#spirals of delusion

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surprising truth about data-driven dictatorships

Here’s the “dictator’s dilemma”: they want to block their country’s frustrated elites from mobilizing against them, so they censor public communications; but they also want to know what their people truly believe, so they can head off simmering resentments before they boil over into regime-toppling revolutions.

These two strategies are in tension: the more you censor, the less you know about the true feelings of your citizens and the easier it will be to miss serious problems until they spill over into the streets (think: the fall of the Berlin Wall or Tunisia before the Arab Spring). Dictators try to square this circle with things like private opinion polling or petition systems, but these capture a small slice of the potentially destabiziling moods circulating in the body politic.

Enter AI: back in 2018, Yuval Harari proposed that AI would supercharge dictatorships by mining and summarizing the public mood — as captured on social media — allowing dictators to tack into serious discontent and diffuse it before it erupted into unequenchable wildfire:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/

Harari wrote that “the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place may become [dictators] decisive advantage in the 21st century.” But other political scientists sharply disagreed. Last year, Henry Farrell, Jeremy Wallace and Abraham Newman published a thoroughgoing rebuttal to Harari in Foreign Affairs:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/spirals-delusion-artificial-intelligence-decision-making

They argued that — like everyone who gets excited about AI, only to have their hopes dashed — dictators seeking to use AI to understand the public mood would run into serious training data bias problems. After all, people living under dictatorships know that spouting off about their discontent and desire for change is a risky business, so they will self-censor on social media. That’s true even if a person isn’t afraid of retaliation: if you know that using certain words or phrases in a post will get it autoblocked by a censorbot, what’s the point of trying to use those words?

The phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out” dates back to 1957. That’s how long we’ve known that a computer that operates on bad data will barf up bad conclusions. But this is a very inconvenient truth for AI weirdos: having given up on manually assembling training data based on careful human judgment with multiple review steps, the AI industry “pivoted” to mass ingestion of scraped data from the whole internet.

But adding more unreliable data to an unreliable dataset doesn’t improve its reliability. GIGO is the iron law of computing, and you can’t repeal it by shoveling more garbage into the top of the training funnel:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/05/29/garbage-in-garbage-out-machine-learning-has-not-repealed-the-iron-law-of-computer-science/

When it comes to “AI” that’s used for decision support — that is, when an algorithm tells humans what to do and they do it — then you get something worse than Garbage In, Garbage Out — you get Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Back In Again. That’s when the AI spits out something wrong, and then another AI sucks up that wrong conclusion and uses it to generate more conclusions.

To see this in action, consider the deeply flawed predictive policing systems that cities around the world rely on. These systems suck up crime data from the cops, then predict where crime is going to be, and send cops to those “hotspots” to do things like throw Black kids up against a wall and make them turn out their pockets, or pull over drivers and search their cars after pretending to have smelled cannabis.

The problem here is that “crime the police detected” isn’t the same as “crime.” You only find crime where you look for it. For example, there are far more incidents of domestic abuse reported in apartment buildings than in fully detached homes. That’s not because apartment dwellers are more likely to be wife-beaters: it’s because domestic abuse is most often reported by a neighbor who hears it through the walls.

So if your cops practice racially biased policing (I know, this is hard to imagine, but stay with me /s), then the crime they detect will already be a function of bias. If you only ever throw Black kids up against a wall and turn out their pockets, then every knife and dime-bag you find in someone’s pockets will come from some Black kid the cops decided to harass.

That’s life without AI. But now let’s throw in predictive policing: feed your “knives found in pockets” data to an algorithm and ask it to predict where there are more knives in pockets, and it will send you back to that Black neighborhood and tell you do throw even more Black kids up against a wall and search their pockets. The more you do this, the more knives you’ll find, and the more you’ll go back and do it again.

This is what Patrick Ball from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group calls “empiricism washing”: take a biased procedure and feed it to an algorithm, and then you get to go and do more biased procedures, and whenever anyone accuses you of bias, you can insist that you’re just following an empirical conclusion of a neutral algorithm, because “math can’t be racist.”

