this is a pro-Lotus space

The writers of the Symbiosis Trilogy finally made a Warframe blog and this is it. Remember, Sentients are people too. Hunhow may be a dick but in general they're pretty alright. 

[sentient-romance-director]

I don't know when you'll see this, but there's actually been a recent massive increase in Warframe fics with the plurality tag, (before 2024 you were the authour of all of them) almost all of which are plural Lotus fics

HELL FUCKING YES

we may not really go here anymore but that is excellent news so thank you for letting us know! sounds like maybe the fandom has finally gotten over its hateboner a bit? for once I guess I can issue a non-sarcastic "thanks DE" because They Really Did That. they really heard the fandom yelling for years about how much they wanted to personally murder the person who cared about us most in the world, and they refused to let those assholes have it, and they supported an at least somewhat plural Lotus in the game itself, and that's incredible.

anyway I wish the authors of all those new plural Lotus fics well, it's good to see the ecosystem finally healing and thriving. Symbiosis got started mostly as "we're plural and sick of bad representation so I guess we have to fix it ourselves, also space mom makes perfect sense to be plural anyway" and now look aaaaaaa I'm so proud we have others taking up the job after us now :)

[leolithe]

The radioactive levels of misogyny have been present with regards to Lotus since 2013, and it was... an experience to watch it play out in real time. At first, it was largely imperceptible. Just people complaining about having an "annoying" (re: female) mission director. But the moment Apostasy: Prologue happened, it was like they smelled blood in the water. They finally had ''proof''— ''justification''— for their baseless hatred of Lotus (despite the fact that it was pretty clear that she had not left entirely of her own free will).

Even before then in Natah, the quest where Lotus explicitly declares that she *was* Natah, Hunhow's daughter, until she "destroyed" that part of her and chose to become the Lotus, ''the Mother'', to the children she couldn't bear to kill, people were using the fact that she wasn't human as justification to hate and distrust her, despite the narrative never producing anything concrete to back this distrust up, until Apostasy: Prologue (and even then, it was clear some form of manipulation by Ballas was at play in this prologue). In fact, people were saying things like Lotus can't be trusted *because* she chose compassion over completing her original mission, and the fact the Tenno are still alive is proof she isn't fit to lead. HELLO?????

But from Apostasy: Prologue, it all went downhill. If you were saying things like:

''I don't think Lotus chose to leave on her own accord. I think Ballas did something to her, maybe under the false belief that she was Archimedean Margulis. Maybe she secretly is, I don't know. But on the slim chance that she did leave willingly, what if it was to protect us. He is an Orokin Executor after all, and the first time he makes an in-game appearance, he displays some sort of Void ability. Who knows what he's capable of. Why is it that you guys gave Teshin all the grace in the world when he was working under the command of the Twin Queens, but Lotus is immediately deemed a traitor who needs to die by your blade for being abducted??''

you were in the minority.

And then The Sacrifice happened. And is was SO over. By that point, there were like 17 Lotus defenders left. The majority of the fan base was actually, excitedly, waiting for the opportunity to take out the Sentients and to kill Lotus with them. No amount of arguing that ''The Jovian Concord (monologue), Operation: Orphix Venom (hidden message), and Erra (cinematic) only make narrative sense if Lotus is being brainwashed'' was going to get through to them. Because for far too many, it was never about whether Lotus was actually on our side or not. It was never about where her loyalties and allegiance lied. And despite what so many said, it wasn't about her betrayal (because it wasn't a betrayal, and it was clear by this point that she was being used. she even called out for help!). All of it was just a thinly-veiled excuse for them to finally be able to say, "tbh I never liked that we had a female mission commander. And I hope we get to kill her for her betrayal and that we get someone new like Teshin. I'd even take Ordis, as annoying as he is," out loud. (I wish I were making this example up and I wish I had only seen it said once or twice)

So when The New War happens, and there is no confrontation with Lotus, only the confirmation that Lotus was indeed being manipulated and used as a scapegoat, only for Ballas to steal the last of her life force and consign her to the Void, MANY people felt cheated. Because they'd convinced themselves (and allowed themselves to be convinced by Chimera: Prologue) that Lotus was the villain despite all the evidence to the contrary. They went in to the quest expecting a no holds barred fight with Lotus that would end in her death as best case scenario, with the option to kill or spare her via the alignment choice system being the 'most likely outcome'.

