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doom-dreaming · 4 months

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High Flakes Combat

“Blue Lead,” Linda’s whisper cuts across TEAMCOM, crisp and several degrees colder than the icy landscape. “Hostiles approaching your position.”

Fred, tucked behind the trunk of a towering pine tree, exhales a slow, measured breath. Waiting. Listening. Without his motion tracker, only the crunch of footsteps in the snow—and Linda—could tell him when their opponents were closing in.

There. Fifteen meters out. He motions to John, positioned behind an adjacent tree. On my signal.

…ten meters…

Cover me. Go high.

…five meters…

John nods. Fred tightens his grip on his weapon.

Now.

As one, they pivot, breaching cover. Fred drops to a knee, attacking swiftly, before their adversary has a chance to retaliate.

The snowball hits Ash directly in the center of his chestplate. Active camouflage flickers briefly, then recalibrates, as the young Spartan crashes dramatically to his knees before sprawling backward, motionless.

Fred doesn’t let the theatrics distract him. The other two had to be nearby and the round wasn’t over until— A snowball whizzes past his head, followed by a sharp curse—out loud, close. He catches a shimmer of white on white as Olivia leaps to find cover and “reload,” but John is faster.

The snowball hits her thigh before she can complete her maneuver and she slides to a dejected halt in a snowbank. “Dammit! Mark!” she calls out. “You’re on your own!”

Fred doesn’t hear a verbal response. He knows he won’t, Mark’s too good to give away his position— Thwap. Fred’s vision goes fuzzy and white as Mark’s snowball connects with his visor, splattering on impact. Fred groans and flashes a red status light across his team’s HUDs. He’d be out until the next round.

“He’s on the move!” Linda barks over the comms.

Fred folds himself cross-legged into the snow and wipes his visor clean just in time to see Kelly bounding over a nearby ridge, clutching a snowball in each fist.

“I’ve got him!” She goes streaking across the snow toward a barely-visible figure—also sprinting.

Mark wouldn’t be able to outrun Kelly—a fact Fred knew the S-III was well aware of—but he was certainly trying his best.

Kelly nails Mark with both snowballs, one in the shoulder, the other in the back. He stumbles just enough that Kelly’s momentum sends her into him at full force. The clack of their colliding armor echoes like a shot as both Spartans go tumbling to the ground, sending up a minor flurry in their wake.

“Aaaaaaaand match!” Roland’s voice rings out over the simulation deck, followed by a buzzer. “Blue Team takes the win!”

“Again,” Olivia grumbles, pushing to her feet and dusting snow off her armor.

“It’s three against four,” Ash reminds her, still lying on his back a few feet from Fred.

Olivia crunches her way over and offers him a hand. “Can we make Kelly sit out the next round?”

“If you’re not having fun, leave,” John quips.

“Or maybe you should switch Kelly to our team and see how it feels,” Livi bites back, helping Ash haul himself to his feet.

“Fighting over me?” Kelly rejoins the group with Mark close behind. “I’m flattered.”

Fred chuckles. It was good to see Olivia trading barbs with John. The Gammas had warmed up to him quickly—and he to them—and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Fred was sure the S-IIIs had given him some new streaks of gray hair, but at the same time, they made him feel younger. He hoped they were having the same effect on John.

“So…” drawls a familiar voice, raised just loud enough to carry, “this is the reason my fireteams can't train today? A snowball fight.”

Every Spartan in the simulated snowscape whips toward the entrance. Commander Palmer stands at the far edge of the scene, arms crossed. She looks odd and out of place, a lone figure in a techsuit against the stark white surroundings, but no less intense than usual.

“Thought we’d try something different from the typical drills, ma’am,” Fred coughs. He’s not sure why he feels guilty; they’d requested the time and blocked out the schedule and followed protocol…even if they hadn’t said precisely what they’d be doing…

Before anyone else has a chance to speak, a snowball goes sailing over Fred’s shoulder, on a collision course for Palmer. She’s too far away to hit, but the aim is dead-accurate and it lands with a wet plap several yards directly in front of her.

Even at this distance, Fred sees her eyes narrow. The vague guilt solidifying in his gut crystallizes into ice. He knows who threw that and he’s already, reflexively, preparing for the necessary damage control—and for Linda, no less. Kelly he was used to, but Linda?

Palmer shifts her weight and fixes the seven of them with a hard stare that lasts long past the point of being uncomfortable. “Don’t go anywhere,” she eventually orders, leveling a finger in their direction. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” Without leaving any opportunity for rebuttal, she turns on her heel and swiftly disappears from the deck.

