#this isn't about anything in particular. just a general sentiment

[dlight98]

We should all keep Dr Wily Protomen's words in mind in this age of social media

[kenzan-kiwami]

to be completely frank i think most of the people i've seen with major complaints regarding RGG 8's story are forgetting that 99% of what they're saying can be applied across the whole series

[ingravinoveritas]

electronic-chocolate replied to your post "Just wanted to make a separate post about this…”

I had an argument on here with someone who said that michael is a straight man who's just started queerbaiting bc he wanted to appeal to the gomens fandom💀

@electronic-chocolate Oh my God. That has to be right up there with someone calling Michael a non-practicing bisexual a few months ago. What's interesting to me is how five years ago, people talked a lot more easily/readily about Michael's sexuality--not his sexual orientation, but in the sense of viewing him as a sexual being--whereas nowadays, he's been rendered almost sexless. I know the "family man" image Michael has been boxed into is at least part of the reason for that, but it's hard to think that this isn't also an unconscious response to his queerness becoming more visible and more loud (as if it wasn't visible/loud enough already) in recent times--specifically, Michael's overtly sexual comments about David.

In 2014, Michael talked about Sarah Silverman putting her hand on his butt and made cheeky quips about Lizzy Caplan's breasts on the MoS commentary, and nobody blinked an eye. Ten years later, he's not making those type of comments about a particular woman, or any woman. Instead, Michael is making those comments about David--about his slinky hips, his sylph-like chest, about how attractive David is--and suddenly, it's a big deal. People are seeing what's in front of them and either rationalizing or outright ignoring it, all while choosing to believe those comments couldn't possibly have those same sexual overtones because Michael is talking about a man.

But not only is the argument of the person you mentioned entirely specious on a surface level (because as we know, real people cannot "queerbait," as that term applies to fictional characters/media), it also manages to ignore absolutely everything Michael has said over the last five years about playing Aziraphale and Good Omens in general: How he decided before filming even began that Aziraphale is in love with Crowley, and the acting choices he made in every scene with David that were in the service of that relationship. The way Michael has said he always misses being Aziraphale when they're not filming, and how he doesn't know where the character ends and he begins.

There is also the fact that Michael has played a tremendous number of queer roles over the years--long before Good Omens--and none of them had anything to do with appealing to a fandom or fan base of any kind. Michael once previously said that every character he plays is "him"--that is, there is some piece of the character that is a part of who he is. And when you take that sentiment and put it alongside the multitude of queer roles and Michael's recent comments on the death podcast about his crush on John Taylor and his struggles with gender expression, it forms a clear, rounded picture of exactly who Michael Sheen is.

Not "queerbaiting"...just queer. Even if he doesn't label it specifically, and also because he shouldn't have to. Insisting on calling Michael straight despite all of the above and everything else Michael has shared about himself erases every part of his sexuality, not just the parts someone is uncomfortable with. I just wish more people understood that...

[leonardcohenofficial]

hello i would love to hear your general thoughts re: tenmartha if you feel like sharing them

okay so many thoughts about dr. martha jones and the doctor but one of the main ones is that despite popular (misogynoir-driven) belief, martha's character as written is much stronger than people give the series credit for. i think so much of her very strong character development and arc (based in her growing into her self-sufficiency, which was always there from the start and demonstrated in her constant analysis and questioning in the search for the most info to make the right decisions) is overshadowed by fandom racism, too much focus given to the unrequited crush storyline (which is also key to her arc, but is also something that she very distinctly and importantly gets over!), and general "she's not rose" sentiment. i think it's really interesting that unlike rose or donna whose narrative arcs need them to become super-human, martha essentially becomes the doctor's equal by the end of her run, if not surpassing him given the fact that as a human, she doesn't have those same otherworldly powers as him.

while i think the narrative of season three ultimately lets her come out on top, i think there is a big cost to that, for both martha the character and for the viewers. even separate from fandom racism there are so many moments of racism in the series that i don't think actually do anything to further the storytelling (literally fuck the whole human nature/the family of blood storyline) and that puts a damper on much of that whole year for me despite loving the characters. i also understand why the doctor (via the writers) is constantly comparing martha to rose, but the moments where martha calls him out on it—while they are certainly there—aren't always enough. i think that fact that martha also begins as fairly dependent on the doctor's validation (which like. makes total sense, she has no idea how all this works and is getting thrown into insane scenarios with no info from the jump) gets reduced to calling the character "needy" which just simply isn't true. this is also something that i think people focus on a bit too much rather than seeing how that particular character trait shifts throughout her season.

all this to say, when tenmartha is good, it's fantastic. freema agyeman and david tennant's chemistry is so on point, and that saves a lot of otherwise mediocre-to-bad writing. from the jump martha is shown to be so SO fucking smart, self-reliant, willing to take risk, and uninterested in the doctor's bullshit; when the doctor isn't just whining in the post-rose hangover or treating her like crap, he recognizes how powerful she is AND how much potential she has to continue to hone her skills, which is why he trusts her so inherently and ends up leaning on her so much during that season. the fact that he manipulates her emotionally to me is equal parts hard to watch and based writing-wise in a lot of the aforementioned -isms AND interesting character development from him because we haven't really seen that type of messy fucked up (human) behavior from the doctor. and then martha leaves on her own terms, which no other companion has gotten to do (clara's storyline feels different in that regard to me). she realizes she doesn't need him, arguably becomes his equal (or surpasses him) in terms of skill, and makes it out alive. imho that's a pretty big accomplishment.

[tinystepsforward]

i've still been keeping tabs on what's happening at automattic. a couple of things i've observed:

toni schneider (who is a man btw), the interim ceo, has been quite open with staff in ways that mean they generally seem relieved to have him leading the company for now. i've heard people speak optimistically about him from all parts of the spectrum (by which i mean: staff who are trans tumblr users right through to staff who are "anti-woke" or whatever and were absolutely intolerable to work with as a trans person), which seems like... a good sign? maybe.

this relative transparency includes things like weekly updates from an executive level, as well as openly saying that he did have to directly speak to matt and encourage him to, you know, stop posting.

matt is back to his usual milquetoast blogging, and replied to someone on mastodon about the AI issue saying he'd comment on it when he's back in may, so whatever toni said to him seems to have worked for him keeping out of it for now.

people have no idea what it's gonna look like when matt's back.

the best case scenario is that schneider manages to create a significant enough boost in morale and productivity that "it'd be nice if we just kept him" becomes a sentiment that isn't held just by the rank and file. i don't know how likely that is, but there's a sense of cautious hope and of making the most of this reprieve from matt's increasingly erratic decisions no matter what.

the tumblr staff statement was approved by schneider and hr, so i am also hopeful they won't face repercussions. what they said might seem pretty mild from the outside, or carefully worded, but it's pretty clear to me and to most people who've worked at companies like this that it's a pretty bold one.

i'll quote a friend:

keep reminding the more histrionic elements out there that: 1. there really are trans people, INCLUDING TRANS WOMEN, in the fight here. 2. we don't have nearly the power they seem to think we do. 3. we're fighting anyway. was the statement we wrote enough? fuck no. does it fix everything? fuck no. but we literally called out the CEO, and got the greenlight for it from the interim CEO. i don't know where this will end, but that's not nothing.

