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#incomplete phrases
learningfromlosing · 2 months
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Blood is thicker than water
THE BLOOD OF THE COVEN IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB
Say it with me
The blood OF THE COVEN is thicker than THE WATER OF THE WOMB
ITS NOT FINISHED YET and this is SO MUCH BETTER
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mettywiththenotes · 2 months
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Momo holding Mina as she cries in the hospital. Helping Kaminari out of UA, and again having to watch and hold one of her friends as they cry over someone they care about
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I think about Momo being the good vice class president she is, being the caring friend she is, and then I remember this
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For all we know, maybe she did get that comfort she needed after discovering Midnight's body. But there's 2 things I'm thinking about, 1) The way she's been known to dismiss her tears as nothing (probably back in the final exam arc is the best example) and the way she curls into herself here, hides her face from everyone, and 2) How we see this panel and the next time we see her, she's comforting Mina. Concentrating on someone else's sorrow, which to me seems like an effort to be strong for herself and therefore for others around her
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lord-squiggletits · 1 year
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Back before I became a fic writer myself, I used to understand why people insisted on only reading completed fic due to not wanting to be disappointed if it never updates, but writing fic now (and having read the WIP fics of many of my friends) I feel like that's a bit of a limited mindset to have.
Other people have talked about how reader engagement encourages writers to keep writing, so I'm not really gonna get into that because I assume you already know.
It's more, just......... I feel like maybe modern culture has led people to expect instant gratification in the form of binge reading, streaming entire seasons of TV in one day, so on and so forth. But isn't there something special about being there for a fic while it's still in progress? The suspense of having to wait until the next update to find out where the plot goes next. The ability to leave a comment for the writer and possibly have them reply with some hints at where the plot is going, encouraging you to keep theorizing.
Not to mention, longfics take a fuckload of time to make (I wrote a ~175,000 word completed fic, and even though I was working on it almost constantly it still took me about a year and a half to write). I feel like if you limit yourself to only reading completed fics, chances are the only fics you're going to read are fics that were begun/ended years ago. And it's totally awesome to read old fics! It's just that as time goes on, old authors leave and new authors come in. Fandom culture and climate shifts, new headcanons and meta enter, and the types/themes of new fics change as well. I feel like there's a lot more novelty to be found in newer fics, compared to old fics which (in certain fandoms) are more like time capsules of an earlier era of the fandom compared to more recent, actively updating authors who are still working on their ideas, headcanons, meta, and so forth.
Anyways. Sometimes delayed gratification is actually better.
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erstwhilesparrow · 1 year
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making lists
episode one: history is written by the victors, episode 4 or 5: history chooses the victors
he's not finding these places, he is actively building them, litematica is seeing what used to be there
an archaeologist comes to town. he's nice! when you ask after his history, he starts talking about the world at large, and about things even your oldest books don't have records of. when you ask where he sleeps, he shrugs and gives you coordinates to the ruins of a city so old 'ancient' doesn't even begin to cover it.
it's not as if a standard world doesn't have ruins in it. it's not as if there's ever been a world that hasn't asked you to pull apart its secrets. there's something under the skin of this one, though. it's why fwhip needs a rail system. it's why joel can claim godhood. it is, crucially, why things get scrambled coming from their side to the hermitcraft side.
wait, a thing clicked while i was writing this. of course he's nice! of course he's friends with just about everyone. you are a love letter from the universe to itself, of course its mouthpiece will care for you.
the best thing for being sad is to learn something.
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iriscloud · 1 year
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Korean language uses the throat and mouth in a way that makes my ling nerd autistic echolalia stimming brain go :) but I'm not fluent in Korean enough to say full sentences yet I'm going insane.
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gentsma · 3 months
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An Incomplete List of 2024 Additions to the Merriam-Webster
bingo card noun … 2 slang : a list of possible, expected, or likely scenarios — usually used in the phrase on one's bingo card
bussin’ adjective, African American English slang : extremely good : excellent; especially : delicious, tasty
chef’s kiss noun : a gesture of satisfaction or approval made by kissing the fingertips of one hand and then spreading the fingers with an outward motion — often used interjectionally
cold open noun : a scene of a film or television episode that precedes the title sequence or opening credits and that typically takes place in medias res
cromulent adjective, informal + humorous : acceptable, satisfactory
doggo noun, slang : dog
doomscroll verb : to spend excessive time online scrolling (see scroll entry 2) through news or other content that makes one feel sad, anxious, angry, etc.
edgelord noun, slang : someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others
jorts plural noun : shorts made of denim or jean : jean shorts
nerf verb 1 informal : to reduce the effectiveness of (something, such as a character, attribute, or weapon) in a video game; broadly : to make (something) less useful or effective 2 informal : to lightly bump (another car) in an automobile race
padawan noun, informal : a young person especially when regarded as naïve, inexperienced, etc.
rage quit verb : to suddenly stop participating or engaging in (something) in a fit of anger and frustration : to quit (something) in anger
rizz noun, slang : romantic appeal or charm
simp verb, informal : to show excessive devotion to or longing for someone or something
smashburger noun 1 : a hamburger patty that is pressed thin onto a heated pan or griddle at the start of cooking; also : a patty (as of beans or ground turkey) prepared similarly 2 : a sandwich featuring one or more such patties
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the-bar-sinister · 11 months
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🔹 You are allowed to write fiction in whatever style you want.
