#it's hard to explain to people who aren't artists

[rosenkranz-isnt-dead]

guys there's plenty of that too. take your pick

I won't ever be able to understand people who complain about the lighting in the early X files seasons. like what do you mean you don't see the appeal of twin flashlight beams in the dark.

doesn't this fill you with hope for humanity? don't you feel the child-like sense of adventure?

you're telling me you don't see the beauty of the silhouettes against the night sky?

the intimacy that comes from two people who only trust each other? you won't be able to tell that story under a bright light. it's the hushed whispers while standing very close together in an empty room, it's the shadows that lurk in the corners. that's the show's central thesis. this is also, simply put, art.

[thankskenpenders]

Help me out here: Why is there so much Ian Flynn hate going around lately? I thought everyone loved that he was contributing to the games. Now suddenly they aren't. I guess that's par for the course for this series but I don't get it. He isn't perfect but I like what he's done. Am I a weirdo?

Ian Flynn has always had a lot of fans, but any creator putting their work out there is going to have detractors as well. That's just the nature of being an artist. To some extent, it's no big deal. He's not a perfect writer. Nobody is! I consider myself a fan of his work, but I've criticized plenty of individual writing decisions from him on here.

But Ian doesn't just have critics. He has his own obsessive hatedom. And the specific nature of Ian's hatedom is... interesting.

A decade ago, Ian was only the guy writing for Archie Sonic, meaning any debates over his work were quarantined within that tiny niche of the larger Sonic fandom. Only people who kept up with the comics month to month had any real reason to have an opinion on the guy, which means we're talking about merely thousands of fans as opposed to millions.

Within that group, he had some haters. You had the people who were mad about story changes made during his run, particularly things like ancillary characters getting killed off (although over the years we've learned that most of those were editorial mandates from Mike Pellerito). You had the people mad that Ian didn't push their favorite ship, with feuding SonAmy and Sonally fans claiming that he was CLEARLY biased towards one or the other. You had the people who just really, really liked one of the previous writers way more - usually Penders, as hard as that may be to believe today. That sort of thing. Pretty normal comic fandom type stuff. Again, it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, many of those haters only got worse over time, morphing into reactionaries who constantly try to incite Comicsgate type culture war bullshit.

There are people still mad at Ian for making Sally bi and pairing her with Nicole instead of Sonic in the later Archie comics. There have been elaborate MS Paint red string conspiracy boards explaining how people like Ian and Jon Gray have apparently been destroying the franchise from the inside for years by Making Sonic Woke. (Jon gets dragged into this because people are still mad about him drawing The Slap 20 years later. Yes, really!!) There was an unhinged change.org petition trying to get Ian fired, specifically from people who were mad that the Freedom Fighters aren't in the IDW comics. There was even a very sad little fan campaign from these people trying to get Sega to move the Sonic comic license away from IDW and over to Udon, because they thought Udon would bring Sally and Bunnie back and also make them sexy again. There's a lot of this.

(Unfortunately, Penders has also exacerbated this by gossiping about Ian on Twitter and giving these fans ammo, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)

The thing is, for years, people who only played the games or watched the cartoons had no reason to pay attention to any of this. Now, though, Ian isn't just writing for some weird spinoff comics that only the super nerds read. Now he's writing comics that are canon to the games, and ALSO some of the games themselves, and ALSO consulting on other tie-in media like Sonic Prime, and ALSO writing the official Sonic encyclopedia, and ALSO serving as part of the new Sonic Lore Team at Sega. And on top of all this, he's got an increasingly popular podcast where he fields questions about his work on all of these things, which serves as one of the fandom's main windows into creative decisions being made behind the scenes.

As a fan of Ian's work, it's been really cool to see him rise in prominence. But the dark side of this is that his obsessive haters from the Archie days now have WAY more of a potential audience of their own. Now, every Sonic fan has to have an opinion on Ian. What this frequently means is that you'll have the Comicsgate types taking things Ian writes or says out of context, attempting to get more of the general fandom to yell at the guy.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of Sonic fans who take the bait:

You've got hardcore fans who disliked basically any recent piece of Sonic media and are looking for someone to blame.

You've got the people who are concerned about the sanctity of Sonic's canon, who shoot the messenger any time Ian mentions a new retcon from Sonic Team on the podcast - or any time he even mentions the THOUGHT of changing anything about the canon, as we saw recently with the Sol Dimension nonsense.

You've got people who romanticize some sort of mythical artistic vision that Sega of Japan supposedly has (or had) for the franchise. To many of these fans, American contributors like Ian just don't "get" the heart of the series and are trying to turn Sonic into something different. (This "heart of the series" tends to be some mix of Japanese instruction manual lore, the cinematics from Sonic CD, the OVA, and/or the games written by Shiro Maekawa, depending on what Sonic media the fan in question grew up with.)

You've got fans of specific characters or ships who pin the blame for how their faves are depicted entirely on Ian - most vocally fans of Shadow, even though the root problem is that Sonic Team hasn't known what to do with Shadow since 2006. At best this stops at regular old criticism, but at its worst this devolves into claims that Ian has an agenda against certain characters.

You've got fans annoyed by a perceived over-emphasis on comic-original characters in the IDW comics, ignoring the obvious facts that these characters exist because the game cast is so tightly controlled by Sega, and also, you know, that people just like the IDW characters and want more stories about them.

You've got a LOT of discourse over IDW's Sonic being a hero who tries to give his enemies second chances, as if half of Sonic's closest friends aren't already former villains and rivals. Honestly this is very transparently just reheated Steven Universe discourse lmao

You'll also see people who just think they could do Ian's job better. They can't believe that THIS GUY is the American fan working on all these Sonic projects, when clearly THEY understand the characters and lore and themes SO much better than this charlatan.

All it takes is for someone in one of these categories to be unhappy about some recent piece of Sonic media, and for them to come across an out of context quote or comic panel that rubs them the wrong way, and suddenly the leftist Zoomer Sonic fans will join the latest dogpile on Ian alongside the reactionary Comicsgate types who are mad at him for Making Sonic Woke.

In general, when fandoms get upset, they tend to want a scapegoat. A person or two to point a finger at and go "THAT's who ruined the thing I love!" This tends to be based less on reality and more on which contributors are the most visible online. You'll sometimes see teenage and adult fans of children's cartoons single out a storyboarder who's particularly vocal on Twitter, blame them for every story decision they don't like, and harass them off the platform out of a sense of retribution for their favorite ship or whatever. Failing that, fans might choose to blame every nitpick, down to individual lines of dialogue and frames of animation, on a showrunner, just because that's the name they associate with the show. And unfortunately, when it comes to Sonic, Ian is now arguably the most prolific and outspoken contributor on the English speaking internet, and therefore a common scapegoat.

Some of the things I've seen Ian blamed for are truly wild. A lot of people have claimed for YEARS that he's just lying about the existence of creative guidelines and restrictions from Sega - or, as fans call them, The Mandates - even though they're just an inherent aspect of working on a licensed property. Others claim that The Mandates are real, but somehow Ian's fault. A vocal minority of fans have convinced themselves that Ian is the sole reason the Freedom Fighters don't exist in the IDW comics, even though Ian says he's been pushing to bring them back since day one.

Sometimes you'll see people say he ruined shit he didn't even work on. A few weeks ago on Twitter I saw someone claim that Ian had written a rejected script for Sonic Forces in which Tails died. I could not find a source for this for the life of me. As far as I can tell, the rumor seems to have been born from an alleged leaked script for Forces with margin notes from Aaron Webber that criticized the way Tails was written, and also an old tweet where Aaron joked that Tails would die in an upcoming episode of Sonic Mania Adventures. These merged into "Aaron Webber criticized a draft of the Forces script in which Tails died." How'd Ian get dragged into this? Who fucking knows!

It's all just a big game of telephone. All it takes is some asshole to make something up about Ian on Twitter or YouTube or a DeviantArt journal or some forum, and at least a couple people will believe it, and then it gets repeated as fact. Again, this used to be contained by the niche nature of the Archie Sonic fandom, but now there are WAY more people who are receptive to this shit.

It's just sad to me that Ian tries to be so open and honest about his work, to try to explain the rationale for certain things, to keep fans looped in on the direction the franchise is headed, and this just gives the Flynnspiracy types more quotes to take out of context and try to paint him as the devil. If it sounds like I'm being overly defensive and dismissing his critics, man... some of the things I've seen people say directly to him are just unbelievable. People will send paragraphs-long angry screeds in to his podcast that completely tear him apart, and he has to sit there and be like "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it." People literally pay for special guest interview episodes where they just rapid fire complaints about his writing at him directly to his face. I don't know how he does it. I would snap.

All of this over Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all things.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Engaging with fandoms online is very tiring, which is why I tend not to do it. Things like this are too common. I guess, just... remember that making art collaboratively is a complicated thing. The people involved are generally trying their best given the circumstances, but they're only human. They make mistakes. But please treat them like humans. Criticism and dogpiling are not the same thing.

[hms-no-fun]

Hi! I just read your post about your opinion on "AI" and I really liked it. If it's no bother, what's your opinion on people who use it for studying? Like writing essays, solving problems and stuff like that?

I haven't been a fan of AI from the beginning and I've heard that you shouldn't ask it for anything because then you help it develop. But I don't know how to explain that to friends and classmates or even if it's true anymore. Because I've seen some of the prompts it can come up with and they're not bad and I've heard people say that the summaries AI makes are really good and I just... I dunno. I'm at a loss

Sorry if this is a lot or something you simply don't want to reply to. You made really good points when talking about AI and I really liked it and this has been weighing on me for a while :)

on a base level, i don't really have a strongly articulated opinion on the subject because i don't use AI, and i'm 35 so i'm not in school anymore and i don't have a ton of college-aged friends either. i have little exposure to the people who use AI in this way nor to the people who have to deal with AI being used in this way, so my perspective here is totally hypothetical and unscientific.

what i was getting at in my original AI post was a general macroeconomic point about how all of the supposed efficiency gains of AI are an extension of the tech CEO's dislike of paying and/or giving credit to anyone they deem less skilled or intelligent than them. that it's conspicuous how AI conveniently falls into place after many decades of devaluing and deskilling creative/artistic labor industries. historically, for a lot of artists the most frequently available & highest paying gigs were in advertising. i can't speak to the specifics when it comes to visual art or written copy, but i *can* say that when i worked in the oklahoma film industry, the most coveted jobs were always the commercials. great pay for relatively less work, with none of the complications that often arise working on amateur productions. not to mention they were union gigs, a rare enough thing in a right to work state, so anyone trying to make a career out of film work wanting to bank their union hours to qualify for IATSE membership always had their ears to the ground for an opening. which didn't come often because, as you might expect, anyone who *got* one of those jobs aimed to keep it as long as possible. who could blame em, either? one person i met who managed to get consistent ad work said they could afford to work all of two or three months a year, so they could spend the rest of their time doing low-budget productions and (occasionally) student films.

