#led to the creation of what this blog is all about

[destiel-news-channel]

when i was born there was nothing and when there was something i was already old

i started putting the whole story in the tags then tumblr fucked me by not allowing me any more tags and i cant bring myself to type all this out again but the story isnt finished so im gonna continue in a whole other post and if anyone knows how to copy tumblr tags into a post that would be really appreciated

i feel a 100 years old

[waywardsalt]

oh yeah i’ve got a bunch of loz aus that i haven’t really talked about. a few of them are listed and slightly explained in this poll and explanation reblog but i haven’t gone out of my way to actually list the aus i have and really explain them. so that’s what this post is for. here are some... decently simple explanations of my major aus and what they're generally about

i have two kinds of aus: original aus (loz aus that are set in their own kinds of worlds with their own stories and twists on character roles) and then crossover aus (we all know how this works i just mash loz and a thing i like together)

original aus: (many currently dont have actual titles, so the titles will often just be concept shorthand)

in the court of the crimson king/crimson king au: probably the most developed and closest to being written out. it's got one of the longer premises; set in a industrial-esque hyrule city, following linebeck as the main character, as the adoptive older brother of link and aryll, living with them and their grandmother as the only one able to reliably make money to pay for rent and food, leaving every other week to do jobs, but he moonlights as the 'demon of the gray moon', a masked persona he'd created as a child that had long since become a city-wide urban legend, anonymously taking unsavory jobs from whomever can contact him and offer pay, often working directly for bellum, a childhood friend, the one who enabled and trained him to become the demon, and one of five anonymous leaders of the city. linebeck effectively lives a double life, and tries to stay out of too much trouble to avoid drawing attention to himself or making his adoptive family worry, but he gets dragged into more and more danger as bellum becomes curious about the identities of the city's other leaders, and linebeck falls in love with a man named ganondorf, suspected to be one of those other city leaders. ive got a few posts related to it already: this one being another vague concept descriptor, this one being an actual scene i have written out.

'gimmick' au: i cannot explain the gimmick without spoiling the au. put simply, in this au, hyrule as a whole has been at war for ten years, every race and kingdom taking sides in a conflict that seems to be going nowhere. link joined the hylian army young, and has made his way up the ranks to become trusted by queen zelda herself, and things in the war take an interesting turn as he and zelda discover a new faction, unaligned with any particular kingdom and with unknown motives, and zelda decides to set out to the different parts of hyrule, link and a chosen group of trusted allies in tow, intending to try negotiation one more time before things take a turn for the worse.

sci-fi/space au: the fun one that probably would need to be done in a visual medium. it takes place in a solar system of a few planets, link growing up on the planet hyrule and occasionally traveling to the others as a knight specializing in investigating and taking down dangerous bounty hunters, working for zelda as a friend. he and zelda uncover a plot by the yiga clan to accumulate a number of highly dangerous research and weapons held by each species as they aim to resurrect a demon to wreck havoc on the solar system- the b plot being about the top bounty hunters in the solar system screwing around, eventually colliding with link and zelda's a plot as it begins to involve them.

murder mystery(?) au: one of the older ones, maybe one of the oldest that i still stick with. this might actually be one of the first ones i tried writing. the plot begins when zelda returns to hyrule city years after her father- the former mayor- was murdered, finding that he has been replaced by ganondorf and that while things seem fine enough on the surface, random and organized crime run the show, and she begins a private detective agency as 'sheik', a masked young man, and with the help of impa, and old friend and confidant, she moonlights as sheik and uses her daytime identity as zelda to help chip away at some of the city's biggest problems and finds herself drawn into a long string of murders that appear to be anything but random violence.

ruined hyrule 1: i have two au’s with the premise of hyrule being ruined. neither of them have more specific names yet. this one begins with the majority of greater hyrule's population having long since locked themselves in hyrule castle town in order to escape the increasingly dangerous wildlife. zelda, a young girl at the beginning, becomes curious about what lies beyond the city walls, and makes friends with many other children within this sheltered hyrule, and as they grow up together, aim to eventually venture out into the wilderness to see what may have caused the outside world to become so incredibly hostile.

ruined hyrule 2: the other ruined hyrule. set in a devastated hyrule, roughly ten years after the royal family was killed, link failing to save them or hyrule in the time since. he now resolves to set out and indiscriminately destroy every demon that plagues the ruined hyrule, meeting and bringing along various allies, each of which has been uniquely affected by and have different lived in this altered, dangerous shell of hyrule.

modern (school): i also have two modern aus. this one isn’t plot driven, just a concept i have, would work best as little vignettes or something. essentially just the idea of a group of loz characters hanging out together in a modern high school (or college?) setting.

modern: this is the one with an actual plot. follows the general idea of zelda characters living in a modern world only for the typical legends to begin resurfacing and heralding dark events. plot specifics are murky, but that's the general idea.

dark mage: this is the au that where the seas meet the sands takes place in. basically just ganondorf x linebeck shenanigans in this alternate hyrule while actual plot sneaks up on them. named 'dark mage' mostly because the initial idea behind this au was that linebeck would learn magic.

horror au: doesn't have the best name, and it's ended up just being a personal sandbox for me. constantly changing, with the cast and setting often altering if i find that something isn't working or sticking. it's an au i've considered (and even briefly tried) writing in the past, but it's still too fluid, and writing horror effectively is difficult. it's a fun au, though.

mecha au: spawned because i watched neon genesis evangelion. a lot of this au's basic concepts can be found here: x but the short version is that hyrule is being besiged by massive monsters, but each race has created their own mechs to combat them. link is just a farmer who happens to have a strange knack for being a mech user, so is brought in by zelda as a gamble to bolster their chances, and he is tasked with working with a new and less-than-trustworthy crew to help fight those monsters.

'amnesia link' au: an au that sprang up in about a day and hasn't gotten too far since. basic premise being that three years prior to the story, link and a group of allies has faced off against ganondorf and, despite their best efforts, lost, with link being presumed dead by their enemies. now, link has woken up from his coma, his memories gone and hyrule taken over, and, with guidance, must once again travel across hyrule, aiming to rediscover his allies and try to face ganondorf once more.

A quick list of crossovers: I won't explain these in length, since they can range from having their own plot to just being a fun mental concept. So, the things I have made crossover aus with are:

Warrior Cats

Batman

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Persona 5

Pokemon

(there are other, smaller ones, these are just the ones i consistently pay attention to)

So! These are the majority of my legend of zelda aus, some of which I may write, some of which just exist in my mind for fun, all of which I wouldn't mind talking more about if anyone is curious!

[mdzsartreblogs]

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

Heyo, @unforth here! I run some danmei art blogs (@mdzsartreblogs, @tgcfartreblogs, @svsssartreblogs, @zhenhunartreblogs, @erhaartreblogs, @dmbjartreblogs, @tykartreblogs, and @cnovelartreblogs) which means I see a LOT of danmei art, and I go through the main fandom tags more-or-less every day.

Today, for the first time, I spotted someone posting AI-generated images (I refuse to call them AI "art" - and to be clear, that's correct of me, because at least in the US it literally LEGALLY isn't art) without any label indicating they were AI generated. I am not necessarily against the existence of AI-generated images (though really...considering all the legal issues and the risks of misuse, I'm basically against them); I think they potentially have uses in certain contexts (such as for making references) and I also think that regardless of our opinions, we're stuck with them, but they're also clearly not art and I don't reblog them to the art side blogs.

The images I spotted today had multiple "tells," but they were still accumulating notes, and I thought it might be a good moment to step back and point out some of the more obvious tells because my sense is that a LOT of people are against AI-generated images being treated as art, and that these people wouldn't want to support an AI-generator user who tried to foist off their work as actual artwork, but that people don't actually necessarily know how to IDENTIFY those works and therefore can inadvertently reblog works that they'd never support if they were correctly identified. (Similar to how the person who reposts and says "credit to the artist" is an asshole but they're not the same as someone who reposts without any credit at all and goes out of their way to make it look like they ARE the artist when they're not).

Toward that end, I've downloaded all the images I spotted on this person's account and I'm going to use them to highlight the things that led me to think they were AI art - they posted a total of 5 images to a few major danmei tags the last couple days, and several other images not to specific fandoms (I examined 8 images total). The first couple I was suspicious, but it wasn't til this morning that I spotted one so obvious that it couldn't be anything BUT AI art. I am NOT going to name the person who did this. The purpose of this post is purely educational. I have no interest whatsoever in bullying one rando. Please don't try to identify them; who they are is genuinely irrelevant, what matters is learning how to recognize AI art in general and not spreading it around, just like the goal of education about reposting is to help make sure that people who repost don't get notes on their theft, to help people recognize the signs so that the incentive to be dishonest about this stuff is removed.

But first: Why is treating AI-generated images as art bad?

I'm no expert and this won't be exhaustive, but I do think it's important to first discuss why this matters.

On the surface, it's PERHAPS harmless for someone to post AI-generated images provided that the image is clearly labeled as AI-generated. I say "perhaps" because in the end, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a single AI-generation engine that's built on legally-sourced artwork. Every AI (again, to the best of my knowledge) has been trained using copyrighted images usually without the permission of the artists. Indeed, this is the source of multiple current lawsuits. (and another)

But putting that aside (as if it can be put aside that AI image generators are literally unethically built), it's still problematic to support the images being treated as art. Artists spend thousands of hours learning their craft, honing it, sharing their creations, building their audiences. This is what they sell when they offer commissions, prints, etc. This can never be replicated by a computer, and to treat an AI-generated image as in any way equivalent is honestly rude, inappropriate, disgusting imo. This isn't "harmless"; supporting AI image creation engines is damaging to real people and their actual livelihoods. Like, the images might be beautiful, but they're not art. I'm honestly dreading someone managing to convince fandom that their AI-generated works are actual art, and then cashing in on commissions, prints, etc., because people can't be fussed to learn the difference. We really can't let this happen, guys. Fanartists are one of the most vibrant, important, prominent groups in all our fandoms, and we have to support them and do our part to protect them.

As if those two points aren't enough, there's already growing evidence that AI-generated works are being used to further propagandists. There are false images circulating of violence at protests, deep-fakes of various kinds that are helping the worst elements of society to push their horrid agendas. As long as that's a facet of AI-generated works, they'll always be dangerous.

I could go on, but really this isn't the main point of my post and I don't want to get bogged down. Other people have said more eloquently than I why AI-generated images are bad. Read those. (I tried to find a good one to link but sadly failed; if anyone knows a good post, feel free to send it and I'll add the link to the post).

Basically: I think a legally trained AI-image generator that had built-in clear watermarks could be a fun toy for people who want reference images or just to play with making pseudo-art. But...that's not what we have, and what we do have is built on theft and supports dystopia so, uh. Yeah fuck AI-generated images.

How to recognize AI-Generated Images Made in an Eastern Danmei Art Style

NOTE: I LEARNED ALL THE BASIC ON SPOTTING AI-GENERATED IMAGES FROM THIS POST. I'll own I still kinda had the wool over my eyes until I read that post - I knew AI stuff was out there but I hadn't really looked closely enough to have my eyes open for specific signs. Reading that entire post taught me a lot, and what I learned is the foundation of this post.

This post shouldn't be treated as a universal guide. I'm specifically looking at the tells on the kind of art that people in danmei fandoms often see coming from Weibo and other Chinese, Japanese, and Korean platforms, works made by real artists. For example, the work of Foxking (狐狸大王a), kokirapsd, and Changyang (who is an official artist for MDZS, TGCF, and other danmei works). This work shares a smooth use of color, an aim toward a certain flavor of realism, an ethereal quality to the lighting, and many other features. (Disclaimer: I am not an artist. Putting things in arty terms is really not my forte. Sorry.)

So, that's what these AI-generated images are emulating. And on the surface, they look good! Like...

...that's uncontestably a pretty picture (the white box is covering the "artist's" watermark.) And on a glance, it doesn't necessarily scream "AI generated"! But the devil is in the details, and the details are what this post is about. And that picture? Is definitely AI generated.

This post is based on 8 works I grabbed from a single person's account, all posted as their own work and watermarked as such. Some of the things that are giveaways only really show when looking at multiple pieces. I'm gonna start with those, and then I'll highlight some of the specifics I spotted that caused me to go from "suspicious" to "oh yeah no these are definitely not art."

