#i have no idea if i actually answered the question

[bunny-jpeg]

not second best

max verstappen

tags: smut/pwp, redbull driver!reader, teammates au, jealousy, possessiveness, missionary, dirty talk, rough sex

"if you could be teammates with anyone else, who would it be?"

you stood in front of the camera and thought on it for a moment before you answered, "oh, easy! i'd choose charles! i'd say we're pretty close and i'm hopeful this year is the year we wins... but he'd have to beat me first!" then winked at the camera with your hands on your hips.

your teammate, max, was behind the camera and his ears were burning. he knew the question was a joke, but he didn't want to see his favourite teammate be on the same team with his most loathed rival.

in the hotel room, max's hand lingered across your back a little more as he guided you away from your hotel room and towards his. his nose brushed against your neck, taking in your scent before he went to open the door.

when he got the door closed behind you two, his hands were on you once more. his lips at your neck and between kisses he asked, "you'd pick, charles, huh?"

you squeaked, "they said pick someone else." you looked into max's eyes, "we're already teammates." and your eyes went a little wide as he pressed himself further against you. you two have had sex before, it was no secret - with the amount of time you spent together it was inevitable.

"could have picked anyone else." he said lowly as he rubbed up against you further and touched your chest, "you know how i feel about him. how he gets under my skin. i wouldn't want anyone to be on the same team as you. you're mine."

you knew his reaction was overbearing, but you knew that max deeply cared for you. he yearned for you deeply. the thump of his heart was in time with how much he adored you, needed you. so the idea of charles taking you away from him only poked at something in his brain.

you gasped when he bit into the skin of your neck, you knew it would bruise. but something curled in your gut as you felt the a certain lust wash over you.

"you're red bull or nothing." he said lowly, "by my side, or off the track." he said as he started to play with the front of your jeans, "i don't want charles to get the wrong idea, so tonight. i'm going to make sure you firmly remember who you belong to." he placed another kiss on your neck before you ended up in the bedroom and on the bed.

you could have said no, you could have stood your ground and had him slink away with his tail between his legs. but there was something about the domineering max that just made you wet. the looked in his eye, cold, commanding. he looked like the villain that everyone thought of him as.

you took off your branded t-shirt and you felt his gaze linger on your breasts. he licked his lips and you got your bra off, slowly your jeans came off too along with the rest of your under garments. socks throw in two different directions and your panties on the other side of the bed. max was quicker to get undressed before he got on top of you in bed. he pushed you up against the pillows and gazed down at you.

his cock was fully erect. you knew he got off to submitting you under him. he told you once that he liked when you posed a challenge on the track because that meant he could fuck you harder. a real champion can take anything, he told you once when he had you in a headlock and bullied your poor pussy.

"look at you." he said as he hiked your hips up closer to him, "see, this is what no other driver can have. you're just so sweet on the track, you're their little star. but you need someone to actually keep you safe. and charles would never do that." max said lowly and rubbed the tip of his cock up against you, "too trusting. you should only be trusting me."

you swallowed, "please, max." you held onto the pillows under your head and you lifted your hips a little to give him better access to your cunt. you were wet and max knew it. he loved that he carried that bit of control over you, easily making you soaked between your legs.

he remembered after a rough practice he spent what felt like half an hour rubbing your cunt through your driver's suit and he knew that you raced the next round with stickiness between your legs. risky move, but max had to plant those seeds early.

that after formula one, you wouldn't become an engineer or a reporter, or whatever else ex-drivers seemed to do. no, you'd be max's wife. and hopefully married after after that season ended.

he looked at you and licked his lips. you met his gaze as he sank his cock into you. you arched your back a little and he relaxed against you. and so did you. he planted his hands on either side of you, he leaned in to kiss you on the lips as you wrapped your legs around him.

"look at you." he said.

you shifted yourself on the bed a little and reached for him. your arms wrapped around his neck. you held on while he moved against you. pleasure moved through both of you. you loved the feeling, even with max's harsh words, you still felt affection for him. both as a teammate and a lover.

"i'm always looking out for you." he said, he drank in the sight of your face, "i want you well, i want you safe. and i want you as mine." his strokes started to move faster, he felt a slight fire in his gut from the feeling of his cock buried inside of you slick pussy.

you were on birth control, but still it was a risk to take you this way. to have him bare inside of you. but, it eased his jealousy just a little bit to know that he was the only man to ever take you this bare. to take you as his, all his.

"please, max. it feels so good." you encouraged him as you held on tighter, the pleasure was growing in your core as he rutted against you. there was something about how his cock moved inside of you that hit all the right areas that made your eyes roll a little out of pleasure.

"you don't know what you do to me." he said lowly, "i don't want you to ever think about having another teammate ever again. i want you to only need me by your side. matching cars, matching uniforms." matching last names.

he continued to thrust into you, he held onto the bedding a little tighter and felt the sweat at his brow. it was hot between you two. the movements of him against you only had you holding onto you tighter.

"max. fuck."

"i know, it feels good. you love how you feel under me. do you like being my teammate?"

you nodded and your nails nipped at the back of his neck as you held on, you swallowed before you said, "i love being your teammate, max. you know that!"

"do you want another teammate? want another man to fuck you the way i do?"

you shook your head, "never. never in a million years. i want us to win the constructor's this year!" you arched your back a little when his cock nudged against just the right spot that made you feel tingly all over. he laid another heated kiss on your lips and continued to fuck you quickly and roughly.

the headboard slammed against the wall from the force that he was fucking with you. you whined into the kiss and he held onto your hips tightly, you were pinned under him while he fucked you. he felt your body quake under him, the feeling of heat under your skin. you were the sparks in his brain and the fuel in his blood.

fucking you was the same intensity as driving. except he could let his mind grow hazy with each powerful thrust. to know you'd never want another meant the world to him, to know that you were all his. you moaned against his lips and clawed down his strong back.

you didn't last much longer. you broke the kiss and made a strong yet whiny noise as you came around his cock. you arched your back and squeezed your eyes shut as you climaxed. it only spurred him on, it made his heart hammer along with yours. the pleasure flooded your head and after you reached your peak, you let go of him and let him have his wicked way with you.

"beautiful." max said as he continued to fuck you strong thrusts. he left himself feel all of you, every inch of you felt warm under him. you were sweaty and hot. he licked his lips and the pleasure throbbed in his body.

"please, max. i'm sorry that i made that comment. i knew i couldn't pick you." you whined.

max kissed at your neck, "next time, pick someone else. alex, george, even carlos. just not charles, i won't let that sweet talker take you from me." you could feel the possessiveness in his tone.

he knew he was close, with a few more heavy thrusts he finished inside of you. he groaned under his breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead. your cunt fluttered around him and he drank in the feeling. you felt amazing, warm all over and so soft. he knew he had to have you always.

"perfect." he cooed before he pulled out and laid out next to you in bed. he cupped your face with his large hand. those large hands on your soft skin. he leaned in, "tell me again."

you opened your eyes and asked, "tell you what?"

"that you don't want charles."

you shook your head, "i don't want charles. only you, max." and you curled up closer to him. his touches were more gentle, the jealous beast in him calmed down. for now.

-

"if you could be teammates with anyone else, who would it be?"

you thought about it for a moment, the reminder of last time tickled in your gut. but quickly you looked back to the camera and said, "i'd have to pick, lando! he got really close to the wdc last year, but if we were teammates he'd have a little more competition."

and you knew behind the camera, max verstappen was seething. <3

[bagadew]

While this is a good breakdown, I’m not entirely sure I agree with the portrayal of the Doylist view as being inherently more true, or with the Watsonian view being more naive. I don’t necessarily think that one is better than the other, but I will argue the other sides of what was written above for the sake of balance.

Doylist point of views have a tendency to be jaded. They assume that things happen by the readers own perspective of the way the real world works, and the way the people involved think and behave. Sometimes this is appropriate, and most likely correct, like with the bunny girl the example listed above… other times it shuts down actual media analysis with bad faith takes that, refuse to connect with the media as an art form with something it is trying to say.

