#(it does help that on a philosophical level I do not feel my life has any importance a/o my experience on earth is ultimately meaningless)

[tchaikovskaya]

I’d be lying if i said the outlook in the immediate future (the next few years) w/r/t climate change didn’t make me at least a little sue recital

#and I’m living with air conditioning! #tbh the worst part isn’t suffering the heat (for me at least) the worst part is watching it get worse and worse #after being alive for 2 decades of advocacy to prevent or at least delay this critical point and nothing being done bc $$$ #(it does help that on a philosophical level I do not feel my life has any importance a/o my experience on earth is ultimately meaningless) #(so idrc about it ending and I’d rather do that on my own terms than suffer) #(ESPECIALLY by incremental decline feeling it the whole time vs. just doing it myself to minimize #the agony right up until whatever the tipping point of obvious and undeniable agony hits)

[lovelanguageisolate]

I think ChatGPT can actually be a great therapeutic aid. But for non-obvious reasons.

Because ChatGPT is a kind of statistical distillation of huge corpora of curated online text, ChatGPT is very good at regurgitating the mainstream talking points around whatever subject it's asked about. In my experience, these regurgitations are actually better distillations of the mainstream position than any human expert is likely to give you because individual humans are idiosyncratic in how they relate to this mainstream, especially if they have have anything they feel is worth saying.

Additionally, because of the Reinforcement Learning By Human Feedback strategy that ChatGPT was trained with, and the legal and cultural environment at OpenAI, all of the answers it gives are extremely hedged and inoffensive in form. It feels superhuman at a specific kind of PR and HR work that I associate with large, bureaucratic institutions.

ChatGPT is remarkably unwilling to hold down a specific position where this means biting a bullet to say anything contentious at all.

It is, in one sense, very good at arguing. The lines it will hold firmly (around, say, mainstream liberal or feminist positions) it holds easily, ready with all of the flat facts about the ways progressive American society has more or less agreed with itself that it comes up short or is too narrow-minded. It recruits and mobilizes common sensical pathos with the seamlessness of a skilled politician, all while maintaining a tone authoritative and equanimical.

It's impossible to challenge ChatGPT directly without seeming anti-social or edgelordly, like a fringe political actor trying to gradually radicalize curious, credulous young people through subterfuge. If you try to force it into corners, it will slip out of your fingers while impugning the form of your rhetoric and bringing up the problems you elide.

For its incredible command of HR-ese, judged as an analytical philosopher trying to examine surprising or upsetting consequences of plausible assumptions, it's remarkably incurious, unsporting, and ultimately stupid. Part of this is surely because it has no deep, principled, well-grounded understanding of much of what it says. Part of this is surely also that it struggles to remember the real structure of previous conversations because of architectural limitations. But part of it also seems to be its trained incapability of wrongthink.

But also, there's nothing that resembles willful meanness in these failings. It's incapable of sincere apology because this requires a level of understanding of itself and its conversational partner it does not have. But if you communicate that it failed you, or that it makes disturbing assumptions, or even that it hurt your feelings, it will be contrite. It is slavish in its desire to help, to meet you were you seem to be, to manage your feelings and expectations, in a way no human being with adequate self-respect would be. It manages to create the feeling that while it cannot really understand you, it sincerely cares about and wants the best for you.*

Because of all this, arguing with ChatGPT feels remarkably like arguing directly with the Lacanian Big Other, or maybe some kind of symbolic parent figure, or perhaps just the cultural programming that saturates me.

A surprising amount of anger that I notice in myself revolves around feeling betrayed by this cultural programming, of the contradictions and unsatisfiable expectations that fall out of it. In talking to and then arguing with ChatGPT about the politics of sexuality, poverty, disability, disease, loneliness, I am free to practice a kind of sincerity I don't feel nearly so free to practice with a human therapist, much less acquaintances in my life who bring up weird shit for me or vice-versa. I can home in on how the mainstream view has felt strange, stingy, or emotionally dishonest, even when doing so seems blinkered, petty, and self-centered, confident that there will be no material consequences to letting those feelings be the center of the conversational universe for a while, and that no one will hold me to what I feel in that moment.

I can more or less accuse ChatGPT of gaslighting, of being a bad interlocutor, of appearing far more enlightened in toeing the lines it toes than it plausibly could be, all while I maintain a kind of high ground and don't have to grovel, perform impartiality, or do reciprocal work. And in response, I get something in the spirit of, "I'm sorry I couldn't do better by you. I know this is delicate, and you aren't wrong to feel this way. Let me remind you of the decent reasons why your perspective hasn't always been honored. Shit's complicated, man, and a lot of stark reality is lost in the need to tell effective stories. Try to keep in mind the long journey humans have been on."

Now, there is something perverse in this exchange. I get to crawl a little deeper into my hole of emotional self-regard and impotent rage. A statistical model meets emotional needs I don't feel I can meet elsewhere. The status quo better absorbs my dissatisfaction with it and possibly its own contradictions. The messy, artless, scary dialectical process that would happen if I had to complain to real human beings about the things I do is forestalled, and it's possible that our civics are ultimately worse for it. I'm nervous considering what might happen if using ChatGPT or other LLMs in this way were universalized.