Sign 1: all the images are the exact same size. I mean, to the pixel: 512 x 682 pixels (or 682 x 512, depending on landscape or portrait orientation). This makes zero sense. Why would an artist trim all their pieces to that size? It's not the ideal Tumblr display size (that's 500 x 750 pixels). If you check any actual artist's page and look at the full-size of several of their images, they'll all be different sizes as they trimmed, refined, and otherwise targeted around their original canvas size to get the results they wanted.

Sign 2: pixelated. At the shrunken size displayed on, say, a mobile Tumblr feed, the image looks fine, but even just opening the full size upload, the whole thing is pixelated. Now, this is probably the least useful sign; a lot of artists reduce the resolution/dpi/etc. on their uploaded works so that people don't steal them. But, taken in conjunction with everything else, it's definitely a sign.

Those are the two most obvious overall things - the things I didn't notice until I looked at all the uploads. The specifics are really what tells, though. Which leads to...

Sign 3: the overall work appears to have a very high degree of polish, as if it were made by an artist who really really knows what they're doing, but on inspection - sometimes even on really, REALLY cursory inspect - the details make zero sense and reflect the kinds of mistakes that a real artist would never make.

So, here's the image that I saw that "gave it away" to me, and caused me to re-examine the images that had first struck me as off but that I hadn't been able to immediately put my finger on the problem. I've circled some of the spots that are flagrant.

Do you see yet? Yes? Awesome, you're getting it. No? Okay, let's go point by point, with close ups.

Sign 4: HANDS. Hands are currently AI's biggest weakness, though they've been getting better quickly and honestly that's terrifying. But whatever AI generated this picture clearly doesn't get hands yet, because that hand is truly an eldritch horror. Look at this thing:

It has two palms. It has seven fingers. It's basically two hands overlaid over each other, except one of those hands only has four fingers and the other has three. Seeing this hand was how I went from "umm...maybe they're fake? Maybe they're not???" to "oh god why is ANYONE reblogging this when it's this obvious?" WATCH THE HANDS. (Go back up to that first one posted and look at the hand, you'll see. Or just look right below at this crop.) Here's some other hands:

Sign 5: Hair and shadows. Once I started inspecting these images, the shadows of the hair on the face was one of the things that was most consistently fucked up across all the uploaded pictures. Take a look:

There's shadows of tendrils on the forehead, but there's no corresponding hair that could possibly have made those shadows. Likewise there's a whole bunch of shadows on the cheeks. Where are those coming from? There's no possible source in the rest of the image. Here's some other hair with unrelated wonky shadows:

Sign 6: Decorative motifs that are really just meaningless squiggles. Like, artists, especially those who make fanart, put actual thought into what the small motifs are on their works. Like, in TGCF, an artist will often use a butterfly motif or a flower petal motif to reflect things about the characters. An AI, though, can only approximate a pattern and it can't imbue those with meanings. So you end up with this:

What is that? It's nothing, that's what. It's a bunch of squiggles. Here's some other meaningless squiggle motifs (and a more zoomed-in version of the one just above):

Sign 7: closely related to meaningless squiggle motifs is motifs that DO look like something, but aren't followed through in any way that makes sense. For example, an outer garment where the motifs on the left and the right shoulder/chest are completely different, or a piece of cloth that's supposed to be all one piece but that that has different patterns on different sections of it. Both of these happen in the example piece, see?

The first images on the top left is the left and right shoulder side by side. The right side has a scalloped edge; the left doesn't. Likewise, in the right top picture, you can see the two under-robe lapels; one has a gold decoration and the other doesn't. And then the third/bottom image shows three sections of the veil. One (on the left) has that kind of blue arcy decoration, which doesn't follow the folds of the cloth very well and looks weird and appears at one point to be OVER the hair instead of behind it. The second, on top of the bottom images, shows a similar motif, except now it's gold, and it looks more like a hair decoration than like part of the veil. The third is also part of the same veil but it has no decorations at all. Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever. Why would any artist intentionally do it that way? Or, more specifically, why would any artist who has this apparent level of technical skill ever make a mistake like this?

They wouldn't.

Some more nonsensical patterns, bad mirrors, etc. (I often put left/right shoulders side by side so that it'd be clearer, sorry if it's weird):

Sign 8: bizarre architecture, weird furniture, etc. Most of the images I'm examining for this post have only partial backgrounds, so it's hard to really focus on this, but it's something that the post I linked (this one) talks about a lot. So, like, an artist will put actual thought into how their construction works, but an AI won't because an AI can't. There's no background in my main example image, but take a look at this from another of my images:

On a glance it's beautiful. On a few seconds actually staring it's just fucking bizarre. The part of the ceiling on the right appears to be domed maybe? But then there's a hard angle, then another. The windows on the right have lots of panes, but then the one on the middle-left is just a single panel, and the ones on the far left have a complete different pane model. Meanwhile, also on the left side at the middle, there's that dark gray...something...with an arch that mimics the background arches except it goes no where, connects to nothing, and has no apparent relationship to anything else going on architecturally. And, while the ceiling curves, the back wall is straight AND shows more arches in the background even though the ceiling looks to end. And yes, some of this is possible architecture, but taken as a whole, it's just gibberish. Why would anyone who paints THAT WELL paint a building to look like THAT? They wouldn't. It's nonsense. It's the art equivalent of word salad. When we look at a sentence and it's like "dog makes a rhythmical salad to betray on the frame time plot" it almost resembles something that might mean something but it's clearly nonsense. This background is that sentence, as art.

Sign 9: all kinds of little things that make zero sense. In the example image, I circled where a section of the hair goes BELOW the inner robe. That's not impossible but it just makes zero sense. As with many of these, it's the kind of thing that taken alone, I'd probably just think "well, that was A Choice," but combined with all the other weird things it stands out as another sign that something here is really, really off. Here's a collection of similar "wtf?" moments I spotted across the images I looked at (I'm worried I'm gonna hit the Tumblr image cap, hence throwing these all in one, lol.)

You have to remember that an actual artist will do things for a reason. And we, as viewers, are so used to viewing art with that in mind that we often fill in reasons even when there aren't. Like, in the image just about this, I said, "what the heck are these flowers growing on?" And honestly, I COULD come up with explanations. But that doesn't mean it actually makes sense, and there's no REASON for it whatsoever. The theoretical same flowers are, in a different shot, growing unsupported! So...what gives??? The answer is nothing gives. Because these pieces are nothing. The AI has no reason, it's just tossing in random aesthetic pieces together in a mishmash, and the person who generated them is just re-generating and refining until they get something that looks "close enough" to what they wanted. It never was supposed to make sense, so of course it doesn't.

In conclusion...

After years of effort, artists have gotten across to most of fandom that reposts are bad, and helped us learn strategies for helping us recognize reposts, and given us an idea of what to do when we find one.

Fandom is just at the beginning of this process as it applies to AI-generated images. There's a LOT of education that has to be done - about why AI-generated images are bad (the unethical training using copyrighted images without permission is, imo, critical to understanding this), and about how to spot them, and then finally about what to do when you DO find them.

With reposts, we know "tell original artist, DCMA takedowns, etc." That's not the same with these AI-images. There's no original owner. There's no owner at all - in the US, at least, they literally cannot be copyrighted. Which is why I'm not even worrying about "credit" on this post - there's nothing stolen, cause there's nothing made. So what should you do?

Nothing. The answer is, just as the creator has essentially done nothing, you should also do nothing. Don't engage. Don't reblog. Don't commission the creator or buy their art prints. If they do it persistently and it bothers you, block them. If you see one you really like, and decide to reblog it, fine, go for it, but mark it clearly - put in the ACTUAL COMMENTS (not just in the tags!) that it's AI art, and that you thought it was pretty anyway. But honestly, it'd be better to not engage, especially since as this grows it's inevitable that some actual artists are going to start getting accused of posting AI-generated images by over-zealous people. Everyone who gets a shadow wrong isn't posting AI-generated images. A lot of these details are insanely difficult to get correct, and lots of even very skilled, accomplished artists, if you go over their work with a magnifying glass you're going to find at least some of these things, some weirdnesses that make no sense, some shadows that are off, some fingers that are just ugh (really, getting hands wrong is so relatable. hands are the fucking worst). It's not about "this is bad art/not art because the hand is wrong," it's specifically about the ways that it's wrong, the way a computer randomly throws pieces together versus how actual people make actual mistakes. It's all of the little signs taken as a whole to say "no one who could produce a piece that, on the surface, looks this nice, could possibly make THIS MANY small 'mistakes.'"

The absolute best thing you can do if you see AI-generated images being treated as real art is just nothing. Support actual artists you love, and don't spread the fakes.

Thanks for your time, everyone. Good luck avoiding AI-generated pieces in the future, please signal boost this, and feel free to get in touch if you think I can help you with anything related to this.

[srbachchan]

DAY 5973

Jalsa, Mumbai June 25/26, 2024 Tue/Wed 2:07 AM

Birthday - EF - Anamika Gupta .. 🙏🌹

Ef Özen Eren Wednesday, 26 June .. and all ur prayers and wishes for this special day for the Ef ..

the Agenda .. an act of predetermined thought and conveyance .. what shall bring attention recognition be the intent .. any express that can remotely be given the spin, and mastered is the guile and expertise of such ..

it is lamentable , ignominious to witness the impotency of content .. to somehow in any which manner , to be able to draw attention in storied form, just so it can be put up and seen or read , in favourable condition to them that devise it ..

devise .. for the right is not needed to be devised ..

pity ..

never ever underestimate the generation that follows , or is about to follow .. they are aware and alive to every situation and knowledged to hold their own in debate or discussion ..

we are enriched by the circumstance that often fall upon us .. and then we find a way .. even when there be none ..

"In today's digital age, the ubiquitous nature of content has paradoxically led to a dilution of its potency. With the democratization of content creation, anyone with an internet connection can produce and distribute information, leading to an oversaturation of the digital landscape. This phenomenon has profound implications, rendering content less impactful and more ephemeral.

First, the sheer volume of content available online has created a paradox of choice. Every minute, hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to platforms like YouTube, thousands of blog posts are published, and millions of social media updates are posted. This relentless flow of information makes it difficult for any single piece of content to stand out. The audience, overwhelmed by options, often resorts to skimming or entirely ignoring vast amounts of content, diminishing its overall impact.

Moreover, the quality of content has become highly variable. While the ease of content creation has empowered many voices, it has also led to an influx of low-quality, poorly researched, and sometimes misleading or false information. This glut of mediocre content competes with high-quality, well-researched pieces, making it challenging for audiences to discern value and trustworthiness. As a result, even content of genuine worth can struggle to achieve the recognition and engagement it deserves.

Another critical factor contributing to the impotency of content is the algorithm-driven nature of content distribution. Social media platforms and search engines prioritize content based on engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments rather than the inherent quality or informational value. This prioritization often leads to the virality of sensational, clickbait content at the expense of substantive, insightful work. Consequently, the attention economy favors superficial engagement over deep, meaningful interactions with content.

Additionally, the fast-paced consumption habits of modern audiences further erode the potency of content. The average attention span has dwindled in the face of constant digital distractions. People increasingly consume content in bite-sized formats, such as tweets or short videos, which limits their exposure to in-depth analysis or comprehensive narratives. This shift towards brevity undermines the ability of content to foster nuanced understanding or sustained engagement.

The commercialization of content also plays a significant role in its diminishing impact. Content marketing has become a dominant strategy for businesses, leading to a proliferation of branded content. While this can provide value, it also contributes to the noise and can sometimes prioritize promotional messages over genuine, informative content. The blending of editorial and advertising content can lead to skepticism and diminished trust among audiences, further reducing the impact of the content they encounter.

Lastly, the fleeting nature of digital content means that it often has a very short lifespan. Unlike traditional media, which could have a lasting presence, digital content is quickly buried under the avalanche of new information. This ephemeral existence means that even impactful content can be forgotten rapidly as attention shifts to the next trending topic.

In conclusion, the impotency of content in today's times is a multifaceted issue stemming from the overwhelming volume of information, variable quality, algorithm-driven distribution, changing consumption habits, commercialization, and the ephemeral nature of digital content. To reclaim the potency of content, creators and platforms must prioritize quality, foster trust, and find ways to engage audiences meaningfully and sustainably amidst the cacophony of the digital age."

Love and more ..

Amitabh Bachchan

[fuckyeselucien]

Creator Highlight #18 - @fieldofdaisiies

Welcome back to Elucien Creator Highlights!! We want to take a moment to recognize the amazing individuals in our fandom who kindly use up so much of their free time and creative energy to share their work with us! 

