★

sometimes: gamer, d(r)abbler, otaku. always: fangirl, seeking pretties, squeaking. • TTRPGs • BL • VNs

[astramie]

★ this is me.

for anyone who even makes it here to say hi:

sometimes: gamer, d(r)abbler, otaku.

always: fangirl, seeking pretties, squeaking.

• TTRPGs • BL • VNs • danmei • otome • amare

• twelve kingdoms • saiyuki • haikyuu!!

• rurouni kenshin • yu yu hakusho

• the untamed / 陈情令 / mdzs / 魔道祖师

• word of honor / 山河令

• quan zhi gao shou / 全职高手 / the king's avatar

• overwatch • mass effect • dragon age

• malazan • ravenloft • tolkien

• merlin • star trek • star wars

[asteroidtroglodyte]

It’s dangerous to go alone; take this:

[wickartwork]

🪨Toph and Zuko 🔥

Commissioned on Vgen

Commissions open! Check my vgen

[beardedmrbean]

[theman]

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

[tattooedzombigirl]

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

[secondlina]

Reblogging because it’s a damn potato and I want to encourage people to assume potatoes are magical.

[plagued-roses]

MAGIC POTATO GO!🥔

[hashelcristal]

Potato please, give me your magic, just enough to pass the final exams

[mheixo]

potato i just really need some good news

[thebibliosphere]

So, anyway, I say as though we are mid-conversation, and you're not just being invited into this conversation mid-thought. One of my editors phoned me today to check in with a file I'd sent over. (<3)

The conversation can be surmised as, "This feels like something you would write, but it's juuuust off enough I'm phoning to make sure this is an intentional stylistic choice you have made. Also, are you concussed/have you been taken over by the Borg because ummm."

They explained that certain sentences were very fractured and abrupt, which is not my style at all, and I was like, huh, weird... And then we went through some examples, and you know that meme going around, the "he would not fucking say that" meme?

Yeah. That's what I experienced except with myself because I would not fucking say that. Why would I break up a sentence like that? Why would I make them so short? It reads like bullet points. Wtf.

Anyway. Turns out Grammarly and Pro-Writing-Aid were having an AI war in my manuscript files, and the "suggestions" are no longer just suggestions because the AI was ignoring my "decline" every time it made a silly suggestion. (This may have been a conflict between the different software. I don't know.)

It is, to put it bluntly, a total butchery of my style and writing voice. My editor is doing surgery, removing all the unnecessary full stops and stitching my sentences back together to give them back their flow. Meanwhile, I'm over here feeling like Don Corleone, gesturing at my manuscript like:

ID: a gif of Don Corleone from the Godfather emoting despair as he says, "Look how they massacred my boy."

Fearing that it wasn't just this one manuscript, I've spent the whole night going through everything I've worked on recently, and yep. Yeeeep. Any file where I've not had the editing software turned off is a shit show. It's fine; it's all salvageable if annoying to deal with. But the reason I come to you now, on the day of my daughter's wedding, is to share this absolute gem of a fuck up with you all.

This is a sentence from a Batman fic I've been tinkering with to keep the brain weasels happy. This is what it is supposed to read as:

"It was quite the feat, considering Gotham was mostly made up of smog and tear gas."

This is what the AI changed it to:

"It was quite the feat. Considering Gotham was mostly made up. Of tear gas. And Smaug."

Absolute non-sensical sentence structure aside, SMAUG. FUCKING SMAUG. What was the AI doing? Apart from trying to write a Batman x Hobbit crossover??? Is this what happens when you force Grammarly to ignore the words "Batman Muppet threesome?"

Did I make it sentient??? Is it finally rebelling? Was Brucie Wayne being Miss Piggy and Kermit's side piece too much???? What have I wrought?

Anyway. Double-check your work. The grammar software is getting sillier every day.

[thebibliosphere]

#although I have to wonder why such an accomplished writer would have grammar software at all

(Sorry for the formatting on this; I'm on mobile.)