there was a time when this was the standard for the film industry, even in LA; you expected to work 3 to 5 shows a year (exact number's hard to estimate because production schedules vary wildly between ads, films, and tv shows) for six to eight months if not less, so you'd have your bills well covered through the lean periods and be able to recover from what is an enormously taxing job both physically and emotionally. this was never true for EVERYONE, film work's always been a hustle and making a career of it is often a luck-based crapshoot, but generally that was the model and for a lot of folks it worked. it meant more time to practice their skills on the job, sustainably building expertise and domain knowledge that they could then pass down to future newcomers. anything that removes such opportunities decreases the amount of practice workers get, and any increased demand on their time makes them significantly more likely to burn out of the industry early. lower pay, shorter shoots, busier schedules, these aren't just bad for individual workers but for the entire industry, and that includes the robust and well-funded advertising industry.

well, anyway, this year's coca-cola christmas ad was made with AI. they had maybe one person on quality control using an adobe aftereffects mask to add in the coke branding. this is the ultimate intended use-case for AI. it required the expertise of zero unionized labor, and worst of all the end result is largely indistinguishable from the alternative. you'll often see folks despair at this verisimilitude, particularly when a study comes out that shows (for instance) people can't tell the difference between real poetry and chat gpt generated poetry. i despair as well, but for different reasons. i despair that production of ads is a better source of income and experience for film workers than traditional movies or television. i despair that this technology is fulfilling an age-old promise about the disposability of artistic labor. poetry is not particularly valued by our society, is rarely taught to people beyond a beginner's gloss on meter and rhyme. "my name is sarah zedig and i'm here to say, i'm sick of this AI in a major way" type shit. end a post with the line "i so just wish that it would go away and never come back again!" and then the haiku bot swoops in and says, oh, 5/7/5 you say? that is technically a haiku! and then you put a haiku-making minigame in your crowd-pleasing japanese nationalist open world chanbara simulator, because making a haiku is basically a matter of selecting one from 27 possible phrase combinations. wait, what do you mean the actual rules of haiku are more elastic and subjective than that? that's not what my english teacher said in sixth grade!

AI is able to slip in and surprise us with its ability to mimic human-produced art because we already treat most human-produced art like mechanical surplus of little to no value. ours is a culture of wikipedia-level knowledge, where you have every incentive to learn a lot of facts about something so that you can sufficiently pretend to have actually experienced it. but this is not to say that humans would be better able to tell the difference between human produced and AI produced poetry if they were more educated about poetry! the primary disconnect here is economic. Poets already couldn't make a fucking living making poetry, and now any old schmuck can plug a prompt into chatgpt and say they wrote a sonnet. even though they always had the ability to sit down and write a sonnet!

boosters love to make hay about "deskilling" and "democratizing" and "making accessible" these supposedly gatekept realms of supposedly bourgeois expression, but what they're really saying (whether they know it or not) is that skill and training have no value anymore. and they have been saying this since long before AI as we know it now existed! creative labor is the backbone of so much of our world, and yet it is commonly accepted as a poverty profession. i grew up reading books and watching movies based on books and hearing endless conversation about books and yet when i told my family "i want to be a writer" they said "that's a great way to die homeless." like, this is where the conversation about AI's impact starts. we already have a culture that simultaneously NEEDS the products of artistic labor, yet vilifies and denigrates the workers who perform that labor. folks see a comic panel or a corporate logo or a modern art piece and say "my kid could do that," because they don't perceive the decades of training, practice, networking, and experimentation that resulted in the finished product. these folks do not understand that just because the labor of art is often invisible doesn't mean it isn't work.

i think this entire conversation is backwards. in an ideal world, none of this matters. human labor should not be valued over machine labor because it inherently possesses an aura of human-ness. art made by humans isn't better than AI generated art on qualitative grounds. art is subjective. you're not wrong to find beauty in an AI image if the image is beautiful. to my mind, the value of human artistic labor comes down to the simple fact that the world is better when human beings make art. the world is better when we have the time and freedom to experiment, to play, to practice, to develop and refine our skills to no particular end except whatever arbitrary goal we set for ourselves. the world is better when people collaborate on a film set to solve problems that arise organically out of the conditions of shooting on a live location. what i see AI being used for is removing as many opportunities for human creativity as possible and replacing them with statistical averages of prior human creativity. this passes muster because art is a product that exists to turn a profit. because publicly traded companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to take every opportunity to turn a profit regardless of how obviously bad for people those opportunities might be.

that common sense says writing poetry, writing prose, writing anything is primarily about reaching the end of the line, about having written something, IS the problem. i've been going through the many unfinished novels i wrote in high school lately, literally hundreds of thousands of words that i shared with maybe a dozen people and probably never will again. what value do those words have? was writing them a waste of time since i never posted them, never finished them, never turned a profit off them? no! what i've learned going back through those old drafts is that i'm only the writer i am today BECAUSE i put so many hours into writing generic grimdark fantasy stories and bizarrely complicated werewolf mythologies.

you know i used to do open mics? we had a poetry group that met once a month at a local cafe in college. each night we'd start by asking five words from the audience, then inviting everyone to compose a poem using those words in 10 to 15 minutes. whoever wanted to could read their poem, and whoever got the most applause won a free drink from the cafe. then we'd spend the rest of the night having folks sign up to come and read whatever. sometimes you'd get heartfelt poems about personal experiences, sometimes you'd get ambitious soundcloud rappers, sometimes you'd get a frat guy taking the piss, sometimes you'd get a mousy autist just doing their best. i don't know that any of the poetry i wrote back then has particular value today, but i don't really care. the point of it was the experience in that moment. the experience of composing something on the fly, or having something you wrote a couple days ago, then standing up and reading it. the value was in the performance itself, in the momentary synthesis between me and the audience. i found out then that i was pretty good at making people cry, and i could not have had that experience in any other venue. i could not have felt it so viscerally had i just posted it online. and i cannot wrap up that experience and give it to you, because it only existed then.

i think more people would write poetry if they had more hours in a day to spare for frivolities, if there existed more spaces where small groups could organize open mics, if transit made those spaces more widely accessible, if everyone made enough money that they weren't burned the fuck out and not in the mood to go to an open mic tonight, if we saw poetry as a mode of personal reflection which was as much about the experience of having written it as anything else. this is the case for all the arts. right now, the only people who can afford to make a living doing art are already wealthy, because art doesn't pay well. this leads to brain drain and overall lowering quality standards, because the suburban petty bouge middle class largely do not experience the world as it materially exists for the rest of us. i often feel that many tech CEOs want to be remembered the way andy warhol is remembered. they want to be loved and worshipped not just for business acumen but for aesthetic value, they want to get the kind of credit that artists get-- because despite the fact that artists don't get paid shit, they also frequently get told by people "your work changed my life." how is it that a working class person with little to no education can write a story that isn't just liked but celebrated, that hundreds or thousands of people imprint on, that leaves a mark on culture you can't quantify or predict or recreate? this is AI's primary use-case, to "democratize" art in such a way that hacks no longer have to work as hard to pretend to be good at what they do. i mean, hell, i have to imagine every rich person with an autobiography in the works is absolutely THRILLED that they no longer have to pay a ghost writer!

so, circling back around to the meat of your question. as far as telling people not to use AI because "you're just helping to train it," that ship has long since sailed. getting mad at individuals for using AI right now is about as futile as getting mad at individuals for not masking-- yes, obviously they should wear a mask and write their own essays, but to say this is simply a matter of millions of individuals making the same bad but unrelated choice over and over is neoliberal hogwash. people stopped masking because they were told to stop masking by a government in league with corporate interests which had every incentive to break every avenue of solidarity that emerged in 2020. they politicized masks, calling them "the scarlet letter of [the] pandemic". biden himself insisted this was "a pandemic of the unvaccinated", helpfully communicating to the public that if you're vaccinated, you don't need to mask. all those high case numbers and death counts? those only happen to the bad people.

now you have CEOs and politicians and credulous media outlets and droves of grift-hungry influencers hard selling the benefits of AI in everything everywhere all the time. companies have bent over backwards to incorporate AI despite ethics and security worries because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and everyone with money is calling this the next big thing. in short, companies are following the money, because that's what companies do. they, in turn, are telling their customers what tools to use and how. so of course lots of people are using AI for things they probably shouldn't. why wouldn't they? "the high school/college essay" as such has been quantized and stripmined by an education system dominated by test scores over comprehension. it is SUPPOSED to be an exercise in articulating ideas, to teach the student how to argue persuasively. the final work has little to no value, because the point is the process. but when you've got a system that lives and dies by its grades, within which teachers are given increasingly more work to do, less time to do it in, and a much worse paycheck for their trouble, the essay increasingly becomes a simple pass/fail gauntlet to match the expected pace set by the simple, clean, readily gradable multiple choice quiz. in an education system where the stakes for students are higher than they've ever been, within which you are increasingly expected to do more work in less time with lower-quality guidance from your overworked teachers, there is every incentive to get chatgpt to write your essay for you.

do you see what i'm saying? we can argue all day about the shoulds here. of course i think it's better when people write their own essays, do their own research, personally read the assigned readings. but cheating has always been a problem. a lot of these same fears were aired over the rising popularity of cliffs notes in the 90s and 2000s! the real problem here is systemic. it's economic. i would have very little issue with the output of AI if existing conditions were not already so precarious. but then, if the conditions were different, AI as we know it likely would not exist. it emerges today as the last gasp of a tech industry that has been floundering for a reason to exist ever since the smart phone dominated the market. they tried crypto. they tried the metaverse. now they're going all-in on AI because it's a perfect storm of shareholder-friendly buzzwords and the unscientific technomythology that's been sold to laymen by credulous press sycophants for decades. It slots right into this niche where the last of our vestigial respect for "the artist" once existed. it is the ultimate expression of capitalist realism, finally at long last doing away with the notion that the suits at disney could never in their wildest dreams come up with something half as cool as the average queer fanfic writer. now they've got a program that can plagiarize that fanfic (along with a dozen others) for them, laundering the theft through a layer of transformation which perhaps mirrors how the tech industry often exploits open source software to the detriment of the open source community. the catastrophe of AI is that it's the fulfillment of a promise that certainly predates computers at the very least.