Today we’d like to highlight @fieldofdaisiies! If there is anyone who signifies the essence of kindness and community, it's fieldofdaisiies. She is always going out of her way to uplift others, both in her daily interactions on her personal blog and also through projects such as @acourtofkindness - a blog dedicated to spreading kindness in the fandom.

The light and joy that she brings to the fandom is infectious, and her efforts to spread positivity in this community is in part what led to the creation of this blog! So it is with very heartfelt gratitude and honor that we highlight @fieldofdaisiies, and say thank you for all the work and effort you contribute to make this fandom a better place.

And isn't just her heart that's made of pure gold, her fics are too! Fieldofdaisiies is a wonderful author, with works comprising a variety of ships and mediums.

Below are some of our favorite of her Elucien works, but you’ll want to read all the fics on her masterlist, HERE!

Ars Amatoria:

Elucien Medici AU With their father's passing and amidst the intense conflict between the Vanserra and Hybern bank, Eris assumed the role of family head, shouldering the responsibility of both his lineage and the bank. The need for allies becomes vital, prompting a crucial decision: Lucien, Eris's younger brother and Second in Command, will have to take over responsibility — meaning, he has to alter his lifestyle and take a wife. His destined match is Elain Archeron, the daughter of a prominent and influential merchant from Venice.

A Court of Sight and Devotion

The story follows Elain's journey back to the Mortal Lands, where she must confront her past and present. She isn't alone on this journey; her mate accompanies her as they navigate their feelings and the effects of their bond, striving not to let the mating bond interfere too much with their actions and emotions. Lucien, just like Elain, must face his own memories of the past and uncertainties about the future. He eventually meets his biological father and struggles with the possibility of loving again after losing Jesminda, who took a piece of his heart with her. Can Elain heal his broken heart, or will their paths in the end part?

O Solstice Night

Lucien and Elain are finally putting everything aside and listen to their hearts one Solstice Evening. But obviously that does not work without some misunderstanding that creates a bit of angst and unease. And since our favourite male with fire in his blood is involved there is also a fine amount of smut in this story.

Want to nominate someone? Fill out the form HERE.

[leggerefiore]

Hey, I saw that your requests are open so I wanted to ask how Maxie, Archie, Cyrus and maybe some other characters of your choice would be like as dads, if you want to write about that ^^;

anon don't let me make more pokemen dilfs.

uhhh took this as a /reader thing since that's how my blog is.

cw: afab reader, light mentions of pregnancy and birth, mostly focused on villains being dads, mentions of termination for a second in cyrus's part,

characters: Maxie, Archie, Cyrus, Volo

☀️Maxie🌋

🪨 When you first told the Magma Leader the news, he had nearly fainted. He was certain he had been careful, but his mind instantly drew a few times such a thing could have occurred. Maxie actually needs to be supported by how limp his limbs go. Truly, he did not know how to handle the idea he was going to be a father. For some reason, his brain recalled the child who had opposed his team as he debated his next move. Being a dad did not sound awful to him. He just was completely unsure as to what to do.

🪨 Somehow, he managed to get over his immediate hesitations and considered the positives. The redhead was not getting any younger, after all. He had felt a strange uncle-like care for the child who had stopped him. It was not so bad having a child to look out for, he thought. Plus, he had beaten Archie in something again. He soon found himself pouring countless hours into guides and information related to parenthood and fatherhood. Being well-informed was the first step he felt.

🪨 He had his ups and downs throughout the pregnancy before finally having a full-on breakdown during labour. His practised stern expression gone with his sanity. They had to give him a bag for his frantic breathing, and he had to be removed from the room. He would later apologise for his behaviour, but it was all too surreal for him. But, in the end, he stares in wonder at the newborn. The small boy's weight in his arms was so light, yet so heavy. Tufts of red hair decorated his head as Maxie took in another shaky breath.

🪨 It was a struggle actually adjusting to parenthood. Reading was one thing, a screaming baby at one in the morning was another. Still, he powered through it all. There was something enchanting to watch as the baby grew more and more aware. His son seemed to grow an affinity for grabbing at his hair or trying to take his glasses while making interesting coos and gurgles at him. He was not sure just what kind of person they would grow into, but he was determined to help try to raise them into a person who would be mindful of the environment and kind.

🪨 As they grew, Maxie found himself seeing too much of himself in his son. They could be just as stubborn and unyielding as he was, while being oddly fascinated with geology as he was. He even had to stop his son from eating dirt at one point, which stirred unfortunate youthful memories out of the Magma Leader. Despite how they would butt heads, Maxie felt strangely in tune with him. He loved letting his son read his reports and explaining the different meanings held within.

🪨 He felt especially cocky when he introduced Archie to his boy, smirking at how the pirate seemingly was lost as to how the redhead actually reproduced. Before he could rub his life achievement in his face, Archie knelt down and ruffled the boy's head with a friendly grin. He bit his tongue. The Aqua Leader congratulated his counterpart genuinely and told the boy to keep an eye out for his old man. All Maxie could do was grumble in return.

🪨 He tries to be fair, but he knows boundaries are important and healthy for children. The effects of being too permissive with children often led to the creation of troublesome people, after all. Though he does not want his son to feel rejected and like Maxie does not care for him, he makes sure to have actual discussions with his son about why and how with things. He does feel like his child has a good understanding of these things in the end but feels like he accidentally imposed many of his mannerisms onto his son.

🪨 Team Magma ends up talking about the so-named mini Maxie frequently. The obvious resemblance between their leader and his son is just so fascinating. Even Courtney wishes to coo over an almost perfect clone of her leader. Tabitha just nervously laughs whenever the boy follows his dad in to watch the Magma scientists work. He is very well accepted, no matter his age. Grunts even nervously act as properly as they do when their leader strolls in.

🪨 Overall, Maxie ends up as a slightly overbearing parent who tries to understand his kid and have them understand him back. He goes from being nervous about parenthood to being deeply grateful for the change. His son brought an odd new purpose into his life after everything that had happened with Groudon. He truly enjoys every moment spent with his family.

🌧Archie🌊

💧 When you told Archie about the news, he scooped you up like you weighed nothing and spun you around excitedly. The Aqua Leader had been feeling like something was missing from his life, and he feels like you just answered it. There is no hesitation or doubt from the man — No, this must be his destiny. The little scamp that had been his odd rival while he tried to awaken Kyogre made him realise how nice being a dad could be. He instantly begins to ramble off assorted ideas and plans while you can only stare at him.

💧 Honestly, he probably had been unconsciously trying for a child. Archie thought back on his own youth with both happy and confused feelings. Having a kid could be really difficult, he realised. Shelly came in to save him by gifting him a bunch of parenting books and reminding him that it was a genuinely serious change in his life. He suddenly felt more grounded, for lack of a better word, in his thoughts. Plus, he had beaten Maxie in something! Not that he really thought his rival wanted a kid, though.

💧 He does simply everything for you during your pregnancy. Archie proves just how dedicated he can be to a goal with his attentiveness to you. Even during the birth, he stood at your side with a bright grin and endless support. Though, internally, he would admit he was panicking just a bit. This was still a dangerous process, even if he treated the doctors and whatever else. Though, when everything calmed down and a small infant was laid in your arms, his heart just felt full. A little girl was now the newest and most important member of his crew.

💧 His adjustment to life with a baby is something amazing. It seemed he really took all the advice in those books to heart, as he just accepted his sleep schedule was going to be ruined until the poor girl found a schedule. Archie did not mind, simply happy to see more and more of the little thing. He even found a good nickname for her when she held a small death grip on his beard. His little Clamperl. She was quite fond of laughing and giggling, too, which made his heart feel even warmer. However, sadly, everyone around him stuck down him wanting to try infant swimming classes.

💧 As she grew, Archie was a bit amazed about how she seemed to be just like him. A strong affinity for water and loving to just be around people. Both of them could just spend all day on the beach and in the water playing around, making Archie think back to his own youth. He had loved the ocean then as much as he loved it now and is glad to pass his love on to his daughter. The Aqua Leader adored teaching her all about marine life and the many creatures that lurked in the waiting waves. She seemed to absorb the information like a sponge.

💧 He felt smug when Maxie saw him and his daughter in Slateport. The redhead stood stunned at the little girl holding his rival's hand tightly. The Magma Leader approached with careful steps. The girl just beamed up at him. Maxie actually smiled back at her. He shot a glance at Archie. He carefully listened to the little girl excitedly telling him about the Chinchou she saw. The Aqua Leader's feelings changed. Maxie almost seemed proud of him. Before Maxie departed, he congratulated Archie and told the girl to keep her dad in line. She just grinned up at him.

💧 He is a bit too lenient with his daughter, he knows. The girl simply deserves everything he feels, and he struggles to tell her no. Of course, he does know the importance of setting up boundaries for kids so they do not get all out of control. Though, he absolutely struggles with punishments, sadly. His softness, thankfully, is not taken advantage of because his daughter is just as oddly good-natured as he is.

💧 His team is just eager to have his daughter around. She loves playing around with the grunts, even when it ends with her horribly beating them in a pokemon battle. Everyone just sees her like another Archie, almost. She is just less likely to give out orders. Shelly simply adores the girl and loves dressing her up or just hanging out with her while Archie is too busy to be with her. Matt, on the other hand, is overly protective over her. The poor guy is terrified that his bro's daughter is in danger because of how small she is. Granted, she is very safe because the entirety of Team Aqua would hunt whoever hurt her down.

💧 In the end, he is quite excited to be a father and eager to do everything he possibly can for his child. He struggles a bit when it comes to pushing back on her and is probably too permissive for it to be good, but his example of bring redeeming himself from his past actions and genuinely caring for pokemon and the sea sets a good example for her. She quickly adopts many of his interests in protecting the environment, and he feels certain that his change of heart after Kyogre was all for good with that.

🌌Cyrus🛰

☄️ When you told Cyrus of the news, he froze. His entire world seemingly paused, and the only thing he could hear was the sound of his heart racing. Father… Him? No, he could not. What a terrifying thought. His own childhood creeping up his back as he debated how to most kindly ask for a possible termination. Your immediate refusal shook him even more. Losing you was not something that he believed he could bear in this world, so sickeningly consumed by spirit. Could you not just wait for his perfect world to start a family?

☄️ He relents after his initial panic. Your joy is apparent with how you speak to the unborn child and loving place a hand over where they should be. Was twenty-seven an appropriate age to start a family? He supposed there was little time to consider. Immediately, he found himself drowning in guides upon guides upon books and informational videos until he felt somewhat confident in what being a parent entailed. He absolutely dreaded every coming minute of it, but he refused to make that apparent to his future child. Cyrus would not dare even imitate his parents.

☄️ Amazingly, he managed to stay by your side during the stages of labour. While he almost constantly wanted to leave the room, horrified but what he could only blame on spirit, he remained and forced his feelings down to support you and advocate when you were unable to. You seemed grateful for his unfaltering support in the end, smiling as you held the infant girl in your arms. Cyrus felt amazed by her very existence. Soft blue tufts were on her head, while her face seemed frozen in a familiar expression. You called her a mini Cyrus. He could only feel awestruck.

☄️ He struggled immensely in the shift after bringing her home. Thankfully, it was less due to the constant awakenings (as his insomnia made that easy enough to deal with) but more so how she simply existed in his space. Her cries broke his heart, making him fear he was already falling into the ways of his parents. Yet, he found that she was straightforward to comfort, simply craving to be held and softly spoken to. Her eyes, the same colour as his, adoringly stared up at him, and he suddenly felt warm inside.

☄️ Her growing up was both a relief and torment to him. She proved herself just as reclusive as he could be and not interested in any other kids for the most part. Cyrus felt strange seeing his daughter hidden in her room and burying herself in whatever hobby she had decided to indulge in. It was like staring into a mirror that reflected one's younger days. He found himself being someone she could talk to about her hobbies, happy to listen at any time. Cyrus felt even more stunned whenever she followed him to his office and watched how he worked on his machines. It slowly turned into him explaining everything to her and her wishing to help him.

☄️ He flinched at how Cynthia caught him out at the Veilstone department store with his daughter one day. The champion stared in silence at them for a moment before falling into her unusual polite grin and waving at the small girl. Cyrus knew that the blonde would not do anything to her yet still felt strangely nervous about how she had gazed at him specifically. The babbled quietly to Cynthia about her interests, and she could only smile more at the girl. When the woman finally left, her final glance back at him spoke too many words. “You accepted this world, didn't you?” Had he? Cyrus forced those thoughts away.