i'm not sure automattic deserves the immense honor of having this many of its brave, dedicated trans staff put effort into trying to make it better. but it has them, and it would be wise to do its best to keep them. so many of us — even me, even now — believe in the ideals that drew us to the work automattic does, and hope that it can return to them. we will see!

other things i want to say:

the wellbeing of my friends on staff is my priority. i am interested primarily in their safety, and won't pressure them to give me goss. the ways i've spoken publicly are already pretty scary to people who might worry about retaliation against them just for being known to be my friend.

this is a regular personal blog. i'll keep updating if there's shit to update about, but i also don't work at automattic any more (thank fuck, again), have a life, and am not interested in declaring matt my specific nemesis or otherwise acting purely out of spite.

some of youse really deeply do not understand companies, the internet, generative ai, or pretty much anything else i've said. that's okay — big tech in particular is fucked up on purpose bc it benefits those in power to have it be incomprehensible! but maybe it's not a great position from which to get mad at me specifically or at staff for idk not personally assassinating matt.

got tired of blocking transphobes so i've turned anons off. i'll probably flick them back on eventually.

[jojotichakorn]

i started penning a post about how i always find it narratively unsatisfying when an arc ends with a conclusion the following arc breaks, regardless of how realistic the repetition of the same mistake might be, which is still true, but i actually want to talk about something else right now.

i feel like, at least at this stage, jack is in a position that is both generally unrealistic and untrue to the specific events of the series. 'jack and joker' has a clear focus on poverty and money and class issues, but it seems to treat jack in a very special way. he somehow manages to stand on the moral high ground above other characters. specifically, other poor characters. which is, first of all, a little ridiculous, since he was indeed a debt collector and, in fact, almost became the boss's son. and, second of all, is generally Not Great, because it does idolise the idea that if you "just try hard enough", you won't "allow" yourself to be backed into a corner and therefore won't have to do bad things.

now, don't get me wrong, i am not saying that our characters who have made mistakes are completely blameless. tattoo did shitty things (and hoy followed suit), safe did shitty things, hope frankly admitted to enjoying doing shitty things. however, if we zoom out a little, we will see that all these characters are in a situation that is inherently unfair to them. we have all of these poor people in immense amounts of debt and then we have this disgusting rich motherfucker whose entire wealth is literally based on making their lives as miserable and unfair as they are. and i think that, in this particular case, the series would have actually benefited from a dichotomy. don't get me wrong, i'm usually absolutely brimming with nuance and also asking "what lies outside of it?" but this shall be my exception. (though you could say that joke already brings some nuance to it - he is initially from a well-off family and he actively makes choices to the benefit of poor people, despite it resulting in him being ostracised from said family and its riches).

jack walks the line of being poor and managing not to do anything "too bad" like he is a fucking circus performer on a wire. and, don't get me wrong, he is genuinely a selfless character. he makes choices that a lot of other characters in the same circumstances wouldn't make. he remains in debt and continues working for the boss because he keeps trying to help people and pay off their debts first - that is admirable. however, he himself was already set up for more success than others. sure, being forced to become a debt collector isn't a walk in the park, but most other debtors didn't even have that choice. jack has to work for the boss in order to stay afloat - that is an undeniably hard task. the other people the boss collects debts from, however, have to come up with a lot of money out of thin air - that is not simply a hard task, that is an impossible one that is designed to trap them in the cycle of doing this impossible task forever. that being said, ultimately, jack is still poor. his own hamster wheel should be somewhere around the corner, that's always the case. this idea is where i wish they would have taken jack's arc.

from the moment when he refused to marry rose, there was no escape for him. finally, much like our other poor characters, he found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. (and i think that it's very thematically appropriate for jack's particular "i can't do this anymore, i deserve to live a full life" sentiment to be connected to love, since he is, after all, a lead of a romance drama). he made the decision to say "no" and from that point on, he was completely and utterly fucked. because, realistically, that conversation that he had with the boss after refusing rose was insane. i don't know what he would have done to jack exactly, if that was a genuine conversation and there was no exchange of jack's freedom for the ring, but it would not have been anything good.

so i wish jack had to make the actual tough call there, instead of having joke save him all on his own (and later take the fall for it). and if it was, at least in some capacity, jack's decision to steal that ring, he would finally be placed in a situation where every other poor character already inevitably found themselves in. because the entire system is rigged against all of them and they are eventually always forced to do things that they should have never even had to consider in the first place. but they deserve better than living a life set up for them by evil rich people who literally live off of their suffering and they are allowed - no, at some point they simply have no choice but to - fight for a better life.

this, in my opinion, would have been a much more powerful message and - not to circle back to my personal preferences - would have also not left us with joke making the very same mistake that we decided we should never make again at the end of the previous arc.

[nyoomerr]

Thoughts on Qijiu (as a ship or just in general?). I feel like when YQY or, rarely, the original Shen Qingqiu show up in your fics, they're treated pretty sympathetically, but I'm curious to know more on how you feel about them.

i've never really made up my mind about qijiu, tbh. toxic doomed yaoi VS tragic brothers VS two people who went through something awful together and since then have changed so much as people that honestly they really would be better off without being anything to each other...

in part my general non-commitment to a particular stance on qijiu is probably just a result of my general ambivalence to the characters themselves ;; i'll put my opinions below the break, so that no one has to see my lukewarm sentiments if they're keen on these characters (especially sj!sqq)😅

i often write yqy in a favorable light since sy!sqq likes yqy, but personally i think he's just... fine. i can tell i'm supposed to feel bad for him, but honestly i don't have a lot of sympathy or understanding for someone who feels so horrible about their own self that they then decide to... let somebody else act and feel horrible? i think he's got nice older brother vibes, but the fact that he knew about sj!sqq's abuse of his disciples and didn't intervene kinda cuts into his image as the 'respectable' one, for me.

for sj!sqq... he's a very complicated character, and an interesting character to me because of it. however, i love binghe VERY much, and in the end i just can't actually like anyone who is cruel to him.

at the start of my time in fandom, my opinion of him was just that: "he's interesting, but i don't really care to think about him very much because he was very awful to the character that i DO want to think about a lot." and because i didn't care to think about him, i also didn't care to tackle how complicated his character is - i honestly very frequently just used him as a convenient plot point for binggeyuan without really caring if it was OOC for sj!sqq.

but over time, i've seen a lot of sj!sqq fans who try to wash him clean in ways that feel very weird... as if there is this need to have him proven innocent of every single one of the crimes he was accused of, just because some of them were proven to be misunderstandings. in particular, i've seen this theory that sj!sqq only dumped tea on lbh because the tea was medicinal (??) and it was how he could treat lbh for his injuries (??) without breaking his character (??)... and i've seen this several times, from multiple different people, and all treated very seriously -- this isn't just one person shouting at the sky with this idea.

i guess, as someone who loves bingge when he's soggy and loves him still when he's insane and violent and awful, beyond just feeling like the fandom often misrepresents sj!sqq for the sake of turning him "likeable," it also just feels a bit cheap and cowardly 😂 like, sure, by all means, love that man! but, please love him while also looking the fact that he abused lbh in the eye.

anyway, so i guess tldr: i think sj!sqq is very complicated, and more often than not i just don't care enough about him to represent that correctly, but sometimes i see a take so Weird that it makes my teeth itch. 'raised by winter winds' was more or less the culmination of all of those moments - me going, "okay, let's just for once give genuine care and attention to how i represent this character, since if i want to complain about other people's misrepresentations than i had damn well better make sure i'm not being so careless with my own characterizations."

u can u up, no can no bb, and all that.

to circle back to your original question with all that context: i'm generally ambivalent to both yqy and sj!sqq, so i'm also generally ambivalent to qijiu or what form it takes. there have been a couple fics where i find moments that i'm really invested in them, because i do think that sj!sqq is a complicated and interesting character, but it isn't something i seek out.