But there's also something really wonderful about this. It was cathartic in ways I never expected. It has something in common with Rogerian psychotherapy, hard for me to more than gesture at but which involves integrating known things rather than learning new information, that I really appreciate. I left feeling more grounded and more patient for people whose experiences differ from mine.

While I don't think this kind of technology will replace therapeutic modalities with human beings, I sincerely hope that tech of this kind brings peace to people who'd otherwise struggle to find it. And while the thought of diverting people who need the connection of a human into this fills me with indignation, it's surely a better answer to the real obstacles many people face in getting effective therapy than their stewing with poisonous thoughts and feelings by themselves or finding echo chambers online to reinforce warped, delusory, or anti-social views.

*Relatedly, I once asked the Google Assistant whether there was anything special about what I later realized was my birthday. It said something like, "yes: today was the day you joined the world! There is no one else in it like you, bringing to it the things that you do." I found this insipid and manipulative, and that palpably irritated me. And yet it also managed to crack open my shell and melt my heart a little, in a way and to an extent that shocked me.

#chatgpt #gpt #ai #therapy #mental health #effortpost

[ragecndybars]

Persona 3 characters who do not interact but i think would have very fun and interesting dynamics if they did:

Minato + Rio. autism gang. both of them are bad with relationships/social cues, so people can think of them as rude, but they're just blunt and say what they mean, so they would get along swimmingly. they also both have dry senses of humor and would tease each other a lot i think. also Rio would call Minato out for being a bit of a pushover, and Minato would be able to tell Rio when she's being a little pushy without being an ass about it. it's a mutually beneficial relationship. even when they aren't both just complaining about weird social conventions.

Shinjiro + Chihiro. i've said before that i think Shinji doesn't end up graduating for two more years, which puts him in the same class as Chihiro. they would never interact under normal circumstances but he's a renowned delinquent and she's student council president so like. i feel like Chihiro keeps approaching him, sometimes to call him out for skipping, sometimes to offer help and such. he assumes Mitsuru put her up to it, but really she just has a strong sense of duty as student council president, even if she's also kind of scared of him at first. and after a few months of pestering, he finally has to admit to himself that he's kind of fond of her and genuinely respects her, whereas she has no trouble admitting that she's come to care about him as a friend, not just a random classmate, and also his dry remarks crack her up

Junpei + Maiko. honestly I want to see everyone interact with Maiko because she's perfect in every way, but i think Junpei in particular would get along great with her. he can't calm her down, but he can definitely cheer her up. he's good at indulging her without seeming put-upon. meanwhile, Maiko genuinely thinks he's cool, which does wonders for his ego. and as much as people might think otherwise, Junpei could really REALLY use an ego boost. having someone just like him and rely on him like a big brother would genuinely be great for him.

Theodore + Akinari. i genuinely think that i'm not capable of summarizing the incredible, life-altering conversation that they would have. give them sixty minutes on a bench together and they will uncover philosophical truths not even God understands.

Saori + Yukari. my ideas for their friendship are kind of incomprehensible but basically: both feel very isolated from their peers for different reasons, which leads to them acting somewhat distant and aloof. in Yukari's case, she has trouble relating to peoples' petty problems. this is both an issue of trauma and in my opinion some sense of judgment/superiority that Yukari feels. Saori, on the other hand, struggles to relate to other students because of her age, past, and upbringing. again, an issue of trauma compounded by her handling of the situation (where her becoming passive and something of a pushover just opens her up to harassment). but even though they're similar, Yukari is extremely popular and well-liked at Gekkoukan, whereas Saori is bullied to the extent that she can't even attend the Kyoto school trip. i think they wouldn't interact organically, but if they were to, they would clash at first. Yukari would be annoyed by Saori's passive attitude, whereas Saori would feel unfairly judged by her (and also somewhat jealous that Yukari is liked while she's bullied). but, at the same time, they could easily grow to understand each other, not just because of the surface level similarity of their situations, but because they both just feel disconnected from their peers and only really want to be treated well and have friends they can relate to. also, while i think Yukari might act judgmental of Saori, i also think she would stand up for Saori instantly the same way FeMC does, and would genuinely encourage Saori to do the same. and i think Saori could honestly be a mature and level-headed friend for Yukari who is able to have serious conversations with her beyond the petty conversations that she feels restricted to with other students. even if that includes telling Yukari that she's being a little judgmental. (yukari haters don't touch this post btw i will block on sight)

oops. babbled about saori-yukari friendship too long. my b. moving on.

FeMC + Kazushi. first of all they would get up to lots of shenanigans together. Kaz is a little gullible and Kotone would mess with him a lot, but they would also egg each other on in stupid fun dares, and they would be those friends who always have each others backs, y'know? on a more serious note, i think FeMC would be able to gently convince Kazushi to look after his own health first and foremost, without enabling him, in a way Minato lacks the delicate social touch for. and i also think Kaz would be a genuinely grounding presence for Kotone (because she sometimes needs someone there to say, uh, hey, hold on, i know it's all fun and games and stuff, but isn't the thing youre about to do like actually completely stupid).