☄️ He, truthfully, is quite soft as a parent. What he has been through has made him terrified of ever inflicting such pain onto a child. Cyrus is much too weak when it comes to his daughter and folds into himself for what she asks for. He strangely finds her already perfect. In fact, he dared to even say her spirit was somehow complete. He does make sure she understands social norms and boundaries, still, but she seems to come to understand on her own all the same. The only downside is that he struggles to be affectionate with her, only allowing himself the rare hug and mostly relying on petting her head.

☄️ Team Galactic is oddly obsessed with their boss's mysterious child. How she just showed up one day after Cyrus took an unexpected few weeks off. They all found themselves engaged in watching how she mimicked her father unknowingly. Mars and Jupiter love playing with the little girl, seeing a need for a more feminine touch in her life and finding her fun to dress up. While Saturn seemingly finds himself on babysitting duty whenever Cyrus gets busy. He secretly enjoys these moments and shows her games on his computer. The grunts are constantly getting jumpscared by her accidental glare.

☄️ Overall, he struggles quite a bit with his own childhood, but desperately does not want his beloved child to ever go through what he had. Cyrus leans probably strict in some ways, yet extremely permissive and passive in other ways. At first, the idea of parenthood nearly makes him ill, but he somehow moves past it into deeply enjoying the connection he has with his daughter. While he still has not accepted this painfully incomplete world, he feels his daughter is leading him to another possible answer to his inquiries and wishes to see what she thinks when she is at an age to understand. Perhaps he would even dare let her make the new world herself.

💫Volo📜

⭐️ When you told him the news, he sincerely debated fleeing and hiding again. Being a parent was a terrifying concept to him. He simply was not someone who had much interest in establishing a family line. After all, he had made very obvious his intentions to continue pursuing Hisui's myths to one day finish his goals. While he may have relented to whatever kind of relationship this was, he was not sure a child was something he needed. Then you mentioned that his child would come from one chosen by Arceus, and he suddenly gave in.

⭐️ He supposes that a child from both his blood of the ancient Sinnoh people and yours from that of one chosen by Arceus sounded too good. Besides, he had begun to wonder what should happen if he failed in his endeavours. A descendant could carry on where he left off, even possibly creating the world he so desired and bringing him back should he die. His acceptance is quiet and subtle. He finds himself listening to men and women about their experiences of being parents as he wanders around Hisui. Bravely, he even questions Cogita about what is entailed, intriguing her.

⭐️ He could not be at your side for any process of the delivery since he was very much wanted for his crimes in Jubilife, but he was somewhat doting during the pregnancy. He attempted to get whatever you requested, though he felt like he was going a bit mad when you sent him out hunting for seemingly endless leeks out in the wilds. Volo was mostly following Cogita's instructions here. It was about a week after the birth when you finally managed to sneak out of the village with the infant for him to finally greet the child. He could only stare at the sleeping face of his daughter in mild bewilderment. Soft golden tufts were across her head as she nuzzled into his warmth. His heart felt oddly heavy.

⭐️ When you finally escaped back to his home, he felt distressed by how needy the child was. Crying nearly relentlessly and needing attention more than he expected, yet before he could complain, he realised how he felt about those thoughts. Quickly, he shut them down and took to intently caring for the child. How could he have even thought such a thing about his child? He felt ill. Her confused coos and giggles at lease forced the pain out of his heart. She always seemed so entranced with his hair and desperately tried to grab it. Her grey eyes held pure adoration as she turned her head to find him whenever he was not holding her.

⭐️ As she grew, he became worried. His own youth was extremely difficult and lonely. The only person he felt he could turn to was rarely around, so he always found himself alone and ruminating on his complicated feelings. It all seemed pointless with how easily she spoke with other people. A bit like him, he supposed. Her intrigue with his investigations of ruins and myths drew her in, too. The girl listening to her father go on and on about history and stories of myths. Volo felt oddly eager. It seemed his legacy would inherit his interests. She began joining him to look over ruins and learn the culture of the ancient Sinnoh people.

⭐️ Cogita seemed smitten with his daughter, he had noticed. The older woman had often been there for him in his youth, and now it appeared her intentions remained the same for the girl. If his partner was busy while he was, too, he found her more than willing to babysit. She shared just as many myths to the girl as he had. The girl seemed utterly fascinated with everything, just as he had been. Though, he could feel the slight glare Cogita would give him when he listened in. It seemed she was more than aware of his darker plans.

⭐️ Volo is not really sure how to parent. He tries to be supportive towards his daughter, but struggles to understand if what he is doing is right or wrong. His parents were not exactly around him enough to help him even now by an example. He almost ends up treating her like a pokemon. Firm boundaries and obvious things you do and do not do. She has many moments of frustration towards the blond, which he entirely understands. Though, he does find himself overly protective of her. He feels she is in danger as the hero of Hisui's child alongside being his own, not mentioning the general danger of Hisui alone.

⭐️ From what he hears, the Galaxy Team simply adores her. Laventon cannot stop himself from going on and on about pokemon behaviours to the girl, and even bravely offering her another one of the pokemon he brought from his home region. Cyllene seems to fret over her wellbeing whenever you take her out of the village to his home, claiming she is too young to explore the harsh wilderness even while being monitored. Even Kamado has a strange soft spot for the kid, probably trying to make up for what he did to you. Volo can only sigh at all that.

⭐️ Ultimately, he has many shortcomings as a parent. It is a difficult change for him, but he forces himself to be at least more supportive and caring than his own parents were towards him. He honestly can be a little too harsh with his words, but somehow, his daughter seems to get he is trying his best. Her love for history and mythology makes him feel confident she will pick up where he left off should anything ever happen to him. After all, he plans to take her to the Temple of Sinnoh and explain to her his ultimate goals. She is already being trained in battling as a wielder by him. But, somehow, he wonders if she really will. The look in her eyes is much like his own yet different.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ashley Rindsberg

Published: Oct 25, 2024

a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around israel with alarming influence

A coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack

Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas

The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”

A group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after October 7, which violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord

Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and its members went into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel

On everything from American politics to corporate brands, Wikipedia plays host to a smoldering battle of ideas and values that occasionally erupts into white-hot, internecine edit wars. But no fire burns hotter than the Israel-Palestine topic area. The topic is such a flashpoint that the Palestine-Israel Articles (PIA) designation is used synonymously with its own dispute resolution abbreviation — Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel Articles, known as ARBPIA in Wiki-speak.

While always contentious, over roughly the past four years, and intensifying since October 7, PIA has been subject to a highly coordinated, sustained and remarkably effective campaign to radically alter public perception of the conflict. Led by around 40 mostly veteran editors, the campaign has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream.

A separate but complementary campaign, launched after October 7 and staged from an 8,000 member-strong Discord group called Tech For Palestine (TFP), employed common tech modalities — ticket creation, strategy planning sessions, group audio “office hour” chats — to alter over 100 articles. Operating from February 6 to September 3 of this year, TFP became a well-oiled operation, going so far as to attempt to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British members of parliament into changing their positions on Israel and the Gaza War.

These efforts are remarkably successful. Type “Zionism” into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism (and a disambiguation page), the auto-fill returns: “Zionism as settler colonialism,” “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators” (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” and “Racism in Israel.”

The aggregate effect of these efforts is a wholesale shift to the landscape of the Palestine-Israel topic online. As I reported in a previous Pirate Wires investigation, this is largely thanks to Google, which grants Wikipedia a “most favored nation” status with articles automatically given the first spot on any topic-related search result. If you Google “Zionism and settler colonialism,” for example, what you get is a Wikipedia article automatically anchored to the very top of the Google search results, with its own knowledge panel to the right. A fringe concept that would have only shown a smattering of unfocused articles just two years ago — before the article was created — now has its own primetime Internet stage.

“The recent issue with the ‘Zionism’ Wikipedia page is fundamentally a Google problem,” says someone familiar with the matter. “Wikipedia articles act as an unprotected back door to top Google search results, with the article's introduction often populating the knowledge panel, giving the impression Google has vetted this content — when it hasn’t. Malicious editors exploit this vulnerability, platforming fringe views and giving them priority over more reliable sources.”

The kind of coordination carried out by these groups violates many of Wikipedia’s most fundamental policies, including one of its core content policies, Neutral Point of View (NPOV), which states that, “Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them.” The practice also violates the Gaming the System guideline, which prohibits editors from “engineering ‘victory’ in a content dispute.” It runs afoul of the broader Wikipedia ethos discouraging Tag teaming, when “editors coordinate their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus.” Most flagrantly, it violates a guideline called Canvassing, which prohibits secret coordination with the “intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way.”

To skirt this, the pro-Palestine group leverages deep Wikipedia know-how to coordinate efforts without raising red flags. They work in small clusters, with only two or three active in the same article at any given time. On their own, many of these edits appear minor, even trivial. But together, their scope is staggering, with two million edits made to more than 10,000 articles, a majority of which are PIA or topically associated. In dozens of cases, the group’s edits account for upwards of 90% of the content on an article, giving them complete control of the topics.

One of the most prominent members of the pro-Palestine group is the user Iskandar323, a prolific editor whose nuanced approach to historical and even esoteric articles is representative of the larger effort. In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, “cultural communities” don’t require, or warrant, their own states.

Iskandar also worked to sanitize articles on Hamas, in one case removing mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article “Hamas.” (The edit remains intact today.) He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles.

To expand his reach, Iskandar also goes on editing rampages, or “speedruns.” Last August, he removed 22,000 characters from the article on Amnesty International that were critical of the organization, in one case wholesale deleting a 1,000-word long passage related to criticism of its stance on Israel. On the “History of Israel” article, Iskandar deleted a paragraph critical of the Iranian government; removed an account of 16th century Jewish immigration to Israel; excised a mention of the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem's alliance with Hitler; and made dozens of similar edits — all in a matter of minutes.

Far from a lone wolf, however, Iskandar is part of a group of editors that uses coordinated “swarm” tactics that, taken together, invert Wikipedia’s founding vision, turning the site's perceived neutrality and authority into an attack vector that can be hijacked to advance ideological aims at a mass scale.

In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period. Other members of the pro-Palestine group are equally prolific, with top contributors including CarmenEsparzaAmoux (8,353), Makeandtoss (8,074), Nableezy (6,414), Nishidani (5,879), Onceinawhile (4,760) and an admin called Zero0000 (2,561).

The 15,000 edits by Selfstudier and the 12,000 by Iskandar323 put those two users in the top 99.975% of editors by number of edits — solely for their PIA edits made in under three years. The other pro-Palestine group members’ PIA edits from this period place them among the top 99.9% of Wikipedia editors. All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles.

It’s not just the raw number of edits that matters. The same analysis shows that fully 90% of total edits by Selfstudier in that period were made to Palestine-Israel articles. Other members of the group clock in at 90% (sean.hoyland), 86% (CarmenEsparzaAmoux), 82% (Makeandross), 64% (Nishidani), and 43% (Onceinawhile). After October 7 the intensity increased, with Selfstudier peaking at 99% in October 2023, while others got to 97%, 98% and even 100% of their total monthly edits dedicated to PIA.

To evade detection, the group works in pairs or trios, an approach that veils them from detection. They also appear to rotate their groupings for the same reason. Likewise, one or more of the group’s editors can come to the aid of another in the case of pushback. In many instances, editing by the group is made to articles focused on historical issues, where a single editor might be patrolling for this kind of abuse, making it easy for two dedicated users to overwhelm or exhaust the lone editor.

A separate analysis shows the number of instances in which two members of the group edited the same article to be extraordinarily high. As of time of publication, Nableezy and Onceinawhile have co-edited 1,418 articles. Nableezy and Iskandar323 1,429 co-edited articles. Onceinawhile and Zero0000 have co-edited 2,119 articles. Zero000 and Nableezy have co-edited 1,754 articles. Onceinawhile and Iskandar323 have 1,594 co-edited. Huldra and Onceinawhile have co-edited articles 2,493 times. Nableezy and Huldra have co-edited 1,764 times.

[ Incidences of co-edited articles amongst top 30 members of this group. Cells in purple indicate instances of two editors co-editing more than 150 articles. ]

One of the articles targeted most intensively by the group is the one for Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem from the 1920s to the 1950s, a pivotal figure in Palestinian history. While Iskandar323 worked to remove negative content from the Al-Husseini article, it was two other members of the group — Zero0000 and Nishidani — who would have the greatest impact, together making over 1,000 edits to the article, often in an attempt to erase or downplay Al-Husseini’s well-documented collaboration with Hitler.

