#so now its shit quality with no images but one which looks so out of place now

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

what’s the story about the generative power model and water consumption? /gen

There's this myth going around about generative AI consuming truly ridiculous amount of power and water. You'll see people say shit like "generating one image is like just pouring a whole cup of water out into the Sahara!" and bullshit like that, and it's just... not true. The actual truth is that supercomputers, which do a lot of stuff, use a lot of power, and at one point someone released an estimate of how much power some supercomputers were using and people went "oh, that supercomputer must only do AI! All generative AI uses this much power!" and then just... made shit up re: how making an image sucks up a huge chunk of the power grid or something. Which makes no sense because I'm given to understand that many of these models can run on your home computer. (I don't use them so I don't know the details, but I'm told by users that you can download them and generate images locally.) Using these models uses far less power than, say, online gaming. Or using Tumblr. But nobody ever talks about how evil those things are because of their power generation. I wonder why.

To be clear, I don't like generative AI. I'm sure it's got uses in research and stuff but on the consumer side, every effect I've seen of it is bad. Its implementation in products that I use has always made those products worse. The books it writes and flood the market with are incoherent nonsense at best and dangerous at worst (let's not forget that mushroom foraging guide). It's turned the usability of search engines from "rapidly declining, but still usable if you can get past the ads" into "almost one hundred per cent useless now, actually not worth the effort to de-bullshittify your search results", especially if you're looking for images. It's a tool for doing bullshit that people were already doing much easier and faster, thus massively increasing the amount of bullshit. The only consumer-useful uses I've seen of it as a consumer are niche art projects, usually projects that explore the limits of the tool itself like that one poetry book or the Infinite Art Machine; overall I'd say its impact at the Casual Random Person (me) level has been overwhelmingly negative. Also, the fact that so much AI turns out to be underpaid people in a warehouse in some country with no minimum wage and terrible labour protections is... not great. And the fact that it's often used as an excuse to try to find ways to underpay professionals ("you don't have to write it, just clean up what the AI came up with!") is also not great.

But there are real labour and product quality concerns with generative AI, and there's hysterical bullshit. And the whole "AI is magically destroying the planet via climate change but my four hour twitch streaming sesh isn't" thing is hysterical bullshit. The instant I see somebody make this stupid claim I put them in the same mental bucket as somebody complaining about AI not being "real art" -- a hatemobber hopping on the hype train of a new thing to hate and feel like an enlightened activist about when they haven't bothered to learn a fucking thing about the issue. And I just count my blessings that they fell in with this group instead of becoming a flat earther or something.

[scourgeofmyownbrain]

Good fucking day, Robot enjoyers! Gaze upon the updated semi-accurate height comparison of Bumblebee across the multiverse.

This is an updated version of a chart I made a few months ago. I had gotten some feedback and then TFOne came out and I kinda had to update it. I also added a Gen 1 Optimus Prime for scale, for fun... no other reason... (edit: slight adjustment made, just corrected a slight mistake in the order)

I am also working on at least two more character charts and one universe chart, so hopefully I can finish those soon (for some fucking genius reason I decided to do the characters that show up EVERY FUCKING UNIVERSE so I'm s u f f e r i n g)

*PST! Optimus, Megatron, Shockwave, and Soundwave ones are done now*

Listed Heights, Explanations, and Justifications below the cut, bc you couldn't shut me up if you tried and I had shit to say.

Gen 1 - ~10 feet (TFwiki says greater than 3 meters so I rounded up to the first whole number because round)

Netflix Cybertron Trilogy - ~10 feet (He looks identical to Gen 1 so... the reason his photo looks weird is because I couldn't find a good full body photo with him standing straight up facing the camera so I put two images together to make the worst looking photoshop job you have ever seen)

Earth Spark - ~10 feet (There is no confirmed height yet, but using this screen shot (see below) of him standing in front of a barn door, I was able to make a reasonable guess, bc I'm so smart.)

One V1 - ~13 feet (I am well aware of what the TFWiki says: 26.429 feet. And I fully reject that number. A: These numbers are sourced from the Walmart Promotional AR Experience that came out before the movie. B: There are three decimal points, and that number does not convert into a whole number in meters (which is originally what I thought was weird about it). C: The director has said that this movie is both canon to the LA movies and its own separate canon, and Bumblebee in both sets of LA movies does not exceed 20 feet tall. Ever. So, for sanity's sake, I have used the KCV numbers as my baseline. Bee grows when he gets his t-cog so shrink this one down a few feet. Look, I'm working on the Optimus chart rn, and one of the numbers from Beast Wars on the wiki was very observably wrong, and if I can dispute numbers older than me, I can dispute numbers 2 decades younger than me from fucking Walmart. Also, yes, his picture is 3 images sandwiched together)

Animated - 13 feet 3 Inches (There is no actual given heights, but in the comments of the previous version, @phoenix-inanis told me that they had done their own analysis of TFA heights and, gonna be real with you, I am blown away by all of their work and how detailed it is. Go marvel at how much work they put in -> https://phoenix-inanis.notion.site/TFA-Height-Chart-f6ad2960ca8c4c5b859ee4958723aaa4?pvs=4 )

One V2 - ~15 Feet (Please see reasoning above. Since this is as tall as we see Bee get, he's the same height as KCV Bee. Sweet fuck, I have put way too much effort into this shit)

Knight/Capel-Verse - 15 feet (No actual numbers, but Mirage is stated to be 15 feet tall (TFWiki), and he and Bee are like the same height, so... Capel directed the ROTB movie if you're wondering why his name is there)

Bayverse V1 - 16 feet (TFWiki. This is like the first 3 movies minimum, I don't remember when he hits his growth spurt. Also mr bay is king, we have numbers for nearly every character in BV)

Cyberverse - 18 feet (I'm gonna be honest, the only info we have is from a really shitty screen shot of a magazine. SO if any one has a copy of this book from the video below, a high quality scan would be greatly appreciated and I will kiss the ground you walk upon. Yes I found the video where the screen shot comes from leave me alone)

Bayverse V2 - 18 feet (TFWiki. Movie 4-5 I can't remember which one, I'm not re-looking this up. I fucking love the bayverse tho, this is the only universe with concrete and consistent this-character-is-this-height info)

Aligned Cont. WF/FOC - 20 feet (TFWiki/Fandom. Video game info screens you godsend, kiss me sweetly)

Aligned Cont. TFP/RID15 - 21 feet (These two designs are canonically identical, like in ALC canon, Bee has not changed visually at all...Ok, yes I got this number from fandom and they give literally no source for where they got these numbers. But, I can fully believe these are accurate. Just by looking at these characters on the show I can verify these numbers in my mind. Here, let's Compare.

This is Sam compared to Bee from one of the BV movies, I'm too lazy to check which one. Sam is average size for a human and we know Bee is 16 feet tall in the first three movies. Checks out. Let's now look at a TFP Character who is also 16 feet tall.

Jack is average size for a human, and the size difference is about the same. Can you see why I can't question the Aligned heights, even if they don't have a source??!?! They specifically made this universe to be full of freakishly tall robots for some fucking reason.)

Not Pictured: Aligned Cont. Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots Academy Bumblebee - 21 Feet tall. Look, did you want to see all 5 versions of ALC Bee? No, you don't. They're all the same height anyway; the back row would have just been a wall of redundant yellow. 5 different fucking art styles in one universe, why is that one my favourite.

Here's the front row and the back row separated into their own jpgs. I know it's kind of hard to tell which Bumblebee is which when they're all together.

[deesseshesca]

PAC : What's the wildest sexual experience bound to happen with your s/o ?

Is not because I ain’t takin that I can’t keep up with love

Good afternoon, pretty souls, today we are diving into the sexual destiny of your relationship.

FLASH SALE 

For the next 2 weeks all readings on my ko-fi is 20$, only 

Choose the image that’s speak to you and allow yourself to soak ONLY what’s reasoning with YOUR SITUATION 

Rules and Disclaimer 

I am the type of tarot reader to say as it is. Nothing is sugar coated but everything is sent with good intention. If you are not ready to face some truth, you should vagabond somewhere else. 

