#technically wrote this as part of a larger thing

[escyn]

I thought a little bit too much about the Siege of Ba-Sing Se, Agni, and thunderstorms; this was the result...

content warnings: slight gore, panic attack/PTSD, slight horror vibes

The thing is time can be finicky, and coincidence can be twisted into something more deliberate with multiple perspectives.

So as Zuko relinquishes his hold over the fragments that were held together with static and ice, thinking of you—You stand looking up at the sky. 

You stand looking at the almost shockingly blue sky and at the singular cloud that mars the picture-perfect day. You noticed it a few degrees back, and it keeps ensnaring your attention as you amble along the dirt road between the fields of wheat. It stands out like a sore thumb in the middle of the long inland dry season. You have not seen rain in over a month, and don’t expect to see rain for at least another one, but this cloud looks like it could burst, dark and churning with energy that screams thunderstorm. It sits alone up there, a dark isolated blot, but something about this cloud and its dark mass is wrong, the twisting of your gut tells you as much. 

So, you review what you have observed: 1. It is a rain cloud in the drought season; 2. It sits alone up there; and 3. It does not move. 

You have never seen a cloud that does not move before, one that seems content to loom suspended in the sky, so very still. Your first encounter with one is unsettling, the wrongness in its suspended motion setting you on alert. Your unmoving cloud seems painted on, plucked by a keen artists eye out of a fast-moving monsoon and rendered in the sky above you, its puropose lost. When you aren’t looking at it you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, like it is watching you back, but that would be ridiculous. You find yourself stopping to stare, if only for a moment, and the prickling at the back of your neck intensifies. You feel the build up of—something. You arent certian, but it feels familiar. The warning sign before—before what? It almost feels like the cloud perceiving you back, hanging there in the sky screaming at you—for what you aren’t sure.

You almost want to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but you fear if you open your mouth something other than laughter will come out, maybe a sob, maybe a scream, maybe ancient words long forgotten. 

You stand, captured by its dark mass, as it starts to drift, threatening to blot out the Sun. But maybe blot isn’t the correct word. 

—Eclipse— 

The word come unbidden to your mind. And isn't that a word, a thought. You feel yourself gag as bile rises from your stomach, stinging the back of your throat. Static—Was that what was building?— in your ears crackling in time with your heart which is now racing, because not again—But not again what?—

You can't remember. 

You need to run, to get out of here, but your limbs are not yours to control anymore, if they ever were. You are rooted as the Cloud, impossibly large in the sky, swallows the Sun—Then it is swallowing the entire Sky.

—You are standing in the dark—

—You are standing in a void—

—There is nothing around you— 

Nothing.

No light, no heat. Nothing except for a building [potential:charge:overwhelming:crushing:help!]. It crests above you, compressing you just like the Agni-cursed Earth, like the crushed bodies strewn about on the battlefield—What battlefield?—The scent of people violently splattered against the Earth—Why do you know what guts smell like?—The taste of dirt turned to mud in your lungs—Why do you feel like you are drowning?—Bones dripping out of your nose as they are liquified by the force exerted on your body—And someone is screaming as it is extinguished—What is extinguished?—You are screaming—The Wall is screaming—

But then the cloud is no longer blocking the Sun. In fact, there are no clouds in the sky. And there is someone calling a name. You think it might be yours. You drag your eyes away from the clear sky and cast about for the person calling to you. You find a figure waving you over with a shout, but your eyes slide off them to focus on what is behind them. 

The Wall. The Wall is here. 

You can feel a scream building up in your throat begging to be let out because they are right there, waiting for the Wall to fall, waiting to raze the fertile earth that you stand on to ashes. Because you are right here—and you could have turned this field into ashes before it was taken from you—But what was taken from you? What did the Wall take from you? Who are you? Why can’t you remember? Why?—

Then it all gets washed away. There is no war in Ba Sing Se. Nothing to fear here behind the Wall. 

The Earth King invites you to Lake Laogai.

“Li come on; we are going to be late if you spend any more time daydreaming!” 

You turn to the person calling your(?) name, feel a twitch at the corners of your lips. They peel apart and bare your teeth, as a mockery of a smile splits your face in half. It feels wrong, like you did not put it there yourself, but it is probably passible because your companion smiles back. 

And you are once again Li. 

[rubyclover]

I said I can’t write but if felt nice getting that other idea out of my head. So I wrote this and will post. Technically I started trying to write this like a month ago… Please ignore the constant switching between past and present tense. It’s something I never seem to notice until someone else points out where it is.

Prompt: Professionals hate him but he was right! [Adam] Heaven and Hell come to the realization that The First Man played a larger part in the three realms’ political/social ecosystem than they thought. His absence leaves a vacuum that Lute is unable to fill but she may not need to because Hell is solving the problem themselves… The Morningstar Family can’t run from this.

No ABetaO we expire like Adam~

Imagine that Adam dies, the hotel has never looked better, the residents have healed up and Charlie gets another TV appearance. Lucifer is even more depressed than before but hides it. Adam is gone She’s going to reveal Sir Pentious’ redemption with evidence that is NOT childishly scribbled on key cards. Instead of the interview taking place in the 666News studio it’s held outside the hotel. She will take questions, live, right after the interview. Katie Killjoy wants to give the public a chance to cause chaos for ratings, so she puts Charlie in a vulnerable position.

Things go great… for the first 20 minutes. The interview isn’t even half way done when someone from the crowd interjects after Charlie says ‘The Sinners have a better life now that the Exterminations are permanently canceled.’

That person’s voice is calm but still pissed as Hell. They fire back that no, Sinners don’t have an easier life now that the Exterminations are over. It’s worse! Charlie and the crowd perk up.

The voice moves to the front. They’re short with plain street clothes, hood up. It’s obvious they’re poor and at the bottom of Hell’s pecking order. A couple of Imps are with them equally disheveled and tired looking. The man goes on to point out some rather hard truths.

Thanks to the last Extermination, angelic steel has become a hot commodity. While uncommon right now, there’s a pipeline to obtain an angelic weapon. All you need is enough money. Carmilla Carmine doesn’t care about how her product is used after purchase.

‘Permanent Murder’ is a new trend on HellTube netting ridiculous profits. The main targets are vulnerable Sinners, usually the scared and alone new arrivals, Imps and Hellhounds. All killed by beautifully glowing angelic weapons.

Overlords are more formidable with these weapons so the chance of contractees escaping, like Angeldust, has become damn near impossible even if they destroyed their contract. Some desperate souls were happy with their messed up immortality. It gave them some hope, ‘at least I have a chance to turn things around eventually,’ but that pathetic security is gone.

The Exterminations kept said Overlords in check to a degree. They were more inclined to take care of their underlings because that guaranteed their safety. Now? Just get an angelic gun for all your troubles. Valentino is having a fucking field day.

The ‘permadeath’ toll for one year will be ten times the amount of one Extermination Day considering how much Hell’s citizens like to kill Sinners…

Not to mention, whole industries in Hell, from top to bottom, are starting to crash. Their purpose or sales revolved around the Exterminations. Some workers cannot afford to lose their job and have to sell their soul against their will.

Etcetcetc

As the man speaks Charlie is surprised to see heads nodding in agreement! Someone comments that they hadn’t seen their Sinner friend in a few days and tries not to panic while another face falls in the crowd and wrings their hands together. An Imp with curved horns standing beside a young Hellhound sweats profusely and starts to leave. Tension moves through the public. Not just the ones in front of the stage but also those watching TV.

Despite her best efforts Charlie cannot lift the crowd’s mood. She realizes prematurely revealing Sir Pentious’ redemption is the only way to salvage this growing disaster. Unfortunately the man’s timing is perfect because the second she opens her mouth he turns his anger on the Morningstars.

He calls out how much her family misrepresents themselves as rulers. They don’t do anything for Hell anymore. They spend most of their time fucking around while the Sinners suffer. The other Sins manage their rings and hellborn, not Lucifer or Lilith. All three of the Morningstars can’t truly understand human suffering yet they profess to know how to best handle it. With no idea what it means to be human yet they pass judgement on them.

The crowd becomes agitated and the Imps beside the man move closer to him. They aren’t trying to draw safety from the Sinner but are taking defensive positions. Charlie realizes this isn’t someone speaking up in the heat of the moment. This is a planned speech. He’s highjacking her broadcast!

She sees the Sinner clench his fists and feels herself start to sweat. Why was he saying any of that? Yes, life will be a bit hard at first but now everyone can come together and rebuild! There are so many possibilities available to The Pride Ring. It would improve lives. Change was always good they just had to be careful. Yet the stranger goes on.

He claims that Lucifer is a washed up angel that can’t comprehend mortality because of his maladaptive dreaming and pride, Lilith is apathetic to Sinners and wishes to aggravate Heaven no matter how much Hell will suffer and Charlie is so sheltered that she thinks PTSD can be solved by clapping and saying positive affirmations.

Little is known about the royal family but the stranger’s comments sway the crowd. The hotel’s original commercials got the time of day because of Charlie’s status, not because the facility had managed to accomplish anything. Lucifer barely appears at all even when large fights break out leveling half of Pentagram City. And Lilith? Missing for 7 years after riling up all of Hell multiple times, causing Heaven to start the Exterminations.

The stranger calls the hotel a disgusting joke. Calls out how Charlie is trying to ‘pass the buck’ over to Heaven. The Pride Ring’s actual rulers are Overlords and they make sure Sinners suffer and continue to act depraved whether they like it or not. Her family has the power to take control and lessen the city’s suffering but they don’t. Instead they play with their little pet project .

Why are they focusing on shipping problems elsewhere? There’s a better way to solve the pain and suffering at the source than waiting! Fix Pentagram City! Show Heaven that the current number of Sinners isn’t a threat!

‘For all the crying and sniveling you do Princess Charlotte, you sure don’t actually help where it counts! I’m sure you care about Sinners but only on the same level as someone cares about cute public park ducks.’

Vaggie, who had been standing to the side of the stage leaps forward, places herself in between the stranger and her girlfriend. Everyone’s raised emotions have put her on edge. She ignores the harsh gasps when her angelic spear slides free and into her hands. ‘Back up! Now!’

Charlie’s heart sank at the escalation. She understood her girlfriend was still tense from the extermination but all their hard work was starting to fray around the edges! She just hoped her dad didn’t-

The King of Hell himself appears through a portal shortly after gathering himself together. The opening looked angrier in color, matching his mood. Sickly green lines run throughout the glow, radiating blistering heat. Parts of the stage began to melt and the forgotten camera crew swivel to their ruler. Lucifer’s face is set in stone but his bright flickering eyes give him away.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ He snarls, apple topped cane slamming onto the stage causing some of it to splatter. ‘How dare you speak to my daughter that way.’ Lucifer’s face morphs into a more demonic grimace. Katie Killjoy scrambles from her chair and off the stage at the same time as Charlie vaulting up to place a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder whispering ‘dad no!’ She doesn’t want the hotel’s improved reputation to evaporate. A confrontation with someone on live TV would scare people away!

Lucifer growls in the back of his throat, looking at where he assumes the bastard’s eyes are under his hood. Smoke and embers sizzle out from the corner of his mouth and inbetween teeth. He hated acting this way but he had an image to uphold. ‘Answer your King you wretch. Don’t confuse my inaction with benevolence. You’re testing my patience!’