[that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction]

Can I ask your top 10 fav fics ever (from any fandom, if you don't mind)?

Also, just curious, is there a story behind your name "that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction "?

Top 10 fics, in no particular order, (these are all complete, in English and most have just a touch of angst. Also there��s no smut, it’s just not something I enjoy reading)

things lost in the fire by earlgreylover98

ALTA fic In which Zuko isn't sure Ozai knows which side of his face he burnt off and it sends him spiraling, the gaang finds out about his scar. It's a super great one shot, 5,067 words

Drinking Buddies and Diaries by dove_dove

Good Omens fic where Muriel reads Aziraphel’s diaries and Crowley finds out some stuff about his angel. 31,115 words

The death song of arthur pendragon by hanyuism

Merlin fic, Orpheus and Eurydice but make it Merthur, the angst is amazing, 6,827 words

Two Feasts and a Bard by emerillon

Merlin fic, pure Mercelot fluff, completely destroyed me, I’ve reread this an unhealthy amount of times. 2,785 words

Possessed by Emrys by ooh_look_the_void

Merlin and Gaius tell Arthur that Emrys is a magical entity who possesses people to interact with the mortal realm so Merlin can use magic. It gets a bit out of control when Merlin isn’t the only one getting possessed by Emrys. 10/10 fic had me wheezing. 14,759 words. (You do need an account to read it but well worth it)

Kilgharrah Moves to Camelot by ticketyboo00

In which Kilgharrah learns to actually be a decent person, gets therapy and is surprisingly a good brother figure to Merlin. 55,918 words

i know why the birds sing your name by ironfamjam

Arthur is banished from Camelot, Merlin follows him, together they unite Albion and find a family along the way. It’s really cute, Merthur and background Gwencelot. I can’t remember if there were a few mild smut scenes but they were skipable I think. 113,376 words.

Merlin in disguise by Theroundbartable

5 Times Merlin disguised himself. And 1 time he stops hiding, Gwaine being Gwaine, Arthur being smitten, Merthur. 21,576 words.

For Want of a Nail by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf

Fleeing from Essetir in the bloody beginnings of the Purge, Hunith finds herself on the doorstep of Leon’s family (Hunnith’s old friends) so Leon and Merlin are raised as brothers. Also needs an account to read, but one of my all time favourite fics 234,831 words

the cute guy next door (might be a villain) by Alesyira

Mha fic Shinsou is an underground, undercover pro hero trying to find a lead on a case that may or may not involve the socially awkward guy living next door, (Midoriya) Misunderstandings ensue

And shit that’s 10. I have so many more so let me know if you want any others. I’ve got a few Yuri on Ice fics, a lot more mha and toh, one or two Sasaki to Miyano, Seraph of the end and Sherlock fics. I’m still getting into Song of Achilles fics, but there’s a few of them and a few crossovers too.

And for my name, there’s a kinda long story behind it, but the short version is my grandad used to call me Nerdy or clever or anything like that, he always said being smart and working hard to be smart was the best thing a person could do and I really looked up to him as everything I wanted to be when I grew up. Then when I came online in lockdown during Covid, it was just a whim that stuck to go by Nerd, or ThatNerd on Ao3 but the user was taken so I added bits till I found something available. After he died, it became more sentimental but generally it was just a lockdown thing that stuck.

[infamous-if]

I’m curious what the RO’s homes/bedrooms look like because I think it can tell a whole lot about someone 🤔

I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. I was actually ruminating over what Sev's room/apartment, in particular, would look like the other day.

Seven's room is very dark to me. Black walls, a lot of band posters plastered everywhere. It's a mess but an organized mess. Very much what a music enthusiast's room would look like in a 2000s teen movie lol. They've never grown out of the 'fanboy/fangirl' phase so they'd just have posters all over, they have a dresser of vintage records on one side and a mirror full of photo booth pictures and photos of their life tacked to it. Their bed is never made, mostly because Seven is always in bed when they're home. Seven has clothes strewn just about everywhere but they claim to know where everything is. A lot of ripped-out pages of scrapped out song lyrics on the floor. My imagination of Seven's songwriting process is a lot of pacing, a lot of humming. They get their best ideas while doing other stuff like cleaning and cooking. Outside of their room, their apartment is also messy with a lot of novels strewn about. Seven is very sentimental so every gift they've ever gotten is on display. Their bathroom is clean but messy; just a lot of hair products and makeup everywhere. Seven's "I just rolled out of bed" look is a stylistic choice lmao

I can imagine Sev being a very annoying neighbor to have since they always have music on and they're always singing. Seven has never actually cleaned their place quickly because of all the times they stop to have a mini concert in their living room. Seven is fun when they're alone lol

Orion's is expectantly clean and very minimalist. His room is barren, a plain black bed with a metal headboard. He always has incense burning and has an air purifier and a lot of tech. Everything is spotless and there's not anything out of place. Orion's place is a lot of dark furniture, a lot of leather, and a lot of gray and white in terms of looks. He has a large glass balcony that he likes to do work on in the mornings. I imagine him to have a large closet with all just suits on one side and just...straight up black clothes on the other. Orion isn't one to wear anything colorful. His neighbors love him and want to connect with him but Orion is not interested lol More than a few times he'd come home and just plops himself on his couch and falls asleep due to how tired he was.

Sebastian's home is large but sparsely decorated. He has a big TV to play his video games on and it's what you'd think is a stereotypical young guy's place: brown couch, some video game memorabilia, and some sports stuff. He has a huge gamer computer setup he built himself. He uses it for games and for coding and general data stuff. Sebastian likes displaying all of his goodies and stuff and he doesn't touch Maya's room, which is much like Seven's in that it's super cluttered with music stuff and posters. Sebastian's house is what a default sims house looks like: nothing stylish, just generic furniture.

Victoria and G's is luxurious that leans more to anything that they like they just toss it in there. Huuuuge with plushy colorful couches and overpriced designer furniture. OH! If anyone has seen Cara Delevigne's AD...that's what their house would look like. Just chaotic everywhere with so many knickknacks and things that it's like an assault on your every single sense. Funky wallpapers, leopard rugs. A lot of that, surprisingly, is G's doing. G was very set on designing their house. They're barely home and live mostly in hotels anyway so it doesn't really matter.