For instance, chalking a character’s unusual behaviour up as the result of the episode having a different writer isn’t just trite, it’s objective, and makes assumptions of things going on behind the scenes that you ultimately have no real knowledge of. Perhaps that was what was going on, perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps it was something intentional the audience was supposed to pick up on? Perhaps it’s an intentional subtlety that fits into a bigger picture the writers were trying to tell. Perhaps it will be something later. Perhaps the show is finished and it’s an echo of an idea they decided to drop? Sometimes there is no clear truth. Sometimes the truth is a mixture.

The Watsonian view meanwhile, can be about engaging with a piece of media on its own merits, and analysing it on the strength of itself on its own two feet. Things like world building and can be a legitimate answer as to why the story goes in the directions it does, especially in works where those things are the fleshed and important parts of the world.

The Watsonian fan and the writer are not a different species. Writers can and do sink hours into their world building and character work, trying to stick to the laws they created and follow them through to their natural conclusion. They put those things in their work for others to pick up on, even if those things are just background because there are more important things to put in the foreground. Those things are placed there on purpose for people to pick up on and think about.

Sometimes the curtains are blue because that was the only fabric the set designer had. Sometimes the curtains are blue because it says something about the themes of the work. Sometimes the curtains are blue because it’s the colour the character would have picked out. All of these reasons can be true and all of them can be false. It depends on the work in question.

I feel like we need a refresher on Watsonian vs Doylist perspectives in media analysis. When you have a question about a piece of media - about a potential plot hole or error, about a dubious costuming decision, about a character suddenly acting out of character -

A Watsonian answer is one that positions itself within the fictional world.

A Doylist answer is one that positions itself within the real world.

Meaning: if Watson says something that isn't true, one explanation is that Watson made a mistake. Another explanation is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a mistake.

Watsonian explanations are implicitly charitable. You are implicitly buying into the notion that there is a good in-world reason for what you're seeing on screen or on the page. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie all the time because they're from a desert culture!")

Doylist explanations are pragmatic. You are acknowledging that the fiction is shaped by real-world forces, like the creators' personal taste, their biases, the pressures they might be under from managers or editors, or the limits of their expertise. ("The bunny girls in Final Fantasy wear lingerie because somebody thought they'd sell more units that way.")

Watsonian explanations tend to be imaginative but naive. Seeking a Watsonian explanation for a problem within a narrative is inherently pleasure-seeking: you don't want your suspension of disbelief to be broken, and you're willing to put in the leg work to prevent it. Looking for a Watsonian answer can make for a fun game! But it can quickly stray into making excuses for lazy or biased storytelling, or cynical and greedy executives.

Doylist explanations are very often accurate, but they're not much fun. They should supersede efforts to provide a Watsonian explanation where actual harm is being done: "This character is being depicted in a racist way because the creators have a racist bias.'" Or: "The lore changed because management fired all of the writers from last season because they didn't want to pay then residuals."

Doylism also runs the risk of becoming trite, when applied to lower stakes discrepancies. Yes, it's possible that this character acted strangely in this episode because this episode had a different writer, but that isn't interesting, and it terminates conversation.

I think a lot of conversations about media would go a lot more smoothly, and everyone would have a lot more fun, if people were just clearer about whether they are looking to engage in Watsonian or Doylist analysis. How many arguments could be prevented by just saying, "No, Doylist you're probably right, but it's more fun to imagine there's a Watsonian reason for this, so that's what I'm doing." Or, "From a Watsonian POV that explanation makes sense, but I'm going with the Doylist view here because the creator's intentions leave a bad taste in my mouth that I can't ignore."

Idk, just keep those terms in your pocket? And if you start to get mad at somebody for their analysis, take a second to see if what they're saying makes more sense from the other side of the Watsonian/Doylist divide.

[deerspherestudios]

Hi! I adored your game and Mychael, and have spent a good amount of time reading through all of the questions/answers here, and I wanted to ask:

Is it alright if I headcanon Mychaels ability to be based on spores instead of the original idea of eyecontact/hypnosis?

When I first played the game, I thought the pink effect shown on screen were spores, which made sense given his design; With them acting kinda like the cordyceps fungus but much more specified to either erase/block memories from the hippocampus, or imprint on/manipulate the visual cortex to create a new (though impared) memories.

Sorry if this is an offending question, or if I'm just blabbering!! Just wanted to be sure in case I wanted to create fanart in the future.

Lots of admiration from Scandinavia! ♡♡

Of course! Headcanons are always accepted, depict my characters however you'd like! Actually, checking my previous answers even a blind person can be affected by his ability without the eye contact. So it might be spores after all! Who knows!

The pink haze is just a visual cue to players so they know something's up, alongside the audio cue of fuzzy static and pink text. You don't actually see pink when he does it.

It's no coincidence you brought up cordyceps, since it's actually what his horns are based on in one of his character concepts! Cordyceps image below though I feel like it might gross people out so it's under the cut:

The bright orange of his horns are definitely inspired by these guys!

[ene-ask]

I saw your little teaser of adding TFA Optimus and I am very pumped for this! Also semi related because it looks like he has Liege Maximo's garment and, if you already answered this then please direct me to where you put this, but what is Liege Maximo like in this AU? Is he a mischief maker when it comes to the other Primes or something else?

Because while I had an idea to write about TFA Op getting picked up by Megatronus, the idea of Liege Maximo grabbing him before Megatronus could is very hilarious and I can easily swap it to something like that.

Actually a better question - have Primes noticed one of their own eyeballing a potential Apprentice but decided to go and snatch that Apprentice up first, not out of pettiness or spite but because they believe they could teach that Apprentice better than the initial Prime who was eyeing them?

(Sorry, I'm just really feral when it comes to TFA because that's my continuity of choice -Goofy_Boss)

Liege Maximo is in general a cranky mech, he dislikes his position and job but he fulfills his duties and keeps a professional front with his apprentices. His mischief and urge to cause them were dampened over time by the Prime’s disapproval, especially Prima. He’d still cause some harmless mischief here and there, be sarcastic and tell white lies but that’s about all he’s allowed to do

I suppose that has happened before, the apprentice practice has been going on for a long while

[gospelica]

hi granny!! <3 hope ur doing good <3

just uncle sukuna and you come back from a trip (weekend/spring break) and he's the one who picks you up from the airport, but you don't make it far before he's demanding you let him check. Has to make sure you haven't whored yourself out to anyone, that you're exactly as desperate for him as you were last time. fingers you to check that you haven't been stretched, make sure no stupid boy has been taking what's his, and then fucks you stupid. He doesn't care if you're being honest about 'no one else' as you whine his name, he has territory to claim. And claim it he does, cumming in you twice before pissing in you. He can't have you thinking your cunt is for anything other than taking what he gives you.

Its a good thing you have your luggage, so you have other panties to change into. He tells you to change after the first time, then rips those and fucks you again for thinking you could hide your pussy from him. It's his, and you won't forget it. He drops you off at your house, tells your parents your plane was late. Gives you a teasing head pat and winks at your parents, saying you were gushing about some boy. leaving you to answer their questions about your trip with his cum dripping out of you.

- ✨️

EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKK nonnie this made me giggle out loud and now my bf is staring at me. he thinks im watching porn.

this is actually my fav thing ever nonnie baby u have no idea... im going feral i love uncle sukuna more than anything and THIS????? pls pls pls never stop having these ideas and never stop sending them to me im in love with you i. cant.

[hrizantemy]

The Weaponization of “Interpretation” in the ACOTAR Fandom

One of the most frustrating aspects of the ACOTAR fandom isn’t just the toxic dynamics within the books—it’s how a portion of readers respond to critique, especially when it comes to uncomfortable truths about race, power, gender, and narrative bias. There’s a particular attitude that gets thrown around whenever someone dares to challenge the dominant reading of the story, and it’s essentially this: “I can read it however I want, and if you don’t like it, just ignore it.”

