#tech bros get blocked

[tyanis]

Reason 9137 why I hate Elon Musk:

I have a 12 year old cat named Tesla, after Nikola Tesla, and I always have to put out a disclaimer wherever I talk about him online because dumbasses think Muskrat made up the name on his own and it only relates to him.

Anyway, Tesla trapped himself in the bathroom this morning because he was mad that I didn't pour water on him while he was in the tub.

[jammatown919]

If you care about art and artists at all, PLEASE sign this petition calling for the regulation of AI generated “work”. These generators exploit us and are built on our backs while we desperately scream no, all so tech bros and corporations can give our jobs to machines that were trained by stealing our work to feed it into a database we never wanted to be part of.

The things called for in this petition are basic and only the beginning, but they’re important first steps in keeping human artists safe. PLEASE help us.

Furthermore, please stop using these generators, at least until they stop taking our work to regurgitate it back at you at our expense. Without regulation, AI art is and always will be unethical and come at the expense of artists and art as a whole. Every image you generate continues to harm us. If you want a piece of art, commission someone, or draw it yourself. It doesn't matter what your skill level is, your art will ALWAYS be better, more meaningful, and more valuable than anything an AI can spit out.

Please, fight to protect artists. Fight for ethical regulations of AI generators.

[bunnyb34r]

I really wasnt expecting that anti-apple post to get notes sgdgdgdg I feel so validated 😭💕

[yappacadaver]

Day 1 of getting staff blogs to block me

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

The Man 10

Warnings: non/dubcon, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Character: mob!Lloyd Hansen

Summary: a demanding customer complicates more than your work life.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

Gah. You hate the taste. It doesn’t get any better and it feels worse on your skin. There’s something unnatural about human biology. Should that be so slimy?  

You’re not a prude, not mentally, only experientially. The act itself, yeah, it’s kind of hot, but the finale. That’s too much. Not to mention, it wasn’t exactly mutual. None of this is. 

It’s weird, actually. The more you think of it, sat naked under a desk, in the mess of his excitement, you can’t help but analyse the situation you find yourself in. This man articulated a strategic destruction of your life; he messed with your rent, your bank, your job, and now you’re sitting her in his house, perched on your heels like an orphan begging for more gruel. 

You frown as you rub your chin again. Despite the single tissue he offered, you still felt the residue clinging to your skin. You need a shower. Or maybe some clothes. That would be nice. You scrunch up your nose and sneer. 

“What the hell is that face for?” Floyd—Lloyd snips and you look up to meet his gaze through the glass top of the desk, his keyboard blocking out all but one of his blue eyes. Hey, he has nice eyes for a meanie. You’d never tell him because he’s not a very good listener. 

“Nothing, I just...” you shrug and his eye flicks down to the jiggle of your chest. You cross your arms and tilt your head to the side, “can I go wash off or something?” 

“Why?” He challenges. 

Your lips part and a puff of air shoots out. Is he serious? 

“I... I’m not saying it’s your fault or anything but semen smells and I smell like semen, so going by a very basic formula--” 

“Oh my god, you don’t stop. Why can’t you just say anything straight out? Why’s it this nonsense?” He growls. 

“Fair enough, but I’m still hoping to see a sink or maybe a washcloth--” 

He rolls his eyes and closes them. He sits back and puts his hands to either side of his nose and exhales heavily. He clucks as he drops his arms and considers you as he leans against the leather cushioning. 

“You don’t make the rules. Stay.” 

He rolls back up to the desk and starts typing again. You look at the bottom of the sleek keyboard. He’s definitely an Apple guy, the iMac isn’t even the biggest giveaway. He just has that essence to him. He’s one of those guys who claims to be all about the best of everything but really he’s just buying into capitalism. He’s basic; mainstream. 

What is he even doing? Typing, clicking, scowling at the screen. Is he working? What on earth does he even do? Well, if you account for the mustache, the tacky clothes, and shoes without socks, you might assume he’s some sort of salesman. Used cars if you were to go by looks alone and yet his house would suggest more than that.  

He doesn’t look like a lawyer. He could be a tech bro, again, Apple everything. Still, the way he types doesn’t really seem savvy. He’s got the whole chicken peck down pat, jabbing each key with his index finger. So you’re at a loss. What the hell do rich people do? How do they even get rich? 

“Would you stop staring at me like that?” He stops again, another glare through the glass. 

You swallow and shake your head, shifting on your knees as you keep your arms across your chest. 

“Sir, Mr. Jansen--” 

“Hansen,” he grits dangerously. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hansen, sir, please, it’s cold in here, can I get a sweater or maybe you could turn off the air? This time of day, the rate must be ridiculous.” 

His lashes flutter and his forehead lines. His hand closes to a fist then opens. His chest rises and he squares his jaw. 

“You’re distracting me. I’m trying to work.” 

“So maybe I could go somewhere else. It’s a big house--” 

“My house,” he insists. 

“A very nice house,” you offer, “I mean I’m sitting down here, my knees are killing me, I’m shivering, I can’t sit still. You’re not gonna get anything done. I’m agreeing with you. One hundred percent. I’m annoying. A real nuisance so let the leash go a little bit. Promise, I won’t touch a thing--” 

He squints then his eyes flick up as he thinks. His lips thin and he huffs. He brings his fingertips together, elbows planted on the glass desk, and taps them as he hums. 

“You’re lucky you can make me cum,” he grumbles. 

“Ah, but sir, don’t give me all the credit. You’re a very good cummer. An expert, it seems.” 

His nose crinkles and his mouth falls open, for just a second. His cheek dimples and he shakes it away, “what on earth are you fucking on about?” 

“I’m just saying, sir, I don��t know much about the old sausage link but I’m comparing it to the hub--” 

“The hub?” 

“PornHub, I’m sure you know it.” 

He lets out cluck but says nothing else. 

“Anyway, you got what they would call girth,” you gesture with your hands. “Good job, although, maybe it’s more a genetic type thing. Not really something you did...” 

He stares at you for a moment the pushes his knees wide. He takes a breath and slides slightly forward in his chair. You are keenly aware of the twitch beneath his pants. Please, not again. Are their calories in cum? 

“You watch a lot of porn?” He asks, a genuine hint of interest in his voice. The furthest from spite you’ve heard from him. 

“Eh, not as much as some people, I'm sure. I get curious,” you say. “but within discretion. Never wanna go too far down the rabbit hole.” 

He taps his toe and gives a thoughtful angle of his chin, twining his fingers between each other, “what kinds?” 

“Mm, well, I dunno. Usually, I just click something on the front page that doesn’t look too wild. Like creampie is pretty standard, I guess. Doggystyle is usually all over, but the stepdaughter stuff, ick. Not for me, sir. No way.” 

He makes a clicking noise in his throat and slowly reclines in his chair, “you are way too honest for your own good.” 

“Maybe, I guess. In this situation though, what do I get from lying? Besides, I see the stache,” you shoot him with a fingergun then quickly holster it. “You definitely are trawling around. RedTube? Xvideos?” 

“You said you’re curious,” he ignores your question, “you don’t... do anything while you watch?” 

You feel a subtle tickle in your thighs. The casual air turns thick. You’re starting to get worked up. 

