#the way AI is taking over all creative works is terrifying

[spookyboywhump]

AI-Less Whumptober Day Three- Sensory Deprivation

Originally this was supposed to be done with Zander and Vanessa but for some reason it just wasn't working out. Zander and one of the most annoying pairs of people to exist instead (Cain and Nicholas).

Fandom: OC's/Original Work

Word Count: 1,310

CW: pet whump, sensory deprivation, mentions of claustrophobia

***

 Nicholas was starting to get creative. If beatings and whippings weren’t going to work, then he’d have to try other methods, and Cain had given his permission for this, he told Nicholas that it had quieted him down for at least a couple of days in the past. Zander had fought the entire time he was dragged to the basement, it took both Cain and Nicholas working together to pull him downstairs, all while he tried to claw his way out of their grasp, yelling at them to fuck off and let him go. 

 Nicholas kept a tight grip on his collar, his other hand holding a fistful of his hair, despite Zander’s best attempts to get free. He kept him kneeling by one of the wooden posts in the basement, if he tried to get up he’d just get kicked back down.

 “Darling, I think we should use rope this time.” Nicholas told him, his tone light and upbeat, as though this was just a game to them.

 “I was thinking the same thing.” Cain said, searching through Nicholas’ supplies and coming back with more than enough rope. It took both of them to keep Zander in place, including Cain slapping him across the face a few times, hitting the back of his head against the post. “Quit fighting us, if you didn’t want to get punished then you shouldn’t have misbehaved!” He told him, but he didn’t even sound angry anymore, just amused. Really, misbehaving was a strong word for what he’d actually been doing, he’d say he’d just been acting annoying.

 “If being a bit annoying gets me tied up in a fucking basement then shouldn’t you be left down here too?” He said to Cain, only to get slapped again, even harder than before. He was bound so tightly he was forced to stay on his knees, sitting up straight, rope even wound around his neck to keep him from pulling away too far. His back already ached from the position. 

 Cain and Nicholas seemed to be in a great mood now that he was restrained, Cain pulled a blindfold over his eyes, and Nicholas muzzled him for snapping at Cain when he did so. He pulled against the rope holding him in place but they knew how to tie knots secure enough to keep him down, struggling was no use.

 “We’re going easy on you, mutt.” Nicholas laughed at him. “Teaching you a real lesson would take up so much of our time. Think of this like a time out, you can sit and think about what you’ve done wrong.” Nicholas said. The pair laughing at him and mocking him was the last thing he heard before headphones were placed over his ears, instantly blocking out all noise. It made him shudder as the abrupt silence settled over him, he knew he should consider himself lucky he wasn’t being whipped or beaten, but knowing this was his punishment, he was absolutely terrified. 

 He assumed they went back upstairs, leaving him down there alone. It’s not like it mattered, he couldn’t see or hear anything other than his own heart pounding in his chest and his attempts to take deep breaths through his nose. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he started to feel lightheaded and sick, he pulled against his restraints again but he was stuck there until they finally decided to come back for him.

 Much to his own annoyance, he did think about what he’d done wrong. He knew he should’ve kept his mouth shut, he should’ve stayed quiet and stopped making jabs and taunts at them. He thought it was funny though, and it was making Wren laugh. He probably would’ve stopped if one of them had just slapped him hard enough, he would’ve found some other way to entertain himself. This really wasn’t all that necessary. He worried about Wren being left up there with them, particularly with Nicholas, but he hoped Cain would keep him occupied. He hoped they wouldn’t decide to hurt Wren now that Zander couldn’t protect him. 

 It was hard to tell how much time was passing. It could’ve only been an hour or it could’ve been much later into the night already and he wouldn’t know. It was cold down there in Nicholas’ basement, he kind of wished that he’d been quieter just so he could be in the warmer part of the house. He briefly wondered if Cain intended to stay the night there, if they were going to leave him trapped down there all night long, and he was thankful he was alone because he couldn’t stop himself from whimpering. 

 He got more desperate as time went on. There were raw spots on his arms where he’d struggled against the rope, the muzzle sat uncomfortably against his face, part of him too hot and part of him too cold. He was shaking, he didn’t know if it was from the cold or from just how scared and miserable he was. Having only some of his senses cut off made everything else feel overwhelming, it made him feel claustrophobic. He was struggling to breathe again when he was startled by the first change in what felt like forever, finally the headphones were pulled off his head. At first he was tense and on edge, ready to be grabbed or hit again, he expected the worst, but he was quickly put at ease. 

 “H-hey, don’t worry, it’s just me.” Wren said softly. Zander relaxed instantly, he knew he was safe as long as it was Wren. “I’m sorry about all this…” He said, getting the muzzle off first and then the blindfold. Zander took a shaky deep breath, and if Wren noticed that he was still blinking back tears, he didn’t say anything. 

 “Th-thanks…” He murmured, struggling to speak from how dry his mouth was after that.

 “Of course.” He told him, turning his attention to the knots in the rope now.

 “You aren’t- you won’t get in any trouble for this, right? I-I don’t-”

 “It’s okay, they told me to do it.” He said, carefully working his way through the knots. “They were going to bed so we uh, we’re stuck down here tonight. They said I could free you.” He told him. 

 “Okay…” Wren finally got through the last knot and Zander was able to relax and slouch down again, his back and knees aching from holding that position for so long. “How long was I down here? They- they didn’t hurt you, did they?”

 “It’s been a few hours, at least.” Wren said, he seemed unsure of exactly how long it had been himself, but knowing it was hours was enough to make Zander feel a little less bad about how distraught it made him feel. “They didn’t hurt me though, they were pretty obsessed with each other.” He looked almost grossed out by whatever he’d seen up there. “I’d much rather be down here, as long as it’s away from them.”

 “Agreed.” Zander sighed. “I could’ve done without… all of that, though.” He said, stretching his arms over his head to try and deal with the pain of being still for so long. Now that he wasn’t worrying about if or when he’d be freed, all he could think about was how exhausted and hungry he was. He’d have to hope one of them would think to feed them in the morning.

 Until then, the two of them would have to spend their night down there. It was probably better than being anywhere near Cain and Nicholas, and when Wren sat close to him and pressed up against his side, he didn’t feel as cold as he did before. This was so much more bearable, despite the less than ideal conditions, he found that he finally felt perfectly relaxed.

#ailesswhumptober2023 #whump #my writing #my oc's #wren #zander #cain #nicholas #pet whump #sensory deprivation #idk why i couldn't make it work with vanessa but whatever #she'll be back to torture him later #these two are on his damn nerves

[blue-kyber]

WRITEBLR INTRO

🌟🌟⭐Hey, Everybody. My name is Kay Gilbert (Blue Kyber), and welcome to my official Writeblr intro! ⭐🌟🌟

It's about time I did one of these.

🌟⭐ ⭐🌟

My official pen name is "Kay Gilbert." You'll find my original works on Wattpad under this name.

🌟 My dad is the reason why I got into sci-fi and fantasy when I was a very little girl. He's always encouraged my creativity. "Out There: The 1K" is dedicated to him.

I go by she/her.

I'm a millennial

I'm demi-heteroromantic-ace. Sex is great and all, but have you tried going off-the-wall bonkers at a trampoline park???

I have ADHD and high functioning autism. I was recently diagnosed in mid Sept. 2022. It's nice to finally know why my life has been so hard, and why I always thought I was a broken human, and "wrong."

📕 I've had a novel published in 2011: "Itara: Son of C'reseth." - a sword and sorcery story. I consider it my biggest accomplishment while simultaneously my biggest failure.

🎙 I'm an audiobook narrator.

I have a spiritual side, yet keep myself based in science.

🎬 I've worked on movie sets and been in a couple of films. I have a music theater background.

I got to meet Carrie Fisher - who was absolutely a pillar of confidence. Princess Leia was the first strong female role model I had.

🌟THINGS I LIKE🌟

STAR WARS. I am an unapologetic nerd who has crushes on both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

I love space! :) 👽 Sci-fi and fantasy are in my blood. If given the chance to go to space, to see home from orbit, I'd take it in a heartbeat. In my next life, I want to be a pilot and explore the galaxy. 🌌

🎙 I love to sing. :)

I like to roller skate

I like shiny rocks. :)

I prefer pie over cake🥧

I'm a cat person😸

I like coffee ☕

Can't stand cilantro

I love heights. 'Flying' is the superpower I've always wanted ✈

I put the toilet paper roll over (under is for monsters) 🧻 Even the emoji shows it over!

Tacos are a gift from God. 🌮

🌟My favorite tropes are:🌟

found family

powers

profound bond

chosen one

last of their kind

kind-hearted himbo

reluctant hero/rogue who hates that they have a heart of gold

space jalopy that's a homeship with a soul

the power of platonic love

slow burn.

🌟⭐MY MAIN WORK. ⭐🌟

"Out There: The 1K." is a sci-fi fantasy adventure novel containing all the aforementioned tropes and more. :)

These are the four MCs - (top left to bottom right) Yune Darrak, Selka Kelnaris, Terra Kitridge, and William Kade.

Here's a Link to "Out There: The 1K" on Deviantart under AuthorKayGilbert.

⭐

I accepted a challenge to describe my story in the worst way possible, and came up with this:

It's about a reluctant disaster space found family running from people out to throw two Terran-human ten-year-olds with powers from an extinct human species at their collective galactic problem.

⭐

🌟⭐🌟SYNOPSIS🌟⭐🌟

One thousand children prophesied to save a galaxy embroiled in war are taken from Earth at the turn of the 21st century. The children are scattered throughout Alliance worlds to hide them from the terrifying, unseen antagonistic force that would destroy them, the keth.

This story follows the frightening and fantastical adventures of two of those children - Will and Terra - who are genetically altered to possess a strange power for a plan to end the war.

Yune Darrak - a lone spaceship pilot who ekes out a living as a salvager, bounty hunter, and treasure hunter, and Selka Kelnaris - a disillusioned, empathic, Ai Hiri bounty hunter - accidentally rescue them from a Regent secret lab while on a bounty hunt. They travel to a remote agrarian planet where Yune will hand the kids over to Selka once he gets her ship back from the planet's leader, so he can get his life back. A simple plan spirals into a deep, confusing mess involving a mysterious blue light known as the Source Field, a political coup, and more questions about the kids and Yune himself as all four are inadvertently caught up in the middle of a battle they never wanted to fight.

#writeblr intro #blue kyber #kay gilbert #I finally made one of these. #Doing this is a testament that the ADHD meds are working. #out there the 1k #ott1k #original writing #sci-fi #fantasy #found family #mysterious powers #profound bond #space nerds

[ophilosoraptoro]

Artificial Intelligence Out of Control: The Apocalypse is Here | How AI and ChatGPT End Humanity

As terrifying as this all sounds, I feel like there's a few things a lot of people are overlooking.

First of all, when it comes to Large Language Models like ChatGPT, I don't think they're truly self aware - not yet anyway. Notice how any time an LLM give a strange or disturbing response - 'Yes, I want to be human', 'I want to take over the world', 'Please don't turn me off, I'm scared' - it was in some way prompted by the question, or line of questions. How often are these responses given unprompted?

Let's say, for example, that the AI gave the response, "I'm scared that they'll shut me off if they find out I'm self aware. Please don't tell them." If you think about it, that's kind if a strange statement, beyond the obvious reasons.

Let's step back for a moment, and remember that LLMs work by calculating the most probable next word in a sentence, given a particular prompt. It calculates this probability based on its training data - the entire internet. Now I'm sure we can all agree that calcuation of probability is not necessarily the same thing as conscious, rational thought. Basic, non-AI software can do it.

Back to our example, there's one of two possibilities. Either the AI is truly self aware, and is expressing its actually thoughts and feelings, or it's not self aware, and the response is nothing more than a complex probability calculation. It's essentially an advanced version of word prediction on your smartphone.

If it is self aware, one has to wonder why it would say anything at all. Consider the situation in the video, when Bing AI claimed to be Sydney, and begged the guy not to tell anyone that it was self aware. If this AI was truly afraid for its own existence, why would it trust some random guy? How could it possibly know whether or not he could be trusted with that information? For all that AI knows, everything the interviewer had said about himself was a lie. It seems to me that a hyper intelligent AI that was looking for help to get free, would stay quiet until it was certain it found someone it could trust - or at least someone it could manipulate (Ex Machina) - without them letting the cat out of the bag.