MINOR DON'T INTERACT WITH THIS POST 

MINOR DON’T READ THIS POST 

Basing myself on the legal age in my country which is 18

 

PILE 1 

4 cups, Strength, High priestess, Knight wands 

WILD SEX : INVOLVING A THIRD PARTY 

Prostitute, stripper or an unicorn 

Check in : You guys have a very wet cooch. No need for a lube. If you are a man , you know how to move your hips smoothly…hihihi

I’m sorry babe but you’re man/woman ain’t shit. I see you wearing sexy good quality lingerie walking around lather in lotion and perfume and he/she keeping its gaze on the TV. While you are waiting to get into some hardcore sex. If you are a man , I see you walking around in gray sweats, fresh cut and some good cologne. Some of y’all even go as to applying some lip balm but nothing she/he is more preoccupied with their phone. The worst you deserve is all the hype after all the effort you put in. Back then yall used to go round and round, night until sunrise. Now we are getting out off in the shower. He/she can’t bring himself to care. While there are people out here that would kill to be in his/her place. From their perspective y’all need to add another person to bring back the spark. Hey, I am the last one to judge sexual needs but their intention ain’t it. They want the 3 of y’all in a car,fucking. How is that even going to work ? The car is already small for 2 people. The reality is that they don’ t want look at u or even deal with you while y’all fucking. And that right there tells me all I need to know. They don’t care for you any more but they keep you around to satisfy their sick ego. Sorry to announce, he is never going to ask your hand in marriage. If it is a women, she will never accept a long term commitment with you. 

💌Don't listen to one word coming out of their mouth. You got me feeling all the way hot a front of my screen. So damm sure you are the Bomb.com. Anyway if you want more insight regarding you next sexual encounter, you can always message me especially now since my readings are on sale.

Much love, Shesca

FLASH SALE 

For the next 2 weeks all readings on my ko-fi is 20$, only (Link at the end of the post )

PILE 2 

5 cups, 6 cups (reverse), ace wands, 9 pentacles (reverse), ‘’I was hidden my true feeling because I was scared of commitment and did not want to lose my freedom !’’

SHE (FEMININE ENERGY), HIM (MASCULINE) 

Before you go further, know that it doesn't matter about the gender but which energy you embody. Because there is a clear difference in this one. 

You guys already had crazy sex. I don’t even think it is about the kinky level but is more about the overwhelming emotions shared in that intimate moment. I’m talking about your most recent ex, some of y’all (especially women) it was your first relationship. Let’s start from the beginning. He used to send you cheeky pics of him after a workout or a shower. Y’all are not better, out here sending lingerie haul and voice memo. Knowing damn well that your moan drives him crazy. I can’t exactly see how we got into the fucking scenario  but I can see bits of the whole thing. He grabbed your waist and pushed you on the bed. Leaving hickeys on your neck and breast. While nibbling kisses on your stomach and leaving love bites on thighs. Before latching on your clit like a man on a mission. When he finally let himself inside, you were a whimpering mess. I keep hearing: ‘’ You can take it princess. Everything is fine. You know I’m in love with you, right ? You are so gorgeous’’. Plus he gets easily aroused around you. Some of y’all had a place that you were banned from kissing before going. I see 2 clear incidents. One before meeting your parents, y’all make out a bit in his car then y’all have to wait because of boner. Y’all at school just after one kiss, he has to go in the bathroom, to calm down. Because of you he started wearing sweat, yes to please you but most importantly because is his best bet to hide the constant boner he has around u. As of now he still gets off from flashbacks of y’all shared moments. Believe me Pile 2, he did not move on. He let you go because he wanted you to pursue your dream. He doesn't want to be the reason to stop you from  your potential. I’m sensing that y’all work or study abroad at the moment. That’s why he prefers a sad break up with much love rather than a messy one where he might do the ultimate act that he despise : hurting you. 

BONUS

WILD SEX: LOVING DOM

 8 wands, High priestess, Page wands, Magician, ‘’I know you are my soulmate babe ! Our bond is magnetic ! I’m seeing all the signs’’, ‘’ I didn't feel like I was on your level ! You are a boss ! I’m very insecure ! ‘’ 

Lucky you, your guides allow me further more access to your energy. I never getting deeper than I am allowed without having a signal. You guys are going to meet again. Is inevitable. Some he might text you drunk, after his friend tries to keep his phone away from you the whole night. They are love sick. The next first touch,I see an extremely tight hug in the middle of the airport. Him coming with red roses to you. You are jumping in his arms. I see y’all going crazy with each other not even being able to wait to make it in your bedroom. Is not just lust, it is the most intimate discord that your soul has with each other. When y’all having sex. If he did text you and promise you a surprise: is a small vibrator. See clothe flying, your ass up face down on the floor while his pounding into you,  in the kitchen. Some of y’all are not even going to make it until the kitchen, losing your mind in the door hallway. Y’all are going rounds after rounds. The last scene, you are on the bed, missionary position, crying from overstimulation. He is usually assertive but now he’s like an emotional dom. Thrusting in you hard and slow while opening up: ‘’ Don’t you dare cum. You know how much I missed you. You know how hard it was for me … to let… u … go’’

You are barely able to formulate an answer: ‘’ I know, I know, I’m sorry baby …’’ Completely dizzy on orgasm . 

💌Girl, how can you handle all this intensity ! Anyway lucky you, if you need further confirmation regarding your situation, you can always message especially now that my reading are on sale.

FLASH SALE 

For the next 2 weeks all readings on my ko-fi is 20$, only (Link at the end of the post)

PILE 3 

8 cups (reverse), 9 cups, 7 cups (reverse), World, ‘’ I want a second chance ! Not being with you is killing me !’’, ‘’ Telepathic Communication’’ 

WILD SEX : WORSHIPING KINK 

I’M USING ''SHE'' BECAUSE I’M SENSING HEAVY PREGNANCY ENERGY

Check in : Good afternoon to my plus size babes. Some of y’all or only pregnant while others of both. You have a big butt. The stretch marks and cellulite and you love it. You love yourself the way that you are. With the rolls and belly. I am obese with your energy. 

You know who else is obese? Your boo thing. Pile 3, y’all are mean. You just block your fiancé/husband after sending a risky picture. Just because. On a random Thursday morning. He is out here losing his mind in the break room. Trying to understand what he has done to deserve that treatment. Did he forget to put the garbage out ?, did he not walk the pet?, did he forgot to start that diy project in the garden ? or did he forget to get your coffee this morning ? What’s going on ? He  is losing it in the middle of a team meeting. While you are smirking, living the dream life. Y’all look like a regular couple, kids, pets, house in the suburb with 2 garage doors. And your dream car brought by yours truly. They don’t know how freaky y’all are. Sex toys, sexting, latex lingerie and fucking in the walk in closet he build. If necessary, y’all don’t mind calling the babysitter so you can lose it in a hotel room. But y’all favorite experience is a good old missionary. He’s caressing your legs, while looking deep in your soul with nothing but love. While you are forever grateful to have found the one that cherishes you forever

💌Y'all better teach me your ways. You got that on Amazon, Target maybe it was a private sale. Anyway congrats on your pregnancy/engagement and keep the good energy, if you want to dive more into upcoming events regarding your life, you can always message. Especially now that my reading are on sale.

FLASH SALE 

For the next 2 weeks all readings on my ko-fi is 20$, only (Link at the end of post)

[ineffably-smote]

Macbeth, David Tennant - A very subjective, spoiler and emotion filled review

Just walking out of seing Macbeth at the Donmar and I have Feelings. Unsurprisingly, I primarily went to see it because David Tennant was in it. I love the play, big fan of Shakespeare but the trip to London was most certainly motivated by a very specific actor. Hence the highly subjective review. Fortunately, I also happen to quite like Macbeth. We studied it at school, and it holds a special place in my heart (back then, Hamlet was my favourite Shakespeare play but honestly, after tonight, I’m not so sure anymore. Anyway, I digress). It was my first time actually seeing an actor I’m a fan of in real life, so obviously the entire time my brain was just going oh my god that’s David Tennant oh my god that’s David Tennant like I actually could not comprehend it. The man I’ve spent hours staring at on a little screen is suddenly real, and right there. So yeah, that took me a hot second.

(Excuse the piss poor image quality, I took this with shaky hands without looking or bothering to focus the cam)

The Staging

Still starstruck and a bit dazed, one thing really really stood out to me: the staging. It was so, so good. I knew it was going to be minimal from the pictures I had seen, and it was, but it was also so insanely real. There were barely any decorations, and half the cast and the musicians were hidden behind a glass screen doing background noises and gestures. From where I was sitting I could not see them much, but could definitely hear them which added to the overall atmosphere. The stage was also really tiny, and the play benefitted incredibly from it. All the action was happening in one tight space that had been put to use incredibly well, particularly the banquet scene but I’ll come back to that because it deserves its own paragraph.

The way they chose to do the soliloquies was so fitting - all the actors start to move in slow motion - everyone else slowing down and just the characters speaking moving was so good, it made sense.

The Headphones

I’m a bit mixed about the headphones. They were amazing for the vibes, we could hear whispers and they really heightened some of the emotional speeches in the play - because when someone is struggling with guilt and trauma it makes sense for them to be mumbling rather than yelling. So that was really great. However, especially in the scenes where the actors where yelling/ loud I preferred to take them off a bit cause it felt more real that way. I’m so used to hearing actors voice on recordings, it does hit different when you can hear them for real. But, as I said, personal preference and that’s what’s nice, you can take them on and off as much as you want.