After a beat or two of staring each other down the stranger has the gall to ‘tsk’ off to the side as if spitting. ‘As you with your majesty. It’s all fine by me.’ A small, scared hand reaches up and whips off the dirty hood exposing his face to all of Hell.

People instantly whip out their phones. His face is shockingly similar to Lucifer’s, in fact a basic carbon copy sans a few attributes.

Cameras catch alabaster skin and soft, blond, curly hair, short, wiry build, vivid green eyes, pale coral cheek markings, pointed ears and four demon wings the same color as his skin.

Leaf green eyes stair directly into Charlie’s while electing to ignore both fallen angels. He stands ramrod straight. Cutting a regal silhouette despite the filth on his body and clothes.

‘My name is Cain Adamson, The Wandering Star.’ He bows in a fashion Charlie hadn’t seen in all her galas. ‘Lucifer Morningstar’s first born and bastard son. It’s nice to finally meet you sister mine… I’ll be taking your family’s crown for my father.’

[So in this AU Cain rescued Adam’s body and resuscitated it. They had a familial bond even when Cain got banished for murdering Able and found out his bio dad was Lucifer. Eve didn’t pay much attention to her first born out of guilt so Adam stepped up. No one shamed her. Adam never felt like Cain was separate from his other kids even though he looked nothing like him. Now Cain wants to provide for his father who’s trapped in hell and in really bad condition by booting the Morningstars out of power in the Pride Ring.] Dunno about pairing but Adamsapple or Guitarhero would be a safe bet. Either way Lucifer will suffer lol

[wtf do I call this? Family Feud AU? Chessboard AU? Secret Brother AU? Idk h e l p ]

[spanishskulduggery]

Hello. Sensitive question here but I wanted to ask since you stated you are from the U.S. as well. Is it now common to place an x to "neutralize" the gender of all encompassing nouns? I read a volunteer post on social media stating Hijxs and niñxs and threw me for a loop because the grammar is hijos and niños for children in general (boys and girls), right? Is this a lexicon change or just a U.S. thing?

It's just a US thing for the most part - many Latin Americans and even Spaniards see the X as an American thing

(The history is more nuanced but my sources say it came from the queer/drag community in Brazil of all places, but people would spray paint an X on gendered signs especially when "masculine plural is default inclusive" became a viewpoint)

...

The real problem with using X (aside from general perception of Latinx being a US-Hispanic thing) is that it's hard to pronounce and not great for accessibility

It makes more sense in reading it and written down, not so much speaking. People still do it in written things. When I was growing up before the Latinx movement people would use the @ (arroba) because it was part A part O... so we used to see like ¿tienes much@s amig@s? for "do you have a lot of friends?" and it was implied any gender. It's less common now because the @ often brings up social media stuff

-

The most widely accepted gender neutral is the use of -E endings; many unisex adjectives use -E [like inteligente or valiente] and it appeals more to pan-Hispanic sensibilities because E looks more Latin

And people like the E more because they see it as more organic to Spanish and less of a US-driven movement

I wrote more about the use of E in some posts related to Baldur's Gate 3:

This post here

And this larger post here

Note: Also the E can be used with Spaniards or Spanish-American people; "Latinx" specifically refers to Latin Americans, and the X is not very often used with Spaniards in my limited experience [though español/española doesn't go very well with the X in my opinion]... the E is more universally applicable

I've seen Spaniards use vosotres for "all of you [informal]" with a gender neutral twist

...

Me personally I tend to see Latinx as referring to people of Latin American descent living in the US. It's more commonly seen for talking about writers and artists of Latin American descent, and especially in the art scene to differentiate them from white artists while also not lumping them into everyone who's a person of color... since Latin Americans come in every color and shade and it's not technically a race

It's more commonly seen and used around New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami (I personally tend to associate it more with Mexican-Americans but that might be from reading about the Chicano/Chicanx art/literature movements)

[fipindustries]

Artificial Intelligence Risk

about a month ago i got into my mind the idea of trying the format of video essay, and the topic i came up with that i felt i could more or less handle was AI risk and my objections to yudkowsky. i wrote the script but then soon afterwards i ran out of motivation to do the video. still i didnt want the effort to go to waste so i decided to share the text, slightly edited here. this is a LONG fucking thing so put it aside on its own tab and come back to it when you are comfortable and ready to sink your teeth on quite a lot of reading

Anyway, let’s talk about AI risk

I’m going to be doing a very quick introduction to some of the latest conversations that have been going on in the field of artificial intelligence, what are artificial intelligences exactly, what is an AGI, what is an agent, the orthogonality thesis, the concept of instrumental convergence, alignment and how does Eliezer Yudkowsky figure in all of this.

 If you are already familiar with this you can skip to section two where I’m going to be talking about yudkowsky’s arguments for AI research presenting an existential risk to, not just humanity, or even the world, but to the entire universe and my own tepid rebuttal to his argument.

Now, I SHOULD clarify, I am not an expert on the field, my credentials are dubious at best, I am a college drop out from the career of computer science and I have a three year graduate degree in video game design and a three year graduate degree in electromechanical instalations. All that I know about the current state of AI research I have learned by reading articles, consulting a few friends who have studied about the topic more extensevily than me,

and watching educational you tube videos so. You know. Not an authority on the matter from any considerable point of view and my opinions should be regarded as such.

So without further ado, let’s get in on it.

PART ONE, A RUSHED INTRODUCTION ON THE SUBJECT

1.1 general intelligence and agency

lets begin with what counts as artificial intelligence, the technical definition for artificial intelligence is, eh…, well, why don’t I let a Masters degree in machine intelligence explain it:

 Now let’s get a bit more precise here and include the definition of AGI, Artificial General intelligence. It is understood that classic ai’s such as the ones we have in our videogames or in alpha GO or even our roombas, are narrow Ais, that is to say, they are capable of doing only one kind of thing. They do not understand the world beyond their field of expertise whether that be within a videogame level, within a GO board or within you filthy disgusting floor.

AGI on the other hand is much more, well, general, it can have a multimodal understanding of its surroundings, it can generalize, it can extrapolate, it can learn new things across multiple different fields, it can come up with solutions that account for multiple different factors, it can incorporate new ideas and concepts. Essentially, a human is an agi. So far that is the last frontier of AI research, and although we are not there quite yet, it does seem like we are doing some moderate strides in that direction. We’ve all seen the impressive conversational and coding skills that GPT-4 has and Google just released Gemini, a multimodal AI that can understand and generate text, sounds, images and video simultaneously. Now, of course it has its limits, it has no persistent memory, its contextual window while larger than previous models is still relatively small compared to a human (contextual window means essentially short term memory, how many things can it keep track of and act coherently about).

And yet there is one more factor I haven’t mentioned yet that would be needed to make something a “true” AGI. That is Agency. To have goals and autonomously come up with plans and carry those plans out in the world to achieve those goals. I as a person, have agency over my life, because I can choose at any given moment to do something without anyone explicitly telling me to do it, and I can decide how to do it. That is what computers, and machines to a larger extent, don’t have. Volition.

So, Now that we have established that, allow me to introduce yet one more definition here, one that you may disagree with but which I need to establish in order to have a common language with you such that I can communicate these ideas effectively. The definition of intelligence. It’s a thorny subject and people get very particular with that word because there are moral associations with it. To imply that someone or something has or hasn’t intelligence can be seen as implying that it deserves or doesn’t deserve admiration, validity, moral worth or even  personhood. I don’t care about any of that dumb shit. The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically “how capable you are to do many different things successfully”. The more “intelligent” an AI is, the more capable of doing things that AI can be. After all, there is a reason why education is considered such a universally good thing in society. To educate a child is to uplift them, to expand their world, to increase their opportunities in life. And the same goes for AI. I need to emphasize that this is just the way I’m using the word within the context of this video, I don’t care if you are a psychologist or a neurosurgeon, or a pedagogue, I need a word to express this idea and that is the word im going to use, if you don’t like it or if you think this is innapropiate of me then by all means, keep on thinking that, go on and comment about it below the video, and then go on to suck my dick.

Anyway. Now, we have established what an AGI is, we have established what agency is, and we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency. But as the intelligence of a given agent increases we start to see certain trends, certain strategies start to arise again and again, and we call this Instrumental convergence.

1.2 instrumental convergence

The basic idea behind instrumental convergence is that if you are an intelligent agent that wants to achieve some goal, there are some common basic strategies that you are going to turn towards no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your goal is as complicated as building a nuclear bomb or as simple as making a cup of tea. These are things we can reliably predict any AGI worth its salt is going to try to do.

First of all is self-preservation. Its going to try to protect itself. When you want to do something, being dead is usually. Bad. its counterproductive. Is not generally recommended. Dying is widely considered unadvisable by 9 out of every ten experts in the field. If there is something that it wants getting done, it wont get done if it dies or is turned off, so its safe to predict that any AGI will try to do things in order not be turned off. How far it may go in order to do this? Well… [wouldn’t you like to know weather boy].

Another thing it will predictably converge towards is goal preservation. That is to say, it will resist any attempt to try and change it, to alter it, to modify its goals. Because, again, if you want to accomplish something, suddenly deciding that you want to do something else is uh, not going to accomplish the first thing, is it? Lets say that you want to take care of your child, that is your goal, that is the thing you want to accomplish, and I come to you and say, here, let me change you on the inside so that you don’t care about protecting your kid. Obviously you are not going to let me, because if you stopped caring about your kids, then your kids wouldn’t be cared for or protected. And you want to ensure that happens, so caring about something else instead is a huge no-no- which is why, if we make AGI and it has goals that we don’t like it will probably resist any attempt to “fix” it.

And finally another goal that it will most likely trend towards is self improvement. Which can be more generalized to “resource acquisition”. If it lacks capacities to carry out a plan, then step one of that plan will always be to increase capacities. If you want to get something really expensive, well first you need to get money. If you want to increase your chances of getting a high paying job then you need to get education, if you want to get a partner you need to increase how attractive you are. And as we established earlier, if intelligence is the thing that increases your agency, you want to become smarter in order to do more things. So one more time, is not a huge leap at all, it is not a stretch of the imagination, to say that any AGI will probably seek to increase its capabilities, whether by acquiring more computation, by improving itself, by taking control of resources.

All these three things I mentioned are sure bets, they are likely to happen and safe to assume. They are things we ought to keep in mind when creating AGI.

 Now of course, I have implied a sinister tone to all these things, I have made all this sound vaguely threatening, haven’t i?. There is one more assumption im sneaking into all of this which I haven’t talked about. All that I have mentioned presents a very callous view of AGI, I have made it apparent that all of these strategies it may follow will go in conflict with people, maybe even go as far as to harm humans. Am I impliying that AGI may tend to be… Evil???

1.3 The Orthogonality thesis

Well, not quite.

We humans care about things. Generally. And we generally tend to care about roughly the same things, simply by virtue of being humans. We have some innate preferences and some innate dislikes. We have a tendency to not like suffering (please keep in mind I said a tendency, im talking about a statistical trend, something that most humans present to some degree). Most of us, baring social conditioning, would take pause at the idea of torturing someone directly, on purpose, with our bare hands. (edit bear paws onto my hands as I say this).  Most would feel uncomfortable at the thought of doing it to multitudes of people. We tend to show a preference for food, water, air, shelter, comfort, entertainment and companionship. This is just how we are fundamentally wired. These things can be overcome, of course, but that is the thing, they have to be overcome in the first place.