HRDAG has done excellent work on this, finding a natural experiment that makes the problem of GIGOGBI crystal clear. The National Survey On Drug Use and Health produces the gold standard snapshot of drug use in America. Kristian Lum and William Isaac took Oakland’s drug arrest data from 2010 and asked Predpol, a leading predictive policing product, to predict where Oakland’s 2011 drug use would take place.

[Image ID: (a) Number of drug arrests made by Oakland police department, 2010. (1) West Oakland, (2) International Boulevard. (b) Estimated number of drug users, based on 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health]

Then, they compared those predictions to the outcomes of the 2011 survey, which shows where actual drug use took place. The two maps couldn’t be more different:

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2016.00960.x

Predpol told cops to go and look for drug use in a predominantly Black, working class neighborhood. Meanwhile the NSDUH survey showed the actual drug use took place all over Oakland, with a higher concentration in the Berkeley-neighboring student neighborhood.

What’s even more vivid is what happens when you simulate running Predpol on the new arrest data that would be generated by cops following its recommendations. If the cops went to that Black neighborhood and found more drugs there and told Predpol about it, the recommendation gets stronger and more confident.

In other words, GIGOGBI is a system for concentrating bias. Even trace amounts of bias in the original training data get refined and magnified when they are output though a decision support system that directs humans to go an act on that output. Algorithms are to bias what centrifuges are to radioactive ore: a way to turn minute amounts of bias into pluripotent, indestructible toxic waste.

There’s a great name for an AI that’s trained on an AI’s output, courtesy of Jathan Sadowski: “Habsburg AI.”

And that brings me back to the Dictator’s Dilemma. If your citizens are self-censoring in order to avoid retaliation or algorithmic shadowbanning, then the AI you train on their posts in order to find out what they’re really thinking will steer you in the opposite direction, so you make bad policies that make people angrier and destabilize things more.

Or at least, that was Farrell(et al)’s theory. And for many years, that’s where the debate over AI and dictatorship has stalled: theory vs theory. But now, there’s some empirical data on this, thanks to the “The Digital Dictator’s Dilemma,” a new paper from UCSD PhD candidate Eddie Yang:

https://www.eddieyang.net/research/DDD.pdf

Yang figured out a way to test these dueling hypotheses. He got 10 million Chinese social media posts from the start of the pandemic, before companies like Weibo were required to censor certain pandemic-related posts as politically sensitive. Yang treats these posts as a robust snapshot of public opinion: because there was no censorship of pandemic-related chatter, Chinese users were free to post anything they wanted without having to self-censor for fear of retaliation or deletion.

Next, Yang acquired the censorship model used by a real Chinese social media company to decide which posts should be blocked. Using this, he was able to determine which of the posts in the original set would be censored today in China.

That means that Yang knows that the “real” sentiment in the Chinese social media snapshot is, and what Chinese authorities would believe it to be if Chinese users were self-censoring all the posts that would be flagged by censorware today.

From here, Yang was able to play with the knobs, and determine how “preference-falsification” (when users lie about their feelings) and self-censorship would give a dictatorship a misleading view of public sentiment. What he finds is that the more repressive a regime is — the more people are incentivized to falsify or censor their views — the worse the system gets at uncovering the true public mood.

What’s more, adding additional (bad) data to the system doesn’t fix this “missing data” problem. GIGO remains an iron law of computing in this context, too.

But it gets better (or worse, I guess): Yang models a “crisis” scenario in which users stop self-censoring and start articulating their true views (because they’ve run out of fucks to give). This is the most dangerous moment for a dictator, and depending on the dictatorship handles it, they either get another decade or rule, or they wake up with guillotines on their lawns.

But “crisis” is where AI performs the worst. Trained on the “status quo” data where users are continuously self-censoring and preference-falsifying, AI has no clue how to handle the unvarnished truth. Both its recommendations about what to censor and its summaries of public sentiment are the least accurate when crisis erupts.

But here’s an interesting wrinkle: Yang scraped a bunch of Chinese users’ posts from Twitter — which the Chinese government doesn’t get to censor (yet) or spy on (yet) — and fed them to the model. He hypothesized that when Chinese users post to American social media, they don’t self-censor or preference-falsify, so this data should help the model improve its accuracy.