“Eh, well, you know... the fingers find a way,” you look away and giggle nervously. “I go on these women’s forums. They say you should know yourself best before you try with a partner. Obviously, I haven’t found my number two yet but I know my way around my captain's chair. I can get to warp speed.” 

His lips curve slowly as you look back to him and you gulp. You’ve said too much. Again. The very reason you fell head first into this predicament. 

“Sir, why are you looking at me like that?” You squeak. 

He chuckles and brushes his fingertips over his bristly mustache, “well, sweet lips, show me the way.” 

“Huh?” Your eyes round. 

“Show me around your captain's chair, as you so eloquently put it,” he demands and wiggles two fingers at you. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

—

cdsessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[wisteriagoesvroom]

schools of thought

A landoscar college AU, told through social media

oscar, a quiet english major, and lando, chaotic maths boy, are paired together in a philosophy module at Federation U.

author's notes:

we're being a bit fluid with grid ages, but oscar and lando are sophomores/year 2 of college here

ignore the timestamps, they don't really matter

if you enjoy it, please consider liking / reblogging / commenting! 💙

part 1 🍊 (of 4?)

——————————introducing our protagonists——————————————

INSTAGRAM

@landoooonorriz

📍fed U more like fed UP

liked by charliesangles, carloswithone_S, wochi_jianbing and 158 others

landoooonorriz get in my dump truckkk

view 23 replies

charliesangles photos taken moments before disaster 🕷️😬

maxisnot_here: batman isn't part of the MCU ⤷carloswithone_S: buzzkill

wochi_jianbing nice pic bro ⤷landoooonorriz: ty GY, enjoy shanghaiiii. haha that rhymed comment liked by wochi_jianbing carloswithone_S: on the decks next week let's gooo

GOODREADS

@oz-peartree

oscar spent most of his summer (or australian winter) hanging out in cafés and reading. he once wrote a 2,000 words review on the merits of good omens on goodreads, but then got embarrassed and also thought it would interfere with his deliberate choice to not leave any reviews besides stars. so he deleted the whole thing and saves it in a folder for himself instead. one of his sisters once stumbled on his goodreads page by accident. he has tried to block her IP across multiple devices but has largely been unsuccessful.

——————————— the seminar —————————————

we zoom in on Federation Internationale University (FIU), a sunny campus nestled up in the hills of monaco. two students, lando norris and oscar piastri, have made it into their sophomore year.

prof vettel's philosophy 204 module is notoriously hard. both of them have to take it as part of their degree requirements (but for lando, maybe also because he enjoys a challenge).

assignment pairs are set by prof seb early in the semester. lando already knows of oscar, and vice versa, but nothing substantial beyond passing each other in the hallway or the occasional library run-in in freshman year. lando's made quite an impression because he once spent half the seminar chatting about how "young stalin was kinda cute" despite stalin not being related to the philosophy syllabus, and it being totally tangential to the topic at hand. half the class agrees with lando, the other half is too overwhelmed by his energy to argue.

oscar just wants to get on with the work already. he was the best kid at his prep school, the prep school that he moved halfway across the world for at 14 and worked hard at, and doesn't like being distracted from his very important goal of being class valedictorian at FIU eventually.

lando gets oscar's number after class, before they both skirt off in different directions. oscar wants to talk to lando about the assignment, but when lando exits the room he's already off talking to another bunch of friends, and oscar's too awkward to jump in.

lando texts first.

iMessage

oscar rolls his eyes and gets back to writing his eighteenth century literature class notes.

meanwhile, lando texts max, his roommate and padel bud, about it. max is at a campus hackathon. (max is a junior who has been scouted by at least three big tech firms already, and is on track for early graduation. but lando thinks max has other reasons for wanting to stick around...)

the other thing lando is sure of is that oscar is not in fact better than him at padel. but he is not going to worry about that. or think about how oscar might look, red-faced and flustered and sweaty...

lando's phone pings with social notifications, and the thought disappears.

————meanwhile, the boys do some research——————

lando:

oscar:

and contrary to popular belief, oscar does have some feelings on the matter. he makes these feelings known to his friend logan, one of the few non-europeans on campus who also knows distinctly what it's like when people make fun of his accent. nevermind that everybody has an accent, oscar thinks. the idea of a neutral accent is an arbitrary invention. he'd just rather not expend the energy fighting people about it.

if oscar has any thoughts about how he would feel should lando choose to turn his flirty energy towards oscar himself, well... that is besides the point. because that would never happen. oscar is not interesting, oscar is not noticable. oscar is here to get his grades and move on.

oscar can think of three things that he hates, which he is in the process of overcoming. flight delays, going to the dentist, and now: working in group projects.

but, oscar tells himself, he is a grown man. he's moved halfway across the world to pursue his dream of getting his degree, and then heading on to work in publishing. he tells himself he'll stay focused on this, and nothing else. because pursuing his goals requires singleminded determination. or like the great poet pitbull once said: for anybody going through tough times, been there, done that. every day above ground is a great day, remember that.

so oscar puts his phone face-down on the table. he tries very hard not to think about bee statues or lando for the rest of the day.

(he fails.)

——————————— What happens next, you ask? Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out —————————————

📚 part 2 now live!

more author's notes:

eyy it's my first multimedia(?) fic for f1blr!

this was inspired by an ask. i took some key elements from this (lovely!) prompt and remixed. i meant it to be just one post but i think it's now gonna be four parts, oops.

i love chatting so if you have thoughts or even remotely enjoyed this story, let me know what you think :) or lmk if you want to be tagged on the next updates!

bye!

[oatmealmika]

What Are They Like On Social Media (Headcanons)?

feat. luffy, zoro, nami, sanji, usopp, robin, franky, and brook

requests open for other things like this!

Luffy

nami made him make an Instagram account and he did so... BUT NOT WITHOUT DOWNLOADING 8 VIRUSES THE MOMENT HE GOT ONTO IT

he started clinking on every ad he saw, of course, and now he's got to pay 100000 dollars by the end of the month or else world government will find him.

he took that as a challenge.

basic, but his username is kingofthepirates or strawhat69 or something

maybe even a pun or some shit bro

follows anybody he even slightly likes and comments dumb shit on all of their posts.

ex; luffy commenting on a post robin made w chopper "can you ask him if reindeers are real?"

takes weird angled photos of his friends and posts them (ex. forehead shots)

Zoro

username is bestswordsmanofficial

usually posts training videos, but also sometimes puts on his story a cry for help to his friends cuz he got lost again

also not the most tech savy guy

i get vibes he would straight up record himself coughing to death and post it

he went viral once, actually.

was dragged by nami to be a backup dancer for one of her tiktoks

stiffly dancing

on snapchat, he uses weird filters like the broccoli one and just sent it to everyone he knew.

