#there is so much complexity and good writing in the world.........

[stekken]

Hmmm, I mean, yeah, I was abandoning the Star Trek context and thinking about if replicators were real in our world's future, but if our future went down a similar path to Star Trek and capitalism ended, it wouldn't be because of replicators. They wouldn't "replace capitalism"; you CAN sell things to people who can just make them appear out of thin air. We do it all the time. A replicator would give physical matter most of the attributes of digital information: permanent online storage and easy reproducibility. Therefore (if they were invented before capitalism ended), artificial scarcity would be enforced on them like it is on digital media, with some tweaks and unique emergent behavior. Why do people pay for TV shows and video games today? Faith in capitalism and in the right of the proprietor to their money, fear of being caught pirating, not knowing how easy pirating is, fear of malware from pirating (both justified and manufactured), they think it's easier, etc etc etc. And then there's monetizing by way of adverts, and the value of selling your users' info, and the value of having customers reliably give your app or software attention three times a day, which can be turned to your advantage in all sorts of ways. Some industries would fight the replicator and die, but investors would be ALL OVER IT. People would jump ship from the industries being made obsolete because the writing would be on the wall, and billions of dollars across the globe would be thrown into figuring out how to use this thing to maximize profit. Every roadblock would be met with an army of engineers, starry-eyed stock holders, government funding, and ambitious startups. There'd be even more enthusiasm than there's been for LLMs and image generation, only it wouldn't be misplaced.

As for this problem of storage being solved by small reusable files that make food unsatisfying and homogeneous, I just don't think that's right. I was writing up something about how the uncompressed scans wouldn't actually have very much relevant information in them, but that's not really the point. The point isn't that this or that argument against good tasting replicator food is wrong, but the fact that these arguments keep popping up like weeds. I think sentimentality toward cooking is leading us to invent ways for the replicator to fail, to exhaust our imagination condemning its ability to prepare meals like humans can. Like, let's say you're right, and smart algorithm-driven psychogustatory compression to cut file size down to a fraction just isn't possible (mp3s can get a 10 to 1 ratio before most people notice a difference). Our sense of taste is just too different from sight and hearing so compression isn't viable here. The replicator (or its cousin) is still used to copy entire humans so exactly that they don't lose their train of thought going in one end and out the other. The human brain has staggering amounts of complexity compared to anything else in the universe (or, since this is Star Trek, anything except other brains). Certainly more complexity, more relevant info to keep track of than a chicken dinner.

But let's put that aside too! Maybe the complexity of any two things becomes equal once you zoom in far enough and have to take every little interrelationship into account, and the difference in complexity only appears when you zoom out far enough to regard the thing as a whole instead of the series of atoms or collection of energy that a replicator would see it as. Or maybe human scans are so large, they only store one at a time, then get rid of it to make room for the next scan, and that's with top of the line machinery that can't be spared for someone's chicken dinner. Ok, but this isn't as significant as it seems: if the file tracks every particle, complexity is mostly a function of mass (that and energy differences between particles, which at scale would be more or less proportional to mass I think). A human's mass is enough for a good number of meals, and that's before you start getting smart. Here's how you can get smart: a side of asparagus is created from a scan of ONE asparagus. Tiny file size comparatively. Sauces, dressing, etc? A scan of a representative sample of the sauce, which would be a speck if it's an even solution. Seasonings? That's nothing. Save one of each grain/particle in the mix and use metadata for the ratios between them. Same for beverages—save a few molecules and you have all the info you need. In this scenario, replicator food would heavily favor separate morsels with dips. It would be different, but it wouldn't taste worse. And that's just for the storage space of a single human body scan. For a whole ship's crew, the cost-to-benefit ratio of extending your storage seems like a no-brainer, especially with how cheap computer memory has gotten in the last few decades.

But this doesn't pass the variety test! you say. And that's because we're all holding replicator food to a standard we aren't holding cooked food to. It seems obvious to me that replicators would greatly increase the variety available to 99 percent of people who use them. Unless you can afford to travel across the world just to have dinner where the microorganisms in the water make the sourdough ~just right~ for your pizza crust, your only option besides happening to live there already is using a replicator. All the regional variety in the world at your fingertips from the comfort of your own home! (Assuming we don't invent obstacles just to make that impossible.) Lots of the complaints in this reblog chain apply just as much if not moreso to fresh food. Can't get your food to taste just like it does at your favorite restaurant? That's a problem in the real world to, except it's harder, more costly, and takes longer to do it yourself. And if people aren't pointing out issues that fresh food has too, they're inventing new ways for replicators to fail. "They'd edit all the fat out." Well, no, maybe they'd gain the ability to do that, and then some people would opt for it—good for them! Most people wouldn't. Why are we inventing problems? I don't think it's just curiosity/imagination fueling this, or people wouldn't be satisfied with the arguments in this reblog chain, because most of these problems are just silly. Really, it's because we don't want people to have access to all the world's regional variety without leaving their flat. The idea of hitting an express key on your magic microwave and getting a five star Michelin meal or a McDonald's happy meal or your grandma's pumpkin pie as it pleases you seems to offend people. I think what people are actually doing, when they wax poetic about buying a tamale that tastes like home and then invent a replicator tamale that tastes like homesickness, is saying that this new technology would disenchant the world.