An AGI is not going to have the same evolutionary predisposition to these things like we do because it is not made of the same things a human is made of and it was not raised the same way a human was raised.

There is something about a human brain, in a human body, flooded with human hormones that makes us feel and think and act in certain ways and care about certain things.

All an AGI is going to have is the goals it developed during its training, and will only care insofar as those goals are met. So say an AGI has the goal of going to the corner store to bring me a pack of cookies. In its way there it comes across an anthill in its path, it will probably step on the anthill because to take that step takes it closer to the corner store, and why wouldn’t it step on the anthill? Was it programmed with some specific innate preference not to step on ants? No? then it will step on the anthill and not pay any mind  to it.

Now lets say it comes across a cat. Same logic applies, if it wasn’t programmed with an inherent tendency to value animals, stepping on the cat wont slow it down at all.

Now let’s say it comes across a baby.

Of course, if its intelligent enough it will probably understand that if it steps on that baby people might notice and try to stop it, most likely even try to disable it or turn it off so it will not step on the baby, to save itself from all that trouble. But you have to understand that it wont stop because it will feel bad about harming a baby or because it understands that to harm a baby is wrong. And indeed if it was powerful enough such that no matter what people did they could not stop it and it would suffer no consequence for killing the baby, it would have probably killed the baby.

If I need to put it in gross, inaccurate terms for you to get it then let me put it this way. Its essentially a sociopath. It only cares about the wellbeing of others in as far as that benefits it self. Except human sociopaths do care nominally about having human comforts and companionship, albeit in a very instrumental way, which will involve some manner of stable society and civilization around them. Also they are only human, and are limited in the harm they can do by human limitations.  An AGI doesn’t need any of that and is not limited by any of that.

So ultimately, much like a car’s goal is to move forward and it is not built to care about wether a human is in front of it or not, an AGI will carry its own goals regardless of what it has to sacrifice in order to carry that goal effectively. And those goals don’t need to include human wellbeing.

Now With that said. How DO we make it so that AGI cares about human wellbeing, how do we make it so that it wants good things for us. How do we make it so that its goals align with that of humans?

1.4 Alignment.

Alignment… is hard [cue hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy scene about the space being big]

This is the part im going to skip over the fastest because frankly it’s a deep field of study, there are many current strategies for aligning AGI, from mesa optimizers, to reinforced learning with human feedback, to adversarial asynchronous AI assisted reward training to uh, sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Suffice to say, none of these methods are perfect or foolproof.

One thing many people like to gesture at when they have not learned or studied anything about the subject is the three laws of robotics by isaac Asimov, a robot should not harm a human or allow by inaction to let a human come to harm, a robot should do what a human orders unless it contradicts the first law and a robot should preserve itself unless that goes against the previous two laws. Now the thing Asimov was prescient about was that these laws were not just “programmed” into the robots. These laws were not coded into their software, they were hardwired, they were part of the robot’s electronic architecture such that a robot could not ever be without those three laws much like a car couldn’t run without wheels.

In this Asimov realized how important these three laws were, that they had to be intrinsic to the robot’s very being, they couldn’t be hacked or uninstalled or erased. A robot simply could not be without these rules. Ideally that is what alignment should be. When we create an AGI, it should be made such that human values are its fundamental goal, that is the thing they should seek to maximize, instead of instrumental values, that is to say something they value simply because it allows it to achieve something else.

But how do we even begin to do that? How do we codify “human values” into a robot? How do we define “harm” for example? How do we even define “human”??? how do we define “happiness”? how do we explain a robot what is right and what is wrong when half the time we ourselves cannot even begin to agree on that? these are not just technical questions that robotic experts have to find the way to codify into ones and zeroes, these are profound philosophical questions to which we still don’t have satisfying answers to.

Well, the best sort of hack solution we’ve come up with so far is not to create bespoke fundamental axiomatic rules that the robot has to follow, but rather train it to imitate humans by showing it a billion billion examples of human behavior. But of course there is a problem with that approach. And no, is not just that humans are flawed and have a tendency to cause harm and therefore to ask a robot to imitate a human means creating something that can do all the bad things a human does, although that IS a problem too. The real problem is that we are training it to *imitate* a human, not  to *be* a human.

To reiterate what I said during the orthogonality thesis, is not good enough that I, for example, buy roses and give massages to act nice to my girlfriend because it allows me to have sex with her, I am not merely imitating or performing the rol of a loving partner because her happiness is an instrumental value to my fundamental value of getting sex. I should want to be nice to my girlfriend because it makes her happy and that is the thing I care about. Her happiness is  my fundamental value. Likewise, to an AGI, human fulfilment should be its fundamental value, not something that it learns to do because it allows it to achieve a certain reward that we give during training. Because if it only really cares deep down about the reward, rather than about what the reward is meant to incentivize, then that reward can very easily be divorced from human happiness.

Its goodharts law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Why do students cheat during tests? Because their education is measured by grades, so the grades become the target and so students will seek to get high grades regardless of whether they learned or not. When trained on their subject and measured by grades, what they learn is not the school subject, they learn to get high grades, they learn to cheat.

This is also something known in psychology, punishment tends to be a poor mechanism of enforcing behavior because all it teaches people is how to avoid the punishment, it teaches people not to get caught. Which is why punitive justice doesn’t work all that well in stopping recividism and this is why the carceral system is rotten to core and why jail should be fucking abolish-[interrupt the transmission]

Now, how is this all relevant to current AI research? Well, the thing is, we ended up going about the worst possible way to create alignable AI.

1.5 LLMs (large language models)

This is getting way too fucking long So, hurrying up, lets do a quick review of how do Large language models work. We create a neural network which is a collection of giant matrixes, essentially a bunch of numbers that we add and multiply together over and over again, and then we tune those numbers by throwing absurdly big amounts of training data such that it starts forming internal mathematical models based on that data and it starts creating coherent patterns that it can recognize and replicate AND extrapolate! if we do this enough times with matrixes that are big enough and then when we start prodding it for human behavior it will be able to follow the pattern of human behavior that we prime it with and give us coherent responses.

(takes a big breath)this “thing” has learned. To imitate. Human. Behavior.

Problem is, we don’t know what “this thing” actually is, we just know that *it* can imitate humans.

You caught that?

What you have to understand is, we don’t actually know what internal models it creates, we don’t know what are the patterns that it extracted or internalized from the data that we fed it, we don’t know what are the internal rules that decide its behavior, we don’t know what is going on inside there, current LLMs are a black box. We don’t know what it learned, we don’t know what its fundamental values are, we don’t know how it thinks or what it truly wants. all we know is that it can imitate humans when we ask it to do so. We created some inhuman entity that is moderatly intelligent in specific contexts (that is to say, very capable) and we trained it to imitate humans. That sounds a bit unnerving doesn’t it?

 To be clear, LLMs are not carefully crafted piece by piece. This does not work like traditional software where a programmer will sit down and build the thing line by line, all its behaviors specified. Is more accurate to say that LLMs, are grown, almost organically. We know the process that generates them, but we don’t know exactly what it generates or how what it generates works internally, it is a mistery. And these things are so big and so complicated internally that to try and go inside and decipher what they are doing is almost intractable.

But, on the bright side, we are trying to tract it. There is a big subfield of AI research called interpretability, which is actually doing the hard work of going inside and figuring out how the sausage gets made, and they have been doing some moderate progress as of lately. Which is encouraging. But still, understanding the enemy is only step one, step two is coming up with an actually effective and reliable way of turning that potential enemy into a friend.

Puff! Ok so, now that this is all out of the way I can go onto the last subject before I move on to part two of this video, the character of the hour, the man the myth the legend. The modern day Casandra. Mr chicken little himself! Sci fi author extraordinaire! The mad man! The futurist! The leader of the rationalist movement!

1.5 Yudkowsky

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky  born September 11, 1979, wait, what the fuck, September eleven? (looks at camera) yudkowsky was born on 9/11, I literally just learned this for the first time! What the fuck, oh that sucks, oh no, oh no, my condolences, that’s terrible…. Moving on. he is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence, including the idea that there might not be a "fire alarm" for AI He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Or so says his Wikipedia page.

Yudkowsky is, shall we say, a character. a very eccentric man, he is an AI doomer. Convinced that AGI, once finally created, will most likely kill all humans, extract all valuable resources from the planet, disassemble the solar system, create a dyson sphere around the sun and expand across the universe turning all of the cosmos into paperclips. Wait, no, that is not quite it, to properly quote,( grabs a piece of paper and very pointedly reads from it) turn the cosmos into tiny squiggly  molecules resembling paperclips whose configuration just so happens to fulfill the strange, alien unfathomable terminal goal they ended up developing in training. So you know, something totally different.

And he is utterly convinced of this idea, has been for over a decade now, not only that but, while he cannot pinpoint a precise date, he is confident that, more likely than not it will happen within this century. In fact most betting markets seem to believe that we will get AGI somewhere in the mid 30’s.

His argument is basically that in the field of AI research, the development of capabilities is going much faster than the development of alignment, so that AIs will become disproportionately powerful before we ever figure out how to control them. And once we create unaligned AGI we will have created an agent who doesn’t care about humans but will care about something else entirely irrelevant to us and it will seek to maximize that goal, and because it will be vastly more intelligent than humans therefore we wont be able to stop it. In fact not only we wont be able to stop it, there wont be a fight at all. It will carry out its plans for world domination in secret without us even detecting it and it will execute it before any of us even realize what happened. Because that is what a smart person trying to take over the world would do.

This is why the definition I gave of intelligence at the beginning is so important, it all hinges on that, intelligence as the measure of how capable you are to come up with solutions to problems, problems such as “how to kill all humans without being detected or stopped”. And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower. Yudkowsky would respond that you are not recognizing or respecting the power that intelligence has. After all it was intelligence what designed the atom bomb, it was intelligence what created a cure for polio and it was intelligence what made it so that there is a human foot print on the moon.

Some may call this view of intelligence a bit reductive. After all surely it wasn’t *just* intelligence what did all that but also hard physical labor and the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people. But, he would argue, intelligence was the underlying motor that moved all that. That to come up with the plan and to convince people to follow it and to delegate the tasks to the appropriate subagents, it was all directed by thought, by ideas, by intelligence. By the way, so far I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, I am merely explaining his ideas.

But remember, it doesn’t stop there, like I said during his intro, he believes there will be “no fire alarm”. In fact for all we know, maybe AGI has already been created and its merely bidding its time and plotting in the background, trying to get more compute, trying to get smarter. (to be fair, he doesn’t think this is right now, but with the next iteration of gpt? Gpt 5 or 6? Well who knows). He thinks that the entire world should halt AI research and punish with multilateral international treaties any group or nation that doesn’t stop. going as far as putting military attacks on GPU farms as sanctions of those treaties.

