#like not to seem like a luddite

[youhavereachedtheendofpie]

tbh it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the average studio ceo didn't actually understand what ai - even in its current form where the very term 'artificial intelligence' is a misnomer at best - actually is and can or cannot do and especially what that entails re: still needing human labour

[endcraft]

i like etho as a mcyt figure because he is like if a computer engineer could be a caveman. like imagine if the guy who invented the watch and the guy who invented the wheel were the same guy. imagine if you were talking to him and he was like oh yeah i also invented the hand axe. and google

[choking-on-roses]

Colleague called me a Luddite today because I wrote the abstract for a book chapter submission by hand without using ChatGPT

[marsixm]

the perils of knowing people who have middle school aged kids is your extremely logged off elder millennial boss revealing that he has not only seen a mrbeast video but is going to watch the jake paul mike tyson fight

[visionsofgideontheninth]

i want to keep my itunes music library on an external hard drive and i don't know how and i've been reading articles for an hour and i just need to free up space on the laptop damn you digital age

[weedle-testaburger]

because as we all know, curing smallpox and purifying water had huuuuge costs for humanity

[colleendoran]

Yeah, I drew that.

Half my life as a comic book creator is explaining that almost all of my training as an artist is pre-internet, pre-Photoshop, and pre-computer.

No, I don't trace all my figure work or backgrounds because almost all creators of my generation had to learn to draw extemporaneously, and it is actually easier and faster for me to just draw off the cuff than it is to dig through a pile of pics to get what I want.

No, this doesn't mean I never use reference and it doesn't mean I haven't ever closely followed reference - or even closely copied a reference photograph.

It means I usually don't have to use reference for things I draw every day, like the human body. But if I had to draw the Taj Mahal, I'd use reference. I mean, I could do a generalization of the Taj Mahal from memory, but I'd need reference to get it right.

No, back in the day artists didn't all use the Camera Obscura, overhead projector, or lightbox. There is the sight size method, the comparative method, and the construction drawing method. I learned all three and have never used a Camera Obscura. I only used overhead projector a few times and hated it. I usually only use a lightbox to transfer sketches to the final art boards.

In classical ateliers, artist candidates are locked in rooms without access to any kind of Camera Obscura-style tools to make sure the artist can draw and paint without reliance on them.

No, this doesn't make me a Luddite and it doesn't mean I don't use computers now, it just means I can draw and paint and write without them, perhaps with a bit more confidence than some who never had to do without.

There are some computer artists who can do without, and some who can't. No judgment.

You do you.

I did without computers because there was no with computers. And that is how I learned.

But I don't appreciate that some out there flat out mislead about drawing methods because, it seems, if they can't do something, clearly other people can't either. Just because an artist used reference on one picture or even a dozen pictures, that doesn't mean every single element of everything they draw was slavishly referenced.

Most comic book creators of my generation did not and do not trace their figure work in Photoshop. Or whatever.

Some do. Most do not.

That's all.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello, Mr Gaiman!

There's been a lot of backlash against the art-generating AI recently, and while on some level I understand the reasons (the corporations train the AI using other people's art for free without permission, then charge money for using the AI), it just seems more about the AI existence in general than about evil corporations (and they are evil, don't get me wrong). I don't know, whenever I see another 'haha, here's a way to cheat AI and make the quality of its product worse' post on my dash, it just sounds like a luddite argument.

What's your point of view on the recent development of AI? I swear I'm asking in good faith, perhaps I just fail to understand the issue because I'm not aware of some underlying problems or arguments.

I guess the point is that the AI art isn't generated by magic from a vacuum. It starts by taking actual art that actual humans made, and then, without their permission or payment of any kind, plagiarising it.

So from my point of view, if you make art and you want the machines that are plagiarising your art without permission or payment to be harmed and made less reliable when they come and steal your work, all power to you.