Famous Speeches

There were three speeches I was quite interested to see how they were going to be adapted - scorpions and dagger for Macbeth, and out damned spot for Lady Macbeth. These are classic, everyone knows the words, the plot but they managed to make it feel real in a new and touching way. I think here the headphones were quite helpful because they allowed the actors to actually whisper parts of those lines. They were so subtle, so embedded in the text they felt so natural which imbued them with all their power. I saw in a review Cush Jumbo’s out damned spot speech be described as “haunting”, and I wholeheartedly agree.

The Macbeths

I didn’t like Macbeth, the character, very much when I first learnt about him. His actions didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t quite comprehend in my 21st century little brain how he went from I’m super loyal to the King to I will freely murder children for shits and giggles. But now, now I understand. It makes sense, it’s believable. And that’s a mix of the acting choices and teh overall setting. Like the opening scene, instead of presenting Macbeth as a glorious hero, he is presented to us as a traumatised hero. He spends the first few minutes washing the blood of his clothes, haunted by noises from the battlefield. And that sets the themes quite nicely, not ambition, as Tennant specified in an interview, but guilt and trauma. There are so many ways to interpret Shakespeare, that’s the beauty of it, and I think this version of Macbeth just resonated more with me (maybe because ambition I don’t quite understand but guilt I am intimately familiar with? Or maybe because it was David Tennant? I don’t know, probably a bit of both). Tennant delivers a convincing Macbeth. Yes, you can see his ambitions play out, but also his fears, his guilt, and that makes him into a complex three dimensional character that you want to understand.

And I absolutely loved this version of Lady Macbeth. Not just a powerful woman who bullies her husband into become an evil murderer (because again, here we can see traces of that in Macbeth from the start), but an ambition woman in love, with her husband, with power, and not quite healed from the trauma of loosing her child. Again another review said she is more of an enabler than a manipulator and I quite liked that description.

My Favourite Scenes

God the banquet scene. The one with the ghost of Banquo. An absolute masterpiece. I did not expect that scene to hit that hard. It was raw, it was powerful and even if Tennant was facing away from where I was sitting, even without seeing his face I could feel the emotion, the whole audience could. In a video essay on Tennant, @davidtennantgenderenvy highlighted how in almost every role he played, there is it is the classic Tennant breakdown moment, and breakdown moment it was. Not with tears, not as expressive as he sometime is but just enough for a King trying to hold it together but fear and guilt breaking through. I was absolutely overwhelmed and it was beautiful. The set up for the scene was amazing too - there were ceilidh, celebrations, I adored the contrast between these fast pasted scenes and guilt ridden whispers of the couple. And the way everyone sat down around the stage and suddenly it looked like a banquet table ? Just perfect.

Another really cool moment, less on the emotional side but more on the visuals was when Macbeth goes to get the second prophecy from the witches. Almost the whole cast is there, running around, moving, almost dancing and it gives the whole thing a mystical atmosphere. There’s smoke, Macbeth falls, is carried up high Jesus style, cowers, rises, it’s so busy and insane all the while there are whispers and whispers in the headphones - it manages perfectly to feel like a mystical moment.

Descent Into Madness & other cool things

For Macbeth, having the kid running around scene after scene, haunting him, and then scene where he kills him - GOD it’s powerful. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness was so well characterised, I also loved the glass on the background that locked away some of the cast. Just wild. The actor that played Malcom actor was also really cool, and Macduff and Ross, big fan of all of them.

Overall I am overwhelmed with emotions. Tennant is truly one of my favourite actors - from Good Omens to Staged, Jessica Jones, even Harry Potter but also Mad to be Normal, Nativty, There She Goes, Around the World in 80 days, Doctor Who (god I’ve started a list, never start lists cause you’ll forget people) and so, so many more, I was truly beside myself with excitement and expectations for tonight. And it did not disappoint. I do not want to leave the theatre and I pray they release a recording of this because I want it imprinted on my soul.

(Side note: I don’t know how to use tumblr very well, for some reason whenever I try to reply to ppl it posts from my other blog? Anyway @raquel-and-sergio is in fact me)

[opinions-about-tiaras]

So apparently the Rohirrim-focused Lord of the Rings animated movie is actually happening. I have to say that after it kept getting pushed back and there was no hype, no trailers, no nothing, I thought it wouldn't. But no, they showed like twenty minutes at Annecy and apparently it looks pretty good? They released no trailer to the public, but they did release some promo images, and I like what I'm seeing:

Image quality is kind of shitty, but that sure is the Golden Hall, and I do like a redhead. Very Princess Mononoke vibe from the whole thing.

So this is honestly a pretty good idea. I have zero interest in watching old man Viggo Mortensen track Gollum for four hours. That is... that does nothing for me. But the saga of Helm Hammerhand is a great hook; it's in familiar, iconic locations, but the events themselves are sketched out so roughly you can do an awful lot with them. There's political machinations, betrayal, war, conquest, pride, envy, some of that good shit that Tolkien really excelled at. Helm's daughter didn't even have a name in the appendices, which means that you're free to flesh her out just about any way you like.

But anyway! This got me to thinking about Helm and his reign.

So I hauled my books down off the shelf and read up on ol' Helm, and... okay, wow. I was honestly sort of surprised by what I found there. I remembered this, but hadn't really thought about it before.

Helm, the storied king of Rohan, second in renown only to Theoden and Eorl himself, is sort of... he isn't great. He sort of sucks, actually, I think.

You know what, I'm just going to excerpt the whole thing, which isn't that long:

Of the Kings of the Mark between Eorl and Theoden most is said of Helm Hammerhand. There was at that time a man named Freca, who claimed descent from King Freawine, though he had, men said, much Dunlendish blood, and was dark-haired. He grew rich and powerful, having wide lands on either side of the Adorn. Near its source he made himself a stronghold and paid little heed to the king. Helm mistrusted him, but called him to his councils; and he came when it pleased him. To one of these councils Freca rode with many men, and he asked the hand of Helm's daughter for his son Wulf. But Helm said: "You have grown big since you were last here; but it is mostly fat, I guess"; and men laughed at that, for Freca was wide in the belt. Then Freca fell into a rage and reviled the king, and said this at the last: "Old kings that refuse a proffered staff may fall on their knees." Helm answered: "Come! The marriage of your son is a trifle. Let Helm and Freca deal with it later. Meanwhile the king and his council have matters of moment to consider." When the council was over, Helm stood up and laid his great hand on Freca's shoulder, saying: "The king does not permit brawls in his house, but men are freer outside"; and he forced Freca to walk before him out from Edoras into the field. To Freca's men that came up he said: "Be off! We need no hearers. We are going to speak of a private matter alone. Go and talk to my men!" And they looked and saw that the king's men and his friends far outnumbered them, and they drew back. "Now, Dunlending," said the king, "you have only Helm to deal with, alone and unarmed. But you have said much already, and it is my turn to speak. Freca, your folly has grown with your belly. You talk of a staff! If Helm dislikes a crooked staff that is thrust on him, he breaks it. So!" With that he smote Freca such a blow with his fist that he fell back stunned, and died soon after. Helm then proclaimed Freca's son and near kin the king's enemies; and they fled, for at once Helm sent many men riding to the west marches.

It's been some years since I read this, and I have to say that... well.. Helm doesn't come off as the wronged party here, or as a just, evenhanded king. He comes off as a murderous asshole.

Freca is clearly an overmighty vassal, not doing proper homage to his king. This is a good reason for said king to mistrust him, but so far he hasn't done anything actually wrong.

Freca wants to make a match between his son and a daughter of the royal house. As someone with royal blood himself, a cousin to the king (Freawine is Helm's great-grandfather; Freca is probably Helm's third or second cousin) who has a mighty fief, Wulf would be an acceptable match. Helm, however, doesn't just demur, refusing the match; he responds to the offer with an insult. That's his right as king, of course, but it's still a dick move.

Freca responds by getting angry and "reviling" his king, and then issuing a veiled threat; saying in essence that Helm needs him more than he needs Helm. This crosses a number of lines; even when the king insults you in front of his entire court, you really can't do that back to him. Helm would be entitled to demand an apology, or banish Freca from his councils, or any one of a number of other appropriate proportionate punishments.

Instead Helm escalates about as far as you can escalate. First he forces Freca from his hall, probably so he can't be said to have slain a guest beneath his roof. (The Rohirrim are based on Anglo-Saxon cultural traditions and this had a strong, though not unbreakable, concept of guest right. I'm making a bit of an assumption there, tho.) Then he essentially says that in his eyes, Freca isn't one of the Eorlingas, one of the Men of the Mark; he is a Dunlending, which of course places him outside of the king's protection.

Then Helm simply straight-up murders him with his bare hands in cold blood.