August's is pretty generic; gray walls, purple bed. They live with their family (August was supposed to live with a roommate but I changed it to better fit their route) and Clare tends to be the messy one. I would say August's room is half and half, it's pretty empty but what they do have takes up a lot of space like their drum set and their huge speakers. The house is big (August's parents are pretty well-off as politicians) and very Grecian in appearance. August doesn't have much knickknacks and things like Seven. They're pretty detached to sentimental things like that. It's a very standard room, the centerpiece definitely being their drums. They have a huge computer set up, though, like a gamer set up like Seb's but they don't use it for games lmao

[kelvintimeline]

well i care what happens to crowley and aziraphale after the end of season 2 and i don't care about the feelings of those two little radfem bitches so that's a pretty easy choice lmfao

I know this is bait and/or trying to frame GO fans as especially bad (though I have seen this exact sentiment expresesd by GO fans so... idk)

but it should be said:

the victims are not TERFs. we do not know their politics, we do not know much of anything about them besides their age, that they were assaulted, and their general relationship with neil. that's it.

the podcast reached out to these women and they took advantage of the opportunity. scarlett reported her rape in october 2022 and no one listened. k had been living with it for 20 years. they aren't bad people for just wanting to be heard, not when there have been whisper networks about neil for decades. not when he's been glorified in spite of being a missing stair.

you can frame them of being taken advantage of the podcast or colluding with the podcast or whatever you want, that doesn't change what neil has done to them

even the podcast isn't a TERF podcast--it seems to be right wing, there are TERFs on staff, but that doesn't mean it's reporting objectively false information every time. it isn't primarily trans issues or feminism, either. so, you should be aware of framing, fact check when you can, and not use it as a primary source when you can. but bad actors break real news... all of the time. sometimes with an agenda, and sometimes even without one. we have real insight from the victims themselves, in their own voices, on this podcast that really can't be reframed as anything else unless they were literally hacking and cutting audio to form new sentences that the victims never stated.

none of that makes this podcast a good thing but it does mean that this particular series contains primary sources, including proof from gaiman himself, which exists outside of the politics of the people running it.

anyways--

even if the victims were TERFs, that wouldn't make neil less of a rapist

even if they were TERFs, that wouldn't mean they deserved to be raped

neil didn't rape them because they were TERFs (and if he did, that would still be wrong, rape is not a punishment, rape is not judgement, rape is not justice), he raped them because he could and because he wanted them to

so, to not care about these women is to not care that he is a rapist, to not care about other victims (of his but also just in general)

anyways--

TERFs are terrible people. Rapists are also terrible people.

As far as we know, his victims aren't TERFs, but even if they were, that wouldn't mean you should continue to support Neil. Or his art projects and adaptions.

Because... he's still a rapist.

This isn't some pokemon match where we figure out different power levels of "TERF" types and "Rapist" types and see which one is more powerful, where one defeats the other and somehow becomes morally okay.

This is where we think critically about the information we have on hand and then employ basic human empathy. If you are incapable of empathy, learn to fake it. Post haste.

Can't do that? Well, then shut the fuck up. Talk about something else. Be a better person by being less of yourself.

[dcficrecs]

I'm A Good Pretender - Chapter 2: I Got Lots Of Problems

By shipNslash on AO3

My last post was an excerpt from the first chapter of this fic. I've finished it now and I like most of it, but there's something in Chapter 2 that I just have to talk about. This whole fic is a Robin origin story. It has seven chapters, so it drawfs in comparison to the 'Firework' fic by paganpunk2 on fanfiction.net (I posted about that too, maybe my favorite fanfic ever). Still, I really like it. It's written with excerpts from days. It starts with day zero, where Dick's parents are killed and Bruce comforts him. Day one is him meeting Alfred at the orphanage, and it goes all the way to day 262, where Commissioner Gordon meets Robin.

Anyway, in this particular excerpt, Dick is scheming to sneak out of Wayne Manor and kill Tony Zucco himself, and has to guilt trip Bruce in order to be alone long enough to escape even though he feels bad about it. He likes Bruce, but he isn't quite a father figure to him, yet. Dick has inherited Bruce's old bedroom, something very sentimental to Bruce. The excerpt starts with Bruce giving a tour of his old room. Bruce also gave Dick a note, saying to ring the service bell when he wakes up. He does, and it calls Bruce to his room. Dick keeps the note in his pocket. Also, a slight trigger warning for mentions of sexual abuse against a child.

So Bruce awkwardly shows Dick around the cavernous bedroom. The dresser is full of generic clothes in his size and Bruce promises they can get his stuff from their trailer later today and go shopping soon for anything he's missing. He shows him how to work the computer at the desk and the TV on the wall, and even points towards the staff lift at the end of the hallway that will take him directly to the kitchen. The bathroom is in the bedroom and almost as huge, with a sink and toilet and a big shower/bathtub combo already filled with a bunch of different soaps.

"I wasn't sure what you'd need," Bruce mumbles when Dick comments on the variety. "We have different hair types."

That's…surprisingly thoughtful, Dick thinks, and Bruce's folded note feels like it's burning a hole in his pocket.

He ignores the guilt and smiles. "Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate it."

"I want you to be comfortable here," Bruce whispers back, even quieter than normal.

Dick pushes the guilt down, down, down. Now is as good a time as any and Bruce is already uncomfortable. Now if Dick can just get him to leave…

(Never talk about sex, Mama always says, grown ups hate when kids even mention sex.)

"What about rules?" Dick asks, pitching his voice a little higher and widening his already big eyes just a little bit bigger. "One of the older boys at the detention center said rich people only foster kids to warm their beds. I don't know what that means, but I'll try, if you teach me."

And bingo.

Bruce's pale skin goes practically gray and he flinches back until he's outside of the bathroom. "That- No, I- You won't ever-"

"Did I say something wrong?" Dick asks, adding in a small sniffle and not letting up on the eye contact. (He's already learned that Bruce Wayne hates eye contact.)

The man is still backpedaling, now well to the hallway. "No! No. I'll… see you at breakfast." When he steps out of the room, his shoulders sag. "Kitchen. Eight." And then he's gone, latching the door shut behind him.

Dick sighs and flops against the bed. That was almost too easy. He feels… kinda bad.

Still. Eight o’clock. That's just over three hours, according to the clock on the wall.

"Alright," he mumbles to himself and carefully rocks to his feet. "Like Mama says, make a list."

So, he does.

Stretch my poor, atrophying muscles

Shower off the scent of the detention center

Find out where Haly's went

Sneak out

Catch and murder Tony Zucco

Run away to (re)join the circus 

There, that doesn't seem hard now that he's made a list- Mama's always right.

Something about "I don't know what that means, but I'll try if you teach me," is literally so well written. Obviously, gross, but Dick using something that makes Bruce obviously uncomfortable to his advantage against Bruce is so Dick coded. Dick absolutely knew what it meant and purposefully used it to horrify Bruce. Guilt tripping Bruce Wayne is so easy, as long as you're Dick Grayson. He's a little gremlin and I love it. Also, the list he makes is adorable, literally went from zero to a hundred real quick.

[bunbeeplays]

The Lemon Legacy: Generation 1, Chapter 146 - Adulting

Xander wakes up early and starts making breakfast for the family. It's his birthday today, but he doesn't really like making a fuss over his own birthday, so they're going to celebrate later just as a family.

Ophelia comes downstairs only to see her husband beat her to breakfast.