I don't believe that. I think these arguments sidestep reason and actually win people over with sentimentality. This doesn't satisfy me because I don't care what I'm sentimental about here, I care about what the future generations in this imaginative world will be sentimental about. And they'll be sentimental about the replicator food! These imagined people would never invent these hundred-and-one reasons for replicator food to be inferior unless they fell down some "RETVRN! REJECT MODERNITY!" rabbithole. Replicator food will be the subject of their nostalgia, at least for the average person. They wouldn't see it as a pity if they never got to try freshly cooked food, they know it's the same.

And if we were to imagine, say, the year 30XX, where everyone needs to upload their minds to the machine aboard a nomadic space station or else be destroyed by some bioweapon, everyone will be upset about replicator food being replaced with VR food simulations. I just think our imaginations get way more interesting when we stop trying to sabotage the imagined new technology on the basis of this-makes-us-human-because-that's-how-it's-always-been.

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[bonebeautyart]

Resuming this again, the parasites of my mind ask me to talk about this.

From an early age I have been interested in writing, writing everything. So I also took literary writing courses in my high school, and I have to say that I had never seen a historical character with as much potential as Saint Just, wasting his image on this kind of nonsense.

Saint Just is quite complex as a person, thinker, artist, and his legacy is also complex. It is not a light reading in any aspect, this can be observed with the historical load and style that Organt possesses; but at the same time in his speeches and political essays you can see this mental acuity of his character and the poetic refinement that characterizes him.

For me, his golden stage as a literary character has been given to him in the romantic era. Novels like 93, the religious descriptions by Michelet, Saint Just in Dumas' works also seem quite decent in form, etc.

But a characteristic of all these, is that they paint him as an inhuman being, almost like a deity. They explore him as a villain; however, he has deficiencies due to the disregard for the amount of nuances that this young man had.

And although I have been interested in doing an artistic project about him, some points that I would like to review about him are the following:

1. Saint Just and a religious crisis: We know that Saint Just grew up in a highly religious environment, full of saints, prayers and his studies in the Soissons oratory. I find this facet of his life fascinating, as his experience in the oratory for the formulation of his morals could have been, which would later be represented in Organt almost as a religious and mystical delirium. As an organt in search of an identity, he used his closest resources. Saint Just seems that during his childhood and part of his adolescence he lived in a bubble of religiosity, which, possibly with experiences related to the church, broke, creating a breaking point in his person. Maybe this bubble was what kept him subject to the belief of a heaven and the human good. In a deeper exploration and as he grows, he sees the sins of his environment and the human filth. This belief in heaven can vanish with its slow introduction to the real world and its natural maturity.

2. His extravagant relationship with death: Perhaps starting from the previous point, we can see that from a very young age he had deep existential crises about death and the afterlife. The first impression we have is evidently Organt in a passage from the V canto. He had very rarely seen this relationship with death in his artistic representations. He always sees death as a muse and inspiration in his writing, even in his rise as a conventional and the poetry that emanates from his perspective in Thermidor.

3. His sensitivity to the world in general. He is always described as an inhuman being without feelings, but they not explore that sensitivity that he clearly possesses from being a poet, to the anecdotes that his friendships tell after his death. But they also forget about Saint Just artist. His history is almost never explored in the war, we know that he saw firsthand the ugaliness of the war on the battle front and how this decision infuerced the decision of insurrection during Thermidor. His post-war character changes: it seems that he may have developed a trauma and depression for the same reason. Too many Dostoyevsky-style mologos of this period in his life can be built. What reflection can he give to the war and as always he puts the soldiers first because he knows how immoral and unworthy it is to fight, not for the subsequent honor, but for the misery of the war, the aura of death that spreads through the battlefields, that dying stend.

And I have more points that I would love to reflect on, but he is really a historical character with a lot to take and they are my main reasons why I do not accept literary mediocrites like that Japanese manga.