Immediately, Linda’s status light starts blinking rapid-fire green across Blue Team’s HUDs. Kelly follows suit.

“Really?” Fred grumps over TEAMCOM.

“Can you blame her if it worked?” Kelly retorts.

“Yes! You’re making an assumption and setting a bad example.” He switches to his helmet’s speakers. “Gammas, don’t throw things at your commanding officers.”

“Unless you’re sleeping with them,” Kelly adds, with enough tact to keep the comment on Blue Team’s private channel.

Another green light from Linda.

Fred willfully ignores both of them.

“...we’re not in trouble, are we?” Ash removes his helmet and shakes out his hair. “To be honest…I don’t know what just happened.”

Kelly seats herself on a tree stump, legs akimbo, smugness oozing from every seam of her armor. “Palmer’s getting suited up to come play with us.”

Ash seems unconvinced but Mark shrugs. “She’ll balance the numbers. We might even start winning.”

Only Blue Team can see—and appreciate—the red light John flashes in silent response.

**********

As threatened, Palmer returns exactly ten minutes later, fully armored aside from the helmet tucked into the crook of her arm. “Okay, here’s the official story.” She strides up to the group. “We’re running an unorthodox but fully sanctioned training exercise all day.”

“I’ve cleared the schedule and put out an open invitation,” Roland chimes in. “As requested.”

Palmer nods her approval. “Figured I’d let you have your fun on the condition that the rest of us could get in on it too.” She raises an eyebrow. “Sound fair?”

“Fair enough,” Fred answers, echoing the array of green lights on his HUD. “Alright. Ground rules—we’re running blind for this, Commander. No motion trackers.”

She looks pleased. “I like a challenge.”

“If you get hit, you’re out for the round,” he continues. “Once you’re out, you can’t help anyone still standing. Round ends when a whole team goes down.” Fred nods toward the ceiling. “Roland’s keeping score.”

“Huh,” Palmer hums. “So you knew about this, too, Roland?”

“I…was informed the exercise would require a scorekeeper instead of a handler,” the AI answers, somehow managing to achieve the verbal equivalent of tip-toeing. “And I volunteered a mere fraction of my copious attention to the task.”

Palmer just rolls her eyes.

Ash clears his throat and steps forward. “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, we’d greatly appreciate it if you joined our team.”

“They’ve been wiping the floor with us,” Olivia adds, somewhat ruefully.

Palmer looks back and forth between Blue Team and the Gammas with a hint of a smirk. “Well.” She slips her helmet on. “Allow me to level the playing field.”

**********

And indeed, the tide began to turn. Quickly. It wasn’t that the Gammas couldn’t hold their own, but Palmer was a different flavor of ruthless and even numbers did make a difference.

Kelly, as Blue Team’s sole survivor, was in the midst of a valiant stand, but she was up against Palmer and Olivia and they were going in for the kill. Up to this point, Kelly had been relying on her speed to evade them, but Fred doubted that would be able to carry her any further.

Palmer and Livi split around the back of the snowbank Kelly had hidden behind, falling into synchronized step with each other, timing their paces perfectly. Palmer’s boots fall heavier and louder, covering Olivia’s near-silent glide around the other side.

The strategy is obvious, at least from Fred’s position of passive observation—Palmer would draw Kelly’s attention, Olivia would come up on her flank and take her out. And it would work, too…on anyone less observant than Kelly. Fred has a feeling she’ll see right through it. But one of them was going to hit her either way, so it didn’t really matter as far as the outcome was concerned.

Surprisingly, a third option presents itself. Fred realizes after a few seconds that he’s been holding his breath, expecting Kelly to explode out of the snow and make a run for it, but…she doesn’t.

Palmer reaches the other side of the snowdrift and slows, confusion evident in her body language. She paces around the area, making sure not to stay still for too long, obviously reluctant to let her guard down completely. Fred can see the hazy mirage of Olivia’s SPI suit still moving in with careful deliberation.

There was no way Kelly could have moved. She hadn’t had enough time. More importantly, she would’ve been spotted if she’d tried to flee, so why couldn’t—

Palmer disappears. One second, she’s standing on the other side of the snowbank, visible from the waist up, and the next second she’s gone. Fred can’t see much of anything, but there are sounds of a scuffle and the blur of camouflaged armor as Livi sweeps in to assist with whatever the hell had just happened.