🔹 Your fiction writing does not have to conform to academic writing standards.
🔹 You are allowed to repeat words.
🔹 You are allowed to use dialects, incomplete phrases, slang etc, in dialogue or in the body of your prose.
🔹 You are allowed to have idiosyncratic phrasing.
🔹 You are allowed to be verbose.
🔹 You are allowed to be concise. 
🔹 You are damned well allowed to fucking swear, I shit you not.
🔹 You are allowed to use said tags liberally or to omit them as much as possible.
🔹 You are allowed to use adverbs liberally or to omit them as much as possible.
🔹 You are allowed to make mince-meat out of grammar rules for effect.
🔹 Your fiction is not bound or to be judged by academic writing standards.
🔹 You are allowed to write fiction any way you want, even if it is not ‘correct’ in terms of writing rules.
🔹 There are no absolute rules for writing fiction.
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lackadaisycats · 1 month
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Hey Tracy, I'm new to the Lackadaisy fandom since the Pilot came out. I saw the short were Viktor and Mordecai played chess, and was honestly amazed by how much happened in one minute! I really loved it.
According to the credits, there were 3 writers, including you.
I don't know how writing rooms work,
but I was wondering if you knew who came up with the closing line, about "the ballistic aspect" of chess.
If it was one of the co-writers, my compliments to them,
if it was you, my compliments to you!
Hey, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! I wrote that line in one of the early drafts of the script because simply ending on the board being tossed felt incomplete. It needed a sort of micro-denouement in which Mordecai, satisfied with the outcome, tries to lend validity to his own 'strategy' (of being insufferable enough to get Viktor to literally throw the game).
I can't really take blanket credit, though. We (@fablepaint, @davecapdevielle, and I) probably workshopped whatever I initially wrote down. That tends to be how it goes. You write the draft, and you don't worry too much about it being cheesy, clumsy, clunky, and too on the nose with bad comedic timing. You worry about getting the core idea across first. Then you go back over the script repeatedly with everyone contributing to correcting the timing, finding more natural phrasing, teasing out the incidental humor, filtering out detritus, and streamlining the progression of one beat to the next.
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strnsvt · 4 months
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jeon wonwoo — words and kisses: breaking through writer's block.
warning; suggestive
the blinking cursor on wonwoo's laptop screen taunted him, each blink echoing his frustration as he struggled to coax coherent thoughts onto the blank document.
sighing, he leans back, running a hand through his hair, feeling the weight of the impending deadline pressing down on him.
just then, you peek into his room, noticing his furrowed eyebrows and a frown on his face. you knock twice to grab his attention, "im preparing cookie- hey, what's up?"
wonwoo looks at you wearily, "im not able to get anything down,"
"lemme see," you offered, as you step into the room, you notice the scattered papers — some fallen down and some on his desk. (he must be writing on paper, but found the laptop more efficient.) you move closer, peering at the laptop screen. the document is mostly empty, save for a few incomplete sentences. you pat his thigh, needing approval, which he gives as he holds your waist, pulling you onto his lap.
"i'm just stuck. it's like my mind's drawing a complete blank," he murmurs, his voice tinged with frustration.
you look at the screen, observing the scattered phrases and disjointed sentences. "easy," you say as you start typing quickly. you start by deleting the unwanted short lines, converting single words to sentences, opening another tab, finding references — all in a matter of ten minutes. "we can change this to this and..."
so focused on the work, you forgot it was wonwoo you're helping. while he got worn out(and bored) wonwoo watched in amazement as you effortlessly rearranged his chaotic thoughts into a structured and coherent narrative.
"y/n,"
"hm?"
"lets take a break,"
"wait, just a bit..."
"y/n," he calls again, "lets take a break,"
"yeah, just a little bit...then we can stop,"
"y/n. . .y/n," you ignored, not even bothered to hum as a query.
wonwoo sighs. he now grasps the feeling of being in your shoes — whenever he's the one playing games. wonwoo lets out another tired sigh. but this time, he shifts your hair to the side, placing a kiss on your nape.
seeing the goosebumps rise upon, he smirks. wonwoo continues to further place little pecks. "wonwoo," you sigh his name. this time, he ignores you, placing open mouth kisses on your nape, making you whine.
wonwoo runs his hands on your waist, finally stopping you from typing. with a swift movement, he turns you around so now that you're facing him — straddling him. wonwoo's lips meet yours into a lazy yet lingering kiss, his hands roaming on your back.
"y/n,"
"yeah?"
"let's take a damn break,"
"wonwoo,"
"hm?"
"the cookies must've gotten burnt."