On the surface, it sounds harmless. Everyone should be able to interpret art, right? Isn’t that what stories are for?

Yes—and no. Because this attitude isn’t really about interpretation. It’s about avoiding accountability for the biases and implications embedded in those interpretations. It’s used not to invite dialogue, but to shut it down.

What makes it worse is that this behavior often comes from readers who are the most vocal in defending the canon characters—especially Rhysand, and the Inner Circle—as infallible, morally perfect, and beyond critique. These are the same people who masculinize Emerie, demonize Nesta, infantilize Feyre, and ignore the colonialist, classist, and misogynistic structures in Prythian, all while claiming they’re just “having fun” with the story. But the moment someone points out that their interpretation upholds harmful tropes or flattens characters of color, they double down, insisting that fiction is off-limits to criticism.

What they’re really saying is: “I don’t want to think about what my interpretation says about me or the world I live in.”

And look—no one’s interpretation is neutral. Every reader brings their worldview to a text. That’s normal. But when people aggressively defend readings that erase marginalized characters, glorify abusive power structures, or uphold racist and sexist tropes—and then cry censorship when they’re called out for it—that’s not just annoying. It’s dangerous.

Because stories shape culture. Stories inform our understanding of love, power, justice, and identity. And when a fandom refuses to reckon with the uglier parts of those stories—when it insists that any discomfort is “just your opinion”—what it’s really doing is creating a space where critical thinking is punished and harmful ideas are celebrated.

You are allowed to interpret a story in whatever way you want. But once you share that interpretation publicly—especially in a fandom space—you don’t get to act shocked when people respond. You don’t get to cry “bullying” when someone says, “Hey, that reading is actually kind of racist/sexist/classist.” You’re participating in a conversation, whether you like it or not.

This fandom has a habit of hiding behind the idea of “personal interpretation” to excuse the dehumanization of certain characters (Lucien, Nesta, Emerie, Eris), while worshipping others (Rhys, Feyre, Azriel) with a level of aggression that borders on propaganda. And when you question that narrative? Suddenly you’re “too serious,” “toxic,” or “just hating for no reason.”

But it is serious. Because the characters people uplift, the ones they rewrite, the ones they silence or erase or demonize—it all reveals something. And if you’re not willing to examine that? You’re not interpreting the book. You’re reinforcing your own biases and using the story as a shield.

So no—it’s not just fiction. And it’s not just an interpretation.

It’s a choice. And we’re allowed to interrogate the ones you make.

And let me be clear: this is not me saying only I get to judge. You’re absolutely allowed to question why I like Nesta, why I don’t vibe with Cassian, why I’m critical of Morrigan’s flat characterization. Ask me. I will answer. I have answered. I’m not afraid of critique. I welcome it—because that’s what makes fandom richer.

But what I won’t do is accept the idea that “critique = hate” and “neutrality = attack.” If you can write endless metas about how Rhys is secretly the most benevolent ruler in Prythian while overseeing Illyria’s mutilation camps, I can write one about how Nesta’s anger is valid, or how Eris might be a victim of his own environment. That’s not me overstepping. That’s engaging.

You’re allowed to read how you want. But I’m allowed to ask why. And if that question threatens your enjoyment of the story? Maybe the issue isn’t me. Maybe it’s the narrative you’ve built to protect your favorite characters from accountability.

[bogkeep]

thoughts about the "it's ableist to demand people to create art without ai" argument

thankfully not an argument that shows up on my dash unless someone is dunking on it (though i prefer not to be exposed to it at all but what can you do), but i Do think it can be worth biting into the question of: Does True Art Require Effort?

like, if we just ignore the exploitative nature of generative AI for a moment, and the fact that it creates dogshit results and is probably not going to get much "better" than this.

the thing i tend to harp on is that i don't find it particularly meaningful to discuss back and forth whether or not ai generated pictures counts as Real Art or not, because we do not have a meaningful consensus on how to define art in a way that includes everything we personally think is art and excludes everything we don't think is art. it's an interesting discussion! but it's a distraction from, well, The Exploitation. i personally think ai generated pictures can be art - it just tends to be Bad Art. it's uninspired, boring, and makes a mockery of the craft - but that's something you can say about many artworks that's been crafted by real human hands, as well.

so technically i have already answered the question, but it's not what i wanted to talk about. what i wanted to look at was the relationship between Art and Effort, or as some may put it, Suffering. because there is a point where i agree- i don't think there's a necessary Effort Threshold something needs to pass to be considered Art. i don't think one has to suffer to create. and it is true that for some people, the act creation requires far more effort or sacrifice than it requires of others, be it because of disability, time restraints, a lack of resources... we have different situations! this is real! i myself have struggled with tendonitis, severely limiting my ability to draw, and it's not something you can just keep drawing your way through the pain for, lest you fuck it up even worse.

the first question is this: is Creation a human right? well, self actualization IS on the maslow's pyramid of needs, on the tippy top. i have no idea if the pyramid theory is considered Super Legit or not, but it makes sense to me. i think humans DO have a creative need that we express in a myriad of forms - not just writing and drawing! i think our brains yearn to Make Thing for the sake of Making Thing. i think it is very very sad that techbros are dabbling in the act of creation by writing prompts to feed ai generators, and i pity them for not having discovered a more fulfilling way to feed that impulse. i do actually think all humans should have time and tools for creative expressions, but that's an extremely broad sentence for me to say.

(a more adjacent topic is that art as a Product is more of a luxury than a Human Need, like it's not food or shelter. but also art is so deeply embedded in human civilization, and i do think it's a shame how often people consider it superfluous or even hedonistic. *i* think it's important to feed the soul with beauty and stories and expression, but i have no authority to make such a claim for all humankind.)

here is the thing. we have made many tools that have made creating art easier. we live in an age of photography and audio recording and digital art programs. the last one especially can give us a MYRIAD of shortcuts when it comes to creating visual art! nobody would consider it "cheating" to use the paint bucket tool instead of painstakingly filling in every area with a brush tool. we have increasingly more access to 3d models and various assets. *is* there a point where we draw a line in the sand and say, "you're not spending enough time to make this, therefore it is void"? i, personally, wouldn't. i wouldn't know where to draw that line. i have been reading webcomics for a long time, and i have seen how webtoon as a platform has slowly gentrified the medium and is forcing creators to create pages at an unsustainable, breakneck speed - it's no wonder artists are plopping 3D assets directly into their art to even make that schedule viable.

like, ultimately, generative ai doesn't make anything new we have never seen before - we've had photo manipulation for as long as photography has existed, what we consider "slop" has been churned out by greedy corporations for as long as it's been a way to make money - it just makes it much faster, and, crucially, without intention or creative input.

like, i think that's the big thing. whether or not Art can be created without Intent is a whole another discussion, actually. there was an article about someone leaving their glasses on the floor at a gallery, and people started treating it as part of the exhibition. your cat can take a random, unintended photo and you can call it art. once again, a very big and interesting discussion to have! but i think the throughline is that even if human intent was not involved in creating the art, human intent placed it in a context to make it art. art is a social construct! but! i do think intent can be the line between Good art and Bad art. unfortunately, this is another extremely complex discussion to have, because can we objectively call any art Good or Bad? what does Good or Bad even *mean*! do we even have time to delve into that!!