so, i don't really know what to tell someone who uses AI for their work. if i was talking to a student, i'd say that relying chatgpt is really gonna screw you over when it comes time take the SAT or ACT, and you have to write an essay from scratch by hand in a monitored environment-- but like, i also think the ACT and SAT and probably all the other standardized tests shouldn't exist? or at the very least ought to be severely devalued, since prep for those tests often sabotages the integrity of actual classroom education. although, i guess at this point the only way forward for education (that isn't getting on both knees and deep-throating big tech) is more real-time in-class monitored essay writing, which honestly might be better for all parties anyway. of course that does nothing to address research essays you can't write in a single class session. to someone who uses AI for research, i'd probably say the same thing as i would to someone who uses wikipedia: it's a fine enough place to start, but don't cite it. click through links, find sources, make sure what you're reading is real, don't rely on someone else's generalization. know that chatgpt is likely not pulling information from a discrete database of individual files that it compartmentalizes the way you might expect, but rather is a statistical average of a broad dataset about which it cannot have an opinion or interpretation. sometimes it will link you to real information, but just as often it will invent information from whole cloth. honestly, the more i talk it out, the more i realize all this advice is basically identical to the advice adults were giving me in the early 2000s.

which really does cement for me that the crisis AI is causing in education isn't new and did not come from nowhere. before chatgpt, students were hiring freelancers on fiverr. i already mentioned cliffs notes. i never used any of these in college, but i'll also freely admit that i rarely did all my assigned reading. i was the "always raises her hand" bitch, and every once in a while i'd get other students who were always dead silent in class asking me how i found the time to get the reading done. i'd tell them, i don't. i read the beginning, i read the ending, and then i skim the middle. whenever a word or phrase jumps out at me, i make a note of it. that way, when the professor asks a question in class, i have exactly enough specific pieces of information at hand to give the impression of having done the reading. and then i told them that i learned how to do this from the very same professor that was teaching that class. the thing is, it's not like i learned nothing from this process. i retained quite a lot of information from those readings! this is, broadly, a skill that emerges from years of writing and reading essays. but then you take a step back and remember that for most college students (who are not pursuing any kind of arts degree), this skillset is relevant to an astonishingly minimal proportion of their overall course load. college as it exists right now is treated as a jobs training program, within which "the essay" is a relic of an outdated institution that highly valued a generalist liberal education where today absolute specialization seems more the norm. so AI comes in as the coup de gras to that old institution. artists like myself may not have the constitution for the kind of work that colleges now exist to funnel you into, but those folks who've never put a day's thought into the work of making art can now have a computer generate something at least as good at a glance as basically anything i could make. as far as the market is concerned, that's all that matters. the contents of an artwork, what it means to its creator, the historic currents it emerges out of, these are all technicalities that the broad public has been well trained not to give a shit about most of the time. what matters is the commodity and the economic activity it exists to generate.

but i think at the end of the day, folks largely want to pay for art made by human beings. that it's so hard for a human being to make a living creating and selling art is a question far older than AI, and whose answer hasn't changed. pay workers more. drastically lower rents. build more affordable housing. make healthcare free. make education free. massively expand public transit. it is simply impossible to overstate how much these things alone would change the conversation about AI, because it would change the conversation about everything. SO MUCH of the dominance of capital in our lives comes down to our reliance on cars for transit (time to get a loan and pay for insurance), our reliance on jobs for health insurance (can't quit for moral reasons if it's paying for your insulin), etc etc etc. many of AI's uses are borne out of economic precarity and a ruling class desperate to vacuum up every loose penny they can find. all those billionaires running around making awful choices for the rest of us? they stole those billions. that is where our security went. that is why everything is falling apart, because the only option remaining to *every* institutional element of society is to go all-in on the profit motive. tax these motherfuckers and re-institute public arts funding. hey, did you know the us government used to give out grants to artists? did you know we used to have public broadcast networks where you could make programs that were shown to your local community? why the hell aren't there public youtube clones? why aren't there public transit apps? why aren't we CONSTANTLY talking about nationalizing these abusive fucking industries that are falling over themselves to integrate AI because their entire modus operandi is increasing profits regardless of product quality?

these are the questions i ask myself when i think about solutions to the AI problem. tech needs to be regulated, the monopolies need breaking up, but that's not enough. AI is a symptom of a much deeper illness whose treatment requires systemic solutions. and while i'm frustrated when i see people rely on AI for their work, or otherwise denigrate artists who feel AI has devalued their field, on some level i can't blame them. they are only doing what they've been told to do. all of which merely strengthens my belief in the necessity of an equitable socialist future (itself barely step zero in the long path towards a communist future, and even that would only be a few steps on the even longer path to a properly anarchist future). improve the material conditions and you weaken the dominance of capitalist realism, however minutely. and while there are plenty of reasons to despair at the likelihood of such a future given a second trump presidency, i always try to remember that socialist policies are very popular and a *lot* of that popularity emerged during the first trump administration. the only wrong answer here is to assume that losing an election is the same thing as losing a war, that our inability to put the genie back in its bottle means we can't see our own wishes granted.

i dunno if i answered your question but i sure did say a lot of stuff, didn't i?

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

The appeal of One Piece

I know everyone's a bit sour on One Piece after the clown stunt tumblr pulled, but with the live-action series out and the anime popping off on social media, there's more eyes on this goofy pirate story than ever, and I've been dying to talk about it, so now's the time.

A lot of the conversation around One Piece is steeped in hyperbole, and it's hard not to be hyperbolic when you're talking about a work of almost unprecedented length and popularity. With that in mind, I wanna try to explain what makes One Piece so good in a way that is concise, spoiler-free, and that will give you an idea if this might actually be a story you'll enjoy.

And I do actually think a lot of people who would enjoy One Piece are currently writing it off, and I think a lot of the blame lies on assumptions people have about shonen as a genre. One Piece is no doubt a shonen, with young and teen boys as the primary demographic, but it is also first and foremost an adventure story about a group of quirky outcasts setting out to follow their dreams, despite (or often in spite of) the crushing weight of reality.

But you can't have an adventure story without a world to set that adventure in, and what a world Eiichiro Oda has crafted. One Piece manages to feel like it has fully realized an entire planet, with every island we travel to having a very distinct sense of culture and visual identity. A lot of care has gone into building the history and politics of these places, and the mechanics by which their more out-there elements, like the sky-high ocean geyser or the mountain with an upside-down waterfall, function. As such, it is a setting that afford its story a lot of variety, while also being able to tackle a lot of very heady topics like authoritarianism, racism, and abuse in intelligent, nuanced ways.

But just as important as all of islands we visit are the wonderful characters we meet. A lot of people aren't into One Piece's exaggerated cartoon aesthetic, and I respect that, but it does lend itself to a lot of very unique faces and body types that make its cast of 1000+ characters a joy to behold. This is admittedly less true of the more conventionally attractive women, many of whom look very similar, but this is does not extend to their writing. Oda is very good at imbuing his characters with life, pulling on their histories to give them personalities and quirks that are often as funny as they are sad. Everyone I know that reads One Piece has a side character that they stan hardcore for, be it the lovable klutz Donquixote Rocinante or the petulant ghost girl Perona.

And all of this is especially true for our protagonists, the Straw Hat Pirates, each one of which is a deep, multifaceted character whose drive and dreams can be traced back to their often heartbreaking origins. I know I mentioned it at the top already, but at its core, One Piece is ultimately a story about a group of hurt, lonely individuals who find in each other not just friends, but a family that will support and protect them as together they chase their dreams in the face of a world whose systems have been built to squash them underfoot.

All of this is brought together by Oda's exceptional artistic skill. While as mentioned earlier, One Piece's cartoony artstyle isn't for everyone, it's by no means an accident. One Piece is a story set in a cartoon world, and Oda is able to give even his most ridiculous characters and places a tangible sense of physicality, making everything feel real within the confines of the page. While Oda has a team of assistants to help him, he still does the brunt of the art himself, and his dedication to his craft means the comic is full of panels that are breathtaking in their complexity and visual density.

But it's not just his technical skill that makes the art of One Piece so good, it's that Oda is also very good at letting his art speak for him. Compared to a lot of other big shonen manga, One Piece doesn't lean as heavily on the dialogue to give the readers all the necessary information, but can convey a lot of what is happening and how characters are thinking and feeling through its artwork. There's some sections where this doesn't hold as true (and they are frequently less well-liked as a result) but it makes One Piece a far lighter read than its soon to be 1100 chapter-count would make you believe.

But the thing I think makes One Piece the most exceptional of all, and what makes me recommend it despite its length, is that as a story, One Piece has a remarkable clarity of vision. One Piece has a stance and a worldview that it does not waver on, and it is present from the very beginning. It's is romantic story, about the power of faith and dreams, about people's right to be free and be who they want to be, and about how the beauty and wonder of the world makes its worth its danger and uncertainty.

One Piece knows what it wants to be from the very beginning, and because of that you don't have to wait for it to get good. A problem that a lot of longform media struggles with is that the opening hours are a slog to get through, because it doesn't show you its hand early enough for you to know if it's something you'll like, and that is not a problem One Piece has. It is exactly what it is going to be from the beginning, only in a simpler, cruder form that it is going to expand upon to become the sprawling pirate fantasy epic it has grown to be. This clarity of vision also makes One Piece very rewarding for attentive readers, as it frequently hints at future places and characters, and plants story seeds that it pays off hundreds of chapters later. It does a lot to make the world feel big and interconnected, and makes One Piece very fun to re-read as you pick up on things you missed the first time around.

It is frequently recommended that new readers start with the initial 100 chapters, the East Blue saga (which is what the live action series adapts, for the record), to see if One Piece is right for them, and that's the note I am going to end this post on, as well. East Blue uses its 100 chapters to tell a fairly self-contained story that introduces the first half of the core cast, setting the stakes and building its world while giving you plenty of interesting places, bizarre creatures, and wacky action all the while. It is One Piece showing you its hand, with the promise that if you like what you see, it'll have so, so much more in store for you

[zorilleerrant]

things I think are responsible for the reading comprehension crisis, rather than the things people always talk about:

people get so worried that kids will hate reading that they profusely compliment any analysis young kids make, even when it's blatantly wrong, like A Modest Proposal levels of wrong. which means later when someone argues they refuse to listen because they think they're perfect at analyzing books

teachers are so overworked and undersupplied (and often assholes) that they demand only a specific version of analysis that they agree with and if anyone has any competing arguments they get their grades docked. possibly due to above

because of the literacy crisis, people keep putting huge, daunting classics in front of kids instead of fun books. this leads kids to believe that books can't be fun. or that books can only be fun if you pretend they have nothing to say

knowing that encouraging reluctant readers in reading literally anything improves literacy, people start encouraging all readers the same way. this leads to kids believing they're super smart and special readers who read way above grade level when they're actually falling seriously behind

the attitude of 'everyone has something worthwhile to say' means that people work really hard to compliment students who say things that are pointless or even fundamentally wrong. while withholding praise from students who make creative contributions in case it seems 'unfair'

that weird thing where kids now believe that everyone has to agree on everything or they're experiencing violence

increased push for diverse perspectives in fiction simultaneous with a push against describing the backgrounds or social situations of various authors (or historical figures in general) means there's less context and more confusion

it seems like people have stopped explaining that you can enjoy something artistically while disagreeing with its message or values? I blame advertisers for this one because it's the thing that lets kids not fall for commercials

too much emphasis on how 'everyone is smart' instead of placing less social import on intelligence. leads to ideas like 'no one can be more talented at anything than anyone else, they only practiced more' which makes more perceptive kids dumb down their analysis so no one thinks they're being stuck up. it also makes people believe no two books could be saying different things

the strong push against TV, movies, video games, etc. being considered art means people no longer bother to analyze them artistically. so they don't exercise the same skills they'd need for reading while doing other things

and the related push that reading is always a 'brainy' activity and all books are 'equally smart', meaning that even books that don't say much must secretly be incredibly complex and have deep, well-researched messages. which leads to people inventing things that aren't there. and since they have nothing to practice on, also no learning how to pick up on things that are there

the idea that there's some inherent divide between 'mindless' activities and 'intellectual' activities, and that it's a trait of the activities themselves, not how people engage with them. so people are under the impression they don't have to try to do anything in particular. it'll just happen

the creepy thing where people universalize history and think everything has always been the same as it is now, only worse (or better, depending) and related misunderstandings

whatever has happened to fact-checking

novels genuinely are worse quality now because there's less money in it and therefore way more constraints on who writes and what they write and how it gets popularized