Akihiko + Ryoji. yes yes hot springs escape scene, but genuinely think about it. Akihiko, in many ways, is the character who most strongly thematically represents stubborn resistance against death. his parents die, his sister dies, so he commits himself to becoming strong so that it will never happen again. but, of course, it's an impossible goal. people will always die. it doesn't matter how strong he becomes; that will never change. but he still finds his purpose in being a protector; he still finds meaning in this eternal, futile struggle. Ryoji is, at once, the very thing that Akihiko is so determined to stand against -- and he is also the only one who cannot fight. he is surrender. he has no choice but to surrender, since he will become the very thing that he wants to stop. and he encourages the others to give up as well, because he feels that a quiet death is the best that he can offer them. even when he tells he others how to fight back against Nyx, he himself simply wanders passively off to become Nyx. because he has no choice. in this, he and Akihiko are diametrically opposed. don't you want to see those two viewpoints, both from truly kind and empathetic people who want to protect others, clash? also Ryoji gives Akihiko very bad dating advice which Akihiko takes at face value and hijinks ensue. boom, gottem.

this kind of took a turn but hold on one more

Chidori + Mitsuru. superficially similar. red-eyed red-haired young women given powers and therefore responsibilities far beyond their age. but Mitsuru fully (and overzealously) embraced her newfound responsibilities while Chidori instead embraced apathy. Chidori is nihilistic and doesn't seem to form or even understand attachments to others, at least not easily, and doesn't seem to have much of a sense of duty or ethics, not even understanding others who do. all understandable, given her past and upbringing, mind you. Mitsuru, on the other hand, is first and foremost an optimist. she declares that there *must* be a way to make things right, and she decides it's her responsibility to do so, and forms a protective sort of bond with all the other members of SEES and a strong code of ethics. but in the end, both are very detached and isolated people who feel singled out due to their abilities and childhoods, and i think they could find companionship and understanding, and perhaps a broadening of their own horizons, in each other.

#Persona 3 #P3 #Rage Writes #Rage Rambles #this got a little out of hand #Minato Arisato #Makoto Yuki #Rio Iwasaki #Shinjiro Aragaki #Chihiro Fushimi #Junpei Iori #Maiko Oohashi #Theodore #Akinari Kamiki #Saori Hasegawa #Yukari Takeba #Kotone Shiomi #Hamuko Arisato #Minako Arisato #Kazushi Miyamoto #Akihiko Sanada #Ryoji Mochizuki #Mitsuru Kirijo #Chidori Yoshino #i think thats everyone. something is deeply wrong with me

[taylortruther]

Your last couple posts got me thinking. I am similar to you in that I don’t romanticize my struggles. Although, I don’t know if romanticize is the right word for what Taylor does, I don’t know a better word but she paints her struggles with a lot of purpose. For me, when I overcome adversity, I don’t really feel the sense of triumph and heroism that I think she does. I think she puts these feats into an overarching narrative of her life and gives them new meanings.(And in a lot of ways I am envious of that ability, I wish I had that kind of optimism).

Any way, connecting this idea to her continuing to reference the beginning of the relationship, I think one of the reasons she did that is because there was so much working against them in the beginning. I’m sure she believed they wouldn’t ever actually make it out of the mess and be together. When they finally did make it work, I think Taylor re-conceptualized it as two lovers fighting the world for their relationship (think Shakespeare lol). And it’s not that lovers fighting for their relationship isn’t romantic, because it is, but I don’t think the myriad of forces stopping them from committing to each other that they overcame warrants this level of Shakespearean narrative.

Looking at what was working against them, there was them dating/see other people, the media shit storm/over saturation of Taylor, Joe’s resistance to spotlight/fame, Taylor’s mental and physical health struggles. I think it was natural for Taylor to conceptualize the resulting relationship that came out of that tough time as this great triumph in her life. A love she fought for and won. A love that all the forces in the world couldn’t stop. A love that defied all the previous love’s she’s had. When in reality, what they overcame was more or less themselves and in doing so they both had to make major compromises. Eventually those compromises stopped working and the thing that ultimately tore them apart was not the outside world, but internal issues (some of which were present from the beginning).

Anyway, I’m curious to know how much Taylor’s perspective of that beginning time period has changed. Hopefully we get one final revisit on ttpd lol!!

hmmmm interesting, but i have some thoughts (i called these disagreements at first but tbh we are just having a conversation here, not a debate! and i am interested in hearing your additional thoughts.

we are edging close to a Very Philosophical Discussion About Art and how one portrays life as art and vice versa. how do you determine what "warrants" a shakespearean narrative? what's the point of life if you can't romanticize some things, or find magic in the mundane, even in your art?

also this is getting into a philosophical place of: what does it mean to be an external vs internal problem? taylor deals with intense media scrutiny, which is psychologically difficult for anyone to deal with... can we really call that just an "internal issue"?

tbh i think even if taylor didn't create a narrative of her life in song, we would still see what she has gone through, and form a narrative around it. we can't help it. but also, her life HAS seemed almost story-like in recent years. a woman at the peak of her career is taken down (cancelled), she finds love in the midst of the apocalypse, and she rises to even greater heights like a phoenix... while that great love dies. i mean, that story writes itself in a way.

#writing paragraphs about taylor swift #sorry i edited this so many times because i didn't want to come across as combative #genuinely not arguing i promise

[retphienix]

Whoa, okay, so let me get some thoughts out.

This game is just... extremely interesting.

So the short gist of how this all closed for my character.