but what we can say for absolutely 100% certain is that generative ai has no intent, no purpose, no thoughts. it is an algorithm, it does not have the ability to think or mean anything of its own. if it has a bias, it's because the people who programmed it have a bias, or because there is an implicit bias in the content fed to it. now, i don't want to go down the path of talking about how Real Art has a ~*Soul*~ or always has some kind of deep meaning. i don't think the millions of Cool Anime Eyes sketched in math notebooks have a deeper meaning. we create art for lots and lots of purposes - for fun, for practice, to make money, to tell our most vulnerable of truths in the only way we know how, and so on. it can be hard to tell how much of what we create is imbued with ~*intent*~, or even how much we are aware of it - i don't know if a 12 year old trying to draw the coolest edgiest sword wielding OC is thinking too hard about like, the contextual implications of design tropes... but they're making an effort to make their OC look ras as hell with the knowledge and tools at their tiny hand. when they are 24 they may look back at what they drew and redraw it with all the experience they have gained since!!

an AI can't replace a human doing creative work professionally because the skills and knowledge they are using is far more than just "picture look pretty" or "this text vaguely sounds like it was written by a human and isn't that super impressive". at best, or worst really, it replaces extremely overworked and over-exploited professionals who are not given time, resources and compensation to do their job *well*, such as ghost writers forced to write slop.

creation is more than the effort it takes to make it. it is *knowing* how to shape your clay, your words, your lines, to make them into what you want them to be and what you want them to do. it is knowing how (and when) to rewrite your draft, to pick out the best sketch, to make coherent thumbnails, tighten up the narrative, to evoke a mood, to play on themes. it is to build your skill with everything you make.

generative AI is a randomizer button. the one thing i feel fairly certain about is that it's very difficult to say *you* created something if all you did was write a prompt and a machine spat out a product at you. like that one seems fairly cut and dry to me. another thing i've seen a lot is people claiming to use genAI as a starting point, and then editing the thing to make it what you want it to be - and i can see the merit in that, sure! though i also think that the amount of editing and tweaking you need to do to make the thing workable is so substantial and grueling that you may as well make your thing from scratch, and now we've just looped back around to the Demanding Effort Is Ableism problem again.

using generative AI is giving up your autonomy in the process of creation. there are ways to spin art out of that (gestures at marina abramovíc's famous performance art where she just let the audience do whatever they wanted to her while she remained unresponsive) - but for the question of Creating Art As A Human Right And Need: why would you want to? what creative fulfilment do you get out of relinquishing all creative control? you're not... you're not *making* anything. maybe you came up with an idea - great start! - and then threw it out the window in the hopes that the wind would pick it up and take it somewhere exciting. god, even that sounds more like an artistic project than using generative AI. literally any metaphor i could make about this sounds more artistic and interesting than what generative AI is doing these days. i miss the time when AI generated pictures were incomprehensible and strange. i miss secret horses. i miss the time where i naively hoped computers dreaming up images would be like, artistically interesting.

most importantly, as many, many other people have said: disabled people are *already* making art. when my tendonitis was bad, i drastically reduced my drawing time and switched to only using tools that were gentle on my hands, and planned my drawings and drawing time accordingly. i think of my disabled writer friends using speech-to-text software. i think of sir terry pratchett, diagnosed with alzheimers, creating his last books by dictating to his assistant and making audio notes for himself. i'm thinking of the many, many creatives who have collaborated to create amazing things together. i'm not going to come out here and say that ~*Anything Is Possible If You Only Put Your Mind To It*~ or some other platitude that disregards your disability, i don't know you, maybe you will never have the ability or resources to work on the One beautiful creative project that lives in your heart. but i am nearly completely certain that generative AI is not your only option.

[caesarflickermans]

SUZANNE COLLINS: SOTR EXCLUSIVE EDITIONS INTERVIEW

This is a transcript from the Barnes & Noble / Waterstones exclusive edition interview. To my knowledge, they are the same.

Not to be confused with interview on her website, which you can find here.

transcript below

DL: Did you always know you’d write a novel about the second Quarter Quell? If not, what compelled you to return to this particular point in the Hunger Games timeline?

SC: I always start with the underlying ideas—in this case, implicit submission, the uncertainty of inductive reasoning, propaganda, love—and they find their way to the story that supports them. But yes, I think I did want to do Haymitch’s story because I’ve always known that the version Katniss and Peeta saw on the train was very misleading. When I landed on implicit submission and its dependency on propaganda, Haymitch’s was the natural tale to tell. Just like the state of nature debate led naturally to Coriolanus’s story.

DL: The quote at the start of the book from the philosopher David Hume is a very telling one. It starts, “Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which they are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.” This feels like a key to the entire book.

SC: If all people do is read the full Hume quote and discuss it, this book has been a win for me. This quote invites so many questions. Like, “Do you think Hume is right? As human beings, do we ultimately end up being governed by a few people? Not in, say, a totalitarian state, but in a democracy?” (After thinking about it, every single person I asked about this said yes. No one seemed happy about it.) “But why have we resigned our own sentiments and passions to those rulers? Why are we implicitly submitting to this? Especially since force is on our side, as the governed.” Hume answers that for us. We’re allowing ourselves to be controlled by “opinion.” And that’s where propaganda comes in.

All right, then, “What propaganda do we all consume on a daily basis that maintains this status quo? Is it harder to maintain in an autocracy or a democracy where we pride ourselves on our intellectual or political freedom? How much propaganda does it take to make you think that implicit submission is what you want? Is it inevitable? Is there a way to protect ourselves against it? What would that entail?”

DL: Haymitch is starting at a very different place than Katniss or Coriolanus—while his life has had its sadness, it’s largely been a good life so far. How does that change the stakes within the novel?

SC: Yes, his life has been largely good. A loving family, good friends, the love of his life. A sweet part-time job that may lead to a profitable, if illegal, career. He’s happy except for the shadow of the Games that hangs over them all. So, emotionally, his loss is the greatest because he has the most to lose. And unlike Katniss and Coriolanus, who have loved ones to the end, Snow tries to strip Haymitch of everything: family, friends, lover, job, community, happiness, and the freedom to love anyone. His personal stakes couldn’t be higher.

DL: What was it like to be creating a new work that you’d already loosely outlined in Catching Fire?

SC: Actually, it helped. Younger me provided a protagonist, his arena, his overall arc, and some of the cast, including Maysilee Donner. Having to build off the recap, not having everything to decide, meant some extra challenges on the plotting side, but ultimately it was freeing. I just had to work within what was established. Of course, knowing that the narrative had been manipulated into a piece of Capitol propaganda gave me a lot of freedom as well. 

DL: It’s such an interesting scenario, to have our very reliable narrator understand that he is surrounded by so many unreliable narrators — and that, in fact, unreliable narration is a powerful political tool. The “card-stacking” that helps him a little in the beginning (with Plutarch using the manipulation as an excuse to give Haymitch time with his family) ends up being existentially overwhelming when Haymitch watches the “recap” of the Games and realizes how history is truly written by the victory (and not the Victor). To me, this felt like the biggest revelation to Haymitch — the sheer degree of manipulation. Can you talk a little about how this revelation about propaganda sits within the larger scope of the series?

SC: After he watches the reaping on the train, Haymitch realizes that he’s the Gamemakers’ puppet and that they will manipulate his image and actions to serve their needs. Within the arena, he can only wonder what they’re showing the audience. But the full force of their deception doesn’t hit him until he sees how completely they’ve changed his story the night he’s crowned. Remember, too, that in order to appease Snow and protect his loved ones and, when that fails, to fulfill his promise to Lenore Dove, he has to carry the Gamemakers’ narrative forward as the absolute truth. It’s an enormous burden that he bears alone because all of his allies who lived the truth are dead. Keeping the real version straight in his own head while promoting the fabricated version would require constant vigilance. But deep down, even through his white liquor fog, he realizes it’s imperative that he do it. If he can’t distinguish between the two, the Capitol wins. This foreshadows Peeta’s hijacking in Mockingjay and reinforces the question the whole series asks about the information we’re consuming: “Real or not real?”

DL: If I could give you a time machine back to when you were writing Catching Fire, would you have asked yourself to do anything differently?

SC: No, but maybe in the Mockingjay book. I might have shortened the period between Haymitch being crowned victor and when he loses his family. It doesn’t need to be two weeks. Although it does give Snow an additional window to torment him in the Capitol. But really, he could have gone straight home after the Victor’s Ceremony.