(I’m gonna tag you again cause this maybe can help you with your novel proyect 🫡 @saintjustitude)

[hbatfam98]

This was my response to someone asking who we that Bruce was with options like 'someone who does the best they can for Gotham and walks the path paved by good intentions' and 'a good man who believes he is bad (or vice versa)'. (But much better written obviously and had some really good options and once again I can't find the post now I rlly need to stop losing them🙃) Anyway this was my answer:

He was supposed to be a damaged but good man at heart who truly believed himself to be bad but still did his best for Gotham.

And this would be consistent with most batman centric media/JL media

But then there were too many story lines of him treating the batkids in ways that (imo) canon batman shouldn't. But given that it is canon, I find it hard to say he's good anymore. Because whatever your intentions may be, when u r responsible for a kid, u should take care of them and canon batman has failed at that so many times? Jason, Steph being the top examples in my mind but definitely not the only ones.

Anywayz that's why I choose to live in delusional fanon world where batman stayed the way he was (supposed to be) and (yes he would absolutely still make mistakes with each of the kids but) be a caring dad/mentor. ie, not repeatedly insulting/beating up his kids.

....

I was thinking about this more and I stand by this in that fanfics and fanon are for ourselves so fuck canon. Since I got into this through batman, i want to protect my childhood fav character so most of my AUs are inherently fix-its with Bruce as a good dad. But something I think we should be considerate of (and something I am still very much working on myself) is to not disrespect other characters in doing so.

A lot of the batkids have gone through shit because of canon batman and that is an integral part of their character arc. Be careful to not just.. thoughtlessly erase that ig?

If u r writing a fluff batfamily Sunday morning or something (maybe I'm wrong but) I think it's fine for it just to be fluff - we can act like Steph had an ok time being Robin for example.

But if u r writing an angsty/feeling/deep thing, than don't make the character more 1D/easier/lighter just because it makes it easier for ur narrative.

Because that character is a complex character too. And yes it's just fanfic/AUs but writing that also makes you a writer. And a core part of being a good writer is respecting every character you write whether you love them or not.

Anyway, just my rant/thought vomit ig. Open to comments/discussions ofc because this is smthg I only started considering recently.

[gowerhardcastle]

Hello, I'm a fellow IF fan waiting patiently for more updates atm. I'm wondering how you find the motivation to write so much and often?

Usually for even for creative writing, the best I can do is some paragraphs, then I just zone out for the rest of the day. Then I'll check my email then I realize it's actually late evening with only the same paragraphs.

---

I have a lot of answers to this question.  Specifically ten answers.

The first, biggest answer is that the words just well up in me, and if I don’t write, I feel antsy and malcontent.  I love writing, but if I have more than a few days where I’m not writing, I feel weird.  So this is definitely a weird-me-thing than anything I would advise anyone to acquire.

Second, when I write, I get in the zone and I just write and write for six or seven hours straight, and I’m having a great time the whole time.  I think my age does help me here because I didn’t grow up with the internet, and I have no real desire to keep checking stuff while I write.  I think that’s a huge benefit. 

I think if someone asked me if I recommend that they write like me, I would say hell no.  I know I’m a weird outlier.

Third, I blast music while I write.  This does a lot for my energy.

Fourth, coffee.  Lots of it.

Fifth, I type really, really fast.  I double space after periods because I learned to type on a typewriter.

Sixth, there’s a real cost to it.  I love playing computer games, and gaming in general, and writing just consumes that time, just devastates it.  If I’m not careful, it eats my reading time, but that I won’t allow.  But you have to be ok with the trade.

Seventh, I wake up quite early, before my family wakes up, just naturally.  I creep downstairs, take my iced latte from the fridge, which I made the night before, and write for hours while the world and the house is still.  This feels like time stolen.

Eighth, I have a really hard time resisting challenges I give myself.  I always have the urge to outdo myself, to make things more interesting, complex, bigger, fuller.  I see the perfect finished product, and I just want to get there, and I have a hard time saying “no!” to myself.  Quite the contrary.

Ninth, people who let me know that my games cheered them up on a hard day.  That they laughed so hard their gut hurts in spite of being on active deployment somewhere.  

That something I said helped them realize that they wanted to write, or that they could write and someone would read it.  That one of the relationships in my game helped them realize something really important about themself.  Or someone writes and says “I think about that one line from that game all the time,” or that they practiced and learned English from a story I wrote. 

I mean...that is unbearably humbling and kind of miraculous, and my impulse hearing that is to sit down and write more and connect with more people, because writing is very, deeply, an alone thing, and it requires that you sort of sequester yourself away from life for a long time.  It’s really hard! 

So making that connection with people is *incredibly* motivating.