[fieldghoul]

A round-up of ministry technology:

Chapter Two: The Cardinal

Copia is carrying the Siemens R836 stereo, produced c. 1988

Chapter 5: The Call

The TV in the hospital is the Toshiba T277Z, produced c. 1977

p.s., the first clip playing on the TV is twins running away in Chapter 1 :-)

Chapter Seven: New World Redro

Nihil's typewriter is the Olympia SM9, produced c. 1965-1968

Chapter Ten: Home Coming and Special Guests

The record player in Cardi's room is actually not vintage! It's the Victrola 3-in-1 Bluetooth Record Player, produced c. 2017

To get deep into minutiae, the other thing they pan past on the shelf that looks like an antique cathedral radio is actually a piece of ceramic -- you can see it's holding a book. It's made from a commercially available plaster mold, namely the Duncan DM-355 B, which was manufactured in the late 70s. Here are photos of the same ceramic with a different glaze, and the mold itself :-)

Chapter Twelve: Ghost Goes Hollywood

Cardi's camcorder is part of the Sony CCD-TRVX5 series, produced c. 1998

(My understanding is the CCD-TRV75, 85 and 93 all have the same body -- but it's one of those.)

Chapter 16: Tax Season

Cardi's TV is the Samsung BT-317TR, produced c. 1984

He is, of course, playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), produced c. 1986-1990

The radio is the Motorola TT23FS, produced c. 1968

The phone gadget is the Tele-Rest, produced c. 1958

The alarm clock is a Lawson Model 215 Sierra, produced c. 1948-1981 (Lawson clock history seems... complicated)

As for the phone itself... I can tell you it's this exact phone, since this prop house seems to have supplied all the props in this video, but there are too many identical puke-green rotary phones produced between the 1940s and 1970s for me to pretend I can tell which one it is (same goes for the other two rotary phones in Chapter Five).

Rite Here Rite Now

The TV backstage is (probably) a Magnavox 20MT4405/17, produced c. 2006

If you turn the brightness on RHRN way the fuck up, you can see a piece of tape over the brand badge on the TV. (But that can't stop me!!!)

I'm sure most of the tech choices are just for humor and Tobias's personal nostalgia as a child of the 80s, but I do love way all of the old tech characterizes the ministry. It's not clear if they're just luddites, cheapskates, out of money, too bureaucratically inefficient to upgrade (like the government!) or if it's something completely different. But that's why set dressing is fun, it tells stories indirectly :-)

[yuurei20]

Prefect Dialogue Options in Twisted Wonderland: Book 1 (pt1)

Option 1: I guess...? Ace: What kinda wishy-washy answer is that?!

Option 2: It does seem a tad extreme. Ace: Riiight?!

Option 1: He may have been a little extreme... Grim: But you stole food! That ain't cool!

Option 2: Stealing food is a serious offense. Ace: Aw, you gotta be kiddin' me!

Option 1: Grrr... Ace: Grim's getting away...do we have a deal, or what?

Option 2: Yessir! Right away, sirs! n/a

Option 1: I don't have a smartphone. Cater: For real? I've read about luddites like you, but never imagined l'd meet one in the wild! I know a place that sells the latest models cheap. How about you and I go on a phone-shopping date?

Option 2: What, what...?! Cater: What is up with you, Prefect? You look so tense! It's okay, baby! Relax! Relaaaaax! I bet you're the type that's awkward IRL but can text up a storm, huh? Just give me your info already!

Option 1: That was your fault for causing trouble, Grim. Grim: Grrrrr... But that collar really hurt, and it shut off all my magic! That's just rude!

Option 2: So what's this "signature spell" he mentioned? n/a

[toasecretsanta]

Percy Jackson and the Herald of Destruction

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Friendship Characters: Apollo, Percy, Estelle A visit to the Jackson-Blofis household brings Apollo face-to-face with one Estelle Jackson-Blofis once more, and her doting big brother. A toasecretsanta submission from @tsarinatorment for Melonyan [AO3], using the prompt "Apollo, Percy Jackson and Estelle Bloufis-Jackson inspired, something sweet maybe a little angsty!" I have shamelessly used aeithalian's Estelle theory in this fic, which can be found detailed here. It's been a while since I last wrote Apollo pov, and I barely ever write Percy, so this was a bit of an adventure to put together. It's certainly closer to fluff than angst, I think, but I still hope you like it, Melonyan!

As a general rule, gods did not knock on the doors of mortal homes.  Nor did they ring intercoms and wait patiently to be let in.  Why would they?  They were gods, and bound by neither mortal social niceties, nor the limitations of mortal entrances.  It was perfectly possible – and normal – for a god to simply materialise in the best chair in the abode (opinions on what constituted the best varied drastically).