In one instance in April 2021, Zero0000 and Nishidani worked together to keep a photo of Al-Husseini touring a Nazi concentration camp out of the article. While a single editor, Shane (a newbie), advocated for its inclusion, a trio of veterans including Zero0000, Nishidani and Selfstudier fought back. After Selfstudier accused Shane of being a troll for arguing for the photo’s inclusion, Zero0000, days later, “objected” to its inclusion, citing issues of provenance. Nishidani stepped in to back up Zero0000, prompting a response by Shane. The following day, Zero0000 pushed back against Shane, who responded. The day after, Nishidani returned with his own pushback. The tag-team effort proved too much for Shane, who simply gave up, and the effort succeeded: the photo remains absent. To date, Nishidani’s contributions to the article on Al-Husseini comprise 56.4% of its content.

In another case, Nishidani worked with a member of the pro-Palestine group editors, Onceinawhile to produce an article called “Zionism, race and genetics.” (The article’s title was later changed to “Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism”.) The article attempts to tie Zionism’s roots to 19th century views on “race science” embraced by the Nazis, thereby drawing an implicit — and, in at least one instance in the article, explicit — parallel between Zionism and Nazism. Pro-Palestine group member Onceinawhile created the article in July of last year, accompanied by a note arguing, “Early Zionists were the primary supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it offered scientific ‘proof��� of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent.”Together, Onceinawhile and Nishidani’s contributions account for nearly 90% of the article’s content. Onceinawhile would continue to push this view in numerous other articles, including the article on “Zionism.”

In March, a Wikipedia user submitted a case to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) alleging “a systematic removal of instances documenting human rights crimes by Iranian officials on Wikipedia, accompanied by the addition of misleading information favoring the IRP (Islamic Republic Party) on the platform.” The case shows that a member of the pro-Palestine group called Mhhossein edited the article on the Mahsa Amini protests — the months-long anti-regime demonstrations that rocked Iran when a young woman died in custody after being arrested for improperly wearing her head scarf — to change key wording to falsely depict widespread support for the Iranian regime and whitewash violent calls from pro-government counter-demonstrators.

According to the allegations, Iskandar323 (who has co-edited with Mhhossein nearly 400 times) worked with a separate editor to delete “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Iranian] officials.” This included a claim about Iran’s post-revolution death commissions that executed thousands political prisoners; details showing executions were carried out by “high-ranking members of Iran’s current government”; mention of the Iranian government’s “unprecedented reign of terror” in the early 1980s; the sentencing of an Iranian official to life in prison in Sweden for his role in the executions; the targeting of an Iranian dissident group with “psychological warfare,” and dozens of others.

The charges are serious, and the evidence backing them up abundant. Nevertheless, seven months later the Arbcom case is still pending. The reason is systemic: in a lengthy request for arbitration on a separate PIA case, one of Wikipedia’s arbitrators noted that the final decision-making panel is staffed by 12 volunteers, only 10 of whom are active. “It is clear that AE [arbitration enforcement] has run out of steam to handle the morass of editor conduct issues in PIA,” the arbitrator wrote. “PIA is a Gordian knot; and AE has run short of knot detanglers.”

Electing more Arbcom members would require a massive overhaul of the site’s governing regulations, a task akin to the US government amending its constitution. And though Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has around $500 million in assets, because of the air-gap between Wikipedia and WMF and the volunteer ethos of Wikipedia’s mission not a penny can be used to hire people to oversee contentious topics.

So the group’s pro-Iran efforts go unchecked. One of its most prominent members, Nableezy (over 6,000 PIA edits since 2022), has put considerable effort into sanding the hard edges off of Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah. Nableezy — who took the extraordinary step of including a userbox on his Talk page that links to a text that reads “This user supports Hezbollah.” — has worked to rebuff claims that Hezbollah is a terror organization. In one instance, Nableezy pushed back against another user characterizing a Hezbollah attack on Israeli population centers as a terror attack, arguing “An attack on military targets is not terrorism.” Last year, Nableezy, who appears to be an American, argued in the Talk page for the “Hezbollah” article that, “The US military is designated as a terror group by Iran, should we include that as an endnote everywhere the US army is mentioned?”

But Nableezy’s main area of focus is Israel. To this end, Nableezy’s editing has included subtle, ideologically consistent moves like removing a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the “Israel” article (the image remains absent at time of publishing), pushing for the removal of the ancient history of Israel from the article, and altering a sentence on Zionism that described it as a call by its leaders for the “restoration of the Jews to their homeland” to a call for “the colonization of Palestine by European Jews.”

This exchange embodies the rhetorical approach taken by the group: the shifting of language, the torturing of settled definitions, and positioning fringe academic theory as mainstream — an approach developed by the radical left, in concert with global Islamist movements, in the wake of 9/11, when the attacks put Islamism on the moral back foot. In response, the leftist-Islamist alliance launched two decades of ideological assault on the US, and the West more generally. The same post-9/11 dynamic took place after October 7, when the savagery of the Hamas attack opened a vulnerability as the broader public would recognize it as a barbaric attack on civilians.

In response, the ideological push-back on Wikipedia ramped up. In February, an explicitly coordinated effort was launched when leaders on a group called Tech For Palestine (TFP) — launched in January by Paul Biggar, the Irish co-founder of software development platform CircleCI — opened a channel on their 8,000-strong Discord channel called “tfp-wikipedia-collaboration.” In the channel, two group leaders, Samira and Samer, coordinated with other members to mass edit a number of PIA articles. The effort included recruiting volunteers, processing them through formal orientation, troubleshooting issues, and holding remote office hours to problem solve and ideate. The channel’s welcome message posed a revealing question: “Why Wikipedia? It is a widely accessed resource, and its content influences public perception.”

At the heart of TFP Wikipedia Collaboration was a veteran editor called Ïvana, who was tapped as the resident expert on the site, and whose Discord username featured the red triangle affiliated with Hamas’ targeting.

With Ïvana’s guidance, as well as her hands-on editing of articles, the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration group coordinated both on Discord and Wikipedia, where they created editing staging grounds on Talk pages that included elements like “Work in Progress Table,” “Investigate and Decide,” and a volunteer job board with detailed responsibilities. Off-wiki, the group created planning documentation with agendas, meeting notes, goal setting, role allocation, skills and breakdowns. Their activities ranged from editing celebrity articles by adding pro-Palestine statements they made to creating new articles out of whole cloth, like a proposed article called “Palestine: The Solution.” The group focused extensively on the article for German discount supermarket Lidl, adding a section in the “Criticism” section about products from Israel being incorrectly labeled as Moroccan. They also put special emphasis on articles concerning sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, with Ïvana questioning the veracity of reports of rape from that day, while adding to other articles claims that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians. (In March, a senior UN official who investigated sexual violence on October 7 concluded that, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023.” The official wrote her investigation produced a “‘catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,’ including sexual violence.”)

In its most audacious case, TFP members developed a project to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British Members of Parliament to change their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict in advance of UK elections in July. The plan called for scraping data on visits by MPs to Israel and Israel-related donor information, to create a dedicated Wikipedia article using the data to (as the originator of the project put it) inform “voters to put pressure ahead of the next [parliamentary] elections.”

Within the TFP channel, there was always a background awareness that what they were doing was not in keeping with Wikipedia norms. Early in the channel’s existence, a user and veteran Wikipedia editor called shushugah wrote, “I’m a little confused what the goal is here. I’m an active Wikipedia editor, and for any Israel/Palestine topics you need a solid grasp of Wikipedia policy/culture, and have 500 edits/30 days of activity…no shortcuts.” Within minutes, another user, Heba, wrote “Let’s chat [hand wave emoji].” One of the channel’s power users, zei_squirrel, who runs an X account with 270,000 followers, noted “it’s important to keep this as decentralized and organic as possible to avoid it being used against us, but again this should all be familiar to those who know how wiki works.”

The anxiety was not unwarranted. In September, a researcher discovered the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel and published a number of posts on a blog called Wikipediaflood. (A magazine called Jewish Insider also stumbled across the group, but mostly failed to appreciate its full significance.) These events sent the group into a panic, with Ïvana erasing all her chats in the channel, and deleting the Talk pages and Sandboxes staging pages she’d created. The group locked down the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel in September. At minimum, the group made revisions to at least 112 articles on celebrities, American cities, pro-Palestine organizations, and figures and events related to the Gaza war.

There is little doubt that the kind of careful, intelligent Wikipedia coordination detailed above will continue. Wikipedia is simply too powerful a tool — and one too easy to manipulate — for actors like the pro-Palestine group and TFP activists to stay away from. But Wikipedia is coming to a crossroads. The ask-and-answer modality of generative AI will eat away at the value of the site’s privileged position within the Google information ecosystem. Groups less savvy than pro-Palestine will also learn to exploit the site, to much more public effect. As with so many of our once-cherished institutions, trust will be lost, and credibility will soon follow.

One of the hallmarks of an institution in crisis is that, far from preparing for the future, it is barely capable of managing the present. With Arbcom grinding to a halt and edit wars erupting in all corners — all while Wikimedia Foundation, fiddling to the baroque tunes of DEI, has turned its attention to funding progressive activism — it seems Wikipedia is facing exactly this challenge. In most cases, calling a crisis existential is overblown. While Wikipedia may not be there just yet, it’s clear that moment is not far off.

==

This is what online jihad looks like.

If you've donated to Wikipedia, stop. For anything even marginally political, Wikipedia has been successfully ideologically penetrated and compromised by coordinated activist attacks.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -- George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

[hamliet]

Oshi no Ko's Angel of Light: Kamiki Hikaru

So, I wrote a review of Oshi no Ko previously, just not on this blog. I talked there about the meaning of Hoshino Ai as a name (it's literally hoshi no eye, Ai spelled in katakana to reinforce that it's a loanword, meaning starry eye, and of course, eye/ai is a homonym for love) and how Oshi no Ko uses wordplay and puns to introduce its themes.

Naturally, I wanted to talk about the other parent, whose name is just as significant.

Kamiki Hikaru is literally "god of light/shining god." Well, okay, sort of. It's technically "kami of light," and kami doesn't translate super well into English. It's often referred to as a god in Shintoism, but it's not quite the western perception of a god. Spirit is another popular translation.

Of course, this references the supernatural themes of the story, as well as Hikaru's role. See, "angel of light" is what the Christian Bible calls Lucifer, the Christian devil. Pretty fitting for Hikaru's role in the story as the main villain.

But wait! There's more! Lucifer itself, as a name, refers to the planet Venus, known as the morning star. Which, of course, is the "star" we see in the story associated with Ai.

(Yes, the story is very much using distinctly Christian allusions alongside Shinto ones.)

Hikaru, like Lucifer, is known to, well, want everything for himself. That doesn't mean he wants all the worship of the world like Lucifer literally did according to mythology. No, instead it's far more insidious but no less disturbing: he sees himself as entitled to dictate how the world runs. He decides whose life is worth living, and makes others pay for mistakes of people they don't even know. He's playing God, in other words--exactly what Lucifer did to fall from heaven in Christian mythology (it's not actually super biblical hence why I'm using "mythology").

Lucifer is also called "Satan" obviously, which literally means "accuser" in Hebrew. That's kind of the perfect summary for what Hikaru sees himself as: he's visiting his hatred of an abuser he has every right to hate on everyone and everything that remotely reminds him of her.

The thing is, as said above, Hikaru does have the right to hate Airi, just like Aqua has the right to hate him. But following the path of revenge is Not The Way.

So, is Hikaru Satan?

No. He's a person.

The Path To Hikaru

Hikaru is not all that different from the other characters we know and love--Ai, Ruby, Kana, Akane, and especially Aqua. Fitting since they're all idols of sorts (yes, Akasaka is constantly using religious references to add social commentary to the idea of an "idol" as a false god/object of worship). They're also all actors.

Hikaru is what Aqua risks becoming. No, seriously. Hikaru was traumatized as a child via rape that led to the creation of a life.

As a result he's pretty anti-life as a whole, and especially anti-woman. He's constantly seeking revenge on women, hence his murder-happy spree. The problem is that he's not seeing these women as individuals: he sees everyone and everything as a representation of Airi, the person who assaulted him.

Also, society as a whole's attitude towards male victims of sexual assault, especially male victims of attractive women, means that Hikaru would not be seen as a victim. One of OnK's major themes is how messed up society is and how it dehumanizes people via fitting them into roles, and this is a perfect example of the harm that can come from it. Hikaru would be seen as a boy, and all boys clearly want sex. A famous actress slept with him? Lucky him! Even though this never came out publicly, Hikaru absolutely knew this was the case and it certainly plays a role in his grudge against the world.