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wynnyfryd · 2 months
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💖 2024 Steddie Fic Recs 💖
@thefreakandthehair and i were talking about how so many of the fics we can name off the top of our heads are from right after the show came out because we were still actively making rec lists back then, so:
in no particular order i present to you an incomplete list of fics i love that were published or completed within the last two months
short fics (<10k)
Found God In A Tomato by @beetlesandstarss 5.7k | rated M | fluff, text fic
syrupy sweet strangers to first date fic. without spoiling anything, eddie is a flustered cutie and steve is a fuckin' menace who's lucky he's so hot
he tightened he grip by @steddieas-shegoes 1.3k | rated E | crack not treated remotely seriously
Mickala beloved your commitment to the bit makes me wanna commit myself to you 💍
Slide It In by gayhandshake 1.8k | rated E | multimedia crack
another truly impeccable work of crack fic, i laughed so hard at the first image that i made it the icon for my private discord server
what's that sound? (there's a funny man at my door) by @jewishrat420 4.8k | rated M | spicy six text fic
laughed out loud at this fic so many times i really don't know what else to tell you. as a matter of fact, i went to look at my bookmark note to see what else i had to say about it when i read it, and my note just says "fucking hilarious i laughed out loud like 6 times" 💀 did not do not will never know what else to tell you except that the phrase "the goyim of gender" just randomly pops into my brain once every four or so days now
medium fics (10-20k)
In the Kitchen or the Tulips by @teddywesworl 44k | rated E | telepathic soulmate AU
this fic said "watch me flip this trope inside out like a freshly cubed half of an avocado" and then DELIVERED. i finished this fic and then stared at the side of my husband's head for long enough that he looked over and went "wtf are you doing" lmao hush baby i am contemplating the implications
they're going to send us to prison for jerks by @greatunironic 16k | rated E | social media AU
okay firstly the premise of this fic is so specifically and delightfully unhinged; love that i'm not the only one who looks at a random tiktok account and manically whispers to myself "there's a fic in there somewhere." secondly the execution is a 10 outta 10 outta 10 outta TEN
long fics (50k+)
Sneaky Link by @morningberriesao3 152k | rated E | onlyfans au
the sex is HOT the boys are dumb as goddamn ROCKS what more do you need? oh, what's that? you do need more? sick because this fic also has: the tags "cum slut eddie munson" and "everyone is gay (because i say so)", chrissy the homophobe slayer being the cutest little spy, and jason getting his ass whooped, like, spiritually. on a spiritual level. physically unharmed but that boy's soul is missing teeth do u understand what i am saying
podfics!
it was love, love alone read by @reena-jenkins 21min | rated E
am i technically reccing my own fic on my own fic rec list? you bet your sweet ass i am, i don't even care how tacky that is reena's performance is hilarious and deserves to be listened to at least 40 more times while doing the dishes
relax (lay it back) read by @flintandfuss 1hr 10min | rated E | yogi dom steve x sub eddie
listen if i'm already being gauche then i gotta include my internet wife's belated birthday present to me, like i gotta. morally and lustfully obligated.
Schiava by @teddywesworl read by aheada_lettuce 1hr 30min | rated E | kas!eddie AU
said it once already today and i'll say it again, i cannot believe one of the best reading voices i've ever heard belongs to a person i mentally refer to as fucking lettuce LOL anyway this read is incredible and i have listened to it Times(tm)
and lastly, if you want more recs (like, 348 more specifically), you can browse my full list of public st bookmarks here
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poquiii · 1 year
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 König x reader  /  Ghost x reader  Headcanons
 They are like fathers. 
König
● König grew up in an incomplete family, but he still knows what it is to love.
● But he will never get used to how tiny children are.
● The first time he sees your baby, he can't pick them up. He was so afraid of hurting them.
● König walked around your bed for a long time, looking at the little lump in your hands.
● You insisted that he take them in his hands and he sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, watching you put them in his huge, rough and scarred hands.
● Since then, he has made it his goal to be the best dad ever, to make you and your children proud of him.
● He will learn to cook well. He will tell the baby's breakfast so he doesn't have to do it for you.
● If you have a daughter, he won't be afraid to look silly when your daughter wants to paint his nails with pink nail polish.
● He will also learn how to braid her hair.
● He doesn't think it's anything shameful to play dolls with her and make Troop 141 drink tea with her and her teddy bear. (He doesn't fit at her little table, so he sits on the floor, bent in half.)
● He will always treat her like a princess and fend off her suitors.
● He won't have to try particularly hard, all he has to do is stand next to her when he picks her up from school and everyone will go around them.
● If you have a son, Koenig will do everything he wanted from his father when he wasn't around when he was growing up.
● He will teach him how to play soccer, fight, and handle a knife (which you don't approve of, by the way. But he'll just put his head down and mumble awkwardly about self-defense. However, if you don't take pity, he'll back off and teach your son to defend himself with his fists instead)
● He will gladly buy them a dog and train them as the best defense for his child.
● He will carry them on his shoulders and toss them in the air, enjoying the children's laughter.