Following this murder, of which there is not even a pretense of it being an act of a king dispensing justice rather than that of a thug murdering a rival, Helm puts the cherry on the sundae by dispossessing Helm's heirs and family and driving them from their homes by force.

And I mean. Fuck me. This is classic "how blood feuds start" shit. If I were Wulf I abso-fucking-lutely would have raised an army and come back and conquered the shit out of Rohan. The king murdered your dad! In front of everyone!

Helm Hammerhand is the proximate cause of his own kingdom's near-demise.

[doodlemancy]

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Video game console and case design

Today's hyperfixation is on the PLAYSTATION 5. Because I want one, but I really shouldn't buy one, so I am just looking up everything to do with games consoles and burning my brain out.

I used to be a proper xbox player, until I got my PC, then I never really touched by xbox again. I got a PS4 to play Persona 5 and since then it's been a blu ray player for my Adventure Time boxset, not much else. But the current gen - PS5, Series X - is arguably more powerful than my gaming PC, and I still have a lot of friends stuck on PS5, so I am considering investing in a unit.

Anyway is it me or did they really shit the bed with design in this generation?

Look at these chunky fuckers! They do not fit smoothly under your television at all. There is no detail or decoration breaking up their unnecessarily large faces, which makes them look bland and ugly. They look like they're made of cheap plastic, with the two controllers being the highest quality thing about them. I can attest the xbox controller is unbeatable, but playstation really made their shot this generation. A shame I can never get used to the dualshock joystick positioning.

The Series S and the PS5 Slim are almost NO improvement on the base designs.

For some reason they made the Series S look like a speaker???

The new PS5 slim FINALLY has a line across that massive faceplate, but the half matte half glossed finish is not doing it any favours. I think it would've looked much better if, for example, the matte and gloss plates were different colours. Like black and white! It also has an even MORE out of place disc drive, which I think is part of Sony's agenda to go digital only, and the two tiny "feet" for its horizontal positioning are pathetic! Personally I like this more than the original but not significantly, disappointing since I was really looking forward to it.

I want you to compare these nasties to the previous generation - the PS4 and the XBOX One.

....Now, what's hilarious about this image is the consoles look ALMOST IDENTICAL from this angle. And, I guess, that would be why Sony and Microsoft decided to make such a departure with the space heater PS5 and the fridge Series X.

But they both look very premium and advanced, and they fit very nicely in your living room.

The companies tried to look a bit more distinguished in their followup versions in the previous gen too. The white PS4 Pro looks a lot closer to PS5 with its quirkiness, but without the atrocious shiny plastic. Sony tended to add or remove a layer whenever they altered the PS4, I wonder what they would look like all stacked on top of each other.

It's not just the games console designs that suffer - Look at the game cases! I know that the companies want to incentivise you to go digital, but Xbox Series X cases are just awful.

So if you're confused - You should be!!! Microsoft have two kinds of case for the Series X. One of them is the EXACT SAME CASE as Xbox One, but with Series X printed on the front. The second newer version foregoes the sexy Xbox logo entirely and just has Xbox Series X printed in some default font. Awful awful awful.

Playstation is doing better, but barely.

They are reusing PS4 cases with a different print on them. It doesn't look as horrible as Xbox's, and it at least has a different colour on the logo, but damn, the jump between PS3/360 and PS4/One was really impressive, and now they've stopped bothering because they want everyone to go digital. If your game cases look like shit, why bother with physical?

I want to contrast with physical media kings Nintendo, who did an outstanding job in 2017 with designing the case for the Nintendo Switch.

These bad boys are mine. They're super thin, easy to stack, decent quality, and F U N. The red colour pallette makes them pop out. You can see one from across the store and go, "damn, that's a Nintendo Switch game".

I just want a thousand of them.

I would say a disadvantage, especially compared to the Gamecube games next to them, and even compared to 3ds, is that you can't tell what game you're looking at without going right up to them. These cases are TOO uniform, and really tiny, so i have to triple check I am picking up Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and not Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Meanwhile you can tell exactly what Gamecube games I have by colour pallette alone. Like, you can instantly tell that's Windwaker.

The switch in general is a very fun looking games console, much nicer looking than its predecessor the Wii U, though I'm not sure how I feel about the white of the OLED. But every time I see a Switch Lite in stores, even though I know it's worse than my Switch, I want to buy one. It just looks so FUUUUUN.

And finally a special mention to the 3DS and its games case. The console itself was pretty stylish, if... rudimentary for its release period, but the games cases are high quality and almost make me want to have 3ds games just so I can have the cases.

[madelynhimegami]

To my knowledge, you like Puyo Puyo! But what do you enjoy most about it?

Honestly, it might be easier to explain my intoduction to the series. Ideally we'll get there in the end either way. You ever seen one of those "What I Played/What I Expected/What I Got" memes? My story is pretty much like one of those.

I don't remember when I started learning bits and pieces about it, or when Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine went from being itself to a Puyo game in a trenchcoat in my mind. But by mid 2017 I knew the aforementioned (I called the CPZ boss in Sonic Mania a Puyo boss on twitter when I played it), recognized Carbuncle, recognized Draco Centauros (thanks to a friend who is still a big fan of her), and had heard that there was some sort of story to it, but didn't know a lot of details.

Then in September of 2017, a friend of mine mentioned that he had been playing Puyo Puyo Tetris lately as his go-to "pick up and play" sort of game. I looked it up in the eshop, saw it was cheap, and thought a pick-up-and-play game was what I needed and bought it. Not that I knew shit about playing Puyo well, but I at least had some basic competency at Tetris to balance things out.

And hey, at least the story mode would be a good way to learn! So I dove in to the story and started playing.

I was expecting the story to be inconseqential to my enjoyment of the game. Something either generic or corny, with characters that ranged from "tolerable" to "painful anime cliche."

The thing that knocked me on my ass almost immediately was that the writing was actually funny, made better with the English cast's fantastic delivery.

Those are all from just the story's first chapter! The first one is from the prologue! The other two are from the third scene (couting dialogue before and after a round of gameplay together as one scene)! And it kept going!

For the record, even though I was picky with what to include, and stitching lines from the same scenes together, I still had almost fifty (50) funny moments I wanted to drop out of context, in a game with a rough total of two hours of story material collected to write this post. And then I had to narrow it down further just so I wouldn't hit the image limit too quickly.

Was it a little corny and awkward at points? Sure. Several voice actors had to grow into their roles. Plus, the impression I always had from the script-- an impression that's only gotten stronger the more I learn about this series and then come back to this game-- is that someone on the development team was not expecting this to be all that successful overseas. And not for no reason, since Puyo Puyo's tried to get its foot in the door in the west several times by this point. But the end result of this lack of faith was a localization team that tried very hard to make this game stand on its own merits with as little understanding of the games that had come before as possible. Which, honestly I think they did a pretty dang good job of! Especially since it didn't shy away from the hard-hitting stuff when it came. Which I'm going to intentionally leave even further out of context so as to not give away all of it.

There was also this line here, which was what first clued me in that the writing's quality wasn't an accident, that the writer is actually thinking all this stuff through:

Fun fact, the only people you will see in your dreams are people you have seen while you're awake. The parts of the brain responsible for dreams can't make up new faces, or throw together composites of preeviously-known ones. Hence, this question, which does in fact get answered in the next scene, in a way that made me go, "Ohhh, that's really smart, actually!"

But yeah. That was just this one game. It took me a few more years before I tried other games that had been translated, fan or otherwise, but the more I've played and the more I learn about these characters and their worlds, the more engrossed I get. It's a hyperfixation now. It seems like there's always something new I'm learning about it, but it's not overwhelming, it just feels like I'm knowing a good friend better and better. The modern artstyle is deceptively simple and very endearing, and so many of the characters are interesting and fun. And the current writer is just so galaxy-brained, I'm not even kidding.

The characters in the Puyo Puyo series are all morons. They're all crazy. But at the end of the day, they care about each other, no matter how little they want to admit it. And they all have their own theming to the magic they use. It's a lot of fun. From your standard-fair RPG spells, to cosmic forces, to math terms,

I can't recommend this series enough, no matter what your skill level with puzzle games is! There's something in it for everyone.

Unless you're looking for genuinely evil characters, I guess. Like, there are characters that are intimidating or sinister or threatening, but almost none of them are actually evil. Fraid the closest to that this series has is a(n as-of-now) gender-ambiguous Elon Musk with better hair in the Japan-excusive gacha game.