Nami

username is nami.venmo.me

probably makes scams in order to get money

she has two accounts; a scamming account and a real account (both under similar usernames actually)

on snapchat, she and usopp have a 200+ snapscore

they both contemplated jumping ship when they messed it up..

matching pfps with usopp too! ex.;

nami is cookie monster, usopp is screaming man

Sanji

username is lovecook_sanji

other than posting the food he makes, he also posts aesthetic photos of him crying💀

ALSO posts photos of baths with rose petals that he only made cuz he wanted to be desperate in the caption like "such a beautiful place... i just wish that... someone could share it with me... :("

out here posting "i wish i was beautiful :(" posts for attention and zoro out here commenting back "i wish you were too💀"

blocked zoro after that

tags ONLY nami and robin in his posts whenever he posts the group

"the rest of them are just some guys 🙄"

Usopp

username is god..usopp

also is in charge of the strawhat official social media accounts

nami makes the aesthetically pleasing posts while usopp posts the funny hahas

like that time luffy slipped off ship with his mouth full of food (and bcuz he can't swim w his devil fruit) so he almost sank to the bottom

plugs his personal acc on the strawhat official acc too much

luffy used to be the manager of the account but that acc got banned...

so usopp was given the job to make a new one and manage it (no luffy you can't write the caption)

Robin

username is nico.robin

mostly posts about the books she's been reading, such as reviews

formats them nice and neatly

all her posts are very aesthetically pleasing

besides book reviews, she posts a lot of chopper

she's like a mom in that way making her kids pose for photos and takes photos as much as possible

overall very pretty account

Franky

username is franky_da_cyborg

when not posting inventions, he posts crewmates doing random things

doesn't have to be weird at all most of the posts are just straight up usopp making a sandwich or robin reading

all posts are very low quality tho lol

Brook

username is musician-brook

obv posts him playing music but also posts himself saying terrible dad jokes

"singing in the shower is fun until you get soap in your mouth. then it's a soap opera."

he got the phone confiscated for that one

apart of nami's backup dancers for her tiktoks

actually works it

go grandpa go!

all right reserved. do not repost or copy my work but relogging, comments or feedback is very much appreciated! Thank you.

[misteria247]

Do y'all realize just how lost the 87, 03 and possibly 07 boys would be about the internet and cellphones and laptops of today?

Like the 87 gang had home phones and communicators and if lucky those big bulky blocks that were supposedly considered cellphones.

03 boys and 07 boys had cellphones that were flip phones or the sliders that came in all those wild colors.

Can you imagine the absolute bafflement when they catch sight of the 12, Bayverse and Rise gangs technology? The absolute awe they'd feel at just how big the internet and technology had advanced??

Can you imagine how they'd feel about internet humor?????? How absolutely lost they'd feel when one of the younger turtles say an iconic meme or vine or tik tok?????

Like it'd literally go:

Rise Leo: This bitch be empty yeet-!!!

87 Raph: ????? The fuck is yeet??????

Rise Donnie: It's empty that's what it is.

Or-

12 Mikey: I'm feeling like the crying cat meme today.

03 Leo:.......the....the what?

Bayverse Raph: I feel like the cat meme that says Father I crave violence today little dude.

03 Leo: ????????????????????????????

Or-

12 Leo: You been to the soup store lately?

Bayverse Donnie: I haven't been at soup lately because I was buying clothes.

07 Mikey and 07 Donnie: ?!?!? What???? Does soup????? Have to do????? With buying clothes?????

And when the younger boys pull out there cellphones and touch screens and laptops they'll just be met with bewildered looks and it'd be like:

07 Raph: What in the shell is that????

Rise Mikey with his touchscreen phone: My cellphone???? Have you never seen a cellphone????

07 Donnie: You mean that's supposed to be a flip phone?????

Rise Mikey: A wHAT-??????

Or-

87 Donnie: This is incredible!!! It's so small and sleek!!!

12 Donnie: It's just a cellphone. I mean you've seen one before right???

87 Leo: Oh! You mean these things???

Pulls out this clunky piece of tech that was an 80s cellphone

12 Donnie with a painful wheeze: THAT WAS YOUR CELLPHONE???? I now completely understand why Master Splinter was so confused when he tried to use the TPhone holy chalupa-

Or-

03 Donnie: That's a computer??? It's so light????? And easy to carry?????

Bayverse Mikey: Yeah bro, the technology just gets better and better! Why?

03 Donnie: It just blows my mind I mean this is nothing compared to my computer back home!

Bayverse Leo: What's your computer like back at home?

03 Donnie: Oh! Well it's this!

Shows a picture of the old early 2000s windows computers

Bayverse Mikey whistles: Damn bro, you could kill someone with that thing.

Bayverse Leo:..........

It'd just be this huge shock on both sides and it'd be absolutely hilarious.

[californyankat]

As a casual fighting game player, I have dabbled in a lot of the big ones (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, little bit of DBFZ and Melty Blood, Smash Bros) and ever since I’ve been aware of the larger scene there’s one game I’ve dared not to touch.

Tekken

Tekken is fucking hilarious from an outside perspective, with not 1, nor 2, but 4 Mexican Jaguar Luchadors, a guy who has so much hate in his blood that his nationality is listed as “None (previously Japanese)”, multiple Robots, and TWO BEARS THAT KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE.

You’re telling me that the son of the most evil man alive who used to be third to only his own father and Akuma Streets, starts World War 3 to cause mass suffering upon billions to summon the original Demon to kill it to get rid of the evil gene that runs in his family? Comedic.

You’re telling me that there’s a character who has a sword and doesn’t use it like a sword but instead like a helicopter but also a pogo stick based on what game your playing because his play style changes every entry in the series? Hilarious.

You’re telling me that a grappler is a decently viable character and has grabs that chain into more grabs that each have a different input to be teched? Fucking bonkers.

Tekken is such bullshit condensed into one of the most intense looking fighting games I’ve ever seen, but I dare not touch it because of its complexity. Almost every character has over 100 individual moves and inputs??? And not only do I need to learn how my own character’s moves work together, but also what moves are safe and unsafe to punish on block? And there’s 32 (and counting) characters??????? Nope nope nope, maybe one day if Harada adds Waffle House as a stage (legit chance) or Captain Falcon gets added as his own character (not happening ever) I’ll install it. I am so afraid of learning Tekken, I even made this gif based on how I think getting into Tekken is like. (Sorry for low quality, it was the first version of this scene I found.)

[tmnt-fann]

|-VACATION DAY-|

Lately the Mad Dogs have been having a hard time, mission after mission. Villain after Villain. Raph noticed this and decided they needed a vacation. He gathered everyone in the living-room for a family meeting.

"What's the news big bro?" Leo said

"Yes, I must get back to modifying my tech for future missions." Donnie agreed

"Well, I decided we all need a break from hero-ing because of how things have been recently. So everyone get ready because we are taking a vacation!" Raph announced

Everyone seemed to agree and thought it was a good idea, but there was one issue. How would they enjoy a vacation day at the beach? For so long they have wanted to enjoy the sea air and bask in the sun in the sand.

"Yes yes, an amazing idea brother. But how shall one go to the beach looking like a mutant? *ahem* us..?" Donnie questioned

"Well.. Uhm, we will go at night!" Raph said, just coming up with the idea.

Everyone thought it was a good idea and went to go pack for the night ahead.

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

Everyone quietly enters the beach. Passing the security slowly, making sure not to make any sound.