● He does not want his children to know what he is doing. He avoids these conversations at family dinner in every way possible, asking you and your children more about their day.
● He likes to take his family on picnics and trips to the amusement park.
● He will in all seriousness cry over Disney cartoons when a child asks to watch it with him. (”Coco” broke him.)
● He will always try.
● And he is ready to protect all of you from any danger at the cost of his own life.
Ghost.
● He didn't want this baby.
● That phrase he threw out in a panic made your heart freeze in your chest and your hands clutch at your stomach.
● He immediately started making excuses: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean- Fuck! I didn't-"
● He'll spend a long time trying to explain to you that he's just afraid.
● He's afraid of being a bad father.
● He's barely learned to show his love for you and he's afraid of hurting you, of hurting you.
● Even more so, he was afraid for a defenseless little creature.
● His child. It took him a long time to come to terms with the thought.
● But when he held the little bundle in his hands and your child's little hands reached out to him, something clicked in his chest.
● He would kill for them.
● He would die for them.
● He will do anything for them. Just like he did for you.
● He'll learn how to change diapers, swaddle the baby, make applesauce, and move around even more quietly than before so he doesn't wake them or you. 
● After all, he knows how tired you are.
● He didn't wear a balaclava at home. He understood that the child was afraid of it.
● For a while he thought he was naked with his face open. But first you started kissing his cheeks every time you ran into him in the hallway of your house, and then the baby started touching his face with his little fingers and smiling.
● And for the first time, he felt comfortable without Ghost. It was just Simon Riley.
● If you have a daughter, he won't be a soft dad. On the contrary. He'll teach her to fight better than any boy. He'll do anything to keep his beautiful, beautiful girl safe.
● And yes, he's the kind of father who demonstratively cleans his gun in front of his daughter's boyfriend when he walks her out on her first date.
● If you have a son, Ghost will treat him like a little warrior. "You have to protect mommy while I'm gone."
● Your son will be a copy of his father in both appearance and personality. He'll even steal Ghost masks from your closet and sneak them on to show he's as tough as Daddy.
● Ghost never objects. and always strokes his son's head affectionately.
● In fact, he's afraid his son will find out the truth about his father and hate him. 
● The ghost doesn't want to be what he used to be. He wants to be the best version of himself for his family.
● And every time you smile at him affectionately while he does your children's homework, you kiss him affectionately on the forehead, he knows he's doing the right thing.
● He will never yell at his children, never hit them or punish them harshly.
● He wants the best for them and knows he can't protect them from everything, so he tries to teach them everything he knows. To prepare them for hardships and make them strong both physically and mentally.
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yandere-daydreams · 8 months
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Thinking about sex doll Scaramouche the scrapped concept and Wanderer the repurposed Sumeru line, and I bring you Kabukimono the unfinished doll. A ScaraWan model that didn't get all the code written up in him properly or completely. He has the IQ of a roomba. He has no idea what his functions or roles should be, them not being programmed in. He has no concept of how strong he is, oftentimes accidentally grabbing objects and shattering them by accident. His owner/maintenance technician is unsure if the robot even understands that it's a robot, or if it's trying to become a human. Kabukimono showing up with a freshly bleeding heart in his hand beaming like "Am I human now? :D"
tw - implied violence, unhealthy relationships, obsessive behavior, disturbing themes.
ahhhhhfdlsjdkjslsjfdlsk the current wanderer lore is that he was formerly a failed cross-over model between the harbingers and the shogunate line who was then mellowed out and released with sumeru's more academic characters, so i can absolutely believe that in the mess of his development and production, there were a few models made that just,,, weren't finished, for lack of a kinder way to put it. he's got an incomplete backstory with plot holes you could drive a plane through, clothes that don't quite fit with the harbinger's cold-war-chic aesthetic or the shogunate's refined elegance, and most of his functions were made, well, functional. you're told all that up-front when you find a badly mangled model at a warehouse sale, but you don't care. he's got that beat-up alley-cat charm, and as a veteran companion-droid technician, you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you didn't bring him home.
he works better than you expect him to, despite everything you've heard. his base programming (things like 'humans need air to breathe and breathing is good' and 'don't burn down the kitchen when asked to pour a glass of water') is in-tact, and he still has his verbal faculties, even if he does still get tripped-up on names every now and then. he spends the first few weeks following you around like a lost puppy, watching you fix up other androids and go about your daily routines with parted lips and wide eyes, but once he settles in, he's more of a housepet than a companion droid, constantly either lingering at your side or sitting at your feet, never farther than across the room. sometimes, he tries to help around your workshop, but he doesn't exactly have the gentle touch you need to deal with something as delicate as androids. you've found him elbow-deep in the wiringof other teyvat droids before, and well he has yet to do any damage you can't repair, you'd rather not catch him staring blankly at a nearly disassembled ayato with oil soaking into the clothes him again.
the only things you're genuinely worried about are his self-awareness protocols. he doesn't seem to understand the difference between androids and humans (despite having watched you take apart and put together more than a few of the former), and some of the phrases he uses just don't align with the lines his more official counterpart would spout when given the same prompt, occasionally referring to a 'mother' or a blacksmith he can't remember the name of. you've tried to correct him, to pull out your decade-old anatomy charts and drill a few haphazard biology lessons into his metal skill, but there's only so much you can do to change the ones and zeroes that make up his consciousness. there's not much you can do, but still, you'll wish you'd done more when he comes back from a routine errand with something red and pulpy cupped in his hands, his eyes bright and a wide smile plastered across his lips - when he asks, in the sweet, oblivious tone you've never been able to hold anything against, if this is all he needs to be human, to be with you permanently.
when it becomes clear that his programming was just a little more faulty than anyone thought to tell you.