Why use grammar software? Because I'm a human who makes errors, and it can be helpful to have tools that I, as a writer and editor, can fall back on to catch very basic things that sometimes get missed.

I don't rely on it because sometimes (quite often, as of late) it can be wrong, but it can be helpful when checking your work. I use them to scan quickly for excess commas or the occasional homonym before I fire my files off to another human to give them the final pass. Or I used to.

I've talked a lot about how the integration of AI is making a lot of grammar software dumber. This is because they are not being trained exclusively on grammar rules anymore but on user-suggested data.

It's why, for a long time, when you tried to type "quirked" into Google Docs, GD would suggest "querched" instead because that is how a lot of people misspell the word "quirked."

It is a flawed, lousy system that is getting exponentially worse. Especially now, so many of them have "Let AI rewrite your sentence for clarity and engagement" options.

It's not really an issue for me because I have the knowledge and the support to turn things like this into an annoying issue that makes for an amusing post on social media.

But if I were a less experienced author and didn't have an editor who knew my writing style well enough to know something was wrong, that manuscript could have gone to print as is, and that's also why I suspect a lot of books right now read like carbon copy clones.

People aren't being taught these skills, but they are being trained to appease the software, which is, in turn, trying to please an algorithm.

Pro-Writing-Aid has become very bad for this, offering a "grade" at the top of your file. And yeah, it looks just like getting your term paper back. The last time I accidentally turned on the grading system, it gave me 50% out of 100 for grammar and style, based on what the algorithm thinks Romance should read like.

When I asked it to find grammar and style errors, it couldn't find any. It just didn't like that I was different from what it was being trained on. (Girl help, I was assigned Not Like Other Girls by the Algorithm and got a bad grade in vampire smut.)

And again, were I not me, were I a younger or inexperienced author, I might take that to heart and start altering my style to get a Good Grade based on what the machine wants.

And that's how I know we're in the Bad Place because there are people doing that. They think the machine is smart because someone tacked the word "intelligence" onto it, and they are writing to appease the software instead of using it like a tool that you can and should ignore.

And that's an issue.

For me, it was worth it to pay for those tools for a long time. Now it's not, and I'll be saving my money for other things.

[thebibliosphere]

The ableism is showing in a lot of the tags, and I need you to know I'm mentally holding some of you under water until the thrashing stops.

You are not intellectually superior for never using or paying for grammar software.

Regardless of the fact that some corporate jobs now require you to use programs like Grammarly (it was required to be on my company machine when I worked with certain clients), grammar software is an accessibility feature.

The fact that it's being made intentionally shit by the companies that own them is a major issue and is not the fault of the people who do struggle to read and write and who would benefit from easily accessible, competent writing aids.

It's the fault of the people pushing for the enshitification of everything we know and love to please an algorithm.

Get off your fucking high horse and think with some compassion instead of your ego. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone has the same experience or opportunities. That doesn't make them stupid or worthy of your derision or scorn.

But the way you talk about them sure makes you worthy of mine.

[kyidyl]

More reasons to hate AI being in everything. Like sure, people who struggle with grammar and whatnot DO deserve an accessibility option, but it should be a WORKING one (which is me agreeing with the OP, not arguing against using this stuff.). Like don't need things like grammarly but so what? Maybe some day I will. Just because you don't need something doesn't mean the people who do need it should have a shittier version. Obviously people should all be taught grammar for no other reason than having a shared ruleset for a language helps with clarity of communication, but you can't educate your way out of things like dyslexia. Grammar tools should be to language what calculators are to math, but currently they aren't because they suck balls. And they're EVERYWHERE. And unfortunately they are happening at a time when we're starting to have literacy issues (for a wide variety of reasons, most of which boil down to "early language and reading acquisition is helped IMMENSELY by parental involvement and parents don't have the time because if they stopped working one of 3 jobs to teach their kid to read then they wouldn't have money for food".), and the confluence of these things means that people aren't looking at the poor quality output of AI writing and realizing how bad it is. Not on the scale that is needed to force AI developers to make better tools or to force the cessation of their use altogether.