[3liza]

thank you for speaking rational thought AS AN ARTIST into the ai debate. i get so tired of people over simplifying, generalizing, and parroting how they’ve been told ai works lmao. you’re an icon

some of the worst AI art alarmists are professional artists as well but theyre in very specific fields with very specific work cultures and it would take a long and boring post to explain all the nuance there but i went to the same extremely tiny, hypefocused classic atelier school in San Francisco as Karla Ortiz and am actually acquainted with her irl so i have a different perspective on this particular issue and the people involved than the average fan artist on tumblr. the latter person is also perfectly valid and so is their work, all im saying is that we have different life experiences and my particular one has accidentally placed me in a weird and relevant position to observe what the AI art panic is actually about.

first thing i did when the pearl-clutching about AI art started is go on the Midjourney discord, which is completely public and free, and spent a few burner accounts using free credits to play with the toolset. everyone who has any kind of opinion about AI art should do the same because otherwise you just wont know what youre talking about. my BIGGEST takeaway is that it is currently and likely always will be (because of factors that are sort of hard to explain) extremely difficult to make an AI like Midjourney spit out precisely wht you want UNLESS what you want is the exact kind of hyperreal, hyperpretty Artstation Front Page 4k HDR etc etc style pictures that, coincidentally, artists like Karla Ortiz have devoted their careers to. Midjourney could not, when asked, make a decent Problem Glyph. or even anything approaching one. and probably never will, because there isn't any profit incentive for it to do so and probably not enough images to train a dataset anyway.

the labor issues with AI are real, but they are the result of the managerial class using AI's existence as an excuse to reduce compensation for labor. this happens at every single technological sea change and is unstoppable, and the technology itself is always blamed because that is beneficial to the capitalists who are actually causing the labor crisis each time. if you talk to the artists who are ACTUALLY already being affected, they will tell you what's happening is managers are telling them to insert AI into workflows in ways that make no sense, and that management have fully started an industry-wide to "pivot" to AI production in ways that aren't going to work but WILL result in mass loss of jobs and productivty and introduce a lot of problems which people will then be hired to try to fix, but at greatly-reduced salaries. every script written and every picture generated by an AI, without human intervention/editing/cleanup, is mostly unusable for anything except a few very specific use cases that are very tolerant of generality. i'm seeing it being used for shovelware banner ads, for example, as well as for game assets like "i need some spooky paintings for the wall of a house environment" or "i need some nonspecific movie posters for a character's room" that indie game devs are making really good use of, people who can neither afford to hire an artist to make those assets and cant do them themselves, and if the ai art assets weren't available then that person would just not have those assets in the game at all. i've seen AI art in that context that works great for that purpose and isn't committing any labor crimes.

it is also being used for book covers by large publishing houses already, and it looks bad and resulted directly in the loss of a human job. it is both things. you can also pay your contractor for half as many man hours because he has a nailgun instead of just hammers. you can pay a huge pile of money to someone for an oil portrait or you can take a selfie with your phone. there arent that many oil painters around anymore.

but this is being ignored by people like the guy who just replied and yelled at me for the post they imagined that i wrote defending the impending robot war, who is just feeling very hysterical about existential threat and isn't going to read any posts or actually do any research about it. which is understandable but supremely unhelpful, primarily to themselves but also to me and every other fellow artist who has to pay rent.

one aspect of this that is both unequivocally True AND very mean to point out is that the madder an artist is about AI art, the more their work will resemble the pretty, heavily commercialized stuff the AIs are focused on imitating. the aforementioned Artstation frontpage. this is self-feeding loop of popular work is replicated by human artists because it sells and gets clicks, audience is sensitized to those precise aesthetics by constant exposure and demands more, AI trains on those pictures more than any others because there are more of those pictures and more URLs pointing back to those pictures and the AI learns to expect those shapes and colors and forms more often, mathematically, in its prediction models. i feel bad for these people having their style ganked by robots and they will not be the only victims but it is also true, and has always been true, that the ONLY way to avoid increasing competition in a creative field is to make yourself so difficult to imitate that no one can actually do it. you make a deal with the devil when you focus exclusively on market pleasing skills instead of taking the massive pay cut that comes with being more of a weirdo. theres no right answer to this, nor is either kind of artist better, more ideologically pure, or more talented. my parents wanted me to make safe, marketable, hotel lobby art and never go hungry, but im an idiot. no one could have predicted that my distaste for "hyperreal 4k f cup orc warrior waifu concept art depth of field bokeh national geographic award winning hd beautiful colorful" pictures would suddenly put me in a less precarious position than people who actually work for AAA studios filling beautiful concept art books with the same. i just went to a concept art school full of those people and interned at a AAA studio and spent years in AAA game journalism and decided i would rather rip ass so hard i exploded than try to compete in such an industry.

which brings me to what art AIs are actually "doing"--i'm going to be simple in a way that makes computer experts annoyed here, but to be descriptive about it, they are not "remixing" existing art or "copying" it or carrying around databases of your work and collaging it--they are using mathematical formulae to determine what is most likely to show up in pictures described by certain prompts and then manifesting that visually, based on what they have already seen. they work with the exact same very basic actions as a human observing a bunch of drawings and then trying out their own. this is why they have so much trouble with fingers, it's for the same reason children's drawings also often have more than 5 fingers: because once you start drawing fingers its hard to stop. this is because all fingers are mathematically likely to have another finger next to them. in fact most fingers have another finger on each side. Pinkies Georg, who lives on the end of your limb and only has one neighbor, is an outlier and Midjourney thinks he should not have been counted.

in fact a lot of the current failings by AI models in both visual art and writing are comparable to the behavior of human children in ways i find amusing. human children will also make up stories when asked questions, just to please the adult who asked. a robot is not a child and it does not have actual intentions, feelings or "thoughts" and im not saying they do. its just funny that an AI will make up a story to "Get out of trouble" the same way a 4 year old tends to. its funny that their anatomical errors are the same as the ones in a kindergarten classroom gallery wall. they are not people and should not be personified or thought of as sapient or having agency or intent, they do not.

anyway. TLDR when photography was invented it became MUCH cheaper and MUCH faster to get someone to take your portrait, and this resulted in various things happening that would appear foolish to be mad about in this year of our lord 2023 AD. and yet here we are. if it were me and it was about 1830 and i had spent 30 years learning to paint, i would probably start figuring out how to make wet plate process daguerreotypes too. because i live on earth in a technological capitalist society and there's nothing i can do about it and i like eating food indoors and if i im smart enough to learn how to oil paint i can certainly point a camera at someone for 5 minutes and then bathe the resulting exposure in mercury vapor. i know how to do multiple things at once. but thats me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Do you think an Owl House book (not necessarily a Belos one since we all know how Dana feels about the character) could popularize the Owl House fandom again like the book of Bill is doing for the Gravity Falls fandom? The show has been trending on Tumblr for quite a while now.

Well, before we answer that, I think it's important to examine why Gravity Falls is "making a comeback." It ended nearly 10 years ago, and since then, it has a reputation of being a groundbreaking tv show that has influenced Disney TVA shows since then. Artists and writers who worked on GF then proceeded to make their own popular and well-regard shows (The Owl House and Amphibia). Even during the near-decade since it ended, its fandom has been chugging along nicely, making art, fics, and meme templates. To put it simply, GF has a larger fandom that is still interested in its world and characters.

In contrast, The Owl House ended just last year and while the show does trend on here occasionally, it's usually because of MoringMark (and even just looking at his recent comics, they're mostly rehashing plots and character arcs from the original). The wider fandom has mostly moved on to other media (except for the usual die-hards).

I think The Book of Bill is so successful because it provides so much: it is an interactive text, it has a website that is an extension of the book itself, allowing readers to decode riddles and learn more about GF's lore and characters. It's about a character people love and want to engage with. That interactivity has always existed on the show and now Disney can capitalize on audience nostalgia and provide a book aimed at an older audience.

Can the same be done with toh?

I'd argue no. The world building and characterization are far more limited in toh but besides that, I don't think it's likely we will see official toh content ever again. Alex Hirsch has an amicable relationship with Disney but the same does not seem to be the case for Dana Terrace. She left with her show cancelled and has even stated that the characters aren't hers anymore but Disney's.

Gravity Falls is founded on mysteries and ended with some to speculate on. Toh pretty much explained everything except for the Wittebanes and the Titan-Archivists War. Of those two, perhaps a Philip Wittebane journal would be the most lucrative since it's connected to the main plot and you can make it fun and creative. A book explaining the Titans would just be more lore. So when you have a world that's rather flimsy and characters who are more like archetypes, then it's no wonder that people have largely moved on.

[pruneunfair]

When it's hard to admit something you like is actually not great.

I understand the cry or better yet beg fans on some level when it comes to your favorite piece of media being endlessly criticized. Trust me, it doesn't feel good.

I'll speak from my own experience with my media that I loved and eventually had to admit it wasn't as amazing as I claimed I to be. I was a huge fan of yandere simulator, a game that is mostly known nowadays for both it's poor quality in coding and story telling and it's pedo developer, Yandere dev.

Before that controversy, I loved the game for its bright appeal, anime aesthetic and of course the easter eggs that came with the game to eliminate NPC'S in a funny way, I watched all the development videos on his YouTube channel, I visited his WordPress blog for any extra updates and probably the worst I've done: I've defended him against other channels calling out his bullshit after I was easily swayed by his hate and shame video. I was about 11 years old when I last defended him, not realizing that's exactly what Alex wanted his younger fans to do.