And yet, there Apollo was, pressing the button for the intercom for the Jackson-Blofis household.

Belatedly, he realised that the occupants were unlikely to be expecting him to take the mortal entrance, not now he was a fully fledged god again, rather than a vulnerable mortal body that couldn’t do useful tricks like light-teleportation, but the button had already been pressed, and Apollo was not about to do a knock-and-run.  Besides, he’d been invited, yes, but generally even invited guests were expected to use the front door.

There was also probably no harm in allowing Percy control over who entered his home – and how they entered.  Olympus knew they’d taken enough control from the demigod over the past few years.

Really, it was a wonder the boy – almost adult now, closer to young man than boy – was willing to tolerate Apollo’s invasion of his home again.

The intercom connected with a buzz.

“Who is it?” Percy’s voice demanded, crackling slightly through the technology.  Modern technology and demigods didn’t always mix well, although they persevered remarkably as society kept advancing and their choice was to keep up or turn luddite.

Apollo cleared his throat, an unnecessary action but one that helped announce his presence – and a long ingrained habit that Apollo wasn’t in any real hurry to shake.  He liked the way it brought everyone’s attention to him before he started speaking.

“It’s me,” he announced, the words falling away into a silence that Percy didn’t break, and after a few awkward moments, Apollo remembered that Percy couldn’t actually see him from his apartment.  “Apollo,” he added on belatedly, and a little awkwardly.

Percy’s silent judgement was impressive, given they were several floors apart and couldn’t actually see each other.  Clearly to the son of Poseidon that was a minor inconvenience that was easily ignored.

He also, more pressingly, wasn’t letting Apollo in.

“Paul invited me?”  The words weren’t supposed to come out as a question, because there was no question about it.  Paul Blofis had certainly invited Apollo into the humble Jackson-Blofis abode.  Although, one could argue that the question was actually asking whether or not Percy had been informed by his step father that Paul had invited a god over for an afternoon.

Those seemed to be the magic words, however, as with a put-upon sigh that made Percy’s thoughts on the matter of Apollo’s presence in his home crystal clear, he finally, finally pressed the button to open the front door of the apartment block and gave Apollo entry into the building.  Apollo did not waste the invitation, slipping in immediately and following the familiar route to Percy Jackson’s apartment – familiar, because while Lester’s memories as Apollo had been more full of holes than one of Britomartis’ nets, Apollo could recall everything he had experienced as Lester in pin-sharp clarity.  Many of those things he would rather forget, admittedly, but traipsing towards the front door of the Jackson-Blofis apartment had not been, inherently, full of uncomfortable trauma.

In fact, Sally Jackson had been incredibly welcoming to poor, unfortunate Lester, and Apollo was not afraid to admit that he was hoping to find some of her seven layer dip waiting for him – or some of her blue cookies, he supposed, but between the two it was the seven layer dip that had captured his heart.  Its inclusion of his cabin number certainly didn’t hurt.

He was not greeted by a seven layer dip, tragically.  Nor was he greeted by a plate of blue cookies, or Sally Jackson at all.  Paul Blofis was also summarily absent, which seemed a little rude given Apollo was here on the man’s invitation.

No, instead he was greeted by his demigod cousin, who looked no more pleased to see him now than he had been to see a mortal, beaten-up Lester and trash-covered street urchin Meg in the middle of one chilly January.  Percy was not alone, however.  Clinging to him, but staring out at Apollo with wide sea-green eyes that almost identically matched those of her big brother, was young Estelle.

There were not many things that unnerved Apollo – well, maybe there were a few, but most did not apply to this situation, or indeed most situations that he allowed himself to enter nowadays – but one Estelle Jackson-Blofis managed to do exactly that.  It was nothing the young girl had done – at scarcely a year old, there was very little she was capable of doing, beyond apparently chewing on her big brother’s hoodie string, which Percy had either given up discouraging, or hadn’t even noticed she was doing.  Indeed, to look at her, there was nothing untoward.