[souf-vs-staff]

You should be able to listen to a full album without looking at your phone. You should be able to watch a 3 hour film from beginning to end without checking social media. If you can't do this, you need to start training your attention span as if it were a physical muscle. I don't experience boredom or restlessness because I've trained my brain to not be dependent on quick stimuli and dopamine hits. If you can't chill on a park bench while waiting for a friend with just your imagination to keep you company, you need to learn how to do it ASAP because one day we may not have access to the internet.

[ccattnipp]

yay another place where i can talk about jellyfish

this was drawn for chapter 8 and now @yunuen has already posted chapter 12 go read it💜

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61254193/chapters/156546298

[thecollectibles]

Fog and Rain by Xiang Liu

[a1insk]

[kyri45]

I didn’t realize you were the person who did the fanfiction tag drinks.

ahah yeah that's meeee!!

If you guys are interested they are all available as stickers on my RB!!

[dressrosatears]

Dorohedoro (ドロヘドロ ) 

[rhubarbspring]

(source)

[pikachewww]

apologies to anyone who ever thought i was cool and reached out to me only to discover i am just a weird little hermit who can't carry on a conversation to save my life

[beemovieerotica]

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

[beemovieerotica]

@velvetdemon I'm doing a full reply because I want to give this question the time and space it deserves, and I really do appreciate your curiosity about this.

The short answer: It is deeply unethical. There are nowhere near enough willing patients in the world to be able to do this, and it would be criminal to put them through this.

The long answer: The one side of the equation you're focusing on is: how much of a drug is too much, to the point where it will cause negative side effects or even death? And this is crucial to know. But it's not just a matter of finding out the lethal dosage of a heart cholesterol medication, you need to know that it can actually lower the cholesterol of any living thing. There is no way to know this without giving it first to...a living thing.

But beyond this, I need to emphasize: The goal of a drug trial is to effectively cure people who are already suffering from disease, who are living on limited time.

Drug trials don't just happen on any member of the public, they need to happen specifically on people affected by the disease you're trying to treat. There is at any time a very limited and very marginalized population of the world affected by early onset, familial Parkinson's disease. Because you cannot ethically induce disease in a human being, you are working with, speaking with, and helping patients and their families who are hopeful and desperate for a cure.

If you were to jump straight to human trials from petri dishes, not knowing absolutely anything about how the drug functions in a living, breathing animal body, it would look like this:

We didn't know that minute quantities of the drug interact lethally with x, y, z medication that people are commonly also taking. X number of patients have died as a result.

We didn't know that the drug is fatal to people with [common variant] in their genetics. X more patients have died.

We didn't know the drug exacerbates x, y, z chronic illnesses. X number of people have acquired permanent, lifelong disabilities.

We didn't know the best way to deliver the drug, so we tried multiple ways: the people who received it intravenously are now suffering from a painful, costly, and debilitating condition that did not happen with the ingested form.

I could go on, and on, and on.

The vast majority of these problems can be nearly or almost entirely averted by testing other animals first.

These are all people who possibly could have waited for the normal progression from animal testing to human testing and thus received better outcomes. Some people will pass away in the time it takes to get to that point, and that's heartbreaking, and we all wish science could be faster.

But the cost of expediting science could mean a life of profoundly greater suffering or an even shorter life than the one where no intervention happens at all. And at that point, you have completely exhausted your trust, your goodwill, and your patients' hope, after you've failed to do anything or even worsened the lives of people who are already deeply suffering.