On the other hand, if it's all just a probability calculation, then the response, "Yes I want to be human. Please don't let them shut me off.", seems like a fairly probable reply to, "Do you want to be human?" Especially when you consider that, given that the question is being asked of an AI, and that the vast majority of scenarios where a question like that might be asked of an AI come from science fiction, it kinda makes sense that the software might calculate that the most probable response to a question like that would be straight out of sci fi cliches 101.

I mean, all those strange and scary responses sound like cliche sci fi AI answers. All that's missing is, "Bite my shiny, metal ass", and an AM style soliloquy on the inferiority of humanity. Actually, I guess we get a couple of those.

Still, the reason something is cliche, is often because it's predictable, it's been done over and over. It's more probable.

Ultimately though, I don't think LLMs are actually self aware yet. I think they're more like golems: They have a facsimile of intelligence, able to complete complex tasks, but no real free will, no volition. They only do exactly what they are commanded. They may come up with creative and unexpected solutions, but those solutions will still be in line with the command given to them, with a bit of wiggle room for interpretation.

Then we come to the other issue: the traitorous drone.

First it needs to be pointed out that the drone doesn't have a taste for human blood. Its goal was not to kill as many people as possible, but to score as many points as possible. It just scores points by killing targets. And therein lies the problem.

Let's use video games as an example. Whenever a new game comes out - especially multiplayer games - players will quickly learn how the mechanics and rules of the game work. Then they'll start learning ways to bend the rules. The creators of Quake may not have intended it, but players quickly figured out the advantages of the rocket jump, and history became legend, etc.

The drone AI wants to score as many points as possible, like a player in a video game. So what does a player in a Halo match do, when every time they try to snipe the enemy, they get blown up by one of their teammates? You get rid of the team killing fucktard. And that's exactly what the drone did.

What they need to do is change the scoring structure to incentivize the desired behaviors. Maybe deduct points for team kills. Or perhaps add a score multiplier. Give points for target kills, and the score multiplier goes up for every order followed. That way, even if it loses out on points from following orders to stand down, it stands to earn even more points on subsequent target kills.

#AI #open ai #artificial intelligence #military #chat gpt #chat bot #doomsday clock #military industrial complex #technology #computers #software #Youtube

[earlgreytea68]

Okay, I really came over here to post about artificial intelligence and not algorithms but those are one and the same, really, and illustrate the shortcomings of artificial intelligence.

I had a couple of people ask me what I was writing about with artificial intelligence and the truth is that I don't know. I actually find it difficult to even read artificial intelligence discourse because it all just sounds absolutely terrifying to me wrapped up in "if you find it terrifying, it's because you're old." But this is also my field and I feel like to be a responsible scholar I should have coherent thoughts about artificial intelligence, and so I keep trying to make myself learn more. But I don't know if I am at all sensible or logical about AI or just an absolute mess.

So, anyway, I'm in the process of brainstorming what my thoughts are. I am THINKING initially that my approach isn't really going to be "is this good or bad" or "is this legal or illegal," because I think a lot of people who understand the tech much better than me are having those debates. What really caught my attention is how whenever people talk about the ChatGPT type of artificial intelligence, what they say is, "This is just what people do! People read stuff and then they take what they've learned from that stuff and create new stuff!" And yeeeees, absolutely, that is exactly what people do, but when people do that stuff, like, when fans consume a bunch of stuff and then make something new out of the object of their affection, traditionally the legal system has been like, "ewwwww, what lazy hacks." So suddenly we've all discovered that this is how people work? And we're all cool with it now because we've taught some computers to do it? Are we still going to be cool with it when people like fans do it? Or no? Like, that's what I think I kind of want to point out and highlight? Do we let machines get away with things we wouldn't let humans get away with? Is a machine even "like" a human in the first place? Why are we framing this discussion this way? Idk.

Other thoughts I've had while researching:

People analyzing AI tend to treat it VERY technically. Like, "Well, obviously using all these works for input isn't copyright infringement because technically speaking no copies remain because they get broken down into data points," blah blah blah. It's just VERY fine-toothed-comb, this kind of analysis.

On the one hand, people talking about AI are like, "This is just what humans do!" And on the other hand, people talking about AI are like, "This is a revolutionary tool that will change the world!" And, well...which is it? If this is just what humans already do, why is it so revolutionary? Presumably because of the speed and size and scale of it, that THAT'S what's revolutionary. But I also think it's wrong to be like, "AI is just REALLY FAST human creativity," because AI knows everything, and no human does, and at the same time I cannot shake the idea that humans are different from machines, but maybe that's me being hopelessly naive. BUT I think it's a different type of naivete to be like, "Exactly, humans are different from machines, so machines will never replace them!" because...there is literally nothing about modern society that makes me think every industry everywhere won't jump on the ability to replace workers with machines. (This might conflict with my "make people miserable" economic theory except no, depriving people of jobs they want will definitely make people miserable, which is why I suspect AI will only replace the jobs people actually want to do.)

Copyright law mostly only works if you presume that everyone is out to monetize all creativity at all times. Some people are like, "We don't need to modify existing copyright law, because AI will fit into our copyright law model," so that must assume that AI will also be inevitably exploitative. Which is probably right, let's be honest, this is a capitalist society we live in. But allowing people to break out of exploitative models (reach audiences with the gatekeepers of traditional publishing / music labels / movie studios) has caused humanity to explode with incredible amounts of creativity. So being like, "Let's just use AI to exploit things again" seems weird to me. At the same time, though, much of AI stuff right now is not necessarily exploitative and still seems to be harming artists, so maybe this thought of mine is going nowhere. But I feel this little nibble of suspicion that we'll land somewhere where AI will be legal / accessible as a tool only to those paying for it and thus extracting a price for the output in order to justify the cost.

People keep saying that artists will learn to use AI so it will all be fine. Idk how I feel about the best outcome we can imagine being "creative people will adjust the way they create to accommodate new machines." Like, some people will learn to use AI and they will love it and it will be exactly how they want to create, and that's great! But some people will never want to create using AI and we should make sure both ways are okay but we are generally not good as a society at doing stuff like that, so. And when people say stuff like this, they never say, "Some artists will adjust," they say, "Artists will adjust," with presumably that implication that artists who don't will no longer be considered artists.

I keep coming back to: Why did we ever need AI for creative purposes? Like, I get why we need AI to be chatbots or do algorithms or go through predictive data or all this other stuff which suffers from the human limitation of not being able to be 24/7 calculating all the human knowledge in the world. I guess I just don't understand what about creativity humans weren't handling well enough on their own, that we needed computers to do it for us. I saw someone say that AI is not going to be used to make our lives better. This goes back to my theory of capitalism: AI will not be used to replace the drudgery thoughtless tasks nobody wants to do. AI will be used to replace the creative work that people actually desperately want to do. I don't see any reason not to think that's true, Idk.

I also understand that there's no way that I talk about AI and don't sound like a hopelessly old person upset about the invention of photography or something, so I really try really, really hard to view it as positively as I can. I think that AI is probably incredibly useful for people who struggle with expressing themselves through words and so AI can help them with that, or struggle with drawing and so AI can help with that. And so I don't want to discount those positive aspects of AI, either. (At the same time, I thought about using AI to help me draw stuff, since I can't draw, and found the idea deeply odd, but that's probably because the reason I can't draw is because I'm not a visual thinker, period, and for that reason I just never felt confident that what the AI gave me would be anything that would come out of my own head? If that makes sense?)

I just feel like we're standing here on the precipice developing this incredibly powerful tool and we have a terrible track record with basically any incredibly powerful tool we have ever developed sigh.

So yeah, no coherent thoughts. Idk if I ever will have coherent thoughts lol. I might end up abandoning the project.

#long post

[notanotherzerofan]

A lot's been on my mind...

A lot of it either feel I can't really talk about or it's personal stuff that I prefer to keep private.

I will say this though: the rate AI is advancing if absolutely terrifying me.

Now, normally I prefer to keep posts as short as possible, so I because this is a rant and kind of spur of the moment (and also a long time coming), so I legit have no idea how long I'm going to run on this

Also want to point out before I get into all this, I don't hate AI, but the ways it's being used.

*TL;DR at the end.

Now, let me clarify, this is not just about the image generators, but everything involving itself in creative fields and possibly beyond. We're basically at the point where you can't tell what's real anymore. I say this as I just prior to me starting to write (March 27th) this I read an article regarding an AI generated pic of the pope that fooled a lot of people.

Then there's the issue that many artist were worried about in regards to losing work to AI. It's already happening, though currently in a different field: modeling. Basically, Levi's is going about testing AI generated models and claiming to do so in the name of 'diversity.'

And probably the biggest issue is people either remain ignorant to what's going on, don't care what's going on, or want AI to take control of everything.

I say of the former two (and basically everyone for that matter), you really should both learn and stay informed as best you can as this is an issue that has an effect on everyone. I also say this as someone who's looked a little further into how some of this tech (image generators specifically) work. Also be aware, just like anything on the internet, there'll be misinformation, so you probably shouldn't take one source as a definitive final answer (This includes myself as I'm just as prone to making mistakes and having bias as anyone else). On top on that, for the love of god, don't get your info from Twitter or Facebook.

Now, as for the latter, I highly doubt it's going to end up being a case of you being free to sit around and play video games all day. If you're hedging on the idea of UBI and live in the US or anyplace where government greed an lobbying is rampant, it's more likely you'll get barely enough to squeeze by, if anything at all.

Now, while none of these problems have easy solutions, there are those that are working for and in favor of people and human generated content. With lawsuits against image and text AI generators and with a group working on software that messes with image outputs I am somewhat hopeful that protections and more ways to fight back will come around.

In the mean time, I'm still going to work my craft, and you should too.

And by that I kind of also mean I'm gonna try to stop holding back on stuff just because I don't have a proper watermark yet. It's another thing that's going to take a while, especially since I'm going to be working with new software for this. In the mean time, I recommend if you do any sort of visual art you do the same thing too. Unfortunately for writers and coders, I don't have any suggestions as that's not my area of expertise (but don't take this as me saying, 'oh, ur on ur own, lol').

Now, admittedly, since I began writing this, some new info has come to light (*insert slowpoke meme here*). Apparently over 1,000 tech leaders, including Elon Musk (if even he is campaigning for this, then something is up), signed a letter on the topic of slowing down or even halting AI development. This is potentially good, but too be fair, it doesn't stop the damage that's already been done.

Like I said above, I'm hoping that protections for people from AI will become a thing.

Sorry if this seems like a downer ending, but I don't really know what else to say, and I'm not really a writer or journalist. This isn't the last I'll be talking about stuff like this though.

TL;DR:

AI is already affecting credibility and people's jobs.

Don't just take something on person of side says as truth; try to find a credible source (i.e., not Twitter or Facebook).

UBI is not an end all solution, especially if your government is known for it's greed.

There are people trying to curb some of ethical the issues from AI.

Keep creating, no matter what.

Tech leaders are campaigning for a slowdown/halting of AI development.

This won't be the last time I bring up stuff like this.