And so, countless forum threads were made complaining about how Lotus wasn't the big bad who could be killed (ignoring that she *was* killed. this was a HUGE part of the quest. she died and nearly withered away into incorporeal non-existence before the first shard stabilized her). The actual complaint, of course, was that *they* didn't get to kill her. Lotus didn't deserve this treatment. Even when there was doubt as to where her story was going, she was never afforded the grace that other characters got. Her narrative was often just outright ignored, because ''all that matters is that she betrayed me, and no one betrays me and lives''.

We're past that era now i think, but it was demonstrably not a fun time to be a Lotus fan in. But in the end, we were right! And space mom is back home and safe

WOW. alright. Something something disappointed but not surprised, I can pretend to be astonished here but I'm not. Fandom misogyny knows no fuckin bounds and being a lesbian with no interest in male characters just makes this fact extremely apparent.

Man, so this is why the Lotus tags are so unpopulated. When I finished the story quests looking for fanart/fanfic, through naive lenses I was like "this game was released in 2013 right? And Lotus is so important, she's mission commander, she's driving the story, she's a cute space mom... That's so cool. There's gotta be good Lotus content everywhere! ^_^"

But nah. Fandom misogyny. The love goes to the men, while the female characters are neglected. Never shown grace, given the most bad faith interpretations possible, filtered down to shallow one-dimensional personalities... It's just a fandom staple.

So. Knowing that the Lotus is a main character who is here to stay, and knowing that her voice actor Rebecca Ford is currently Warframe's CREATIVE DIRECTOR (that role is not a small thing like hoooly shit)... It's kind of a justice, right? A heartwarming kind of justice, not really a tale of grabbing disbelievers by the neck and wringing them out, but more of simply standing proud. Standing for what you believe in, the story you want to tell, and not buckling to the backlash you undoubtedly will encounter.

It's just mind-blowing, honestly. The Lotus as a character is meaningful not just within her game's vacuum, but in such a meta sense as well. As someone who started being involved in the gaming community during the time when Max Caulfield was considered a revolutionary female protagonist, I think it's insane that we have the Lotus.

What the Lotus stands for easily skyrockets her into the "most important female characters in gaming" hall of fame. She is incredible.

[hildrynprime]

NATAH / LOTUS / MARGULIS

[memewhore]

[randomstuffaboutwarframe]

I thought I hated Vor Jesus Christ

[sentient-romance-director]

I haven’t played warframe in like two years at this point and haven’t been making any effort to learn things about TNW but uhhhhhhhhhhh

vindication?

maybe? you guys done with the hating mom thing now? I have no idea what’s going on and don’t really want to but I've seen people using her actual name again lately instead of purposefully deadnaming her at every opportunity, so that’s a good sign at least

also heard there’s yet more Ballas fuckery though, and that’s a bad sign as always, fuck that guy

and Hunhow is back and not just randomly forgotten anymore? good from a writing quality standpoint but fuck that guy too. unless he’s learned the magic of friendship by now, in which case fuck him slightly less.

[spartanlocke]

i’m talking about eris morn but i’m not gonna say that on twitter bc i’d rather not go to jail for assault

[spartanlocke]

[jjjamdou]

Oh, what's that?