"All right! Here we are!" Raph said

"Aww yeah! I'm gonna build a sand castle!" Mikey says as he runs off somewhere

Raph follows Mikey to help him build the said sand castle.

"Well, I will be basking in the moonlight. DO NOT bother me with one of your dumb puns Leo." Donnie says as he lays down on a lounge chair in his board shorts

Leo rolls his eyes at Donnie and puts his things down, setting up a little spot with his things. Leo grabs his scuba diving gear and heads towards the water. Once he enters the water a small blue fish swims up to him, it seems to think he's a friend.

However, after a few minutes the fish quickly swims away. This leaves Leo confused. Then he feels something swim behind him, he turns around to be face to face with a shark. The shark does not attack, but Leo is freaking out. Leo stays still, not moving an inch. The shark swims past him, leaving him in awe. Leo quickly goes to the shore to brag about what happened.

"Donnie! Guess what?!" Leo shouts at Donnie

"Sigh. What do you want? I told you not to bother me."

"Well.."

The conversation goes on and on, but while they are conversating a ooze-quito bites the shark from earlier. Turning it into a ghost like creature that still looked like a shark, but it was 10x bigger than a normal one and definitely scarier.

As Donnie and Leo continue to talk the shark gets closer and closer to the shore, then leaps out of the water blocking the moonlight. This catches everyone's attention. It roars at them as nearby seagulls or security are scared off.

The shark phases though the sand and attacks Donnie and Leo from below. It causes Donnie to fall out of his lounge chair and Leo to fall over. Mikey who is watching from afar, uses his weapon to catch the shark. The chain wraps around the shark with its fire and sun like glow. The shark whines at the light and turns into tiny fishes, then once out of his grasp, turns back into a shark. Mikey notices this.

"Guys! Guys!" Mikey says as he runs up to Leo and Donnie.

While he is running up to them, the shark attacks him. But right on time, Raph pushes Mikey out of the way as they both hit the sand with a thud.

Mikey rushes to his feet "Guys! The shark doesn't like light!"

Raph nods. "Mikey, your weapon could make fire. Why don't you use that?" Raph said

Everyone looks at Mikey.

"Oh yeah, heheh.."

Mikey swings his weapon around as it catches flame. He does this for a few minutes and then gives up.

"I cant do it! Its too big!" Mikey whined as he looked defeated

"Step aside , I got this" Donnie said as he pushes Mikey aside and steps foward.

Donnie pulls out his tech bo. He tampers with it and it turns into a large disco ball at the end of the staff. Also coming out from his battle shell is a flashlight that is around the size of his speaker.

"Begone!" Donnie shouts as he turns the lights on

The shark screeches at the light and flees back into the water once again. But as soon as the shark clears Donnie turns off his lights.

"Well team, good job. Now lats get back to out vaca-" Raph says as he is cut off by the sound of security

"Come on this way!" One security guard said

"It came from over here!" Another security guard said

Raph sighs. "Well, seems like our vacation day is cut short. Let's get out of here before they see us." Raph said

They all retreat with their items to the nearest sewer entrance and head home.

[sweaterrat]

PORTALS ✦ Chapter 2

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“Fallen Down” — Undertale

════════⊹⊱≼ ✦ ✧ ≽⊰⊹════════

The crescent moon illuminated the rooftops along with the lights of the city. Stars brightly glistened with the moon, dancing in its beams. It was a night like every other night. The unsleeping city of Manhattan bustled below, blissfully unaware as four figures leaped from roof to roof. The quartet landed on top of a building right in front of a closed museum.

They all watched carefully as a hooded figure looked around. It was too far to get a good look at their face, especially while they were hidden in the dark. They glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then slipped into a dark alleyway next to the museum.

Donnie and the others had been following this guy for a few blocks now and everything about them screamed trouble. They kept on tailing them until they ended up here.

“Just seems to be a lowlife burglar,” Donnie scoffed. He didn’t have time for this, he had mountains upon mountains of projects to catch up on. Couldn’t this guy rob a museum another day?

“Still, it’s our duty to keep this city safe. No matter how small the threat,” Raph stated, browbones furring as he scanned the area for any possible onlookers or accomplices.

“Raph’s right, we can take care of this guy no problem!” Mikey piped up, weapon in hand and ready to go whenever Raph said so.

And then there was Leo. He looked as confident as ever with that cocky look on his face. “If they’re just some thief, this’ll be easy peasy!”

Raph sighed, “Only if you don’t mess it up. You always get way over your head, Leo. Just please listen to me this time so we can get this over with.”

Leo just rolled his eyes. “The whole point of being a leader is that you lead. Which is a role that Dad gave to me, so I get to call the shots now,” he argued smugly.

Raph, along with the others, could only groan in annoyance.

“Do you at least have a plan?” Donnie questioned, already growing tired of this.

“Uh, no? Why would we need a plan? Just ninja in, ninja their face, and ninja out. Easy.”

Donnie did nothing but pinch the bridge of his snout.

Raph sighed deeply. “Consider our plan?” He huffed, gesturing to the others.

Leo simply raised a brow. “You have a plan? No offense bro, but you were never the strategic type.”

“We don’t want to make this longer than it has to be. Stealth would be quicker and won’t attract unwanted attention,” Donnie tapped away on his tech band, not even bothering to look up.

Raph nodded. “We find out where that crook got in and use that as an entrance—”

“Why would we need to do that if I have my portals?” Leo interrupted, seeming smug that he had found a plot hole in Raph’s plan.

Donnie spoke up this time. “Your portals are bright and obvious, like yourself—”

“Hey!”

“—And if we’re going stealth, it’s better to stay as discreet as possible.”

“Exactly.” Raph nodded proudly to the softshell. “And when we’re in, we find the guy, apprehend ‘em, and leave it to the cops to deal with the rest. We’ll be in and out.”

“I like Raph’s plan!” Mikey said enthusiastically which earned a prideful smile from the eldest.

Leo’s sly smirk morphed into a pout at no one agreeing to his (totally awesome, cooler, and better) strategy. He dramatically groaned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Fine,” he grumbled, begrudgingly complying. “But my plan was cooler.”

Content enough, Raph turned to the others. “Alright, let’s—”

A loud, beeping alarm sounded from Donnie’s tech gauntlet. It pulsed a faint, reddish glow.

“What in the world is that annoying beeping sound— oh wait, that’s me.” He tapped on the gauntlet’s screen and pulled up a purple digital display. “What do we have here…?” He mumbled to himself.

“What is it?” Mikey asked, peeking over Donnie’s shoulder to get a better look at the screen. The softshell expanded the hologram so everyone could see it properly.

On the monitor, there were four brightly colored dots. Blue, red, orange and purple. But not too far off to the side was another dot— a white one. It was far brighter than all the other dots on the screen. The unknown entity was pulsating waves from its center. Donnie furrowed his brows and zoomed into the location.

“Well, that's odd,” he mumbled, cupping his hand over his mouth while continuing to mutter incoherently.

“What’s odd? What is that?” Raph inquired while looking up quizzically at the digital screen.

“I’m not sure what it is,” Donnie squinted at the new entity. “It just popped up on my monitor.”

“What’s with the uh, the things coming out of it?” Leo asked, peering up at the circular waves emitting from it.