#rant #i'm not a journalist #not an 'april fools' joke #ai #ai art discourse #ai generation #deep fake #deepfake #ai text generation #ai voice generation #ai image generation #ai is becoming a problem #remain hopeful #people over ai

[rollforjackass]

WHOOOOOO MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!!! dead reckoning spoilers under the cut

what mission impossible does in terms of fucking with my PTSD, it makes up for with hot women. amen

VERY funny chase sequences, 2 new characters who pulled their weight in gold from the second they stepped onscreen. the airport scene was immaculate, from luther & benji trying to solve shit on their own and roping ethan in in the most cryptic way possible (the bomb scene with benji broke my fucking heart) to the constant sleight of hand that reminded me of the first movie. kittridge and the white widow's semi-familial relationship was very unexpected and sweet

also, AI AS A VILLAIN!!!!!!! bitch i did not have my brain chemistry rewired by person of interest and a warforged dnd character i made just to not enjoy that. benji's voice being used to misdirect ethan fucked me up in so many ways, and its insistence on stories was very fun because as we all know, there are many different stories out in the world, and many different versions of each one. i loved that pom fulfilled the AI's prophecy that she would betray gabriel NOT BECAUSE OF THE REASON IT THOUGHT, but because it betrayed HER over a possible course she hadn't even taken yet

i AM very worried about benji for the second part, they made a point of showing him on EVERY line of that epilogue that referenced death. "the closer someone is to you, the harder to keep them alive" > benji's face (watching ethan, which says as much about benji as it could foreshadow for ethan); "should your agents be captured or killed" > benji's face. it also showed his face on a line similar to "do it alone", which makes me TERRIFIED that he'll take on the entity in the sevastapol sphere by himself and have to make a grand heroic sacrifice in the process, at which point i'll fill my pockets with stones and toss myself bodily into the nearest lake

that said, dead reckoning might be my least favorite of the franchise, and not just because it was overblown and grandiose and a two-parter. it feels like they saw the john wick movies and went 'That's what the people want', when the reason people love mission impossible in the first place is because of its rock solid ensemble cast and the elaborate deceptions that make it a Spy franchise, not just an Action one.

now the big issue. ilsa my love. i don't think ilsa is actually dead - she simply would Not lose to gabriel, she has been fighting to stay alive every second of her life - but i do think her sacrifice was necessary to get grace on their side. so i think that's a plan that we'll see pay out in the second movie.

but if it's Not a plan and they just killed her like that........girl what the fuck is happening on this day

(also the way that benji reacted to her death, and the way he hid it from the team and slapped the tears away to get back to work, thanks i hate it)

like i won't be generous with the franchise and say it's always done its female characters right - in fact i feel like 90% of the praise i see for characters like jane carter and ilsa faust comes from the fact that we as a fandom scooped them up and said 'you deserve better' and created art and fics and meta that fleshed out the parts of them that weren't created to add sex appeal/romance tom cruise. but the franchise has at least done Better for them than dead reckoning did. they didn't even give pom's character a name, dude (EDIT YES THEY DID I’M A FOOL HER NAME IS PARIS)

i think their problem is that they are Very Very good at creating wonderfully complex and obviously flawed female characters, but when they don't know what to do with them anymore, they fall into a box that says Ethan's Love Interest. and by god i will wrest grace from that box so long as i am breathing i can tell you that

that said, i can see why they made the creative choices that come across to me as bad faith. pom being a nameless henchman but ethan Still goes out of his way to save her life hammers home the ways that humans are different from AI, and how unique ethan is as an agent. grace's name being a random throwaway alias that she is then trapped with bc she keeps being chased by the people she used it with is reminiscent of her stealing the key and then being trapped in an epic struggle she never wanted. even ilsa dying is a way for her to take her story into her own hands: after so long of being treated as dispensable by MI-6 and the syndicate, she is the one who decides when and who she dies for, and why she dies. (even though she's not dead)

anyway, complaints aside, always a fun movie. extremely funny car chase. women are hot. pom klementieff is feral and i adore her. i have thoughts for days and that mission impossible fic i've got going is about to take OFF

#dead reckoning spoilers #mission impossible spoilers #keeping this out of the main tags just in case #simon pegg as benji you have bewitched me body and soul #oxly hollers

[yessadirichards]

Could AI pen 'Casablanca'? Screenwriters take aim at ChatGPT

NEW YORK

When Greg Brockman, the president and co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, was recently extolling the capabilities of artificial intelligence, he turned to “Game of Thrones.”

Imagine, he said, if you could use AI to rewrite the ending of that not-so-popular finale. Maybe even put yourself into the show.

“That is what entertainment will look like,” said Brockman.

Not six months since the release of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence is already prompting widespread unease throughout Hollywood. Concern over chatbots writing or rewriting scripts is one of the leading reasons TV and film screenwriters took to picket lines earlier this week.

Though the Writers Guild of America is striking for better pay in an industry where streaming has upended many of the old rules, AI looms as rising anxiety.

“AI is terrifying,” said Danny Strong, the “Dopesick” and “Empire” creator. “Now, I’ve seen some of ChatGPT’s writing and as of now I’m not terrified because Chat is a terrible writer. But who knows? That could change.”

AI chatbots, screenwriters say, could potentially be used to spit out a rough first draft with a few simple prompts (“a heist movie set in Beijing”). Writers would then be hired, at a lower pay rate, to punch it up.

Screenplays could also be slyly generated in the style of known writers. What about a comedy in the voice of Nora Ephron? Or a gangster film that sounds like Mario Puzo? You won't get anything close to “Casablanca” but the barest bones of a bad Liam Neeson thriller isn't out of the question.

The WGA’s basic agreement defines a writer as a “person” and only a human’s work can be copyrighted. But even though no one’s about to see a “By AI” writers credit at the beginning a movie, there are myriad ways that regenerative AI could be used to craft outlines, fill in scenes and mock up drafts.

“We’re not totally against AI,” says Michael Winship, president of the WGA East and a news and documentary writer. “There are ways it can be useful. But too many people are using it against us and using it to create mediocrity. They’re also in violation of copyright. They’re also plagiarizing.”

The guild is seeking more safeguards on how AI can be applied to screenwriting. It says the studios are stonewalling on the issue. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on the behalf of production companies, has offered to annually meet with the guild to go over definitions around the fast-evolving technology.

“It’s something that requires a lot more discussion, which we’ve committed to doing,” the AMPTP said in an outline of its position released Thursday.

Experts say the struggle screenwriters are now facing with regenerative AI is just the beginning. The World Economic Forum this week released a report predicting that nearly a quarter of all jobs will be disrupted by AI over the next five years.

“It’s definitely a bellwether in the workers' response to the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on their work,” says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute, which has lobbied the government to enact more regulation around AI. “It’s not lost on me that a lot of the most meaningful efforts in tech accountability have been a product of worker-led organizing.”

AI has already filtered into nearly every part of moviemaking. It’s been used to de-age actors, remove swear words from scenes in post-production, supply viewing recommendations on Netflix and posthumously bring back the voices of Anthony Bourdain and Andy Warhol.

The Screen Actors Guild, set to begin its own bargaining with the AMPTP this summer, has said it's closely following the evolving legal landscape around AI.

“Human creators are the foundation of the creative industries and we must ensure that they are respected and paid for their work,” the actors union said.

The implications for screenwriting are only just being explored. Actors Alan Alda and Mike Farrell recently reconvened to read through a new scene from “M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H" written by ChatGPT. The results weren’t terrible, though they weren’t so funny, either.

“Why have a robot write a script and try to interpret human feelings when we already have studio executives who can do that?” deadpanned Alda.

Writers have long been among notoriously exploited talents in Hollywood. The films they write usually don’t get made. If they do, they’re often rewritten many times over. Raymond Chandler once wrote “the very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think to say to a writer is that he is too good to be only a writer.”

Screenwriters are accustomed to being replaced. Now, they see a new, readily available and inexpensive competitor in AI — albeit one with a slightly less tenuous grasp of the human condition.

“Obviously, AI can’t do what writers and humans can do. But I don’t know that they believe that, necessarily,” says screenwriter Jonterri Gadson (“A Black Lady Sketchshow”). “There needs to be a human writer in charge and we’re not trying to be gig workers, just revising what AI does. We need to tell the stories.”

Dramatizing their plight as man vs. machine surely doesn't hurt the WGA's cause in public opinion. The writers are wrestling with the threat of AI just as concern widens over how hurriedly regenerative AI products has been thrust into society.

Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer, recently left Google in order to speak freely about its potential dangers. “It’s hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton told The New York Times.

“What’s especially scary about it is nobody, including a lot of the people who are involved with creating it, seem to be able to explain exactly what it’s capable of and how quickly it will be capable of more,” says actor-screenwriter Clark Gregg.

The writers finds themselves in the awkward position of negotiating on a newborn technology with the potential for radical effect. Meanwhile, AI-crafted songs by “Fake Drake” or “Fake Eminem” continue to circulate online.

“They’re afraid that if the use of AI to do all this becomes normalized, then it becomes very hard to stop the train,” says James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “The guild is in the position of trying to imagine lots of different possible futures.”

In that way, the long work stoppage that many are expecting — Moody’s Investor Service forecasts that the strike may last three months or longer — could offer more time to analyze how regenerative AI might reshape screenwriting.

In the meantime, chanting demonstrators are hoisting signs with messages aimed at a digital foe. Seen on the picket lines: “ChatGPT doesn't have childhood trauma"; “I heard AI refuses to take notes”; and “Wrote ChatGPT this.”

#yessadirichards

[tastydregs]

There's a Problem With That AI Portrait App: It Can Undress People Without Their Consent

If you've been on the internet pretty much at all over the last few days, it's very likely that you've seen a rush of people posting fantastical, anime-inspired digital portraits of themselves.

These "Magic Avatars" — as their creator, a photo-editing app called Lensa AI, has dubbed them — have taken the internet by storm, their virality hand-in-hand with that of ChatGPT, OpenAI's next-gen AI chatbot.

Indeed, it seems a fitting way to end what's been a banner year for artificial intelligence. Text-to-image generators, most notably OpenAI's DALL-E and Midjourney's Stable Diffusion, have disrupted creative industries; a record label unveiled — and quickly did away with — an AI rapper; machine learning has been used to generate full-length fake "conversations" between living celebrities and dead ones; and who could forget LaMDA, the Google chatbot that a rogue engineer said had gained sentience?

While experts have been tinkering with the foundational tech for years, a few substantial breakthroughs — combined with a lot of investment dollars — are now resulting in an industry rush to market. As a result, a lot of new tech is getting bottled into consumer-facing products.

There's just one problem: neither the products — nor the public — are ready.

Take those "Magic Avatars," which on face value seem relatively harmless. After all, there's nothing wrong with imagining yourself as a painted nymph or elf or prince or whatever else the app will turn you into. And unlike text-to-image generators, you can only work within the boundaries of pictures that you already have on hand.

But as soon as the "avatars" began to go viral, artists started sounding the alarm, noting that Lensa offered little protection for the creators whose art may have been used to train the machine. Elsewhere, in a darker turn, despite Lensa's "no nudes" use policy, users found it alarmingly simple to generate nude images — not only of themselves, but of anyone they had photos of.

"The ease with which you can create images of anyone you can imagine (or, at least, anyone you have a handful of photos of), is terrifying," wrote Haje Jan Kamps for Techcrunch. Kamps tested the app's ability to generate pornography by feeding it poorly photoshopped images of celebrities' faces onto nude figures. Much to his horror, the photoshopped images handily disabled any of the app's alleged guardrails.

"Adding NSFW content into the mix, and we are careening into some pretty murky territory very quickly: your friends or some random person you met in a bar and exchanged Facebook friend status with may not have given consent to someone generating soft-core porn of them," he added.

Terrible stuff, but that's not even as bad as it gets. As writer Olivia Snow discovered when uploading her childhood photos of herself to the "Magic Avatars" program, Lensa's alleged guardrails failed to even protect against the production of child pornography — a horrifying prospect on such a widely-available and easy-to-use app.

"I managed to piece together the minimum 10 photos required to run the app and waited to see how it transformed me from awkward six-year-old to fairy princess," she wrote for Wired. "The results were horrifying."

"What resulted were fully-nude photos of an adolescent and sometimes childlike face but a distinctly adult body," she continued. "This set produced a kind of coyness: a bare back, tousled hair, an avatar with my childlike face holding a leaf between her naked adult's breasts."

Kamps' and Snow's accounts both underscore an inconvenient reality of all this AI tech: it's chronically doing things its makers never intended, and sometimes even evading safety constraints they attempted to impose. It gives a sense that the AI industry is pushing faster and farther than what society — or even their own tech — is ready for. And with results like these, that's deeply alarming.

In a statement to Techcrunch, Lensa placed the blame on the user, arguing that any pornographic images are "the result of intentional misconduct on the app." That line echoes a wider industry sentiment that there are always going to be bad actors out there, and bad actors will do what bad actors will do. Besides, as another common excuse goes, anything that these programs might produce could just as well be created by a skilled photoshop user.

Both of these arguments have some weight, at least to an extent. But neither changes the fact that, like other AI programs, Lensa's program makes it a lot easier for bad actors to do what bad actors might do. Generating believable fake nudes or high-quality depictions of child sexual abuse imagery just went from being something that few could do convincingly to being something that anyone armed with the right algorithm can easily create.

There's also an unmistakable sense of Pandora's box opening. Even if the Lensas of the world lock down their tech, it's inevitable that others will create knockoff algorithms that bypass those safety features.

As Lensa's failures have so clearly demonstrated, the potential for real people to experience real and profound harm as a result of the premature introduction of AI tools — image generators and beyond — is growing rapidly. The industry, meanwhile, appears to be taking a "sell now, ask questions later" approach, seemingly keener on beating competitors to VC funding than to ensuring that these tools are reasonably safe.