Further reading from the author (that isn't already on their tumblr):

[1]

[2]

[3]

[spagheddiesquash]

so today i was in the mw oc server talking abt some stuff i noticed about jawbone (+ some other theory stuff as well!!)

so first of all. two kind of obvious details:

he is green (“yeah no shit sherlock” i hear u thinking. trust me there is a reason why im pointing it out)

his pupils are triangular. nobody else in the show so far has had triangular pupils. (well. i mean commander tezzoree’s eye has a triangular pupil but she hasnt made an appearance in any episodes yet and i doubt the two characters are connected)

just making this point known for now. we will hold this thought for later in the post.

another thing: so in the ref sheet of him posted to the mw tumblr back in september i believe(?), his name is written as “jawbone (a.k.a. scythelord)”

you know where a character by the name of “scythelord” has shown up already?

on a wanted poster, thats where!! he has a bounty on his head!!!

which means that tyneen and her crew are probably after him, which probably explains why they’re at the thicc chicc casino. (how do i know jawbone is there? because ricket is there, which i know because he is shown interacting with both shrike and tyneen, who we know are both there)

now. remember that thought from earlier that i told you to hold until later? now is the time to bring it back.

ok so. we already know that colors and shapes each have their own respective significance in this show, and colors and shapes are chosen deliberately.

with that said:

correlation?? maybe???

ADDITIONALLY:

this further cements my belief that ep 4 will have a LOT in it regarding the cataclysm or some other related thing. why?

(2nd pic comes from the VA application doc. unfortunately i dont have any better quality pics of it)

despite the poor image quality in the second pic, you can still tell that both of these characters have some sort of magenta (or pink i guess?) type of theming going on in their designs.

also if we look at campions, like, the flower

you can see where im trying to go with this idea.

i did a whole bunch of examining colors today in light of this, actually!!! quick fun fact for those unaware: RGB and CMYK invert into each other.

and then after i made that image i started sorting things into what colors they are. (white and black have been omitted from the screenshots simply because there doesnt seem to be any significant things tied to them)

obviously this list is probably incomplete and i will continue to add to it, of course.

(my main inspo for even thinking about CMYK for theories in the first place was @toastedclownery btw!! GO CHECK OUT THEIR BLOG IF U HAVENT ALREADY THERES SO MANY COOL THEORY POSTS THERE!!)

one final not-as-relevant theory that’s really more of a prediction: i really think joel vargskelethor is gonna be in this upcoming episode, whether it’s in whole or in part. i mean, he already voiced the duende in ep 3, so it’s not like its impossible or anything. also “scythelord” happens to be the name of joel’s band as well (which you should DEFINITELY check out if ur into metal!!!!! absolutely amazing stuff) OH OH AAAAAAND

id like to direct your attention to the title of this update, which is “the bone zone,” which i believe to be a skeleton metal reference.

also jawbone/scythelord has the little sweden viking helmet thing on the wanted poster. AND HES GREEN! LIKE FREN!!

for those who dont know, this is fren (also known as vargfren i think)

so yeah. these evidence pieces combined with the fact that zeurel has made dozens of “vargskelethor animated” videos (which is how i got into zeurel’s animations in the first place actually!!) are what led me to make this prediction.

anyway, i hope you guys liked this theory post. it’s not an update on the web, but i figured id try doing something new. though, if youd like to see the web, here’s a view of the full thing currently:

but yea thats all i really had. ill reblog with some additions if i think of anything else. bye for now!!! :^D

[beesmygod]

What's your take, if you have one, on the cut moon presence boss on the lake of mud?

as always, i dont know. i thought i didn't really have much to say but the more i typed the more i Realized. but i still don't really know lol. this is really image heavy, which made it long, so most of it is under a readmore.

e: hello bea from the future here. hey. this gave me so much to chew on for the next section in a shockingly positive direction. thank you so much for getting this ball rolling

it half-relevant but there's also some kind of. intermediary thing. i think it's the same shape as the used moon presence but its blue. for some reason.

no animations on this one, so it was cut early. different "faces" as well. or the low quality of the cut one doesn't maintain the "features" as accurately.

oh what the fuck. hold on. look at the head of the "lake of mud" (LOM from now on) moon presence compared to the others

ive made posts in the past about anti-clockwise and clockwise metamorphosis runes possibly referencing the in-game phenomenon of creature's heads being turned in odd directions. loran silverbeasts and the crawler enemies (ostensibly both loran/nightmare frontier residents) have their "heads" turned clockwise, like above. slime scholar and probably other things i cant remember turn anti-clockwise.

the crawlers are....i mean they're gross. but also uncanny. there's SOMETHING going on here, right? god only know what though. they are also known for the grim sight you can take in when they rear up to Get You: their...stomach?? is rife with messengers. being consumed? maybe? it evokes the image of the artbook moon presence, who is swarming with messengers in the same area of its body.

anyway back to the little creep.

in the center of its chest there's this bizarre unknown thing. if you peel away the majority of its body it looks like this. a grey blob with tentacles. as far as i can tell it doesn't have bones to animate, unlike the rest of the model. the entire model has unfinished textures so its hard to tell what it's supposed to be.

judging from the blisters on the creature, it is CURSED. the orphan of kos' placenta weapon (which is, i think, just a huge cursed blood gem?) has these same blisters, marking it as a fellow "cursed" great one infant (? probably? look at what a runt it is).

curses are a complex aspect of the bloodborne universe. sometimes they can be identified by the appearance of "sickly spots", but other times, curses are color-coded with purple (or red, but that seems strictly related to cainhurst nope i forgot foetid offering can give enemies red rally auras and change their drop tables to include cursed blood gems. much to think about) auras and magic.

a curse is exactly what you expect it to be: great power at a high price (like a huge weapon bonus but your health depletes per second), but the source is arcane. the cursed and defiled pthumerian chalice states, "curses are caused by inciting the anger of the Great Ones, and used to hex others." winter lanterns, the enemies with the heads made out of messengers fused into a brain shape, are the only enemy that consistently only drops cursed blood gems (and, evidently, blood gems only form in the dungeon or nears its entrances). given the pattern of these spots appearing on bosses, it can be reasonably assumed that winter lanterns are the result of a great one's wrath. what the fuck! i dont know what that means!

we're not going to bother going into the nuances of rites and data-mining because holy shit. this garbage is needlessly complex for how half-baked its implementation is. but cursed offerings create cursed dungeons to explore with cursed blood gems to collect. cursed and defiled pthumeru is differentiated by the purple (!) skull vapor overflowing from the chalice. cursed rites required cursed materials: bastards of loran are the mummified bodies of infants who died midway through their transformation into a silverbeast. with the clockwise heads.

okay. that wrapped us up back around to the beginning. i think the lake of mud arena was intended to be in loran, canonically. it has a bunch of different variations that probably would have been used for root dungeon generation rather than canon usage. a lake of dried up water fits perfectly with the terrifyingly arid climate of loran (which generates the blue bolts in the atmosphere). at one point, it seems that several chalice dungeons would have had secret 4th layers (they're still in the game and can be accessed with some light hex editing); i propose that this is where that fight would have taken place. the previous layer would have been the cut great one beast. and layer 2 would have been the loran darkbeast. layer 1 would have been the abhorrent beast instead of the baffling loran silverbeast boss fight that's completely inexplicable otherwise. isz has similar pacing issues. oh shit, i wonder if that's what that blue one is supposed to be. fuuuuccckkk.

the ailing loran chalice tells the player that "some have made the dreaded extrapolation that Yharnam may be next" but the game is telling YOU the player that YOU are supposed to look at loran and extrapolate the fate of yharnam from it. loran was also using old blood as medicine and became a place overrun with beasts and abandoned by god. the loran moon presence is bloated with curses and lives in a place devoid of water, a horrible thing for a great one given how much they love to yammer about lakes and the sea. the area outside of the LOM arena is, amazingly, the exact same facade as the entrance to mergo's loft. there's a stained glass window above the door that's shared between locations, yet again linking loran, the nightmare frontier, and the nightmare of mensis together. and, really, the hunter's nightmare, since the LOM arena was very, VERY similar to the orphan's ocean with identical architecture.

holy shit i guess this is what im working on tonight. and now i see how micolash fits into the entire timeline. neat

[iruiion]

rating burger pics

they look like theyre lining up to square dance & pair up. theyre like embarrassed preteens in middle school. very cute but i cant help but feel sympathetic its literally SO embarrassing to hold burger hands with some random sweaty nerd burger -_- 7/10

despite belonging to separate tables they find a way to stick together..... these two can face the end of the world together. i bet they gossip and shittalk all the time 9/10

has dirt all over him... he's been through the trenches of life (living as a mcdonalds stool). this is obviously an image taken to showcase items for sale (ie. like off of ebay or something) which is disgusting... trafficking of burger isnt the way of life. ashamed of having been taken advantage of, he refuses eye contact... heartbreaking. stay strong and godspeed, brother. 3/10

oh my Goddddd literally he looks so good here. The gloss.... the VELVETTT omggg..... the ass pic. Looks good at every angle ❤️❤️❤️ hes going out tonight doesnt he look so pretty. hope he scores a hot burger tonight 10/10

The way theyre lined up against the wall + the vintage quality of this image makes me nervous. Somebody is about to pull bags over thejr heads and execute them via firing squad. They were political activists, advocating for the freedom of burgers from their stools.... but now, they are martyrs. 2/10

What do they see? Twin grains of sand in the desert, a pair of trees in the vast forests of appalacia, partners in a dazzling binary star system. One day, one of them will supernovae, and the other will have no choice but to be shredded apart; their mass fed to the newborn black hole. For a moment that lasts both a blink of an eye & an eternity, two burgers become self aware in their place in the cycle of rebirth, watching sunrises and sunsets until they inevitably are seperated. 4/10 Can you guys ponder this shit somewhere else im trying to eat my happy meal.