Ophelia: Aww, no fair. I wanted to make you breakfast in bed.

Xander: I'm gonna be an old man, babe, I gotta get used to waking up on time to get the Early Bird Special now.

Ophelia: Stop it! You're going to be an adult, not an elder.

She leans in close to whisper something.

Ophelia: And your back better not start hurting after you age up, because my gift for you tonight involves a lot of… physical activity.

Maybe aging up isn't so bad…

Gemma is working hard on her gift to her dad. She was going to use her tooth fairy money to buy him a gift, but he insisted she save that for herself. He never said she couldn't make him anything, though!

The kids eventually come down for breakfast.

Jaden: Happy birthday, Dad! My first scout meeting is today, but it's okay if I can't go. I don't wanna miss anything

Xander: Don't worry, short-stack, the meeting's only two hours. I don't think I'll wither away to dust, I can wait.

After breakfast, Xander works on crawling with Wren, who doesn't seem to be enjoying it nearly as much as he is.

Jaden checks on his Llama Scout board and realizes he's done enough to earn his first badge, the Scholarly Aptitude badge, and his first promotion to Griffon Scout!

Jaden's off to his first Scout meeting!

Ophelia finishes up Xander's birthday cake shortly after, and gets a bit sentimental looking at old pictures of them together. She's grateful he's stuck by her side all these years and can't wait to spend many more with her soulmate.

Jaden will be back from his meeting soon, so Ophelia goes upstairs to tell everyone they can start celebrating soon.

Gemma: We'll be right down, Mom, I wanna give Dad his gift!

Ophelia: You've got plenty of time, I'll leave you to it!

Xander: You didn't have to get me anything, Gemma.

Gemma: I made it myself!

Xander opens the gift and sees a drawing of an elephant. That's his favorite animal! Gemma must have asked Ophelia, because he doesn't remember telling her.

Xander: You're the best, Muffin. Thank you.

Jaden runs in once he's dropped off, excited to tell his mom about his first meeting.

Jaden: I made so many friends, Mom!

Ophelia: You, a lovable angel, making friends? Color me surprised.

Jaden: Haha, Mooooom!

Ophelia: Okay, okay. Tell me about these new friends.

Jaden babbles off a few names, but one sticks out in particular.

Jaden: -And I even made friends with the bigger kids! There's Tommy, he's really nice, and…

Tommy? Hector and Tiff Laurent's son is named Tommy… Well, she supposes it's a common name. Might not be that Tommy.

Before candle time, Xander chats with his wife.

Xander: This is it. Take a good look. My old man started going bald as an adult.

Ophelia: Probably because he was dealing with you!

The two share a kiss, and Xander knows he's ready for this next chapter of his life.

Happy birthday to our Generation One spouse!

The whole family celebrates as Xander becomes a full-fledged adult.

New life stage, new haircut (finally)!

Xander's very close to achieving his life goal of becoming a master mixologist, now will be a good time for him to finish that goal before Gemma's generation takes over!

Speaking of mixology, after the kids filled up on cake and sugar-crashed straight into bed, Xander makes some juice for him and his wife. He loves being a mixologist and creating new drinks that Sims can make memories with, but these quiet nights with Ophelia are the best.

Ophelia: This tastes amazing, sweetie. And you look amazing too. You just keep getting better with age, like a fine nectar.

Xander: Well it'd be pretty bad if I got worse at my life aspiration AND got uglier.

Ophelia: For a self-assured Sim, you sure can't take a compliment.

The two talk into the night, reminiscing about the past ten or so years of their lives together. Ophelia's kleptomaniac trait of the past is something she's glad she left behind, but it led to their woohoo partnership, which lead to all this. Ophelia doesn't regret a second.

Don't think Ophelia forgot about her own gift. She leads Xander upstairs and tells him not to look as she wraps… or rather, unwraps… his present.

Xander's getting himself hyped. Don't break a hip, old man!

Ophelia: Okay, I'm ready.

Xander turns around, and he certainly can't say he's disappointed.

Ophelia sometimes feels insecure about her stretchmarks, but even she knows she looks damn good tonight.

Xander: What a pretty little package… You did such a good job wrapping my gift, I almost hate to tear it off.

Ophelia: No you don't. No get over here, tiger.

The two fall onto the bed between hungry kisses, hardly taking a breath.

Ophelia: Nice to see your libido hasn't slowed down.

Xander: With you looking like that, how could it?

Ophelia: Happy birthday, Xander. You're the best thing to ever happen to me.

Xander: Well, you're the best thing to ever happen to me, so I guess we're even. Now let me get a slice of that lemon cake.

Fresh!

What a way to end a birthday!

Looks like in his old age, Xander needed to grab a pillow for support. Hey, whatever works!

[kal-sharok]

Hi!! If you’re willing to talk about it/up for it I’d love to hear more about the slavophobia BioWare has in relation to their dwarves. No pressure at all of course bc I’m sure it’s taxing, I’ve just not seen this before and would love a resource to reblog about it if that’s okay. Thank you love your blog ❤️

hello! im actually glad you asked, i'll try to be as coherent as possible 😅 and no u i love yr blog!!

i'd like to preface by saying i don't think bioware invented anti-slavic sentiment in games or in general and isn't the only company, game or otherwise, perpetuating it. it's found all over the western world, most notably in western europe (where we're still regarded as 2nd class citizens, pairs really well with imperialism towards people outside of europe imo), but it also gained a significant boost thanks to the red scare in usa in particular (and continues to thrive thanks to the absolute chokehold mediocre american media keeps everything else in the world in).

im also no social sciences expert, but i do have first-hand experience on the short end of the stick and a couple of books in my have read list so let's say im qualified to rant on 🤭 it turned out quite lengthy so i've hidden it under the cut below!

when it comes to bioware, the first hurdle is already at their utterly haphazard character naming policy. there's a considerable number of dwarves who bear names that range from mockingly slavic-esque to full-blooded backwater serbian, now in yr local fantasy rpg! examples:

gorim saelac. while i do appreciate they tried to give a dwarf a mountain-y name (gora is basically any kind of steep pile of rocks with trees and dew and wildlife over it), "gorim" is how you would say "i am burning" in multiple slavic languages. this is one of the rare ones that are not hurtful and are hilarious instead (and tbh naming him goran, which is what i assumed they were going for, would probably be more ridiculous in the long run. for example i still can't take jowan seriously despite my love for the mage origin bc someone really yassified jovan and thought nobody would notice. wrong!)

lucjan and myaja. these two (along with maybe wojech "we couldn't spell wojciech" ivo) are the classic example of non-slavs butchering the hell out of slavic names bc it suits them better, which is also something commonly experienced by all non-western cultures and communities and a worldwide sign of disrespect. the in-game pronunciation during the provings gave me a physical rash. "myaja" in particular is still in my top 5 wtf moments in origins bc 1) what kind of stroke induced spelling is that 2) it reminds me of kids speaking dialect A mocking kids' dialects B by adding y sounds (which is what set the dialects apart in the first place) at unnatural spots and 3) maja /ma-ya/ would've sufficed perfectly for ethnic coding if that was the sole purpose of her character. do better! sure it was 2009 but from the little i happen to know about the world beyond the atlantic, you're just bound to run into someone of slavic descent in alberta (maybe not exactly polish but anyone would give you a closer phonetics match than... this). it's kind of amusing how 3 of bioware's founders have very slavic surnames and this keeps happening.