“Waves of mystic energy,” Donnie said simply, but it all still perplexed him. “I’ve never seen something this strong before. It might be dangerous, I think we should check it out.”

“What about the robber? Hm? In the museum? Ringing any bells here?” Leo said while wildly gesturing to the building below them. “They could be getting away right now!”

“You’re right, we’re gonna have to split up for this,” Raph stated. “Donnie, Mikey, you two go find out where that mystic energy is comin’ from. Leo and I will—”

“Hold on, hold on! Last I remembered, I’m leading the team,” Leo fussed. Raph pinched the bridge of his snout, grumbling.

“Leo, we don’t have time for this—”

“Alright! New plan! Donnie, you and Mikey can go see whatever that mystic business is about. Raph and I’ll deal with the museum guy, ‘kay?” The terrapin instructed.

“That’s literally exactly what I said.” Raph sighed through his teeth.

“Well, I said it better.”

Raph rolled his eyes, “Whatever. Let’s go.”

Donnie retracted the hologram and beckoned Mikey to follow him. “Onwards, Micheal! We must locate this plethora of mystic energy! It could be important.”

“Or extremely dangerous!” The other piped in cheerily.

And with that, both pairs went their separate paths.

════════⊹⊱≼ ✦ ✧ ≽⊰⊹════════

Kat’s brain pounded against their skull. Their eyes slightly squinted open as they clutched their head. How did they end up on the floor?

“What the hell happened…?” They groaned, sitting up on their knees as they scanned their environment. Despite their blurry vision and aching head, they were able to make out that they had no fucking clue where they were. They were on an unfamiliar rooftop in the middle of some unfamiliar city. They knew this wasn’t a dream, they tried to conjure up Leo ages ago.

What in the world— where the hell were they? Panicked now, they looked around frantically for some sort of memorable landmark. Taking time to survey their surroundings properly, they spotted scaffolding, metal bars, wood planks, and more assortments of building tools. They assumed that they were in an unfinished construction site.

“Okay, okay,” Kat breathed, talking to themself like a normal person because normal people talk to themselves and possibly sleepwalk their way on top of buildings.

Shaking their head, they tried to regain focus. What was the last thing they remembered? They snuck out of their house, then they were walking with Niyah and that weird portal showed up— oh shit, the portal! OH SHIT, NIYAH!

“Niyah?!” Kat called out, barely managing to stand before a sharp pain shot through their ankle. They yelped and fell back to the ground.

“The hell?” They grunted. Kat peered down at their ankle quizzically, but shook their head to try to ignore the pain. They noticed something just a little away from them and their heart dropped to their stomach when they realized it was Niyah.

Assumptions of the worst flooded their brain, making panic course through them. “Niyah?!” They shouted again without a response before taking a deep breath, slowly standing up, and limping towards their friend.

Kat collapsed next to her, scanning her unmoving figure, and began to lightly nudge her. “Hey, hey, Niyah? C’mon, wake up! This isn’t funny!” Their voice cracked as their shaking became more violent. Kat kept pleading but Niyah never woke.

Kat’s breathing quickened and they gripped their arms tightly, their nails digging into their skin. It felt as if they had fallen into freezing cold water, only to find that when they tried to emerge, they were being weighed down by an invisible force, making them spiral deeper and deeper into the never ending depths of anxiety.

“It’s okay, Kat,” they said in an attempt to comfort themself. “You just fell through some portal and now you’re in some random city on a random rooftop with a busted up ankle and your unconscious, possibly dead best friend. No big deal!” They let out a dry laugh. If anyone else was around, they would probably think Kat was insane.

Kat thought to themself; maybe there was someone around who could help them? But then again, anything here could be dangerous. Maybe they should—

Their thoughts were abruptly paused when they heard a crash echo on the other side of the roof. They perked up like a deer in headlights, listening carefully for the next possible noise.

They heard voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Could this be help? Or an enemy? Kat couldn't see anyone, they were hidden by the large crates in front of them. Looking around for something to protect themself, Kat spotted a toolbox just beyond arm’s reach. Surely there could be a hammer or something they could use as a weapon?

They stretched their arm out for the box, fingers grazing the handle countless times but it was just an inch out of their reach. Kat strained to grab it, wrapping their hand around the handlebar.

“Ha!” They laughed triumphantly before the whole box tipped over, clattering loudly on the floor. All the contents scattered around the ground and Kat’s breath hitched when they heard the other voices stop abruptly.

Frantically, they looked for a place they could possibly hide. The most they could do was try to shrink as far as they could into a corner and hope whoever was on the other side of those crates wouldn’t see them.

With Niyah in their arms, Kat snatched the closest tool they could find— a metal wrench— off the floor and shuffled closer to a wall, further into the shadows. They could do nothing else but hold their breath and wait.

“Pretty sure it came from over here,” a voice mumbled. Kat’s brows furrowed, have they heard this voice before? They swore it sounded familiar.

“Be careful, it could be something dangerous…” That’s two familiar voices now, that couldn't be a coincidence.

Kat held their breath, gripping their wrench and holding Niyah protectively with one arm. They heard the slow steps of the people on the other side of their hiding spot, closing in.

A tall figure, hidden slightly but the shadows crept around the corner. Maybe it was because Kat was sitting down, and maybe it was because their anxiety was through the roof then, but whatever the silhouette was it looked like a monster. Its face was obscured by the dramatic shadows it was hidden in; and yet, it somehow still looked vaguely familiar.

Out of instinct, Kat flung the tool at the figure. The wrench cut through the air, souring true to its destination. The throw was so clean and so accurate that it flew miles past the person’s head, missing completely.

The wrench clattered loudly on the ground, echoing obnoxiously and for far too long. The two just stared at each other awkwardly.

“I think you missed.”

Hold on, why did they sound exactly like—

“You okay, Dee?” The second figure popped their head around the corner.

Wait a damn minute.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

The duo stepped out of the shadows and into the light of the moon. Kat realized instantly why they sounded so familiar. The moonlight highlighted their features like their green skin and three fingers, their color coded attire and gear. And even with the two standing right in front of Kat, they couldn’t believe it.

There was no way in hell that Kat was looking at the fucking ninja turtles right now.

Kat was frozen in place, mouth agape and eyes widening at the people in front of them. They felt their head start to spin.

They were definitely dead. If they weren’t dreaming, they were dead. That’s gotta be the only explanation. They fell in a trippy portal and died and Niyah was probably double dead.

Kat’s shock seemed to trigger something in the other’s memory and he frantically started to cough up some excuse.

“Oh, hi! We were just uhh— looking for the t-turtle costume competition?” One of the mutants— Mikey— jumbled, shooting glances at Donnie to ask for help.

“What? Oh! Right, of course! We seemed to have lost our way to the humanoid alien convention that is most definitely real and not something made up mere seconds ago! Also fear not, these are simply very elaborate turtle costumes and we are most definitely humans,” He rambled proudly.

Mikey held his head in his hands.

Looking down at Kat again, Donnie seemed to finally notice Niyah who was carefully held in Kat’s arms. They realized who Donnie was now looking at and protectively held them tighter as a way to say ‘back off’. Kat knew well that she definitely couldn’t beat them in a fight but damn it, she’d go down swinging if she had to.

