or see something that can make us laugh but in 4 scrolls we forgot we ever saw it. Being on social media is the closest those of us living will ever get to being in purgatory, because even if hell is hot it doesn't have AI generated jesus engagement farming on facebook. 

As a social media user I am fairly active. I definitely have more time on it then most people my age I feel. I was lucky to be born when I was so I did not have to navigate the people who are marketing misogyny and to young boys and saying that's how you get women because I was really dumb and would have fallen for it. I feel like I am not quite “chronically online” but you have to be a certain level of online to even be aware of that phrase. I am an amount of online where making connections in person is hard because most sentences start with “did you see that post on (social media site) about (dumb/angering/political/funny thing)”  and if they say no then it feels like an impromptu staring contest. 

I feel like I am pretty strong at identifying some trends and reading between the lines of internet speak. I can also read things with an appropriate amount of skepticism knowing everyone wants to make themself look like the good guy who just did a superhero landing in a marvel film, you have to read posts from many different perspectives to really feel you have the full story. I would say I am fairly weak out of my bubble however. If it is things about welding or gym rat behavior I am out of the loop and would not be able to clue people in. I am strong within my cliques but outside there are many things I know very little about.

For this class beyond of course the credits I think being more informed on things I use but know little about has always been interesting. I have been on social media since I was very young and yet I know nothing about it beyond what the 2010 film The Social Network told me. Elon bought Twitter for more money than anyone in my gene pool will ever see within their lifetime but why, what value did it have to him? Joe Rogan may say he needed to and is saving humanity by doing it but I think he is just a very rich bored guy with autism because if I had a lot of money I would also buy things I did not need because I am also autistic and bored. I feel this class can potentially teach me the value social media can have and how we can use it most effectively. I also feel like this would be fun for me because before I changed my major I wanted to be a social media manager. 

[ct4cd]

The weird essentialist "villain in a movie about a robot" rhetoric people have been spewing is just so fucking bizarre, it's a level of pavlovian thought-termination when you just hear the letters "AI" that happened scarily quickly to every otherwise rational person I know

I'm not going to relitigate every argument for or against AI content generation here, especially since most of the arguments on both sides I see are somehow equally fucking unhinged, but, like, your buddy using Nightcafe to make a couple shitposts isn't going to end life on Earth and capitalism has always had access to shitty writing and art or can have for much cheaper, it's called "hiring shitty artists and writers" and their having access to that hasn't prevented good shit from being made entirely.

If Akiva Goldsman has a career and an Oscar and we still get good movies then the same people having access to Robot Akiva Goldsman won't make good art go extinct just because he can write a hundred movies at once, and that's assuming they ever actually have an AI that can write a coherent script. Not even good, just like, intelligible.

The joke people keep making is "Why are we automating the jobs people actually want and not the jobs nobody wants?" And, like, first of all, capitalism. That's literally always the answer. Everything good anybody ever makes will be turned evil by capitalism because it's a giant turning-things-evil machine we allow to run the world! None of this would be happening without a system that we allow to dictate how art is made that incentivizes profitability over quality and it already does that every way we can. The modern blockbuster is an almost mathematical formula. Action beat every X pages, joke every Y pages. We still get movies that aren't that, because spectacle and quality both sell, just to different markets. If the Transformers movies didn't kill the indie sphere despite catering to a totally different demo, neither would AI. Getting scripts is not the bottleneck in film production! Every waiter in Southern California has one they're trying to sell! Even the shittiest modern blockbuster went through five drafts, because they do have standards. Commercial standards, marketing standards, rather than artistic ones, but standards. And AI isn't meeting them, and won't.

Second, they aren't automating good jobs. They're automating creative jobs, but they're automating shitty ones. They're automating jobs nobody wants, just in fields that also contain other jobs people do want. AI is only being used to create the kind of busy work slop that it's downright insulting to be told to create if you have any talent. If anything, the problem is that AI is bad at that too! Writing WikiHow pages might be a waste of your precious time on Earth, but you're at least unlikely to go so on autopilot that you tell people to thicken their pasta sauce with glue.

"But big companies ARE taking AI seriously! That means it's a real threat!"

Big companies minted NFTs and had interns create digital storefronts in Decentraland. Major studios put out movies on DIVX discs. There were break rooms at major tech companies that probably had Juicero machines. How many testing devices did Walgreens order from Theranos?

Companies don't care about AI. They care about not being the only ones not using it. They care about not being the guy who didn't sign the Beatles, and it's trivially easy to avoid that by just signing every band for a comically small amount of money each just in case. That's how big businesses treat tech. "AI is here" means as little as "NEXT is here" or "Zune is here." Oh, it is? Will it be tomorrow?

Generative AI made a huge leap forward, and capital did what capital always does: they had somebody draw a second graph where the line does the same thing each of the next ten years it did this year, even though that's literally never what happens. The thing that actually does end up being The Next Big Thing is always the thing nobody saw coming. The Second Chart is always wrong. It's not going to make another leap that big for a long, long time. It's getting better by tiny increments again. The sky is neither the limit, nor falling.

i need to be clear re: that post from ed zitron about AI: ive already seen people claim that "creatives" were ahead of the curve on this train of thought. in not uncertain terms: not they werent. they immediately became catholic and started rambling incoherently about art requiring a "soul" or creating parameters for the definition of art that's on par with the most braindead reactionary takes on postmodernism. they were willing to chuck 100 years of artistic development and their audiences under the bus at the mere whisper of a possibility that they might lose a dollar to an existential threat. it is and was embarrassing. they should be ashamed but instead they're going to plaster over reality because it financially benefits them to do so.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

S2 Ep 4 reaction

Lol the boys and Flint broke into Bosco's

They just start unloading bullets hoping something would happen what kings

"I'd kill for a time machine right about now. Of course, I'd kill for just about anything." Oh Max.