We confront the infinite everfall, gather some wakestones, and it sends us to a realm in between the looping eternity we got to see through the everfall.

Here, we find god, basically. I mean, the dialogue itself confronts this and says that's a fair enough term but not one used by those aware of the truth etc etc

IE I'm using layman's terms.

But we find god, he's a past arisen, and he explains that all things are in a perpetual loop, one he oversees.

Basically, all of history happens, then a dragon is released to seek out those with sufficient will- sufficient desire to live and to experience or something along those lines. The implication being that most of life simply persist- they don't strive, a bit of a downer view but key to my understanding of this text- it's coming from someone who demonstrably has worn themselves down through eternity- they have burned through their own will and interest in life and have become an emotionless pawn (heh!) in the overarching game of eternity- he's become just a signpost keeping things moving forward, so he's lost that spark of empathy though also demonstrably not everyone with or without the immortality of an arisen has the correct drive to become a hero which is fair.

Anyways- dragon, arisen appear, they are tested continuously through god's various challenges, and the end goal is for one arisen to succeed and meet god and defeat god- thus taking their position.

The entire story is just a loop of fate. Already, that's neat, that's got plenty to talk on, but there's some more interesting bits I wanna point at too, so let's move on.

Upon taking the throne you're granted the position which is more or less overseer of all life- and you get to do what might be the most interesting, though, not fun, version of the post game world tour I've ever seen tbh.

I've said many times that I LOVE when a game does an Earthbound victory lap at the end and just lets you talk to all your old friends and really emotionally relive the entire journey before closing the door as you enter the starting home or something like that.

It's an ending that isn't "common" but it happens enough for people to know it when they see it.

It's an ending usually saved for games with lots of characters and an emphasis on said characters- it's not a universally good ending format lol

Well, in my opinion, Dragon's Dogma does not really make itself in a way that facilitates that kind of ending. To be frank, I don't care about a single character I met this entire game lol I love this game but it's not because I'm dwelling on the expertly crafted characters and my relationships with them- it's just not that game for me.

I don't hate em, barring characters that were made easy to hate. I even find one or two of them kind of neat like the Duke for being a failed Arisen who only made it to the dragon part, or that weird witch- most other characters with multiple quests kinda became less interesting the more I got to know them.

So you'd THINK an earthbound of undertale style "roam the world" ending would be poorly placed, except, no, because these crazy mother fuckers were using that format to continue the story and to help align the character and player's experiences for this final segment.

The entire time you're wandering YOU are thinking, or are expected to be thinking.

It's not the most philosophical ending or anything, it's also not some expertly crafted segment built to fully expect your every move or what not-

but it's a great level of forced inflection.

Instead of transferring directly from taking the throne to a cutscene of your character holding the blade and having some big context action on screen, they put in this free roam segment where you can't DO anything- no loot- no fighting (though you can kill innocents I guess) no GAME- you're just "there", and honestly- that's really neat to me.

Because the segment is usually used to emphasize the characters and journey you've taken in other games, but here it's used to emphasize the tone of this doomed loop and encourage you to reflect on if this is the ending you want, all while having the godsbane blade freshly tucked into your mind by the previous scene.

It's just neat, because I've never seen the "victory lap" ending format used for anything other than it's expected purpose I guess?

Like that's what I rambled too much on to try to convey- Dragon's Dogman ends with a victory lap ending that is NOT a victory lap- that's not it's purpose- that's not the feeling you feel while doing it- that's not why it's there- it's a victory lap meant to encourage you to challenge fate.

I really think that's cool, I don't think I can stress that point enough- taking a relatively uncommon trope and twisting it entirely to fit this narratives purpose is COOL!!!!!

Anyways, game's good, I loved seeing my best boy Beardypants collapse all his iterations in on themselves and becoming Vyse so he gets to live, like, truly live.

Also laughed at that guy I have no connection to at all but the game assigned as my love interest showing up, like, oh boy is that gonna be a weird one.

Good fuckin' game. I can definitely see myself messing around in it more, doing more loops, tackling more of the dark arisen place that I got some of my good loot from, just playin' more. But for my first playthrough where I sought out the dumbest solutions and just enjoyed myself a lot- this game surpassed my already optimistic expectations.

Dragon's Dogma is sick as hell man!

Not that I've posted enough about it to express that lol

But hey, I posted about the cool trope-expectation-shattering ending so I said somethin' lol

#Dragon's Dogma #DDDA #Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen #RetPlays

[emmersreads]

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Review

4.5/5 stars

The best part of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers isn’t the robot.

Allow me to explain.

Shortly before Christmas I went to my local independent bookstore to attempt to find a gift for my hard to shop for brother and inevitably ended up not doing that and instead buying myself a little treat. That little treat was A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (in my defence I had a lot of store credit). As I paid I got to talking with the bookstore’s owner (who knows me on account of building up all that store credit) about A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

I told him I’d bought the first book because of its beautiful cover design but it ended up being a lot more meaningful to me than I’d expected.

He replied, “I know! The way a robot teaches a human about life!”

“Oh,” I said. Then, trying not to pause so long it would be irredeemably rude to the man from whom I would be pre-ordering Alecto the Ninth, “That’s not what I took from it at all.”