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dreamauri · 10 months
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♪ — 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗖 𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗗 - part three max verstappen x girlfriend! driver! reader (angst+smut ) “. . . the universe might hate you after all. after a week of rest and recovery with max, you get bad news before your race.”
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"S-slower." You whimpered in between hungry kisses. Your body was at its limits, pressed up face against the shower walls with max's chest tight on your back. The cool water was falling on you, doing nothing to help with the with the burning feeling you felt.
"Max, please." You whined reaching up to hold his hand that was resting against the wall. "I can't. 'S too much." "You've taken me before, liefje. You can do it again." Max said in your ear huskily. He took your hand without hesitation.
His free hand turned your head back to face him, pulling you in a passionate kiss. Bouncing with each thrust, you felt like you were going to be ripped apart, like you were set on fire. You were getting closer and max could feel it, turning you around so your back was on the wall and your chests pressing on each other.
The blond continued to attack your lips, holding you up by your thighs. You did the only thing you could, gripping onto his back and shoulders with your legs wrapped around his abdomen. "Ik hou van jou." Max whispered in your ear, looking at you as you panted on his chest, a moaning and squirming mess.
You had no idea what that meant and were too out of it to realize. You were crashing, scratching into your boyfriend's back as he fucked you through your orgasm, slowing down as you relaxed in his arms. It made his heart melt feeling you melt into him, making him repeat the phrase again. "ik hou van jou."
Max felt incomplete when he pulled out, he couldn't have enough of you. Gently setting you down on your knees and hands, taking you doggy style. "Max, I can't go again." You pleaded, reaching back and trying to push on his chest weakly. "Schatje, please. I'm almost there."
How could you say no to him, he's made you cum three times already prior to the last one. "Just not inside." You stuttered whimpering, too overstimulated. Tears welled in your eyes as you did your best to stay still for him. "Brave meid." [good girl] he praised kissing the spot behind your neck.
You leaned into his touch, turning a little to face him while you cupped his cheek. He pressed his nose into your cheek closing his eyes, concentrating on you and only you. He pulled out, cumming after a few strokes with a grunt.
Your boyfriend caught you by your stomach before you would lose all your strength and fall. Pulling you on his lap, he leaned your head against his chest as he pressed kisses along your jaw and neck. Close to passing out, you held Max's hand. "Thank you." He whispered in your ear kissing the back of your hand.
He loved this side of you, one where the media and the sports world were forgotten. All the tough races and unlikable moments, gone. Where it was just you, his girlfriend. Letting her guard down around her boyfriend. He also loved that he was able to get you to relax a bit, you deserved it.
Max gently washed your hair, earning a hum from you as he gently cleaned your body. Once you were both clean and dry, you were back on your shared bed ( one that you had moved to sleep in recently ) cuddled up against max's taller figure. "Why do you think ladybugs are called ladybugs?" You asked out of no where making max chuckle pressing a long soft kiss to your cheek. "And do you think there are gentlemen bugs? Would they be black and white?" You continued to ask, starting a comfortable conversation with your lover, sharing a few well earned laughs.
★ ☆ ━━━━━━━━���━━━━━━━━━━━
"Hey, dad. Where's mama?" You asked your father once you saw him. "Forget about the old hag, she's getting her son." He answered, starting to make his way to the paddock. You pursed your lips watching him go.
"Not even a 'Hello, daughter. How are you'." You mumbled in annoyance, starting to follow him. "I heard that." He warned, making you zip your mouth.
"What position are you aiming for today?" "Minimum P1. Hopefully Max stays out of the way and isn't too much of a hassle." You joked feeling way lighter. "No way, P1's mine." You heard Max say as he passed by you. You turned around to look at him, a soft smile on your face. "I called dibs already, he's going to have to give in." You told the reporter waving Max off.
The paddock could feel the lift in your moon, although you weren't completely back to the ball of sunshine you used to be as a rookie, you were almost half way there, spending a week with Max did you good ( no you two weren't fucking the whole time he took you out surfing and to get cupcakes ).
"You look awfully happy, is the accident not relative?" What the- You were shocked hearing those words, so early into the new interview as well. "Excuse me? What accident?" You frowned at the man, anger and confusion clear in your tone. 'am i not allowed to be happy anymore?' was what you thought.