Sam and Max fanboying over Flint 😍

"What are ya staring at fellas? You're making me nervous."

"Hot toilet wine! Everything Bosco would need to survive for months." (Is literally wine around a toilet).

Love that his safe house is just the bathroom

Oh hey I figured out the school fair volcano thing really quick... You know, by my standards.

Ah!!!! Why is Bosco a COW???

So THEM are aliens

Also love how casually Sam and Max treat getting abducted

Ok I clicked everything except the elevator

GASP MAMA BOSCO

I can't believe I finally get to meet her

"Nations rise, nations fall, but those hot weenies will outlast us all."

The wine is still in the bathroom

Ooh OK that's why it was unplugged before

Laughing at Sam getting genuinely upset over spilled milk

Ok but the baby-maker machine is the perfect excuse for ya'll to make your oc-kids for the boys (if you want them to be biologically theirs)

Also laughing at Sam and Max staring in awe at the guns

She's barely talked and I love her already

Oh boy, she wanted a girl

Oh no, she (understandably) didn't realize Bosco was her son. She only sees some guy who wrecked her store.

"You don't even like girls."

Oh no, she's into Max now!

And now she doesn't even want to have a kid. Does that mean Bosco won't be born?

Oh no, he is fading from existence... and he's still a horrifying cow-human hybrid!

Ok, I got some more time cards. To Stinky's!

GASP Grandpa Stinky!

Double GASP! Soft marketable Sam and Max!

"You're embarrassing when you try to act cynical, Max."

Stinky thinking the boys are the parents of their kid selves ���

Sam immediately trying to eat the tar cake

"No shirt, no shoes, no service." "We're being discriminated against, Sam!"

The carbon dater doesn't work on Stinky???

The Devil has apparently gone to Stinky's

"I'm not suppose to talk to strangers." "But we're strangers with candy and cool guns you can play with." "Well, that should be ok."

Oh, Sam built Bluster Blaster.

It's funny that Sam knows less of technology than he did as a kid.

Baby Sam and Max are literally so cute I can't even handle this you guys

Asdfghh Sam almost shot his kid self for calling him fat

"Didn't you guys say I could play with your gun." "We lied, kid." "Remember this, it's a good life lesson."

Just gonna steal kid Sam's screwdriver so I can steal another thing.

Gee, Max, great distraction.

Going to steal some of the tar cake.

Oh! Old men Sam and Max?

Old Sam is, ugh, not all there. It's really sweet that Old Max sticks with him. He kinda seems like a caretaker actually.

Superball!

Aw, Max wants to build a fort ❤

"The oval office looks the same in our time as it does in the 60s." "Yeah I was hoping you'd take that as a challenge from the other first ladies, but you just never stepped up to the plate."

Oh Superball, your tour was lovely.

"So more about this door..."

Wait... Is Superball Bosco's dad???

How old IS Superball?

Love that out of everything, it was the fact that the president was going to go to Stinky's that shocked Superball

That's also possibly the only time he's raised his voice

Mmm, nope! Superball definitely isn't his dad haha. At least he has hair now, and isn't a cow.

GASP the banang gag

Also, another Superball!

Another Sam just called at us from out the window for a trade.

"Smiletember. Seems like only yesterday it was Gaypril."

"How's the cover up going." "Very good, sir... which is what I would say if there was a cover up."

Did... Superball just mindwipe Sam and Max!

Superball being sus af in general.

"Everytime life closes one door it opens another." "That thought disgusts and terrifies me, sir."

"I'm aging gracefully sir. Clean living."

Lol, we got the patent for Stinky's slop. Let's go make him cease and desist

Oh, the AI fell off!

I bet using the abusive AI will work... Yup!

Wait, ew, did we turn Max het!?

I hope it's just turning him even more annoying and not THAT.

Ew, I hate Max flirting with her! Good thing she hates it too.

Oh good, Max says he'll be back to normal in a month.

Well, Bosco isn't fading out of reality now... but he’s still not bold.

How the actual hell did it take me so long to notice the envelope in the white house???

Yay, we fixed Bosco!

Oh, the aliens are coming?

The mariachi men?

What?

A song????

Bosco is so scared of them

Jurgen!?

Wait, where are they sending vamp boy?

They gave Bosco a heart attack!

Oh, no, his soul.

"A mariachi can never have a birthday for himself. It is our curse!"

"Hey, lighten up on Sam and Max!" Bosco cares 🥺

Ok, let's show the mariachi the egg and the eulogy

Egg didn't work

I keep making Bosco shrink :(

Oh, am I going back to season 01?

Aw, Sam singing

"It keeps the mystery in our relationship"

I??? They stole the time machine!?

Omg playable Sam and Max had to go through the entirety of Season 01 again.

By meeting future version of themselves does that they've split off into an alternate universe????

Ok I finally got the recording contract, so that's one mariachi down.

I think I know how to get rid of the second one

Superball's birthday is Spetember 6 - A national holiday!

"This has been the best birthday ever" Superball, my love

Ooooh, so the typewriter ribbon from the previous episode was because of what we did in this one

A blank card?

We're at the beginning of the universe!

Why is the chicken here!?

Haha big dog grabbed chicken

He... put Mr featherly into his inventory? OK, we show the last one the bird, right?

Oh, the spaceship is Sombrero shaped

Max adjusting Sam's tie 🥰🥰🥰

So, uh, next episode takes place in hell, huh?