Even though Airi is dead (probably as a result of him provoking her husband by revealing that he wasn't the father), he still isn't satisfied. No, Airi is still everywhere. Killing the perpetrator, making them pay, did not erase his trauma.

If Aqua kills Hikaru, his trauma will likewise not be erased. Not his trauma as Gorou, not his trauma as Aqua. Hikaru's death will fix absolutely nothing in his life besides stopping more murders, but there are ways to do that that, y'know, don't involve killing. If Aqua kills Hikaru, he will lose the best part of Gorou (valuing life) and the best part of Aqua (the future Ai wanted for him, a future with Kana and Ruby).

Aqua, You are Your Father

Aqua, you are your father. It's almost like the entire series has been trying to give you this message and you keep ignoring it. (By the way, because I know I'm going to get asks about this, I am NOT saying Aqua and Hikaru are moral equivalents. Not at all. I'm just saying that Aqua is walking a path that will end with him being just like Hikaru if he doesn't get shoved off said path.)

From being the violent stalker who attacks someone who has never felt loved in his first acting job after Ai's death to scenes like this:

The story is asking Aqua to take a good long look at himself, and he's trying desperately to avoid doing this. Why? Because he's also playing God, same as his father, same as Satan in Christianity. He thinks he is responsible for everything; a natural, childish attitude that people grow out of as they age.

Of course, Aqua is not nearly as toxic in this as Hikaru--he's not attacking innocent people--but the root of this is still a belief that he somehow controls what happens, when he doesn't. He doesn't at all.

Aqua, too, is just a person.

But Aqua struggles to understand what it means to be a person, to be Hoshino Aquamarine.

He struggles to see other people as people, too. This ranges from sabotaging Ruby's auditions to how he treats Akane to his protecting Kana without considering what she wants. It's been brought up multiple times in the story so far:

Aqua also fundamentally does not see Ai as a human being, either. Unlike Ruby, who calls Ai "Mama," Aqua only ever calls her "Ai," her persona. Aqua and Ai are foils to Kana and her own mother, in that Kana's mom lived through Kana only to abandon her, and Aqua is living through his mom... but ignoring what she would actually want.

(Ruby isn't flawless or perfectly healthy, and the story certainly doesn't frame them as good twin bad twin, but Ruby's overall worldview is absolutely more in line with what the story wants to endorse.) That's why we have lines like this, where Ruby reveals that she has a healthier view of their mother than Aqua does. She knows Ai was flawed.

This is extra notable because he has 0 problems calling Hikaru his father. It's almost like Aqua is drowning in self-hatred, in feeling unloved, in the idea that he brings bad luck just by existing.

He'll call out Ruby for her negative traits, but Aqua thinks he deserves them. Aqua dehumanizes himself, the same way he dehumanizes Ai, and he has to see both his mother and himself people before he can step off this path.

Essentially, what he tells Ruby here is exactly what he needs to realize, but he has not done so.

The root of Aqua's God complex is that he cannot move past his trauma. It's actually psychologically realistic that a child who experienced such an event would be stuck in a childish mindset wherein they feel guilt for not being able to save their mother.

But it's not just Ai that Aqua couldn't save. It's Sarina, too. She is the one who introduced him to Ai, after all. He didn't move on from her death in his past life, either, which can probably be traced back to his own tragic birth circumstances--the idea that he only brings death, because his mother died giving birth to him. Gorou even states that he became a doctor to help people like his mother, but the point is also that he wanted to bring life, not death.

Except, he isn't God. Neither Gorou nor Aqua are. He can't save Sarina, and that isn't his fault. But Sarina ends up okay as Ruby, not through his own intervention. Aqua couldn't save Ai, but that's not his fault.

The point I'm making here is that Aqua needs to heal the hurting child within him. The story has also brought up the theme of children suffering at the hands of the entertainment industry numerous times:

His path towards healing would involve taking a long look not just at the hurting child in himself, but the hurting child in Hikaru, too. Which is not the same as excusing. After all, we already saw what happened with Aqua thought his dad was dead: despite the supposed justice and his proclamations about being free, he was still every inch the trapped, terrified, traumatized child afraid to live. Killing Hikaru won't be any different.

Becoming Human

So, is there hope for Aqua?

Yeah. A ton of it.

Despite the tragedy of Ai's story, every other arc has ended optimistically. The story's optimism, also, is fundamentally rooted in humanity. Every character, even the ones who seem like exploitative jerks like the producers who edited Akane to look bad and the self-centered mangakas, end up having their thoughts and motives explored, and we see where they are coming from. Not only that, but they have the best of intentions.

Frankly, this is true to life as well. Precious few people see themselves as the villain. Almost everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. It's very human.

The end of the reality dating show arc is kind of what I expect in the end here. There, all contestants came together and pooled their unique individual talents to exonerate Akane. I would expect Ruby, Miyako, Kana, and Akane (who herself has finally realized that she can step into her own personhood instead of trying to be Ai/whatever Aqua needs and vowed to stop him) to come together to save Aqua from himself.

Aqua is incredibly loved, and he doesn't seem to understand this. Love is what enabled Ai to die smiling. A lack of love, feeling undeserving of love, is what torments Sarina/Ruby, Aqua, Kana, and more. The bastardization of love is what torments Hikaru.

Love allows someone to be themselves, truly, to individuate. This is what Aqua needs to learn:

He also doesn't need to earn the love of those around him, nor the love of Ai. She loved him just because he was her son, and all she wanted was for him to be happy and to live.

Imo, it's pretty unlikely Akasaka plans to end the series with Aqua becoming Hikaru 2.0. My guess is that Hikaru will be stopped because of Aqua, and he'll even likely die, but not at Aqua's hand. I suspect Akane, Ruby, and especially Kana (the one person Aqua has consistently placed above Ai) will help save Aqua from himself.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

I’m actually curious about your thoughts on Cross. I haven’t seen anyone ask about this.

Just like your general opinion or what you like about him.

I know you’re the Killer blog. But still interested in hearing your thoughts of other characters for a change.

Gotta be honest, chief, I mostly just consume media from my cross loving moots and am content with it that way, although I have watched Underverse and X-Tale, its been a long while since I did and I also don’t think I’ve fully read the comics? Not really sure where to start with it.

I understand that XGaster had the Overwrite and was intentionally started out only wanting to make his creations (kids?) XChara and XFrisk happy—but his perfectionism and insecurity (?) got the best of him when he was introduced to the Multiverse and he started becoming obsessed with the idea of a perfect story i think.

I remember he harmed and abused XChara and XFrisk a lot, just about any attempt the two did to try and fight back and stop him always failed and ended badly for them. And he used his abilities to turn the others either against them, kill them, or even make them all forget what happened before so the two humans only had eachother.

The one timeline that stuck out to me was the one where Cross and XPapyrus were seemingly adopted by XGaster, and Xalphys was their sister—and they were childhood friends with the royal children xfrisk and xasriel. I remember that Cross and XPapyrus joined the Royal Guard to protect XFrisk from the humans that kept attacking them on the surface.

I remember Cross i think refused to do what XFrisk wanted him to do, and I think he fought back against his friends because he was attempting to take control of the Overwrite? I’m not sure on this one. I know he took the human’s soul, and that was how he winded up in the Void with XChara which led to the events of Underverse when he was trying to bring back his AU.

If i remember correctly he also got his heart locket and nickname of Cross from XFrisk, perhaps. He doesn’t like being called Sans as if it’s a dog breed, i remember that. I’ve seen some moots talk about how he’s kinda prissy(?), and there’s a lot of dog coded Cross floating around. I know he’s friends with Epic.

Ah, my first impression of Cross when it comes to fandom stuff actually had a whole lot to with ao3 portraying it as if cross was sexually abused by XGaster and XGaster was transphobic and also lots and lots of Kross which isn’t really my thing in the way it’s typically portrayed by the fandom.

I think his AU is a very cool concept—it’s similar to how I like to envision Something New, at least in terms of XGaster/XChara/XFrisk vs the Killer/KC/Player stuff with all the constant changing timelines—but I don’t feel I know enough exactly about Cross to give a full educated opinion on his character itself.

This is an invitation to send me links to comics/asks or just leave paragraphs about Cross in my inbox or reblogs of this post if yall want btw 🙏.

{ @twinribbonz }

[beyondbinaries]

I'm posting this a bit early in case the 12th isn't a good mental health day. And I'm sorry if the random tag is annoying or if this post takes up too much space on dash.

On Oct 12 2016, I made a coincedental decision that has changed my life as a whole. A choice that has led me to so much pain but also so many happy memories and irreplcable friends. I made my pfp on Quotev a Genis Sage picture and somehow ended up involved in a Symphonia rp group 💕.

I had loved Genis as a character since I was a child watching my sister play at my Nanny's (my cousin would always delete her save before we even reached triet) and when we got a copy of the game when I was around 11/12 I had him on my team for the most part. It was my fascination with half elves and the mysterious Kharlan War Era that led to the creation of Mana, Oracle, Lee, 3rd, and Sunny. But those were all just childish writing in a notebook I hid from the world. Im sure lil me would die on the spot to hear that they are charas so many people know. I always knew that I loved to write but it was for charas like Sherlotta who were niche and not from a series as big as Tales so I never wrote Genis. Well until that day, I was too awkward to tell them I wasnt an rp blog and fully committed to it.

And look where that has led me. Here to you all. This journey may have been long and filled with things I'd never wish on anyone but I'm happy. So many of you have encouraged me and been there for me. I love and appreciate you all. Under the cut imma try to have things for a lot of you all word wise as gratitude. But thank you all so much, there are no amount of words or tangible sentences to express how much you all mean to me. And a happy birthday to my Genis interp who I wish i still wrote

@pyonpyonpyon ; Yuki youve been around since I started on here and damn time sure does fly. Thank you for always sticking around and plotting some of the most insane relations w/ me (Moe and Yuuri family) and dealing with tye silly kyubey meming I did back in 2017 (its been that long)

@mermaus ; sobs you know how much i lov and appreciate you but I will reiterate here... Lena you have stood by me for so much, have made my day so many times, etc. You are one of the most talented people on this website and in general? You are funny, kind, brave, strong, amazing. Im forever thankful to have met you and to be in your life. I am so eagerly awaiting the day we can meet and I can hug you irl.

@strebcr ; Pineapple !!! I am so so glad to have reconected with you! You are truly an amazing person and i am forever blessed to be considered your friend.

@in-sum ; Puyo !! Sobs I am so glad we were able to reconnect again, you are an amazing friend and you are always there for me. Youve stood in my corner when I was going through some of my worst times and I am forever grateful. You are talented and kindhearted and you stand up for what you believe is right.

@malusrecord / @constellationcrowned ; Kala!!!!!! It goes without saying how amazing of a writer and person you are. You bring so much life to your characters and it truly shows. I always find myself reading and rereading your posts when I am active on dash. You deserve all the good things in the world. And thank you so much for being my fren, I will always enjoy our dms and learning more about series i never thought I'd enjoy.

@ervaurem ; Shai!! I appreciate ypu so heckin much, you are such a kind and thoughtful person. I adore your presence on my dash and i adore the bonds between our characters. You've been there for me for such a long time now and I cant ever thank you enough..

@ofstarsandskies , @mathcs , @altosk , @cataclysmus , @talesofourworlds , and @broadswordandpistol ; a big catch all for all the wonderful people I met during festitales, despite how rough i am forever thankful for the oppurtunity I was given to force others into my point and click dm style of adventure. I have so much I cam say to each n every one of you 🥺

@solivcgant ; Mochi Mochi!! I am so sorry for the crimes Mana has committed against food and Eiji's mental health (eggbear eggs painge). I enjoy your presence and dog memes so much. You are so cool amd amazing aaa.

@twinklesofhope ; Ringo!! You are so talented and seeing you around makes me so happy.

@canidgrit / @nickitsden ; Fox!!! Hi we don't write together often but you are such a joy to see on my dash.

@biisutoarm ; Red!!! Hewwo hewwo, i love your Elfman so much he is such a treat and seeing him on dash always brightens my day. You are such a talented writer !

@osovereign ; Rinni! Hi hello, you are such an amazing and wonderful person. I have a lot of fun dming and writing with you. Its so nice to write with you again (I found a draft from like Jan 2017 on an old blog for you and i had to stop and stare at it lol--). I appreciate you so much and I hope to keep expanding Kratos' collection of poor Mana art.