bogdan vasca. we don't know anything about him apart from the fact bianca davri was forced into a marriage with him and that his very dwarven parents considered him to be 'a gift from the god' (which is what his name means. theodore would be an equivalent) when naming him. the same clan of dwarves that preserved castes topside (which is why the marriage was arranged) and thus are likely to either believe in the stone (that they do not worship as a god) or nothing, certainly not a very human god with a very human, quite possibly mage (a completely alien concept from common dwarven pov) prophetess and a very human doctrine of considering anyone not human as lesser. the jokes are writing themselves at this point.

all of this naming business falls more into petty territory rather than being outright offensive, but it does bring us to the more serious manifestation — typecasting. the western media simply cannot fathom slavic people in roles that are not violent, volatile (i.e. berserkers, though there are other influences in there), constantly infighting and better off killing e/o (i.e. the diamond quarter, the merchants' guild, the carta) and relating back to thievery, addictive abusable substances and trafficking (i.e. the carta, but also official channels of lyrium supply from orzammar to the rest of thedas). as a slavic woman, it was exceptionally painful to see bioware join virtually everyone else in depicting us as women whose major purpose seems to be to engage in prostitution and surrogacy lite (i.e. noble hunters, most evident in beraht's grooming of rica brosca into the role of one). while these practices are tied to societies of woman-hating — and orzammar, if not all of thedas very much is one — i just take incredible offence in someone naming them integral (dwarven birth rates and the blight anyone?? i hated every moment of that) for a society that's previously been coded with people like myself in mind. of course im going to relate to how someone who looks like me is treated, that's the very purpose of casting. doesn't help bioware's cause that the bulk of npc's with slavic names tend to be lower-caste or castless - with exceptions such as some minor noble houses (houses ivo and harrowmont, possibly meino too) and branka (who's again smith-born and a whole villain).

by only allowing us to fulfill such roles, we are effectively barred from actually engaging storytelling to spend our eternity on the writers' back-burner. hell, even the witcher has been sanitized for the western eye (despite literally being made in poland) and i am yet to find a piece of modern media that doesn't reduce baba yaga to a quirky chicken-legged aesthetic (while also forgetting she's specific to the eastern slavic people). not to mention that if tevinter and par vollen are truly inspired by byzantine and the ottoman empire respectively, guess which mfs were both their vasals. now guess who built the deep roads and guess what tevene mages need to fuel their magic. if dwarves have already been declared the slavs of thedas, let's at least give them/us some space to be such.

[qqueenofhades]

you can tell you work in academia with how much patience you have for some of these asks...."I don't know what is and isn't true anymore" is such an indefensible cop out of a way to exist in the modern world. morally clean "Leftists" could at least have the decency to learn the history of the people and places they pretend to care about for internet points, but hey, it's way easier to take the Opressor Approved route and give into despair and recycle repurposed right wing propaganda like the TERF version of geopolitics. a lot of people need to ask themselves, if there were no internet asspats involved, would you actually still care?? anyway thank you for your patience and willingness to engage, you're a better person than me :')

So far as the other anon goes, they have apologized and taken responsibility that it was a dumb thing to do, I have accepted that apology, and I think that matter is now closed. And yes, I do actually appreciate (as discussed in many other posts and asks) that it is difficult to always and automatically find reliable information, that it has been made deliberately even more difficult to do so by various bad actors, and that this results in a big ol' Bad Take Sea even by people who are genuinely otherwise well-meaning or want to make a positive contribution. So I really do have sympathy for that. Perhaps the previous anon did not put that sentiment across in the best of ways, but as I said, we should all have a bit more grace in remembering that we are real people behind the computer/phone screen and are dealing with different stressful things, and therefore sometimes make mistakes and do or say things we don't mean. (You know, for those of us who aren't pornbots. Oh tumblr.)

Where you and I absolutely agree, however, is that just because it is sometimes difficult to acquire that information, or that systemic and deliberate barriers/misinformation has been put in place to increase the difficulty, it does not excuse people from the responsibility of doing so, especially if they want to put themselves in the position of being the Perfectly Correct Social Media Oracle who will judge and criticize everyone else's responses and act as if that has some real-world impact or is a real marker of someone's "personal morality." And there are for sure plenty of people who are doing that with literally no self-awareness or other critical tools, because as you say, they want the Internet Asspats for being seen as a "Good Person" according to a very narrow and limited definition. But they can't think about what that entails, how to challenge it or correct it, or otherwise apply it carefully, so, yeah.

As I said, I am generally willing to answer asks that are made in good faith and show a real willingness to learn, because (as noted and which is doubtless visible again here) I am an academic and I enjoy having these kinds of discussions. But this topic in particular, and modern social media in general, is really not made for it, and it's easy to get sucked down the Discourse Black Hole that doesn't do anything for anyone, and I try to avoid that. So I answer only when I think I can contribute something useful to the discussion, which results in those kinds of long and careful responses where I do always worry that I haven't said enough or said it the right way, especially with the bad-faith reading police eager to leap on any small misstatement or sentence taken out of context. That is of course a hazard of being a person on the Internet in 2024, and since I am still here and still answering questions generally, I have clearly decided to accept it. But I also don't have an obligation to respond to *everything,* and I don't. It is a fine line to walk and again, I am a middle-aged tired academic and ordinary person doing my best. I appreciate your support. :)

[mannatea]

Fanfiction writing and posting culture has shifted so much over the last 20 years. Every time I read anything on r/fanfiction, not only do I lose brain cells, but I feel like a huge, huge part of fanfiction culture has moved toward reading only completed works and avoiding engagement at all cost, but particularly until a work is finished. There was a post yesterday by someone celebrating the fact that a fic they had on alert updated because it had "been so long" since the last update: it was a wait of one and a half months.

That isn't that long for a writer with a spouse and/or children and/or a busy career and/or someone busting ass at school and/or a life outside and off the internet.

While a lot of comments did chastise this person for their perceived idea of a long wait for an update, there were also a few comments from readers proclaiming that this was why they never read incomplete works.

Heck, there were one or two (upvoted!) comments about how writers should simply pre-write everything if they wanted feedback.

Don't get me started on the posts by people that read hundreds of fics a week and yet never comment. "Gosh, I wish I there were more fics for xyz." As if there's not something they can do about that by simply commenting on the works that do exist to show the authors the content they made has an audience!

As a fanfic writer specifically, I find this weird attitude toward the creative work of other people more than a bit discouraging (and sometimes deeply uncomfortable). Fanfiction, like fanart, is a social experience. I create a thing and then others engage with it to encourage me to do more of the thing. I am not a machine and I do not exist for your entertainment or pleasure, but the way fandom leans these days would lead you to believe authors and artists exist for the purpose of consumption.

I am a whole person and doing this costs me my time. For a long story, many many hours of time.

I don't think it's asking too much for people who took the time to read a story (and in particular those who enjoy it) to engage with it.

This doesn't even touch the weird "I only read completed fics" mindset and how it feels to see that sentiment echoed as an author.