He was right — the model got significantly better once it ingested data from Twitter than when it was working solely from Weibo posts. And Yang notes that dictatorships all over the world are widely understood to be scraping western/northern social media.

But even though Twitter data improved the model’s accuracy, it was still wildly inaccurate, compared to the same model trained on a full set of un-self-censored, un-falsified data. GIGO is not an option, it’s the law (of computing).

Writing about the study on Crooked Timber, Farrell notes that as the world fills up with “garbage and noise” (he invokes Philip K Dick’s delighted coinage “gubbish”), “approximately correct knowledge becomes the scarce and valuable resource.”

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/07/25/51610/

This “probably approximately correct knowledge” comes from humans, not LLMs or AI, and so “the social applications of machine learning in non-authoritarian societies are just as parasitic on these forms of human knowledge production as authoritarian governments.”

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop summer fundraiser is almost over! I am an alum, instructor and volunteer board member for this nonprofit workshop whose alums include Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kameron Hurley, Nnedi Okorafor, Lucius Shepard, and Ted Chiang! Your donations will help us subsidize tuition for students, making Clarion — and sf/f — more accessible for all kinds of writers.

Libro.fm is the indie-bookstore-friendly, DRM-free audiobook alternative to Audible, the Amazon-owned monopolist that locks every book you buy to Amazon forever. When you buy a book on Libro, they share some of the purchase price with a local indie bookstore of your choosing (Libro is the best partner I have in selling my own DRM-free audiobooks!). As of today, Libro is even better, because it’s available in five new territories and currencies: Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand!

[Image ID: An altered image of the Nuremberg rally, with ranked lines of soldiers facing a towering figure in a many-ribboned soldier's coat. He wears a high-peaked cap with a microchip in place of insignia. His head has been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The sky behind him is filled with a 'code waterfall' from 'The Matrix.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

 — 

Raimond Spekking (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acer_Extensa_5220_-_Columbia_MB_06236-1N_-_Intel_Celeron_M_530_-_SLA2G_-_in_Socket_479-5029.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 — 

Russian Airborne Troops (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vladislav_Achalov_at_the_Airborne_Troops_Day_in_Moscow_%E2%80%93_August_2,_2008.jpg

“Soldiers of Russia” Cultural Center (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Col._Leonid_Khabarov_in_an_everyday_service_uniform.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #habsburg ai #self censorship #henry farrell #digital dictatorships #machine learning #dictator's dilemma #eddie yang #preference falsification #political science #training bias #scholarship #spirals of delusion #algorithmic bias #ml #Fully automated data driven authoritarianism #authoritarianism #gigo #garbage in garbage out garbage back in #gigogbi #yuval noah harari #gubbish #pkd #philip k dick #phildickian

[c0l0re]

"How would a melody describe itself when asked?"

Reblogs are greatly appreciated!

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fanart #the magnus archive fanart #michael distortion #michael the distortion #the spiral #digital art #art #digital painting #fanart #my art #colore draws #ITS THE THROAT OF DELUSION INCARNATE EVERYONE <3333 #fuckhands mcmike my beloved <3 #cw eyestrain #tw scopophobia

[dagda-the-doodler]

Don't open the wrong door....

Here's some more old TMA art I did of Michael and Helen as the Distortion, as well as their ill-fated predecessors! I hope you enjoy these little freaks!!!