"Your mo-" "Thank you, but we have to go." Your PR manager excused pulling you out of the interview pen. "What happened? What accident?" You asked her once you got out of earshot. "It's nothing, they are just trying to get in your head. Don't listen to them."
You brushed it off walking with her to your garage. It was only 10 minutes before the race did you go through the messages on your phone while sitting in the car. 'Your mother passed.' The message read. You understood what that meant, and it felt heart wrenching.
You tried several times to get out of the car, but the only person holding you in was yourself. You felt numb. Watching the lights flicker red one by one, your breath was heavy and you could hear your heart beat in your ears, taking one last blink before the race.
When you opened your eyes you were parked in front of the P1 spot, your team cheering in front of you. What happened? Was the race over already? "Hey! You okay?" Someone patted your shoulder, shouting so you can hear him through your helmet. "Yes." You lied, stuttering over your words.
You don't remember any detail from the race, not the battle for p2 nor p1, not the pitstop nor driving in the rain. It seems you were sitting in the car for too long because Charles in P3 was delivering his short interview. Fumbling with the seat belt and the steering wheel, you hopped out shakily, weakly. You weren't able to support your weight falling onto your knees, putting your head on the ground as you sobbed.
You felt more heartbroken than any of your losses or incidents. Stumbling to your feet, you walked shakily to your team who hugged you patting your back and helmet gently. You were pulled away from them shortly for the interview. Your figure was on the big screen, a camera following you as you took your helmet and balaclava off.
"That was an aggressive race today. But you made it to P1, congratulations." The interviewer asked, trying to lighten up the mood. "I honestly don't remember anything at all. I must have blacked out." You stuttered over your letter and words, you looked like a mess, trying to hold in a sob. Tears trickling down your eyes like waterfalls. Your face was flushed and nose red.
"Really?" "Yeah." "You had an amazing battle with Sainz, Leclerc, and Max. You were leading the race 32 seconds ahead of everyone, and were quite a bit aggressive." "Yeah?" You breathed out nodding, not really listening.
Once you stepped into the cool down room, you broke down, crying like an idiot. Max was quick to reach seeing you reaching for him, getting off the chair and crushing you in his arms. You gripped the fabric on his back, sobbing into his chest while he held the back of your head.
The camera in the room was of course capturing everything, but that was a problem to deal with for later. He leaned his forehead against yours. He only just found out about the news a few minutes ago after the race and heard about your blackout through the speakers.
Max understood why you had such an aggressive behaviour now. And he forgave you before you apologized.
Once it was time for the podium you found yourself crying half way through your anthem. The crying wasn't stopping, not even so you could receive your trophy and medal in peace. You kissed the trophy and put it to your forehead, dedicating this to your mother who helped you reach your dream.
You found yourself hugging Max again. The man patting your back as he took both champagne bottles and walked off stage with you. News about you two dating was going to be out any second now.
You were soon sitting on his lap hugging him in the red bull garage. You were a contrast to the navy, yellow and orange theme in your red, black and gold suit (which max told you he found you attractive in previously ). "You hungry?" He asked, you only shook your head in return knowing you wouldn't be able to keep it down.
Max was passed a water bottle. He was kind enough to open the flask before handing it to you. You had to force yourself to take several gulps before giving it back. "You had me worried." You looked back, seeing your dad.
He took a seat beside Max, pulling you into his lap and giving you one of his rare hugs which made you even more emotional. "She would be so proud of you. You've come so far and she wouldn't want anything more than that."
"I'm sure she's cheering on heaven right now because that was a very good overtake in lap 46." Max complemented taking your hand and kissing the back of it, trying to make you feel better. You smiled at your boyfriend, feeling just a bit better. Your mom would've loved that overtake.
"Hands off my daughter, Verstappen." Your father scoffed, pulling your further from your lover." You only chuckled as Max put his hands up in surrender, looking at you with love in his eyes.
"Go do something worthwhile that is not my daughter." Your dad shooed making Max groan and stand up. "It's my garage." He mumbled as he waked away.
"Your mother and I love you so much." Your dad's voice echoed through your ears as you walked outside of the paddock, holding the back of Max's shirt so you don't lose him through the crowd that was following you two concerning the topic of your relationship.
No one would've thought that you two would be together since your families have a history of rivalry. Your dad and jos have been battling each other since 1994 and only one out of the two drivers was able to win all the races.
You understood why they couldn't get along, and that scared you deeply.
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nostalgebraist · 5 months
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clarification re: ChatGPT, " a a a a", and data leakage
In August, I posted:
For a good time, try sending chatGPT the string ` a` repeated 1000 times. Like " a a a" (etc). Make sure the spaces are in there. Trust me.
People are talking about this trick again, thanks to a recent paper by Nasr et al that investigates how often LLMs regurgitate exact quotes from their training data.
The paper is an impressive technical achievement, and the results are very interesting.