DL: Besides Haymitch, was there any other character from the trilogy that you particularly enjoyed revisiting in Sunrise?

SC: I love doing all of them: Plutarch, Effie, Beetee, Mags, Wiress, Burdock, Asterid. Getting to share who they were and what motivated them. They didn’t arise fully formed in the trilogy. All the characters are on journeys. Beetee losing Ampert, Effie clinging to her Capitol beliefs, Asterid healing the sick in 12, Plutarch still staying in the games. Everybody has their own story.

DL: One of the most fascinating things about seeing the Games play out over time — going from the Tenth to the Fiftieth to the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth — is understanding both the evolution of the Games and the evolution of the roles within the Games. In particular, I’d love to ask you about the contrast between Drusilla and the Effie of the Trilogy. There seems to be a profound generational difference that shapes their view of their role in the Games — and, indeed, seeing the start of Effie’s relationship here made me suddenly understand the dynamic that must have governed District 12 tributes for the next twenty-five years. Can you talk about what makes Drusilla tick versus what ultimately makes Effie tick?

SC: As escorts, both Drusilla and Effie are ambassadors for the Hunger Games. Drusilla who lived through the cruelties of the Dark Days, has channeled her experience into vengeance against the districts. She’s dehumanized her enemy, referring to them as beasts and pigs, and she has no qualms about ushering the piglets into the arena. Effie, born decades after the war, has embraced the Hunger Games as her patriotic duty. She’s been raised on them as necessary evil and a reminder of a war that Panem can never afford to repeat. Unlike Drusilla, she believes all the participants have a noble role to play. That begins to wear thin over the years. Every Games it becomes harder to justify the atrocity. You can see her clinging to good manners for reassurance of humanity’s decency. But in terms of the Hunger Games, Effie being assigned as their escort was a lucky break for District 12. She might be ridiculous, but she’s not malicious.

DL: Even though Maysilee is mentioned in Catching Fire, we really get to know her for the first time in this book. In many ways, she’s not so much defined by her privilege as she is by her lack of control over her life — when we first talked about her, you said she was “indentured into a life she doesn’t want.” What do you think fuels Maysilee, both in the arena and out of it?

SC: Rage. She’s one of the angriest characters I’ve ever written. She’s mad about the injustice of the world she’s born into and not it threatens and limits her life on every level. Before she’s reaped, that just manifests as meanness. But once she’s reaped, she begins to evolve and focus that emotion on the Capitol. She remembers who the enemy is.

DL: Snow makes quite an appearance when he arrives at Plutarch’s apartment. What was it like to see him in this era, after spending so much time with his younger self when writing Ballad?

SC: When I started working on this book, for the first time Snow and I were about the same age. We’re both entering our third act. I could feel his middle-agedness in mind and body, imagine his lost and realized dreams, and sense the cost of maintaining them. He's devoted his whole life to controlling Panem. But the work will never be done. It's exhausting.

Emotionally, he's beginning to reflect back on his life. His loves and losses. His resentment at the Heavensbee library when his own childhood books were burned for warmth, his cynicism over Haymitch's romance, his fear and loathing of District 12. I enjoyed having Lucy Gray's memory rise up and disrupt his life.

DL: And poor Haymitch doesn't even know why he's setting Snow off! But that does lead me to a question about Lenore Dove, who has grown up in a very different Covey world than Lucy Gray. How do you feel her outlook is shaped by her Covey roots?

SC: Lenore Dove romanticizes the Covey's prewar days as itinerant musicians on the open road. She also knows the losses that followed, the murdered parents and orphaned Covey children. And in particular, she's haunted by the fate of Lucy Gray. She wears bright bits of Lucy Gray's dress about her person and keeps her forbidden lyrics alive in private performances for Haymitch and Burdock. The Capitol has never meant anything but oppression and pain for her people; and that fuels her desire to bring it down.

DL: And how did Poe become such a part of the book?

SC: Haymitch's love needed a name. Since she's Covey, that starts with a ballad. I knew she'd died young, as Haymitch mentions this in Mockingjay. So, love of his life - her early death + his relentless grief = Edgar Allan Poe. I’m right back at the Romantic poets again. Even then, I’ve got several poems to choose from — “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume,” “Lenore,” “To One in Paradise” — but I couldn’t resist “The Raven.”

DL: One of the things I love about Ballad and Sunrise is that they make the series much more about “the long game,” showing that the events of the trilogy don’t happen because the right girl shows up at the right time, but because of decades of planning. In many ways, Plutarch’s extremely ambiguous role is the biggest acknowledgment we have of long-game tactics. I don’t want you to try to pin him down here — I know he is ambiguous for a reason — but perhaps you could discuss his role.

SC: Plutarch’s the master of the long game. In Sunrise, we see him as a young man who’s convinced the government needs overthrowing, but he’s just taking his first baby steps. by the time we get to the trilogy, he’s masterminding the rebellion. He’s built a network in both the districts and the Capitol. He’s found an army in District 13 and allied with Coin. When Katniss shows up, he’s got a Mockingjay for his propaganda. He orchestrates the Airtime Assault that brings down the Capitol. And he manages to do all of this while convincingly playing a Gamemaker.

He doesn’t glorify humanity. At the end of the war, he tells Katniss, “We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.” And when she asks what, he answers “The time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race.” So, at heart, he’s an optimist. He doesn’t accept that war and self-destruction are inevitable. Plutarch believes that we’re all on a continuum. We’re all ultimately playing the long game. You may fight your whole life for a greater good and never see the fruits of your labor. Plenty of people have done that historically. And so he tells Haymitch, “You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?” I think that’s a question we all have to ask ourselves.

DL: When we first discussed the manuscript, you told me, “Books are part of Plutarch’s privilege.” In seeming contrast, there is the transmission of stories through song that we see echoing within Haymitch. I’d love for you to share more about this and the role books and songs play in the storytelling within this series.

SC: The Heavensbees have enormous wealth and privilege and, largely thanks to Trajan Heavensbee, that has allowed them to collect and protect an impressive library. The only other personal collection we’re sure exists belongs to the Covey. Much smaller, of course, but it’s apparently got some great books in it. Poetry, philosophy, literature, and at least one guide to raising poultry. The only book the Everdeens owned was the edible and medicinal plant guide they made themselves. That expands into the memorial book at the end.

District 12 doesn’t have many books, but they have plenty of songs. Why? Because a book can be burned, but you can’t burn a song. It can be passed along from person to person without a trace, no physical form required. Theoretically, you could commit a book to memory, like in Fahrenheit 451, but that’s a talent not everybody’s going to share.

By the trilogy, the songs have been discouraged as well. Under Snow, the live music in 12 devolves from the Covey performing in the Hob in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to a trio of instrumentalists in Sunrise on the Reaping to a lone fiddler (Clerk Carmine) in the trilogy. Lucy Gray’s songs, which Katniss sings unaccompanied in the trilogy, are held in memory and are passed along orally. Snow would love to stamp them out entirely, not just because he doesn’t like music, but because they’re powerful politically. A protest song like “The Goose and the Common” can articulate an injustice, stir people up, and become a rallying point.

DL: Just because you mentioned it, I’m going to ask: Are Snow and Clerk Carmine the only two people we see in Ballad, Sunrise, and the trilogy? (I won’t ask what Tigris is up to during Sunrise, but whatever it is, I know it’s good.)

SC: Yes, I think it does come down to Snow and Clerk Carmine. A handful of Snow’s classmates might still be around by the trilogy, but they’re not named characters.

DL: I’m fascinated by the surface similarity of Katniss’s, Coriolanus’s, and Haymitch’s family structures. All have dead fathers. All are being raised by a mother or grandmother. All have a single sibling or cousin in their care. But even if the structures are alike, their experiences vary. In what ways do you think they were shaped similarly by this structure and in what ways were their upbringings different?