Barely a breath later, Roland announces the end of the match. “And Gammas-Plus-Palmer emerge victorious! …or should I say Olivia, specifically, seeing as she is the last Spartan standing. You know, you really oughta come up with a better name for your team—”

There’s a burst of indignant exclamations and flustered cursing from Palmer. She reappears only to rip her helmet off and kick some snow back in the direction from which she’d escaped.

Olivia removes her own helmet; Fred is surprised to see her laughing. “She got you good!” There’s a giddiness in her voice that Fred’s never heard before, but she seems to remember who she's talking to a moment later. “...ma’am.”

Kelly pops up beyond the ridge. She remains helmeted but Fred knows there’s a shit-eating grin on her face just from her posture alone.

“What happened?” He shouts the question out loud.

“She buried herself in the fucking snow and pulled my legs out from under me,” Palmer growls as she trudges over.

“And then I hit Kelly point-blank in the face!”

Olivia’s gleeful comment is backed by Kelly’s laughter over TEAMCOM. “Worth it.”

“Hey!” A different voice cuts into the conversation, once again pulling everyone’s attention toward the entrance. “Heard there was some kinda free-for-all goin’ on in here?” Gabriel Thorne stands flanked by the rest of Fireteam Majestic, all in full Mjolnir. “Got room for another team?”

Palmer waves them in. “Come on up, Majestic. We’ll get you briefed on the rules.” She sighs and fits her helmet back on. “Hope you’re ready to get your asses kicked.”

**********

An hour later, after Majestic had carved out a few victories of their own, Crimson shows up. Rules are recounted, home bases are realigned, play resumes. Within another two hours, there are four more Spartan fireteams on the field. Alliances are formed, both openly and secretly. Several hours are devoted to building snow forts. Play evolves. Forts are defended and captured, sabotaged and reinforced.

And then Lasky arrives.

“Captain on deck!” Roland bellows.

The silence that blankets the simulation deck is instantaneous and absolute. Nobody moves. If the snowballs already in flight could have frozen in midair, they probably would’ve. Instead, they land in a chorus of muffled thwumps.

Lasky stands there for a few seconds, small and unimposing by the distant doors, sporting his trademark expression of beleaguered amusement—presumably at being called out. “Don’t stop on my account,” he eventually says. “I just wanted to watch. …unless there’s a team looking for a liability,” he jokes with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Everyone on the field exchanges glances and shrugs. A sea of status lights blink across Fred’s HUD—most amber, some green. Finally, someone from Crimson waves Lasky over. “We’ll take you, Captain!”

He seems genuinely surprised by the invitation, but begins the trek across the snow. “Try not to kill me, alright?”

That draws laughs from most of the Spartans, but it’s John who actually banters back. “No promises, sir.”

#halo #my writing #halo fanfic #s2blueteam #sarah palmer #fred 104 #ash g099 #olivia g291 #kelly 087 #just tagging characters with the most screen time bc Everybody is here #also don't ask me when this takes place #bending the timeline to my will #everyone's here at the same time and that's what matters #mainly i just wanted to write something cute and let them have some playtime #this was somewhat prompted by the exchange in the fall of reach that haunts me #where kelly mentions snowballs #and john gets salty because she puts rocks in them #IMPLYING THEY HAD A SNOWBALL FIGHT AT SOME POINT #can you imagine mendez like 'you know what these little war machines need? Snow Time'#anyway happy holidays #also yeah. yes. the title is a shitty pun #that's the kind of person i am #and yes this takes place somewhere in the PSEU (palmer sandwich extended universe)

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whumpshaped · 11 months

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i love. all powerful whumpers. i know i talk about this a lot but i just really absolutely love when a whumper controls every aspect of whumpee's life. not even as a human, but more as a god. a being so far above whumpee that they genuinely have no chance of fighting back.

maybe whumper literally created whumpee, and is now playing with them like a puppet. and whumpee is forced to bump into the invisible walls of their confined world over and over again, realising again and again that they can only ever go as far as whumper allows.

and maybe... sometimes... whumpee thinks they have outwitted whumper. they find a little loophole, a glitch in the matrix, a tear in the fabric of their artificial reality. they take the opportunity immediately, thinking they're about to be free... only to end up as a pawn in whumper's game yet again. the opening was put there on purpose, specifically for whumpee to find. and where it led was entirely controlled. and whumper enjoyed every second of this delightful little show of whumpee feeling some hope, only for it to be violently ripped away.

again.