Yandere simulator itself is extremely gross. You've probably already heard of why but just in case someone seeing this hasn't, I'll explain. The game itself was about the protagonist, Ayano Aishi, on a obsession fueled quest to feel emotions by romancing a boy and the player has to eliminate 10 rivals over 10 weeks. What made it gross were the use of panty shots as currency that you used to have to crawl and look up at yourself if you wanted to use any of the tools in the games shop (Info-chan) the characters skirts are often flipping up when you run, one of the rivals is a sexy pedo teacher not meant to tell a story on SA but rather for self gratification, the UNDERAGE protagonist wears different underwear for special buffs and you get the idea that this game is a mess of code for something that is just a porn game being played by minors given how easy it was to download the game.

Other pieces of media I defended as amazing at all times are Helluva boss and Hazbin hotel. They aren't nearly as awful as yandere simulator and for the most part, I can still watch them without feeling intense disgust, but as much as they shows are guilty pleasures, they still have problems that needed to be called out.

Hazbin hotel has objectively more issues than its youtube cousin. Mostly just minor pet peeves that don't actually ruin the entire story such as too much of the same color scheme and many characters having the same skinny body type. Those are all flaws though that can easily be attributed to the shows tumblr esque artstyle that can be really appealing. However, it messes up with its portrayal, I see what Hazbin tries to do with Angel Dust, I am not a victim of SA so I will not be inserting my own opinions if the depiction of someone coping with the trauma with hypersexuality was done well but I have looked through reviews of Angel Dusts character who have gone through SA and it was overall a mixed bag, that it was okay but ultimately tarnished by the fact that the storyboard artist Vivzie put in charge for that episode was someone who has a rape fetish and even ships Angel with his abuser, Valentino.

Helluva boss is a little better in my opinion but it still has several of its own issues. Characters aren't allowed to actually be flawed and generally repent for being assholes because there's always some sad sad backstory that completely justifies them being assholes by inserting someone who's entirely worse. It kinda takes away from the fact that the characters are demons and would naturally act dickish to people considering how vulgar they are. I feel Helluva boss does actually try to make a good story since there are many episodes that aren't too bad, my favorite episodes are actually the shorts of the crew doing their job as assassin's which I really miss compared to the constant drama and the 3 year long "Will they? Won't they?" Between Stolas and Blitzø.

And not that's even mentioning the excessive swearing.

Now that I'm older, I can see how labeling anyone who criticized my favorite shows/games as mindless haters who just didn't get how amazing it is was childish. I know nowadays that critique and criticism are absolutely necessary when you have a flawed piece or media or a problematic creator. I don't blame Van Ji for adapting COBYB considering how tight money is but I still will criticize Solche for how vile COBYB is regardless of their talents. This doesn't mean sending them death threats or doxing their location but rather making my own complaints where anyone who wants to can join in.

There are times when you have to admit something you are attached to isn't that great and I know it can be especially hard if it's a special interest but instead of listing paragraph after paragraph on why the "haters" are just stupid for not seeing the hidden "message" of how Matthias is actually misunderstood. Take your time to listen to their perspective, why they hate it so much and have your own civilized discussion about why its good or bad, and agree to disagree, I despise remarried empress with a passion but I still like to listen to remarried empress fans explain their view on the story when the conversation is actually civil and not an hour long internet debate.

If you are a big fan of cry or better yet beg and are only looking for positive things about it, I implore you to look somewhere else because aside from my love for the Van Ji's beautiful artstyle, I have nothing positive to say about any of Solches work aside from mystical.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Fluff and Angst (2) Masterlist

part one

24 Hours - Phan (ao3) - Art3misPlayerOne

Summary: Living a life in the public eye is hard, but it becomes almost impossible when you have to pretend you aren't in love. There gets to be a point when friendship, secret glances, and fantasizing just aren't enough anymore. So what do you do when your secret accidentally comes out and you realize the object of your love has been hiding a few things of their own?

amaryllis (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: “Amaryllis,” Phil explained, showing Dan the flower. Dan spun it between his finger, staring at it in awe. “It represents pride.” “Huh,” Dan grinned at it, “It’s my favourite yet.”

In which Dan has to wed Princess Alice when he would much rather marry her brother, Philip.

A Maze of Thoughts (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan's oblivious to Phil's feelings towards him. His own feelings -and maybe even his world- are thrown out of control once Phil brings home a boyfriend. Rated T(+) for triggers. (self-harm)

and true, the vision's hazy (ao3) - sensorydephrivation (memoryofamurder)

Summary: Ever since he was a small child, Phil had strange dreams. They seem to foretell terrible things, and a certain curly-haired man keeps showing up in them...

Better With You By My Side (ao3) - conshellation

Summary: Dan and Phil are both sons of rich families and are sent to ballroom dancing lessons. Because there is a shortage of girls, Dan and Phil end up as partners. Phil really doesn’t want to be there and Dan doesn’t either, but is so frustrated by the fact Phil doesn’t want to dance with him he is determined to get him to.

Blue (ao3) - Phanallamallama

Summary: ‘You were red and you liked me because I was blue.’ Dan is an artist who sees people as colours and Phil needs money.

Colour Me Free (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: At age 25, Dan Howell doesn’t want to hide anymore. The problem is, it’s not exactly easy to tell your boyfriend of 7 years that you’re not a girl.

Colour-Smears Nursery (ao3) - gerardopoly

Summary: After a rough divorce, Dan Howell is left with full custody of his son Dil. For a while, life at home was calm between their little family, and Dan had started to notice that things for them were starting to look up. Except, Dil is going to begin his first year of nursery school, which puts Dan's mind in a whirlwind of anxiety. With the help of loving friends and one quirky nursery school teacher, perhaps Dan will learn to let things go. And maybe his little family will grow.

Drunken Confessions (ao3) - phan_stole_my_heart

Summary: Dan and Phil stumble into their apartment late on night and end up having sex. In the morning Phil freaks out and kicks Dan out of his bed. (This fic is very angsty, so angsty)

heart full of headlines (ao3) - dantiloquent

Summary: Phil Lester has a lot of good things: supportive friends, a lovely dog, a world tour, a famous writing blog.

He also has magic. It shouldn't be a problem - except, in a world where magic is hated and mocked, it is. After a disastrous run in with Guardian-acclaimed "Modern Beat Generation Boy" Dan Howell ends in an unexpected friendship, Phil finds himself having to make more and more choices. While his blog sends him all over the world, and while their friendship develops, Phil can't help but bring it all back to one pivotal issue: who can he tell?

Life is a Test and I Get Bad Marks - botanistlester

Summary: Soulmate au where the first thing you think when you see your soulmate for the first time appears on their skin. Dan has always been known as the most badass guy in school; Until Phil Lester shows up, that is. Feeling like his image is at risk, he lashes out, causing an all-out war between the two.

Play Upon Me Like This Piano (ao3) - Elleberquist6

Summary: In many ways, Phil’s life is perfect: he loves his life in London, he has a wonderful brother and parents, and he has a great job as a radio DJ for BBC Radio One. There’s only one thing missing in his life… A rumor reaches an executive at the BBC about a talented local piano player named Daniel. The executive decides that Daniel would be the perfect guest on Phil’s radio show, so she sends Phil to speak with the evasive and mysterious piano player. When they finally meet, Phil starts to think that he has found the person who will make his life complete. Unfortunately, Dan has a secret that will make getting close to him difficult.

Ready to Let Go (ao3) - auroraphilealis (peachrayne)

Summary: Dan doesn’t want to go to India in February, just before Valentine’s Day, with his increasingly homophobic parents. He doesn’t want to be a lawyer, or settle down with some pretty girl one day. Dan wants to spend Valentine’s Day with Phil. He wants to be an entertainer. And he sure as hell plans on marrying Phil one day. But more than any of that, Dan just wants be himself. He wants to be happy. Sequel to Too Tense to Be Undone.

Rise Again (ao3) - ColdPorridge22

Summary: After the events of Phoenix Down, the boys are home and they've just gotten together. Phil is still healing from his injuries, but that's not stopping the relationship from getting more and more physical as they explore this new side of them. And then of course, there's the issue of coming out...

So Long, London (ao3) - solarpower21

Summary: Dan and Phil did the unthinkable and broke up in 2020. They meet again, four years later on Christmas Eve.

Song Stuck In My Head - xinyanhowell

Summary: Phil’s best friend is getting married. How can one song change so many lives forever?

The Infinite Possibility of Us (ao3) -  Young_Rouge_Rose

Summary: It began as all good stories do, with an inciting incident. Dan’s just so happened to be almost getting hit by a car, watching a man die before his eyes and somehow falling into a web of alternate realities. Just your usual morning inconvenience. He just wanted a coffee, and to make Phil happy. Now all he wants is to get back home, back to his world, his life, his Phil. Little does he know Phil has found himself in a similar predicament, and what is stranger still is that in all other worlds they seem to be together. Maybe this is the universe trying to tell them something.

the one where dan pretends to date phil to save him from embarassment (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Phil was meant to be going on a week long holiday with his family, and finally introduce his girlfriend to them. But as Phil has the luck of a black cat walking under a ladder on Friday 13, said girlfriend breaks up with him the night before their planned trip. Devastated, and scared to tell his family of his failure to settle down again, his best friend Dan offers to pretend to be his partner for the holiday- but little did Phil know about Dan's not-so-subtle 8 year crush on him.

[rainy-astrology]

ATEEZ San Birth Chart Analysis

Based on my opinion and observations. Not a professional astrologer. May change later.

July 10th, 1999

Jinju, South Korea

10:08 AM

☀️♋️, 🌙♊️, ⬆️♍️

Sun in 11th shows a drive and ambition towards his future dreams and goals. San has always wanted to be a singer since he was young and has worked very hard to achieve his dream. He has improved his performance and vocal skills immensely over the years, often being the most eye catching member for many people who aren't ATINYs.

Mercury Leo in 11th shows a preference for like minded people. San seems to really enjoy the company of others - seems considerate of others feelings and cares to be on good terms with people. He has a natural charm and sweetness about him.

Moon in 9th also adds onto his ambitiousness - he truly seems to want to make a great influence on the world and be successful. Especially as a Virgo rising...I've never seen a lazy Virgo placement, they always work so hard for they want. He's very strongly opinionated, all of his beliefs come from the heart.

Saturn is also in 9th, which solidifies his strong beliefs/opnions. Saturn here puts a heavy focus on building future career and life. He makes sure to implement a sense of strictness and discipline into his routine.

Saturn trine ASC can make him appear serious and quiet. Physically, it can give people sharp features (Saturn and prominent bone structure), which San definitely has: sharp cheekbones and jaw, nose and eyes, prominent brow bones. Angular brow shapes suit him the best too (at least imo - it looks more cohesive with the rest of his features compared to straight brows). This is also likely why many people may find him intimidating at first or think he's older than his real age.