SC: You see this a lot in books for young audiences, where the protagonist is orphaned or placed outside of parental protection, leaving them to fend for themselves. It requires them to be responsible for their own survival and choices.

Haymitch has always had at least one functional parent, which is not true of the others. I think this has allowed him to be more open-hearted and optimistic than the other two heading into the story. Coriolanus is orphaned during the war and his grandmother does an impressive job keeping him and Tigris alive, but by the time that book opens she lives in her own world and her grandchildren care for her. Katniss loses her mother to grief and depression when her father dies and becomes her family's provider and protector at age eleven. Haymitch doesn't have to take full responsibility for himself until he's reaped.

DL: The role of the sibling (and I count Tigris as a sibling) is also so important within the series, to the degree that, in this book, becoming a "found" sibling is the highest mark of trust. Can you talk about exploring that dynamic within the series?

SC: In Ballad, when Coriolanus is filling out Lucy Gray's questionnaire and there's no place to record her cousins, he thinks, "There should be a place for anyone who cared for you at all. In fact, maybe that should be the question to start with: Who cares about you? Or even better, Who can you count on?" There's the family you're born into and the family you choose. All the protagonists have trustworthy families to begin with, but they adopt "found" siblings as well and those bonds are born of experience. Maysilee for Haymitch, Finnick for Katniss, even Sejanus for Coriolanus. People who care about you that you can count on. They replicate the natural sibling bond and aren't limited by biology. All of them ultimately find siblings among people they once viewed as antagonists.

DL: With the Newcomers, we see a different angle to the presentation of alliances within the Games — and in some ways, this alliance is in conversation with the alliance that forms in Catching Fire. In many ways, alliances are the unsung hero of the series, especially when we look at the long game. What does Ampert establish with the Newcomers that echoes throughout the series?

SC: Ampert’s laying the groundwork for the rebellion later with the district alliance in the third Quarter Quell. It’s a work in progress. Even in the trilogy, we’re well into the war before the rebels finally get all the districts on board. But Ampert’s message wins out. “We don’t have to put up with living under the Capitol’s rule. We have greater numbers, more power, more strength. We can change our lives.”

DL: I love how within Sunrise we see how Mags’s and Wiress’s mentoring styles contrast — and neither one is at all like Haymitch’s mentoring style in the trilogy. I can’t believe I’ve never asked you this question before, but of all the characters we’ve seen across the five books, which one would you most want to be your mentor?

SC: Haymitch, but not until the trilogy when he pulls himself together. Before that, I think I’d go with Mags, who’s brought home several victors while retaining her humanity.

DL: How thoroughly do you outline before you start writing?

SC: Pretty thoroughly, this time more than usual. I started with Post-its and laid out everything that was established about the second Quarter Quell in the version that Katniss and Peeta watch on the train in Catching Fire. Then I added in a few things that Haymitch mentions to Katniss in Mockingjay. And finally, I overlaid that with the story of what really happened. Additionally, I had to weave in characters and events from the past and the future.

There are a lot of balls to keep in the air. Multiple versions exist of, say, the reaping: the one we live through with Haymitch, where Woodbine gets killed; a second that’s aired to the public after the delay; a third of Plutarch’s card-stacked edit that they broadcast the night of the reaping that includes footage of Ma and Sid; and a fourth version played during Haymitch’s Victor’s Ceremony, which seems quite close to the one Katniss and Peeta view, but it could have been tweaked a bit over time. It’s a lot to keep straight.

DL: In terms of the smaller connections between this book and the other books (like the use of the word sweetheart or the presence of geese in Haymitch’s early story), were these things you knew going into the book from the start, or were they things that happened when you were putting words to the page?

SC: These were things I knew about, but I didn’t know if I’d ever write Haymitch’s story and have the opportunity to lay in their history. So many things are like that when you’re building a world. But Haymitch’s decision to tend geese at the end of Mockingjay wasn’t random.

DL: And, of course, for my final question I need to ask... what do you have against gumdrops?SC: Not a thing.

[tangledbea]

I’m so sorry for asking so many questions and you may have answered this before, but this blog is so active that ten minutes of scrolling only took be back to the beginning of February so I have to ask-

What happened to ‘getting Varian the help he needs’ in season 2? Was Varian’s re-introduction in season three decided later on after Secret of the Sundrop was released? Additionally, how was Andrew as a cellmate and was Varian OKAY during the year he was with him?

So, from what I understand, originally Varian was supposed to be in S2 more. Not as in "he went with them on the journey," but as in "looking in on Corona to see what was up with him." The fact of the matter is, his role was lessened because the fans loved him so much, but that's not the character the executive producer wanted people to love. He wanted everyone to love Cassandra (his personal favorite). So, out of literal spite, he removed Varian's parts from S2, minus his ten second cameo in "Happiness Is..." that wasn't actually him.

As for what happened to getting him the help he needs? IDK, it's 100% in Frederic's personality to just shut problems away and ignore them and hope they go away. We don't know why he didn't actually make any attempt to help Varian. Or, if he did, why Varian refused it until Frederic gave up.

As for Andrew, I never personally headcanon that he was literal cellmats with Varian. We've seen before that they have tons of empty cells. So, I think they either had adjacent cells or cells right next to each other. Some way they could communicate with each other easily, makes plans, etc. But that's just my headcanon. The text of the series is that they shared a cell.

As for whether or not Varian was okay? Not really? lol Like, I don't think Andrew threatened or harmed him in any way, but he definitely manipulated him, convinced him to give into his revenge fantasies, convinced him that using Saporian magic/alchemy on the king and queen and all of Corona was a good idea. The fact is, their relationship was a lot more topical than was likely intended. Varian was basically indoctrinated into an Alt Right type mindset, and Andrew used flattery, understanding, and compassion to get to him. In other words, all the things that Varian felt his life was lacking.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

What does Alecto want?

This is something I thought about while I wrote that post about Gideon's immortality.

When people speak about Alecto the book and Alecto the character, there is often an assumption that Alecto wants revenge for John turning her into a Barbie, and that our main characters want to kill God.

I'm not going to get too much into what I think the endgame might be for Jod (I'll leave it for another day) but I have some observations about Alecto!

First, people think Alecto wants revenge for the initial act of ripping her soul out and stuffing it in a Barbie body. I'm honestly not so sure that's her main concern!

Initially, Alecto's main fear is dying:

This is presumably what frightened her when in pain as Gaia, and what frightened her here, starting her life with John at the end of the world.

Of course, in the middle, there's her actual murder, and how she felt about it:

This fragment is so interesting. Most of this chapter the dialogue is in quotation marks, indicating it's not the memory of John and Alecto but current dialogue between John and Harrowhark.

John tells Harrow what happened. He is the one who asks her if she remembers what Alecto said. She (Harrowhark) said “What else did I say?”. And when Harrow says “I still love you”, Jod remembers that Alecto was also willing to love him despite what he'd done.

But Harrow is left without the answer to one question. “Where did you put the people? Where did they go?”

After this paragraph, she will say there are things she doesn't understand:

Apparently Alecto's memory isn't fully accessible, or she can't know Alecto's thought process, or there's bits of her memory gone for other reasons, whether it's John's intervention (unlikely, given how much incriminating stuff Alecto does remember) or because that's what was most traumatic to her and—unlike John's tale of apocalypse—nobody later reminded her. (Diegetically, of course, Tamsyn is simply saving that reveal for Harrow's arc in Hell.)

In any case: after being told the entire story about being killed and turned into a Barbie, Harrowhark still says “I want to understand why she was angry”. And that's seemingly tied to why John was terrified.

And the text directly relates that to the missing population of the Earth.