True, she had the exact same eye colour as her demigod brother, who had inherited Poseidon’s preferred appearance, which raised a few questions about her origins although Apollo could detect nothing as strong as demigodliness about her.  Strains of a distant legacy?  Yes, but the same strains ran through Sally Jackson, so that was to be expected.  Estelle was no demigod.

She was simply a young, mortal child, who coincidentally had the same eye colour as Apollo’s uncle, and his dark hair, too, but Paul also had the same dark hair, and Apollo had no difficulty in recognising her as being his biological daughter.

He almost, almost, wouldn’t have known any different than what he saw now.  Indeed, if he hadn’t seen her as a much younger child, before her original baby-fluff on the top of her head thinned away and grew back strong and dark, Apollo would have been as clueless as his father was – hoped his father was, and the lack of any world-ending lightning storms suggested that so far the king of the gods remained ignorant.

If he hadn’t seen the greys threading through her dark hair, salt-and-pepper, almost but not quite the same patterning as Griscelli syndrome, during his last visit as Lester, he would never have known that the girl was a ticking time bomb, a catalyst that could ignite at any moment.

The signal for Zeus to end the current age of humanity.  And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have grey hair on the temples at their birth, Hesiod had written millennia ago.

The Fates had made an interesting choice, choosing the younger sister of one Perseus Jackson to be the herald, Apollo thought.  The loyalty of Percy to those he clung to – his loved ones, family and closest friends – was not something Apollo would’ve chosen to pit against the fall of humanity at the hands of his father, but he was not one of the Fates himself, and understood their workings only when they chose to reveal them.

Needless to say, they had not chosen to reveal their machinations surrounding Estelle to Apollo.  If anything, she was hiding in plain sight – nothing about her was Concealed from his sight.  If he Looked he could see the spiderweb of her lifetimes, the possibilities glimmering in the sun like gossamer spun silk stretching out towards infinity, the same as any other mortal.  The only reason Apollo knew what he was seeing was incomplete was because he’d seen the grey at her temples as a young baby; without that knowledge, he would never have noticed that not all the threads that should be there were there – and he knew his father did not see the threads the way he did.

If Apollo could not see any of her Fates where his father learned of her existence and chose to act upon it, then his father would not see them, either.

“I suppose you’d better come in,” Percy said, disrupting his musings and taking his active attention away from the young, innocent herald of destruction and onto her older brother instead.  He still didn’t sound happy to see Apollo, and certainly wasn’t eager to invite him into his home, but his irreverence for the gods didn’t seem to quite extend to slamming doors in their faces.  “Mom and Paul will be back soon, they had to go out for a few minutes…”  He trailed off, but Apollo could read the judgement in his face just fine: Did you have to pick when they were gone to arrive?

Somewhat embarrassingly, it hadn’t occurred to Apollo to check that his inviter was home when he’d arrived, although in his defence Paul Blofis had specified the afternoon in question, so surely it was common sense to assume that he would be around.

“That’s quite alright,” he said, stepping over the threshold now that he had the invitation and breezing into the apartment.  It certainly wasn’t the neatest place he had ever set foot in – nor was it the neatest he had ever seen this particular apartment, either.  Apollo’s eyes slid over to Estelle again, who still had the end of Percy’s hoodie string in her mouth and was now gripping at the rest of it with her chubby little fists, too.  Percy seemed to have finally realised what was happening to his clothes and was trying to get her to let go whilst kicking the front door shut with his foot.

Herald of destruction, indeed.  There was no doubt that most of the mess was the fault of young Estelle, given it was mostly a minefield of various age-appropriate toys scattered across the floor in a child-friendly version of caltrops.  At least Estelle had not yet been deemed old enough to be introduced to Lego; scattered Lego bricks were far more lethal than caltrops, even to the soles of godly feet.

As it was, combined with the tipped-over container hanging off the edge of a low table, Apollo got the impression the toys were freshly-scattered, just in time for his arrival.  There was the faintest tint of red in the tips of Percy’s ears as he looked away from Estelle and realised Apollo had noticed the mess.

“Uh, sorry about all that,” he said, before trying harder to reclaim the knotted end of the hoodie string from his sister’s mouth with no success.  It appeared that Estelle’s stubbornness easily rivalled that of her older brother – Apollo felt a flash of sympathy for Sally Jackson.  One headstrong child was already a lot of work.  Two of them…

He ignored the small thought that pointed out that both of them had been born with heavy destinies hanging over their heads, like thunderbolt-shaped guillotines.