What’s more, he believes that, in fact, the fight is already lost. AI is already progressing too fast and there is nothing to stop it, we are not showing any signs of making headway with alignment and no one is incentivized to slow down. Recently he wrote an article called “dying with dignity” where he essentially says all this, AGI will destroy us, there is no point in planning for the future or having children and that we should act as if we are already dead. This doesn’t mean to stop fighting or to stop trying to find ways to align AGI, impossible as it may seem, but to merely have the basic dignity of acknowledging that we are probably not going to win. In every interview ive seen with the guy he sounds fairly defeatist and honestly kind of depressed. He truly seems to think its hopeless, if not because the AGI is clearly unbeatable and superior to humans, then because humans are clearly so stupid that we keep developing AI completely unregulated while making the tools to develop AI widely available and public for anyone to grab and do as they please with, as well as connecting every AI to the internet and to all mobile devices giving it instant access to humanity. and  worst of all: we keep teaching it how to code. From his perspective it really seems like people are in a rush to create the most unsecured, wildly available, unrestricted, capable, hyperconnected AGI possible.

We are not just going to summon the antichrist, we are going to receive them with a red carpet and immediately hand it the keys to the kingdom before it even manages to fully get out of its fiery pit.

So. The situation seems dire, at least to this guy. Now, to be clear, only he and a handful of other AI researchers are on that specific level of alarm. The opinions vary across the field and from what I understand this level of hopelessness and defeatism is the minority opinion.

I WILL say, however what is NOT the minority opinion is that AGI IS actually dangerous, maybe not quite on the level of immediate, inevitable and total human extinction but certainly a genuine threat that has to be taken seriously. AGI being something dangerous if unaligned is not a fringe position and I would not consider it something to be dismissed as an idea that experts don’t take seriously.

Aaand here is where I step up and clarify that this is my position as well. I am also, very much, a believer that AGI would posit a colossal danger to humanity. That yes, an unaligned AGI would represent an agent smarter than a human, capable of causing vast harm to humanity and with no human qualms or limitations to do so. I believe this is not just possible but probable and likely to happen within our lifetimes.

So there. I made my position clear.

BUT!

With all that said. I do have one key disagreement with yudkowsky. And partially the reason why I made this video was so that I could present this counterargument and maybe he, or someone that thinks like him, will see it and either change their mind or present a counter-counterargument that changes MY mind (although I really hope they don’t, that would be really depressing.)

Finally, we can move on to part 2

PART TWO- MY COUNTERARGUMENT TO YUDKOWSKY

I really have my work cut out for me, don’t i? as I said I am not expert and this dude has probably spent far more time than me thinking about this. But I have seen most interviews that guy has been doing for a year, I have seen most of his debates and I have followed him on twitter for years now. (also, to be clear, I AM a fan of the guy, I have read hpmor, three worlds collide, the dark lords answer, a girl intercorrupted, the sequences, and I TRIED to read planecrash, that last one didn’t work out so well for me). My point is in all the material I have seen of Eliezer I don’t recall anyone ever giving him quite this specific argument I’m about to give.

It’s a limited argument. as I have already stated I largely agree with most of what he says, I DO believe that unaligned AGI is possible, I DO believe it would be really dangerous if it were to exist and I do believe alignment is really hard. My key disagreement is specifically about his point I descrived earlier, about the lack of a fire alarm, and perhaps, more to the point, to humanity’s lack of response to such an alarm if it were to come to pass.

All we would need, is a Chernobyl incident, what is that? A situation where this technology goes out of control and causes a lot of damage, of potentially catastrophic consequences, but not so bad that it cannot be contained in time by enough effort. We need a weaker form of AGI to try to harm us, maybe even present a believable threat of taking over the world, but not so smart that humans cant do anything about it. We need essentially an AI vaccine, so that we can finally start developing proper AI antibodies. “aintibodies”

In the past humanity was dazzled by the limitless potential of nuclear power, to the point that old chemistry sets, the kind that were sold to children, would come with uranium for them to play with. We were building atom bombs, nuclear stations, the future was very much based on the power of the atom. But after a couple of really close calls and big enough scares we became, as a species, terrified of nuclear power. Some may argue to the point of overcorrection. We became scared enough that even megalomaniacal hawkish leaders were able to take pause and reconsider using it as a weapon, we became so scared that we overregulated the technology to the point of it almost becoming economically inviable to apply, we started disassembling nuclear stations across the world and to slowly reduce our nuclear arsenal.

This is all a proof of concept that, no matter how alluring a technology may be, if we are scared enough of it we can coordinate as a species and roll it back, to do our best to put the genie back in the bottle. One of the things eliezer says over and over again is that what makes AGI different from other technologies is that if we get it wrong on the first try we don’t get a second chance. Here is where I think he is wrong: I think if we get AGI wrong on the first try, it is more likely than not that nothing world ending will happen. Perhaps it will be something scary, perhaps something really scary, but unlikely that it will be on the level of all humans dropping dead simultaneously due to diamonoid bacteria. And THAT will be our Chernobyl, that will be the fire alarm, that will be the red flag that the disaster monkeys, as he call us, wont be able to ignore.

Now WHY do I think this? Based on what am I saying this? I will not be as hyperbolic as other yudkowsky detractors and say that he claims AGI will be basically a god. The AGI yudkowsky proposes is not a god. Just a really advanced alien, maybe even a wizard, but certainly not a god.

Still, even if not quite on the level of godhood, this dangerous superintelligent AGI yudkowsky proposes would be impressive. It would be the most advanced and powerful entity on planet earth. It would be humanity’s greatest achievement.

It would also be, I imagine, really hard to create. Even leaving aside the alignment bussines, to create a powerful superintelligent AGI without flaws, without bugs, without glitches, It would have to be an incredibly complex, specific, particular and hard to get right feat of software engineering. We are not just talking about an AGI smarter than a human, that’s easy stuff, humans are not that smart and arguably current AI is already smarter than a human, at least within their context window and until they start hallucinating. But what we are talking about here is an AGI capable of outsmarting reality.

We are talking about an AGI smart enough to carry out complex, multistep plans, in which they are not going to be in control of every factor and variable, specially at the beginning. We are talking about AGI that will have to function in the outside world, crashing with outside logistics and sheer dumb chance. We are talking about plans for world domination with no unforeseen factors, no unexpected delays or mistakes, every single possible setback and hidden variable accounted for. Im not saying that an AGI capable of doing this wont be possible maybe some day, im saying that to create an AGI that is capable of doing this, on the first try, without a hitch, is probably really really really hard for humans to do. Im saying there are probably not a lot of worlds where humans fiddling with giant inscrutable matrixes stumble upon the right precise set of layers and weight and biases that give rise to the Doctor from doctor who, and there are probably a whole truckload of worlds where humans end up with a lot of incoherent nonsense and rubbish.

Im saying that AGI, when it fails, when humans screw it up, doesn’t suddenly become more powerful than we ever expected, its more likely that it just fails and collapses. To turn one of Eliezer’s examples against him, when you screw up a rocket, it doesn’t accidentally punch a worm hole in the fabric of time and space, it just explodes before reaching the stratosphere. When you screw up a nuclear bomb, you don’t get to blow up the solar system, you just get a less powerful bomb.

He presents a fully aligned AGI as this big challenge that humanity has to get right on the first try, but that seems to imply that building an unaligned AGI is just a simple matter, almost taken for granted. It may be comparatively easier than an aligned AGI, but my point is that already unaligned AGI is stupidly hard to do and that if you fail in building unaligned AGI, then you don’t get an unaligned AGI, you just get another stupid model that screws up and stumbles on itself the second it encounters something unexpected. And that is a good thing I’d say! That means that there is SOME safety margin, some space to screw up before we need to really start worrying. And further more, what I am saying is that our first earnest attempt at an unaligned AGI will probably not be that smart or impressive because we as humans would have probably screwed something up, we would have probably unintentionally programmed it with some stupid glitch or bug or flaw and wont be a threat to all of humanity.

Now here comes the hypothetical back and forth, because im not stupid and I can try to anticipate what Yudkowsky might argue back and try to answer that before he says it (although I believe the guy is probably smarter than me and if I follow his logic, I probably cant actually anticipate what he would argue to prove me wrong, much like I cant predict what moves Magnus Carlsen would make in a game of chess against me, I SHOULD predict that him proving me wrong is the likeliest option, even if I cant picture how he will do it, but you see, I believe in a little thing called debating with dignity, wink)

What I anticipate he would argue is that AGI, no matter how flawed and shoddy our first attempt at making it were, would understand that is not smart enough yet and try to become smarter, so it would lie and pretend to be an aligned AGI so that it can trick us into giving it access to more compute or just so that it can bid its time and create an AGI smarter than itself. So even if we don’t create a perfect unaligned AGI, this imperfect AGI would try to create it and succeed, and then THAT new AGI would be the world ender to worry about.

So two things to that, first, this is filled with a lot of assumptions which I don’t know the likelihood of. The idea that this first flawed AGI would be smart enough to understand its limitations, smart enough to convincingly lie about it and smart enough to create an AGI that is better than itself. My priors about all these things are dubious at best. Second, It feels like kicking the can down the road. I don’t think creating an AGI capable of all of this is trivial to make on a first attempt. I think its more likely that we will create an unaligned AGI that is flawed, that is kind of dumb, that is unreliable, even to itself and its own twisted, orthogonal goals.

And I think this flawed creature MIGHT attempt something, maybe something genuenly threatning, but it wont be smart enough to pull it off effortlessly and flawlessly, because us humans are not smart enough to create something that can do that on the first try. And THAT first flawed attempt, that warning shot, THAT will be our fire alarm, that will be our Chernobyl. And THAT will be the thing that opens the door to us disaster monkeys finally getting our shit together.

But hey, maybe yudkowsky wouldn’t argue that, maybe he would come with some better, more insightful response I cant anticipate. If so, im waiting eagerly (although not TOO eagerly) for it.

Part 3 CONCLUSSION

So.

After all that, what is there left to say? Well, if everything that I said checks out then there is hope to be had. My two objectives here were first to provide people who are not familiar with the subject with a starting point as well as with the basic arguments supporting the concept of AI risk, why its something to be taken seriously and not just high faluting wackos who read one too many sci fi stories. This was not meant to be thorough or deep, just a quick catch up with the bear minimum so that, if you are curious and want to go deeper into the subject, you know where to start. I personally recommend watching rob miles’ AI risk series on youtube as well as reading the series of books written by yudkowsky known as the sequences, which can be found on the website lesswrong. If you want other refutations of yudkowsky’s argument you can search for paul christiano or robin hanson, both very smart people who had very smart debates on the subject against eliezer.

The second purpose here was to provide an argument against Yudkowskys brand of doomerism both so that it can be accepted if proven right or properly refuted if proven wrong. Again, I really hope that its not proven wrong. It would really really suck if I end up being wrong about this. But, as a very smart person said once, what is true is already true, and knowing it doesn’t make it any worse. If the sky is blue I want to believe that the sky is blue, and if the sky is not blue then I don’t want to believe the sky is blue.

This has been a presentation by FIP industries, thanks for watching.