“What happened to your friend there?” The softshell asked while gesturing to Niyah.

Kat hesitated. “I… I don’t know,” she muttered helplessly.

Mikey chimed in. “Are you guys okay? Do you need help?” His eyes flashing with concern.

Donnie was quick to speak up. “Now, hang on— we don’t even know who these strangers are! Again, they could be dangerous.” Mikey didn’t listen in the slightest and approached the two anyway which earned a groan out of Donnie.

Mikey crouched down to their level, cautiously moving closer. Kat’s breath quickened as she tried to back away.

“Hey, it’s okay. We won’t hurt you,” He cooed as one would do to a frightened cat (which was comically accurate in this case).

Kat eyed him carefully for a moment. “You won’t?” they asked meekly and Mikey simply shook his head. Kat tried to let themself ease up a little. Their tense shoulders relaxed just a bit and the terrapin smiled at that.

“Donnie, can you do your scanny thingy to see if they're hurt?” Mikey asked while looking back to his brother. Donnie sighed and rolled his eyes, then silently pulled down his lenses to scan the two.

“Woah,” he let out.

“What?” Kat said, threads of concern weaved into their tone.

“Seems like you were the cause of that mystic energy I detected earlier. Or rather your sleeping bud over there,” he responded, flicking his goggles back up.

“What- what do you mean by that?”

“What I mean is none of you are badly hurt. Although you,” pointing to Kat, “have a sprained ankle. Probably not good to walk on it, and you might wanna check your friend for a concussion.”

Kat noticed that he never directly answered her question, but she was too scared to ask about it again. Instead, they looked at their ankle and winced.

Mikey piped up, “Don’t worry! We’ll get you fixed up.” Kat reciprocated his smile.

“I’m Mikey by the way. That’s my big bro Donnie over there.” He gestured to the other who half-heartedly waved.

“So, where are you from? And how’d you get up here?” He questioned, tilting his head while doing so. Kat paused for a moment, not really knowing how to respond.

“Um, we aren’t… from here. And for how we got up here, I have no idea,” They replied wearily.

Kat had noticed that Donnie had stepped away for a moment, seemingly talking to someone on his tech band thing. They strained to get a better look at who was on screen.

“Pretty sure he’s talking to Raph, our other brother,” Mikey said, noticing Kat’s curiosity. Kat decided that the best route was to play dumb. It would definitely be safe to act like they didn’t know basically everything about the turtles.

“Uh, so are all your brothers… turtles?” They ask slowly.

“Yeah, they are! We may look scary but I pinky promise we’re the good guys!” The terrapin held up his pinky(?) to Kat. They looked at it for a moment, then brought their own shaky hand to his. As they linked pinkies, Kat got a rush of… well they didn’t exactly know what. This whole thing had felt like a weird, vivid dream. It was one thing to look at the turtles, but now they had touched them and it just made the whole thing more real.

Donnie returned to the others, “Raph’ll be back with Leo in a bit. They sound like they’re dealing with some trouble.” Kat’s breath hitched at the sound of Leo’s name. Holy crap, are they going to meet him too?

Mikey noticed Kat’s nervousness and kindly placed a hand on their shoulder. “Don’t worry, they won't hurt you. I promised, remember?” He smiled brightly, holding up his pinky again. “I know this might feel like a lot to you, but it’ll be okay,” he cooed.

Kat inhaled deeply in an attempt to calm themself. They wearily looked down at Niyah, who was still unconscious. With a deep sigh, they closed their eyes.

What have they gotten themselves into?

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WAHOOOOO CHAPTER 2 IS OUT EVERYONE!!! I hope you guys liked this one hehe ^^ 💛💛

@yourlocalartsonist @yosajaeofficial and @oleander-nin are our lovely beta readers <333 go take a look at their projects!! They make amazing stuff :]

<-Previous||Next->

[walks-the-ages]

Sorry peeps, but if you're genuinely out here trying to defend generative Ai because you think anyone against it is "ableist" sorry not sorry you're not just getting unfollowed you're getting fully blocked along with the OP and who you reblogged it from lmao.

"most people angry about Nanowrimo allowing AI are just being loudly ableist!!! Generative Ai is a great tool for disabled people!! Everyone should be able to use it!"

Hmm, sorry, maybe you need to curate your dash some more like I just did by blocking you, but literally the ONLY people I've seen talking about Nanowrimo's AI stance are people who are actually disabled themselves who are pointing out how fucking shitty it is for Nanowrimo to defend themselves and their sponsor using AI (and possibly scraping your works to further train their AI) By using ~Disabled People~ in concept as a shield against criticism.

Many, many people have posts on here about how they are physically or mentally disabled and they would absolutely hate having someone belittle them by telling them the only way they can accomplish something creative like writing a novel is to have a Computer spit nonsense out into a word document, or generate a "masterpiece" digital image for them from a few words typed in...

Like.

If you actually care about disabled people, you wouldn't be advocating for generative AI to be used to erase their creativity by just letting a computer churn out crap.

If you can type in a prompt on an AI generator, you can type in a word processor to write your story.

Can't physically type at all?

Use speech to text,

or do an audio recording of your novel, and have someone transcribe it,

or use actual existing Closed Caption technology to transcribe it for you!

These are all accessible technology options that actually help disabled people be creative, not just tell an AI generator "hey write me a book about x"

Disabled people have been authors and artists for millennia.

Stephen Hawking used a combination of Predictive Text, eye-control cursors, and an infrared sensor mounted on his glasses that would detect if he was tensing or relaxing the muscles in his cheek, allowing him to scroll a virtual keyboard.

Somehow, I don't think the people championing generative AI actually care about "disabled people" when they try to insist that typing a prompt into a generator and having it churn out random slop is the solution to 'allowing disabled people to be creative' instead of actually giving them the various technology and accessibility tools that have been a thing for at least 25 years, like:

Eye-tracking software that allows you to type or paint on a computer screen (this is now at the point where people can play online video games with this software!)

Having any kind of smart phone set up with speech to text and a word processing app like Google Docs or a notepad app

Using basic sound recording apps to dictate your novel for later transcription

Using other body parts than your hands (or using prosthetics) to hold paint brushes, pens, markers, digital stylus, computer mouse, etc to make art with.

And so much more!

The real ableism here is when pro-AI bros try to insist that Disabled People, categorically, are incapable of being creative and accomplishing anything without a computer doing all the work for them by generating things based on millions of stolen works, and the complete erasure of all of the disabled artists who are here *now* and existed in the past, acting like they do not and never existed, all so that rich white ai bros can continue to flood reddit with "super cool badass art I just made" which is a nonsense amalgamation, and throw tantrums when artists start using programs like Glaze and Nightshade in an attempt to protect their art from those same predatory ai tech bros.

Technology is meant to help humans be creative, not steal our works and livelyhood by replacing writers and artists entirely, because all some rich guy has to do now is type in a prompt.

[topazadine]

Defeating Protracted Writer's Block

Sometimes we get a little stuck on a few words; that's normal. Sometimes we just don't feel like doing anything today and would rather roll around on the ground pretending to be a slug or perhaps a snail. Also normal. Very normal.

