#Theyre thriving

[lxndonorris]

ITS FIXED

#And max posting something not racing related #Shocked #Max verstappen #Lando norris #They look so good here #Especially max #Theyre thriving #Oh fuck lando in the second pic #Hold on #Gonna die

[bubbleboybev]

we talk a lot about how hard winters can be for our water ghouls and YES I AGREE but...

what about the fire ghouls?

sure, they're warmer and the cold doesn't bother them much like it does the water ghouls, but they need the sun. it sets so early and when it's there is covered so much by clouds. the air is damp and foggy. they get sick more often. they spend so much of their energy keeping the fires for the ministry and in the den going for everyone else and they're exhausted. the weather seems to make it harder in general to use their magic. dew struggles with joint pain on a normal day esp in his hands. in the winter it can be excruciating. ifrit is almost never late for practice but as soon as the days begin getting colder it takes at least 2 other ghouls to drag him out of bed.

THINK ABOUT IT.

#ill never shut up about this #it just feels so true to me #honestly winter is rough for most of them #except my little quint ghouls #theyre thriving #phantom loves the snow #the band ghost #nameless ghouls

[hirudou]

            @mirrorfates asked:  sender  runs  into  the  woods  to  flee  from  receiver  .  just  some  tweel  fun

        convincing  floyd  to  come  outdoors  with  him  wasn't  hard.  his  admiration  and  love  for  fungus  aside,  jade  wasn't  terrible  to  go  on  these  outings  with.  it  was  a  fantastic  way  to  burn  any  excess  of  energy,  to  get  some  air--  to  step  away  from  the  stuffiness  that  was  his  day  to  day.  

they're  nearing  the  tree line  when  his  brother  suddenly  takes  off.  laughing  over  his  shoulder  before  disappearing  behind  a  row  of  old  oak  trees.  ----  after  a  pause,  a  moment  of  consideration,  jade  checks  to  make  sure  his  pack  is  buckled  at  the  front.  then  follows  suit;  chasing  after  his  brother  with  a  toothy  grin and a drawn string of laughter.

a walk in the woods

#curious? i suppose i can tell you…. ( answered asks ) #sometimes blowing off steam is chasing ur brother in the woods LMAO #theyre in the wild leave them alone #theyre thriving

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

#ai art #generated art #generated artwork #essays #about ai #worth a whole 'nother essay is how the tech side exists in a state that is both thriving and floundering at the same time #because the money theyre operating with is in schrodinger's box #at the same time it exists and it doesnt #theyre highly valued but usually operating at a loss #that is another MASSIVE can of worms and deserves its own deep dive

[mintypsii]

people don't even say i love you anymore they just

#im on kobylu island right now and it is THRIVING #I SCREAAAAAAMMMMMMMMEEEEEDDDDDDDD #THEYRE SOOOOOOOO #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #screams screaming keeps screaming #okay im okay #I AM NOT OKAY???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????? #it was the long gazing into eachothers eyes for me #perfectly straight here guys don't worry! me when i platonically stare lovingly into my homie's eyes #sorry #kobylu #lukoby #lucoby #cobylu #one piece live action #op #one piece #opla #min watches one piece #worst in the east #iñaki godoy #morgan davies #monkey d luffy #coby #koby

[justaz]

semi-dark king merlin au, someone from ealdor tells king cenred about merlin and he is captured and held as a slave in essetir. since merlin despises captivity and servitude, he’d rather be dead and free than alive and in chains so he acts out and pisses people (especially the king) off so they’ll think him too much trouble and kill him. at first they stick to beatings until merlin manages to get his chains around a few necks and now has a body count so they kill him…..only he wakes back up a few hours later and king cenred is Intrigued and keeps him close. merlin keeps acting out but no matter how many times they kill him, he won’t stay dead. merlin has this moment after waking up perfectly fine after his twenty seventh death where he is hopeless and believes there to be no escape, not even thru death. a few other sorcerers in chains come and help him clean up and give him a lil peptalk, realizing him to be emrys, and then they revolt and take over the kingdom and crown merlin as king and now uther is like “wtf” bc his neighboring kingdom who was kinda sorta on his wavelength about sorcery, though uther did not approve of keeping them alive, is now a kingdom ruled by magic. he goes to war with them but with magic running free and fucking emrys on the throne, they don’t make a lot of headway. anyways merthur meet on the battlefield, enemies to lovers, you get it