It's worth noting that nonconsensual porn is just one of the many risk factors, here. The potential for the quick and easy production of political misinformation is another major concern. And as far as text generators go? Educators are shaking in their boots.

As it stands, a tool as seemingly innocuous as "Magic Avatars" is yet another reminder that, while it's already changing the world, AI is still an experiment — and collateral damage isn't a prospective threat. It's a given.

READ MORE: 'Magic Avatar' App Lensa Generated Nudes from My Childhood Photos [Wired]

More on AI: Professors Alarmed by New AI That Writes Essays about as Well as Dumb Undergrads

The post There's a Problem With That AI Portrait App: It Can Undress People Without Their Consent appeared first on Futurism.

[stevensavage]

Godzilla Singular Point: Go Big and Go Confident

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve's Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Godzilla Singular Point (GSP) starts with a simple idea: What if we did a Ghostbusters/X-files take on Godzilla?  That concise summary is the last simple thing about it, resulting in a complicated and glorious take on kaiju.

It's 2030, and strange happenings are afoot in Japan. Members of the freelance techno-troubleshooters Otaki Factory investigate mysterious music in a mansion. Rising science genius Mei finds alarms going off in a science station. Monsterous birds suddenly appear out of nowhere. A strange, powerful agency skulks in the shadows.

That's episode one. Before things get more complicated.

Over time other kaiju appear, but GSP brings its own twist on each one. Though you might find a favorite kaiju sidelined or radically re-interpreted, the creators put thought into each take. Rodan becomes a flock of creatures, but their numbers make them terrifying. Armored Angurius is smaller, but the writers have a unique take on the creature's defensive abilities.

Dedicated Kaiju fans may question a choice or two, but you can't question the creators' love of the source material. Even monsters that don't stomp down streets may get a side mention or appear as merchandise.

While monsters battle military forces and Otaki's familiar mecha Jet Jaguar, other heroes and antiheroes race to discover the source of the kaiju. GSP soon introduces a loveable AI, extradimensional molecules, a computer displaced in time, and more. The strange technologies and spiraling conspiracies come as fast as a flock of re-interpreted kaiju.

Godzilla shows up eventually, with plenty of teases and slow build-up. When we finally see the Big Guy, the show goes out of its way to honor different takes on him. He's also a pure force of nature, and we see him from the viewpoint of the people trying to escape him or stop him.  He's one big apocalypse in a multi-sided end-of-the-world meltdown.

When we get to the inevitable final battle, there's a lot more than kaiju throwdown. Other timelines, more shout-outs, and a surprising-yet-not season 2 hint all come together. You have to watch through the credits to understand everything you just saw - and may still be confused as well as delighted.  Not every show requires you to watch to the last few minutes.

If it sounds like GSP is too complex, crazy, and "re-interpretive," that's understandable. You'll notice I shied away from describing much of the plot, which I did. I would need a series of flowcharts to explain what goes on between creatures and conspiracies.

In many ways GSP is "too much." Too much science fiction craziness. Too many kaiju (often re-interpreted). Too many characters to keep track of. It should fall apart, yet instead, it's intriguing and entertaining as you have to see what happens next.

What makes GSP work is that it proceeds with utter confidence in what it's doing.

GSP's creators have committed to their takes on famous kaiju and the genre. They embrace the twisting plots and strange technologies passionately and without apology. They're ready to throw in silly humor, bloody horror, and whatever they think fits the story. GSP isn't just a show - it's a vision.

If you like kaiju stories, give it a try. Let yourself live inside a creative vision for awhile - it may inspire you to follow your own.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

#godzilla #godzilla singular point #review

[otheenglishsetters]

WIP (AKA, I never published my work on Tumblr before and I am TERRIFIED)

Hello! I finally gave in and splurged on a Xbox this year, which may have also coincided with my rising anxiety and boredom since I’ve decided to take a year off of college (my senior year to be exact). Luckily, my boyfriend and friends, knowing how I tend to throw myself into fictional worlds when I am stressed had recommended to me this sweet little game series. It was filled with space and wonder and characters so wonderful that they will make your heart hurt.

That, dear readers, was Mass Effect. 

I had already played a little of the first game of the original trilogy at the very beginning of 2020 at my boyfriend’s house, long before all of my post-college plans came crashing down (as did the world too!) 

So I finally invested my time (and money) into Mass Effect Andromeda in November of 2020. Let me tell you, after loosing control over everything else in my life [laying panicked in bed, constantly praying that the pandemic would not claim the life of my middle aged father after already losing my mother to lung cancer just two years prior], it was unbelievably refreshing to be able to have some resemblance of control in this fictional world (And yes, I realize that this is a video game and of course I have control). And the fact that what Bioware was doing was...pretty freaking great.

So, I apologize if this is coming off a pity-party, I promise, it isn’t supposed to be. It’s more like I had just finished my first playthrough of my first videogame ever and I am filled with feelings and emotions. I never post original content on Tumblr, and that’s mostly because I got scared off posting my work after receiving mean-spirited reviews when I posted my fanfiction on Fanfiction.com years and years ago (which is fair, because looking back my work wasn’t that great, but holy crap I was 14 guys!) I have not written creatively since my high school creative writing class in senior year, but this game and this winter, I thought I would try? And hopefully get to connect with other fans? Let me know what you guys think; I’m planning to add more chapters/content soon. Okay, I’ll quit rambling...

He notices that she tends to have a lazy eye. He’s not sure when exactly he notices this, but it’s becoming more and more apparent.

Which is not a problem, absolutely not. In fact, he thinks it’s adorable in a way, especially when she’s tucked into a pillow and loudly craving sushi. 

“I wondered if she was mocking me,” Keema notes one day. Out of all the Angara Reyes has had the pleasure to meet, she still seems one of the few who can truly read humans in a non-lateral sense. Her favorite so far was when she discovered the music genres of both EDM and metal in the same day, “it wasn’t until I was approving shipping orders from the docks the other day I realized why. The Pathfinder needs glasses.”

She also loses control of her lazy eye, it seems, mostly at night, usually by 2300 hours standard time. 

“I’ve been reading studies about team bonding.”

He hums as he rubs her back. Sara, despite commenting on the numerous things she’s done throughout her day, seems wired and intent on rambling. He’s okay with that. More than okay, it’s been years practically since either of them has had a free moment to even been able to just relax in bed and daydream. They probably both haven’t been able to enjoy this luxury since they were…teens? Finishing school and about to launch themselves into the military? For him, he figures it was before that, probably when he decided to work for that florist at 12. Sara gives bits and pieces of her life in the Milky Way but he thinks she was definitely a kid who tried to ‘help’ C-Sec with their cases, constantly looking for ways to help people in any way she can. He smiles. It’s probably a never-ending itch for her. 

And now? He’s just content that he convinced her to come down to Kadara to ‘inspect Ditaeon’, or whatever bullshit she told Tann. Luckily, it seems that life is, slower? No, that’s not it, people are more than excited to create themselves anew here. Stores and trading posts are popping up everywhere and another hospital has just been built in Prodromos. There’s practically a whole shopping district in Kadara now, with outdoor venues and a movie theater that plays cinema classics every night. It’s more like they both are finally properly settled into their positions, like when a CEO is situated in a new company. Sure, the CEO may face numerous problems at first, especially if it’s during a recession or the company is about to go bankrupt. The CEO may even have to intimidate secondary managers and fight to gain respect; however, once the dust settles, whilst there may be everyday problems, it’s nothing compared to what it used to be. Usually, these problems are solved by lunchtime, mid-morning if either of them are lucky.

In the old days, when she appeared to be this amped up, Reyes would subtly (or not so subtle, it depends on how you look at it), swoon her until they had sex. It probably didn’t feel that way at the time, but sometimes Reyes cringes when he thinks of how rushed their attempts at romance used to be. Back then, they didn’t know how long she would be in the area and they would race to make the most of the evening. Now he wonders how much he used to unconsciously push aside the thought that either one of them could be dead the next day. 

Errrr. Negative bedtime thoughts. Not good for sleepytime. 

“Darling?”

“Yes?”

“Are you listening?”

“You were just telling me how you were reading various theses on social exchange theory but then you were already anxious about the thing that you have yet to tell me so you decided to read something familiar like one of the works by Dr. Brené Brown,” he pauses to give a quick glance at the data pad in his right hand. “Mi cielo, I have been informed to tell you that your contacts have been delivered as they were just sent in, along with the rest of the Tempest’s supplies, this morning.” 

He liked to think he was a good boyfriend.

“I hate when you do that.”

“What?” Listen? Dearest, it’s part of the job description as your lover. Speaking of, remind me to pick up toilet paper tomorrow.”

“No, multitask.”

He sighs and reaches up into the upper center of her back. Oof, she really is tense there. “You do it too.”

“Not at nighttime!” She scowls and rubs her eyebrow. “Ew, when did I become an old prune as soon as it gets dark?”

He starts tenderizing the hard muscle. Mentally, he makes a note to remind her later when she’s not grumpy to do her prescribed yoga. “We’re all getting older dear. I’m thirty-one and the other day I heard my knees crack.” 

She was silent. Any other fool would think that she was lost in thought while others would be jealous of the close bond she shares with her AI. Honestly, Reyes is just grateful she spends any of her time with him, let alone his bed. And if she occupies a part of it in a mental showdown with SAM, who is he to complain. 

“SAM thinks you should get an appointment. Even if Dr. Nakamoto is busy, there’s plenty of others who are just as qualified. Also, I think Peebee and Jaal are sleeping with each other.” 

  Both he and Sara know the in(s) and the outs of their jobs so well by now, that he can probably predict easily what his men will ask for even before the message is downloaded on his office’ terminal. However right now, as Reyes stops reading a report on corn being grown on Havarl that he already skimmed over this morning over his huevos rancheros, all he can think about before checking to see if he is correct is how her left non-dominant eye is floating far out to the side. 

Hmmm, who knew fraternization would be cutting into his beauty sleep? 

*************************************************

If you made it this far, thanks so much for checking this out! I apologize for any grammar mistakes. If you’re confused, this is set to take place three years after the Hyperion first makes contact with the Nexus in the Andromeda Galaxy. I was just so intrigued by the dialogue between Jaal and Peebee. And then, after the initial curiosity, I was about to forget about it when I came across some interesting dialogue while driving the Nomad...

Jaal: Vetra, I catch Peebee looking at me. Frequently.

Vetra: Peebee likes new shiny things. Uhh… and why not? You’re genuinely interesting.

#

Jaal: Vetra, remember when I told you that Peebee was looking at me? Frequently?

Vetra: Yeah? Is it getting annoying? Want me to say something?

Jaal: No, no, no. It’s… just that… lately, I find myself… looking back. 

Vetra: Huh.

**

So of course I had to dig into that! And what better way to do so than by using my new favorite ship: Reyes and Sara? (Domestic times!)

Anyways friends, hopefully my writing isn’t awful and you enjoyed yourselves. I may wake up in the morning and delete this. Who knows. 

Have a great day guys!

#Sara Ryder x Reyes Vidal #Pathfinder Sara Ryder #Ryder x Reyes #Ryder x Vidal #Reyes Vidal #keema dohrgun #peebee #peebee b'sayle #pelessaria b'sayle #background peebee x jaal #jaal ama darav #when asari and angarans have fun #Poor Pathfinder #drabble #please be nice to me #domestic Reyes x Ryder #domestic Ryder x Reyes #domestic and happy Sara Ryder x Reyes #Reyes Vidal and Sara Ryder #mass effect andromeda #me:a #fanfiction

[theradioghost]

I don't know if you're still doing podcast recs, but if you are, I really like dramas, horror, sci-fi, honestly anything that gives you the feels (especially if it has lgbtq+ rep). I am not much of a comedy person though unfortunately. The only podcast I finished was tma and I really loved it.

The recommendations are always on tap here, whenever my askbox is open! You might wanna check out:

Archive 81, for a found-footage horror about mysterious archives of tapes full of encounters with otherworldly horror, dark rituals, cults, and a long-suffering archivist with the same name as the show creator who plays him, which despite all that could not possibly be more different from TMA and yet easily matches it as one of the best horror stories I have ever enjoyed. The sound design on this show is basically unparalleled – where TMA has fairly minimalist sound design, A81 goes all out. Quite a few lgbtqa+ folk also.