“It’s fine.”  Apollo waved his hand dismissively.  “You have not seen Ares’ weapon collection.”  Admittedly that was a little misleading – Ares loved his weapons and would never leave his spears, swords or shields littered around like this.  However, Apollo’s first comparative thought had been caltrops for a reason.

“Can’t say I’m planning on seeing it, either,” Percy scoffed, which was a wise stance for any demigod to take.  Perhaps Ares’ own children might enjoy the experience, but most would find it to be not-so-pleasant.  For Percy, who did not get on with Ares in the slightest, it would no doubt be more frustrating than anything.  “Estelle, no.  Don’t eat that.”

The chubby little bundle that heralded the possible destruction of mankind giggled – not an innocent giggle, no.  The giggle of a mischievous child who knew they were misbehaving, and also knew no-one was going to do anything about it.  From Percy’s sigh and slumping shoulders, he also knew he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it.

Apollo gestured at the floor.  “Did you want a hand?” he offered, knowing better than to offer to hold the child herself – and not wanting to, not wanting to do anything that might get Zeus’ eyes on her more than they already would be by virtue of being related to Percy Jackson – but more than willing to help a long suffering older brother clean up his younger sibling’s mess.

It was a position he’d found himself in more than once, although his younger half-siblings tended to create messes of far more epic proportions than a single disrupted crate of children’s toys, and attempts to do anything about it were heavily dissuaded on Olympus.  Still, he’d cleaned up a few of Artemis’ messes over the years…

“Sure,” Percy said distractedly, perching on the edge of a couch so that his sister was now in his lap and not supported by his arm, thereby leaving him with twice the hands available to try and get Estelle’s destructive tendencies redirected towards something that wasn’t his clothes.  Apollo sincerely wished him luck with that endeavour.

For his part, with Percy’s permission granted, he knelt down and began to gather up Estelle’s impressive collection of toys, ruining their aspirations of being deadly caltrops by plucking them off the rug one by one and depositing them back in the crate, which he remembered to put upright after the first couple of toys spilled back out again.  Her collection truly betrayed her status as the beloved baby of the family – Apollo didn’t think he’d seen a child so young with quite so many toys, before.

All the better to cause chaos with, he supposed as he dropped a plushie satyr with one of his horns half torn off into the crate.

Millennia of being the centre of attention told Apollo when he was being watched, and the same prickle of awareness had him glancing back at Percy and Estelle, both of whom were staring at him with their identical sea-green eyes.  Estelle had yet to relinquish her hoodie-string snack, but Percy seemed to have forgotten that he was attempting to rescue it from her maw.

Apollo raised an eyebrow.  “Is… there something on my face?” he asked hesitantly, before a thought occurred to him and he craned his head around further.  “Or my back?  I swear, if Artemis put another of those kick me signs…”

“No!” Percy said, a little abruptly, before shaking his head.  “No, there’s nothing on your face.  Or your back..?”  He said the last bit like a question itself, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that some typical sibling shenanigans didn’t also occur to gods, even when the gods in question also happened to be twins.  “I just… didn’t expect you to clean up like that.”

Apollo sat back on his haunches, a well-chewed and still slightly damp hellhound plushie in one hand – oh the irony – and a slightly disturbing squishy skeleton in the other, and centred his attention more directly on Percy.  “Like what?” he asked.

“Like that,” Percy repeated, one hand abandoning the hoodie string rescue mission – not that it had been working on that quest for the past thirty seconds anyway – to gesture broadly at Apollo and the toys still to be cleared away.  “Instead of, I don’t know, just snapping your fingers or something?”

Apollo blinked, and looked back at Soggy-Hellhound and Squishy-Skelly.  He wanted to say that the thought hadn’t occurred to him, and it was true that it had barely occurred to him, a flicker of a thought dismissed before it could fully form, but in reality it boiled down to Estelle, again.  Bursts of godly power in the Jackson-Blofis apartment ran the risk of drawing his father’s eye, and Apollo was reasonably determined to minimise Zeus’ reasons for looking in their direction.