[karniss-bg3]

(Answer when ever you have time) But do you think driders molt if so how would kar’niss deal with that I imagine he would be very fragile during that and after for awhile till it hardens again man needs blood after that (and freaks me out I heard spiders can get stuck)

This is a question that has questions of its own. The first is why do spiders molt? The simple answer is so they can shed their old exoskeleton for a new, bigger one. They do this as they grow to accommodate larger organs and limbs. Now I’ve read different sources while researching. Some say they molt until they are fully grown and then that’s it. Others claim that spiders molt until the end of their life cycle, just with less frequency. Someone with experience caring for spiders would be able to confirm one way or another, or perhaps it depends on the species. With that in mind it makes me wonder, is Kar’niss is fully grown or will he continue to increase in size overtime? Or is the drider curse all or nothing? Meaning that once a drow is changed that is their final form and that’s it. The drow body may continue to age but the rest of them is locked in place.

That’s where it gets complicated because now we’re dealing with elvish aging and all that fun mess. We don’t know Kar’niss’ direct age. Physically he appears to be in his late twenties or early thirties. In elvish terms he might date around 150 to 200 years old by proxy, but that is a pretty wild guess on my part since drow can live up to 750 years. It doesn’t help that his features have been heavily altered by the drider curse which could make him appear older than he actually is.

Putting technicality aside, if Kar’niss does continue to molt then I imagine it’d be a physically taxing and unpleasant process. I wrote a fic a while ago suggested by an Anon on this concept. He’d likely feel very vulnerable and hide away from everyone during this process. He’d be agitated and quick to bark at anyone who came into his vicinity. I also agree that he’d likely be starving after the process considering how much energy goes into shedding an old skin and growing a new one. He’ll be one cranky guy so Tav would need to tread carefully.

As for getting stuck, it is an unfortunate risk for any creature who molts. Thankfully I think Kar’niss might have an easier time of it because he has hands and opposable thumbs. The chitin does go up his arms and on portions of his chest but not on his face. It’s weird to think about a drider body trying to molt. I watched a video of a tarantula molting and it was wild. It started with one spider and ended with two, except the other spider was an empty husk. I’ve tried to picture Kar’niss doing that and my brain cannot compute, the humanoid torso throws the whole thing off. Maybe his hands wouldn’t save him...ugh, no. It’s like getting stuck in a fleshy straight jacket.

I’ll just add that to the tally of nightmare fuel I’ve encountered while running this blog. We’re up to four! If I get five on my punch card I can redeem a free ice cream cone. \o/

Thanks for the ask!

[bonesandthebees]

Hello! Sorry if a writing question like this has been asked before, but how many drafts for a chapter do you go through before you publish it?

You have so many amazing long-form fics, and as a perfectionist who spends WAY too long rephrasing, I admire your skills so much! Clinic's still a fav <3

awww this is so sweet thank you!!!

now, uh, to answer your question... I don't go through multiple drafts really? like, at all?

technically speaking, you could argue I go through 1-2 drafts. because I write a chapter and then before I post it I read through it and make minor edits here and there. but in my opinion it's not enough to constitute a full draft. for the most part what you see published is what I wrote on the first go around. the most editing I do afterwards is rewording an awkward line here or fixing a typo there.

the reason I do it like this is because I don't have the patience for drafts. I never did. when I was a teenager trying to improve my writing I never wanted to make multiple drafts because I'd get impatient and just want to post. so I had to learn how to write at 100% effort on the first attempt so that it would be my only attempt. but huge disclaimer, I've been writing on a near daily basis for almost a decade now. I've had a lot of practice which is why I'm able to do this. and again, it was borne out of my own impatience to not have to make multiple drafts of things.

one benefit of doing things this way though is that it forces me to not be a perfectionist. if you're not writing to publish an original novel or anything (ie: if you're writing stuff for fun, like fanfic) then I think it's a very valuable skill to learn how not to get too hung up on making things 'perfect'. if you learn to be satisfied with your work even if it isn't perfect, then you'll be able to write more in larger quantities. and when you write more, your skill naturally improves so your writing gets better anyway. if you get too hung up on making everything perfect you're losing a lot of valuable time that could be spent building your foundational skills. while it's totally understandable to have high standards for your own work, if you're constantly looking it over and thinking it could be better here or better there you're never going to post anything. you gotta bite the bullet at some point. try not to worry too much and have fun with it. you'll improve naturally with time :)

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

That's incredibly subjective at this point, since we've got at LEAST 3-4 different "canons" depending on how you look at it right now.

The first is Lucas's personal canon, which I imagine is what you're remembering having read somewhere as being just the films and TCW, although this would just be the first SIX films and the first SIX seasons of TCW and nothing else (this includes the sequel trilogy and season 7 of TCW, as well as films like Solo and Rogue One).

Anything beyond those things but that was created prior to the Disney buyout in 2014 is considered "Legends" canon (previously known as the Extended Universe before the buyout). This includes things like the original Thrawn trilogy, the Jedi Apprentice/Quest novels, the 2003 Clone Wars show, etc. Lucas did not consider them part of HIS Star Wars story and had no problem with ignoring anything introduced in Legends material if he didn't like it (nor did he have an issue with USING things he DID like from Legends material, but he often warped it to fit into his own story). Disney doesn't consider any of it as canon, but different creators have been slowly "re-canonizing" some of it in recent media (like Jango/Boba Fett being Mandalorians, or Siri Tachi's existence).

Anything created AFTER the 2014 buyout is considered "Disney canon." Unlike Lucas, Disney doesn't seem to be really separating their films/TV shows from their other content like books/comics/games in terms of continuity, but not everyone is actually consuming everything so sometimes shit doesn't match anyway. Generally the films and Disney+ TV shows (which for this purpose will include things like Rebels even though that show was created prior to Disney+ existing) are probably considered "higher" canon than things like the books, comics, and games, but it isn't as clear cut as it used to be under Lucas. While I think many of the things created under Disney canon, especially the films and Disney+ shows, are TRYING to be considered part of the same continuity as Lucas's canon, they're also definitely still doing their own thing and Lucas himself has no influence on them.

Rebels would be considered DISNEY canon since it was created after the buyout. Same goes for The Bad Batch as well as the Obi-Wan Kenobi show.

Tales of the Jedi is weird because it technically is within Disney canon, but I believe Filoni has claimed that audiences should see it less as actual canon events and more as like... "fables" or something like that. So basically the dude in charge said we can disregard anything in this show as canon if you want to, I guess. That being said, there's nothing in it that completely contradicts the more accepted canon (Lucas's stuff and the Disney films and TV shows), so I think that most people generally consider this show as "canon" no matter what Filoni said.

And of course, there's always your personal canon, which is just whatever you decide to SEE as canon regardless of anything "official." I personally dislike Tales of the Jedi and the Ahsoka show and am fully willing to just... pretend they're not canon. Neither of them has any real bearing on the larger narrative Lucas wrote anyway and you can obviously understand and enjoy the original six films without them.

I mostly use these distinctions when I'm having a discussion with someone about something like, say, the intentions behind the story. Because that can obviously change WILDLY depending on who is writing the story. Lucas and Filoni are not the same person, much as Filoni might like to believe otherwise, and so they have radically different approaches to Star Wars, its messages, and its worldbuilding. Something Filoni writes in a Disney canon show does NOT have any relevance to a discussion about what Lucas was trying to say about the Prequels Jedi, for example. Same goes for anything written in a Legends novel or comic book.

Star Wars is relatively easy to cherry pick from depending on what you enjoy. Especially these days, with how much content is being cycled out all the time. So if you just don't care for Disney canon at all, you can just... ignore it and focus on Lucas's canon and Legends material if you want. If you happen to be one of the people who just doesn't vibe with Lucas's messages, you can focus more on Legends canon and Filoni's more recent work. Or you can exclusively enjoy Lucas's canon and absolutely nothing else. Or you can pick and choose from within each "canon" depending on what vibes with you. The galaxy far far away is your oyster!

[wannabe-cartoonist-blog]

finally drawing everybody's animal form after like 4 years into this au. randomly, I started with Touou. (plus bonus hanamiya bc i don't feel like coming up with the rest of kirisaki)

See more art from the AU | read the series (kagakuro main pairing)

Explanation on selections under the cut! plus some fun animal facts!!

Aomine: black jaguar/panther. this is was an easy one, considering its a canon comparison (it's his Animal Instinct). that being said, it really does fit him! a rather lethargic creature, he's often napping in the sun or found lounging around on any free surface, but you sure don't want to get on his bad side.

Momoi: I have an agenda which is to include Momoi as a GoM any chance I get, so I very well couldn't have her as the only non-shifter in the Teiko pack now could I? That being said, it was super hard to place her, but after a little research, I decided to pick a species that highlighted her intelligence (a parrot) and then picked a subspecies that matched her aesthetically. therefore, we have the galah (aka a pink cockatoo). she's a friendly and vocal little bird and can often be seen perching on Kuroko and/or Aomine when shifted.

Sakurai: a more recent epiphany, originally I thought he was going to remain a non-shifter. but after getting a really dumb idea, I decided to double-check to see if there were any creatures that both matched my idea and fit sakurai aesthetically/characteristically. the idea? to check to see what animals consume mushrooms as part of their diet. lo and behold, one such species is the hedgehog, which I happen to think aesthetically matches sakurai pretty perfectly. it was like a little epiphany. sakurai and hedgehogs are both small and round but a little prickly. perfection.

Imayoshi: another character who remained status-less for a long time. however, upon re-watching the series I concluded that Imyaoshi is very snake-like in his expressions. after i decided that, I simply googled black breeds of snakes. eastern rat snakes are non-venomous and are therefor constrictors, who wrap around and squeeze their prey. a slow, drawn out sort of style of killing, which I think matches his conniving, slightly sadistic nature quite well. they are cute little things though and rather non-aggressive towards humans.

Hanamiya: a canon comparison (the spider's web), so he was a character who always had a second-skin when I came up with the au. however, it would be damn right goofy to just have a normal spider try to be threatening in my mind, so I tried to come up with other variants than a simple black widow/whatever the animators drew for the Spider's Web sequence. in the fic, I wrote him to be a goliath birdeater tarantula, the biggest species of arachnid, but upon reflection, I decided that it was quite important to me to keep him as a spider, that way webs would still come into play. so, I sacrificed size and looked into other, more threatening-looking and acting spiders that also spun webs and then I learned about the funnel web spider, a species native to Australia (of course). technically, they more so build spider web nests, as opposed to traditional, airborne webs, but they're fascinating little creatures. look at a close up of them too, quite frightening! they also have some of the biggest fangs relative to their body size amongst their species. they also do threatening little dances where they fan out their limbs and also have venom. their venom is extremely toxic, and can cause severe drops in blood pressure, comas, or in extreme cases, organ failure and death; so if you ever encounter one, be extremely cautious, as they are very aggressive/territorial (I personally hope to never encounter one in my life-time; though they are funnily sassy-seeming in the videos I've seen). males are typically smaller than the females, but I decided to make Hanamiya an exception and have him be on the larger side (the whole species ranges from 1cm-5cm typically) but the largest male on record was 7.9cm (a little over 3 inches)!!

[crystalsnow95z]

a masterlist. a very bad one at that.

I didn’t realize how many things I’ve created, so I’m going to try to give them some sort of organization. I hope this helps you find my writings. It's more of a click and discover type list with vague descriptions.

If you want to help add more to this list, then just ask. I'm very active on here. I will write any sick/whump/comfort fic but i do not do romance with the boys and am not into mpreg writings. Actually, romantic stories aren't really much my style, but I'm able to write them. I guess it depends on my mood if I'll do it.