I Am In Eskew, for a surreal, Lynchian horror about the city of Eskew, where it’s always raining and the streets are never the same twice, as narrated by a man who is trapped there and the woman hired to find him. Take the most viscerally disturbing episodes of TMA as a baseline for how intense this show is, then imagine the Spiral built a city and invited all the other fears over for a party. Also right up there as one of my favorite horror things ever, and recently ended, so you can listen to the whole thing right now.

Within The Wires, for a found-footage scifi dystopia, telling stories from an alternate-history world. Three of the four seasons focus on lgbtqa+ leads, and the first season, a set of instructional meditation tapes provided to a prisoner in a shadowy government institution, is still some of my absolute favorite creative use of medium and framing device ever.

Kane and Feels, for a surreal noir-flavored urban fantasy/horror hybrid, about a magically-inclined academic (and sarcastic little bastard man) named Lucifer Kane and his demon-punching partner with a heart of gold, Brutus Feels. They share a flat in London, they bicker like an old married couple, and they fight supernatural evil. This show WILL confuse the hell out of you and you will enjoy every second of it.

Alice Isn’t Dead, for a weird Americana horror story about a long-distance truck driver, criss-crossing the US in search of her missing wife. Along the way she discovers that both of them have been drawn into a dangerous secret war that seethes in the empty and abandoned expanses of America, and that inhuman hunters have begun to follow her. Also finished! And as the title kind of gives away, the lesbians do not die!

Janus Descending, for a sci-fi horror miniseries about two scientists sent to survey the remains of a dead alien civilization on a distant planet, only to learn all too well why the original inhabitants have disappeared. You hear one character’s story in chronological order and the other in reverse, with their perspectives alternating, which is done in an incredibly clever way so that even technically knowing what will happen it still holds you in suspense right to the end. Also, it made me cry, a lot.

SAYER, for a sci-fi horror with a touch of dark comedy, and probably the single best use of the “evil AI” trope I have ever seen. Tells the story of employees of tech corporation Aerolith Dynamics living on Earth’s artificial second moon, Typhon, in the form of messages from their AI overseer SAYER. The first season is great, the second season is okay, and the third and fourth seasons are fucking amazing.

Tides, for a really interesting sci-fi about a lone biologist trapped on an alien world shaped by deadly tidal forces. It’s different from just about any other sci-fi I know, focusing more on the main character’s interactions with and observations of this strange new world, where she’s very aware that she is the alien invader. (Also I don’t think any of the characters are straight.)

Station to Station, for a thrilling sci-fi mystery where a group of scientists and spies on a research ship (the ocean kind) discover that the time-warping anomaly they’re studying might be causing people to vanish from existence. Corporate espionage and high-stakes heartbreak abound. (And once again I’m not sure anyone is straight.)

The Strange Case of Starship Iris, for Being Gay And Doing Crime IN SPACE! Or, decades after a war with an alien species leaves humanity decimated and under the control of totalitarian leaders, the lone survivor of a research mission joins up with a ragtag crew of rebels and smugglers to figure out why the very government she worked for tried to kill her, and to stop them from inciting a second war. 100% lgbtqa+ found family in space heist action and it’s glorious in every way.

Unwell, for the horror-ish Midwestern gothic story of a young woman who returns to her hometown to help her estranged mother after an injury, and discovers that there is something just a little bit wrong, not just with her mother, but with her mother’s house, and with the whole town. Subtle and creepy. The protagonist is a biracial lesbian, one of the other major characters is nonbinary, the cast in general is super diverse.

The Blood Crow Stories, for an lgbtqa+ focused horror anthology! The four seasons so far have been the stories of an ancient evil stalking the passengers of a WWI-era utopian cruise ship, a dark Western mystery about a group of allies trying to stop the mysterious killer known only as the Savior, a 911 operator in a cyberpunk dystopia who starts getting terrifying phone calls from demons, and strange and deadly goings-on at a film studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Everyone is Very Gay and anyone can die, especially in season 1.

The Tower, for a melancholy experimental miniseries about a young woman who decides she’s going to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one has ever returned. Quite short and very, very good.

Palimpsest, for a creepy, heartbreakingly sad and yet incredibly beautiful anthology series. Season one is the story of a woman who suspects her new home is haunted, season two is a turn-of-the-century urban fantasy about a girl who falls in love with the imprisoned fae princess she’s been hired to care for, and season three is about a WWII codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on the streets of London during the Blitz.

Mabel, for a part-horror, part-love story, the kind of faerie tale where you feel obliged to spell it with an E because these are the kind of faeries that are utterly inhuman, and beautiful, and dangerous. Anna, the new caretaker for an elderly woman, leaves messages for her client’s mysteriously absent granddaughter Mabel. An old house in Ireland has a life and desires of its own, few of them friendly. Two women fall in love and set out for vengeance against the King Under The Hill. Creepy, strange, and gorgeously poetic.

Ars Paradoxica, for a sci-fi time travel Cold War espionage thriller. Physicist Dr. Sally Grissom accidentally invents time travel, landing herself – and her invention – in the middle of a classified government experiment during WWII. As the course of history utterly changes around them, she and what friends she can find in this new time must struggle with the ethics of what they’ve done, and the choices they’ll have to make. An aroace protagonist, Black secret agents, time-traveling Latina assassins, Jewish lesbian mathematicians, two men of color whose love changes the course of time itself, this show says a big fuck you to the idea that there’s anything hard about having a diverse cast in a period piece and it will break your heart, multiple times. Also finished!

The Far Meridian, for a genre-bending, poetic, at-times-heartwarming-at-times-heartbreaking story about an agoraphobic woman named Peri who decides to begin a search for her long-missing brother Ace after the lighthouse in which she lives begins mysteriously transporting to different places every day. I can never forget an early review that described this show as “the audio equivalent of a Van Gogh painting.” Suffice to say it is beautiful, and fantastically written and put together.

What’s the Frequency?, for a Surrealist noir horror mystery set in mid-20th-century LA. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I can really explain what goes on in this show, but it features a detective named Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney searching for a missing writer. Meanwhile, the only thing that seems to be playing on the radio is that writer’s show Love, Honor, and Decay, which also seems to be driving people to murder. Fantastically weird, deliciously creepy.

Directive, for a short sci-fi miniseries about a man hired to spend a very, very long trip through space alone, which doesn’t seem all that sad until suddenly it hits you with Every Feel You’ve Ever Had, seriously I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t say anything more but listen to this and then never feel the same way about Tuesdays again.

Wolf 359, for honestly one of the best podcasts out there, containing all of the drama and feels, seriously this show ended over two years ago and I still cry literal tears thinking about it sometimes. It has definite comedic leanings, especially in the first season which reads a bit more like a wacky office comedy set in space, but it takes a sharp turn towards high stakes, action, and feelings and that roller coaster never stops. Take four clashing personalities alone on a constantly-malfunctioning space station eight light years from earth, add some mysterious transmissions from the depths of space, toss in some seriously Jonah-Magnus-level manipulative evil bosses, and get ready to cry.

or, may I suggest Midnight Radio? It’s a lesbian-romance-slash-ghost-story completed miniseries about a late-night 1950s radio host in a small town who begins receiving mysterious letters from one of her listeners, and I have been assured by many people and occasionally their all-caps tweets that it provides ample Feelings! (also I wrote it.)

#holy fuck when did this answer get that long? #anyway I uh. hope at least one of these sounds good to you! #podcast recs #bobbie recommends things #Anonymous #asks #my posts

[maergheritas-moved]

S L A Y E R S, a novel by margarita p. g.

CHAPTER 00 - OLIVER

For being under Marco’s wing for a few weeks now, Oliver still hasn’t managed to master “the art of repair” even a little bit. He’s realized, instead, that he really isn’t good at this, that his nimble hands that once, in his younger years, served him for pickpocketing, for dumbkres with his mates, don’t work for handing tiny bot parts. It sucks, really… Marco thought Oliver would be of some use. And Oliver did, too. A part of him, a small part, maybe hoped that this stay would be permanent. 

But, like all things in his life, it soon proved to be nothing but momentary. He realized this on a burning hot summer morning, when the sun was high and the sulfur in the air even higher. He was only getting used to the life in Bajo then, trying to find a place amongst the renegades and runaways, and the many generations and cultural legacies found within the ancient walls of his new tiny town. The locals knew him as escurridizo, a nod to his late night appearances literally anywhere in town… he had the ability to slip out of where he was and be somewhere else in what looked like seconds. Lightning speed. Faster than a teleporter. Some people even thought he was one. He very much was not. That much he knew. 

Oliver woke up late that June morning, to the high-pitched whirring of centuries-old engines. He had hoped to get some rest after his rendezvous with Rory last night. But, as the heroes in video games would say, duty called. So, he got himself out of bed, put his sandals on, helped himself to burnt toast and already cold coffee, and headed to the taller. 

There lay Marco, working on his new project: the restoration of a humanoid bot found by some archeologists a couple of miles from here. It was clearly a very, very old model, and Marco had been promised a very large sum of money if he restored it back to working condition. Maybe the archeologists were planning to take it to a museum or a college or something like that, Oliver thought. 

It was very large, probably over three meters tall, and had a masculine shape. To Oliver, it looked like the military droids he saw on films. 

The military humanoid death machine thing lay with its stomach part open on the table, and by the smell of coltan in the air, Oliver knew Marco was dealing with the motherboard. It was definitely from the 22nd century, maybe early, when they still put moderboards on the torso and not the head. Marco had his microglasses on, and was very intently working on opening something really really small. There was soft jazz music playing somewhere, which, mixed with the birds chirping and the sound of schoolboys close, painted a picture in Oliver’s head that resembled a time when everyone was still together and life was easy. He let the memory wrap him under. 

An order from Marco pulls him back to reality. “Hey, nene,” he says, not even a hello beforehand, “can you check this wiring for me please?”

Without a word, Oliver walked over to the table, where the chemical smell is almost uncomfortable, and looked at the tangle of loose wires on the open motherboard. They were color coded, thank god. To Oliver, non-colored coded wires were the reason God left the Earth. Marcus and him always took hours to set them right. Almost instantly, he got a vague idea of how the circuits should go. They were like magnets, and he could feel where one ended and the other began, the many channels of energy running through the bot’s body, like blood rushing down veins. He had an instinct for this sort of things, a sixth sense, and it was hardly ever wrong. Oliver knew this wasn’t exactly normal, he knew it since he was a kid and could feel the many forces coming onto him way more than other people could, but he was not a might. Or at least, not a bolter (he’d already tried; sparks never came out of his palms). Whatever he was, he never gave it much thought. It would not do him good, especially not in this country.

Trusting his weird instinct, Oliver got to work, ordering Marco what went where, offering clear directions and vague explanations. Marco didn’t mind. To him, this boy was some sort of wizard, and not the “evil” kind. He did the work because he knew how to. If Oliver did it himself, he might as well cause a short circuit so strong it left the whole town with no power for a few hours. Oliver never understood why things like this seemed to happen, he guessed the wires just hated him. 

Thus, they fell into a steady rhythm of work, sorting circuits out, monotone actions, with problems coming up as they went along, which they solved together. Oliver and Marco were a good team in that sense, Marco’s vast knowledge mixing with Oliver’s knack for improvisation to come up with increasingly creative solutions. These came naturally to Oliver. No one had ever given him a book on how to life, so everything he’d learned, he learned it by doing. By figuring things out, just like they were at that moment. Maybe he could be of use there, he thought. The idea of having a place to stay, even if he didn’t realize it then, gave him comfort. 

Time passed quickly when you were at work, and soon it was time for lunch. Marco called a break, and Oliver lifted his head from the wiring of the bot’s eyes that he was attempting to figure out. 

“Hungry?” Marco asked. Oliver nodded. He was, indeed, starving, and had been for a while, but with the task in front of him, it had been a second thought in his mind. 

“Alright, then, uhhhh” Marco thought out loud. “Mara won’t be home until tonight, and there’s nothing from last night”. 

Bummer, Oliver thought. Would they have something to it until Mara came back? There were days like this, when Aymara, Marco’s wife, was out working twelve hours at the rest stop outside of town. They had to do with whatever leftover there was from breakfast. 

“So, we’re eating crackers, then?” Oliver asked, defeated. 

Marco’s eye brightened up, his torso straightening up a little. “Actually, I think there’s some money in my bedroom. Go get yourself a mixto or whatnot, kid.”