#bbc merlin #merlin emrys #king merlin #arthur pendragon #merthur #fanfic #fanfiction #fic idea #writing prompt #king merlin of essetir #the angst is crazy #merthur despising each other bc to arthur merlin is an evil sorcerer while to merlin arthur is just like his father who is just like cenred #slowly learning more about each other and seeing their kindness #slowly earning respect between the other #lmao those silly episodes where the hero and the villain come to a truce to fight a common enemy and then go right back to fighting after #morganas ‘betrayal’ to camelot is just joining essetir’s side #she learns to control her magic and finds people like her #uhhh #druids flock to essetir while the antimagic people of essetir flee to camelot #essetir kinda just becomes a magic kingdom lmao #THEY SNEAK INTO CAMELOT AND SET THE DRAGON FREE SO ESSETIR JUST HAS A FUCKING DRAGON #camelot is shitting their pants #when arthur becomes king hes just like ‘we gotta sign a treaty atp theres no way were winning #and i refuse to send more of my men to their deaths’ #tense political situation where theyre signing a treaty - one wrong move and everything goes to shit #now that the kingdoms can live in relative peace arthur can see the good magic can do for a kingdom as essetir thrives #since theyre on sorta good terms there can be feasts held w merlin in camelot or arthur is essetir #slowburn babey

[galaxyhearth]

Schools on fire but hey they're thriving

#by thriving i mean #theyre really not #solitaire #solitare michael #solitaire alice oseman #solitare tori #tori spring #michael holden art #michael holden

[zanderbobs]

Today on 'Iris is pissed off with the internet's perception of history': I just saw a tiktok about 'things every history girl has been obsessed with' featuring the tudors, Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs, and the Titanic and euughhrjfjrj. This is very dangerously close to just outright calling it 'girl history' and I'm really not a fan.

Tbh it goes along with a trend I've been seeing a lot that I like to call the 'coquette-ification' of history, in which what I presume to be teenage girls (with whom the 'coquette' trend has the most traction) fascinate over the presupposed 'femininity' and 'innocence' of female (usually royal) historical figures like Anne Boleyn or Marie Antoinette (obvs Titanic is an exception, I cba rn to try and analyse why that's considered 'girl history' but I think there's a reason). All of these fixations generally seem so focused on victimhood above all else rather than anything these historical figures actually did, which is something we really should've moved on from by now (did you guys not even see Six??? That was the whole message of Six!!!)

Anyway I could ramble for hours but the main point I want to hammer home is that history is so much more! From extremely niche details and people to broad systems of rule and oppression that we still see remnants of today! It is full of agents, from the average person to those famous historical figures like Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette who were their own agents, for better or worse, and weren't just subject to the actions of others! Just branch out, please

#im very passionate about people not just getting into historical things because theyre trendy #the study of history thrives when people are more into a range of eccentric niches #also im just sick of those 'waa waa marie antoinette' videos like make some other content please its boring #history

[fishfingersandscarves]

diann five years post game <3

#my art #fishfingersandscarves #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #diann (oc) #bg3 tav #doodle #traveling musician confident and THRIVING #single but...........soon.......the love will be...........rekindled...... #thats right meetcute part 2 post story this time theyre healthy

[arom-antix]

A companion piece for my first @viktuuri-week piece because we can't have Yuuri without Viktor, now can we?

Credit to J XIV / Jesa Padayachy on Musescore for the transcription of Duetto: Stammi Vicino, Non Te Ne Andare used.

#wdym i havent posted in almost 2 months? shhhhhh #this was a lot of fun except for the 4 hours of procrastinating that i did #i think the piece itself took like 1 or 2 hours at most #whoops #anyway tumblr user blended ice mentioned that the part of my yuuri piece visible in my blog icon kinda looks like viktors eye colour #so its like yuuri reflected in his eye #and you know i COULD NOT pass up that opportunity and then this was born #so thank you besiyr for this JOY of a process #seriously theyre some of my simplest pieces to make but im always so happy with them #so thank you #also the highlights were everything to do i was THRIVING #yuri on ice #yoi #yuri on ice fanart #yoi fanart #fanart #art #arom antix art #arom antix #viktor nikiforov