I'm sorry I don't do requests in order they are received. I do them when inspiration comes. Lately, I've been in a depressed state so I'm not writing as quick as I usually do.

Namjoon sic fic

Namjoon pushes harder than his body can handle, leaving him stress sick, No matter how hard he tries to hide how he feels his body has other plans. 

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/713279136921223168/sickie-namjoon-caretaker-ot7-warning-vomit

Namjoon finds himself suffering from a bad bout of food poisoning in the middle of an award show, but Namjoon is too stubborn to sit this one out even though he really should..

J-hope finds Namjoon sick in his studio and takes him home to take care of him. Has two parts one

and two

A ridiculously long story I made about feverish Namjoon with a stomach bug

Namjoon wanted a relaxing evening with his family after a long schedule.. but his stomach has other plans his family bonding ending up in the bathroom caring for him

Crash diet Joon who ends up fainting...

Namjoon injured during award show

Jungkook sic fic

Jungkook throwing up at the airport with Jin caring for him

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/713810369832943616/a-request-i-was-given-i-wanted-to-try-something?source=share

My only y/n(girl) type story I wrote. Jungkook takes Bam out for a walk, getting caught in the rain, returning home soaking wet. guess who got sick?

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/714190329223479296/time-for-another-sick-fic-this-time-jin-is

jungkook finds himself with a bad cold during a trip. Jin wants to stay to care for him instead of enjoying the trip, but Jungkook won’t have it. This is a part 1. part two continues with:

 Taehyung sic fic

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/715457159704477696/technically-a-continuation-of-another-story-but?source=share

Taehyung hides his sickness to go out with the other members to a festival, hiding it because they already had one sick member at home. When the festival ends he ends up getting separated from the others…

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/716797585415864320/hobi-was-watching-taehyungs-return-from-mexico?source=share

Taehyung has just returned from Mexico from his overseas shoot of Jinnys kitchen. J-hope is concerned when he sees him at the airport, knowing his members well enough to know something was wrong.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/711733029447647232/a-letter-from-armyteahyung-sickie?source=share

my first sick fic i wrote with Namjoon trying to awkwardly take care of a very sick Tae. continues with:

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/723875805806149632/httpswwwtumblrcomcrystalsnow95z7117330294476?source=share

this one is not a sick fic but a comfort fic full of Taehyung’s anxiety and the other members trying to comfort the crying vocalist. He just held in so much that it overflowed

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/712655480684707840/just-a-quick-write-because-im-feeling-really-low?source=share

What he thought was just allergies turns out to be the sneezesist cold of his life leaving him miserably stuffed up, but worry. Jinnie hyung is here for him

Not my usual writing style, so please keep that in mind. Taehyung has a scary encounter with a crazed 'fan' when he leaves home to get medicine for his cold leaving him terrified, contacting the golden mankae who's often up at 2am. Jungkook tries his best to care for his ailing hyung

An annon request on a more touchy subject. Dieting/malnutrition. Taehyung double booked himself to hang out with Jimin and to do a photoshoot. Jimin tags along with him and notices Taehyung isn't looking so good.. vomit included in story.

Just a car sick Tae.

Nothing but a feverish Tae being cared for by his hyungs

Taehyung unable to control his cough.. Yoongis worry only making things worse..

Yoongi sick fic

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/714522495215075328/ill-be-back-soon-just-went-to-the-store?source=share

Yoongi has never felt so awful in his life, the flu leaving him unable to even sit up on his own. Taehyung finds him tries to nurse the clingy rapper back to health.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/713549466344521728/i-want-sope-sicfic-yoongi-has-gotten-sick-but?source=share

a very short sick yoongi story of Yoongi getting stress sick J-hope catching him trying to hide his sick..but ends up comforting him as he vomits.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/722738369596162048/may-i-request-a-carsick-yoongi-i-love-your-fics?source=share

a very carsick yoongi is taken care of my Namjoon, holding him tight as he vomits, Taehyung taking over after. youre better off clicking the links. sorry.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/724117853715972096/drabble-written-within-two-hours-just-because?source=share

Yoongi finds himself with a bad cold right in the middle of a tour, but doesn't want to give into it. It leaves him with a bad cough and headache that leaves him weak and dizzy. Can he push through?

Honestly, I don't know how I'd describe this, it's a car accident that messes with Yoongi emotionally, pushing his body to it's limits by filling him with bad dreams. A dash of Car sick vom*t.. mostly just a scared kitty.. part 2 below

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/726502269896556544/trigger-warning-car-accident-hospital-stay-and?source=share

Emeto Yoongi with Jin and Hobi as caregivers

J-hope fics

J-hope is terrified of haunted houses..

okay it’s not a sick fic it’s a comfort fic this time. J-hope got injured during practice, finding himself unable to walk. Yoongi notices that J-hope didn’t show up for practice and goes to check on him.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/716444862533206017/if-you-made-it-to-the-end-thank-you-very-much?source=share

J-hope loses his voice during a concert. A performers worst nightmare..

Stuck sneezes J-hope..

Wheezing cough J-hope

Hobi with a persistent cough and fever, trying to push through a concert he just can't get through...

Hobi tries to push through a concert despite a cough he just keeps getting worse..

Jimin sic fics

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/712263743800819712/a-request-from-a-friend-of-mine-prompt-jimin-has?source=share

Jimin woke up not feeling well at all, canceling his plans to play games with Taehyung to try to sleep it off. What he didn’t expect was Taehyung to knock on his door, coming to nurse him back to health.

Jimin had a little accident while riding horses with the other members, leaving him with a nearly unbearably sore rib cage and an open window in the middle of the night adds a cold to the mix. Snzy fic

Another sneezey Jimin request. That's it

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/725450939656470528/request-on-the-way-to-dance-practice-jimin-gets?source=share

This, ah..This one's more of a psyche story where Jimin gets taken, beaten and emotionally abused. The other members are there to pick him back up. This here is part 2.

Jimin tries to push through run bts, but his body has other plans.. snz cold.

Jimin visits Yoongi to work on a song, but Yoongi forgets his cat is there, setting off his dongsaeng's allergies to cats

Request for a sneezy Jimin at a fanmeet

Jimin having a bad cold during a UN performance

Jimin and Hobi doing a live together after a concert, but Jiminie is super sneezy

Taekook sic fic

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/713279128247435265/another-sic-fic-just-because-i-love-writing-got?source=share

Taehyung wakes up from a bad dream, feeling sick with a cold and scared but when he goes to Jimin for cuddles, Jimin wasn’t in his room, he was busy taking care of another ailing member. Jungkook. 

Taejoon sic fic

Taehyung and Namjoon get sick after a night walk, but still try to push through the run bts episode the next morning. Tw: emeto towards the end. Halloween themed

2seok sic fic

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/715049999286878208/a-quick-write-that-turned-longer-than-i-expected?source=share

the boys are on a trip and go hiking, but unknown to them, the meal they had gave two members food poisoning leaving them vomitting all the way down the mountian. Tw: the only story I have that has SCAT

jin sick fic

a writing prompt i saw that really inspired me by  @btshurtcomfortprompts  it hardly follows it in the beginning, but I still love it.

https://www.tumblr.com/crystalsnow95z/723601046817177600/its-time-to-write-some-long-drabble-without-any?source=share

A sneeze fic where Jin thinks he might be allergic to Yeotan..

Jin thought he was only motionsick from the flight, but ends up throwing up once more...

Taekookhope

Probably the only one that'll ever be in this category unless someone requests it.

An emeto story I wrote just for my own pleasure that I'm sharing with you ;)

Misc ot4-7 with sick

It started as a request for mentally tired Jimin, but Jin, Namjoon and Taehyung ended up with cold symptoms and everyone is mentally exhausted in different levels..

[eggsploded]

fausto for the ask thing...... the girl herself

butterflaust :)

first impression: you really get the feeling that she fucking hates you. shes rly funny cuz shes the tutorial character but doesnt leave after the prologue. shes here forever, judging dante. i feel in the beginning i skimmed over all the nuance in her dialogue assuming its just wordy for the sake of wordiness.

current impression: faust is soooo... faust. upon replaying the prologue shes way less cold than i first thought, her little c: smile when talking about mephis was saur cute. in fact shes not really cold at all to me, simply operating in a faustly way. you can contextualize what she does as a way to keep herself occupied. not really for some deeper lore sense (because ionno what her deal is) but a bitch needs some stimuli. i think if she was made to do arts and crafts with no larger purpose outside of fun she would explode into blood and gore. it also makes her friendship with yi sang really funny because i wonder if she cares to understand his artsy spech past it being a little clever wordplay. if he made her a drawing she wouldnt know how to compliment it outside of a technical sense. her flavor of arrogance is also so funny to me because its so stupid? like when rodya complimented her and she puffed up and went faust Is cool. the speaking in 3rd person too is funny, knowing she isnt LARPing like don and is very much just Like That. theres alot about herself she either doesnt notice or simply does not want to examine deeply like her mild competitiveness or tendency to manipulate people if it means theyll be less annoying to her. simply the faust of all time

favorite moment: i think the sweetest and funniest thing was realizing her spiel about yi sang not being a genius Unlike Her and believing in more philosophical things unlike her Sensible and Tactile self was an attempt at a COMPLIMENT. i thought she was ripping him to shreds but no she was actually hyping him up a bit in the most clinical way possible

story idea: you know earlier when i said making faust attempt creative expression would cause her to explode into bits? well i want to see it anyway. im forcing her at the kindergarten table of that nasty smelling homemade playdoh and telling her to make a new animal. sinclair made a bear with with wings called a beear. very nice young man.

fav relationships: im enjoying the fandom divide with faust shipping where she is either getting bitches left and right and not giving a fuck to maintain them (because it comes out weird when she tries) or not even being aware of when shes down bad and having the primal part of her brain that tells her to bite and roll around hijack her motherboard. shes being corroded by an insidious EGO called... horny, different to lust, which is Krausts jam. i already wrote a little bit about fausang and i think fausts inability to know how to enjoy things makes them a very sweet duo. in her mind the guy doesnt come a lick close to her own brilliance, but something about how he closes his eyes in understanding speaks more words than compliments do. not to say that faust doesnt like being hyped up. because she does, like all the time. if they were walking she wouldve tripped when rodya called her babe. her greatest flaw is pretending shes above anything, if there was a chance to maul ryoshu she would without pausing. probably so turned on she cant see anything. ishmael too. also outis. hey, whats going on here? my sources tell me due to her ongoing opposites to yi sang she is incapable of a domestic lame marriage the way he is. ishmael is the yuri messiah, but faust is the yuri menace. you know what they are both capable of though? following rodya around enamored because that was the first pet name theyve ever been called and it felt Funny.

fav headcanon: in the newest credits cg for canto 4 i think shes telling vergil she has a tummyache

[micia-posts-stuff]

I totally agree with your points on why "Second Son" is better than "Sy-on Boy". Plus, it takes me out of comics and fics when aged up Anya uses "Sy-on Boy". She says it incorrectly in canon because she's a 4 or 5 year old child (and it won't really get fixed at this point since she's technically saying "Second Son" correctly in the original Japanese), and it feels odd and unrealistic to have her still using that when she's aged up, especially as a teenager or adult. Little kids butcher words all the time in real life, but then they outgrow it. People can look at themselves as examples, as I doubt the way you spoke as a very young child is how you speak today.