#art #digital art #drawing #character art #character design #redesign #tma #tma fanart #fanart #the magnus archives #the magnus institute #the magnus archive fanart #the magnus pod #helen richardson #michael shelley #michael distortion #helen distortion #the distortion #throat of delusion incarnate #the spiral #horror #podcast #magnus pod

[cringefaildiaz]

excitement over the allusions made in interviews about buddie -> fearful that it's just a marketing tactic to get us back on board after s6 and network change -> but surely buddie enthusiasts don't make up enough of the viewership for them to care about people jumping ship? -> and how many people read the pre-season interviews anyways besides diehards? -> maybe it's just to drum up buzz so ABC can make a return on their investment -> but if not many people (relative to the overall viewership) are engaging pre-season content how would these interviews drum up buzz and excitement in an impactful way for ratings? -> they MUST be putting it IN the show if they're trying to grow a new audience with buddie content -> plus it's airing before Grey's Anatomy and Station 19 -> the franchise that literally invented "realizing you're gay" storylines on primetime network television -> surely this cannot be a trap -> buddie canon real

^that's my brain on a loop lately

#THESE ARE NOT RATIONAL THOUGHTS OR GENUINE EXPECTATIONS #IM IN A DELUSION SPIRAL #911 abc #buddie

[its-a-pain-having-a-name]

It’s been a while we have finally done it again.

It’s Michael :::))))

#the magnus archives #tma podcast #michael distortion #the spiral #throat of delusion #tma fandom #tma micheal distortion #tma michael #michael tma #tma fanart #the distortion #its a pain having a name

[chronicowboy]

Its embarrassing really. Eddie would like to make it abundantly clear that he's very aware its embarrassing. Mortifying, even. Humiliating, etcetera.

Really, its nothing.

Its just... Well, the bride had frozen outside, a few feet away from a blossom tree, and the winds had been whipping the petals around them as they worked on her, and Buck had looked so beautiful backlit by the sun as he spoke with the bride about her dream wedding. And then a petal had drifted into Buck's hair, and Eddie had been paying a little too much attention to how it was almost the same shade of pink as his birthmark, and then there had been a searing pain slicing through the juncture of his thumb.

Its nothing.

(Its embarrassing. He's a thirty-five year old man, a firefighter, for god's sake!, and he cut himself because he was distracted by a flower in Buck's hair like a schoolgirl staring at her crush. Yeah, its definitely embarrassing.)

Bobby had sent him back to the ambulance to deal with the cut which is how he finds himself here, trying to rip through the tape with his teeth as he fumbles the gauze he was trying to hold in place with nothing more than will power and an injured thumb.

The gauze drifts away on the same wind that had carried that fucking petal, but a boot stomps on it before it can fly away into the ether. With a sigh, Eddie tilts his head up to squint at Buck.

"Need a hand?" Buck quirks an eyebrow at the sluggishly bleeding cut, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. Eddie has to fight to keep his face blank, Buck's smug joy damn infectious.

Eddie doesn't answer him, just hands Buck a fresh gauze pad and the roll of tape. Buck sets the tape down on the floor of the rig as he crouches and picks up Eddie's hand instead. Eddie has to hold his breath to stop it hitching in his chest, a revelation even Buck wouldn't miss, at the tenderness of Buck's hold. Its achingly gentle, so soft Eddie almost wouldn't be sure anyone was touching him at all if it weren't for the way Buck's fingertips burn into his skin like tattoos.

When Buck leans in close to inspect the wound, so close that Eddie can feel his breath on the skin of his neck, he leans back on his uninjured hand for a moment of respite, a breath of cool air against his warm cheeks.

Buck wipes away the drying blood with a carefulness that Eddie doesn't feel deserving of. Here, in Buck's hands, in Buck's care, he feels like something precious. No, like something holy. Like maybe all the pain and suffering was worth it if this is where he ends up, with Buck rubbing circles into his wrist as he presses the gauze to the cut.

"Hold it there," Buck murmurs quietly, something reverent in the way he moves his hand to make room for Eddie's fingers on the gauze, a choreographed dance like they've done this a thousand times before.

He reaches for the tape, discarding the saliva-sodden piece Eddie had been gnawing at helplessly, and rips off a new length with the serrated edge Eddie had forgotten existed. Buck cradles his hand once again, turning it upside down, and Eddie is irrationally terrified that his heart will appear in his palm as an offering.

(He wonders if Buck would take it, if Buck would know that he already has it, if Buck would tuck it right next to his own for safekeeping.)

Buck slides the tape onto his skin in one swift motion, kind enough not to mention how clammy Eddie's hands are, and smooths the edges of the tape down until Eddie is sure that his skin is going to combust with pure, aching want.