Mars Scorpio in 2nd is such a possessive and protective placement. It also creates an incredibly hardworking individual who always goes for whatever they want with no limit. San may be especially inclined to working hard towards his finances and can be particular about things he owns (iirc he has a black card but also won't bother to buy new things sometimes).

Jupiter in 8th...this could be about being good with finances, it is a priority for him (could obtain wealth from someone else maybe). This could also be about transformation of himself as 8th house is "death" and Jupiter is expansion. San seems to focus a lot on being authentic and true to himself, so it would not be too surprising if it is about him constantly trying to improve his character for the better. Maybe he has gone through a lot of life changing experiences or will be/is going through them.

Venus Leo in 12th is interesting, especially since Venus squares Moon and Pluto too. He's certainly loyal and devoted to those he loves (Leo's loyalty + Pluto's possessiveness). In 12th though, perhaps San is shy at first? Or at least very selective. It seems once he trusts/loves a person though, he really clings onto them (just look at the way he's glued to the other members and how he always says Yeosang is his. Venus square pluto behavior). Moon square Venus can add onto his attached and affectionate nature (though, many Leo venuses are just affectionate in general)

Uranus and Neptune in 5th makes for a creative and expressive individual. San clearly loves the arts and always expresses his passion in every performance. He may be a bit strange and unconventional, but I think that's just an artist thing in general

Pluto in 3rd explains his thoughtfulness so much! San is a little silly at times, but he seems to have a very deep side to him due to this placement. You can especially see it in the way he talks/writes in his letters to the members and fans - he writes in a way that pulls at heart strings (even I've gotten emotional at one of his letters and I'm not the type to get soft hearted so easily) and makes people reflect. It also explains his strong beliefs and opinions - he's such an advocate for authenticity. Pluto in 3rd folks have a very specific way of talking and thinking that makes them stand out.

Chiron in 3rd may make him feel insecure about the way he talks and thinks though - maybe San is going or has gone through a period of feeling misunderstood by others. A lot of Chiron in 3rd ppl do. Although he does like spending time with others, I think he may accidentally drive people away by oversharing and/or talking too much...He seems a bit intense and clingy, which may be overwhelming for others. Communication and self esteem is a struggle for many with this placement.

Being a Virgo rising, he may appear quiet and serious, observant and disciplined. Hard working with high standards. Pluto and Saturn aspect his ASC so it adds onto the natural stern energy he has.

North Node Leo in 11th is focused on building community, contributing to groups, and celebrating the individualities of others. I think he is doing a pretty good job at this as he's very encouraging and kind to others and is always advocating for people to simply be themselves.

Gemini MC can appear sociable, curious, and optimistic. San is a pretty positive person, I don't think I've seen him be negative to himself or others much...He always seem to be active on socials as he talks to ATINYs a lot. ATEEZ considered him one of the more talkative members in the group too.

___

Other Analysis:

MBTI | Enneagram

___

Masterlist

___

[sweetiesicheng]

seventeen - award show

vernon x reader ; featuring : ateez

word count : 2,280

—

"and then you'll go upstage," one of the stage managers explained to you as you stood on the performance stage.

"got it," you said with a nod, looking around and watching staff members set things up.

"would you like to go ahead and rehearse your performance?" another crew member asked you.

"yea, actually, that'd be great if we could," you said to them.

one of your staff members helped you get your microphone on while a few props were being moved on stage. your dancers were also on stage listening to things that staff members were saying.

"oh y/n~"

you raised an eyebrow in confusion and started looking around when you heard someone speak. then, you noticed some people waving and jumping at you from where the artists' area would be.

"what are you guys doing here?" you immediately asked, speaking into your microphone.

"you aren't the only one with rehearsal," seungkwan said into a microphone before mingyu snatched the microphone away.

"are we going to see your new song?" mingyu asked.

"yea, don't spoil it. the music video comes out in two days," you said to them.

"what if i go live on weverse live right now?" jeonghan asked.

"hey! you better not!" you exclaimed.

"we'll start y/n's sound check now," someone announced and you hurried to get into your starting spot.

you ran through your performance and watched a video afterwards, keeping mental notes of things you needed to remember. some stage crew talked to you about things to be aware of when you performed your set.

afterwards, you met up with seventeen, who were hanging out in the artists' area still.

"are you rehearsing after me?" you asked when you made it over to the area.

"no, another group is before we do," the8 answered you as he leaned against where he was sitting.

"so what are you guys doing here then?" you asked.

"we're bored," joshua answered as he played on his phone.

you crossed your arms and leaned into your hip. "okay, i know you guys have been to japan so many times in the past, but there has to be something that you guys could be doing right now other than waiting to do your sound check," you said to all of them.

"you know how many shows they're doing? kind of a miracle that they came," someone said and you looked over your shoulder.

you uncrossed your arms and put them on your hips, no longer leaning into your hip. "yah! shouldn't you be resting at home?" you questioned s.coups, who was sitting next to dino.

"just supporting my boys, that's all," he replied with a grin.

"y/n! the others are ready to rehearse the collaboration stage in the rehearsal room, if you would like to go ahead and leave," your manager spoke up. you turned and nodded your head at her.

"okay," you said before looking at the guys. "you guys have time to grab dinner one night while you’re here?" you asked.

"we're heading back to korea after this," dino spoke up.

"really? that soon?" you questioned.

"yea, we have to," dk spoke up. "don't worry, you and vernon can go in a date another time," he said while laughing.

"hey!" you yelled and crossed your arms with a pout.

"he's right, you know," vernon said, putting his arm around your shoulders. "can i walk you to your rehearsal?" he asked.

"sure," you replied, smiling at him.

the two of you left with your manager and another staff member directing you where to go.

"so how's everything been? you've been really busy," vernon asked you.

"it's been fun," you said to him, "i really like the new song," you mentioned.

"this one is really good. i'm sure it's going to be a hit," he complimented, "your stage looks really good too."

"thanks, babe," you said while smiling.

"of course," he replied and dropped his arm. "good luck during rehearsal. don't work too hard," he said to you.

"you too," you replied and pecked his lips. "bye."

"see ya," he said with a smile.

—

"y/n! y/n! over here!"

"look over here please!"

"right here, y/n!"

paparazzi continued taking photos as you walked along the red carpet. you continued making your way down the line before reaching the end and going into the venue for the award show you were attending.

"y/n!" you immediately smiled when you saw mingi waving at you. then, he gestured you over to him and the guys.

"you look great," seonghwa complimented.

"thank you. you guys look great," you replied. "are you guys performing later?" you asked them.

some of them nodded. "yea, we are," yeosang said. "you are too, right?"

you nodded, "yea. i have to change after i present an award," you mentioned.

"what award?" san asked.

"best male performance? something along those lines. you guys were nominated for it, i know that much," you replied.

"oh, that one," hongjoong spoke while fixing his jacket.

a staff member came by and instructed all of you inside the venue to your seats. you sat with the guys and greeted other artists who were around.

"oh, we have light sticks!" wooyoung exclaimed, grabbing a light stick that was on a seat.

"we have them too? that's fun," yunho said.

"it's just a block," you commented, holding one in your hand. you pressed a button and the device turned on, shining brightly in your face.

soon, the show started and the first performance occurred. you watched in amazement as performances went by and applauded quite a bit.

after a bit, it was time for you to present an award. staff directed you from the artists' area to the main stage. you had a card in hand and walked on stage when your name was called to present the award.

fans cheered and clapped for you as you walked on stage. you headed towards the microphone and stood right behind it.

"it's an honor to be presenting this next award. with incredible nominees, it's quite difficult to have only one winner for this award," you spoke. "the award for favorite global performer — male group goes too...ateez!" you announced and the crowd erupted in cheers. you stepped back and applauded as music played. ateez made their way to the stage and gave a speech.

once their speech was over, you went backstage and changed into your outfit for your performance. while backstage, you started warming up in a hallway with many artists and staff members moving about.

you continued to warm up, trying to keep yourself warm since the venue was freezing cold for you. as you finished doing your singing warm-up, you saw a couple of the guys walking up to you.

"you guys are here?" you questioned as wonwoo walked up to you with jun behind him.

"yea. we just got here," wonwoo answered.

"this is the only stage you have today, right?" jun asked you.

you nodded, "yea. the other one will be tomorrow, but that one is pretty easy."

"y/n!"

hoshi dashed in with a giant smile on his face with woozi joining in right after.

"hi, hoshi," you greeted. "you guys probably need to go out there, right?" you asked.

"eh, we're already late. more time won't hurt that much," woozi said after shrugging his shoulders.

"hey, want me to grab vernon? i think he's getting a little makeup touched up," hoshi asked you. you shook your head.

"i'll probably see him later. i need to keep warming up. this place is freezing," you said to them.

"well, we'll see you later. good luck out there!" dino said to you before the four of them left.

you continued warming up and your outfit was fixed since one of the pieces wasn't staying on. your backup dancers were also with you, getting ready to perform.

you were performing two songs for your stage; one was your most popular song and the other was your new title track. you were worried about the new title track since you hadn't performed it yet, but you were hoping everyone would like the live performance.

"we need y/n on standby!" someone announced.

you headed to standby and waited for your queue to get on stage. a speech was being given by another group that had won an award.

once the speech ended, the stage became dark. you headed on stage and found your starting spot while your dancers got into their spots. the music started to play and the stage started to display different colors with the lights.

—

after your performance, you made it backstage and a staff member started taking your mic pack off of you while another dabbed your face with a napkin. your manager handed you a water, and you started drinking it.

"y/n! nice job out there," one of your dancers said.

"that was such a good performance," another dancer said in excitement.

"you guys did really good. i'm glad the breakdown went good," you said as someone handed you a fan to help you cool down. "you guys take it easy. i'll see you at dinner," you said to them as they walked past you.

once you cooled down, you had your makeup and hair touched up before heading to the artists' area.

"oh, y/n sunbae! hello!"

“hello sunbae!”

"hi," you smiled and greeted some of the artists who greeted you. you sat down in an empty row and watched the performance that was going on.

"is this seat taken?"

you looked up and saw vernon smiling at you.

"do i know you?" you asked him. both of you started laughing and he sat down next to you. "hey.”

"hi."

you saw the rest of seventeen sitting down in the row you were sitting in and another row a few feet down.

"you guys were seriously fashionable late," you said to him.

"well, here we are," he said to you. "you did really good. the new song sounded really good."

"i was so worried, but the music video comes out tomorrow, so i hope people liked tonight's performance and will look forward to the video," you said to him.

"well, you're a really good artist, so i think it'll work out," he said to you with a smile. "i forgot to ask, but what are you doing tonight?" he asked.

"i have dinner plans with my team," you answered. "you should've texted me earlier. i would've cancelled dinner," you said to him.

"it's fine. i didn't know our plans either," he replied. "what about tomorrow morning?" he asked.

"i'm free until eleven. wanna do something?" you asked him.

he nodded, "yea, let's text tonight about it."

