thepluralmaster

[thepluralmaster]

eight episodes is not a full season of television

[thepluralmaster]

Natural aquamarine crystal having multiple flying birds inclusions from HARAMOSH valley Gilgit baltistan, Pakistan

Photo: Shigar Gemstone

[thepluralmaster]

Sorry if this is worded poorly! It's supposed to be the psychological fictionfolk version of this poll

[thepluralmaster]

cracking the code to daily chores

[thepluralmaster]

Person who has never thought about how alienating it would be to be incapable of feeling something that is believed to be universal: get out of here, that's basically straight

[thepluralmaster]

On Being a Shadow Gallade

By: Madoka Higuchi (she/her)

I am a Shadow Gallade. Specifically, a Pokemon Colosseum-era shadow Pokemon. Obviously, this species doesn't appear until the next generation, but I feel that the shadow Pokemon mechanics from that game fits best with my own noemata.

Ever imagined how it feels to have your heart being sealed shut the way shadow Pokemon experienced it? To me, it feels like constant numbness in my heart. I'm unable to feel most emotions with some exceptions, or if I do feel them, it would feel very dim and it's very easily missed. The exceptions? Something along the lines of ever-present anger or disgust, to the point where it becomes background noise to me in most cases.

In combat, I only know a single objective: To annihilate. To destroy. Nothing else matters. In Hyper Mode, my emotions would feel much more intense than what I'm used to, sometimes mixed with other emotions that feel foreign to me. These emotions would overwhelm me so much that I easily lose control, negatively impacting how well I battle.

The corruption process erased any prior memories I had before, and I think it also hindered my ability to form new memories, so to this day I only remember bits and pieces of memories and noemata from after corruption. I have no memory of being not fully evolved, what led me to being corrupted, and who attempted to purify me afterwards, if that ever happened in the first place.

About purification, for now I'm not sure if I have ever been completely purified or not, but at the very least I know there were some progress made on reopening my heart. The only major sign I have that points towards possible purification is that I currently don't know how to use Shadow Rush. In terms of execution, what makes this move different from the likes of Take Down? For comparison, I know how to execute moves like Psychic or Protect. I'm able to describe what I would focus on and what motions I would use, and I can use these moves in headspace. This is not the case for Shadow Rush. I can only make educated guesses, but so far none of them feels right to me. Other than that clue and the fact that I know several non-shadow moves, I don't think I'm that much different from a shadow Pokemon that has not opened its heart at all, even on present day. I've thought about some hypotheses on this when questioning, but there's one common factor in them: purification is not as simple and straightforward as what's shown in the game. I could've forgotten Shadow Rush very early. There could be no true "end point" where the door to a Pokemon's heart is fully open, and its condition could still worsen over time under certain conditions. But for now, I haven't confirmed any of these as "true" for myself.

At one point, I did also question being a Mewtwo, especially considering how the first movie portrayed it. I'd say the Pokedex descriptions for it fits well with regards to it having a cold and vicious personality and only caring about defeating its opponents. My moveset is also rather unusual for a Gallade and would fit a Mewtwo more, focusing on defense and special attacks. But in the end, I concluded that Mewtwo is more of a simile than a kintype. It just didn't feel right to see myself as one. Instead, I'm a Gallade with a cold, dead heart.

[thepluralmaster]

"I miss when AI was bad" is a sentiment I've been seeing floating around a lot lately, and it's one that I...half agree with, but I must point out-

AI is still "bad".

Sure, there are some pretty beginner-friendly models out there now, like Midjourney, that make it easy to get...something appealing on first glance pretty quickly with minimal skill or even luck, but contrary to corporate claims, no, you CAN'T just get them to pump out an entire passable novel with as little as "hey computer give me a 50k word lesbian space western" or even less "dear ChatGPT, please write me the next great classic show that will appeal to everyone and make me eleventy trillion dollars, love, Netflix". No, there is no Secret Professional Paid Model that makes this possible, either.

The work that goes into making something Good(TM) using AI is being very deliberately hidden from anyone who isn't using it to see for themselves that there is Work and Skill involved, because companies like OpenAI want people like the CEOs of AMPTP member companies to think it's that easy, because they're big money potential clients.

Furthermore, all these companies want you to think it's as easy as that shit on Black Mirror (whether they know it's a lie or not - they don't care either way), because they know that if you think that, eventually you'll wear down and watch their shit once they're the only new releases...and you will think nothing of the fact that the human labor is being erased, because, psh, human labor? What human labor? There definitely isn't a cubicle farm full of living humans being crunched even harder than they did with traditional methods to churn these things out, it's all the robot's doing, right?