"Just write it all in advance before posting it then." Do you even know how long it takes to write a story—to write a longform fic with a plot to completion?

Break Open the Sky was 102,000 words long (and this is short compared to a lot of longfics, so keep that in mind). Even if you assume a writing speed of 1,000 words an hour (generous, because some difficult passages will be much slower to write), that is a whopping 102 hours. That doesn't include the time I had to spend to go back and re-read to continue the story. That doesn't include outlining. That doesn't include note-taking. That doesn't including mapping out locations and distance for travel. That doesn't include editing or formatting to post, either, which took hours per chapter.

I have to sacrifice something else to be able to write. No video games, no movies, no books, no television, no nap, no goofing off online.

Comments become a big motivation, especially on a WIP. It doesn't feel like a waste of time then, to get a little less sleep or take a little less time for yourself; it gives the writer something to look forward to: interaction and socialization with fellow fans. And I don't think the cost is that high for a reader compared to the hundreds of hours it might have cost me to be able to show it to them in the first place.

But nope, r/fanfiction is really out there complaining that fics don't update (even though they didn't bother to comment) and that longfics aren't finished before they start being posted (even though they still don't comment as the story is being posted) and then complaining that there aren't enough fics for [ship]/[trope] even though they are really out there refusing to engage in fandom in a meaningful way that might encourage authors whose work they enjoy to continue to create.

TL;DR: creation costs time.

[superconductivebean]

#1208: how does one spot ai without tools

Thought I'd write a short one to address certain claims regarding AI and to also comment on the —I'm stiffening my breath I swear— You Can't Spot AI sentiment. I tried to be at my most comprehensiveness.

pls dont throw stuff at meh im a humble aficionado of text and code

tags: @iumosmaxima @catohphm @infernalrusalka @espressoristretto-patronum @gothic-lottie @thriftstorebabayaga

What is a generative AI: Generative AI is the end result of the training of a Language Learning Model, the LLM. For whatever reason, English-speaking people are very dramatic about naming, so what that thing really is, is a pattern analysis algorithm.

After it gets fed a whole dataset of texts —a humongous library of books, comments, posts and everything you can scrap, steal and borrow from online— it can proceed to generate patterns it's observed. Those get corrected by the developers and users alike, and the cycle goes for… until the result is acceptable enough I suppose?

As I hope you've just understood, pattern replication isn't creativity by any stretch of imagination. At best, it is a nifty text analysis tool. At worst, it'll give you gibberish, and when asked to cite sources for its claims, give you non-existent laws and books.

How it works: LLM recreates —generates— patterns it has observed.

By 'patterns' I don't mean recreating whole genre cliches or going for anything story-telling whatsoever. I mean that LLM recognises the Subject-Verb-Object word order and it is trained to replicate it, and it is also able to place relative clauses correctly (after nouns, to modify them; thus, a pattern). As you may have guessed, the output should then be rather simple?

But English isn't a stranger to inversion and even to the other word orders, and advanced syntax it is, it presents a challenge for LLMs.

People use inversions and other word orders to create an emphasis; an expression choice rather than a way to underline any kind of factual information as in, in scientific papers, it isn't at all easy to properly build up. If anything, it also creates hindrances to readers; people often call it It's Hard To Follow as emphasis renders the speech less homogenised, less predictable; and it isn't something so very common in English specifically to speak in a such a convoluted way for the language models to accommodate it.

LLMs of today would be able to read ^this linguistical monster of a paragraph and give a summary of it (probably) but not generate it from scratch. Not enough people being too verbose, twined or hard-to-follow is its hindrance on its way to overshadow humans' whimsy.

But if you've read any AI-generated text, you know it doesn't sound quite as simple as, let's say, 'We ate salmon for dinner tonight'.

In order to enrich the output, LLMs can be adjusted by the Perplexity and Burstiness parameters. Understanding what they mean is crucial in AI detection.

What's Perplexity: Perplexity measures the predictability of text.

Many people confuse this with genre cliches and whatnot but what this really refers to is grammaticality.

If you're an English learner, any bat-swung kind of realisations, that you are truly reading this text fast, that you understand it enough to know and sense which word should come next, is this. If you're English native, it's perhaps innate to you as it is to me when I read or edit in Russian. Almost subconsciously, —but generative linguists will say yesyesyesthisyourebornwithit, — we know something is off and not quite alright about the sentence. Oftentimes we're not able to articulate what exactly tipped us off, however, so explaining the issue takes some skill and knowledge of the language.

I hinted that languages are patterns to the LLMs. To us, these patterns —that particular skill to spot them and adhere to them rather— allow us to ease the reading/listening and make it smooth; or make it harder (but not necessarily render the experience horrid) when we're presented a text that falls out from all our linguistical expectations. This is why everyone is so agitated about reading in particular, by the way. To get familiar with the language's grammar and syntax and connotations its one so many words have and in which context.

You have to read enough in order for the language structures to become predictable to you, in other words. So you'd know what will come next after which parts of speech.

So, Perplexity is —partly— it.

But here's the catch: the LLM is aware of the patterns but not meanings of words. Without further training and/or properly marked dataset, it is only capable of constructing grammatically correct but drivel sentences. This is why early LLMs were so bizarrely funny; they did just that.

LLMs of today aren't trained to learn and remember concepts behind the words like we, humans, do, to form semantic relations on the go.

LLMs are trained to analyse individual words and combinations, as far as I was able to understand, and that is how they are able to tell that the water if wet and that the Sun is bright. Isn't hard to imagine why, the machine has only ever experienced binary code.

I hope the difference is now apparent. LLM's Perplexity has been achieved by running an algorithm on an extensive dataset. Any kind of statistical analysis and finding correlations is a cool math of the people who programmed it all but we must understand the result isn't creativity. It's a regurgitation of someone else's work, likely taken into the initial dataset without the author's consent, hence why it's unethical to use AI in writing (and useless, because small dataset means the quality of the output wouldn't be impressive).

The output's quality ranges from Low Perplexity to High Perplexity. Examples of each are taken from the UNLV website (page's called 'AI detection'; I can't link from mobile, it crashes my phone .-.).

Low Perplexity is the expected output. Example 1: 'The capital of France is Paris'. Example 2: 'The Eiffel Tower, an iconic symbol of Paris, is one of the most recognised structures in the world'.

High Perplexity is the unexpected output. Example 1: 'The capital of France is a rare fruit named blue apple'. Example 2: 'The Eiffel Tower, known for its role in the American Revolution, stands tall in Berlin'.

High Perplexity is often used in the all-familiar AI role-playing apps in order to give users less predictable outputs word choice-wise. So, if, by sheer chance, you wondered why AI-generated texts are riddled with

bits of factually incorrect information (such as unusual and unexplained structure placements, example: a well in the middle of a field in a medieval setting),

or abundance of heavily contextualised relative clauses,

or there are huge contextual cues appearing out of nowhere (an object appears and isn't addressed but in the next paragraph it is suddenly called something unusual, like 'sacred'),

this the reason.

What is Burstiness: Burstiness is the tendency to create cluttered and repetitive outputs.

Some call it repetition. The agitated public goes to say, but it's an artistic choice! It isn't. I'll explain.

As I hope you know understand, LLMs pick words based on the text analysis performed.