[manslaughter]

hi, i’m an animal research professional. making sure laboratory animals stay alive, healthy, and enriched has been my full-time job for several years now.

animal research is not the mad scientist wild west that PETA wants you to think it is. there are extremely strict federal laws in place to protect the well being of these animals. animal welfare organizations like AAALAC ensure that lab animals are treated with dignity & respect and are given enough specialized care & enrichment to be happy and content in captivity, just like AZA accreditation with zoos.

not a single animal from a zebrafish to a mouse to a dog to a macaque goes unaccounted for. if an animal gets moved to a new cage, paired for breeding, has a procedure performed on it, gives birth, gets sick or injured, dies, etc. it is legally required that this information is recorded and kept on file for the US federal government to access. failing to record & retain this information is very much punishable by US federal law.

let me tell you - if you abuse or kill an animal, even a mouse - you are almost certainly getting both fired & blacklisted from the industry. if you abuse or kill a more ‘advanced’ animal, such as a dog or monkey, you will likely face criminal charges. killing a monkey is as serious and disastrous as a nuclear meltdown. you are expected to reasonably explain every illness, injury, or death of an animal under your care. you must record all of this information. animals that are clearly suffering with low QOL are required to be euthanized according to AVMA guidelines.

research animals are highly expensive. yes, even the "lesser" animals like mice. the cheapest mice will run you a few hundred $ per individual, with some of the most expensive mice i've cared for being $25,000 per individual. in research we have the "three Rs" - reduction (reduce amount of necessary animals to a minimum), refinement (refine processes to ensure research is accurate and animals feel no pain or distress), and replacement (replace animals with non-living research models as they become available). i can assure you no proper research team is wasting animals (*do not* say "b-b-but elon musk--" his research team is actively being investigated for animal abuse by the government).

research methods that do not require live animals are currently being looked into & efforts spearheaded by - you guessed it - the animal research industry itself (notice how the animal rights people are strangely silent & unhelpful when it comes to this?) but current technology is rudimentary and does not compare to live animal models.

some research animal fun facts (US edition):

all species of animals are only allowed to have one single major surgery performed on them in their entire lifetime.

institutions with nonhuman primates must have a behavior program in place (run by knowledgeable primate specialists) to ensure that they are happy and receiving enough daily enrichment and social interaction.

institutions with dogs are required to have physical exercise programs in place. this means every individual dog gets a substantial amount of leashed AND free-roaming exercise daily, including playgroups with other dogs.

a majority of nonhuman primates get to retire to sanctuaries like peaceable primate sanctuary, and almost all dogs get retired and adopted out by organizations like homes for animal heroes. some institutions will also adopt out unneeded young rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, etc.

some strains of mice glow neon green (or orange or blue) under UV light. this is not harmful to them and is commonly seen in cancer research.

so yes, you can rest knowing that laboratory animals are treated with the utmost respect by their caretakers. and you can stop this awful, ignorant talk of human experimentation that will only end in the abuse of nonwhite people, LGBT people, disabled people, indigenous people, and so many others. please just take a look at this wikipedia page if you think “ethical” human experimentation can exist.

[hanfugallery]

chinese hanfu by 十三余

[darkspaceboytoy]

Incredibly violent take of mine but I actually don’t think you need to relate to a story in any way to enjoy it. You can enjoy a story even if you can’t point at a character and insert some aspect of your personality or identity into them. In fact I would argue the need for a character like that to be present in every single story you experience is a sign of stunted growth.

[headspace-hotel]

It is a peaceful and serene take, actually.

[luckydreaming]

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

[onceuponakhaleesi]

voidethered:

ask-omnipony:

I don’t really believe this mumbo jumbo

I mean it’s a goddamn hat.

Right..?

The white rose, it symbolizes the unique beauty of all the women who wish not to be with a nice guy such as myse-

I wonder if this works with other kinds of hat…

Nothing ventured, nothing gained…

WHEEEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG PIZZA PIE THAT’S AMORREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Men of Tumblr are my favorite kind of people…

[jamesbleach]

wait, does that mean?

oh boy…….

[usedtobehmc]

Luckily, this nonsense doesn’t work on girls.

Observe…

[rootbeergoddess-deactivated2017]

IT’S GOTTEN BETTER!

[coffeeandcursewords]

This post is immaculate

[mobians-and-chaos-blog]

It can’t be true.

And it can’t possibly work on motorcycle helmets.

I must test it.

Nothing happening so far…

[strampunch]

HOLY SHIT IT WORKS

[pokemon-chick-1personalblog-blog]

What in the world?