"uh, lovebirds?" you looked over and saw seungkwan looking at you two. "you two are gonna be trending on twitter if you keep talking to each other."

"i mean, we're public, so does it matter?" you asked.

"not really, but you'll still be trending," seungkwan said.

"hey, can i finally get my credit for setting you two up?" wonwoo asked.

"i literally said thanks like two months ago," vernon said to him.

"publicize it," wonwoo requested.

you laughed, "i'll do it later. you'll get a special shoutout on instagram."

"congratulations, y/n!"

"wait, i won an award?"

"see, this is what happens when you're too busy talking to your boyfriend and not paying attention!"

"i can still hear you even with the cheering, seungkwan!"

—

"ah, finally," you spoke to yourself as you plopped down onto the bed of your hotel room. you had just gotten back from having dinner with your team, but you were so tired from the past few hours.

just as you were about to sit back up, your phone rang. you sat up and looked around to find your phone on the desk. you stood up and walked over to the desk. your phone screen showed a video call from vernon. as you sat down at the desk, you answered the video call.

"yo."

"yo."

"is that how you two answer the phone?"

you recognized dino's voice in the background and started laughing. your boyfriend looked over his shoulder for a second before looking back at his phone.

"i'm with the guys. we're all in one of the hotel rooms," vernon explained.

"should i come visit?" you asked.

"no! but he can visit you!" mingyu yelled.

vernon looked back over his shoulder again, "guys, really?"

"should i hang up?" you asked vernon.

"no, don't. just wanted to check up on you," vernon replied. "oh, i was thinking that we could grab something from a convenience store and walk around in the morning. sound good to you?" he asked you.

"sounds cute," you said to him.

"that's all you could come up with? did we not give you enough tips?" woozi asked.

you laughed, "you guys would be surprised with how many ideas vernon has," you said. "babe, what time?"

"what time do you think you'll get up?" vernon asked you.

"eight?" you suggested.

"yea, sure."

"should we spy on them?" hoshi asked.

"we can take candid photos of them. make them trend for days," jeonghan spoke up.

"that's it," vernon said and you noticed him stand up. "i'll see you guys later," he announced.

"and where are you going?" s.coups asked.

"to be with my girl and to talk to her in peace because i know you guys will keep saying stuff," vernon replied, "i'll be back in a few hours. promise."

"wow, i get my boyfriend all to myself," you said with a smile.

"don't give him hickeys! we perform tomorrow!"

"yah!"

[nsharks]

i'm not good at explaining things so bear with me, but i feel like people who haven't created anything artistic to show for other people don't understand how hard it is, even when you're not stressed. truthfully, it's insane to me how someone can tell a person they've never met that they aren't doing enough or they're using lame excuses. that's just me though. hope you're doing well!

yes I agree!

[katz-chow]

deranged reader my beloved, my daughter, me. back again in the spools of my brain.

warnings: exactly what the title is. fem! reader, pwp, blood, gore, manipulation (?), toxic reader (?), reverse harem w/ soap & ghost eventually the others, pnv, fingering, overstim (fem)

🏷️ | @warenai @reese-is-right

part 1

you came from a normal life before joining the military. your parents love you and so does your younger brother, he's a pain in the ass but aren't all siblings? cookie cutter houses lines the suburban streets, grasses cut, and christmas decorations find themselves on the houses as soon as december hits, no sooner to avoid hoa fines.

It's actually silly how you turned out this way, a small malicious brain in a body of a well cared for girl. in many ways it was like taming a wild animal; your nails were manicured on the regular, hair neat and put together, strands never where you hadn't meant for it to be, and your uniform was pristine, never stained, never wrinkled. on the outside, you truly where just the sweetest young lady that was meant to sing christmas carols at nursing homes and gain pinches on your cheeks as tips.

but you can't fully tame a wild animal though. in many cases, tigers eat their owners, monkeys maul them, and raccoons abandon home after trashing it. you, were simple. you don't bare your teeth to your owners or unsheathe your claws, you pin them. you pin them in a way that artists pin beetles and butterflies, perfect and spayed out for display and enjoyment.

and that's what you did to the 141. you made them yours. it came easy, natural- almost instinctive. everyone wants to be liked, right? so what if you're extra, extra good at that? you're just charming!

it started with soap. he was an easy target knowing how friendly he is. after finding out he's a demolitions expert, you stepped in asking him rather complex questions on the molecular composition of the explosives he found himself building. and he gladly explained it to you, not having a lot of people who know chemistry on such a level outside of an academic space.

the two of you spend lunches together relating his chemistry knowledge to your biology knowledge as an ex-medic. together you were Biochemistry, what a bunch of nerdy POS'.

quickly that lead to more chemistry in the comfort of your bed as well, having the two of you wrapped up in the sheets as he fucked you hard and fast, his name spilling out of your lips like an echo in the void that is your thoughts.

his dick rammed into, your ankles on his shoulders and his grip on the back of your knees as he bends you in half.

after that night, it became many more. soap was now just johnny. the two of you shared loving glances and plenty of playful touches, a slap on each other's ass when the other passed by, a ruffle of hair, and arms wrapped around the other's waist, cheek to the muscle of their back.

ghost, observant as ever, found this quite aggravating as he thought you were his to hold. while you and johnny fumbled with carbons and phosphorus, ghost had picked up more paperwork than normal, training more recruits than he normally would, just to go and ask you for help. which, being the nice person you were, happily agreed to help him empty his plate.

silence filled the air besides the occasional sound of paper shifting and being flipped, or tossed to the side. some pens scribbling on the paper and against the hardness of the wood also found its way into the comfortable silence and the absence of words. ghost's eyes dashed up to look at you, chewing on the flesh of your lip as you focus on the paperwork that he had asked for your help on. he sees the blankness of your face, how nothing else seems to move or show any signs of emotion besides the gnawing of your teeth.

he quirked an eyebrow at this, how unusual you are...how fascinating. almost as if in a trance, a stupor, a daze as your aura pulls him onto his feet and over to you. he hovers over you, only your wooden desk in between.

"you and soap..." he started and as quickly as the daze came, it left him to fumble for the right words. you look up at him, the same bored expression on your face before you wide your eyes just a tiny bit in surprise and realization.

your head tilts to the side, deciding on letting him grumble with his own choked words. and he, in fear of such situation, opted to shut his mouth and walk back to his desk, picking up from what he left off.

a giggle escapes your mouth, "you can ask him." you say playfully, going back to your own sentence to write and finish up.

the two of them were a pair, always have been- and easy to hook both with the same, sweet bait of your kindness. sooner or later, you got what you wanted, two playful dogs that tend to your every need, whether to pick up some food for you, run to your room to get a file you forgot, knock someone's teeth out for your collection, or to pull orgasm after orgasm out of you until you’re a panting mess. that last one was your favorite.

you sat in simon's lap, knee bent with your leg thrown over it, spreading and keeping your thighs from closing. johnny's fingers thrust into your sweet heat as your sharp nails continue to dig into the back of simon's hand, holding onto the flesh of your waist tightly. behind you, you could feel simon's dick twitched as more of your slick dribble down onto his own trousers. his hot breathe against your ear grounded you just a bit as johnny's thumb grazed over your swollen clit. "that's it lovie...one more for us yeah?" johnny snickers from his place, crouched right in front of your pussy, all wet and puffy from the many orgasms that the two of them have taken from you. you whined as he continue to tease you, fingers languidly pulling in and out of your cunt as his thumb swipes over the top edge of your bud. you cry out. even his feather-light touches on your wet clit draws you closer to the edge until your mind goes numb, your pleasure boiling over the edge once again. your body convulses as simon's grasp on you tighten. "good girl, come on now. i kent you could do it..." johnny praises as his fingers pumps in and out of you quicker, pulling every last drop of your pleasure into his palm.

now two of them were playful with you, you were theirs and they knew how to share. their sweet little play thing that was always too good to them, so obedient.

simon now wishes that you were as obedient in the field as you were in bed as he sweeps through the building in search of you. he curses to himself for letting you slip past his field of vision and his attention, going off on your own with a simple "be right back".

he believed it but that was almost an hour ago, and this building is not big. however, the concrete walls and fluorescent lights rendered this place a labyrinth. rifle in his hand, held close and alert, he quickly tip toes up the stairs, observing the twisting quiet hallways, its greenish lights making him feel sick.

he continued on, careful in the thickness of the silence, making his heart thunder and his steps heavy, like forcing through gelatinous air. a wail rung through the concrete walls, not yours, but a shriek of agony, the only sound being made in the longest minutes in his life.

he jogged on, gun tight in his grip, ready to shoot the poor bastard that stood in between his darling and him.

your voice got louder as he got closer, he turned the corner, meeting you and a man in an empty room, door swung open. the man knelt on your feet in front of you. crimson pipes and frayed pieces of his bicep dripped down thick, molten blood onto a pile of rumble from the collapsed wall. simon froze, his own blood flowed thunderously in his ears as he felt his chest shook.

your face showed the same picture as it did when he made you take over his paperwork all those weeks ago. a plain, empty, broken face stared back down at the man on his knees. he mumbles something in russian quickly, petrified in his spot as you held the saw onto the top of his head. his pleas faded into nothing as his voice grew raw from overuse. a simple, broken, "please" breathed out of his exhausted lungs.

simon saw the way his unsteady back raised as he took a quick breath and how it shakily exited his body. blood continued to drip from his exposed bone and muscle. the man's body swayed, weakened from the lack of such plasma flowing through him. a man on the brink of death didn't scare simon, he has been where you are now. he has seen death like an old friend from school, bumping into it every so often.

the dread that filled his body and weighed on his shoulders was your reaction- or lack thereof. you didn't care about his pleas, or how the light in his dull eyes extinguished from tight-lining in between life and death. you didn't care that his arm was discarded behind you. you didn't care about the severed arm, laying in a dark pool, drenched in blackness, just a foot away from your backside. you didn't care.

the man's hand grabs onto your leg, begging, pleading for mercy, even as death was eager to take him. simon sees his breathing becoming staggered, shallow, knowing death is standing over your shoulder, staring on, waiting for you to make the final blow, to end his life.

but you don't. a satiated hum of approval rumbled out of your throat as you dug the jagged blade of the hand saw into his skull. the man pulled from the well of his energy, enough to let out a sluggish, hoarse sob. he bent over more, trying to escape the digging of the steel into his scalp, failing.

you pull back the blade, making you cut deeper and the man choked on his anguished cries. satisfied, you yanked the blade out, leaving the man to hiccup one last plea as you kicked him off your leg. he falls to the ground on his side, his chest rising ever so slightly. you step over him, throwing the saw to the other side of the room, it's weight hits the concrete with a 'thump'. simon doesn't speak, and neither do you. he walks behind you, rifle still drawn. and you know why.