#im watching a stanley parable ultra deluxe playthru and it reminded me of my love for whumpers like this #specifically the ending where stanley decides to keep on the mind control machine #and the narrator is like oh? why keep it on? u want the control for urself?#u want control so bad?#u want ur own little story?#i'll give u ur own little story #and creates a fucking. timer that counts down from 2 mins to zero at the end of which everything will blow up #and continues to talk abt how stanley can have his little adventure now #isnt this so fun?#isnt this exciting?#isnt this what he wanted?#also the way he kept going on abt 'whats wrong stanley? running around not knowing what to do? are the choices u craved too much for u?'#'or did u perhaps think there was a way in this universe to turn off the timer?'#THE HOPELESSNESS OF IT ALL #THE HOPELESSNESS OF HAVING AN ENTITY CONTROL EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF UR LIFE AND EVERY DECISION U MAKE #EVERY DECISION U *CAN* MAKE #BECAUSE THE OPTIONS R CREATED BY THE ENTITY AS WELL..#idk man i just love it #whump #whump prompt

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mittensmorgul · 1 year

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There’s another post going around about this, but tumblr won’t let me reblog it but...

When I read a story written by a human being, I’m not just reading it because I want to read a coffee shop AU with a specific plot description. I’m reading it because it’s making a connection to another human storyteller and seeing a piece of them carved into the words. Storytelling is a human act of sharing joy, angst, tension, resolution, satisfaction. It’s an act of love.

Writing and reading a story isn’t just an act of creation and consumption. I hate that commercialism and AI are reducing it to that sort of transaction. Like oh, you need words on this subject and that’s the end of it. Like what we really needed was just a vending machine we can push buttons on to get a fix, as if the human creating the story wasn’t a factor. That the author’s life experience and views and feelings haven’t infused the words with their own unique touches.

I’ve read hundreds of coffee shop AU’s over the years (and thousands of fics in general). I’ve seen many similar tropes reused across stories, and just like an AI would, I’ve learned things about writing them that I will always carry with me. But unlike an AI, a human author is not just the sum total of coffee shop AU’s we’ve consumed. Even if we used the same prompt, the same sets of tropes, the same characters. I will always choose the human-crafted story over the computer generated one.

Because again, I’m not just looking for a very specific fix via a series of words. I’m looking for a human connection through story.

Unlike an AI, I have BEEN to a coffee shop. I’ve had experiences in coffee shops. I’ve had funny little meet-cutes with people. I’ve accidentally spilled coffee on myself and knocked heads with someone as we both rushed to wipe it up. I know what it FEELS like. The machine doesn’t.

I’ve also read millions of things that aren’t fanfic, or coffee shop AU’s. I’ve experienced things OTHER than going to coffee shops and having meet-cutes. And I know what all those things feel like when processed through my personal human lens of experience, which is different from every other personal human lens of experience.

All the machine can do is spit out what it THINKS a human experience is, and I honestly don’t care about that at all. Fic is not a “product” to be “generated.” It’s an art form that connects us to other people who share the same love of a thing that we do.

People who, even when all writing the same characters in the same setting to the exact same prompt, will all add something or have a viewpoint about something or bring a completely different personality and life experience to the story that no one else on the planet could. That’s what I’m actually reading.

#ai shit #adventures in fanfic #i detest this commodification of art being accelerated by ai tech #as if art was nothing more than a consumer product #i want to engage with art made by people who were driven by a passion to make something and share it with us #not working to an algorithm to generate specific 'content' (and can we agree that reducing art to 'content' is part of the problem here)#and this whole concept of 'death of the author' that has been warped so far beyond what it actually means >.>#it just... makes me incredibly sad to see so many people arguing FOR the use of ai in the arts #like way to miss the whole entire point of what the arts even are #but this reminds me of the fic writer challenge i did one summer...#same prompt same set of tropes and every week a dozen completely different stories from a dozen different authors #because we all took our own unique spin on the subject because that's what PEOPLE do...#i just lament what will happen to that vast well of creativity and humanity that will be lost if everything just gets replaced #by a machine that just keeps spitting out the 'content' it believes the 'consumer' wants... it's just... depressing af

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quaranmine · 1 year

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seeing people use photography as a defense in favor of ai art (photography is easy/photography didn't replace drawn art/they're both just machines humans put input into to create things) makes me sort of violent as an amateur photographer

i am not hiking out to places, literally laying on the ground to get angles, memorizing aperature and iso and shutter speed and white balance information to compensate for constantly changing real-world conditions, paying attention to specific compositions, etc just for u to say it's the same as feeding some prompts into a computer. respect the technical expertise that goes into it or die by my sword