I mean, hell, we keep complaining about ChatGPT essays full of hallucinated information; samey, dry novels and fanfics that can't keep their plots straight; and picture books that are full of glaring errors and can barely even keep the characters recognizable from page to page, and I just think-

So you agree? Creating a coherent, accurate, and/or meaningful image or piece of writing with AI involves creativity, knowledge, skill, and patience?

...in my honest opinion, those garbage-quality cash- and/or clout-grab pieces have an important role in the tech and art and media ecosystem: to remind people that this IS, in fact, the best that can reliably come from the minimal skill and effort that the companies are saying you can make masterpieces with.

What I'm saying is...I don't miss when AI Was Bad, because that era never ended.

I miss when AI was widely recognized as being bad. I miss when everyone knew that getting the image you wanted from a simple text prompt was something like winning the lottery. I miss when people not only appreciated the surreality of the shitposts and more that we made with it, but were broadly aware that most first iterations resemble those shitposts.

I miss before the Silicon Valley ghouls managed to convince people en masse that they'd created True AI that could actually viably replace creatives with no human input. I miss before the corporate media suckers bought that lie hook line and sinker, or at least found it convenient to pretend to believe because it would let them move more work to lower pay grades with the only backlash being about the conventional work getting replaced that they hope they can wait out, but NOT about the mistreatment and underpayment of the new workers, because the public will broadly think there ARE no new workers. I miss when it wasn't an infohazard because corporations want you to think their software knows everything - and have successfully convinced several big name companies of this, or at least that they're close enough to all-knowing to replace search engines.

I miss when we were in the "roll out toys as proof of concept" era, not the "well, we've sunk enough money into running these things for the plebs, time to yank the rug and start lying to get some big money clients" era.

[thepluralmaster]

"I was assigned female at birth. Most cis people would say I was “female socialized”. That’s not quite true.

It would be more accurate to say that people pushed female norms onto me, and I tended to either dismiss those norms, or fail at them. I thereafter received the socialization that typically follows a child failing to meet gendered norms. I was, to an extent, perceived and socialized as a gender fuck-up, not as a girl."

- from Gender Socialization is Real (Complex) by Devon Price

[thepluralmaster]

Love it when cats just give up and go “mow” like fuck yeah man

[thepluralmaster]

Something I’ve noticed and I’m 100% certain I am not the first person to say this but I’m going to say it anyway, systems can never do anything ‘right.’

You know things about your alters? Faking

You know nothing about your alters? Faking

Your a covert system? Faking

Your not a covert system? Faking

You talk about being a system? Faking

You don’t talk about it? Faking

in conclusion to this there appears to be nothing systems can do to appease singlets and other systems so fuck their opinion.

[thepluralmaster]

Hot take: there's no set "you can't go above this many" number for how many alters you can have from one source. If someone has 8 alters from a single source that is okay and valid, it doesn't mean their faking it's just what happened

[thepluralmaster]

[thepluralmaster]

a-spec people on tumblr: hey can we please remember that aphobia isn't over on this website. viewing it a "cringe phase" of the past obscures the fact that aphobic beliefs are still rampant, just being subtly slipped into posts now, instead of shared on "ace exclusionist" "discourse" blogs. can people please collectively work on identifying the coded aphobia, listening to us when we point out that post is aphobic, and start actually meaningfully supporting and welcoming a-specs? because we really don't feel safe or welcomed while you're declaring that "ace discourse" is "over," but simultaneously reblogging from people who claim cishet aro men are "frat boy invaders," laugh that queerplatonic relationships are "just friendships," and suggest that an asexual being personally sex-repulsed means that they're actually inherently a sex-negative homophobe, trying to censor and take away your sex

other people: oh come on, you're just being paranoid. those people aren't really aphobes, ace discourse was so 2015!

self-described aphobes: sorry but no we actually do exactly what those crazy aceys described lol

[ID from alt: tumblr post from a censored name, reading: "what do you mean there are still exclusionist blogs operating today. do what the rest of us do and just reblog normal stuff while exuding an unmistakably aphobic aura." The post is from November 20th, 2024. End ID.]

if the most critical thing you can say towards aphobia was "it was slightly cringe that people made it into their whole online personalities," then, well. in a not-so-shocking twist of events, you hold the exact same position on ace discourse as the most formerly vocal aphobes.

[thepluralmaster]

Theory:

Werewolf as fear is Losing Self-Control, Werewolf as fantasy is Letting Go Of Self-Control.

Vampire as fear is Being Controlled by outside forces, Vampire as fantasy is Having Control over outside forces

Am I getting close to something here

[thepluralmaster]

guys. please

[thepluralmaster]

There is no queer art you can create that will ever be acceptable enough for the Christian far right, so why bother trying? Make art they'd hate.

[thepluralmaster]

youtube is pulling this bullshit again

praying for the firefox gods to save me once more...