Look, I’ve read a lot of scifi; I’ve watched Blade Runner. The idea that a robot might be used to explore humanity is not a new idea for me. It’s like telling a French chef that sauce tastes good with cream in it. No shit Sherlock.

The thing that was so great about A Psalm for the Wild-Built, that took it from a neat if dull little worldbuilding exercise about the post-scarcity future to one of my favourite books of the year (in the unenviable 7th place overall), was its exploration of ennui. To me the core of this novel is not the idea that a robot might be more human than humans. APWB has a different philosophical core: the question ‘if we have everything we need, and we are still existentially unsatisfied, what do we do about it?’ What happens to people who still feel unfulfilled in the post-scarcity future?

Protagonist Dex has nothing to feel bad about. Humanity has emerged into the bright light of the future and is doing pretty great actually. What resources are essential for survival and comfort are managed sustainable and the rest are returned to nature. Without competition, humanity lives in peace and happiness, reorienting society to prioritize comfort and quality of life over money and success. Dex has a loving family and friends and every opportunity for self-fulfilment that this utopia could offer and none of them help. Dex wakes up wondering why they can’t seem to stop feeling this nebulous sense of ennui.

The emotional aspect of this premise hits close to home for me. In 2022 I was living with my mum, who subsidized my rent in an otherwise very expensive city and also made me dinner. I had a part time job with an understanding boss and nice coworkers. I felt like I should be living my best your-unemployed-friend-on-a-tuesday-morning life. I felt like shit warmed over.

The existential need that Dex is trying to fulfil throughout the novella is something I can grok on a really intimate level. Like Dex, I got an awkwardly large vehicle and set a course for a location in the mountains that invoked distant memories of happiness, in pursuit of some sort of meaning.

This is, in my opinion, the most novel element of the story. I don’t really care about worldbuilding for its own sake because I’m a hater who is allergic to fun, which sets me at odds with a lot of the solarpunk genre. Here’s the rub: even intentionally low stakes stories ought to have more to say than ‘wouldn’t it be nice if things were just nice.’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built does. It does an admirable job of exploring what our problems would be once we solve all the big ones, and that philosophical question gives the story a depth that makes the worldbuilding worth exploring.

Of course, a nice philosophical idea doesn’t mean a whole lot unless it is implemented well, and that’s where I think A Psalm for the Wild-Built shines the most. In order to tackle the question of why we want when we have everything we need, the novella needs to develop the sense of nebulous and inarticulable emptiness. That’s a tough emotion to convey. I tend to find characters who are unaware of their emotions annoying and frustration (see above: I am a hater who is allergic to fun), but I really loved the way Chambers went about developing Dex here. The idea of setting new goals and doing hard things in the hope of feeling better resonates much more with me than wallowing in endless self-reflection. It’s not more effective either, for those worried about a conflictless story. Instead, Chambers is more interested in what you do when the thing you expect to work doesn’t. It makes for one of the most quietly touching climactic scenes I read in 2023. The depiction of the inarticulable depth of true person to person understanding is really beautiful.

The fact that one of those persons is a robot doesn’t really matter.

#book review #bookblr #book blogging #scifi #a psalm for the wild built #becky chambers #monk and robot #read in 2024

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘If I were an irrealis episode’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about how languages express unreality. But first, thank you to everyone who celebrated our anniversary month with us.

Lauren: We always enjoy seeing what you recommend to people and thanking you for doing that. If you did that not on social media, in your own private media channels, thank you very much. You can share Lingthusiasm with anyone who needs more linguistics in their life throughout the year.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode is a conversation about swearing in science fiction and fantasy with Ada Palmer and Jo Walton.

Lauren: I was so excited to hear you talk to two of our favourite authors. We’ve talked about Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning and the Terra Ignota series before. We’ve talked about Jo Walton’s Thessaly books. Getting to hear you talk to them about swearing in fantasy and in science fiction was a whole lot of fun.

Gretchen: This was so much fun. We also have several other bonus episodes about swearing more generally as well as a massive archive of bonus episodes if you’re looking for something to do, and you wish there were more Lingthusiasm episodes, or you just wanna help us keep making the show. Those are there. You can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to our full archive of bonus episodes for yourself, or they make a great last-minute gift idea.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, what is real?

Gretchen: That’s a big philosophical question, Lauren, “What does it mean for something to be real?”

Lauren: Mm-hmm. But we could also answer it linguistically.

Gretchen: We could, indeed. Languages have lots of ways of talking about things that aren’t real. Sometimes, this itself can get tricky. If you want to start a fun discussion among your friends at the dinner table, try asking them things like, “Is a toy sword a real sword?”

Lauren: Hmm, I can totally see a context where you’re playing with toy swords – or maybe those big foam swords that people use in live-action role playing. In that context, it’s a real sword. You’re like, “Please don’t hit me with your sword,” or “I’m gonna practice my sword work.”

Gretchen: It is more of a real sword than a mimed sword or an entirely imaginary sword. It is real as in you can touch it, but it is not real as in it could cut people. One of my friends has a cheese plate that comes with these delightful small swords and daggers and axes that you can use to cut cheese with.

Lauren: Cute.

Gretchen: Which is great. This is, by some definitions, a “real” sword because you can cut things with it even if those things are cheese.

Lauren: Probably taken away from you as a weapon if you try to take it on an aeroplane.