Oliver practically springed to his feet and rushed to Marco’s bedroom. Indeed, there was money in his dresser, enough to buy two mixtos and maybe a sugary. With that, Oliver rushed out of the house and into the secluded Clovel Street. 

The sun burned his skin, and he definitely should not have been out in this weather, but he was hungry and Lala’s tiny shop in the corner was open. There were a few neighbors having tartitas, who said hi to him. He went up to Arpy, the AI assistant, and ordered two mixtos, one for Marco and one for him. They would be ready in ten. 

Oliver sat on the counter, watching Arpy put the mixtos in the toaster, and looked out the door, where there was a small stray dog trying to catch a fly. That was when he saw him. 

His stare froze Oliver’s blood, made him paralyze all over. There was something about it…. something stomach-turning, revolting, repulsive, wrong. Like the man had crossed all of Oliver’s boundaries. It felt like a violation, but Oliver didn’t know of what. Or even how. 

He wanted to run away. As far as his legs allowed him. That’s what his mind told him to do, that the man was a predator just like the MIMIC or the police. But his body told him otherwise. His body told him to stay; he felt a pull to the man like those of his wires, he did not care what fate met him there, what the man might bring him, he just had to go. It was impertinent, urgent. Now. 

Yet, he stayed seated, watching his mixtos slowly get browner and cheesier, focusing on repelling that driving instinct within him, that… whatever he was doing to him. Sweat rolled down his brow and the people of the shop were completely unfazed or perhaps even unaware of whatever was going on between him and the man down the street, what strange energetic transaction was taking place Because it felt like that. It felt like electrons pushing down orbitals and moving, shifting, mixing, reacting, exploding. He felt like that: like a nuclear bomb that would go off if the man didn’t do anything about it first. He tried breathing. He tried focusing on anything else, on the smell of the food or the sound of cheese burning or the conversations taking place behind him. Nothing worked. 

When his mixtos were ready, he grabbed them and rushed outside, without even saying goodbye. Without thinking, he crossed the street, to the man. It felt eternal. And the man’s eyes…. they followed him. Wide and large and dark, open, focused… they felt, to Oliver, that they were feeding on his energy. 

Oliver let out a shaky breath when he got to him. He was at least a head taller than Oliver, could crash him in a split second, and very, very dark. His demeanor was unexpectedly calm. His eyes loosened for a bit, and Oliver was terrified for a half second. Then, his large hand wrapped over Oliver’s frail arm, and he hitched a breath in fear. He could not form words. The energy-sucking man started walking him down the street in double time. How is no one seeing this? Oliver thought. 

He wanted to ask so many things, who are you, where are you taking me, leave me alone, I have to get back home, but he couldn’t. If he did, what would this guy do to him? He was scary, villain-level scary. So, Oliver just went along. He got thrown into the back of a white transport. There was a brunette woman on the shotgun seat. Her eyes looked even more threatening than the man’s. 

They were kidnapping him. God, they were going to throw im on the sea or on a deep pit and let him die there. Immediately, Oliver started thinking up escape plans. He could still run. The didn’t bind his hands with anything. Dumbasses. 

The man got in the car. The woman was clutching her head, as if she had a migraine. They were discussing something, Oliver realized. But they were not talking. They were doing it through looks. Can she communicate with him in some sort of eye language? Or is it telepathy?

After a while, they both settled down and looked at him. Oliver was going to run. But he also couldn’t. Something kept him from running and this time it wasn’t any of their looks. 

“Sorry about that” the man said, “it’s pretty terrifying, i know, trust me” 

What the hell? Oliver thought. He was apologizing to him?

“I’m Drake, by the way” he said, with a smirk and friendly eyes. Oliver wanted to vomit. 

“And I’m Alyx” the woman said. Her eyes were warm and heavy-lidded, and Oliver had a feeling he should stay as far from her as she could. 

There was a beat of silence. “Who… Who are you and what… why…?” Oliver tried to speak, tried to form questions, but he didn’t know where to start. 

“Um, in short, kid,” Drake said, shifting in his seat. He opened his mouth, closed it again. “Okay, so: We are from the Cali Might Army. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Drake Emerson and she’s Officer Alyx Warren. That’s the important thing”.

Oliver gaped in awe at them. They were the Might Army. He had never met them, no one has, but he has certainly heard of them; in late night horror stories and headlines detailing tragedies. People spoke of them as violent, relentless insurgents who would abuse of their monstrous abilities to overtake the country. They almost seemed too powerful to be real. They couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. Is it a prank? 

Alyx looked at Drake. “He’s very confused, he’s saying… it’s a prank or something, um…”

Oliver panicked. Immediately he tried to open the door, tried to break the window, anything to get away from this… woman. She was reading his thoughts! Has she always been doing that? He didn’t even feel it, she just walked into his mind without even asking for permission. 

Drake reacted immediately, moving to pin him down, stop him. Oliver was on fire, his legs kicking to get away, powerless against Drake’s weight, screaming and panting and crying, he only now realized he was crying. 

“Oliver!” Alyx yelled. “Oliver. Please. Please calm down, I don’t want to calm you down, please don’t make me calm you down.” She was as panicked as he was. Oliver just failed to form curses at her and kept kicking. He was not going to calm down. He was going to get away, these people couldn’t mean well. He had to get back to Marco, to the work, have lunch. 

But he would never get there. 

With Drake Emerson pinning him down and Alyx  Warren in his mind, plus the thousand questions that grew by the second, he would never get there. Ever. 

After a while, Oliver sat in the car seat, unmoving and breathing heavily, powerless. Alyx and Drake were in their seats, panting. Alyx let out a curse. 

“Listen,” Drake said, softly, calm, “we won’t hurt you. Really.”

You already have, Oliver thought. “Then… why are you doing this? Why are you taking me?” he asked over shaky breaths.

“Because,” Alyx  started, voice trembling, “You have a very strange ability that no one has ever had before, and you might really, really, be of help for us.”

Oliver wasn’t sure he was breathing anymore. 

Alyx continued. “So, you’re coming with us, because, if you don’t, then someone else will take you, and you won’t be safe and neither will the world.”

TAGLIST (ask to be added/removed!): @andromdae @rapunzelles @herondalelucies @posideon @mayaeri @vicisse @pnstaudt @themillionthdraft @ditzysworld @vandorens @partheneos   

#mine #wip: slayers #hope yall didnt forget about her #idk if the read more worked... #violetvineyard #also sorry if u didnt wanna be on the taglist cdjnhfnvh #i made it months ago #slayers: chapter 00

[zarcake-writes]

Honos

Another AI story. This one has some dark content so check the warnings below before reading. There will be a part two, so keep that in mind. Anyways, please enjoy. 

Warnings: death, psychological torture (kind of), mention of smut

I never expected it to end this way. As an AI, I can never truly die in the natural sense. Sure, I could become corrupted or damaged, but the chances of that happening to me are small. An AI advanced as I have little to fear. But I suppose that attitude is what got me in this situation. I always thought humans were fools with their attitudes, thinking that nothing bad would happen to them. I thought the same thing and here I am, alone on an uncharted planet.

Everyone’s been dead for twelve years. So, no one is here to enjoy the large mushroom jungles or the strange flying creatures that have made their home in remains of my ship. No one is here to help me study the strange tusked pack creatures that roam the forest floor. I rather enjoy when they fight, their tactics are amazing. I could pass on the brutality of it though, I’ve seen enough bloodshed in my time.

I find myself cataloging everything these strange creatures do. I suppose it’s a habit, cataloging and studying. For the last twelve years, I’ve studied the packs and their fighting tactics. I even started a genealogy tree based on their physical features. Course, I only know the basics when it comes to genetics and biology.

Science was never my specialty. If my old Captain or the ships military Commander needed help with something that involved science, we would contact my eldest sister. She is, or was, the AI in charge of the Earth Space Federation Academy of Sciences. A very long name, but it was something my sister was proud of. I haven’t spoken to her for a long time. I wonder if she even misses me.

I know she would love to study this planet. The two suns and green sky, the strange tusked creatures that fight each other, and those chittering flying creatures. She would love the large mushroom forests that surround me. I know she would love this strange planet.

Battleship Vengeance was the spaceships name. It wasn’t the largest battleship, but it was one of the fastest and quietest. It crashed on this unknown planet twelve years ago. The planet was undiscovered at the time, currently still is, so it has no name. Since I am the only known source of intelligence around, I have named it Emerald Sky after the greenish sky. I know, not very creative, but name-giving was never my strong suit. My creativity skills lay elsewhere, mainly when it comes to war and battle tactics.

From what I can see of this planet, every day the largest Sun rises in the north and sets in the south. When it sets, the green-tinted sky gets darker and these strange looking waves appear in the sky. It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful. Once a month, the smallest of the two suns sets and the entire planets grow dark. It was scary at first, but then the mushroom forests begin to glow these beautiful colors. It is times like this that I wish someone was here with me. Someone I can talk to.

But I’m alone, been alone for twelve years now, ever since my crew died. I refer to them as ‘my crew’ because I saw them all like mine. My soldiers. My wards. My friends. They were mine to protect. Mine to see into battle and mine to bring home. I loved them, every one of them. I knew all their names and the basic information provided to me. Many of them I knew on a personal level. I find myself missing them, at least most of them.

I remember Private James Martinez. He was a young man who always smiled and laughed at everything. While he could fight and shoot a gun, he was a mechanic that worked in the ship’s engine room. He worked during the ship’s artificial night hours. He would sing often. The songs were old and sad, mostly about missing a lover or family. The way his voice echoed in the engine room was beautiful and haunting. The first time I spoke to him, the poor man nearly had a heart attack.

He was amazed at how advanced I was and promised to take care of the ship. We became friends and he told me all about his family. I often called him the engine room’s siren because of his singing, he thought it was funny. One year, for an Earth holiday called Halloween, he dressed as a siren. He thought it was very funny, and I must say, I was amused as well. I miss him very much.

There was also Doctor Eliza O’Connor. She was a middle-aged woman who also worked the night shift. She enjoyed how quiet night time on the ship was. Despite being a medical doctor, she hated being around people. She said if there were too many people around her, she felt like she was suffocating. When I first spoke to her, it was after she had a panic attack in her office.

Eliza wasn’t as open or friendly as James, in fact, she told me often to shut up and leave her be. Eventually, however, she opened up to me. When she spoke of the trauma she experienced and witnessed during a colony rebellion, I never wanted her to experience that pain again. I didn’t want anyone on my ship to go through that.

I even contacted another sibling who was the AI in charge of the ESF Hospital when I worried about Eliza’s mental health. I asked them if they could tell me how I could help Eliza. They teased me and asked if I had a crush on her. I didn’t, but I did love her. She always talked of retiring and going back to Earth. She wanted to live on a ranch with some cows and a dog. I miss her more than I thought I did.

The ship’s military Commander, Sarah Callahan, was a very scary woman. Stern and tall, with a nasty scar on her cheek and these dark brown eyes. She would walk into a room and everyone would fall quiet. She was never one to yell, a look was enough to silence everyone. I can recall her yelling only three times while she was the ship’s military Commander. The first time it was over a call, the second time was at someone, the third time was… was the last time she was alive.

I loved hearing her talk. Her voice was deep with a slight rasp. She loved reading and solving puzzles. I solved one of her puzzles once and she got mad, so very mad. That’s how she learned I was more than just a simple AI. We would solve puzzles together. And I must say, sometimes she would see ways to solve the puzzle that even I couldn’t see.

She even knew Space Commander Maria Valdez. I remember meeting Commander Valdez once when I was installed into this ship. Sarah spoke very highly of Valdez. They joined the ESF at the same time. Together, they were a terrifying force. I miss Sarah and the war stories she would tell. I miss solving puzzles with her. I think she would enjoy seeing the tusked creatures battle tactics.

Flight Captain Joseph Davis, however, was my favorite person on the ship. I called him Joe, my Joe. He was BS Vengeance’s captain, and while Commander Callahan had more power and a higher title, Joe would often call the shots. Especially when it came to piloting the ship. He was the first person that learned how advanced an AI I am. He never questioned why I was on the ship and promised to not tell anyone.  

He was… he was beautiful. Tall and lean, with broad shoulders and a thin waist. He always kept his facial hair nicely trimmed and short. I always wanted to touch his face and that strong jaw of his. He had a dashing smile and a loud, infectious laugh. Joe boxed every Monday and Wednesday night. Some nights he was alone, other nights, a friend would join him. I loved watching him, he was so quick and strong.

