Step Into the Afterlight

A curious collection of deep thoughts, social justice, pretty boys, and whatever else catches my fancy. Forever obsessions: Young Wizards, Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and pretty boys. Current obsessions: Final Fantasy XIV, D&D, Hearstopper, A Court of Fey and Flowers, and more pretty boys. Genderqueer/enbi, they/them.

[orteil42]

Wait, you were actually born in the 1900's? Thats so cool

i am going to eat my own entire skin

[idabbleincrazy]

Reblog if you were born in the 1900's.

[avoiding-claws]

[hyperlexichypatia]

Yeah, the fuck around century! Now it's the find out century!

[whitetrsh-cryptid-deactivated20]

[depsidase]

[oneheadtoanother]

idk anything about this but I love it

[buffysummers]

Rupert Giles + 🔥 🔥 🔥 [requested by Anonymous]

[red-sterling]

when Red and Green were called “battle legends” when SuMo dropped my immediate reaction was that maybe Green finally won against Red, and Red was proud of his boyfriend and then for a bit Green had the world champion title 

but then Red beat him again and the title changed hands, then like half a week later Green wins again, this continues for like a month until Lance gets so sick of having to constantly re-register which one is the world champion that he just gives them both battle legend as a title and calls it quits

[red-sterling]

as an aside: as someone who was constantly crumbling under the pressure and attention that world champion drew Red was more than happy to have a shared title, which also took the pressure off Green to try and outdo Red

[laserbobcat]

[laserbobcat]

This is almost seven years old, I was desperately trying to get used to draw and sketch on tablet at the time. I was mostly using pen and paper before that

[redpandarascal]

in conversation about white people who go to Japan and expect their knowledge of anime to culturally carry them, I was once posed with “it’s like if there was a Japanese guy who was obsessed with spongebob and came over here and thought he could get by just communicating in spongebob quotes.” This is a false equivalence because if such a man existed we would crown him king. We’d love him. Americans would fucking love that. sometimes I get sad that this isn’t a real guy I can invite to a party.

[hong--zhi--zhu]

[frustratedasatruar]

[rainbowgod666]

Ok the last one got me laughing actually

[curiositysavesthecat]

Do you think it's weird and/or predatory for a 13 year-old and a 30 year-old to be best friends if they're not family members or related by blood? Assuming everything is innocent and platonic. Nothing romantic or sexual.

Yes, it's weird and predatory

It's weird. But not predatory

It's predatory. But not weird

No, it's not weird or predatory

Remaining time: 2 days 9 hours

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[creelson]

unpopular opinion but I don't think there's anything weird or predatory about an innocent friendship

[dianxiacantastemolecules]

The question is why the fuck is a thirty year old hanging out with a 13 year old if not in their family?? The only other relation that could have them interact is through teacher/student and bring friends like that would be weird as fuck

[creelson]

found family? the kid not feeling safe in their house? the adult wanting to help? family / teacher / school isn't always a guaranteed safe place. should the kid and adult each have friends that are their own age too? sure. but if their friendship is genuinely innocent then I think the problem isn't them but people who project their weird and predatory thoughts onto them

[the-bar-sinister]

Don't forget shared hobbies?

A 13 year old and a 30 year old could reasonably meet at a tabletop gaming store, a fiber arts group, a book club....

[audacityinblack]

They could literally just be neighbors. This whole isolationist thing of never even talking to the people you live closest to is new and weird.

[moniquill]

It is important to human social development to have extra-parental adults as advisors and role models!

[audacityinblack]

Something I really think needs noting is that this is very much a white people thing. I am always hearing people of color talk about aunties and uncles and mentors and elders who are not their blood relatives. These intergenerational bonds are absolutely critical to people's survival, particularly when you belong to a group that is treated violently simply for being who you are.

Systems of power have always relied on isolating people and turning them against each other. The current system we live under absolutely does not look out for or protect children, so it's absolutely critical that there be adults in reach that a child can trust outside their immediate family or authority structures. And it's just as critical that kids know how to find and connect with these people.

Elders are survivors. We have managed to live and even sometimes thrive in a world that has time and again made it clear that it doesn't want us to. We are proof of both a history and a future that young people desperately need right now. More than that, we can teach you how to survive and thrive, because we're living in that same world that still doesn't want you to.

[intheafterlight]

Okay, but, like: all of that explains that it's not weird for a 13-year-old and a 30-year-old to know each other; to be close; for the elder to support, mentor, and advise the younger. But the framing was specifically "best friends," and I do think that's weird because of the reciprocity involved.

A 30yo person should not be relying on a 13yo person for the kind of mutual support that one should be able to rely on their best friend for. The experience gap is too vast, as is the gap in, like, overall freedom to act.

I think it's normal and natural for the 13yo to view the 30yo that way. The reverse is what gives me pause.

[assignedmale]

[sarahsscrapbook]

Heartwarming story of Buffy's Giles going out of his way for a young trans fan

Tired: J.K. Rowling supporting a woman with anti-trans views. Wired: Buffy actor Anthony Stewart-Head quietly going above and beyond for his

Anthony Head has passed away. This one really hurts, I've never heard a single bad thing about him.

He was a talented actor and played FANTASTIC villains but this nice story from 2019 is what I'll always remember him for.

[planetsoda]

who remembers this tweet

[planetsoda]

this is your annual pride month reminder that queer rose is real

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[minxitsy]

[kiddosapiens]

Fr

[manicpixiedckgirl]

[theaudientvoid]

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

[aro-ace-from-outer-space22]

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

[kingercainedaddyissues]

Uh??? Tolkien did not claim that???

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

He talked about how WWI affected his writing all the time, he was not in denial for how it affected??? Am I missing something????

[alexseanchai]

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/09/tolkien-as-war-novelist-another-way-of-dealing-with-trauma-through-writing/

what Tolkien was adamant about, which has been confusing people for several decades now, is that he wasn't writing about World War Two

[beatrice-otter]

He was also very clear that he was not writing allegory. Now, some people are not very clear on what allegory means. "Allegory" and "symbols" are not the same thing. Allegory is a type of symbolism, but there are a lot of ways of doing symbolism that aren't allegory ... and a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on that. The way allegory is most commonly used in literary and religious analysis is that there is a direct, almost 1:1 correspondence between the literary figure and what it is standing in for.

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

So people read Tolkien's insistence that he didn't write allegory, and take that to mean that he's saying there isn't symbolic and thematic references. And that isn't what he meant! And also, we focus so much on the thematic references to WWI and Christianity, and we miss most of the other references, which makes it seem like Tolkien's only drawing on WWI, when he's actually doing something more complex.

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 4 days 1 hour

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[smol-blue-bird]

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

[smol-blue-bird]

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

[smol-blue-bird]

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

[theriu]

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.