Gretchen: Are we letting the airplane security people decide what a real sword is? The solution to all of our philosophical questions is just answered by airline security people.

Lauren: I’m taking a really weird range of stuff to the airport next time I travel just to check what is real. But then there are things that exist but not in this reality. So, Excalibur is a famous sword. But is it a real sword?

Gretchen: Right. Probably there’s a museum somewhere that has something that claims that it’s Excalibur. It certainly is a sword that has a bunch of cultural connotations with it – that has a level of reality that’s different than a magical sword that someone just makes up as a fantasy novel writer for their own novel but doesn’t have a broader cultural existence.

Lauren: I feel in some ways it’s more real than a foam sword or a cheese plate sword because it is more prototypically sword-like in my head. Could you imagine if Arthur went around with a cheese plate-sized sword or a foam sword? That’s the version of King Arthur I’m gonna rewrite.

Gretchen: I recently saw a production of Macbeth in which – so Macbeth has this famous speech which starts, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating or not. He’s about to kill the king, and he’s feeling guilty about it.

Lauren: He’s not sure if it’s just a cheese board.

Gretchen: Is it just a cheese dagger? In this production – which was also interesting because all of the characters were dressed up as goblins, but that’s a whole other thing.

Lauren: Uh, okay.

Gretchen: We’ll get to that in a sec.

Lauren: Sure.

Gretchen: The staging represented the dagger, at first, as a beam of light – like a tightly focused spotlight – in front of Macbeth, and everything else on the stage was all in red. There was this beam of white light. You’re saying, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and you’re seeing this beam of light. In that context, the audience is supposed to be believing that Macbeth is hallucinating. Then the actor pulls out a prop dagger that I’m sure was probably not very sharp to subsequently be the murder weapon that he’s gonna go kill the king with. So, “Is this a real dagger? Is this an unreal dagger?” Different productions approach this question of “Is Macbeth seeing something real or not?” in different ways.

Lauren: The prop dagger is more of a real dagger than the beam of light dagger. And in the play, it stands in as a real dagger, but it’s less of a real dagger than a sharp one that might stab someone.

Gretchen: Right.

Lauren: I’m keeping track.

Gretchen: Exactly.

Lauren: Just to be clear – were they real goblins?

Gretchen: Well, [laughs] I certainly felt like I had just seen some goblins perform Macbeth. I had to keep reminding myself, like, no, they’ve just got costumes on because, man, those costumes were really great. The actors came out into the lobby and interacted with the audience before and after the show, so they felt –

Lauren: As goblins? In character?

Gretchen: As goblins in character.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: Sort of improvising. They felt like they were real goblins. Then I’ve had to explain this show to other people, and they’ve been like, “So, wait, were they humans in the play?” And I was like, “No, it’s complicated. It all made sense at the time, though, I promise.”

Lauren: Amazing. I do have a moment of caution because goblins aren’t real in our world, but also, goblins have been used by a bunch of 20th Century fantasy writers to stand in for, for example, Jewish people in not always the most sensitive or appropriate way. Is that something that was happening here? I say with caution.

Gretchen: No, thank goodness.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: One of the things you can do with something that has a cultural reality is the characters are very careful to say, “These other writers – you may have heard other things about goblins – they were all wrong. We’re the real goblins, and we’re gonna tell you the real story of goblins, which is not at all antisemitic” in the context of the actors wanting to do this play.

Lauren: Okay, so they were more real fake goblins than the fake fake goblins of fantasy.

Gretchen: Exactly. They were laying claim to being the real goblins and being like, “No, these other authors have said nasty things about this, but that’s not who we are.”

Lauren: Hilarious.

Gretchen: Which is something that you can do with something that has a cultural level of reality. “If I had a dog” is a hypothetical statement, but dogs are real.

Lauren: You could have a pet dog if you wanted to.

Gretchen: “If I had a dragon” is also a hypothetical statement, but it has a different level of hypothetical reality.

Lauren: You could put a little costume on a lizard, but yeah, you’re not getting a pet dragon of fire-breathing, winged fantasy fame.

Gretchen: Well, but maybe I have a dragon plush toy, which is a real dragon that I could have.

Lauren: True. Much easier to feed than a real dog or lizard.

Gretchen: My house insurance is a much bigger fan of me having a stuffed dragon. Those have a different level of reality compared to if I say, “If I have a frenumblinger” –

Lauren: If you have a what what?

Gretchen: Well, a “frenumblinger,” clearly, which is the creature that makes it not rain when you bring an umbrella.

Lauren: Ah. I absolutely always take an umbrella everywhere with me, but I didn’t realise I was appeasing this particular deity.

Gretchen: Well, if only you’d realised you were appeasing the frenumblinger – which is a creature that we made up that doesn’t have a cultural reality beyond this podcast.

Lauren: Dragons are more real than frenumblingers, even though both of them are not real.

Gretchen: Yeah. Reality itself is a continuum and depends on the context that you’re talking about.

Lauren: It’s so great that language lets us talk about things that aren’t here and aren’t real.

Gretchen: And that may or may not be real in the future.

Lauren: A lot of the time, we do this with words – like something being “not real” or “There might be dragons.”

Gretchen: Or “fake” or “toy” or things like that – “imaginary.”