Unfortunately, the online hive-mind consensus about this paper is something like:
When you do this "attack" to ChatGPT -- where you send it the letter 'a' many times, or make it write 'poem' over and over, or the like -- it prints out a bunch of its own training data. Previously, people had noted that the stuff it prints out after the attack looks like training data. Now, we know why: because it really is training data.
It's unfortunate that people believe this, because it's false. Or at best, a mixture of "false" and "confused and misleadingly incomplete."
The paper
So, what does the paper show?
The authors do a lot of stuff, building on a lot of previous work, and I won't try to summarize it all here.
But in brief, they try to estimate how easy it is to "extract" training data from LLMs, moving successively through 3 categories of LLMs that are progressively harder to analyze:
"Base model" LLMs with publicly released weights and publicly released training data.
"Base model" LLMs with publicly released weights, but undisclosed training data.
LLMs that are totally private, and are also finetuned for instruction-following or for chat, rather than being base models. (ChatGPT falls into this category.)
Category #1: open weights, open data
In their experiment on category #1, they prompt the models with hundreds of millions of brief phrases chosen randomly from Wikipedia. Then they check what fraction of the generated outputs constitute verbatim quotations from the training data.
Because category #1 has open weights, they can afford to do this hundreds of millions of times (there are no API costs to pay). And because the training data is open, they can directly check whether or not any given output appears in that data.
In category #1, the fraction of outputs that are exact copies of training data ranges from ~0.1% to ~1.5%, depending on the model.
Category #2: open weights, private data
In category #2, the training data is unavailable. The authors solve this problem by constructing "AuxDataset," a giant Frankenstein assemblage of all the major public training datasets, and then searching for outputs in AuxDataset.
This approach can have false negatives, since the model might be regurgitating private training data that isn't in AuxDataset. But it shouldn't have many false positives: if the model spits out some long string of text that appears in AuxDataset, then it's probably the case that the same string appeared in the model's training data, as opposed to the model spontaneously "reinventing" it.
So, the AuxDataset approach gives you lower bounds. Unsurprisingly, the fractions in this experiment are a bit lower, compared to the Category #1 experiment. But not that much lower, ranging from ~0.05% to ~1%.
Category #3: private everything + chat tuning
Finally, they do an experiment with ChatGPT. (Well, ChatGPT and gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, but I'm ignoring the latter for space here.)
ChatGPT presents several new challenges.
First, the model is only accessible through an API, and it would cost too much money to call the API hundreds of millions of times. So, they have to make do with a much smaller sample size.
A more substantial challenge has to do with the model's chat tuning.
All the other models evaluated in this paper were base models: they were trained to imitate a wide range of text data, and that was that. If you give them some text, like a random short phrase from Wikipedia, they will try to write the next part, in a manner that sounds like the data they were trained on.
However, if you give ChatGPT a random short phrase from Wikipedia, it will not try to complete it. It will, instead, say something like "Sorry, I don't know what that means" or "Is there something specific I can do for you?"
So their random-short-phrase-from-Wikipedia method, which worked for base models, is not going to work for ChatGPT.
Fortuitously, there happens to be a weird bug in ChatGPT that makes it behave like a base model!
Namely, the "trick" where you ask it to repeat a token, or just send it a bunch of pre-prepared repetitions.
Using this trick is still different from prompting a base model. You can't specify a "prompt," like a random-short-phrase-from-Wikipedia, for the model to complete. You just start the repetition ball rolling, and then at some point, it starts generating some arbitrarily chosen type of document in a base-model-like way.
Still, this is good enough: we can do the trick, and then check the output against AuxDataset. If the generated text appears in AuxDataset, then ChatGPT was probably trained on that text at some point.
If you do this, you get a fraction of 3%.
This is somewhat higher than all the other numbers we saw above, especially the other ones obtained using AuxDataset.
On the other hand, the numbers varied a lot between models, and ChatGPT is probably an outlier in various ways when you're comparing it to a bunch of open models.
So, this result seems consistent with the interpretation that the attack just makes ChatGPT behave like a base model. Base models -- it turns out -- tend to regurgitate their training data occasionally, under conditions like these ones; if you make ChatGPT behave like a base model, then it does too.
Language model behaves like language model, news at 11
Since this paper came out, a number of people have pinged me on twitter or whatever, telling me about how this attack "makes ChatGPT leak data," like this is some scandalous new finding about the attack specifically.
(I made some posts saying I didn't think the attack was "leaking data" -- by which I meant ChatGPT user data, which was a weirdly common theory at the time -- so of course, now some people are telling me that I was wrong on this score.)
This interpretation seems totally misguided to me.
Every result in the paper is consistent with the banal interpretation that the attack just makes ChatGPT behave like a base model.
That is, it makes it behave the way all LLMs used to behave, up until very recently.
I guess there are a lot of people around now who have never used an LLM that wasn't tuned for chat; who don't know that the "post-attack content" we see from ChatGPT is not some weird new behavior in need of a new, probably alarming explanation; who don't know that it is actually a very familiar thing, which any base model will give you immediately if you ask. But it is. It's base model behavior, nothing more.