However, what do you do if your writer's block has gone on for days, weeks, months, years?? Well, you've got to make a plan to defeat the Block. Here are some suggestions I have developed.

Resist the urge to start something new.

Sit with the discomfort.

Give yourself grace.

Assess your overall life circumstances.

Read outside of your comfort zone.

Try a new hobby or activity.

Start over completely (in a new document).

Cannibalize the piece.

And at the end, I'll share some action points to sum up.

As always, I am not the end-all be-all of writing advice, maybe I'm wrong, maybe you have other suggestions, take what you like and leave the rest. Let's go.

Resist the urge to start something new.

I have discussed in another post why you should not have a million WIPs, with citations as to why having a million WIPs is not conducive to good writing processes, so I will not belabor the point.

Basically, the brain really only focuses on one thing at a time. The more projects you have going, the more scattered your focus is, and the less likely you will be to finish any of them.

I get that you might be bored with your WIP, but if you start a new project, you are exponentially less likely to actually finish it. Maybe you've given up on it totally, and that's fine, but if you did intend to get it done, then stick with it.

Any ideas you have can be set aside for later exploration; write them down and you can be assured that they're not going anywhere.

Sit with the discomfort.

One of the best things I have learned over my life, both in writing and overall, is to be okay being uncomfortable. This mostly comes to me regarding getting feedback on my work, but it also refers to being okay with having writer's block.

There's a skill that comes from knowing when you need to push through a bit of writer's block (which is typically just being unmotivated) and when you need to sit back on your heels and breathe. If you have thrown all your tools at the writer's block, such as turning off your phone or using Stimuwrite, and you're still stuck, then you need to accept that right now is not for writing.

Personally, I always get very anxious when I have writer's block. What if I just give up on the story completely? What if I'm just a bad writer and my inspiration has run out? What if I'll never be able to write anything ever again?

Then I remind myself that I have been writing since I was 7 and I have always come back to it, no matter how bad things have gotten in my life. Experience has shown that even if I take a break, I am almost certainly going to return to it because it's my longest-held and most well-developed skill.

In many cases, just acknowledging that I'm more anxious about the future of my craft rather than this particular story is enough to get me to calm down, and by releasing that mental finger-trap, I start to feel inspired again.

Accept and acknowledge the writer's block. Recognize that it's there. Don't avoid it. Simply let it be there for the moment.

Give yourself grace.

Creatives can be really hard on themselves, especially in a world that is constantly pushing us to develop content as soon as possible. We think that if we don't put out a story every week, no one will care about us anymore and we'll be forgotten. Algorithms have started to infest our brains and change our self-image into a "content creator" instead of a writer, artist, musician, and so on.

But these algos were not created by creative people. They were developed by tech bros who do not understand the process of producing something unique.

Downtime is part of being creative, just like rest days are part of being an athlete. Your brain needs time to decompress, relax, and mull over story ideas. No one would force a marathon runner to set out on another cross-country trek just days after completing their last one because their muscles would explode.

If you don't have a looming deadline, relax. Be gentle to yourself. Let yourself loll around and pretend to be a snail. Freeing your mind of that anxiety can, paradoxically, make you want to work again.

Assess your overall life circumstances.

In addition to my controversial beliefs about not starting a million WIPs, I also do not ascribe to the myth of the martyr artist. I covered that in more detail at the link, but basically, being depressed and stressed out does not actually make you more creative, no matter what you think. Not only does that post explain the science behind it, but it shows you some examples of my own writing done during different stages of bipolar disorder: manic, depressed, and stable.

I don't care what any starving artists say. As someone with a severe mental illness, I can confidently tell you that being unstable is not good for creativity. Your brain is under stress, and it doesn't have the metabolism necessary to produce great work.

But this does not just stand for having a severe mental illness like bipolar disorder; it can also refer to just overall shitty life circumstances, like being stuck in a bad job or having toxic people around you.

Sometimes a dip in productivity can actually be the sign you need that there's something awry elsewhere, something you may not even noticed was wrong. As such, when you're feeling The Block, sit down and think about your life circumstances. Are you happy? Are you financially stable? Are the people around you supportive and kind? Are you getting enough food to eat? Do you have regular healthcare?

Of course, sometimes you will face protracted life circumstances that are inconducive to creative activity, and there is nothing you can do about it. I'm not saying that if you're in a bad place, you should just stop writing - not at all. We'd be missing half the literary canon if that were the case.

But. If you are facing challenges, and you're feeling blocked, and you have the means to take care of those things, by all means do. Take care of your life stuff. The writing can wait. You as a person are much more important than what you produce. You deserve to be happy and healthy and well taken care of.

If you are facing challenges, and feeling blocked, and you can't take care of those things, then please give yourself grace. Be kind to yourself. Take it slow. Do just as much as you can and no more. Ask for grace from others if you need to. Again, you as a person are always, always more important than what you produce.

Read outside of your comfort zone.

In addition to writing The Eirenic Verses, I am a freelance SEO writer who mostly writes stuff about real estate and personal injury. You'd be surprised at how much inspiration I get from the boring stuff that I have to write for work! I'm serious - these obnoxiously dry statistics and such have helped me immensely in my creative fiction.

For example, there's a scene in one of the upcoming books where the MC falls down a cliff. I would not have even considered including that if it weren't for writing personal injury articles about construction accidents. I also got inspiration for the main theme of book 8 in the series, Perseity, after writing about real estate probate. I'm serious!

Sometimes, nonfiction like that can kickstart your creative process more than fiction because you won't just be copying the themes or ideas included in whatever you're currently reading. I recommend that you read fiction for things like dialogue, interesting words to use, and so on, but nonfiction for the actual story ideas. After all, life is frequently stranger than fiction. You never know what you'll find in there.

Try a new hobby or activity.

We, of course, use our brains to write, and our brains are always eager for new inputs. The more that you expose yourself to interesting things, whether that's going on a short daytrip or trying out a new skill, the more neurogenesis that occurs and the more metabolic activity going on up there. And we want neurogenesis and good metabolic activity.

If you're really struggling to write, step away from the computer and do something new. It could be anything, but at the bare minimum, it must make you feel like an idiot who does not know what they are doing. It must make you have to try new movements, or apply old knowledge in new ways, or go to somewhere you've never been before and don't know the layout of. This shakes you out of your old patterns of behavior and forces you to shift your understandings of how things work, which can give you new perspectives on your work.

Start over completely (in a new document).

I will only touch on this briefly because I don't use it, but I know other people have had success with it. Basically, you begin all the way over again, writing it as you would have from the beginning. Not copying and pasting, but typing it all over again.

Sometimes (or so I have been told), this helps you recognize where things are going wrong and workshop solutions as you go along. Many also use this for editing when they are done, as it helps you catch typos you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Cannibalize the piece.

If you are really stuck, fed-up, angry, and don't think you can bear to go on, then don't! Unless you've already promised this work to someone or you're doing this for pay, there's no rule that you have to finish everything you start.

But no writing is ever wasted. There is likely the seeds of something good in there that you can recycle. It may be really good phrases, ideas, characters, locations, dialogue, whatever. But there is something good in every single piece, no matter how down you are feeling about it right now.