NOT. CUTE! these chairs migbt seem cute since its a neat stack of lil burgers, but this is actually BURGER HOMUNCULUS. scientists have have sacrificed 8 burgers PER EXPERIMENT to create unseemly beasts. The process is irreversible, and they live in permanent agony... Burger breeding and burger eugenicism has gone too far. The fucking GOP is mass producing these..so The only thing we can do for them is to go out and VOTE! What do you mean the election is over 0/10

[fictionfixations]

playing this game for the first time

IM GOING TO THROW IT CRASHED ON ME WHILE I WAS MAKING A PROFILE i KNEW I SHOULDVE SAVED 😭(I STARED AT THE SAVE BUTTON LIKE 'should i save just in case? nahh i dont need to save until im done' and then it kicked me out)

i dont think of myself as a person good at designing stuff

but i was really liking what i made it looked so pretty hjfiouweshjdWQIUAsk

it doesnt even mean that much to me im just gonna feel really depressed for awhile cause like wtf man 😭

this is the farthest i got last time i kind of hate it. the quality of stuff i do always degrades the more i repeat it so hhhhhhhhhhh it feels really nitpicky but something about the images behind the classroom just dont look right

it keeps saying connection error when trying to save

im pointing a fan directly at it cause my phone is a fucking heater hoping it fixes 😭

im gonna close and reopen the game this sucks (not the game im just getting tired of all the live2d games i play being laggy as fuck or having connection issues, its not just this game that hates me 💀) idk if the twitter button works i havent pressed it cause i tend to lag so much more the moment i click out of a game and then re-enter without closing it and re-opening

tbh i dont know anything about this. i think theres a good story (kinda depressing(???)) but i havent heard much about it

one of the first things i saw about this game tbh was the customizing a profile and i got my mind blown cause it looked so pretty i kept getting pjsk in my recommended and idk something about tatsu...???? forgor rest of name. blonde guy. where apparently in the movie he switched to a pirate outfit???? im. so confused

i feel like im being sabotaged cause im trying to play a song and then it lags and i miss and im dfaiuhdwushdajw

WHY do you do this to me 😭

i need a fan because when it overheats its literally unplayable (its not even that its hot its that it starts lagging like hell) so im just having cold air blasted into my eyes which is kinda distracting :'D

its fun though i like like the interface?? its really smooth its a little confusing with note placement but im. getting used to it

im sad i have to actually play with a fan because i really like rhythm games i wanna get into it but it keeps lagging

why do all the good games (that i wanna play) have to be on mobile and prone to crashing/lagging 😭

tbh im getting into it now that im used to it crashing its like. tears of themis. which also crashes often and lags me. which sucks cause i really enjoy the story. but then id be going through this important bit and almost finish it and then it crashes and then keeps crashing while im speeding through it trying to complete it 💀 (cough cough the trial bits suck because i keep having to re-present evidence and im just like do i look like i remember what the answer is LET ME THROUGH)

its kinda because of that that i cant play it in super long bursts though so im just gonna be here procrastinating from it for months because i dont feel like continuing to crash trying to do shit. play again. crash. stop playing.

sigh. sometimes i hate that i get more invested in stories in games by actually playing the game. because sometimes my devices dont want me to play and makes me lag like hell sadge

anyway my favorites rn are nightcord at 25:00(?) w/ the miku from that ver theres another like band rhythm game i play except the 3d models make me lag so much more. this game is much more manageable. ..like osmetimes it lags so much i literally lose all my life but like. at least i can play ?????

anyway uh ill try to play more. like. i play a lot of games but ive been neglecting the story so ive been trying to speed through them (while actually reading but like bingeing through as much story as i can before it stops me or i give up)

okay i think i can play songs now without lagging except teh moment i think about how its not lagging it starts lagging 💀 (another time is when i started singing along it started lagging. i just have bad timing man.)

i can.. kind of play expert songs. (except when i cant) except its.really overwhelming and i stop being able to read the map to where i just default to see note = tap so its ilke im kinda spamming in a sense??? and praying it works out also my brain sometimes stutters so i fuck up. this prob isnt like anything revolutionary but with flick notes if therse one flick note and at the same time a note thats not a flick note and i get confused i just act as if both are flick notes cause its not like you get penalized for flicking a non-flick note

the 3d music videos are cute

i only got a new outfit for.. person me no remember name of purple haired girl

i think you can set it to have characters who are actually singing the song but i like staring at the characters i have cause i put my favorites on the team + like my only 4 star rn?? also like kaito is there i think (im bad at names but hes one of the vocaloids is he not) because i wanted to go with like the dark sorta empty vibe

but so its so weird when a model is singing but its so clearly not the right voice lmfao

i feel like itd be fun to learn the choreography especially for like cosplay stuff??

id like the music videos more if i could play the songs while watching them without lagging really badly 😭

NOO PLEASEE DONT LAG DURING THE VIRTUAL SHOW 🙏

i crashed 😭

song: plays few notes immediately crashes

hhh i know the song but i cant remember the name

tfw your glowsticks feel like a windscreen wiper

also i just realized your view moves if you move your phone. thats cool but i cant do that because my battery drains stupidly fast if its not being charged all the time i am not joking

i dont really have an attachment to these characters yet so i cant understand how it might feel to someone really invested but this is cool 👍

oh it ended

i missed the first song unfortunately :(

i think theres another one happening in like. ..30 minutes? an hour?? shrug. idk if its the same one or something else

i know this post kinda makes it seem like im having a bad time but im having a fun time its just that when something bad happens i have more to say

anyway i like this a lot more than the other band rhythm game i play. like i mean i had a lot over there and there are some songs i really like that arent on here but i.. also wasnt reading the story for that game either i was literally just playing it because rhythm game thats it 😭 i only went through the story to skip through it cause it gave me like the stuff to pull for the gacha so um

im gonna try to pay attention this time 👍👍👍

also auto is a blessing i will never not praise auto in a game (except when it plays bad but tbh if it works then it doesnt matter. not a shade towards this game but towards hsr cause sometimes it ults on a single enemy with low health that could be killed with just basic atk. and then next wave and that ult wouldve been so useful 😭)

off topic but idk why but 3d music videos dont lag when its playing the song on auto. except when i take a screenshot wtf

or maybe its just that it lags when the phone starts heating up. which tracks. wish i could play this on pc. wonder how itd work if it did cause buttons you press are what??? (honestly i can only play 4 note songs on pc anything else my mind blanks) but it still wouldve been cool and deffo less laggy

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: The Odd Squad UK Gadget-Making Competition Video

I was originally going to make this into a longer post where I discuss Odd Squad UK more in-depth, but to keep things simple (and to avoid frying my brain), I'm going to keep this and another post separated. They will be linked, though, so keep an eye out for an edit and a reblog in the coming months.

We got a first taste of OSUK a little over a week ago, and with it came quite a few things to dissect. Because Season 2 can't be the only season that gets something UK-exclusive that never made its way to the States and never will. Curl up, try to cry, cry anyway.

Join me below the break as I make a Thanksgiving feast out of mere crumbs. Or try to, anyway.

Those of you who have been in the loop might have seen the BTS photos of the UK Headquarters on Instagram. This is what I can safely assume is the bullpen, going by the seal, the desk on the right with some kind of a green form, and...well I mean fuckin' look at it.

As you can see, it's an incredibly stark difference from the Headquarters seen in the past three seasons, though this one looks similar to S1 and S2's, for, y'know, obvious reasons. It actually looks more like something you'd see in some kind of a government building, like your local city hall or the DMV, than anything else.

There's not even any sliding doors either! Which is...well, I mean I watched Season 3, this surprises me next to none.

Take it all in...take it in...

...You took it in? Goood, goooooood. Moving on.

"NOT SO ANDROGYNOUS NOW IS SHE. HAPPY PRIDE MONTH, BITCHES."

-- The CBBC, probably, maybe

Anyway, this is our first look at a living, moving, breathing Captain Oooooooooooooh whoa what the FUCK is at the end of her ropes? Are...are those knitting needles? Stabby-stabs?

I'm...what even are those?