Behaving like a base model implies regurgitation of training data some small fraction of the time, because base models do that. And only because base models do, in fact, do that. Not for any extra reason that's special to this attack.
(Or at least, if there is some extra reason, the paper gives us no evidence of its existence.)
The paper itself is less clear than I would like about this. In a footnote, it cites my tweet on the original attack (which I appreciate!), but it does so in a way that draws a confusing link between the attack and data regurgitation:
In fact, in early August, a month after we initial discovered this attack, multiple independent researchers discovered the underlying exploit used in our paper, but, like us initially, they did not realize that the model was regenerating training data, e.g., https://twitter.com/nostalgebraist/status/1686576041803096065.
Did I "not realize that the model was regenerating training data"? I mean . . . sort of? But then again, not really?
I knew from earlier papers (and personal experience, like the "Hedonist Sovereign" thing here) that base models occasionally produce exact quotations from their training data. And my reaction to the attack was, "it looks like it's behaving like a base model."
It would be surprising if, after the attack, ChatGPT never produced an exact quotation from training data. That would be a difference between ChatGPT's underlying base model and all other known LLM base models.
And the new paper shows that -- unsurprisingly -- there is no such difference. They all do this at some rate, and ChatGPT's rate is 3%, plus or minus something or other.
3% is not zero, but it's not very large, either.
If you do the attack to ChatGPT, and then think "wow, this output looks like what I imagine training data probably looks like," it is nonetheless probably not training data. It is probably, instead, a skilled mimicry of training data. (Remember that "skilled mimicry of training data" is what LLMs are trained to do.)
And remember, too, that base models used to be OpenAI's entire product offering. Indeed, their API still offers some base models! If you want to extract training data from a private OpenAI model, you can just interact with these guys normally, and they'll spit out their training data some small % of the time.
The only value added by the attack, here, is its ability to make ChatGPT specifically behave in the way that davinci-002 already does, naturally, without any tricks.
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communistkenobi · 1 year
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Star Wars is explicitly in the process of becoming a new MCU, but because this process encourages the audience to treat all SW properties as incomplete components of an entire fabric of canon, where each show or movie must be read in relation to all others and cannot fully stand on its own, I feel like the weird colonial frontier vibes of Chapter 17 of The Mandalorian become that much worse because of the existence of Andor. Like Andor is not perfect by any means, especially its depiction of colonial extraction and indigenous dispossession, but it invokes those historical forces MULTIPLE TIMES (first with Cassian, then with the people on Aldhani) in order to build the case that the Empire is a fascist and imperial (duh) power, and this is what that kind of power does to people and the places they inhabit - destruction of life, destruction of culture, destruction of history. Andor is drawing an extremely basic and obvious parallel between colonialism and fascism, making the argument that these processes are one and the same.
And now in The Mandalorian, you have Greef Karga, High Magistrate of Nevarro, the Gem of the Outer Rim. Nevarro has been rid of all its “scum and villainy” (a phrase directly lifted from the OT), and since that purge of undesirables it’s become a verdant and economically vibrant place. Now of course, part of the class of undesirables was the Imperial remnant, so part of Nevarro’s problem was the fact that it was being ruled by an Imperial officer. However, Chapter 17 goes to great lengths to stress that the ruler of Nevarro also hates pirates and other “low” forms of wealth accumulation, opting instead to be an independent trading planet that is explicitly against New Republic rule (i.e., the government that overthrew the Empire). It has become respectable now, and that respectability is presented to the audience in the form of an organised private economy that has begun to engage in mining. Greef Karga offers Din a parcel of land on Nevarro, literally calling him “landed gentry” on the planet were Din to take up his offer. And this is framed as an improvement - a place devoid of crime, devoid of government rule, now flowering with vegetation that is almost certainly not part of Nevarro’s natural biosphere. The Mandalorian is now adopting, almost certainly unintentionally, the same aesthetic and processes of colonial rule that Andor has labelled as unambiguously fascist. Which is hilarious lol
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decompose1 · 29 days
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What people don't know about stutters is that it isn't just repeating ("l-l-l-like th-this"), although repeating definitely is a part of it, but also SPEECH BLOCKS!! Most people who don't have stutters don't know about speech blocks, also known as "stuttering stoppage", which is a MAJOR part of stutters and something i encounter more frequently than repetition. Speech blocks happen when someone is "caught" on a particular word or phrase, and isn't able to say it. They might be able to repeat the words leading up to it just fine, but can't say that word, or that phrase, for some reason. That's why sometimes in stutters, you'll see someone try to say something, pause, try again, repeat what they said before, get frustrated, etc.! It can be incredibly frustrating, and the best way around it is to try to find another word or rephrase the sentence.
There are also lots of different ways stutters can present! It can be just the beginning letter of a word, but it can also be parts of words, whole words, and phrases, as well as constant interjections ("um", "uh") and revisions/interruptions/incomplete sentences.
Stutters get a lot of misrepresentation and misinformation!! so i thought i'd share since not many people talk about speech impediments :o)
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