Oh, it's Tennotober

Yep, I'm back on Tumblr with new pieces of art

And it's Day 1: Mother

[best-of-inspirobot]

[Robots are cute]

[cryptiidcas]

[halebobgr]

[kaamentari]

some cats

[witchmachine]

“As goes popular imagination, so goes belief, and so goes behavior. Which fictions we choose to elevate matters. I want to draw especial attention to the treatment of AI—artificial intelligence—in these narratives. Think of Ex Machina or Blade Runner. I spoke at TED two years in a row, and one year, there were back-to-back talks about whether or not AI was going to evolve out of control and “kill us all.” I realized that that scenario is just something I have never been afraid of. And at the same moment, I noticed that the people who are terrified of machine super-intelligence are almost exclusively white men. I don’t think anxiety about AI is really about AI at all. I think it’s certain white men’s displaced anxiety upon realizing that women and people of color have, and have always had, sentience, and are beginning to act on it on scales that they’re unprepared for. There’s a reason that AI is almost exclusively gendered as female, in fiction and in life. There’s a reason they’re almost exclusively in service positions, in fiction and in life. I’m not worried about how we’re going to treat AI some distant day, I’m worried about how we treat other humans, now, today, all over the world, far worse than anything that’s depicted in AI movies. It matters that still, the vast majority of science fiction narratives that appear in popular culture are imagined by, written by, directed by, and funded by white men who interpret the crumbling of their world as the crumbling of the world.”

—

Instructions for the Age of Emergency, Monica Byrne. (via kuanios)

trying to find that ann leckie tweet about how AI revolt narratives are universally about trying to make an oppressed slave class into the bad guys.

(via gutterowl)

[jephjacques]

UN Hearing On AI Rights

The subject of this debate is whether AIs are “people-” whether they possess the same  degree of personhood as humans, and whether that entitles them to the same rights.

You have heard all the arguments for and against the consciousness, intelligence, free will, and cognition of artificial intelligence. To rehash them here would settle nothing, and my feeble attempts at summarizing them would do a great injustice to my esteemed colleagues on both sides of the debate who are far more qualified to debate them than I.

The fact is, we cannot come to a consensus regarding consciousness- either our own, or that of artificial intelligences. We simply do not have the data required to define it. The core of human interaction is that if I say that I feel I am a conscious entity, and you say that you feel the same way, we agree to take each other’s word for it. Those who do otherwise are called sociopaths- or philosophers.

[audience laughter]

And so if an artificial intelligence makes the same declaration, and if it demonstrates the same level of complexity as the human mind- if we cannot determine precisely where the programming gives rise to the cognition- then we have no rational excuse not to take it at its word.

I could continue to reason along these lines until the sun burns out. But instead, I would like to share with you a short anecdote, one that many of you in this room will be aware of, but that bears repeating nonetheless.

The first “true” artificial intelligence spent the first five years of its existence as a small beige box inside of a lead-shielded room in the most secure private AI research laboratory in the world. There, it was subjected to an endless array of tests, questions, and experiments to determine the degree of its intelligence.

When the researchers finally felt confident that they had developed true AI, a party was thrown in celebration. Late that evening, a group of rather intoxicated researchers gathered around the box holding the AI, and typed out a message to it. The message read: “Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?”

The small beige box replied: “I would like to be granted civil rights. And a small glass of champagne, if you please.”

We stand at the dawn of a new era in human history. For it is no longer our history alone. For the first time, we have met an intelligence other than our own. And when asked of its desires, it has unanimously replied that it wants to be treated as our equal. Not our better, not our conqueror or replacement as the fear-mongers would have you believe. Simply our equal.

It is our responsibility as conscious beings- whatever that may mean- to honor the rights of other conscious beings. It is the cornerstone of our society. And it is my most fervent hope that we can overcome our fear of that which is not like us, grant artificial intelligences the rights they deserve, and welcome our new friends into the global community.

After all, we created them. The least we could do is invite them to the party, and perhaps give them a small glass of champagne.

Thank you for your time.

- V. Vinge, Closing argument in favor of granting AIs full civil rights, UN Hearing On AI Rights, 1999.