There are three things that very nearly make Nona fully recover the memory of who she was. One is when Pyrrha very nearly says her name, and Nona doesn't want to hear it. Later she doesn't seem to be lucid enough to Ianthe reacting it, but she reacts to the final one: Ianthe yelling “John loves Alecto!”. In the meantime, however, there's one more thing that shakes Nona deeply:

And it's the sight of the Tower that makes Nona lose the will to live:

She also gets a couple passages where the sight of devils touches some deep, frightening memory. And we are given one last clue:

The River is dead.

We knew as early as HtN that the River is broken in some way. Its waters are described as brackish, salty, dirty, full of ghosts represented as rotting corpses. It doesn't seem to flow anywhere as rivers should. House religion says the dead wait as mad ghosts until John conducts his Second Resurrection. John of course has planted House theology with his idea to conduct “a flood” at some point and start over (“empty is just another word for clean”, etc.), once his revenge is done. He needs souls to not move on, in order to do that. We know through Abigail and Dulcinea that there is another shore, a Beyond that they've managed to exceptionally reach.

Alecto seems upset, above all, by what happened to the River.

Alecto states that she no longer fears death. She has experienced it (“I died once… no, twice”, and that's before her brief tenure as Nona).

She might be ready to leave John behind and move on, but.

What if she can't move on?

By which I mean: what if she—a Resurrection Beast, intimately acquainted with the spiritual dimension that is the River—what if she knows that she could never cross it, if she were to die? What if she knows that she would be absorbed by the stoma in the River's current condition, or float around insane forever? What if the sum of all necromantic transgression is that Jod committed ecocide on the afterlife and true death is no longer possible?

What if she needs the River to be healed in order to die?

To conclude, two other tidbits:

1. When Nona, trying not to engage with her Alecto consciousness, briefly considers just giving up and dying, she says:

2. Palamedes speaks of the Beyond (after briefly witnessing Dulcinea as she is there in TUG) right before he describes Paul as an end and a beginning. I don't think this is accidental?

[nicawritesandwhines]

Elriel is next, because SJM said so, you just didn’t listen. (Inspired by this amazing answer by @psycologynerd)

First, we have the live with Steph, on January 15, 2021 (find it here), where on minute 38:35, Steph questions Sarah with the following: How much Azriel content can we expect in ACOSF?

SJM answer redacted: "A good amount. He - it's so hard to talk about this book without spoiling things but - he's in the book more than Eris - laughs - Cassian and Az, they have a close bond, and Az has a lot of his own shit going on that you, erm, maybe get some hints on, and, hm, I'm kinda obsessed with him. Weirdly enough, I have no idea why but this song that came on in a Throw Back playlist - you know Mr. Brightside, by The Killers? I always think of Azriel when I hear that song, I don't know why!"

Then, you have the interview with Eva Chen, on February 21, 2021 (find it here!). Where on minute 24:40, Eva specifically asks: Did you always plan to address Nesta's story, and if so, do you have another book planned for the third sister?"

M: “Yes to everything." And then, on minute 30:10, we have Sarah saying: "I always try to keep one eye on the horizon when I'm writing just to make sure that I can set up for things later on. There's actually lots of little secrets in Silver Flames that set up for Elain's book.”

So what’s Azriel’s “own shit”? That he doesn’t sleep at night. He moved houses for some reason. And his secret to tell that we discovered in his BC.

1 + 1 =2, guys. The answer is right there, people. SHE TOLD US ALREADY THAT IS IT OBVIOUS!

[transgenderer]

without getting into nietzsche's scholarship on stuff like etymology, as a fellow reader of the works he was talking about, did anything he said about ancient morality seem true to the stories? Or in general does trying to read these kinds of things into literature even make sense?

i think he's getting at SOMETHING real, because there is a bizarre lack of concern about cruelty in the iliad and odyssey. which demands explanation! but i also think the idea that they didnt have the notion of "evil" is forced and silly. "crime/sin" is central to a ton of these stories! now it's a sort of weird pre-euthyphro notion of sin, it's not that there's some Genuine Moral Law, there's just stuff that the gods approve of or don't approve of. but iirc nietzsche doesnt even BRING UP the disapproval of the greek gods in greek fiction in genealogy of morals, which is crazy! there's a lot of concern about good and evil! like, the purported period he's describing has to be *before* any of our sources, and therefore is basically totally made up

i like the last essay on asceticism best, because the ancient greeks (and the 2nd temple jews!) seem to have actually lacked an ascetic tradition. and then with christianity the ascetic BURSTS onto the scene, ~200 AD it appears, by 400 it's a craze, by 500 it's just part of the fabric of what religion *is*. and the ascetic is a weird figure! because he's nietzsche, he places significance on the earlier rise of asceticism in india, as part of his idea that they essentially did the christianity thing a couple hundred years earlier than the west, and as such have degenerated further from its longer influence (or somehting like that. hes vague. maybe he lays this out more clearly elsewhere?)

i think he might genuinely be onto something that the idea of morality as something universal, as something that doesnt just apply between nobles and especially within families, is *not* present in the early greek sources. i THINK some of the greek philosophers were onto something like this but it's hard to tell cuz 1) they werent that interested in morality , except in 2) terms like "justice", which are kind of frustratingly vague. plato DOES explicitly disagree with "the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must". so it seems like you cant lay the end of that on the christians. frustratingly conjectural work. but the origins of morality are hazy. so worthwhile question if he didnt have the tools to answer it

[canmom]

been meaning to write about this paper, glad it's already getting discussed on here.

to add some brief comments:

prediction and thinking may not be so very far away from each other. this is where we get into a (still kind of controversial) hypothesis in neuroscience: the free energy principle proposed by karl friston constructs a mathematical framework which frames the brain learning from sense data as a continual feedback loop of prediction and surprise minimisation. artem kirsanov has a nice video on the basic idea. having this frame in mind has drastically affected the way i see the behaviour of LLMs: it's no longer so obvious to me that they represent an intrinsic difference to what the human brain does, though ofc unlike us they're atemporal, tokenised, feedforward only etc etc.

so an LLM builds a compressed representation of overall language dynamics. there are not nearly enough n-gram samples to be able to predict off any arbitrary string by simple lookup. per the manifold hypothesis, neural networks discover a lower dimensional space describing the distribution of sparse data in the higher dimensional space of inputs. it's this compressed, abstracted representation, shaped by a combination of prediction-loss and reinforcement learning, that allows them to do more than "stochastic parroting".

the model is learning a compressed representation of something like equations of motion for the 'physics' of language. language is an encoding of thought into a linear format for communication; you construct language to excite corresponding thoughts in another brain (or your own!). so the 'physics' detected by the language model should capture at least some of the dynamics of thought. once this is learned, it is sufficient scaffolding for reinforcement learning to take it further and develop actual problem solving skills.

it is those 'physics' that the above paper is breaking down. and the training will encourage it to develop abstractions, to be able to capture more of the data distribution with its limited weights. these abstractions sometimes correspond to human-comprehensible concepts.

what's particularly fascinating about this paper to me is how the above result about 'looking ahead' somewhat contradicts the argument of the Nature article role play with large language models, which had been one of my touchpoints for understanding model behaviour. it seems the hypothesised 'multiverse generator' that branches at every token, and does not decide its final answer in 'twenty questions' until it gets to the end, is actually only a partial picture? because of the stochastic sampling, there is certainly still a 'multiverse' effect even with predicting ahead, but apparently it's more complicated. (in many cases of course perplexity is low and the model is essentially deterministic).

I'm really fascinated to see how this interpretability research can combine with the recent research into latent reasoning models such as coconut and huginn, since they lose less internal information during sampling, which might (speculation) make the model's 'thinking ahead' more effective? (and it might save us from the opacity of losing the CoT). I'm also excited to see if we can discover whether combined vision language models can learn to slip into visual/spatial logic using their image training during their reasoning. there's a reason, I think, that spatial metaphors are highly appealing to us humans: perhaps AI models can also benefit from being able to 'think' in terms of a representation of space.

god, this is such a cool paper.

exciting and extremely philosophically interesting stuff going on in the mechanical interpretability space if you like overthinking things. (i do).