#like Yeah i guess in the end i press a button and the picture is taken and the camera did the work #but did it really do the work. or did i set up everything and control everything #anyway i swear a lot of people think that to be a good photographer all you do is point and shoot #and yeah u can get some good photos on your phone with point and shoot #but the most consistently high quality photos are always gonna come from people who work diligently to master it #anyway i'm not dissing phone photography or point and shoot bc people should enjoy whatever level of hobby they want to #anyway i guess their reasoning is camera = tool for artists and ai = tool for artists #but for photography. you're creating your OWN work. you have to go out find subjects yourself #the amount of timing involved in those spectacular landscape shots is wild. they'll be out there for HOURS waiting for good light etc #you ever looked at what goes into those cool star trail photos? hours of long exposures and precise editing!#whereas ai is just....you're using prompts to get the machine to make something that it only learned about from stolen work

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silhouettecrow · 9 months

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365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 228

Adjective: Perfect

Noun: Fist

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Perfect: having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics, or as good as it is possible to be; free from any flaw or defect in condition or quality, or faultless; precisely accurate, or exact; highly suitable for someone or something, or exactly right; (printing) denoting a way of binding books in which pages are glued to the spine rather than sewn together; (dated) thoroughly trained in or conversant with; absolutely complete (used for emphasis); (mayhematoce(of a number) equal to the sum of its positive divisors, e.g. the number 6, whose divisors (1, 2, 3) also add up to 6; (grammar) (of a tense) denoting a completed action or a state or habitual action that began in the past, and the perfect tense is formed in English with have or has and the past participle, as in they have eaten and they have been eating (since dawn) (present perfect), they had eaten (past perfect), and they will have eaten (future perfect); (botany) (of a flower) having both stamens and carpels present and functional; (botany) denoting the stage or state of a fungus in which the sexually produced spores are formed; (entomology) (of an insect) fully adult and (typically) winged

Fist: a person's hand when the fingers are bent in toward the palm and held there tightly, typically in order to strike a blow or grasp something

#im late again #mainly cos i was absorbed with looking at good omens stuff #but then i accidentally fell asleep #it feels like it almost always comes back around to accidentally falling asleep #anyway this prompt makes me think of 'kiss with a fist' by florence + the machine #which can go a few different ways in terms of inspiration for a poem #it also makes me think of the training montage during 'ill make a man out of you' from mulan #which can also go a few different ways #theres just a lot to consider with this one and i havent landed on anything concrete yet myself #thanks for reading #writing #writer #creative writing #writing prompt #writeblr #trying to be a writeblr at least

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lokh · 1 year

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and 5 days later i finally have........ an outline 🤡

#sndjxc from first getting the idea to notes for the fic to a like #kind of draft outline??#anyway the thing is that actually its kind of based on the ship week prompt but.#they stop taking stuff for it after monday LOLLLL which i guess. is fine ill still post it Akanqndbxnxnc #this is the same fic with the translation notes btw lol. im in hell #also 3 emotional conversations that take place in the span of 2 hours...... sry but i dont think thats realistic LOL #thats why the outline is taking so long i get to one and im like Ohhh here we fucking go lets rev up the feeling machine #ykno that writing advice that goes Under no circumstances can characters say what they mean #well. lets just say i dont have a problem with that LMAO but it is Not conducive to anything happeneing

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virginiaisforhaters · 1 year

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maybe its 5 am and im stoned but i wish that there was more of a conversation about abusive friendships, people talk a lot about abusive relationships and thats important but like, 10 years of having an abusive best friend really permanently altered my ability to trust or relate to people and it took years for me to realize or admit to myself that it was abusive and like, maybe people should talk about that more, maybe if we talked about it more it would happen less, because no one deserves going through that, and i dont know if im ever gonna be normal about people again after that and that really sucks

#this is not about or prompted by anyone on this website i just cant talk about her unless its late and im stoned #every time something happens with HFL and im like wow this is really shitty i remember #that it has been so so much worse and at least HFL hasnt like permanently broken a part of me so #like she took parts of me and broke them and they can never be fixed or replaced and im tired of thinking about it #why havent we invented the eternal sunshine machine yet i dont want to remember any of this

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todayisafridaynight · 2 years

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Type an essay. I dare you. Also I need to know what that Hamazaki and Mine story is????????