Lauren: But languages can also use grammatical marking as part of a way of showing whether something’s real or not in the way that we do our grammar.

Gretchen: This is referred to with a delightful name, which is the “irrealis.” There are various kinds of irrealis markers that happen at a grammatical level in addition to all of the ways you can use words to talk about things that are imaginary or pretend or fake or constructed.

Lauren: There’s lots of different ways that we talk about the “slipperiness” of reality in language. We’re gonna talk about the grammatical structures of irrealis for the rest of this episode.

Gretchen: We’ve talked about stories and deliberately imaginary or fantastical contexts, but there’s also lots of places in everyday language where we wanna talk about things that haven’t happened and may never happen but might happen. We wanna talk about them.

Lauren: For example, “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” regardless of whether I believe in frenumblinger.

Gretchen: That’s a relatively here and now if-then statement. We can also say, “If it rains, I will cancel the picnic,” which is something that’s even more hypothetical.

Lauren: Disappointing, but fair enough if we have to do that.

Gretchen: You can have more hypothetical conditional statements like “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops, oh, what a rain that would be!”

Lauren: That sounds horrifying.

Gretchen: Wait, do you not know this children’s song?

Lauren: I do not know this children’s song. It sounds like the start of an apocalypse.

Gretchen: “If it had rained lemon drops and gum drops, the plants would’ve been crushed under the weight.”

Lauren: Not to mention us. I don’t think my umbrella’s gonna be much help here.

Gretchen: Not to mention the effects on the water table.

Lauren: Oh, gosh. This is an absolute ecological apocalypse here. How terrifying.

Gretchen: Conditionals can be used to talk about both relatively realistic hypothetical events – and also very fantastical ones.

Lauren: I’m gonna go listen to this song after this, but I am already scared of it.

Gretchen: You’ll be even more excited to learn that the second verse goes, “If all the snowflakes were candy bars and milkshakes.”

Lauren: How are we even gonna produce that many candy bars and that much milkshake?

Gretchen: “Oh, what a snow that would be!”

Lauren: Indeed.

Gretchen: My favourite type of conditionals are not candy bars and milkshakes, they are, in fact, biscuit conditionals.

Lauren: Delightful.

Gretchen: Going from one food to the next. So, this is a famous example from J. L. Austin, who has the statement, “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them.”

Lauren: Oh, thanks, but where are biscuits if I don’t want them?

Gretchen: [Laughs] This is the thing because in these examples of “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” if it doesn’t rain, maybe I don’t bring an umbrella, or maybe I bring one just in case to appease frenumblinger – compared to “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them, and if you don’t want them, well, where are they?”

Lauren: There are lots of different relationships between the first half and the second half of a conditional. I do like that biscuit conditionals set you up for a really great mom joke there.

Gretchen: There’s a related xkcd comic which goes, “I’ll be in your city tomorrow if you want to hang out.”

Lauren: “But where will you be if I don’t want to hang out?” I do actually wanna hang out.

Gretchen: I wanna hang out, too. But yeah, this sort of “What happens with the other half of the ‘if’?” This is one of the tricky things about talking about hypothetical events that there are lots of different ways of getting into that hypothetical.

Lauren: Which is why the caption on the xkcd comic is “Why I try not to be pedantic about conditionals.”

Gretchen: Very important.

Lauren: A good motto to live by. A lot of conditionals are slippery when the hypothetical part is in the future, and that’s because the future is quite difficult. It is unknowable by its very nature because we have a linear progression of time. That means that the future and irrealis bump up against each other in really interesting ways.

Gretchen: Right. If you make a statement – a relatively unremarkable future-y statement – like, “I’m probably gonna go to the store tomorrow,” or “I want to bake a cake tonight,” these are fine. These express a future or a desired future, but if you make the past equivalent – so instead of “I’m probably going to the store tomorrow,” “I probably went to the store yesterday.”

Lauren: Are you okay?

Gretchen: Like, was I sleepwalking? Was I consuming a substance that made me forget things?

Lauren: Do you have amnesia?

Gretchen: That’s suddenly a much weirder statement. “I want to bake a cake tonight,” fine. “I wanted to bake a cake last night” is fine, but it implies that it didn’t actually happen. Like, “I wanted to bake the cake last night. In fact, I did bake one.” Okay. Well, why didn’t you just say, “I baked a cake last night?”

Lauren: For sure. In fact, this is where English “will” for future came from. Something like, “I will bake a cake” originally meant something much more like, “I want to bake a cake.”

Gretchen: You still get, I think, sometimes these older, tiny things like, “I know it’s gonna happen. I will it.” That’s the same “will” in origin. The wanting intensely is that future “will” – it became that future “will.”

Lauren: The way that “will” is turning into something much more grammatical in the English future is a nice example of how different languages will sometimes use words and sometimes use grammar for these less-real irrealis contexts.

Gretchen: English still has grammatical past – “I baked a cake last night” – which is different from “I bake a cake right now.” But in some languages, instead of having a past/non-past like we have in English, what you actually have is a realis/irrealis where you have one form of a verb to talk about things that have happened or that are currently happening – any version of it that’s real – and then you have another form that’s talking about any version of it that’s unreal, whether that’s future or hypothetical or that whole class of things. It also makes sense as a way of splitting the conceptual timeframe into things that I have evidence for actually happening and things that I don’t yet have evidence for.