As it was, he was technically causing a risk by being there at all, but if he wasn’t being all godly while he was there, maybe Zeus wouldn’t look too closely.

There were some truths that were best off unspoken, though, and Apollo had no desire to speak into the world the danger that Estelle posed, to herself and humanity at large.  Percy would take it badly, no doubt, and Zeus would not miss such a declaration.

“I suppose some of my Lester habits haven’t quite left yet,” he said instead, which was true in its own way.  “Why, did you want me to?”  It was a dangerous question, because if Percy said yes…

But the son of Poseidon was already shaking his head, as Apollo had suspected he would.  “No, it’s fine,” he said.  “Maybe if she sees that it’s effort to clean up, even for a god, she’ll stop doing it.”  The look he sent his little sister was stern, but it was the sort of sternness that didn’t hold up to scrutiny and Apollo could easily see the bemusement behind the fake frown.

Privately, he thought the herald of destruction lurking behind the angelic face thrived on seeing others suffer through chores such as trying to stop her doing what she wanted, knowing they were doomed to fail.  The concept of hard work no doubt seemed fun to her, still safely in the stage of youth where everything she wanted fell neatly into place and only other people had to do boring and tedious things like cleaning up her messes.  Her tune would only change once it was her responsibility to clean up her own mess.

In Apollo’s experience – and he had a considerable amount of it, given the number of children he had had over the years, even if most of them he had been unable to pick up strewn toys for – most young children Estelle’s age enjoyed watching others clear up their trails of destruction.  He had no doubts that an infant Perseus Jackson had been the exact same way.

Still, he saw no reason to disillusion Percy on the topic.  Deep down, he suspected that Percy already knew the truth and was simply denying it for his own sanity, but in the short term it didn’t matter.  Estelle was still too young to tidy up after herself, and as she had a loving big brother wrapped around her little finger, Apollo knew it would be some time before she truly had to start finding her own feet and responsibilities in the world.

He didn’t envy her that.  If anything, he celebrated it.  Every day that Estelle was able to act like a loved baby sister with a doting family was a day that her existence went unacknowledged by Zeus, and if that could last her entire mortal lifetime, then Apollo would be ecstatic.

Soggy-Hellhound and Squishy-Skelly found themselves deposited in the crate on top of Torn-Horn-Satyr, and Apollo resumed tidying up, listening to the sounds of Percy renewing his attempts at rescuing his hoodie string with little success, and finding a smile creeping across his own lips.

It was, in the end, in the hands of the Fates, he knew, but that wasn’t going to stop Apollo doing everything in his own power to keep Estelle safe, too – even if that took the form of picking her toys up by hand.

[olderthannetfic]

My favorite example of "space tamales" with MENA/SWANA characters was in a fic where an author described Farsi as "a dialect of Arabic." My sister in Christ, they are not even related languages. Farsi is Indo-European (like English is) and Arabic is a Semitic language. The author claimed to be "really passionate about language learning" too, but apparently not passionate enough to just look up 101 stuff about these two major world languages on Wikipedia....

Another thing I see a lot with Asian (especially outside of China/Korea/Japan), African and SWANA cultures in particular in fic is this thing where the "traditional cultural elements" means they're luddites compared to everybody else. Like space futures where the Middle-Eastern character's family are still living in desert caravans with no modern tech or the African character's are doing that in some stereotype of a rural village with no running water or electricity.

Like you'd have hoped that the internationally popular movie Black Panther would've introduced more people to the fact that Afrofuturism = thing that exists, and more broadly that you can do a high-tech, spacefaring future that is culturally non-Western and what that might look like.... and yet people still get stuck on this.

The only non-Western cultures they seem to be able to envision as futuristic are (sometimes) East Asian ones, probably because of cyberpunk and anime.

It makes me want to see a reversal of this sometime. The non-white/Western characters' homes are these super futuristic megalopolises with flying cars, but you follow the French character home and it's still like pre-revolutionary Paris with giant wigs and horses-and-carriages and no indoor plumbing for some reason.

--

A DIALECT OF ARABIC?!?!

And the space!French will 10000% have a bunch of places that make wine in a 1700s way and are extremely annoying about it.