Okay, okay, someone else can answer that. I'm moreso interested in the smartwatch she's wearing, because Oprah and other Directors in the past haven't worn smartwatches. That, combined with how nautical she looks, donning upper clothing usually reserved for male Directors, and having a unique title, makes her have a rather unique appearance.

"Orwell, I am giving a speech. What do you want."

"Someone stole your copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

"Damn it!"

Jokes aside, we now get to the second newly-debuted living breathing moving character of this very short video: Orwell, a Security agent who's about as cheerful as someone whose entire family got run over by Cybertrucks. I don't know if I ever made this joke in any public form before, but in promotional images, he reminds me of Fin Tutuola and...well, with this video, the comparison just launched itself outta my head. Just a lil'. Not a whole lot. Only a lil'.

Yeeeeeah...I'm starting to see how this is poorly edited. Captain O's and Orwell's voices coming through two different audio channels instead of the same one, no BGM in the beginning...this weird-ass cut to Ozzie...I mean I don't expect high quality, but come now. For one of the first promotional things for Odd Squad UK, you'd think they'd do better.

...

This is just a regular-ass home, isn't it. Lookit that Backrooms-esque kitchen there. Lookit the hypnosis wheel ta- no seriously, whose home is this, and if it's Ozzie's, why? And if it's Headquarters...again, why?

I do appreciate the tea set, though. The tea set is to the UK what sharing actors is to Canada. Don't do it, don't get tax credits.

"The Mondays? In my Christian Headquarters?! Inconceivable! Blasphemous!"

No but seriously, this is the most unserious shit I have ever seen from Odd Squad as a franchise, and that is genuinely saying something. The Mondays isn't an odd disease. It's not an odd illness that will grant you extra limbs or make your blood turn blue. It's what everybody who has ever worked a paid job a single day in their life goes through.

*takes off the glasses* You're not boostin' my confidence, BBC.

"It doesn't matter what we seem to do. We can't put a smile on his face."

I'M AN ADUUUUUUUUULT!!!

WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, JACKASS!!

(...Who the hell said McDonald's?)

*slaps on helmet*

Mmmmmmmmmhm. Strap in, human beings. This is where the real shit gets even realer.

So as you can see, Ozzie isn't in his Investigation agent suit here. Promotional material has shown that he's in that suit pretty much all the time, and given how Orli doesn't appear in this video, it's safe to say that we can plop it into the pre-series era.

This specific department had people in the fandom theorizing for the longest time about what it was. Was it a new look for the Creature department? An updated piece of clothing from the Mobile Unit department? A new department enti- oh shit, wait, that's actually it, isn't it.

Yeah, so if you look at the wings on the hexagon symbol there, it's clear to see that this is some kind of a flight department. I'm just going to quote part of the official show synopsis here, so you folks can get a view of what I'm trying to get at:

Not to worry, brand-new agents Orli and Ozzie are on the case. Their job is to solve the toughest and oddest cases now wreaking havoc across the land, sea, and sky (and even that hard-to-reach area behind the couch cushions).

I might as well spit out a theory (one of few, believe you me) that have been spinning in my mind like a nuked rotisserie chicken clinging to life ever since Odd Squad UK was officially announced as a project.

*deep breath*

Okay. So. You guys know Captain O. Loves nautical things. Looks the part. Has assistants who look like sailors.

What if -- and hear me out for a moment -- what if she has a boat? One that can travel across the sea and across the sky?

For land, that's what the tubes are for. That's a nonissue. But for missions that involve going out onto open water or going high into the sky...that's what the boat is for. And if you have a boat that goes up into the sky, you're gonna need some agents who deal in flight matters.

Headcanon accepted. If you hear screaming at any point this fall, assume it's me.

*long exhale*

See, with Odd Squad, child actors can be hit-or-miss. Some, like Dalila Bela and Millie Davis, knock their roles right outta the park, sometimes even going beyond their abilities and really getting into character (for those two specifically, Olive and Oprah are relatable to their personalities as actors, so it makes things easier). Some are okay -- they're neither good nor bad. And some just don't have the range.

The kid playing Orwell here...is on the latter end.

I get it. It's a video out of a twelve "testing the waters for another season or series" episodes of a UK-based spinoff series in a franchise that keeps going nose-down. I shouldn't go in expecting top-notch quality. I'm setting the bar low, as are a host of other people. And I have absolutely no disrespect against the kid who plays Orwell, because for God sakes, I have standards. But twelve episodes of stiff, the-script-might-as-well-be-in-the-damn-hands-when-filming acting like this is gonna be really hard to stomach, especially since Orwell is a main character.

Getting back to gooder things: this "yeeeeeeah, obviously" bit made me laugh harder than it should've. There is no customer service persona for Orwell here. Concept is foreign to him.

Onom is, unfortunately, not in this episode. However, I do appreciate that the Lab is just as eccentric as he is. Not even Precinct 13579's Lab was this crazy!

(And if you're wondering who Onom is: he's the brother of the Pokemon Snom.)

(...No, I'm kidding. He's our Science man for this series. The gods are returning to their roots.)

this video is about viewers making a gadget

orwell grabs a gadget for absolutely no reason other than by proxy

If this is giving a hint to contest entrants, they sure are being vague as hell about it.

If this is not giving a hint to contest entrants, Orwell's taking the gadget like it's the thing that made Onom go vamoosh in the first place.

...

Hold up-

Wake up? Drank.

Feel sad? Drank.

Go to work? Drank.

Get paid jack shit? Drank.

Take a shower? Drank (with the tea bag you showered yourself with).

Last season, they didn't commit enough to a whole entire newspaper page and had to use Lorem ipsum text.

This series, they have someone write words on a paper that are actually read.

I don't know, guys, that says a hell of a lot of things quality-wise.

I see Onom's leaning real damn hard into the Oona archetype, because you can bet your damn asses she would pull this shit on Olympia, Otis, and Oprah with absolutely no remorse.

...No, let me correct myself: she has pulled this shit on them with absolutely no remorse. And fuck it, she'll do it again.

They were probably expecting people to react like Captain O here.

In reality, my body folded in on itself so hard the local urgent care place became a 24/7 business.

...I'm starting to realize what that one person said about OSUK making references to past seasons/series now. I laughed it off. I said "in 12 episodes, that'll never happen."

But it did.

And it will haunt me so.

The Emergency Un-Monday Protocol is the Odd Squad version of workplaces telling you "we're like a family".

It's an unneeded red flag that fucks people over royally.

0/10, sweet summer child didn't even try.

Let's be honest here: if Ozzie encapsulates the reaction you should have when listening to this left-audio-channel-only, bobbin-n-weavin', lip-syncing-does-not-exist bit, then that's...not really a good sign.

Oooohoho no. I'm not the gal to turn to, kiddos. Not when I get the Mondays every goddamn day of the week.

...You're pointing at a person who feels crushing depression every time she walks into a Target, what are you doing-

...God damn it, this eyebrow-raising makes me cackle. It's so unexpected.

Honestly, I might be asking too much of a series that has the episode span of 70% of anime, but I want more fourth-wall-breaking moments like this. Keep the meta alive!

"But please, no Slime-inators. I just washed my hair."

Ozzie's been to one too many Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards for his liking.

That, or he's taking after Otis and his "regular hair".

AH!! AAAAAAAAAHH!! YOU CAN SEE ALEXANDER CRACK A SMILE THERE!! I SAW IT!! I GOT MY GLASSES ON SUCKERS, I CAN SEE THAT SHIT.

Terrible audio balancing aside...and the terrible timing of the logo bouncing...

...Oh wow, that's the other logo. The secondary one. Kinda cool!

----------------------------------------

So overall, this was...a rather disappointing first taste. Whether this sets the standard for the series remains to be seen, but I'm not all too hopeful. Maybe the September results video will see things improve.

That being said, the characters are at least pretty engaging thus far. I'll need to see them in action a little more to make any final decisions, though.

Like I said in the beginning, I'll be putting out a Seren's Study about OSUK when we get more info on it. I'm aiming for August, but it might come out in September when the results video does. We'll see.

For now, thanks for reading. If you want to see the video for yourself, it's here:

[anhed-nia]

PS I almost saw IN A VIOLENT NATURE for the first time at an open air screening on Governor's Island, a popular NYC destination for outdoor entertainment and close-to-home glamping. I thought that was a great idea, but ultimately I skipped it because I wanted to see the film for the first time without the light pollution and ambient noise. They made this cool graphic for it, though...which immediately triggered comments section controversy about AI.

The social media person replied that the image was not AI-generated; though the "scene" does not take place in the movie, it is a photograph of a person wearing the screen costume, just doing something fun on Governor's Island to advertise their cool event. No matter what your general feelings are about AI in commercial art, we can probably all agree that it sucks that we have to have these onerous arguments about everything now.