1.) the hamazaki and mine story i’m referring to is this one ! give it a read sometime if you’d like, i always like mine when he’s scheming and i like watching his plans and thoughts play out so i def enjoyed it. reading Everything mine does for the bulk of the story really has its ending pay off

2.) chicken katsu is kicking my ass right now but for YOU anon... since you’re enabling me i will type an essay for you. but MAN what else do i say that i didnt already touch on in my last post. where do i even start. essay under the cut cause she’s long

Looking back on this story, it definitely feels as though parts of the story are a specific call back to the Y0 substory- or they at least want to hint at some reference to it. First Daigo mentioning Kiryu at the bar and talking about him to Daigo getting into trouble due to Kiryu-related business. It’s like the perfect segway of ‘this man I look up to told me something valuable as a kid’ and now that moment’s coming back when he’s all grown up this time. Even how Mine has to save Daigo after he gets kidnapped during a night they were just supposed to drink together ironically mirrors Kiryu having to save Daigo after he gets kidnapped when they were supposed to be hanging out.

But on to the actual situation, despite everything- despite the army of people that should be concerned over his whereabouts, Daigo’s all alone and helpless. For the most part it seems like no one cares enough to make sure he’s safe, either. The most he can get is that his bodyguards believed him when he lied and told them he was running off to have an affair with a woman: they didn’t bother to double check, they didn’t bother to send someone to follow them just in case- they just took his word and left him be (though to be fair, I don’t exactly know how I’d react to my boss telling me he’s going out for a shag either. An effective lie on Daigo’s part, really- but an undercover car wouldn’t have hurt).

It was one thing for Mine to spend a fortune just so he was able to get information from the right taxi company and find Daigo. When he found him, he could’ve just helped deal with the kidnappers and the two could’ve went their separate ways for the night without talking about what happened. But Mine decides to call out Daigo’s tendency to focus on Kiryu’s wellbeing more than the Tojo’s despite Kiryu not even being within the Tojo anymore- even after Daigo told him how much Kiryu meant to him. He doesn’t mince words and he doesn’t try to soften the truth: he’s unapologetically real and genuine with Daigo in that moment.

And that’s all Daigo ever wanted from people: back in Y0, he laments how it’d been a ‘really long time’ since anyone’d ‘seen him for who he was’ and ‘cared enough’ to correct him. Of course, Kiryu’s there to remind him of his (and Sohei’s) status and how no one would just do that for him out of fear of repercussion. It feels as though that fact really stuck with Daigo for a while: pardon earlier in this story where we briefly see Daigo on the phone with, presumably, a friend, we hardly- if at all- ever see Daigo with someone he can consider a companion.

And how could he have any close friends ? Being the son of a major yakuza boss was one thing, but to actually be the major yakuza boss is absolutely another. Coupled with having to manage the yakuza and having the likes of Goro Majima ready to pounce on anyone who has any opposition towards Daigo (ironically under Kiryu’s request to take care of him), if he’s not busy worrying about what each clan is up to then he also has his persona to worry about. One wrong word and the typical soldier would be right to assume the worst, either from Daigo or from Majima: it’d be safer to keep your distance and to just nod your head when he says something than to actually say anything excessive that could get you in trouble.

But then there’s Mine. He’s hardly been in the underworld very long at this point, yet he doesn’t hesitate to say what needs to be said- to care enough to guide Daigo in the right direction to properly take charge of the Tojo. He’s undoubtedly aware of how severe punishments can go in the yakuza, yet he’s willing to risk those consequences to say what needs to be said for Daigo’s sake.

This is also a pivotal moment for Mine himself, honestly. All his life, he assumed that the best way to obtain friends was through material goods and status, yet it’s neither of those things that really capture Daigo’s eye. Just Mine’s willingness to tell him what he needed to hear and not what he wanted to hear was the ticket, nothing more and nothing less. In a moment where Mine wasn’t scheming or throwing his money around (aside from being able to find Daigo, anyway), he incidentally proved his friendship in Daigo’s eyes; Mine makes a point to tell Daigo that he’s taught him the true value of bonds, and this was the best way he could have shown that gratitude and sincerity, whether he knew it or not.

It’s no wonder after this moment that Daigo decides that mine should be his junior head assistant. Mine’d proven well enough that not only was he devoted to the Tojo and what’s best for it, but he was devoted to Daigo as a friend as well.