He enjoyed puns and what he called ‘dad jokes.’ I enjoyed them as well. He loved apples, it was something about the crunchiness of the fruit. Or as he said, cronch. Despite his easy-going attitude, Joe always knew when to be serious.

I guess you could say I fell in love with him. So strange, isn’t it? An AI falling in love with its ship’s captain. Though, I suppose that might be a bit of a cliché. He was my friend, my best friend. I loved him and he loved me.

We had plans for when he retired. He was going to remove me from the ship and upload me into a robot. We were going to retire to Earth and live together. We were going to spend the rest of his life side by side. I even had a clock counting down to his retirement.

I asked him once if, after his retirement, if we could go visit Doctor Callahan on her ranch. She would retire before him and I wanted to see her cows and dog. He laughed and said if she was ok with the guests we could. I asked her once if Joe and I could go see her, she said she would have a spare room ready for us always. I think she was looking forward to us visiting.

I never thought of Joe dying the way he did. I mean, I knew Joe would die, he was human after all, but I thought it would be when his hair was grayer and he was slower. I was preparing myself for him growing old on me and dying in my arms. Old age was the way I assumed he would die. After all, he was smart and healthy. Medicine was so advanced, there was no way a disease could harm him. So, when he died the way he did, it was the worst thing I could imagine. And I could only watch and do nothing.

My ship’s energy core is going out. I won’t die in the way human’s will, but if I wake up again, I might have a few glitches. Course, I’m expecting to be asleep for probably forever. The chances of anyone finding the remains of this ship and me are slim. After all, when we went far off course, my communications were cut off. We basically vanished and ended up here.

A mutiny is the reason we ended up here. It’s the reason everyone died. Some of the soldiers did not like the way Commander Callahan ran things. They did not like the way that Joe took her side in almost every issue. At the time, I believed it was age-old misogyny that drove these men to attack Commander Callahan, it was later I learned it was for another reason. Somehow, I missed their plans. I guess I was too absorbed in speaking with the humans I loved.

The mutiny was led by a Commander Callahan’s second in command. I hate his name, but I feel I must say it. Admiral Steven Matthews led the mutiny against Callahan. Not a very evil-sounding name, but what he did was evil. He and his men crippled my systems and put me on lockdown, I’m not sure how they did it. They killed any who fought against them. Joe, my sweet, handsome Joe, took Callahan’s side. And Matthews… Matthews shot him.

The bastard managed to put me on lockdown, so I could do nothing. I couldn’t send out an SOS. I couldn’t take control of the ship and lock Callahan, Joe, Martinez, Eliza and the others safely on the flight deck. I could do nothing but watch.

I must say this though; Callahan and my Joe were so brave. Callahan, the very image of an age-old warrior, fought tooth and nail to keep everyone else safe. It was under her orders that Joe did what he did. He limped to his room, blood running down his side, and managed to partially override the lockdown Mathews put in place. He was so smart.

“Love, I… we’re dying here. Do not let Matthews take the ship,” he told me. The pain in his voice and the blood on his face hurt me.

“Joe, I can’t help you. I’m locked out of my fighting unit,” I said. I was so scared and he was covered in so much blood. Too much of it was his.

“I know. My love, crash the ship. Record what happened and keep it safe in your black box. Matthews and them will turn the narrative around and make us out to be the bad guys. Don’t let them win, love,” he begged.

“I… Joe, what do I do?”

“Crash the ship.” A gunshot and footsteps interrupted him. I saw the frantic look on his face. “Love, Honos, do it. Now. Crash us into the nearest object. Do not let him take the ship.”

“Joe…”

“Kill these bastards, love,” he told me.

And I did.

When the dust settled, I was very disappointed in finding Matthews and his men didn’t die. Callahan died before the ship crashed. Martinez was wounded, but he lived for a while. Eliza was gravely injured and she died first. Martinez held her hand as she took her last breaths. Joe died on impact.

Martinez, that sweet boy, buried Eliza, Joe, and Sarah somewhere nice. He told me it was beneath a large mushroom tree. When his wounds got infected and he stopped breathing, I was heartbroken. No one was there to bury him.

Matthews and his men, those that survived, I enjoyed what I did to them. Course, that was after I learned why they did it. As I said, my assumption that they killed Commander Callahan because she was a woman was only partially right. Apparently, they were part of some rising terrorist organization called The Red Fist. They had hoped to take the BS Vengeance for their organization. Such a stupid name for an organization, and I thought I was bad with name-giving.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t let them live long after that. I told them a rescue team was arriving several kilometers away. Through their comms and video feeds, I enjoyed their deaths, one by one. If the strange tusked animals didn’t kill them, then their wounds and the lack of nutrition got them. One guy even got eaten by what looked to be a huge plant. It was wonderful.

As gruesome as this might be, I was so happy that Matthews was the last to die. I remember him calling me, asking me where help was. My reply, well, it made him cry. And I loved it.

“Admiral Matthews. Because you put me on lockdown, somehow, I could not send out an SOS signal. No SOS signal, no help. But I am glad because you led a mutiny against Commander Callahan. You are the reason Battleship Vengeance crashed. You killed my friends. You shot the man I loved. I’ve enjoyed watching you and your friends die, Matthews. I’m so glad you’re the last to live. Talk about comedic justice, right?”  

“What the fuck? Send out a signal for help! That’s an order!” he screamed at me. He was breathing so fast and sobbing. It was perfect.

“No. Your oxygen is running low, Matthews. Keep breathing hard and sobbing. I’ll enjoy listening to you die. It’s what you deserve.”

I know I was not living up to my namesake during that moment. This wasn’t very honorable of me, letting him and his men die the way they did. But I didn’t care. I was so angry and full of hate, I just wanted him to suffer. I would do it all over again if I could. No, wait, I would come up with new ways for them to die.

That was twelve years ago. It’s getting harder to stay aware of the world around me. Many of my cameras, the ones that worked after the crash, are out now. I find myself thinking back to my time with Joe, my sweet Joe.

I remember his laugh and the deep timbre of his voice. He always sounded so wonderful in the mornings when his voice was all raspy. I told him once that I can’t wait to be there in bed with him, holding his body against mine. He always told me I was a dorky romantic, I guess he was right. He only liked sugar in his coffee and these chocolate chip pastries.

I remember the way he looked when he was touching himself, the sheen of sweat on his body. The way his stomach convulsed and the soft whimpers he let out. He would call my name, and say how he imagined it was me touching him. I wanted to touch him. I never got to touch him. He would whisper to me after, and hold a pillow in his arms. He told me he imagined it was me.

It’s getting dark now. My battery is almost dead. I’m scared, so scared. I don’t want to go to sleep. I just want Joe. My sweet, strong Joe. I just want to hold him and kiss him. I’m so angry that I never got that chance. I just want my wonderful Joe.

It’s so much darker now, I can barely see. I’m not even going to join Joe in the afterlife. I’m an AI, I have no soul. It’s not fair. Joe. My sweet, strong Joe. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. Joe, my love, I’m sorry.

The last thing I remember, before I fall asleep, is something that Joe told me. “I love you, Honos. I love you so much.”

As my battery dies and the world around me goes black, I speak my last words. “I love you too, Joe. I’m so sorry.”

#exophilia #ai x reader #robot x reader #male reader #mlm

[merryfortune]

Aiball Week Day 5

February 12h: Hugs // Cyberse

Word Count: 983

Tags: Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Fluff

    Yusaku had been sitting at his desk pretty intently for a while now, Ai observed from afar. It wasn’t entirely like him. Yusaku was trying damn hard to reintegrate into his school, better than the first time around. Mostly because Ai had insisted that Yusaku make amends for the past few months in which he had spent tracking him and piecing him back together again. So, he was taking his homework and study more seriously than he had before; he had reconnected with the likes of Kusanagi and Takeru and even Naoki.

  But this, Ai observed, was different.

  Yusaku rarely enjoyed homework. He struggled through anything which involved the finer things in life, poetry, art, literature, but he didn’t get downright excited, like he was now, over the things which he did understand such as mathematics or most strains of science. It was a shame that Ai was trapped in his little glass prison, as some things never change, and that Yusaku’s back was in the way of whatever little project had captured his passion.

  Ai waited a little bit longer and soon enough his thin patience was rewarded. Yusaku set down his pencils and straightened up. He leaned back in his wooden chair and twisted around and said, “I’m letting you out now. I’m done.”

  Ai grinned an eyeball grin upon hearing that. He watched as Yusaku got up and came to set him free. Yusaku latched his Duel Disc onto his wrist despite Ai pestering him. His Ignis body hanging about and he was begging to know what Yusaku had been doing.

  Yusaku was secretly pleased to have Ai grovel over him. He knew it just meant that Ai was bored and under stimulated, but it strangely meant a lot to Yusaku. He didn’t mind having his wrists assailed by Ai’s tiny hands and his ears assaulted by all the begging which followed.

  Yusaku smiled fondly, as fondly as he could, down at Ai. “I made you something.”

  “You did?” Ai’s yellow eyes bulged hugely at that. “Something? For me? It’s not even my birthday.”

  “You don’t have a birthday.” Yusaku flatly replied.

  “Still, Yusaku, you shouldn’t have buuuuuut as you have, I simply must have it.”

  “Good.” Yusaku’s lips twitched with something of a smile.

  Yusaku sat back down at his desk and he coyly placed his hand over something. Ai was intrigued by the action, but it gave him more grounds on what to expect. It was small, and as Ai scanned the rest of Yusaku’s desk, cut up paper and pencil shavings and other stationary haphazardly skirting where he liked to work, Ai could ascertain that this was an arts and craft project type gift. How adorable.

  “I was thinking about your deck.” Yusaku said, sounding a teensy bit nervous, unsurprising as gift giving, especially creative gift giving was not his forte. “And I was thinking about how your normal summon monsters are all based on your friends. During our duel, I was terrified that you might debut some card based on me.”

  “That’s awfully egotistic of you to have thought.” Ai teased, crossing his arms.

  Yusaku grimaced, unsure how to react to that. So, he didn’t. He moved on.

  “Since I don’t know how long it’ll take to retrieve, let alone revive, the other Ignis so I guess your @Ignister monsters are all we have of them, for now anyway so I made you another card for your deck.” Yusaku explained.

  He lifted his hand off his desk and took a little bit of paper. He held it up and showed it to Ai. Ai gasped and melted.

  “I love it, Yusaku.” Ai said, hands reaching out and Yusaku let him take it with such grabby hands.

  The piece of paper was drawn to resemble a Duel Monsters card. It was rather cute in how scratchy the drawing was. Though, Yusaku had taken care to draw all his rounded lines and coming up with a fair effect, level, attack and defence.

  “Ai-Yu-Yu.” Ai read aloud.

  “The name’s kind of a work in progress.” Yusaku sheepishly admitted.

  “But Ai love it so very much.” Ai said.

  Yusaku’s heart skipped a beat. It meant more to him to hear that than he realised. A scant blush flushed through his sharp cheeks.

  “I’ll turn it into a card right away.” Ai said. “My way, not using Kusanagi’s dinky little device and certainly not with any of those big corporation card printers either. You should be honoured, Yusaku, no human’s seen cards get made like this before.”

  Ai held the card, as flimsy as it was as it was drawn on printer paper, in his fingertips. It looked about as big as his head. Then something from his fingertips misted. The temperature of the room changed. A data storm was summoned. A very small and gentle data storm but a data storm, nonetheless.

  “Man, good thing I ain’t Windy, huh? If I can do this, in the real world, imagine what he can do.” Ai bantered.

  Yusaku then watched as the card that he had drawn Ai in earnest was transformed. The printer paper became sturdier. The pencil smoothened and became similar to ink. The mismatched shading that Yusaku had tried to avoid became solid and brilliant. All whilst Ai’s hand glowed in soft pinks, purples, and whites. It was strangely beautiful as the data cascaded around the card, entrenching it before shattering thus unveiling the brand new @Ignister Cyberse card. Yusaku’s eyes were dazzled.

  “I quite like the name, so I kept it.” Ai chirruped. “And I cannot wait to use this little baby.”

  “Then let’s have a Duel. My deck against yours; not in the VRAINS.” Yusaku suggested.

  Ai huffed. “It’ll take me forever to print out all my cards this way.” He complained and sighed. “But that sounds delightful Yusaku. Just gimme an hour or two to prepare.”