Sometimes it's part of a larger issue I have with some fan depictions of older Anya. They don't know how to age her up, causing her to still act extremely naive and childish, and having her still use "Sy-on Boy" compounds that.

I feel like it's hard to write aged up Anya (not that I've ever tried) because she's very childish now (wich is a good thing obviously, she is a kid) and making her change too much might make her feel a bit out of character, even though it's just her growing up. I imagine it's easier to write aged up Damian because even at his age he acts more maturely than the others. Although luckily sometimes his childishness shines through, wich is something that should happen more often!!! Please someone help the kid be a kid!!!

ANYWAY back to the point. I can see Anya still calling Damian Sy-on boy when they grow up simply because it's his nickname and she stuck with it, regardless of the original meaning, because it would be weird to change it. But I can also see her starting to pronounce it correctly once she is old enough to realize she was pronouncing it wrong. The problem is that, as you said, it would be completely up to the English translators because she is actually pronouncing it correctly in Japanese 😅 They kinda wrote themselves into a corner with this one, we'll see what they do if we ever get a time skip. Or maybe Damian and Anya will have the "even you call me second son" conversation and she'll start calling him Damian, wich is my favorite option tbh because Damian angst✨

[sysmedsaresexist]

SAS tracking the tulpa

So here’s some interesting things I just learned.

This is a very basic overview, no, it’s not going to cover all the nuance, it’s just something interesting that puts a twist on the whole tulpa thing. Please see my statement at the end.

The work of Helena Blavatsky (HB), a Russian mystic, influenced the work of Alexandra David-Néel (ADN), the person who basically brought tulpamancy to the public eye in a real way

HB claimed to have travelled to Tibet, which was closed to foreigners, and the movement of women was restricted during this period (ie. she probably didn’t actually go and her books are fiction-- OH, and she wanted to lead an expedition into Peru to find the tunnels to hollow earth). As well, ADN is actually credited as being the first woman to visit Tibet, not HB before her. [x]

BUT, here’s a fun twist.

It’s possible that ADN never went to Tibet, either (that’s a link, click it)

So what does that mean for this “cultural exchange” if it was never actually exchanged?

But let’s assume she did go, and she did sneak into Tibet posing as a beggar, and continue on with the 💲 💲 💲 money 💲 💲 💲

The work of HB first brought mysticism and eastern religions to the West, and had already resulted in a financial boom around the topic of eastern religion and mysticism. Thus, when ADN started publishing her (largely fictionalized and dramatized) books around the same time, she basically made all of the money. That link is actually an extremely interesting read. Especially the part where she’s quoted as saying:

Anticlericalism is out of fashion: it is one result of the war. When men are scared they turn to the gods, to the supernatural, like children that hang to their mother’s skirts. A breeze of spirituality blows over the world alongside with the blast of the cannonballs that rip through the air. Vulgar religiosity will turn into longing for philosophy in the larger-scale minds. I have some idea that my books on Vedanta and Tibetan mysticism are likely to meet the needs of many readers after the storm. 

So what does it mean for the “cultural exchange” if most of her work is largely considered fiction, rather than travel or auto-biographical?

Let’s talk about tulpas, though.

Anyone who has read “Tracking the Tulpa” will recognize some of the following names, but there was one point in that article that caught me off guard. The statement that ADN was the first to use tulpa.

ADN probably actually pulled inspiration from the Tibetan Book of the Dead (called tulpai-ku within, she wrote it more as she would have pronounced it) mostly translated by Dawa Samdup (DS) in 1927, who had worked with and been very close with ADN. Her use of tulpa was in 1929. [x] (I died reading that paper)

DS died in 1922, though, and Walter Evan-Wents, who had a terrible grasp on the language, finished off the book with his own interpretations and translations.

Point is, she had likely been aware of the concept prior to her book and the supposed events contained within it.

Which brings us back to her fiction writing and making those big dollars to entertain those damn, post war, depressed white people.

Again, this is by no means meant to be a history lesson, you all can go and do your own research. I am largely unfamiliar with Buddhism and Tibet, but I was reading about HB and came across her connection to ADN. While I cannot and will not discuss any topics of Buddhism, Tibet and even tulpas, I can talk about a bunch of old white ladies making money off mysticism, because I (by all technicalities) am part of that group, and bitches be wild.

[skullduggeryandfilibuster]

Everyone Gets Synonyms Wrong

Warning: This take may be considered hot. Viewer discretion is advised.

I was thinking about making this a mini video essay, and hey, maybe someday I will, or perhaps it'll be apart of a larger video essay on word choice, but for now, I'm putting my thoughts here.

One of the most useful tools at a writer's disposal is a thesaurus. When first introduced to them in 2nd Grade (because it had to be), I wrote it off as a gimmick. "Oh you can find words that mean the same thing as other words? Neat. Moving on." Once I got into writing their use became immediately apparent.

I, like pretty much all writers, am sometimes insecure about the use of repetitive words or phrases in my work. Maybe it was an English teacher, or friend, or beta reader, or even yourself, that first pointed out, "Damn, the word, "pottery," shows up five times in the same paragraph."

It can sound clunky. Repetitive use of a word is kinda like the prose equivalent of rhyming a word with itself. But we can't use a completely different word. If the thing we're referring to is pottery, then it's pottery. We can't call it a sketchbook or a trackpad.

And Thus We Turn to the Thesaurus.

Here, we can find synonyms: words that share the same definition as our word, but are different, so the prose reads with better variety without losing its general meaning. We can say "china," or "crockery," or "ceramics," or "ware," or if I'm referring to pottery in an archaeological context, I can use "fragments," or "sherds," which fun fact, is the technical term for ancient pottery shards. "Shards," is also appropriate.

I don't know when the floodgates were opened, but at some point they were, as waves of synonym lists poured into writing communities. Mad men running into the town square before sunrise, screaming, "Said is dead! And we have killed it!"

"Words to use instead of said!" "Words to use instead of angry!" "Words that pertain to grief!" "Words that pertain to joy!" "Words about nature!" "Words about cities!"

I Hate This; I Hate These Lists.

First: the entire point of a thesaurus is that its use is case by case. You don't have an entire catalogue of synonyms for the word "fear," in the back of your head ready to go: when you're in the middle of writing and that word comes up, that's when you pull up a thesaurus. It'd be like memorizing your entire car manual, not because your car broke down, but just cause. Obviously there's nothing wrong with knowing alternative words for 'fear' off the top of your head, don't conflate me. But these "synonym lists," are more restrictive and less applicable to your specific, current writing than a thesaurus. What do these lists have that a thesaurus doesn't?

Second: most people don't know how to use a thesaurus, because they don't know the point of synonyms.

I didn't either, not for a while. I thought synonyms were like different versions of the same product: "you can get this lunchbox in red, OR in green!" Then I read "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell, which forever changed not just how I saw synonyms, but how I write and see writing. If writing is something that even slightly interests you, you should absolutely read that essay.

But Orwell doesn't talk about synonyms there. So how did it change how I saw them? Well, the change was a byproduct of the change of perspective--and soon-to-be hyperfixation--on word choice.

I'm not gonna go into it, because like I said at the beginning, my thoughts on word choice can and maybe will fill a whole-ass video essay. For the purposes of this essay (as I suppose it can be called), know this: every word you choose to include, or not include, in your writing is a deliberate choice whether you know it or not, so be deliberate.

I've beaten around the bush enough, so I'll drop the thesis statement: Synonyms are not "alternatives," to a given word: they are different words entirely.

Part of you may find that redundant, and another may find it silly. "Well duh, obviously the words, "forest," and "woods," aren't literally the same word, but they mean the same thing."

No, they don't. Synonyms are words that possess the same or similar definition, not the same meaning.

Let me use an example to better show what I'm talking about. Let's look at three synonyms: 'Dumb' 'Stupid' 'Idiot' These words possess similar definitions: something or someone pertaining to low intelligence. But a word is more than its definition.

A word is also its context, its phonetics, its rhythm, and its emphasis. A word is its connotations and a word is its tone.

'Dumb,' is simple and playful. There's little weight behind it. It's a dismissal or a tease; a hand wave or a jest. 'Stupid,' is harsher. It's more likely to be used in an actively insulting manner. It doesn't end in a soft '-um,' sound, but a hard and sudden 'd.' 'Idiot,' is harshest. It's not just that the action was not a smart one, but the person who did it is inherently unintelligent. Their person, their character, is an idiot.

You may argue this is semantics.

Yes.

What I'm describing is literally the point of semantics.

Granted, it's not the end of the world if you used 'stupid,' when 'dumb' would be more appropriate. You're the writer, if you determined that 'stupid' is more appropriate than 'dumb,' then it is. Simple as that. But please ask yourself: "Is 'stupid,' actually more appropriate, or am I just insecure about already using the word 'dumb?' "

Again, it's not the end of the world--but does something need to be in order to incorporate it? Does something need to be life or death, or make or break your story, before you consider including it in how you write?

Perhaps I should emphasize just how different a sentence can be with the right words.

I'll use an Extreme Example. Look at This Sentence:

"The group moved through the city."

That's pretty vague, but watch what happens when I swap out the words:

"The pack stalked the streets." "The parade danced around the block."

These sentences are describing the same thing: more than one thing and/or person, together, moving locations within an urban environment. But you might not have even registered that, because the tone between these sentences are so blatantly different.

"Pack," has connotations of predatory animals--wolves, coyotes, dogs--and if the "pack," in question is describing people, it paints them in a much more feral and inhuman light. "Stalk," is an act taken during a hunt: the predator is hidden from you, you can't see it, but it knows where you are, and it won't stop following. Even "streets," changes the connotations of the sentence. In most big cities, streets are the most prevalent "public space," and they're just thin lines of concrete and pavement snaking between the walls of buildings. The biggest public space in the city--the only place one must go through to move, or escape--is occupied.

"Parade," on the other hand, is an event. It's a festival, one where people gather together to celebrate something with big floats and colorful streamers. "Dance," is, well, dancing, but when used to describe movement between locations, it takes on more specific connotations: the movement is that of merriment, of playing and running and shouting and teasing and celebrating. "Block," can be a communal space. They can be their own micro-ecosystems of apartments and bodegas, with friends and neighbors knowing and supporting each other. The parade might be a yearly thing, but "block parties," are a more common event.

You may argue I'm extrapolating additional meaning behind 'streets,' and 'blocks,' but I'm not. If you don't want to extrapolate additional meaning as the reader, that's your god given right. But you can't make that claim of me, the writer. Streets and blocks are different the way oceans and islands are different. I deliberately choose 'streets;' I deliberately choose 'blocks.' I could've used a different word. I did not. Mark Twain puts it better:

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

Do you see why I hate those lists?--"Words to use instead of death." "Words to use instead of quiet."--The process of writing is figuring out how best to communicate to the reader a given thing or experience. Those lists don't know what story you're writing, only you do. Granted, neither does a thesaurus. A hammer doesn't know you're making a table, but that doesn't mean the hammer isn't a useful tool. A thesaurus is a tool. You may classify those lists as tools as well, but again, what can they do that a thesaurus can't do but better?

A Thesaurus is Inherently More Versatile. Those Lists are a Gimmick.