#minedai #snap chats #i impulsively made two slabs of chicken katsu and while it Was delicious i dont really eat at night and it was A Lot so fheUGHgh #god when i started typing this i was so lethargic - cant tell if its cause id usually be alspee by now or Afforementioned katsu #i couldnt even think of what i wanted to say. but as i was typing and the more i felt my food get digested i just kept going #i still dont know if ive said everything right and how i wanted to but Yeah. this just. brainworms #i probably repeat myself a good amount but w/e this is a ranty essay im just here to spill my soul #im too tired to reread all of this also who IS reading all this huh. if you did i'll cook you chicken katsu <3 #anyway feel free to prompt me to spill my soul again my brain is like a pinball machine and ill take every opportunity i can to spill

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holdyourcolour · 2 years

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Some people say that worrying about ai generated art replacing other forms of art is an unfounded concern… an understandable take, and it will never ACTUALLY replace art made by a person, I think. But in terms of the industry? Competing with an AI-generator for certain types of work feels like it has the potential to be devastating. As algorithms get refined, more accurate, and more mature in its results… would companies pay an expensive artist? But it also depends on how much someone would charge for coming up with the prompt and refining it to get your ai-generated result, right? How much work and time is required to get something that looks really good? Something I honestly wonder about as this matures

#nobody is safe from being replaced with a machine. regardless of your skills lol #to be clear I think the process of refining the prompt can be quite difficult too and can require a lot of time and effort as well #so this is not to knock their skills. it is just a very different skill set which poses interesting questions on its own #also similar concerns have happened within the visual art industry and field before! within many different art fields actually!

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dumbkiwi · 1 year

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4 am means it's time to clog up your dash with personal posts anyways looking at ppls embroidery and my own realizing both how far ive come and how much more i can still learn/do is very cool. no i dont want to write an email in japanese.

#sel speaks #i started in december of 2019!! which is very funny and conveniently RIGHT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC #which is like. when eveyrone got into it except i got a month of extra practice lol #and to be fair i did my first real piece once i got home #but i found those photos #and like!!! i did get better!!! my stitches are cleaner now! i have a better handle on how to make things look consistent!#and i have made so many mistakes that i didnt realize were mistakes #that made everything warped etc #but ive actually gotten better and thats like. tangible!!!!#at the same time there are so many cool styles that i have yet to try #and i have so much room to grow technically and like from a basic art perspective #(obvs from the art perspective like i'll probably never be able to do like Original Needlepainting which im fine with lol)#anyways this was prompted by me seeing a hoop with some of the cleanest split stitches ever #like at first glance i thought it was machine #but you can see the texture and it's GORGEOUS #and i always thought the fun of filling stitches like that was that it idnt matter what you did #but like. if you plan it out (maybe have direction lines? practice at having more even stitching? invest in a stand?)#it can look SO PRETTY. the design was also like not super flashy it was just so well made #and that's just like. a really good example of an extremely basic thing #like im trying something similar out with my satin stitch ofmd hoop #to copy the style of the landscape artists i see #and i think im doing okay at it?#but doing dense filling like that is definitely more my vibe #might try it out when i do more chainsaw man #although those are all gonna be black and red so it'll probably be hard to see for the all black stuff

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

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

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #playstation #sony #copyright #copyfight #drm #monopoly #enshittification #batgirl #road runner #financiazation #the end of ownership #ip

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devils-servent · 3 months

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My asks are open!!

Hello everyone, just wanted to some a little updates.

TLDR: Big fic is 1/3 done. I've got a few others on the go that are almost done and my Asks are open so feel free to make requests. :)

1) My progress on the big fic: I'm like a third of the way through my big re-write. It's honestly taking so long so, in the meantime, I've been working on other smaller fics to keep my motivation strong and Im happy to let you know that some of them are nearly done and will be released (likely on Ao3) very soon (as in by the end of February soon). 2) I wanted to let you all know that my asks are open and I'm happy to take requests. It will help me keep inspired and I'm more than happy to deliver some more content. I'm okay with writing both NSFW and SFW stuff so do specify if you'd prefer one to the other. But, there are certain kinks/fetishes/scenarios I will not write including but not limited to: S/A, Any bodily fluids (other than like cum), Extreme BDSM. I'm also not going write any Major character death but that's because I'm quite bad at portraying grief. I'll think of a bigger list of things i wont accept and fandoms I will write for later and pin it to my page. :)

#seduce me the otome #seduce me #seduce me 2 #seduce me 2 the demon war #im just sayin...#happy to be back #please give me some prompts so i can become a writing machine again!!

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euqinim0dart · 2 months

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Some positivity in these turbulent AI times

*This does not minimize the crisis at hand, but is aimed at easing any anxieties.