"There you go." Buck grins up at him, still crouched between his legs, something awful and awe-filled in his eyes. Eddie swallows and makes a show of inspecting Buck's work to avoid the heavy weight of Buck's gaze.

"Hm." Eddie twists his mouth into one of his Buck-and-Chris-named frog faces. "Should have had Chim do it instead."

"Excuse you!" Buck squawks indignantly. "I specialise in scratches!" Eddie looks up at him with a stuttering breath, tries to parse whether or not Buck realises what he just said and to whom he just said it. But Buck just scowls up at him, and that's when Eddie sees that goddamn fucking petal is still in his hair. "How'd you even do this anyway?"

"Here," Eddie says before he can think better of it, reaching forward with his bandaged hand, "you've got a little..." He plucks the petal from Buck's curls, fingers twitching to bury themselves there, and holds it out to Buck, so close he has to go cross-eyed to see it.

"Oh," Buck breathes as he takes it from Eddie, a bolt of lightning sparking where their fingers brush.

"You good, Eddie?" Bobby's voice breaks them from their moment, and Eddie jumps to his feet, shoving his litter into his pockets.

"All good, Cap. Nurse Buckley fixed me up." Eddie nudges Buck with the toe of his boot to avoid looking at the pink of his cheeks.

"Figured he would." Bobby's eyes dart between them, and Eddie flexes his hand to ground himself in the flare of pain.

Its nothing.

#sami rambles #sooo fuck internship applications i guess #i'd like to dedicate this one to elke thanks for spiralling with me yesterday i love our delusions <3 #if ur wondering this is inspired by the new eddie still where his hands are cut off (hmmm?) and i swear buck is in the reflection #and then ofc the aisha live where eddie had a bandaged hand #911 show #911 fox #evan buckley #eddie diaz #buddie #buck x eddie #911 spec #911 spec fic #911 speculation #911 fic #911 fanfic #buddie fic #buddie fanfic #buck x eddie fic #911 spoilers #buddie ficlet #911 ficlet

[pumpkin-parade]

I HAVE COME TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT

Helen Distortion and Michael Distortion should KISS! SMOOCH! go on DATES!!!!!

#I dub this ship doubledoors #tma #tma distortion #tma michael #michael distortion #michael shelley #helen distortion #helen richard #distortion!helen #distortion!michael #the magnus archives #tmap #tmp #the magnus protocol #the spiral #it lies #the throat goat of delusion incarnate

[likhopinetree]

throat of delusion incarnate be like

#the spiral #throat of delusion incarnate #tma michael #tma helen #helen richardson #michael shelley #tma #the magnus archives #fucking doors #🚪

[souporsaladnatural]

Ok so. The thing.. about a possible supernatural renewal is. The actors are Insane. We know this. But i THINK that misha collins might be insane enough that he wont do more spn if theyre not going to address the confession in a positive and meaningful way. And if there's no cas, the renewal will crash and it will burn and we will roast marshmallows over the flames of its dying corpse. AND i think jensen ackles might be insane enough that he wont be swayed into giving dean yet another dissatisfying ending. I mean god, it took eric kripke to convince him last time, and he obviously regrets that. He made a whole show just to bring dean back and soften the blow of how his story originally ended. You dont do that without some serious love for that character.

So ig what im saying here is lik. If this really happens. And dean and cas are both there. And they both do HAVE to be there. Then theres only one path they can take

#i hate this show cuz there is literally only 1 logical direction to take that show and i Do Not trust them to do it #spn #supernatural #destiel #s16 clowning #spn reboot #cat spirals tag #anyway i am trying to think logically thru the delusions im not sure its working

[radiomogai]

[image ID: a rectangular flag with four equal horizontal stripes, going from the top to the bottom, dark magenta, dark web orange, medium blue, and spring green. in the center of the flag they begin to swirl inwards. in the center of the flag is the imosril symbol, a rounded white symbol reminiscent of the faces in the vase optical illusion. there are spirals where the foreheads of the faces would be. end ID]

Imosril

[PT: Imosril. end PT]

Imosril is a neogender umbrella related to the fear of unreality, madness, things not being quite right, spirals, fractals, lying and deception, delusions and hallucinations, optical illusions, mazes, insomnia, impossibility, and The Spiral from The Magnus Archives.