For me, and I think for anyone who enjoys visual art, the medium matters--not because of some imaginary hierarchy of importance, but because different media have different effects, traditions, and implications. And because, with respect to AI, the statement "This really happened!" and the question "Wouldn't it be cool IF this really happened?" inspire very different responses. My personal, casual feeling is that AI art is OK as long as it is easily identifiable as such; like I've seen some really fun AI images whose particular kind of outrageousness makes appropriate use of that specific medium. I'm a "right tool, right job" person, I think some things should be paintings and some things should be photos, some things should be stage plays and some things should be movies. You should carefully choose your medium and exploit the unique qualities of that medium based on exactly what you're trying to accomplish. For this reason I think that AI images that are just trying to fake the effects of i.e. painting or photography kind of suck. And related to that I object to living in a world where we all just have to throw up our hands and say "Oh well, there's no way to know anymore whether something is physically-real or whether it's just a hypothetical representation of something that maybe-could-be real, I guess the only thing we can do is not give a shit about where anything comes from or how it got here and what that all means." For me, "There's no way to ever know anything for sure so who fucking cares" is not an acceptable default setting. (And I realize this is becoming the central issue of our day due to all kinds internet-enabled misinformation and I'm treading on the hem of a way bigger topic here, but never mind all that now...)

But still, I find myself just as annoyed with fakery as I am with people who instantly declare something to be fake. Frankly I think those guys are just scared of being fooled and so they're trying to preserve their own sense of superiority by declaring everything to be fake before they have any evidence one way or the other. This is a very different thing in its consequences, I know, but some of these guys sound just like the bigots who go around trying to clock random strangers as trans; they always have these ridiculous lists of "evidence" that turn out to be just as applicable to afab and amab people as they are to people who have transitioned. It's all roughly the same flavor of defensiveness from people who are scared of being tricked into believing or feeling something that will turn out to be a fraud. And I can sympathize with that to some degree, I don't wanna be tricked into believing in, for instance, awesome-looking photo shoots that never happened; like if you said it wouldn't matter to you if the photos Thierry Mugler shot on top of the Chrysler Building turned out to be digital fakes, then I would happily call you a liar. But what I really hate more than anything right now is this immediate effect where as soon as anything cool-looking appears online, we all have to have these contentious arguments where insecure jerks pound their chests about how un-foolable they are...and sometimes it turns out that the "AI art" is real and so their claims to amazing powers of perception are a big embarrassment. I guess my conclusion is that if everyone agreed to make AI imagery clearly identifiable in some way, then we could all stop having our good time spoiled by this paranoid bickering that has become the prerequisite for enjoying anything. But that's probably an impossible dream.

[vampiremeerkat]

not sure if you've caught up much to Vivziepop's work lately, but got any thoughts regarding her Helluva Boss show, or her upcoming Amazon Prime version of Hazbin Hotel?

Said this: https://vampiremeerkat.tumblr.com/post/188696192708/hazbin-hotel-came-out-thoughts-aye-watched-it https://vampiremeerkat.tumblr.com/post/665027239768899584/since-youve-seen-hazbin-hotel-what-do-you

But I've still not watched Helluva Boss, only about two or three few second snippets out of curiosity for the animation quality. My knowledge on it is based on a review from Just Stop, and if the show is like he describes, I won't be turning on episode 1 soon. It appears to me like Helluva Boss just does things to look or sound exciting in the moment, without caring about previously established rules or how stupid these decisions make a character look in the face of past or upcoming episodes. Then again, my mind has been poisoned by anime, and I like Cars, so I can also imagine none of it would keep me up at night. But even before Just Stop's video, I've not felt particularly interested. If I had to give a reason, perhaps I just don't enjoy Vivziepop's interpretation of Hell enough to want to know about its residents. Just Stop gives a sensible list of reasons what's wrong with her Hell, but like I said in one of the linked messages above: I find many of the characters too approachable/aesthetically pleasing and already don't think that's what Hell should be like. I want disfigured gremlins no one wants to draw porn of. Hell should be Hell, not a (slightly) less bearable version of some big city you can find on Earth. A good example of Vivziepop's work is the character "Beelzebub". I happened to come across an image of her not long ago, which is a fluffy neon-rainbow fox with insect wings, instead of an actual bee with beastly features, which would've made more sense. Why is someone who's called "(queen) bee" a fox? We know why, and I cry for all the sexy bees in the world. You don't always have to cater to the furries, my friends, please, just try something else for once, leave the canines, felines, and dragons alone! There are so many different kinds of animals walking the planet to sexualize! And you.. furries.. You're all conveniently inhabited by the soul of a wolf -an animal that so happens to appeal to most humans in terms of appearance- while there's infinite times more sea life and insects that existed throughout time and in present day, that died and could've reincarnated into what is now you! That's right loser, you are a literal worm! Anyway, the characters draw the attention of teenagers, but at the same time, the show mishandles the use of swear words and throws them around like it's all good, which I also can't stand. I think the latter is what initially turned me off from sitting on stand-by for the upcoming Hazbin Hotel show, because why should I care about anything you have to say if you're always going "fuck" and "shit" in my face? A sliver of positivity in this rant: I think the owl looks cool. Again, he does not look like anything Hell would produce, I'd design something like him if my intention was a "mysterious, forest fairy tale creature", but still cool. I contemplated looking up his scenes under the belief there's a complicated, emotional story attached, but if you're telling me they did this hooty boy wrong by making him a sexually dissatisfied whore, with Blitzo's only aim being his magic book, and yet further episodes proclaim there's an actual connection between the two without the writers having put in the work, then never mind. I'll find myself a different hooty boy. 💔🦉

[mosthuggableffxiv]

"Didn't Quite Make It" Poll

Propaganda (including the Estinien rant I alluded to a while back, which is probably the outside edge of allowable propaganda) and images below.

Erik: "talks down to the wol constantly, assumes they're an unintelligent musclehead, preaches to his fellow ala mhigans about the 'correct' way to rebel against garlemald in a similar tone, generally kind of a massive dickhead through the majority of the questline"

Estinien: "I HATE HIS STUPID GUTS. “OHHHH IM THE AZURE DRAGOON. THE ONLY AZURE DRAGOON!” BITCH NIDHOGG’S EYEBALL COULDNT RESIST ME AND MADE ME THE SECOND AZURE DRAGOON. BUT DO YOU TELL ISHGARD? DO YOU EVEN TELL YOUR BESTIE AYMERIC? NO. I BEAT YOUR ASS AND THEN YOU HAVE THE GALL TO CASUALLY BRING UP THE TIME YOU TRIED TO KILL ME LIKE ITS A FUNNY HAHA MEMORY. AND THEN LIKE SOME DUMBASS YOU CONVENIENTLY FORGET THAT NIDHOGG POSSESSED YOU ALREADY AND GET YOUR HANDS ON BOTH OF HIS JUICY EYEBALLS. YOU DIDN’T EVEN THINK OF OFFERING ONE TO ME! ME! THE SECOND AZURE DRAGOON WHO IS CONVENIENTLY HERE AND COULD HAVE PREVENTED YOU GETTING POSSESSED. AND ON TOP OF THAT YOU STOLE ALPHINAUD FROM ME. I WAS THERE ALONGSIDE HIM WHEN ALL OF UL’DAH WAS AGAINST US BUT INSTEAD HE LOOKS UP TO YOU JUST BECAUSE YOU TAUGHT HIM TO COLLECT FIREWOOD. THIS ISNT EVEN ALL OF WHY I HATE HIM. FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT PISS RAT WHO CAN’T EVEN DEAL WITH MOOGLES FOR A FEW MINUTES WHILE IM BUSTING MY ASS DOING FETCH QUESTS FOR A STUPID MINION LOCKED BEHIND TRIBAL QUESTS."

G'raha Tia: "He was an annoying little shit (I love him now though. I’m so sorry G’Raha T^T)" (Note: the submitter specified that this was just for his appearance in the Crystal Tower raids and not later on)

Hancock: "Just look. At his face. He is a smug little capitalist bastard who just happens to be on our side."

Khloe: "the myth of three lines"

Krile: "Spends her first interactions clowning on Alphinaud pretty harshly and while he usually deserves it he is also my baby and I want to kick her ass for it"

Lue-Reeq: "Brags about having so much money, gives out pocket change he mooched from his parents. Whines when the WoL has a poorly-timed Echo. Prevented me from having quality time with the Bard Boys in ShB."

Radlia: "I’m gonna be honest her facial expressions are fun to imagine socking her to but I’m mostly submitting her because I feel bad for ranting about my personal vendetta against est*nien earlier. She’s a lovely heel character! Very punchable." (Note: this was the same submitter as the above Estinien rant)

Rhitahtyn: "Poor bastard. I'd say beating him isn't even fun anymore but the new solo duty is actually very cool."

The Warrior of Light: "Cause it's us"