With every social media selling our data to AI companies now, there is very little way to avoid being scraped. The sad thing is many of us still NEED social media to advertise ourselves and get seen by clients. I can't help but feeling that we as artists are not at risk of losing our livelihoods, here is why:

Just because your data is available does not mean that AI companies will/want to use it. Your work may never end up being scraped at all.

The possibility of someone who uses AI art prompts can replace you (if your work is scraped) is very unlikely. Art Directors and clients HAVE to work with people, the person using AI art cannot back up what a machine made. Their final product for a client will never be substantial since AI prompts cannot be consistent with use and edits requested will be impossible.

AI creators will NEVER be able to make a move unless us artists make a move first. They will always be behind in the industry.

AI creators lack the fundamental skills of art and therefore cannot detect when something looks off in a composition. Many professional artists like me get hired repeatedly for a reason! WE as artists know what we're doing.

The art community is close-knit and can fund itself. Look at furry commissions, Patreon, art conventions, Hollywood. Real art will always be able to make money and find an audience because it's how we communicate as a species.

AI creators lack the passion and ambition to make a career out of AI prompts. Not that they couldn't start drawing at any time, but these tend to be the people who don't enjoy creating art to begin with.

There is no story or personal experience that can be shared about AI prompts so paying customers will lose interest quickly.

Art is needed to help advance society along, history says so. To do that, companies will need to hire artists (music, architecture, photography, design, etc). The best way for us artists to keep fighting for our voice to be heard right now is staying visible. Do not hide or give in! That is what they want. Continue posting online and/or in person and sharing your art with the world. It takes a community and we need you!

#text #ai #artists on tumblr #art #im usually right #whenever I feel mostly calm in a crisis it's a good sign

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horreurscopes · 1 year

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you don't have to pay overdraft fees ever

the biden administration recently cracked down on overdraft fees which means banks cannot force you to pay them as they have become opt-in -- however you do have to call the bank (for example, paypal payments overdraft you even if you have opted out, as they function like checks.)

my experience is with wellsfargo but i imagine that most major banks may operate similarly:

if you have an overdraft fee, call the bank, you will get a machine. go through the autentification process with it but do not mention your issue when it asks you to (specially not the word overdraft -- this is a conspiracy theory i cannot prove but i swear to god they rewire you to more aggressive phone people if you tipoff the machine) instead say "i'd like to speak to a representative" the machine will be like "lol didn't get that" so you may need to repeat it a couple more times before it wires you to a real person

wait! i'd recomend calling as early in the morning as possible to avoid elevator music.

be nice to the customer service person who picks up (i make a point of thanking them for their help and calling them by their name, if i don't catch it the first time i ask them again for it)

my script is something along the lines of: "hi, i noticed there's an overdraft fee in my account that posted on [date]. i am calling to see if we (WE -- you and the representative are a team against the problem) could do something about it" (<- you may decide to be more direct, i just put my innocent hat on)

most if not all of what they say to you is a script. they will be like "i will check that for you with the automated process that takes into account you previous refund activity" BLAH BLAH BLAH. more waiting. if you have had any refunds in the past 12 months, they will be like "sorry the system says no (:" THOUGH, VERY RECENTLY, they have tacked on this question: do you have any thoughts on that / how do you feel about that / etc. though even if they do not prompt you, here's the next step:

say: thank you! i appreciate the automated review, however i do not agree/approve/consent to being charged a fee. is there any way you could check again / anyone else i could talk to / would it be possible to refund it regardless? etc.

they will check again, possibly more waiting, and then you will get an immediate refund! in the rare case they refuse to, here is the link to the FDIC website that you can refer to (note, this is for overdraft fees only):

8. i cannot emphasize this enough -- be nice !!!!!!!!!!! BE NICE! be cheerful, say "thank you" and "no worries" and "take your time!". it is NOT a confrontation, it is NOT their fault, and most of the time the customer service representative wants this to be as frictionless as possible. they are helping you, use the opportunity to make a moment of their day a lot less stressful than they expect it to be.

that is ALL -- i have been using wellsfargo for over eight years, and have lost hundreds of dollars to predatory overdraft fees charged as a punishment for having no money.

during the beginning covid, when they were momentarily suspended (you had to mention covid on the phone to get them back lol), i came to the realization that all of this time they could have been giving me my money back. there was no reason not to, except corporate greed.

do not let phone social anxiety let them take your money from you, now that it is easier than EVER to get it back. and if you need motivation to pick up the phone, remember this headline from a couple of years back lol:

DEATH TO CAPITALISM !!!!!!

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