[airas-story]

This was another one from @theboywiththestaginthehead that for some reason didn't end up in my inbox.

If I may bother you with another prompt... https://www.tumblr.com/airas-story/760024601774505984/i-love-you-no-you-dont?source=share Now Stephen is hit with the truth spell? Knowing it, he tries to avoid Tony as much as he can. Luckily, the spell spreads only on verbal interaction, so he can lie through the messages that he is just a little sick (or whatever lie he can make up). But, of course, he ends up confessing he loves Tony more than his own life, and learns that it's pretty much mutual.

I figured this was meant not as a direct sequel but as a 'similar premise' type prompt, since that was the way it made most sense to me!

“You’ll be stuck like this until you confess,” Wong told him. “It’s only going to get worse.”

Stephen glared. “I’ll find a way around it.” His fingers itched to grab his phone. The need to find Tony and tell the truth was growing stronger.

Wong sighed. “You really won’t,” he said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He paused. “Though, I do have a few questions to ask while you can’t lie, starting with where did you put—”

Stephen grasped the Sanctum’s magic and disappeared before Wong could finish asking any questions. He hated truth spells, in general, but especially targeted ones like this that didn’t just make him answer questions truthfully, but pushed him to tell the most important truths. 

Like the truth of his love for Tony. Which was why he needed to find a cure. Without actual, physical presence, Stephen could withstand telling Tony, but…

Noise behind him had him turning. He froze at the sight of Tony.  “What are you doing here?” he asked, panic rising.

Tony frowned. “Wong said you needed me.”

Stephen tried to tell Tony he didn’t need him, but that would be a lie.

“What’s wrong?” Tony asked.

“I’m cursed,” Stephen blurted. “Truth spell.”

Tony froze, then took a slow step back. “I should… go. Text me when you’re safe.”

Stephen moved closer helplessly. “You’re leaving?” He didn’t want Tony gone.

“You have no idea how many questions I want to ask you, right now,” Tony admitted. “But that’s not fair, so…” he shrugged. “Gotta go.”

Stephen’s heart jumped into his throat. “I love you,” he burst. “I love you so much it hurts. So much I—”

The press of Tony’s lips against his cut him off. “Hey,” Tony whispered. How had Tony even gotten so close? “I love you, too.”

[softantlers]

why do you ship lottienat when nat said "maybe lottie dying wouldn't be the worst thing" on 2x08? gen question bc i just wouldnt want to ship two characters where one of them says the other dying isnt a bad idea

kay, i'll bite.

i think a thing to consider here is that no one really is suggesting that they're canonically together and making out in the shadows during season 2 -- what people enjoy about this ship is the possibility between the character's, the tension, and all of the thematic parallels. it's an enemies to lovers kind of vibe.

so following shauna beating the shit out of lottie & lottie recovering, natalie says something about maybe it not being a bad thing if lottie dies to coach. i'll point out here that season 2 for me kind of represents an evolution in how natalie views lottie, like their relationship is pretty core & they get a lot of moments together as foils over the episodes. tbh not to diminish your point, but when natalie said that, my first thought was "that's so high school of her." it tracks with her frustration/resentment over lottie's influence on the girls. natalie also follows it up by talking about how everyone has changed because of lottie & coach asks if she's jealous. again, the jealousy thing? so high school to me.

personally, i don't think natalie is the type to actually wish ill or death on anybody. she's having a moment of frustration after witnessing extreme violence & not able to understand how they got to this point. tbh i can almost see echoes of the victim blaming she likely directs toward herself wrt her own dad in the way she says that. like in that moment, she's feeling that lottie let this get out of hand -- likely in the same way that she probably blames herself for her dad's death... i think it presents an interesting insight into natalie's character tbh. when shauna points out in season 1 that she has all this guilt & she's dragging other people down? i mean... she's not wrong.

okay going further though. another thing i would touch on is that season 2 is when natalie carries jackie's bones back to the plane. she has a moment with jackie (although they didn't particularly get along before she died) where she sends her off, so to speak, and mentions that she's made everyone jealous one last time. here you can see a bit of natalie's suicidal ideation come into play. honestly, i'm not sure that she thinks dying is the worst thing, in general, at least not that deep in the winter. (i won't make this too long by going into it, but i think that fundamentally changes when she finds purpose as the leader in the spring, re: the way she tells ben that the suicidal feelings will pass.)

another thing: if natalie actually wanted lottie to die, why wouldn't she have suggested they eat her? natalie was fully participating in the queen draw just like everyone else. at that point, everyone pretty much agreed that lottie was off the table. it's telling that there's no scenes where she argues that they should eat lottie. in fact, when she draws the queen, she's fundamentally moving toward dying in lottie's place. by the end of the season, it's my impression (and it's so delicious) that her feelings toward lottie start to change a bit. when lottie gives her the leadership, there's a switch there & for the first time in the winter, natalie feels seen for all her efforts (instead of passively ignored by the other girls). i think it's extremely meaningful to her that lottie did this for her, even if she doesn't have the words to explain it.

anyways, i hope that answers the question? (i know you said /gen but with the state of things i'm always worried they aren't in good faith.) anyways, i don't think that line really needs to be taken so seriously tbh.

[every1lvsme]

Its me again 😔🙏 begging on my knees for more fics. Pete Dinunzio x reader who’s polar opposite? (Enemies to lovers 😵🔥)

I’m not that good at slow burn which is honestly how enemies to lovers should be done so the enemies part kind of fades quickly please don’t make me explode with mind powers

Pete is gross and doesn’t shower blaming it on his “grunge style”. he’s a weirdo into horror movies and gore and barely goes outside.

You, on the other hand, were a very hygienic and particular person. You wore pastels and bright clothing, you were popular and enjoyed mostly normal things.

Pete hated you, with every bone in his body. He wished every night before he went to sleep and every morning when he woke up that you’d finally leave the state or better.

But it’s not like you liked him. Anytime you saw the horror geek getting bullied in the hallways it brought a smile to your face.

You had only just walked into school and sat down and he was already starting shit.

“Jesus could you be any louder? It’s 7 in the morning.” You snapped at Pete who was talking loudly and defensively about some stupid geeky sounding thing.

Of course with Pete already feeling a bit heated from his argument he snapped back.

“How obsessed can you get? Just go somewhere else if you care so much.” Pete said back.

“I can’t go somewhere else. This is my class as well.” Eventually the argument became just stupid insults

Then it got violent. punching, kicking, I think Pete bit you? Just terrible.

So now you and Pete were sat down in the counselors office after a trip to the nurse. You were holding a tissue over your bleeding nose and he held an ice pack on his black eye.

The counselor seemed fed up with the both of you. As she started saying all the normal stuff you’ve already heard like “this is a school it’s your job to act professional” and “violence is never the answer” but one thing she said got to you.

“Just why do you two hate each other in the first place? Where did this all come from?”

You paused, brows furrowed and actually putting thought to the question.

“I… have no idea.” You really don’t remember, there was no specific action or instance that occurred. Just a long history of hating each other and understanding that the hate is mutual. the silence filling the room after that was making you uneasy. Pete didn’t speak and neither did you.

After the session you had to wait for your parents in the front office with Pete. You avoided eye contact with him as you tried to think of how to make yourself innocent to your parents.

“I don’t know why I hate you either.” Pete said sort of quietly, almost like he was hoping you wouldn’t hear him.

But you did, looking over at him, unsure of what to say or do in a situation like this.

“I’m sorry for uh, punching you.” You said awkwardly after some time.

Pete just nodded in acknowledgment. “Yeah, sorry for making your nose bleed.” He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

You sighed looking around a bit before making eye contact with him again.

“Do you.. I don’t know- wanna hang out sometim-“

“Yeah, I would.”

Maybe you didn’t hate him, maybe you were okay with him.

Me and this one girl are beefing so I stole her miss me jean shorts and lip liner