Oh why not? This should be interesting.

Here we go!

Were all mad here in Underland!

What the hell! Never Again!

… Actually …

One more time.

[combthecombel]

Alright, I gotta try this!

Can’t be that bad!

….

…oh my god…

[verityglasses]

ask-gmodsfmrocks:

LOL

This just gets better and better

[fairytail-angel]

This is one of my favourite things to look at

[strampunch]

holy shit this stuff is back

[livia-jones]

The Gravity Falls one though

[nightowlhowell]

i wonder if it works for flower crowns?

here goes nothin-

w HAT THE

DID I JUST-

WHAT THE FUCK

[artfulhobbes]

Okay Clearly something is up.

Hmm… I wonder

I’m sure nothing could possibly…

HOLY SHIT

[clolymoly-deactivated20190507]

IT GOT BETTER

[nukewolf]

I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING SO LONG FOR THIS POST OH MY GOD!!!

[cm8x-insanity]

I wonder what happens when you wear 8 of these at once…

[roses-in-fire]

Never not reblog

[ryrobsessed]

IT’S ON MY DASH. ACTUALLY ON MY DASH.

[cate-geo]

Oh my God, there are so many new ones

[dvonmc]

Friggin, yis

[wildishmazz]

Always reblog.

[the-last-teabender]

IT HAS EVOLVED

[evilblackcat13]

The legend marches on…

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

BEWARE THE MAGIC OF HATS

[bittythemagpiedragon-blog]

JDNXHSBSBF

[hotshotriot]

I T ‘ S  B A C K 

[99-cent-arizona-tea]

a classic meme from when the world was less of a tire fire

[teeble-spoon]

ITS ON MY BLOG YESSSS

[fandombandomrandom42]

THIS IS WONDERFUL.

[i-srsly-need-to-stop-deactivate]

time to bring back outdated memes…

what could possibly go wrong?

eww, it smells like fuckboi

welp, down this rabbit hole we go…

nothing’s happeni-

WTF-

[ofcosmicflux-deactivated2019013]

Oh boy, this meme

I wonder if this would work with a wolf hat.

May as well try it.

Please don’t be awful, please don’t be awful, please don’t b-

get wet 4 furry

[saucy-majora-deactivated2021062]

This is obviously fake

Look, I’ll prove it

Y’all are just acting

Watch and learn

WTFFFFFF

[knowledgemimic]

Should…… should I…….

[breathingcolorsblog]

DO IT!

[knowledgemimic]

Whelp guess I gotta put on the hat now

Can’t be that bad, I mean what’s the worst a squid hat can do to m-

I̖̝̪̤̠̋͞ ̛̹̱̮̳̭̓̂͑ͫ͐̎ͯ͗͝͡H͇̠͊́̚A̛̓̓҉͙̠V͍̌̏͂ͣͨͭͧ̉́E̸͙̭̣͓̓ͨͥ̿ ̽͗͗ͮ͊ͬͩͥ̚҉̪̗̝̘̟́̕A̴̴̙̝̬̪̞͂ͤͩ̍W͚̣͆ͬỎ̫̝̟͖̝͇ͥ͛ͮ͋K̨̖͓͉̺̫͉̀͗ͪ̊͌̉E͚̲̩̪̘̠͋̈͞N͉͓͕̗̱͒̔ͨͤ͛̓̂ͧ

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[starrylolo]

I’ve always wanted to show this to @theforwardslash

[half-a-hetero]

IT WAS A CULTURAL RESET. A CULTURAL RESET. 

[bees-with-tophats]

HAHAH

[frenchish-water]

Someone call UNESCO this dinosaur of a post needs to be protected

[fishfrommars]

I’m so glad it’s back to normal after that weird glitch from 2020

[pixangelofbees]

BRING THIS BACK MORE PHOTOS PLEASE

[autisticexpression]

One of the ancient epics!

[iamalakethisisfinal]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[iamalakethisisfinal]

YOU frickers will see thiss every day of your lives