[yourheartonfire]

The first sign something was wrong was when the hero opened the door without bothering to check the peephole. Or maybe that was the seventh or eighth sign, after the way the hero had disappeared and the terrible rumors going around and the silence from the Agency and - oh yeah - that dreadful beating they’d taken a month ago from Supervillain that was still being meme-ed and clipped and posted and reposted and -

All right. There were a lot of signs something was wrong, but the hero opening their door first and then their eyes going wide to see who was on their doorstep was the first sign that villain had personally witnessed that something was wrong.

“Nope,” the villain snapped. “Don’t like it.”

“What-” the hero managed to say before the villain’s hand closed around their throat and drove their nemesis backwards into their home, kicking the door shut behind them.

“Don’t like this look you’re giving me,” the villain said and slammed the hero into the wall.

The hero grabbed for their forearm, eyes dim in the gloomy dark. “And what look is that?” they hissed. 

“You should be looking at me with fear. Like, oh no! My death is coming!” the villain snarled back. They snapped one cuff around the hero’s wrist, spun them around. The hero staggered. Staggered! The villain huffed and shoved them into the wall again, this time face first, so they didn’t have to see those terrible sunken eyes in hero’s face. “Instead,” they murmured, clamping the second cuff on, “you look at me with relief. Like, oh yay! My death is coming!”

The hero let out a strangled noise not quite a laugh, half-muffled by the wallpaper. “Go on then,” they said. “Guess you won’t get what you want out of me.”

“Oh yes, I will.” The villain dragged the hero down the hall, shoved them onto the couch of their living room. It was a nice low couch, perfect for looming over. “I want you to suffer, hero. And if death is a release, well. I can work with that. Princess Bride or Pride or Prejudice?”

The hero blue screened - their weary defiance smashed into confusion. And, for the first time, a spark of the real hero’s curiosity. “Uh...”

“You want to die? Tough.” The villain grabbed the remote. Luckily the hero was a Luddite, it only took a few seconds to get the TV turned on and streaming services fired up. “Not only will you not be dying, tonight you’ll be subjected to the treacliest of manipulative schlock that Hollywood has to offer. Or are you more of a comedy...” They trailed as off as they opened the hero’s watch history. The hero winced. “I’m sorry. This seems to indicate your most watched movie over the past five years is Planes 2: Fire and Rescue?” 

“It’s actually really good,” the hero muttered.

“The sequel to the spin off of Pixar’s worst-?” The villain cut themselves off, jammed the play button. “Right. The instrument of your suffering has been chosen. And apparently my suffering too,” they muttered under their breath, plopping down on the couch next to the hero. “You got snacks?”

The hero was staring at them. Slowly they shook their head. “You’re a liar,” the villain grumbled and reached over them to grab their phone. “I’m ordering pizza and you’re paying for it. Why the hell is that airplane wearing literally a corn costume?”

“Watch the movie and find out,” the hero said. “Can you uncuff me now?”

“No,” the villain said, pulling the hero closer as they searched for the most expensive pizzeria in the neighborhood. “You’re being tortured. Shut up.”

The hero did. And if the villain noticed as the tension slowly left their nemesis’s shoulders, well, there was a terrible movie to distract them both.

[plaidos]

btw I am completely fine with people using ai in their art, or making ai art, etc. my only concern is inability to find a job in the art field because of the rise of ai. it's not exactly the ai issue, but boycotting ai seems to be one of the only coherent ways to fight it. maybe you have a different opinion on it, idk