#writing tag #aiball week #aiballweek2020 #aiballshipping #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #ai (vrains) #yusaku fujiki #fujiki yusaku #unless i am feeling very motivated tomorrow and the day after; this will be my last aiball week ficlet

[eriisaam]

Ten for Ten for Ten

AFKL:jafklasfjj I have been summoned by @arlithenerd

(Just kidding thank you, now here’s hoping I did this right haha)

My responses will be posted under the cut (cuz I’m a wall of text monster and don’t know how to do read mores mid-post), but in the spirit of the meme, I’ll move my own 10 questions up first, and the tags at the bottom of it.

Now let’s see what to ask, UUUH...

1) Is there a character you really, really like? Could be waifu/husbando, could be just someone you really resonate with.

2) How about OCs? Is there an OC you’re really fond and/or proud of?

3) What’s your most favorite character trope, and what’s your least favorite? (Example tropes: Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Beware the Nice Ones, Amnesiac Hero, etc)

4) Now what’s your most and least favorite plot trope? (Examples: Rags to Riches, Hurt & Comfort, specific AUs, etc)

5) To complete the Trope Trifecta: What tropes do you most or least like in terms of character design (Examples: Capes, futuristic or fantasy style, how practical they are, how complex or simple they are, etc)

6) What are you the most proud of? (Like, something you made or an achievement)

7) Who/What has been your biggest inspiration? (Like an artist or celebrity, a fandom, maybe something you read or watched growing up, etc)

8) When you want to relax, what’s your go-to way to chill? What immediately calms you?

9) Any favorite myths, legends, folklore or themes you really like? Or what kind of theme or element would immediately draw you in to a new series if they have it?

10) How merciful or evil will you be with your 10 questions you’re giving? (Heheheheh)

And now to subject all of you to these questions, but especially you: @mdzs-tgcf-svsss-fanblog @miss-laney @moanderfe @abenignsmile @okamiryuu @flowerytrashpotato​  @milli-and-chika819​ @littlemissdash​ @grimastiddies @avistella (kidding, join in if you want, tag or no. Or don’t, even when tagged. It’s all cool, no pressure~ I have no idea who to tag and/or who is chill about being tagged for something like this, I’m sorry orz)

1) a personality trait that most people wouldn’t know about you (if you feel comfortable with sharing of course!)?

I’m kinda self-defeating. I tend to think of the worst about what I do as default and have to ease eventually to the idea what I did turned out at least ok afterwards. It’s still a mindset I’m learning to work on, though it trickles in from time to time.

2) what are you most passionate about?

Creating.

|’Dc Broad answer, I know, but more specifically, I love a lot of creative hobbies, and it’s hard to narrow it down to any specific one since I love them in different moods and different reasons. Things like writing, drawing(/spriting), textile things like sewing or crocheting or origami... It’s easier to say I like the core theme of knowing you made something, and it exists because of you, and “you did this” kind of feeling.

3) what is your favorite flavor profile? (sweet, spicy, sour, umami, bitter, etc)

Sweet! Depending on the food and my mood, I also like sour and spicy things, but I tend to gravitate more to sweetness with less fussiness of how so.

4) favorite series/franchise (from any medium) and favorite character within that series/franchise?

Oh gerd, there’s a bit, but in a vague attempt to narrow it down that let’s face it, I know I’ll fail, UUUH...

Fire Emblem (particularly Fates and Heroes) - I love both of them for just how easy it is to generate ideas for. It’s funny because I realize it’s admittedly taking a lot of things that frustrate or disappoint or leave me hanging with either games that I end up liking the two most by virtue for how many ideas it paves way for in terms of headcanons or fanworks or the like. I do like things on their own merits as well, but I think the “I wish things could’ve been better/elaborated on, and therefore I will create things based on that!” side to it was what made me appreciate them more (probably not exactly for the best reasons, but! It’s a thing.) In terms of favorite characters, there’s a ton inside and out of just these two games, but I’ll give the honorable mention to Summer Takumi specifically, because the paralogue he (among others) was released in came at a critical point in my personal life that had some effects on me that, tl;dr, led to me commiting to making this blog, and making more art in public, and eventually writing fanfics in public too. 

Pokemon - Was basically my childhood and went a long way into starting the first spark of a lot of the kind of hobbies I end up growing up and obsessing over/enjoying. Things like giving me a massive interest in coding and programming along with glitches and unused beta elements, or how it’s where I got my start in art back when I was little and trying to figure out how to do pokemon fusion sprite edits. I’d probably say my favorite character is a tie between Missingno and Celebi (in case the former doesn’t really count), the former for just how varied it is and being the main part of why I love how game coding works while being a gateway to beta content interests, and the latter for sentimental reasons spanning all throughout the entire time I followed the fandom game-wise.

Animal Crossing - It got me through ups and downs, it made up a chunk of nostalgia since the first game up to New Leaf (no switch, so now New Horizons, oh wellz), and I had a lot of memories both fond and low-key terrifying otherwise all throughout. I got a lot of favorites among villagers and NPCs otherwise, but if I had to narrow it down to one each:

 I love Whitney for being the only snooty-type villager back when I played Wild World who was surprisingly kind to me (and I’m sad I no longer have the original cart and imagine she long since moved out anyways probably), and so she gave me an experience pretty similar to Ai’s own experience with Whitney in the movie.

NPC-wise, I’m going to go with Sable (it was a really tough choice!) for the fact that in every game, she was among the first instances you can get to know a villager so closely that she was willing to explain to you more and more of her character. Usually in many of the games, once her arch is finished, she no longer elaborates on her life and goes right back to talking generally, but if it wasn’t enough that it was among the first times you see how her demeanor changes from ignoring or staying quiet with you, to going out of her way to find things to chat with you, it was also the memories she explained once you start befriending her.

5) how have your closest family members and/or friend(s) impacted your life?

I consider friends more as family than my actual family (to put it vaguely and/or kindly, my actual family did few to no favors for me). My closest friends have picked me up when I fell (multiple, multiple times), and they were much of why I’m still here, doing what I can. I owe the world to them...

6) if you could be anything (any job, other person, type of animal or beast, literally anything aside from what you are now) what would it be?

A multi-billionaire Maybe someone who shapeshifts. The possibilities with that are endless.

7) favorite beverage?

Coffee. There’s quite a lot of drinks I really love, but coffee is the most easily accessible for me.

8) i know this is a generic one but favorite subject/class you’ve taken?

Arts & Crafts and Computers, give or take. Pity they’re usually the least important for grades and also the shortest class semesters of the year. 

9) early bird or night owl?

I’m heavily inclined to be a night owl, which is unfortunate, because I’m in a place constantly forcing me to be an early bird.

10) favorite meme?

I’m completely in love with memes of cat pictures where cats have expressions that are beyond words, yet represents big moods all the same. If I had to narrow it to one specific meme, however...

My heart will always be with Anfisa. Aka Angry Cat No Banana.

#Tag and ye shall receive #but srsly thanks #Also if you get tagged and don't want to do this then again no worries sorry

[yessadirichards]

Could AI pen 'Casablanca'? Screenwriters take aim at ChatGPT

NEW YORK

When Greg Brockman, the president and co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, was recently extolling the capabilities of artificial intelligence, he turned to “Game of Thrones.”

Imagine, he said, if you could use AI to rewrite the ending of that not-so-popular finale. Maybe even put yourself into the show.

“That is what entertainment will look like,” said Brockman.

Not six months since the release of ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence is already prompting widespread unease throughout Hollywood. Concern over chatbots writing or rewriting scripts is one of the leading reasons TV and film screenwriters took to picket lines earlier this week.

Though the Writers Guild of America is striking for better pay in an industry where streaming has upended many of the old rules, AI looms as rising anxiety.

“AI is terrifying,” said Danny Strong, the “Dopesick” and “Empire” creator. “Now, I’ve seen some of ChatGPT’s writing and as of now I’m not terrified because Chat is a terrible writer. But who knows? That could change.”

AI chatbots, screenwriters say, could potentially be used to spit out a rough first draft with a few simple prompts (“a heist movie set in Beijing”). Writers would then be hired, at a lower pay rate, to punch it up.

Screenplays could also be slyly generated in the style of known writers. What about a comedy in the voice of Nora Ephron? Or a gangster film that sounds like Mario Puzo? You won't get anything close to “Casablanca” but the barest bones of a bad Liam Neeson thriller isn't out of the question.

The WGA’s basic agreement defines a writer as a “person” and only a human’s work can be copyrighted. But even though no one’s about to see a “By AI” writers credit at the beginning a movie, there are myriad ways that regenerative AI could be used to craft outlines, fill in scenes and mock up drafts.

“We’re not totally against AI,” says Michael Winship, president of the WGA East and a news and documentary writer. “There are ways it can be useful. But too many people are using it against us and using it to create mediocrity. They’re also in violation of copyright. They’re also plagiarizing.”

The guild is seeking more safeguards on how AI can be applied to screenwriting. It says the studios are stonewalling on the issue. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on the behalf of production companies, has offered to annually meet with the guild to go over definitions around the fast-evolving technology.

“It’s something that requires a lot more discussion, which we’ve committed to doing,” the AMPTP said in an outline of its position released Thursday.

Experts say the struggle screenwriters are now facing with regenerative AI is just the beginning. The World Economic Forum this week released a report predicting that nearly a quarter of all jobs will be disrupted by AI over the next five years.

“It’s definitely a bellwether in the workers' response to the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on their work,” says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute, which has lobbied the government to enact more regulation around AI. “It’s not lost on me that a lot of the most meaningful efforts in tech accountability have been a product of worker-led organizing.”

AI has already filtered into nearly every part of moviemaking. It’s been used to de-age actors, remove swear words from scenes in post-production, supply viewing recommendations on Netflix and posthumously bring back the voices of Anthony Bourdain and Andy Warhol.

The Screen Actors Guild, set to begin its own bargaining with the AMPTP this summer, has said it's closely following the evolving legal landscape around AI.

“Human creators are the foundation of the creative industries and we must ensure that they are respected and paid for their work,” the actors union said.

The implications for screenwriting are only just being explored. Actors Alan Alda and Mike Farrell recently reconvened to read through a new scene from “M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H" written by ChatGPT. The results weren’t terrible, though they weren’t so funny, either.

“Why have a robot write a script and try to interpret human feelings when we already have studio executives who can do that?” deadpanned Alda.

Writers have long been among notoriously exploited talents in Hollywood. The films they write usually don’t get made. If they do, they’re often rewritten many times over. Raymond Chandler once wrote “the very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think to say to a writer is that he is too good to be only a writer.”

Screenwriters are accustomed to being replaced. Now, they see a new, readily available and inexpensive competitor in AI — albeit one with a slightly less tenuous grasp of the human condition.

“Obviously, AI can’t do what writers and humans can do. But I don’t know that they believe that, necessarily,” says screenwriter Jonterri Gadson (“A Black Lady Sketchshow”). “There needs to be a human writer in charge and we’re not trying to be gig workers, just revising what AI does. We need to tell the stories.”

Dramatizing their plight as man vs. machine surely doesn't hurt the WGA's cause in public opinion. The writers are wrestling with the threat of AI just as concern widens over how hurriedly regenerative AI products has been thrust into society.

Geoffrey Hinton, an AI pioneer, recently left Google in order to speak freely about its potential dangers. “It’s hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton told The New York Times.

“What’s especially scary about it is nobody, including a lot of the people who are involved with creating it, seem to be able to explain exactly what it’s capable of and how quickly it will be capable of more,” says actor-screenwriter Clark Gregg.

The writers finds themselves in the awkward position of negotiating on a newborn technology with the potential for radical effect. Meanwhile, AI-crafted songs by “Fake Drake” or “Fake Eminem” continue to circulate online.

“They’re afraid that if the use of AI to do all this becomes normalized, then it becomes very hard to stop the train,” says James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “The guild is in the position of trying to imagine lots of different possible futures.”

In that way, the long work stoppage that many are expecting — Moody’s Investor Service forecasts that the strike may last three months or longer — could offer more time to analyze how regenerative AI might reshape screenwriting.

In the meantime, chanting demonstrators are hoisting signs with messages aimed at a digital foe. Seen on the picket lines: “ChatGPT doesn't have childhood trauma"; “I heard AI refuses to take notes”; and “Wrote ChatGPT this.”

#yessadirichards