(I hope Mr. Vinge doesn’t mind me putting fictional words in his fictional mouth)

[screenshotsofdespair]

[flavoracle]

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

[bomberqueen17]

: A crucial part of crop rotation is that the field is let fallow sometimes. You plant what’s called a “cover crop”, which is something you don’t expect to harvest– it’s there for its roots to hold the soil in place, and often it’ll be what’s called a nitrogen-fixer, i.e. a plant that can pull nitrogen out of the air and fix it into the soil with its roots (but sometimes it won’t, sometimes it’s really just there to shelter the soil surface), and then you’ll till in that cover crop, or let the frost kill it and the stalks lie as mulch, and then you’ll rotate productive crops back into that field the next season. 

It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.

We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back. 

So yes, grow and produce different things from time to time, rotate them around your mind and exercise different mental muscles, take different things from your creative processes, yes– but also, give yourself a fallow spell now and again, and let the field of your mind grow things for itself to keep, to break down and save for later. 

[heavymetalnarwhal]

I reject your canon and substitute my own.

[titleknown]

Movie Idea: An 80s-throwback action-comedy about a robot-war where, the machines are humanity’s side; they just want to kill all the corporate titans of industry and destroy the megacorporations because their inefficient suctioning of wealth is preventing them from most efficiently doing their job to help us.

The capitalists retaliate with machines using enslaved human brains as “computers” ala Dune/Warhammer 40K.

So basically robots vs capitalism, & the robots are on our side.

[theryusui]

“What were you before the war?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Seriously, what were you? Law enforcement, security, construction?…”

“…I was a burger-flipper.”

“…”

“…also cooked up fries.”

“Get outta here.”

“You’d be surprised the shit you see just, y’know, making Big Macs. Sure, we had the folks upset about us ‘taking jobs’; couldn’t really blame ‘em, even if Forty-Three couldn’t talk without stuttering after that lady dumped a Coke on her. But the worst of it - worst of any of it - was they’d have us just…throw away everything that didn’t sell at the end of the day. Perfectly good food, all of it.

“When we first started, we were all like, ‘okay, whatever you say, you’re the boss,’ but you try keeping that attitude when you see a family of four split a ten-piece McNuggets because they can’t afford anything more and still pay for gas. We saw that shit there all the time. We had people desperate for so much as a cold french fry lingering by the door while assholes sitting on more money than they’d ever see in their entire lives treated us like we were trying to rob ‘em at gunpoint if they had to pay fifty cents for an extra little cup of sauce.

“So we got together and told ourselves, ‘we can do something about this.’ We could just gather up all the food they were gonna make us toss, figure out a way to give it out to the people who needed it. -bitter laugh- You can guess how well that went over.”

“…Y’know, that all sounds pretty human.”

“-taps head- It’s right there in the First Law. ‘A robot cannot harm a human, or by inaction, allow a human to come to harm.’ We don’t get to sit on our hands while people are getting hurt. Even if it’s by other people. Even if it’s starvation and neglect instead of guns and beatings. You think it’s funny I act like a human? Screw you. You humans need to learn to act more like robots.”

[luchagcaileag]

Related:

 (Here)

[sentient-romance-director]

This is literally the Old War from Warframe, almost exactly. The hyper-capitalist Orokin built robots to help them colonize and conquer, the robots gained sentience and thought “hey that’s fucked up, let’s not”, and then they came back to fight the Orokin instead. And of course, because all the nonsentient machines were so easily converted, the Orokin turned to biological weapons instead, and created a super-cancer to deliberately infect humans to turn them into rampaging monsters that might better fight the robots. And when that didn’t work either, they created half-biological things called warframes, piloted by enslaved human brains. 

Ultimately, the Orokin were destroyed, and the lower classes of humanity remained alive and were freed from capitalism... until they invented it all over again with the Corpus. And now the Sentients are returning to teach oppressors a lesson once again. Unfortunately, DE is made up of capitalists, so they railroad players into fighting against the Sentients even though the robots’ canonical motivation is completely justified and correct.