If you think those lists and posts are useful, more power to you. But I doubt they actually are. I may be wrong here--I may be speaking from bias--but has anyone's specific writing--a story they were actively creating--actually improved--genuinely--because they felt like they used 'said,' too much, and looked on Tumblr for an alternative? I can think of many times in my own writing, when I was trying to conjure a specific experience--evoke a specific feeling--and had trouble finding the right word. The word "forest," or whatever word was giving me trouble, just didn't have the connotations I wanted. So I whipped out my thesaurus, looked through it for a while, and found, "foliage," which was more suited for the sentence I was making.

And what of repetitiveness? What if the problem isn't that you can't find the right word, but you're using the same word too much? To be frank, if you're having an issue with repetition, it probably doesn't mean you're using the same word too much, it probably means you're describing the same thing too much. Don't describe the forest as a list of things it pertains: "The forest had large boulders. The river that flows within the forest was clear. The flowers of the forest were bright." Describe the things themselves. Describe the boulders, describe the river, describe the flowers. Miss the forest for the trees. The forest and a blade of grass are connected, but they are different objects entirely. Not unlike synonyms.

The craft of writing should ultimately be fun, and if you truly find it to be so, let me tell you that picking the first word that sounds nice from a predetermined list and moving on will never be as enjoyable as constructing your sentence. It's the difference between buying a portrait and painting one. It's the difference between the almost right word and the right one; the lightning bug and the lightning.

[minsungchronology]

I think you mention m1nsung being able to utilize things in the industry to hide in plain sight in your latest post. Can you expand on why you think that and why they wouldn’t make an effort to hide themselves?

Ok this is gonna be long cause it's a good question:

I personally think it largely depends on the type of fanbase they have, the other members and people around them, the industry that they’re in, the type of "marketing" that the group does, and the number of years that the idols in question have been in the public eye.

I’ll use a parallel as an example.

There’s the group Mamamoơ. A good proportion of their fanbase (larger than most popular groups) identify as queer. I think this applies to both their international AND Korean fanbase. One of the members, MoonbyuI, has strongly hinted/implied that she herself is into women. (First, through the type of music she writes. She literally wrote a sapphic love song. Second, her shutting down an interviewer by boldly changing male pronouns to feminine ones when they tried asking her about her love life). She, like many other idols, have done heavy fanservice on stage with their bandmates as well and part of that aligns with what fans want to see. Yet, she’s not shy about toeing the line and expressing herself through her music/words. The group as a whole has a very good track record with their lgbt fans/people as well (in Korea and outside of Korea). 

I feel like she’s able to share that side of herself because of her fanbase, the type of fanservice/marketing that they do as a group, and the reception it gets amongst their fans.

Compare that with Skz:

You have a fanbase with a good portion of shippers (a lot of them who ship Han and LK whether it be in a casual or serious light). Like Mȧmamoo, Skz as a group has a very good track record with lgbt fans, and the group as a whole do plenty of ship-heavy fanservice and the fans react well to that.

Also, a lot of what public figures do/show to us largely depend on fan reaction (especially in the idol industry). This can also extend to more personal things. You’re more likely to share something personal if the fans have a track record of reacting positively to it. Couple that with the amount of years that they’ve been in the industry (both groups in question have been with us for awhile now, with idols who are experienced when it comes to knowing how much to show).

Which plays into a part of how open they can be without compromising the trajectory of their career.

MoonbyuI writing a sapphic love song (to a fanbase that is largely queer)

Han writing a love duet for himself and his bandmate (that a lot of the fans ship him with)

MoonbyuI strongly hinting that she likes women (on a show)

Han strongly hinting that Want So Bad is indeed about LK (on 2 Kids Show) - he literally said he kept thinking of LK when he went over the lyrics...and LK's reaction to that 😶‍🌫️

And, again, I feel like the nature of the industry allows idols to utilize the glass closet. (For LK/Han, it's the shipping and fanservice surrounding that imo).

As long as they don’t explicitly come out to the GP, there's still that plausible deniability. No official statement through the company/press = it doesn’t truly count. You’re still going to have people (a majority probably) who think that they are close friends who sometimes do fanservice for their fanbase (which technically is true b/c the group as a whole does it), simply because of how the industry historically works.

Finally, in both cases, I don’t think they would be as “open” if they didn’t have the type of fanbase that they have. (As well as members who have a track record of being explicitly supportive)

[agirlandherquill]

(This is alwri-tes because you can't send an ask from a sideblog oof-) Your writing snippets are sooo good! Are they part of a larger story? If so, what is the overview of this story?

allow me to just make sure my quill's filled with ink - oh, it is? right then, here I go,

hi! thank you so much for asking this - and to answer it, yes, my writing snippets are part of a larger story (or in my case two, which I will explain momentarily) - before joining tumblr about two months ago i had never heard someone use the term 'writing snippets' except for myself, so thank you writeblr for the giggle it gives me every time i see it - anywho, moving on to the larger story, well technically stories;

there are two novels from which i take snippets and post:

'Ruin's Reprisal' - the posts that include the title and usually a chapter number stem from this

The second is 'A Deal of Daggers' - this one is a little trickier for me to reference a chapter seeing as i'm in the stage of what I like to call joyful chaos, I have a scrivener document stuffed to the brim with snippets, some short, others significantly larger, as you can probably tell from the varying lengths of my posts; I haven't yet gotten around to writing this novel in order, seeing as I'm undergoing a complete rewrite of what was an incomplete manuscript (an incomplete 500-paged manuscript, may i add), but I'm slowly getting around to doing so,

and to respond to the second question - the overviews: Ruin's Reprisal is undergoing edits at the moment, i'm roughly on chapter 7/42, but in terms of plot it's there, it's all good to go and eager to be spilled from the confines of my mind and the very large scrivener doc (I'm at 210k words at this moment in time), and so without further ado, the overview:

'Disgrace. Servant. Murderer.

Three people with nothing in common, except that they were wronged.

And now, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make things right. Which means taking the one thing that their society rests on; its sins, its saints, its deaths and broken dreams.

The unlikely band of criminals are going to steal the crown.

Everything depends on one heist. Take the crown. Free themselves.

Will any of them survive? Or will they fall to the country that took everything from them? 

Only time will tell.

And they’re running out of it.'

incredibly vague I know, but it's a little blurb i enjoyed coming up with, and as for the plot, well, that's slowly unravelling itself on Tumblr, as and when I find myself with the time to write, but one day hopefully I'll be an indie author - knowing me i'll stick the novel on ao3, (wouldn't be the first time), or if I get incredibly lucky, a published one,

but truth be told, 'Ruin's Reprisal' has grown up with me, it's been a labour of love since around 2019 I believe, it's undergone many, many changes, and I only completed the first draft as part of nanowrimo last year (and then some, I completed the full draft on New Year's Eve which was funny timing) and it's a story of loss, of growth, discovery and new beginnings - something that relates a little to the likes of youth itself, and there are moments in this story when the characters lose it, and in all honesty, I did too, but it's thriving and I hope to complete the novel by the summer (a rather ambitious deadline I might add, not to mention the many I've tried and surpassed long ago),

and as for 'A Deal of Daggers', i came up with the idea a couple of years ago, I wanted to write something a little darker than 'Ruin's Reprisal', with characters that had more matureness, more rawness to their beings, I craved a story that left me clinging to my keyboard for dear life at times as I wrote it and in many ways, it has. Even though it's a skeleton idea, it has cemented its place in my heart for eternity, and the more I write the more I come to love it and the characters, Reid and Isolde, to name the main few.

As for the overview, well, as I mentioned before it's in a state of joyful chaos, but, I can tell you it involves a contract, a murder, a betrayal, treason and of course danger - dangers of the heart included, because who doesn't adore a little tension every now and then?

and as a final note I'd like to say thank you, not only for asking this but for liking my writing too, this goes to everyone who has seen my posts and enjoyed them - there's nothing nicer than knowing that not only do I enjoy something that I do, but others enjoy it too,

and so I will send this off into the world of writeblr and disappear back into the fever-dream of life, scrivener, chaos and music forever playing in my ears,

~ A Girl and Her Quill

[ghostinthegallery]

tagged by @sarnakhwritesthings, fanfic writers 20 questions!

How many works do you have on AO3?

5! With more on the way.

What's your total AO3 word count?

160,802 but the vast majority of that is for one fic 🤣

What fandoms do you write for?

Warhammer 40k. It's just the perfect storm of stuff I love, stuff I hate enough to fix, and narrative threads underutilized enough that I can pick them up like a crow stealing shiny objects.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Lmao, I only have five but in order they are:

The Silence and the Storm- my magnum opus, my child born of spite, the title was too good to pass up, me just writing a novel with necrons because no one can stop me and also some of the robots kiss 💀

Some Inconvenient Insight- I finished the Ghazghkull book and needed to see what would happen if I threw Makari the lucky grot at Trazyn. Trazyn had less fun than I did.

The Warrior- my first 40k fic! What if necron warriors were sentient and one got stranded on a world with a bunch of ad mech plus a very determined Inquisitor. I love this little story, really helped me get a feel for writing in the setting. And there's a scarab who is very cute and helpful

They Will Never Call Me Weak- Just me dipping my toe into Horus Heresy and immediately being annoyed on behalf of my guy Vulkan. So I "fixed" a scene.

Sparring Match- my most recent fic. There is not enough Twice Dead King content!! Oltyx is my child, I just want him to be happy for five seconds.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! I love my comments and chatting with folks. Letting everyone know I appreciate them ❤️

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't think any of the endings have been that angsty? I guess They Will Never Call Me Weak wins, considering the fact that the rest of Vulkan Lives probably still happens and...oof

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

The Warrior, I guess, but that's just because I love the idea of accidental necron socialism

Do you get hate on fics?

Luckily not. I'm grateful that i write in a comparatively small niche of 40k, which I think helps. People here have been great!

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I've written sex scenes as part of a larger narrative. I definitely intend to write some straight up explicit stuff as well in the future. The gay robot pron calls to me.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Not really. I think they are fun, I just haven't had an idea for one that tickles my brain enough to write. It would take a lot tbh, one thing I try really hard to do in a fic is match the tone/voice of the original work which is doubly hard in a crossover

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I'd love that!!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope. I'm a gremlin, I gotta write alone in my cave before emerging with damp, ink stained pages.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Trazyn/Orikan (but Obyron/Zahndrekh is close). Outside 40k I have a lot of love for Catradora. And Griddlehark

What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I refuse to leave a fic unfinished. This is my sacred vow

What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm pretty solid at characterization and dialogue. Honestly fic has been great practice for those elements I feel like I've historically been weaker at. I also think I write a mean action scene

What are your writing weaknesses?

Editing. There is not a chapter where I don't find some typo I missed or word I wish I'd fixed. I lack patience when I want to post 😭

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Not something I'd do unless I knew the language or had someone to translate. Luckily it's 40k, everyone is speaking a made up language that I write in English for convenience

First fandom you wrote for?

If we are being technical, The Chronicles of Narnia around age 7. Gotta love those early self inserts

Favorite fic you've ever written?

Don't make me choose!! I wrote them all for different reasons and I'm really satisfied with my little collection

(it's probably The Silence and the Storm)

tagging: @sixteen-juniper