Imosril is not in itself xenogender, although some specific imosril terms may overlap. While intended to describe gender, imosril may be used for other types of identity as well.

———————————————–

Imosril Terminology

[PT: Imosril Terminology. end PT]

The gender nature for imosril is IMIN, which stands for imosril-in-nature.

The gender quality for imosril is imosrial, with the noun form being imosreality.

The alignment for imosril is imosrilic.

An individual imosril gender is called an imoscin, the plural form of which is imoscins.

The transitioning term is transimosril, which can be shortened to transimo.

An imosrial adult may be called a somnact, while an imosrial minor may be called a rynth.

The word 'imosril' comes from a combination of the words 'insomnia', 'unreality', and the suffix '-osis'. The word 'somnact' comes from the words 'insomnia' and 'fractal', and the word 'rynth' comes from the word 'labyrinth'. Overall, the terms are meant to evoke imosrial concepts.

———————————————–

Thanks to everyone whom we asked for advice with this!!!

Tagging @noxwithoutstars @revenant-coining @transolar @freakthing @hypnosiacon @mogai-sunflowers. Let us know if you want to be untagged!!

#liom coining #neogender umbrellas #imosril #TMA MOGAI #our terms #theme: The Spiral #theme: TMA #theme: unreality #theme: psychosis #theme: fractals #theme: secrets #theme: sleep #theme: contradictory #theme: delusions #gender natures #gender qualities #imoscins #transitioning terms #imin #imosrial #imosreality #imosrilic #alignments #transimosril #somnact #rynth #transimo #imosril in nature #referential language

[nativehueofresolution]

i support people's right to have fun with aus that don't completely line up with canon characterizations, but i personally have trouble getting into fics where armand chooses to let daniel die, because to me armand turning daniel is so inevitable.

in their early years of the cat and mouse chase, armand and daniel talk quite a bit about death (as well as every other topic under the sun), and it's clear that as much as armand thinks being a vampire is curse, he's terrified not only of dying, but of what comes after death.

much later on, during another one of their arguments where armand is attempting to convince daniel being a vampire is a terrible fate, he says he'd have killed himself by now if he weren't afraid of death.

while it communicates armand's unhappiness with immortality, it's also not a great argument to make if he's trying to dissuade daniel from wanting to be a vampire? he's saying 'i deeply hate this, but i still can't give it up, because the thought of what comes next is too terrifying'. he's actually validating daniel's belief that death is the worst fate possible even as he's trying to talk him into staying a mortal. if he can't fully convince himself to accept death, how can he convince daniel?

moreover, armand connects his relationship with daniel to the fact that he finally wants to live again - that he actually doesn't want the world to end, when before it wouldn't have mattered to him.

armand has at long last begun to enjoy living again after their time together, but without daniel? he wouldn't be able to go on. armand is not someone who can easily let things go, it's one of the reasons why he's responsible for a lot of his own misery. so no, he can't let daniel go - it's possibly the defining element of their relationship. he wouldn't let daniel go after they first met, he chased him across the globe. and he couldn't let daniel go when they were stuck in an on again/off again cycle. sure, he gave daniel the illusion of choice during their years on night island, letting him leave many times - but he kept track of him, ready to swoop in the moment daniel became desperate or incapacitated (as armand knew he would, because he'd systematically taken away daniel's independence and ability to care of himself while smothering him with affection, not to mention his awareness of daniel's addictions). his fear of someone else taking daniel away from him is why he gave him the amulet, why he attempted to give him the cushiest cage possible so he never ventured to the outside. all the while, armand and daniel have both convinced themselves that when push comes to shove, the historically selfish and impatient armand will keep to his sacred vow of not turning anyone, because he believes it's always a mistake. keep in mind, armand has already worked around this some in the past by compelling louis to turn madeline as part of his scheme to have them free to run off together. armand is keeping the letter of the vow, but we already know he can talk himself into workarounds if he thinks it's necessary to keep someone he loves.