@ednaeflowers ; Jenny!! Hi!! I know we aren't all that close or anything but you are such a delight to see on my dash. The Eizen and Edna thread we have is near and dear to my heart. I also really appreciate Mana and Edna's little friendship thing. I just really love your Edna interp 🥺, you are so talented and I appreciate you.

And to anyone else who read this far down, I love and appreciate you so much. Even if we don't speak or really write together. I genuinely believe each and every person I follow are talented individuals.

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 98: Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender

When a human learns a new word, we're learning to attach that word to a set of concepts in the real world. When a computer "learns" a new word, it is creating some associations between that word and other words it has seen before, which can sometimes give it the appearance of understanding, but it doesn't have that real-world grounding, which can sometimes lead to spectacular failures: hilariously implausible from a human perspective, just as plausible from the computer's.

In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about how computers process language with Dr. Emily M. Bender, who is a linguistics professor at the University of Washington, USA, and cohost of the podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000. We talk about Emily's work trying to formulate a list of rules that a computer can use to generate grammatical sentences in a language, the differences between that and training a computer to generate sentences using the statistical likelihood of what comes next based on all the other sentences, and the further differences between both those things and how humans map language onto the real world. We also talk about paying attention to communities not just data, the labour practices behind large language models, and how Emily's persistent questions led to the creation of the Bender Rule (always state the language you're working on, even if it's English).

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements: The 2024 Lingthusiasm Listener Survey is here! It’s a mix of questions about who you are as our listener, as well as some fun linguistics experiments for you to participate in. If you have taken the survey in previous years, there are new questions, so you can participate again this year.

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about three places where we can learn things about linguistics!! We talk about two linguistically interesting museums that Gretchen recently visited: the Estonian National Museum, as well as Mundolingua, a general linguistics museum in Paris. We also talk about Lauren's dream linguistics travel destination: Martha's Vineyard.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Also, Patreon now has gift memberships! If you'd like to get a gift subscription to Lingthusiasm bonus episodes for someone you know, or if you want to suggest them as a gift for yourself, here's how to gift a membership.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Emily Bender

Emily Bender on Bluesky and Twitter

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: The Newsletter

The AI Con by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

'Data Sovereignty and the Kaitiakitanga License' on Te Hiku

wordfreq by Robyn Speer on GitHub

Lingthusiasm Episode ‘Making machines learn language - Interview with Janelle Shane’

Bonus with Janelle Shane: we do a dramatic reading of the funniest auto-generated Lingthusiasm episodes

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[conarcoin]

Actually, no, I wanted to make one more post on this topic that I feel is important and that is that I don't think a lot of the current MCYT fandom understands the history and context behind the concept of "CC boundaries", and I feel like it's important to clarify this.

Prior to 2019, "CC boundaries" weren't really a thing in MCYT fandom spaces as far as I've been able to find. And it wasn't because people didn't care about CCs' wishes, but rather because fandom tended to be contained to fandom spaces and was self-regulated. CCs only really tended to see shipping content and the like when they intentionally seeked it out.

As far as I'm aware, the concept of "CC boundaries" came into MCYT fandom spaces in 2019 following CallMeCarson's serious stream and the creation of the Tumblr blog smp-boundaries. I'll get to smp-boundaries later, but I first want to give some more context on the serious stream and the SMPLive fandom in 2019 in general.

The serious stream mainly focused on stan Twitter culture, which is what most of the early "CC boundaries" applied to, but it also singled out a fanwork made by a young creator, a popular fanfiction called SMPRonpa. The issue with SMPRonpa however, was that Carson was the only CC who ever seemed to actually take an issue with it.

In the stream he talked on behalf of all of his friends, but really, these friends had been reading, joking about and praising the fic on Twitter, or seemed disinterested in it at all when it was mentioned to others. Even in hindsight up to just last year creators who were in it would say on stream that they had no real issue with it or thought it was cool.

The serious stream led directly to the creation of smp-boundaries, the first real documentation of "CC boundaries". This blog is still cited as the primary resource for CC boundaries to this day... Despite the fact that it hasn't been updated in over a year, and many of the lists contain outdated information, uncited claims, out of context clips and dead links.

The primary source people point to for "CC boundaries" is a relic that hasn't been touched in over a year, and we now have a fandom where separating the person from who they play in Minecraft is the norm. This wasn't the norm in 2019.

Additionally in 2019, a creator, ZombieCleo, was harrassed off of Tumblr for saying she couldn't control shipping and telling people to just block fancontent they don't like.

Many of the users who chased Cleo off are the same users you'll see on Twitter today pushing boundaries. Many of them are also ex-SMPblr users.

So uh, yeah. This is the context behind "CC boundaries" as a concept and is why you so often see people harassing others over "boundaries" that they straight up made up on a CC's behalf. Because that's where the concept originated.

[storm-angel989]

Greetings, if I may ask, may I have a one-shot where the reader, aka his daughter(teen), comes out to valentino as aroace. Mabye she is scared he will not like her because he is known for the exact opposite if that makes sense.

If you wish to not write this, please make me aware

-L.B Creations

Hi friend,

Thank you for working with me on this! I always appreciate when a not anonymous poster asks for something I have little personal experience with. It allows me to touch base with them personally in addition to my own research so that I can better understand a perspective. I do hope I've written this story accurately, and as always- feedback is appreciated!

<3 Mandy

Aroace. 

I stared at my computer, chewing up every tidbit of information I could find. Relief washed over me. Finally, a word for it. A word that describes me.  And the more I read, the more I saw myself. For the longest time, I wondered if something was wrong with me. Why all my friends were interested in relationships, in sex and in kissing- dating and going to dances,  I had no desire to do any of that. Actually, if I was being honest with myself, the idea of sex kind of repulsed me. 

Sure I liked hugs. And I liked the idea of being held.  I had lots of friends- friends I would text every day. I could appreciate peoples looks- pretty eyes, beautiful hair, a nice set of muscles. But that didn’t mean I wanted to sleep with them. Or do anything beyond enjoying and appreciating their presence in my life. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the Spring Fling?” My father asked over breakfast yesterday morning. “I can get you a date, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Shame rushed over me and I looked down, away from the gaze of the overlord of lust and depravity. My father was known for sleeping with anything and everything- for a price. In my own household, it was known but not spoken that he was in a relationship with my Uncle Vox and Aunt Velvette. Polysexual, the internet called it. Not that a label made a difference for him. Actually, I wasn’t sure there was an accurate label for what my father did. 

That conversation was the most recent of many, many conversations between my father and I. He would encourage me to date, brought me hotel rooms I never used, and even sent Aunt Velvette to talk to me about safe sex. Although he never said it, all of his insistence left me feeling like something was wrong with me. 

It was that feeling that led me here, to the internet, desperately trying to figure out if I was broken. But according to the blogs and information I found, I wasn’t broken. Not in the slightest. I was aroace. With a sigh, I pushed myself away from the computer, my stomach in knots. I had an answer to why I felt the way I did. I had a word for it. Now I needed to tell my father. Hopefully, it would go well and he would understand.

And not kick me out. Or tell me I was broken. Or any of the thousand things that he could say. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more my anxiety grew. The overlord of sex- having an aroace daughter? Would he even accept it? Would he still love me? I swallowed back the overwhelming fear and walked over to the elevator. Two o’clock. Dad would be in his office, filing paperwork. 

“Ah! Bebita princessa,” Valentino announced as I walked into his office. “Come, come mi amore. Sit, I have several prospects for you to…”

“Daddy? Can we talk?” I asked as I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “It’s kind of important.”

“Of course princessa, what’s on your mind?” Valentino leaned back in his chair. “I’m all yours, mi amore.” 

I took a deep breath. “Dad, I’ve felt like this for a while and I’m…I know you’ve been trying to set me up on dates and I don’t mean to be rude, I just…please just promise you’ll always love me.” I could feel my lower lip start to quiver and tears burned at the corner of my eye. 

Alarm spread across his features. In a flash, he knelt in front of me. I felt the warmth of his hand as he cupped my chin. 

“Bebita, I will always love you. What is it? Did someone hurt you?” He demanded. “Princessa, talk to Daddy.”

I felt a hiccup in my chest, a painful burn and I took a deep breath. Now or never. 

“Daddy, I think I’m aroace. I, I don’t like anyone romantically, I just…” My words trailed off into a dissolve of tears. 

He wrapped his arms around me and I leaned into his shoulder and cried. 

“Settle yourself, ninita,” he said softly. “Shussh. Daddy loves you. Daddy isn’t mad. I would never be.”

“Please don’t force me to try it, the internet said…” I sobbed into his shoulder. “Daddy, I…”

“I would never, mi amore,” he reassured gently. “If aroace is what you identify as, then I won’t push to set you up on dates. I would have never done so if that’s how you feel. Hey, bebita, look at me.”

I raised my head up from his shoulder and rubbed my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. I tried to catch my breath, but dissolved again into a sobbing mess of tears. He sighed and took me into his arms again. 

“Reader. Reader. It’s okay, I’m not upset with you- you are who you are, and I love you for that,” he said as he rubbed my back. “I would never not.”

“How is it gonna look, the overlord of lust’s daughter doesn’t want anything to do with sex?” I choked out. 

I felt him chuckle, a low rumble in his chest. 

“Who gives a fuck what the rest of the world thinks? You’re my daughter. You’re all that matters,” he said as he ran a hand down my hair. “Come on now, deep breath. I love you very much. And I always will.”

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS THE "SUN GODDESS" PARTICLE??

Blog#353

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

Welcome back,

Over the years, scientists have managed to unveil the existence of quite a few intriguing particles, pushing the entire field of physics forward with each discovery. There's the "God Particle" for instance, aka the Higgs Boson that grants all other particles their masses. There's also the so-called "Oh My God!" particle, an unimaginably energetic cosmic ray.

named the "sun goddess" particle  —  and is fittingly extraordinary.

This particle has an energy level one million times greater than what can be generated in even humanity’s most powerful particle accelerators; it appears to have fallen to Earth in a shower of other, less energetic particles. Like the "Oh My God!" particle, these bits come from faraway regions of space and are known as cosmic rays. The particle has been dubbed "Amaterasu" after Amaterasu Ōmikami, the goddess of the sun and the universe in Japanese mythology, whose name means "shining in heaven."

And just as its mythological namesake is shrouded in mystery, so too is the Amaterasu particle.

Its discoverers, including Osaka Metropolitan University researcher Toshihiro Fujii, don’t know where the particle came from or indeed what it is. They also still aren't sure what kind of violent and powerful process could have given rise to something as energetic as Amaterasu.

"This is the most energetic charged particle ever detected by the Telescope Array experiment," Fujii told Space.com.

The hope is that, just as Amaterasu is credited with the creation of Japan according to the Shinto tradition, the Amaterasu particle can help create an entirely new branch of high-energy astrophysics.

High-energy cosmic rays are extremely rare to begin with, but Fujii said the Amaterasu particle has an energy level not seen in a staggering 30 years of cosmic ray detections.

In fact, when the researchers spotted Amaterasu with the Telescope Array experiment — involving 507 detectors spread across 270 square miles (699 square kilometers) of the high desert of Millard County, Utah —they initially thought the detection must be some kind of mistake.

"I thought it would be my mistake or bug, and then after checking the details of the event, I was excited to find it was not an error," Fujii said.

First spotted by the Telescope Array experiment on May 27, 2021, the Amaterasu particle exhibits an energy of 224 exa-electron volts (EeV). For contest, one EeV is equivalent to 10¹⁸ electron volts. This puts Amaterasu on a similar energy level to the most energetic cosmic ray ever discovered — yes, that's the "Oh My God!" particle, which was detected in Oct. 1991 by the Fly’s Eye camera in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The latter had an energy of 320 EeV.

"The Amaterasu particle should be an important messenger from the universe about extremely energetic phenomena, but we need to disentangle the origin of this mysterious particle," Fujii explained.

There isn’t an astrophysical object, or any cosmic event for that matter, in the direction from which the sun goddess particle appears to have come from. That's why scientists are pretty unclear on what led to its creation.

But, while the origins of the Amaterasu particle may be currently unknown, Fujii does have some avenues of investigation to follow up on. Importantly, some of these ideas could extend beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, which is the best outline we have of the universe’s particle zoo and how each of those particles interact with one another.

Originally published on www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, December 2nd, 2023)

"HOW OLD IS OUR SOLAR SYSTEM??"