I've given up on a ton of pieces, but I often find echoes of them in later works, even if I never copy-pasted anything. That's because it was still practice - I was still learning and growing as a writer. The only way to improve is to keep going forward, but that does not mean you have to beat a dead horse. Chop it up and feed it to your next piece so you have the strength to continue.

Action points for beating protracted writer's block

Don't start a new WIP unless you have completely given up on this one. If you get story ideas for something else, write them down but don't start them. Allow yourself to have writer's block: unless you have a deadline, the writing will still be there. Recognize that much of writer's block is about anxiety about your skills rather than a true creative stop. Remove the "content creator" curse that tells you that you must be working 24/7. Consider downtime to be part of the creative process, just like athletes need to rest. Remind yourself of how many other times you have have writer's block and the fact that you were able to get over it that time too. Assess your overall life circumstances and consider whether your writer's block is a symptom of something bigger. Prioritize self-care rather than attempting to be a martyr for your art. Read something you wouldn't usually in order to broaden your horizons. Consider reading nonfiction for story ideas and fiction for specific craft inspiration. Do a new hobby, especially one that is completely out of your comfort zone. Rewrite the entire piece in a new document. Take pieces from the old work and start something new if you have fully declared it dead.

If you enjoyed this, maybe you'll consider purchasing my gay fantasy romance, 9 Years Yearning. This coming-of-age story features two young soldiers in a world lightly inspired by the Mongolian steppes, infused with poetry magic and literary mythology.

[modrew71extra]

Right, never thought I had to make one of these callouts in my entire time of using social media, but unfortunately due to the seriousness of the subject matter at hand, I have to get this out here to prevent more people being mislead.

Now for a lot of people who follow artist Tumblr might be aware of this one thread circulating in regards to people using Glaze & Nightshade in response to the recent updates made to Tumblr's data services. With the posting in question, @ reachartwork discouraging use of it and presenting an argument for it.

Now unlike most other people, I can tell how off their argument is as it lacked the nuance of how these programs worked and talked about it in a way that came off more enthusiastic, despite their claims of having sympathies people trying to protect themselves.

It's only until I took one little look at their blog and knew what was up, and their later behaviour proved my suspicions.

Now to get this right off the bat, I do apologise for whatever misgendering I exhibited as I didn't notice that about them, nor am I justifying this callout to harass them.

So please don't

Rather, it's to be weary of this user, and how you really shouldn't be sleeping on these programs.

Now as the original featured, it went out in presenting their argument as followed:

As you can notice in the thread, it's providing very little evidence of their findings of its supposed workings without proper sources, while trying to show ways to work around it (again, enthusiastically mind you).

And yet as you notice, they didn't bother providing an alternative way to combat this scalping situation everyone is in, especially with how replies have been of users expressing their grievances over this.

You'll think that maybe you should have added something to help others or worded themselves in a more sympathetic manner?

But that's when I checked into their profile and knew what seems to be up,

They're into this tech.

I knew this was clear propaganda, why would somebody who is invested into generative tech try and discourage methods in protecting others of data scalping?

Like I'm sorry but you can't be somebody who claims to be sympathetic about the whole power imbalance this whole field is causing, yet enthusiastically be into this tech. Those mixture of ideologies just do not match.

There's no such thing as "ethical AI use" for this tech.

Now upon knowing many were falling prey to this nonsense, I had to step in and present my own counter arguments and why they are so wrong. Both programs Q&A (along with demonstrations of it acting as written) thay explains the inner workings of it as thoroughly as possible:

https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html

(Paper is in QA)

https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ravenben/publications/pdf/glaze-usenix23.pdf

https://twitter.com/zer0int1/status/1749574897179742353

Now comes the part when things get more heated

After I posted my retort, this is the response I got:

A) Again, while I didn't intend disrespect for their gender, "AI-bro" has literally become a catch-all for us who are against the very people who are engaged in this field

B) Since when in my original argument that I did try to villainize the entirety of programmers in general? My wording was superficially against those in that field of ML tech who are for this tech.

C) Trying to spin my own findings with proper context and immaturely handwave it by boiling it down as me going "nuh uh" is making you look childish, the info I provided literally explains the very points they argued.

D) Reason I blocked them straight away is because I knew a lot of these pro-AI tend to be very combative when it comes to criticism, I felt it in my gut that they were going to do so first. And later on other factors of their character proved my point.

Like I'm sorry, you really think me not having a degree of X matter is somehow making me a worst person and that I shouldn't be allowed to voice criticism of something?

Just because somebody is in the field of something, doesn't automatically mean they have the best interests to heart.

And here's my confirmation that like a lot of these AI enthusiasts, they're very sensitive & combative.

Now not too long, I decided to try to reblog my argument on another reblog of the artist @ Kang-Bang as they have a bigger artist presence, while they fortunately did realize what the OP they were quickly blocked upon reblogging my own post:

But it wasn't that confirmed that behaviour.

I found out through a conversation I had with somebody on the server of artist-rights advocate Zakugu Mignon, that this individual had a similar encounter with this user a year ago on Twitter (I'm Hollow btw);

And here's the conversation this person had that led to this similar experience:

https://twitter.com/Acfusi/status/1691261322988527617

Notice a familiar pattern of behaviour?

The unfortunate pattern behaviour that these pro-AI types are once again present.

It's always trying to justify the usage of this succeeding.

Now look, I'm not against the idea of the physical unabled being given the ability to produce creations of their own with the help technology means nor do I think that Artificial Intelligence is inherently bad.

But this generative tech is just doing it all the wrong way.

It's by all intentions & purposes, displace hard working people as cheaply and quickly as they can.

It has unfortunately happened to certain working sectors such as journalism, advertisement and translations as we speak.

Now on the topic of whether or not you use Glaze or Nightshade.

Please don't drop it

Now yes it's not a panchea for the societal problems we're currently facing.

But you shouldn't just leave whatever you post online out in the open without any forms of protection is not the wisest route to take.

As the Q&A already shown, it at least offers some way to ensure a means of sabotage data scalping.

There are still many other creatives and general users utilizing these programs for good reason, and WHY they're desperate for a means of protection.

https://www.tumblr.com/astraskylark/741393628982886400?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/leahfrog/743484550954598400/theres-also-nightshade-if-you-havent-heard?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/thetreetopinn/738157011350470656/ill-say-what-ive-said-in-the-past-ai-art-can-be?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/in-ravenlight/743565614387494913?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/luimnigh/743036171813273600/what-is-this-about-the-tumblr-staff-wanting-to?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/taikova/738369881482919936?source=share

Yes, I understand there's some skepticism going around and we're all frightfully confused about what to do in these uncertain times.

But please.

Don't skim out on a solution to offer some forms of protection.

Having a little protection is better than having none.

[mothdogs]

Blocked a ficbinder for proudly (?) using AI image generation to make their dustjackets. How are you going to show complete reverence for the craft of fic writing while at the same time shitting on every visual artist whose work was chewed up by some random tech bro without permission and puked back out into a fucking slurry for your cover design. Man up and get a Canva subscription like the rest of us