Tenth, and this one is hard to articulate, so bear with me.  There’s a lot of junk in the world, and a lot of things masquerading as something wholesome and real that are quite the opposite.  A lot of this stuff is online, but also just out in the world.  I can’t do much about it, but to me, people who craft real words and read real words and care about good prose are maintaining some kind of small banner of resistance about what’s valuable and worth saving.  

When I sit down to write, I think about that. 

[hobimo]

i think jikook writers just gave up writing non omegaverse ff and i can't go past the anger stage send help

to be honest i also have the sequel to my stupid furry au in the works so im part of the problem.......... honestly i would love more omegaverse. if it was good. unfortunately,

[mongeese]

Now, I haven't actually listened to all that many audio drama podcasts in comparison to other podcast fans, but I really genuinely honest-to-god believe that as audio drama expands as a medium and if fiction podcasting gains mainstream attention that The Silt Verses will be held up as a groundbreaking example of what audio drama can be and as a show that pushed and expanded the boundaries of the medium. Even the roughness of the audio (mainly in season 1 but there are some messy bits throughout the show) I think is an indication of the show's sheer ambition and creative vision, running into the limitations and either pulling back in creative ways or breaking those boundaries. Like imo it's truly unmatched in audio drama productions right now. I've never heard anything like it before. The fandom is not the biggest compared to the really famous podcasts (though it is sizeable and growing!), but I hope that one day TSV gets the acclaim it deserves because it is really, really that good

[trash-gremlin]

could you imagine how good spirit animals would be if it wasn't written as a children's series

[moldy-flowers]

The interesting experience of being pro Sasuke, anti konoha, pro tobirama, anti Naruto ending, pro Sasusaku, anti Itachi, pro Sakura, anti SasuNaru, pro Tobirama×Izuna, anti Madara, pro karin, anti Orochimaru, pro Uchiha and anti Hashirama. And also as much as I hate the guy danzo was kind of hot when he was younger...

[good-beanswrites]

hii hiii is it alright if I request something with kotoko and haruka?(platonic ofc) their character foils drive me insane with all the weak stuff authngghn icant be normal about them

Oooh thank you so much for the request! I realized that these two actually have one of the smallest windows to talk easily, given Haruka's nervousness and Kotoko's T2 changes. They have such interesting approaches to strength/weakness, and I hope I could capture it a bit here! This takes place immediately following Kotoko's bday timeline after Harrow's release:

“I’ll accept those birthday wishes…” Kotoko gave him a wave over her shoulder as she returned to making her bed.  

She shook her head in awe. It was rather impressive how quickly the boy had changed after his verdict. The others had more subtle differences, but he was someone entirely new. She could rest easy, at least, knowing that her verdict wouldn’t change her much. For as long as she could remember, she’d been like this. She knew where she stood, and neither guilty nor innocent verdict would affect that. This verdict was really only an indicator on whether the warden could be trusted or not. 

Her body tensed up when she turned back around, startled by Haruka lingering silently in the doorway. She decided against chastising him for scaring her half to death. Still, she couldn’t keep the bite from her voice as she asked, “did you need something else?”

“Ah… I just…” He twisted his hands together. “I had a question.” 

He fell silent, but Kotoko could tell he was chewing on his next words. She waited.

“H-how do you do it? All the time? You’re older and stronger and braver and I-I just don’t know how.”

“Give yourself some credit. I’m not that much older, or stronger. I only have, what -- two, three years on you? And you did very well in the arm wrestling tournament the other day.” 

She wasn’t being patronizing. For someone so sheltered, Haruka could do some damage. He stood a few inches taller than her. The others had taken the arm wrestling as a little game, but Kotoko had used the event to measure up her fellow prisoners. After his close match with Mikoto, she had made a mental note to take him seriously. 

“No…” his expression twitched, getting frustrated with the misunderstanding. “Not muscles. I mean… you don’t have someone like Muu. You don’t need someone next to you all the time. But you still talk with everyone… and it looks easy. All the time. You always know what to say, and what to do. You never look scared. You never cry.”

Kotoko’s smile softened. She wasn’t the prideful type, but his words gave her a wave of accomplishment. She certainly was scared. She did cry. But she wasn’t about to show a single crack in her resolve in front of anyone here. Haruka had given her the greatest of compliments by confirming her success.

“Ah, you mean strength of spirit. Well, that doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It comes with my purpose, with my virtues.”

“Virtues…?”

“I see the injustice around me, and want to protect the innocent. When I see how awful the world can be, when I see the monsters that are hurting those who are weak, I can’t help myself.” She clenched her fist. “The power to do so just comes to me.” 

“Oh…” Haruka looked down at his palms. 