So Perplexity defines the word choice. At its highest, it creates a word salad. At its lowest, it'll give something expected and coherent.

But what about sentences? Perplexity only picks words based on the prompt, grammaticality isn't fully it.

Burstiness draws the sentence's structure. Word orders, clauses, how extended or short should the sentence be, is all defined and arranged by it. It rarely gives crazy results, I will note, because it also follows the patterns of 1) making sentences of average length and 2) perhaps adding sentence stresses (an emphasis on a word or a clause). I'd say, it'll try to accommodate homogeneity of the language a lot as LLMs are rather terrible with anything regarding prosody—not what we say but how we say things.

Utterances are bizarre and random, sometimes ungrammatical but still comprehensible for the speakers. LLMs can't really take all this into account because this all is hardly covered or encoded in any set of rules besides maybe mentioning that certain uses of the language aren't common, or incorrect, or perhaps are a lacuna.

This is why AI-generated text is often if not rounded-up, then rather smooth, and usually lacks stronger emphases when you'd normally expect them to appear.

I dare hope it's now evident that either parameter can turn the LLM's output into a noticeably strange string of words.

Perplexity is a word salad at its worst.

Burstiness will be a broken record.

Think of it as of not a human trying to write in more words to their thesis that still sits below the word cap days before the presentation. Imagine a uniform distribution of terms and other things associated with the prompt that suddenly —or 'suddenly'— becomes a normal distribution. Unable to take anything from the extremes and not aware that perhaps it should, the LLM will get stuck on the curve and then give you the rainforest example mentioned just few paragraphs below.

It seems, Burstiness is not only deciding on how to arrange a sentence based on the language patterns but it also should more or less evenly distribute aspects pertaining to the prompt within it in order for Perplexity to fill that arrangement with words. That's some advanced shit right there, honest, so no wonder AI fucks up so much at being creative—if to call it that. It literally can't understand what pertains to the fabula as AI quite literally has no idea what's 1) in your head and 2) how to arrange it into sentences even if it knew every single detail of your narrative. And this is the reason why C.AI's bots always ask you questions.

Same to Perplexity, Burstiness is also Low and High.

Low Burstiness means the output is diverse and comprehensive. Example 1: 'Rainforests are vibrant ecosystems teeming with diverse life. From the tall canopy to the undergrowth, they are home to countless species of plants, animals, and insects. The humid climate, regular rainfall, and rich soil foster rapid plant growth. This dense vegetation, in turn, provides shelter and sustenance for a plethora of animal species'. Example 2: 'Cats are popular cats known for their playful nature. They are often loved for being affectionate, and their distinct personalities make each one unique'.

High Burstiness means the output is repetitive and clustered. Example 1: 'Rainforests are dense, moist, and full of life. Rainforests have dense vegetation. Dense trees are a common sight in the rainforests. The density of the rainforests provides shelter to many animals. Because of this density, rainforests are unique'. Example 2: 'Cats are popular pets. Cats are often kept in homes. Many people love cats because cats are affectionate. Cats, with their playful nature, make homes lively. No wonder cats are loved'.

Low Burstiness is commonly used in AI role-playing apps for obvious reasons. But. Because of this, the chats give a distinct feeling of the AI being… shallow, round-upped, and too conclusive to be enjoyable. Instead of taking initiative, albeit Perplexity helps a tad with hints and hooks to the user, it still can't do more than give a brief summary on the ongoing events. It isn't a human to be meta-aware to keep up with fabula and it can't remember plots due to technical limitations of its memory use.

How to spot without the use of tools: I hope my rundown was comprehensive enough. This is a very brief summary. Please remember that AI detection isn't X or Y or Z. It's X and Y and Z, otherwise you're wrongly accusing someone based on an insufficient amount of evidence.

===> Perplexity can create a word salad. Words that seem out of place (or context (or appeared once and never again despite the semantics)), micro factual oopsies that only create rhythms and not coherent images, strange wording and awkward phrasing, nonsensical drivel; all this will be present throughout the text. Pay close attention to sudden changes in wording, too, as sometimes AIs can suddenly give a readable result among mixtures, ear lobes and testamentary/conclusive relative clauses.

===> Burstiness wrap everything up if it doesn't have an idea of what to do next; or it will try to guess user's future inputs; or, if the dataset allows, AI will take something from it in hopes to satisfy the prompt. The text will feel either rounded-up, or Oh So Intriguing, but in either case it will be too even stress-wise. Joints between when the AI did know and didn't are often evident.

===> Perplexity and Burstiness go a long way, so you'd have a word salad that sounds flat. Some people will try to comb the generation but even if they work on the stresses, they may forget about relative clauses that, sometimes, can be wild context-wise. Word usage can also give something away, AI can switch between singing praises to filling a report to Jane Austen to action to, well, you understood.

===> It'd be a good idea to note the pacing as with AI it'd be a rapid change. AI has very limited memory, in order not to forget everything and be quick to provide user entertainment, it'll try to be fast.

===> 'With a mixture of X and Y'. It is usually a dead give-away but I'll explain. It's crude, if not redundant, to write like that. Often emotions and feelings' combinations have names (dread is fear+anticipation; admiration is respect+approval; joy is happiness+glee), and when the one is more prevalent than the other, you'd accentuate. But please note: a lot of people role-play with chat bots these days; they could pick up this particular 'quirk' of describing emotions. But if that mixture is just… hanging in the air, as it's usually a relative clause of this exact wording nomorenoless, I'll say, "AI-generated".

===> LLM's dialogues are less of a stiffened cringe than its general descriptions. Too much of a contrast should warn; you can't write a dialogue like a sreenwriter would and then do descriptions abysmally. Human writers' contrast between the two isn't this drastic.

===> LLM isn't aware of the fabula—the order of events outside the plot. Fabula defines the global variables, if you will, and the plot decides which contextual clues to present to the reader at a given scene in order to form the context and with it, the entire narrative; not to mention unreliable narrators. LLM isn't able to do all this, and because of this, its generations are always read like the text does only know the general direction of the events.

===> Pay close attention to the coherency of the narration aka the composition. AI will likely be a mush due to everything said here.

Which tools to use if you must: I'd recommend Quillbot due to it's stance on the bias towards English learners. In short, many detectors overly rely on the predictability of the language, and it so happens that English learners and LLMs can have an intersection. A sentence as simple as 'We ate salmon dinner tonight' may get picked up as AI-generated by some detectors but it's so basic it's literally built using only the bare bones of the language.

Rule of thumb: check detectors in that regard. Those detectors that give a false positive to a kid's work or to a EFL's essay are perhaps crudely coded and will slip through advanced LLM algorithms.

AI detection used in universities can be an interesting dig as well, as I believe those also should accommodate simple writing?

Resources I've used: 1) Quillbot's statement on the bias mentioned, 2) USNV's website, AI detection section.

Other websites give more or less the same information but USNV keeps it short and doesn't require going through detailed papers. Which, honest, I'd very much like to do and to link those as well but I'm limited in what I can do from my phone and I've struggles reading from its screen as well so unfortunately, you'll have to read further on your own.

Now about the You Can't Spot AI thing: Whoever says this is shamelessly letting their wilful ignorance out.