well it isn’t a coherent way to fight it, because it won’t actually meaningfully stop the use of AI. because you can’t uninvent a technology. again, remember the luddites. if companies couldn’t replace artists with AI, they’d replace them with unpaid migrants, or prison labour, or people in the global south, or just straight up mass layoffs — you know, like what’s happening in every industry that doesn’t/can’t meaningfully use AI already? again, the answer is unionisation and perhaps specific legislation about the application of AI. i saw that the writers’ strike involved requesting that AI never be the credited artist/writer for an episode of television, and i think that’s a wholly good change, because it would be obviously just cutting the real writers out of the lead credit to save money. but i don’t think that legislating it out existence or use at all is just going to happen at all, nor a good thing. but that new AI generated episode of The Simpsons, where they built the script off the prompt for “The last episode of the Simpsons” as a parody of the idea of what the show’s ending would look like — that shit is obviously art. and people made jokes about it, but i think you could probably write a compelling (if cheesy) episode of Black Mirror where the twist is that it was generated by AI but framed in a way to make you not realise it until the end. i think people assume that the process of using AI generated art is just one person typing in a prompt and the computer does all the rest of the work, rather than it being a tool to help evoke a certain feeling (in this case, uncanniness — which AI art is really REALLY good at, making stuff that “looks” right but “feels” wrong). like, as if Matt Groening asked ChatGPT to write an episode of the Simpsons and he just sent its output to the team and said “make this”. obviously there was still a lead writer who actually wrote the script off of the mushy, samey garbage, a writer’s room that turned that into a 22 minute 8/10 episode of the simpsons with jokes and funny moments. AI is literally just a tool that facilitates it.

[bitchqueenofthebitchsquad]

Another problem I had with season 2 is the weird way that hextech is treated. The hexcore is treated like it's semi sentient and malicious, no explanation for why that is, but even regular degular Hextech is treated as uniquely capable of great evil. We're given a whole episode that waxes poetic about how much better everyone would be if hextech was never invented but no explanation for why that is.

As others have pointed out, the problems between Piltover and Zaun are the problems inherent to all stratified societies, particularly ones that appear to be in the midst of an industrial revolution. The under city predates Hextech by a long shot. So why are we being shown this episode about how much better everything would be sans these tools? It just has a luddite vibe to it. I think some people mistakenly identify technology as the reason oppression exists. While some tech can exacerbate oppression, the same technology can often do the opposite. I think season 1 was still a little clumsy in places, but it did a better job of pointing out that the technology is a neutral thing. It's the system that allows greedy and ultra powerful but unqualified weirdos to make all the decisions that's a problem.

I feel like the writers who left over the pandemy took their talent with them when they bounced. I can't know this but I get the sense that the remaining writers did little to no research but were enamored with portrayals of class conflict they'd seen in other media. Not to bring up simulacra but, you know, that's what it was giving. It was derivative.

Getting back to the hexcore, I liked the aesthetic of it, particularly how it transformed Viktors body but thematically I think it was incoherent, especially when put in the context of the rest of the show. Again I like spooky purple energy with evil vibes, very witchy, but how does it help progress the narrative? It seemed to me that it was a totally derivative element. Because sometimes magic is portrayed as spooky and seductive they decided to have this cool object that was spooky and seductive. Maybe someone in the writers room was going somewhere with this but if they were I don't think the execution was successful. It doesn't have anything to do with the stronger themes of the show, it distracts from them, and then becomes a problem because they spent so much time foreshadowing it so there's no way to gracefully retcon it.

It's made even more awkward when Viktor uses his new spooky powers to help disabled people who have nowhere else to turn. Before Jayce shoots Viktor in the chest we don't actually see Viktor doing anything malicious with his magic. He's essentially just set up a rehab and is quietly minding his business. The empire and state come to him and give him grief so wouldn't the reasonable conclusion be that actually Hextech is just a tool no matter how purple and swirly it is and that militaries and cops get in the way of positive social change because they seek to abuse and control technology used to help people? But then the show goes on to make Viktor the ultimate villain and it's very hard to parse what the message is other than to avoid the very specific scenarios that happened in the show.

It's almost like they forgot the show was for an audience, forgot about the themes, and just started advertising for the next league project, forgetting to finish what they were actually making. I also think they fell victim to too big of an ending, not everything has to be world ending or contain multiverses. Idk very sloppy but, even though he's essentially an entirely new character, I loved blonde highlights Viktor.

Edit: not "no explanation" it's the blood that made it evil but again this is tropey and leaning towards derivative again. We wouldn't assume that a technology that interacts with blood is bad/evil if we hadn't all already seen a million other works that do this and have built the negative associations for us.

[thesungod]

most reddit comments around the use of AI to replace actors and screenwriters seem to look like this and maybe i’m just a luddite and my mind isn’t open enough, but i genuinely don’t get how this is an exciting prospect or desirable future for people. the sole idea of art and cinema being like this makes me want to kill everyone in the room and then myself. i don’t… get it