[sleepingdeath-light]

claude faustus + corrupting an angel s/o hcs ; 18+

requested by ; imakequestionablelifedecisions (19/08/23)

fandom(s) ; black butler

fandom masterlist(s) ; hub | specific

character(s) ; claude faustus

outline ; “Can I have Claude Faustus x fem!angel reader who he slowly corrupts them overtime?

If you could also add overstimulate to it that would be great! ^^ luv your stuff!��

warning(s) ; sexually explicit content, corruption kink, overstimulation, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex, referenced anal sex, some religious references (reader is an angel), slight pet name kink, sadism and masochism, bondage, pain play, sensation play, loss of virginity, implied masturbation (fem), mild blood kink, biting, dumbification, suspension, thigh riding, humiliation, degradation, praise, implied threesome (hannah is encouraged to use the reader’s body in one section), exhibitionism & voyeurism

note ; this got a lot longer than i intended at over 1.8k words, oops! hopefully i managed to keep claude in character here, but i haven’t seen season two in a good long while haha

minors and ageless blogs will be blocked

claude’s obsession with you had begun long before he fell — back when his wings were white and he existed as a welcome equal amongst the heavenly choir — and had started off as completely innocent, with you always seeming to catch his eye when you’d fly past him on your daily rounds, as free as the birds that had been freshly formed and as graceful as the fluttering insects with wings of stained glass (they weren’t permitted to name them, as such duties were to be given to the lord’s newest, ‘perfect’, creation, but he knew that they were his favourites)

you were a passing fascination for him, so pure and innocent and devoid of any sinful urges that he couldn’t help but let his mind wander (wander to things that would have him shunned and banished should anyone else glimpse into his darkest fantasies) — but those thoughts were as far as it went for a long, long time

thousands of years, in fact, until the two of you crossed paths when he was in a contract with an obsessive teenager — when he was claude faustus and you were helping out at a convent one town over from the trancy estate (embodying the visage of a nun to hide your heavenly origins just as he took on the form of a butler in order to mask his demonic nature)

that was when those thoughts of sin and lust fully transformed into an overwhelming need to covet and corrupt you — to morph your innocent, virginal, angelic mind and desires to his own design and to use you until you were too far gone to ever see heaven again

he wanted — no, needed — to ruin you, and somehow you started to let him (whether you truly knew what you were inviting into your world or not he couldn’t say, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth)

claude started off slowly, with simple suggestions said in passing — things that he could easily pass off as common topics of conversation and genuine curiosity (it had been a long time since he’d seen an angel, after all, so such curiosity would have been understandable)

asking you about your attachment to humanity led to questions about lovers which then, naturally (or so he claimed), morphed into a conversation about physical intimacy and how different the expectations are between mortals and beings like you — how humans, in their supposed perfection, are permitted to have sex but angels, imperfect in form but granted a place in heaven, were forbidden from it

conversations about hobbies (knitting and gardening, mainly, as that is what he’d been doing at the time) turned towards how each of you relief stress and then, of course, masturbation — how it doesn’t even have to be born of sin and how he’d known many masters (and those around them) to use it simply as a method to calm down and relax after a long day

you’d innocently asked how he’d changed upon falling, having never seen a demon in all your years of living, and he’d used it as a perfect segue to compare each of your anatomy — letting his mask slip and showing you his true form (all spindly legs and piercing eyes) whilst encouraging you to stretch your wings widely, combining touches he knew were too intimate to be innocent but excusing them with a facade of ignorance and an appeasement of your own curiosity

pushing your boundaries, testing your limits, breaking down your sense of normalcy and propriety bit by bit until these perverse encounters and explicit conversations became mundane and routine — until you had enough seeds of doubt sowed in your mind that you started to seek him out of your own volition and privately consider everything his sinful lips had suggested

and he was there for it all, listening just out of sight with his lips curled upwards into a disgusting smirk and his golden eyes flickering with satisfaction as you explored your body for the first time — toying with your mortal vessel with such genuine curiosity and innocence that it took all he had not to go in and take you himself

that could wait; he needed you to come to him first

and before long you did actually end up seeking him out, shame rolling off of you in waves as you averted your gaze and asked for his help — whispering so quietly that no human would be able to recognise your voice as you meekly recalled each of the acts claude had mentioned to you, curious and innocent and perfectly corruptable as you practically fell into his arms

exactly as he’d hoped — but still he maintained his ‘perfect butler’ persona and graciously accepted your plea, instructing you to meet him somewhere private away from the estate (away from the other demons he worked alongside) before turning on his heel and going back to tend to his majesty

leaving you flustered and floundering as he let his mind wander to everything he intended to do to you — to everything you were going to let him do to you

how you had unknowingly given this arachnid sinner the perfect outlet to act out his darkest fantasies, practically offering your soul to him on a platter as you timidly asked (no, begged) for him to take you — but, of course, as an angel your words were far less blunt and crude than his

he’s gentle enough with you that first time — and the next few encounters after that — focusing on sensations and helping you adjust to the feelings that come with such intimacy whilst you sit on his lap with your back against his chest: massaging and preening your wings, caressing your sides and thighs over (and later under) your clothing, trailing his lips along the arch of your throat to the hem of your neckline (and then kissing along your palms and inner wrists), letting you explore the feeling of his gloves and then bare skin on your naked body, etc.

he’s unusually considerate, offering you praise and encouragement as you fluster and moan and buck into his hand as he toys with your pussy through your skirts — calling you a ‘good girl’ and his ‘pretty little butterfly’ and encouraging you to ‘be as loud as you like’, to let him ‘take care of you’ and other such phrases that have you relaxing against his body as he pleasures you

even teaching you how to masturbate so that you’re able to pleasure yourself whenever he asks — giving him a front row seat to your total acceptance of lust as your innocence fades away more and more each night you spend in his arms

but that was only the beginning as he helped you adjust to each basic sex act — holding your hand and massaging your waist when he lowered himself to his stomach and buried his face between your thighs (making you arch and scream and sob with that talented tongue of his until his face was soaked in your juices), going as slow as possible and using plenty of foreplay to ensure you had the best chance of adjusting quickly as he pushed his cock into your tight fluttering cunt, stimulating your ass whilst he fucked you until you were prepared enough to take him there too, etc.

determined and not quite gentle, but not as rough as usual as he guided you — getting you addicted to his touch and to pleasure so that you’d be more receptive of the ‘extreme’ and extreme things he enjoys when he starts to incorporate them

things like fingering your pussy and sucking on your clit until you’re seeing stars whilst he bites bloody deep marks across your chest and stomach — not stopping until you’re trembling, drooling, dumb and covered in cum and blood and tears and spit (too overstimulated to do much else other than twitch and cry and gasp whilst he used your spent hole to do whatever he wants)

things like using his durable webs to suspend you high in the air — your arms bound together at the wrists and your legs forced to spread as far as they can go, leaving you completely at his mercy as he fucked each of your holes as many times as he pleases (not stopping until you were completely stuffed with his seed and the bruises on your hips and thighs were just starting to blossom)

things like blindfolding you and having you kneel in the centre of a room with your wrists bound behind your back — stalking you like a predator to its pray as he makes you beg for him (using names like ‘master’ or ‘daddy’ depending on his mood) and only giving in when you’re in tears as you beg for him to fuck you dumb

things like bending you over his knee and pulling your undergarments down to your thighs as he spanks you over and over again — alternating between fingering your pussy and using all sorts of paddles, swatches, whips and even his own hands to swat your ass (making you count and thank him after each one)

things like mixing pleasure and pain so often that you start to conflate the two, whimpering and moaning every time he hurts you and seeking out pain when you ride him (be that his face or his dick) — giving him every excuse to act out his every sadistic urge as you became precisely what he wanted you to be

things like making you work for your pleasure when before he gave it freely — having you strip nude and ride his thigh (soaking through his uniform as you go, not that he cares enough about this contract to complain), begging for his attention whilst he degrades you and makes it clear to anyone in ear shot precisely how much of a ‘needy’, ‘sinful’, ‘pathetic ’ little ‘slut’ you are and how shameful it is for an angel to be begging a demon to fuck her

(and if he’s feeling cruel enough, he might just invite hannah in to the bedroom to pleasure you at his instruction — showing her just how pretty your pussy is and encouraging her to use you whilst you whimper and moan and lean into her touch, as obedient as ever whilst you’re used like a toy and spoken about like you’re not even there)

but only when he starts to see those patches of black in amongst the dove-white feathers of your wings is he satisfied and content enough to drop you completely — after all, what’s the fun in corrupting something that’s already ruined?

you were his toy, one that he played with for as long as he needed to and not a moment longer — you were corrupt now; he had nothing left to do other than to leave you wanting, that same stoic expression on his face as he returned to fulfil the final part of his contract with ‘alois trancy’

he is a demon after all, and demons don’t do commitment

… maybe the triplets will take care of you in his absence — if you’re willing to put up with their overt pervertedness, that is

[dailycharacteroption]

Roleplaying Races 16: Rougarou

(art by koutanagamori on DeviantArt)

Well, it’s finally time. Time to do one last week special on the 1st edition ancestries. After this, we’ll have finally covered them all. The end an era on the blog…

…all of which is to say that I’ll probably be doubling up on the Starfinder 1E counterpart to this special for a bit before doing Pathfinder 2E ancestries, probably at a somewhat slower pace, or not. Depends on how I feel.

But we’re not done yet, so let’s talk about these last few entries, starting with the Rougarou!

So, the Rougarou. Humanoid wolves, able to shapeshift into a mundane wolf form, get a bit testy when compared to lycanthropes…

…and yeah, that’s about where the lore dries up with them, as they are yet another case of an ancestry that was introduced in a later bestiary but wasn’t lucky enough to get their lore expanded on later on.

They do, however, have a folkloric origin in the real world, however, being associated with French folklore and the French diaspora in the USA. The name Rougarou is an alternate pronunciation/spelling of loup garou… which is essentially the French word for werewolf. Go figure.

But the Rougarou does branch out a little, being used somewhat as a boogeyman to keep young Catholic cajuns in line and following the practice of Lent, as well as a variant where they drink blood or transfer their curse by bite, the original becoming a normal human while the bit-ee becomes a monster.

And what does that have anything to do with the Pathfinder version? Very little indeed, but it is interesting, and elements of it do exist here and there, such as them being native to wetlands in Arcadia, a reference to their Louisiana origins.

Additionally, they also have elements of the Werewolf of Livonia, which was a case in the 1600’s where a man named Thiess claimed under oath that he transformed into a wolf three nights a year, where he and other werewolves would venture into Hell itself and do battle with the Devil and his servants. This is reflected in the rougarou’s tendency as monster hunters, particularly of evil lycanthropes.

No information about Rougarou origins is given, though I’d imagine it might be similar to catfolk and ratfolk being divine creations made to protect and guard young world in it’s early days. But that’s just speculation on my part.

Unsurprisingly, Rougarou resemble humanoid bipedal wolves, though unlike werewolves, they are naturally in this state and do not feature any elements of a true ancestry being twisted into lycanthropic form. Naturally, their wolf form resembles their humanoid form, making them easy to recognize between the two.

Not much is known of their society either, but we do no they are not very widespread on Golarion, and live in close-nit, orderly and civilized societies, and are very protective of their friends and family. If they are anything like real wolf packs, they are probably led by the elders of a settlement, with possibly the parents of individual families having some say in things under these wizened members.

Rougarou are strong and wise, but their rigid society doesn’t promote innovation.

True to their wolf kin, they sport enhanced night vision and a strong sense of smell.

They also sport the ability to take the form of a true wolf, though usually only once a day before reverting to their true form.

Even in humanoid form, however, they maintain strong jaws which they can put to deadly use in combat.

With their strength and wisdom, Rougarou can fill a lot of roles and classes, everything from rangers and hunters making use of both of those stat boosts, to other combat classes such as fighter and paladin while having a slightly higher than average wisdom score. Combat focused clerics or druids are also a fun option. Being able to transform into a wolf does mean you get a little buff as well, bolstering natural attack builds quite nicely… but it is hampered by the fact that their shapeshifting replicates the effect of beast shape I, meaning that they don’t get the free trip attempts with their bite through this method, which honestly makes the wolf form better as a disguise with some builds, albeit a limited one with the general reaction to wolves in many civilizations being what is was historically. However, their only true weakness is that intelligence penalty, which makes skill builds and certain mages slightly harder, but not impossible to overcome.