Her heart sank, realizing he didn’t quite understand. It was a shame that not all of humanity could be as righteous as her. That heroic drive had always come so naturally to her; she wasn’t sure she could put it into words to explain to others.

Haruka’s open hands were trembling. “Um. Is there any other way?”

“Hm?”

“All my life… I only cause pain to everyone.” His worry gradually turned to desperation.” I hurt everyone who gets close to me. Especially things that are small and weak. My whole life, I’ve been nothing but a… a curse. So… is there another way? Please. I want to be better. I want to be strong! I want to be like you! Tell me!”

He stepped forward, pleading. Kotoko stepped back. 

His blue eyes widened at her sudden shift into defense. “Ah! I. I’m sorry. I’m-I’m sorry. It’s your birthday. You should be… Have a g-good day.”

“Wait.” Kotoko stopped him before he could flee. She was aware of the massive gap between them, the vastly different backgrounds they came from. Still, she offered the same advice that had helped her in her toughest of days. 

“Don’t worry so much about others’ strength. The quickest way to burn yourself out is getting overwhelmed with the power that’s all around you. Once you start putting all your focus toward honing your own skills and strengths, you’ll realize how much you’re truly capable of. You don’t need anyone else. You’ll realize that you are enough.”

“I… am enough…?”

She placed a hand firmly on his shoulder. 

“So, no need to get all worked up now, okay?” 

“O-okay. I’ll do my best.” He stiffened, trying to appear worthy of her words.

She let out a bitter laugh. “I told the others not to do anything for my birthday, but I don’t think they paid me any mind.” Kotoko still couldn’t fathom how they were so friendly with each other given the situation. “Let’s go see if there’s some cake or something.”

[poetryqueer]

planning document must be going well I just said the words “explaining the endurance of Platonism could be the life I’m living” to myself. Alone. At 2:30am. Because yeah. Could be.

[zorosdimples]

i completely understand why people write fics with yuuji and sukuna where reader ends up with sukuna (we love and support monsterfucking here). but sweet yuuji boy deserves some love, too 💔

[bitegore]

ngl i think i kind of was a genius for being like 'yeah this character is a scary killyou cannibal scary killer who scary kills you' and then realizing that the way my worldbuilding works out is that there's a nonzero chance that if you leave literally any body parts over they can just come back, depending on what they believe in their heart of hearts can kill them. Of course she'd start eating her kills. She probably tried normal stuff first and then realized it didn't work and she had to try harder if she wanted to actually keep them dead.

[2ndstar-ontheright]

and another thing is, a lot of people don't understand how to both write, and understand child protagonists in stories. Children, are of course, children, but that doesn't mean they're dumb. Just because they don't act like an adult, doesn't mean they're constantly childish and immature. Their brains aren't mature enough to express certain emotions, make thought-out choices, and to just generally behave in the same way adults do.

Because they're not fully developed yet. You can write mature stories featuring young characters, but don't be surprised when they (as they should) act their respective ages. You don't have to treat them like an adult, just as a person because that's exactly what they are. They're a half-baked human. So, yes, please give them harder subjects to tackle and let them be 3-dimensional. Don't just make them into mini adults, or helpless babies with no sense of agency or discernable traits.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

hey sorry everyone I'll reply the asks and everything (<3 thank youu they are all so good and I love them and I feel so blessed) I just... I need to be serious and focus on work for a solid minute. :((

BUT I played a little more of TotK and, yeah, I'm actually pretty baffled people are impressed by this story and considering it a step above BotW, when to me we are clearly below in almost every single way. Again: the game is super fun and I love the little touches and everything, but beyond The Issues there's a lot that's just... incompetent at a very basic level honestly, and I find little excuse for the amount of slack in the way informations are conveyed and, just, how nonsensical and disjointed I find the plot and the world to be overall

(I have a Post in my heart about how I think a single* fix would have done so much good to the story and actually led to a theme and to stakes and tension and characters arcs and everything this game is cruelly lacking in the narrative department)

((*it would imply a number of other cascading fixes, but the framework could roughly stay the same))

[mapleandgingeroatmeal]

Finally getting to the new tsv…this beginning slaps so hard. The ceremony of it all. I love how the use of The Drowning Song draws the mind back to early season one Faulkner and then his internal narration reminds you of just how much he’s changed. He was so young and idealistic at the start, and now he’s got all he ever wanted but he had to give his naïveté up and found it all on the same lies and compromises he detested then. It’s brilliant writing and also absolutely devastating.

[lovelyfirebouquet]

"Focus on yourself, dumbass!" I scream at him. But in the reflection of his eyes, I see myself.