the inherent contradiction of armand saying he values daniel's life more than his own, more than anything, but also resigning him to a fate he's terrified of is always present in the devil's minion. it sets a ticking clock in the relationship to see which part he means more, but to me there could really only be one answer with the levels of devotion, anxiety, and possessiveness daniel brings out in armand.

even when armand does let daniel go in a relational sense during their tva era break-up, armand specifically says that at that time daniel is alive and well, but has become disillusioned with armand. and that clearly hurts armand - he is obviously not well for a variety of reasons at the time he's dictating this - but he will cope with losing daniel's love if daniel is alive to resent him, healthy, traveling again (notice how like all of these are not really true for long, if they ever were at all, but they're one of the many lies armand is forcing himself to believe he can attempt to build a new life). that's why i think even if daniel did somehow have a change of heart and say he accepted his death, what would actually follow is armand would eventually realize just how much of a hypocrite he is - that no matter how important he said this vow was to him, no matter how much he'd been trying to convince daniel to accept mortality, when push came to shove armand would not be able to go through with it. even if daniel no longer wanted it, he would choose to blow up their relationship and turn him (which really is basically what he already views himself as doing in canon). he would keep daniel, in whatever way he could, even if it destroyed them, and obliterated armand's fragile sense individuality and one moral rule. he couldn't do anything else.

#devil's minion #iwtv #like yes armand had to make his choice then and there but if he'd had more time i genuinely don't think it would have changed anything #except he would have agonized over it more #idk how much in the amc series daniel brushing off louis's offer is meant to be taken seriously. it seemed to be a bit of a mind game #but if daniel did conceivably change his mind after living several decades (and possibly missing quite a bit of his memories) #i think what would follow next is armand having a complete breakdown as he realizes the full extent of his hypocrisy and self delusion #as he tries to make the very same arguments he used to dismiss coming from daniel #everything's changed but nothing has. if you get it you get it #now daniel dying because armand couldn't find him in time after he left and started spiraling. that i can easily imagine #kaitlin speaks

[foggy-eyed-poet]

Excuse the crunchy quality but some art of the beloved distortion<33

#michael is gender tbh #michael distortion #michael shelley #the distortion #the spiral #throat of delusion incarnate #tma #the magnus archives #jonny sims is literally an icon and i love him

[wiitzend]

oooh my 'missing eddie munson' feelings are acting up again.

#if i spiral into delusion strong enough i can convince myself that he's coming back for s5 #then all i have to do is find a way to project that delusion onto the duffer brothers. i CAN do this. #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things s5 #I need him to be alive I need flashbacks I need him happy! all of this in s5 or it's a 0/10 for me #haha... :)

[lemontartyellow]

You know that meme that’s like “He ruined my dream journal!” “I did NOT, Mr. Electric, kill him!”, that’s like Nygmobs to me.

#are you all enjoying my downward spiral into delusion #gotham #oswald cobblepot #edward nygma

[tactlesstuesdays]

DOES THIS MEAN MIKA IS GOING TO WEAR THAT DRESS TO BOSE'S PARTY???? MAYBE PROMO PHOTOS???

#danger force #bose o'brien #mika macklin #chapa de silva #miles macklin #i am spiralling #i have delusions #channah is so bose's step sister

[livingfossilknits]

A TAM OF DELUSION INCARNATE

The fifth in my series of tams inspired by The Magnus Archives, one for each of Smirke’s 15 fears! This time: The Spiral!

Inspired by optical illusions, computer glitches and the general concept of eyestrain, I wanted this hat to be a little difficult (but still fun!) to look at. I decided to go for a slightly more conceptual hat for the Distortion, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!

#the magnus archives #the magnus archive #the magnus archives fanart #tma fanart #tma #rusty quill tma #the spiral #the distortion #michael shelley #michael distortion #helen richardson #helen distortion #eyestrain tw #delusion mention #knitting #original knitting pattern #optical illusion