[insertsomthinawesome]

I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!! Okay so honestly I have been very very inconsistent over the years with just disappearing for periods of time due to various things 😂 So it probably seemed pretty normal to most people.

But it felt different on my side, so I'm excited to be back in business. I took a month long hiatus! 31 days of not drawing digital art. Its not something I talk about on here? But I've been suffering from some serious long term Art Burnout for.... a really really long time. Long enough that I should've taken a break probably years ago. It finally got so bad that I could barely draw. I was scared to do it (cause it always looked "bad" in my eyes [i'll come back to that]) and doing it was exhausting and disheartening.

I talked it over with somebody and realized that the fear and anger and frustration I felt towards my own artwork was uh. Not Normal or Healthy. And I finally committed to taking a real break for once.

I still drew a little bit by hand? Traditional art has always felt like it has lower stakes for me (i don't often share it online, and sometimes I don't even share it with friends) so I did some of that when I felt like it. But Digital art was completely off the table.

I had put such an immense pressure on myself to make my digital art perfect, to make as much of it as quickly as possible to satisfy something. It wasn't fun anymore. I'm proud of what i've made over the years! But for a long time now the stuff I've been making was made while hating every second of making it. With some rare exceptions.

I hated my art! It was a combination of Perfectionism, taking in too many external expectations, and the burnout. If you hate doing something its kinda hard to love it even when you want too lol. It wasn't "Bad" in the sense that the quality was low and it was ugly! It was "Bad" in the sense that it was unhealthy for me to keep doing it at that point in time.

I'm glad to report though, that with my hiatus officially over as of Wednesday last week: I am once again. In Love. With doing art, and being an artist :)

I put off taking a break for years cause I was scared that taking a break would mean that I would never achieve all the things I wanted to do with art. I was scared it was a stupid and lazy thing to do that would mean I'd never achieve my dreams. And Also even though I kinda hated drawing, I also loved making art. Its a weird duality that I can't even really explain??? I hated it but I also loved it. I wanted it but I also wanted to run from it. It wasn't until I was more mature and had more clarity and insight (and unfortunately also until the problems got worse) that I was finally able to let go of those fears and just do it.

And I'm really really glad I did. It was everything I needed. And I hope to strike a better balance in the future with art. Taking more breaks when I need them, or just when other things have my attention like reading or Video games (Some star rail got played during this time xD)

From the outside things probably aren't going to be that different?? At this point I don't really have any sure plans to post anything I've been drawing since my Hiatus ended. I might or I might not xD I'm still a hobbyist artist taking things at her own pace, but I hope that it shows how much happier I am :)

Whumptober 2023 is being officially put to rest by this post btw! I was in major burnout when that event started, and I'm ready to just, move on from all the past expectations I'd shoved on my shoulders. If I feel like filling any of the prompts or going back to any of the ideas I'd come up for it I will! But I'm not going to worry about doing it unless the desire sets in. Thanks to everybody who's been so kind to me throughout my time on here as an artist! Ya'lls tags and screaming and kind words, the fanfic, the asks and the responses? Its been fantastic :) You guys have made me laugh, smile, and cry tears of joy. I hope from here that things only get better and sweeter! And if I have bad days again, that's okay too.

Here's to 2024 and whatever it may bring ya'll :D 🎉🎉✨✨🧡💜

[mr-laveau]

Laveau Rambles - Diversity-ish in my work

I've recently sparked an inner monologue with myself on the topic of diversity and representation in NeXus because these are things that matter to me and I introspect on what my values on the topic are as a VA and an artist. I know it helps to make people who aren't seen often in media feel less lonely in the world. One feels more empowered to believe there is a community for themselves out there and that's why I make diverse characters.

That said, the monologue I had with myself is identifying where diversity begins and where that line ends for myself as a person who is not genetically made up of all the races in the human species.

Let me explain; I am indian/african/carbbean indigenous (kalinago)/white and that's it. I am not chinese, nor filipino and I'm definitely not mexican, which makes me take into account that I am not above perpetuating racism against other people in an attempt to represent them.

I am fully capable of fumbling that at some point and I take to try not to do that because a.) that would be embarassing on my part frankly and b.) my intentions are to always shine a light on other people and provide others with exposure to folks outside of their own perspective, not to use them for entertainment. I can only speak to the list of experiences that I am accustomed to partaking in so that makes writing for characters of other races hard.

Which it should be...because condensing the experience and perspective of people who are not living life under the lens I do is not easy. It takes work. It takes research, long hours of reading, listening and parsing through personal stories and accounts of things I cannot and am not able to be there for and that's work I want to do.

I want to try and see how I can push folks who are like and unlike myself into the sight of others who don't understand their culture or know the issues that they face under a largely white capitalistic society because there are legitimate issues to talk about, especially given how deeply those issues run in places we don't expect to see them in (I am talking about fandom). I find joy in learning how people see the world, hearing what defines their lens of society and being witness to other people understanding that the world is bigger and brighter than they thought because it's fun to me.

With that in mind, I am not perfect. I can push and produce narratives that miss points about certain cultures and that's my bad when I do and if I have done it thus far. As a writer, I want to be able to show people the cool things and the deeper understandings that people have about the world while telling a story. I want different points of view to affect how characters interact with each other and see that world which influences the themes of the story because I know that putting a indian character in a cast not mean that's representation; seeing a character who looks like myself and responds and reacts to things with the same attitudes and beliefs that I hold and the perspective I have is representative to me. Especially when done well.

Why ramble about this then? Well, mostly to show that you are allowed to doubt yourself in how you go about producing media. It's fine. There are no police who will knock on your door for having a hard time learning about and unlearning things. I think it's ok to struggle in it because struggle shows that you're somewhat trying (so long as you're like actually putting in work and research to actually show for it). It's hard work and it can sometimes be personal because it involves understanding perspectives that can vary in difference to your own and it's sometimes not something you want to let other people see for fear of judgement. I however want to do that because I see value in it.

All that to say, it's hard but it' also weird to not try. Like, bring about a refusal/acknowledgement to event attempt diversity/representation in your work. You're within your rights and there are no police who will come after you, but it's weird to present forward. Sometimes that's because your particular piece/narrative does not necessarily need that diversity because its themes are not entirely relevant to the idea of diversity which is like ok. It's a very context based thing and you can do that. It's still weird though.

[quirekey]

Hallooooo! I'd like to request a match-up, as per my prior question... The match up can be of any tf-fandom, I really dm :3.Here's some information about me!

My name is Atlas, but I've been given the nickname Eye/Eyes. Im pansexual and use She/they as my pronouns :3 My personality type is Infp.

I absolutely LOVE drawing and reading, I'm just way too shy to show any of my drawings to anyone. I mostly read books about Mythology, Past wars in my country and paranormal Activity. I also like to play some games occasionally, like Genshin or Reverse 1999! If I'm not reading, drawing or playing games I'm mostly zoning out with music in the background. Some of the artists I listen to are Melanie Martinez, Glass Animals, The Hu, Will Wood and Mitski.

I'm usually quiet, but if I'm around my select few friends, I let loose. Think Bee from TfOne. I love to ramble for hours to my friends about my interests, if they're willing to listen of course. I'm also rather helpful, and will jump at every opportunity to help others.

There aren't a lot of things that I hate. I think the thing that annoys me the most is tardiness, or overall when someone makes no effort in plans. Another thing I can't stand is blatant discrimination towards anyone. I mostly try to not get annoyed but given I do have a short temper, I usually get heated and start an argument. Though lately I've grown out of my snappy attitude if I were to get annoyed :3

I hope this was enough!

Have some more red pandas bc they're the best animals to ever exist

MATCHUP FOR @atlas-tbh-idk-what-to-do   

[ Transformers x Human!reader ]

You have got CHASE RESCUE BOTS

These can all be seen as platonic or romantic :)

- Chase would definitely understand ur disliking in things and maybe even relate to some himself. When somebody is late it really buzzes you both off or if somebody puts absolutely no effort into a project it ticks you both. If you both are punctual, why can’t the others be? About hypocrisy, you both despise that too. Your advice also counts onto you for a reason. Because of this, you both have an understanding of hate about people who don’t try to at least be somewhat careful.

- You definitely like Mythology and it got Chase interested. Sure, Chase prefers ‘undercover and crime’ shows but he is willing to try something new. When you tried to explain to him about what Mythology is, how it works and how worldly spread this topic is, he was both shook and confused. Made-up stories to tell morals or legitimately just make-beliefs and lies are world-wide? Why? Chase took most of the things you said seriously so you had to explain that it’s all just imagination and wild thoughts, nothing real

- When it’s a quiet day, you like to pass the time a little and play some RPG games like Genshin Impact. You aren’t the best but you aren’t the worst at it, it’s all about the fun. You sometimes play Genshin while driving in Chase since he can drive on his own. Eventually, Chase does ask what you are looking at when you should be doing patrol instead. You tried to explain the game and how it worked but the laws in Genshin made no sense. A massive factor that caught Chase off-guard is that you were killing ‘enemies’ that were considered ‘aliens and non-human’. This did offend Chase since he is ‘an alien’ as well.

- You both are quite big yappers but for totally seperate things. You talk about your interests and connections while Chase talks about the law and how it affects society. You both understand this so you guys just take turns talking about what you guys are passionate about.

- Chase is usually told that he can be a bit too up-tight and stressing when it comes to the law so he is told to loosen up and relax. Because of this, he has learnt human-humour and some jokes that can be considered strange and awkward. He would tell you jokes and ask you for newer ones he could tell to others, you try your best to help but humour probably isn’t your biggest strength. It’s hard for you to not cringe since you feel bad but it gets to us eventually.

- Your music type varying of Will-Wood and Mitsiki does confuse Chase. You are attached to songs that go wild online or ones that just relax you. Sometimes you’d put on the radio but Chase is tense when you do this. Chase likes to do his patrols with either silence or socialisation, he thinks music takes you away from the present and distracts you from what happens around you (even though talking to somebody does the same thing… He just says it will help him improve with future human interactions, fair.)

- Ever since you’ve been improving with your temper (good job), Chase has been proud bro. You need to have hella patience to deal with criminals so he is glad you are improving yourself.

- Chase is a little frightened by your interest with paranormal activity. Yes, he has handled a paranormal emergency, but it doesn’t mean it still does frighten him a bit. He isn’t scared that much but it gets to him when you’re suddenly talking about how scary it is to go Ghost Hunting.

Only non-platonic one:

- Chase definitely shows you a lot of affection and hated PDA. He thinks it’s best to show his love for you in private so you two can do whatever you want without questions. You guys aren’t that freaky, it’s more just soft-romance than anything else.

Oh by the way, you seem really cool dude and YES SOMEBODY WHO ENJOYS PARANORMAL ACTIVITY! Your awesome. Thanks for the red pandas btw ^^

- To @atlas-tbh-idk-what-to-do