[ruporas]

can’t help falling for you

#vashwood #vash the stampede #nicholas d. wolfwood #trigun #trigun maximum #nicolas d wolfwood #my spin on how they started to really fall for each other tbh..... i mean #my hc is that vash fell first --> hence ch 21 -- which is kind of funny bc they had a lot of back and forths and conflict between one anothe #but i Cannot be convinced otherwise that when vash woke up and saw wolfwood bedridden next to him #that expression alone was filled with so much worry and care and i think that feeling of gratitude and knowing wolfwood had survived pushed #the level of affection.... also those few chapters where theyre just hanging out in the ship honestly feels so domestic amongst everything #which is the kind of atmosphere where i think vash thrives upon the most and is able to feel #comfortable and open to relieve any inner buried feelings... #for wolfwood id like to think he always felt a little drawn to vash due to not only his mission but also bc vash Forces him to be worried #all the time so-- he's just always on the mind and coupled with their initial opposing ideologies #i think ultimately in ch 35 is when he stopped having any feelings of doubt in vash and caved to realizing that he /wants/ to protect him #and also just loves him. a lot! #anyway this is so gushy but i love them so much #these thoughts plague me #ruporas art

[dizzybizz]

penacony.... gay..... gay penacony compilation but im not even done with the main quest so this might not even be all of it.

bonus: sparkle and aventurine wlw/mlm hostility

she's so ....

this was so. so much.

#yall im so ok rn #honkai star rail #hsr spoilers #penacony spoilers #i have so amny. feelings. #why is everyone i meet in this place a raging homosexual #why does bronyas dream open like that. they know what theyre doing ..those writers..... #stelle has another girlfriend #this quest is so long so many hours have past i swear im thriving tho

[im-diseased-but-cool]

People hate that I love old man yaoi swag

#diseasy squeaks #this is about hank and connor #hankcon #hank anderson #connor rk800 #dbh #detroit become human #connor dbh #hank dbh #its because people are fatphobic thats a main reason why they dont get the appeal of hank and connor kissing because they hate it wjen #fat old men thrive they only want twinks to kiss which is honestly boring as hell #i hate you gavin reed #fuck you gavin reed #“oh but theyre like father and son” okay? why cant they have that dynamic AT FIRST and then their feelings grow from platonic to romantic? #i hate fandoms so much #anyways i love you markus #he has nothing to do with this post but i want his love to be heard #markus rk200 i love you

[m1kyweeds]

hes my oc now >:)

#he would b sooooobad at peeling oranges #& breaking eggs........ oh gentle giant #curingb my woe #another ludicrous excuse to draw shapes hehhe #the sunflowers r thriving cuz theyre right next to da Sun!!!!!!!!!!! #matakara asamine #bucchigiri?!

[mrmosseater]

yeah you heard me right

#brawl stars #brawl stars fanart #brawl stars art #brawl stars melodie #brawl stars angelo #theyre...VELVET AND VENEER #personally i wanna draw lola and gray as velvet n veneer #i do see emz n edgar as them a lot #they even have the same letter at the start of their names!! #melodie and angelo fit them too very much #i Had to do this after i saw a comparison on twitter #thriving

[cloudbends]

[ID: a 3 section venn diagram, depicting in each a circle a character from different media: mitsumi iwakura from the manga “skip and loafer” in a pink circle, tome kurata from the manga “mob psycho 100″ in a teal circle, and midori asakusa from the anime “keep your hands off eizouken” in a purple circle. the crossover section between mitsumi and tome reads “over ther top career aspirations”, the crossover section between mitsumi and asakusa reads “country bumpkins, short TM”, and the crossover section between tome and asakusa reads “wanted by the student council for illegally forming a club”. the middle crossover of all three reads “highschool girls with a spikey dark bob haircut who are unapologetically weird, passionate, and iconic as hell”. end ID.]

came to me in a dream. obsessed with whatever brand of character this is fr

#vi rambling #ive had this idea for so long. the spikey bob the small dead looking eyes. the weirdness rep #anyways if you like one of them i feel like youll like the other. please read /watch these theyre all seriously so so good #theyre obviously different in a lot of aspects but when it comes to like #representation of hs girls who are just #weird and unique and thriving #these are peak fr #anyways do i tag all of these i feel weird abt it help #skip and loafer #mp100 #kyhoe