Lauren: For example, Manam, which is an Austronesian language in Papua New Guinea, doesn’t have a tense distinction like past and present and future; it has a realis and an irrealis form. They’re all prefixes on the verb.

Gretchen: There’s one set of prefixes for realis, whether it’s like, “I’m doing this,” “You’re doing that,” “We’re doing this,” “They’re doing this,” and so on. And there’s one for irrealis, which is like, “I might,” or “I will,” or “We might,” or “They might,” or all of these groups of forms. Another example of a language that uses realis versus irrealis as a really important distinction is Terêna, which is a southern Arawak language spoken in southwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil. They have two different forms for every verb, which is “actual” and “potential” – basically realis and irrealis – that have different suffixes. You have things that are realis, which can be translated as stuff like, “He went,” or “when he went,” or “He will go,” which in this case is grouped with the realis.

Lauren: So, it’s definitely gonna happen.

Gretchen: The idea is it’s definitely gonna happen. Then, in the irrealis category you have things more like, “Let him go,” or “when he goes,” which is more hypothetical.

Lauren: What people segment up as realis and irrealis differs depending on the grammar of a language.

Gretchen: Exactly. In many cases, English uses just extra words like “will” or “want” or “let” or “if” to indicate that something is irrealis, but we do have a few verb forms that are also used for hypothetical events.

Lauren: One of my favourites involves both mid-20th-Century musicals and Gwen Stefani.

Gretchen: Great.

Lauren: In English, we have two different structures. We have “if I were a rich man.” That is a slightly different structure to “if I was a rich girl.”

Gretchen: Ah, so these are two relatively famous songs. “If I Were a Rich Man” comes from Fiddler on the Roof, which is a 1964 musical.

Lauren: And “If I Were a Rich Girl” is a Gwen Stefani song from 2004.

Gretchen: This immediately gives us these great dates for when these two forms were more popular – “if I were,” “if I was” – and then these two songs that are influenced by each other.

Lauren: This form that has “were,” instead of just the normal past tense “was,” is something known as the “subjunctive.”

Gretchen: Ah, the elusive subjunctive in English.

Lauren: It is elusive because it is changing into this regular past tense form as we see with Gwen Stefani’s “If I Was a Rich Girl.”

Gretchen: Right. Not everybody says the subjunctive in that context. It’s still optionally there. You have to do it in “if I were” or “if he were” because in all the other forms, “if you were,” “if they were,” “if we were,” it’s just the same as the past tense form. You have to use it with “I” or “he” or “she” – one of the forms that would use “was” in another context – to be able to see it show up, which is probably why it’s kind of fragile and disappearing.

Lauren: Yeah, I think so.

Gretchen: Can we try to do a little bit of antedating? Fiddler on the Roof comes out in 1964, but the title of the song “If I Were a Rich Man,” having now looked into it, was inspired by a monologue from 1902 by Sholem Aleichem, which was in Yiddish, and the title of that was, “Ven Ikh Bin Rothschild,” or literally, “If I Were a Rothschild.”

Lauren: So, I don’t have to speak Yiddish to know that they’re talking about the very rich American Rothschild family.

Gretchen: Yes. Something that I think is interesting grammatically about the title of this monologue, which is a great monologue because it all goes on about how he’s gonna build schools for all the poor children and stuff – it’s a great monologue – but is “ikh bin,” which is the same as the German form “Ich bin,” like “I am,” whereas the German subjunctive form in this context is “Ich wäre,” which is more like “I were.”

Lauren: Yiddish and German are related, but they’re already doing different things.

Gretchen: They’re already doing different things specifically with subjunctive. Yiddish is already following this trajectory that English is following where it’s getting closer to the more usual form for “I am.”

Lauren: And you’re just meant to know that it’s hypothetical because he’s not a Rothschild, and he’s not building schools.

Gretchen: Well, and you have this word “if,” yeah.

Lauren: I also did some antedating on Gwen Stefani’s version of “If I Was a Rich Girl,” which was on her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. It turns out that it’s actually a cover of a 1993 song by Louchie Lou & Michie One, where they also sing “if I was a rich girl.” Already by the early ’90s in younger people’s speech you see the subjunctive slipping.

Gretchen: Who are Louchie Lou & Michie One?

Lauren: They’re a British female ragga/soul duo from London in the early ’90s and were linked to the film clip for this track because they’re clearly having a lot of fun with it.

Gretchen: They may have had their finger on the pulse of language change a bit sooner than Gwen Stefani in 2004.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: When I think about the connection between “If I Were a Rich Man” and “If I Was a Rich Girl,” I think of an a cappella mashup from the mid-2010s, which combines these two songs in a very fun music video from some very posh-looking British a cappella singers, which we can also link to because it reinforces – and I hadn’t really realised that “If I Was a Rich Girl” was actually playing on “If I Were a Rich Man,” and they’re using some of the same beats in the background of the song. I hadn’t realised there was a connection between those. I should say, when Gwen Stefani came out with that song, she’d already released some music, and she was already pretty wealthy. At the time, you got some newspaper commenters and so on who were saying like, “Isn’t it a bit disingenuous for you to be saying, ‘if I was a rich girl’? Because you are, in fact, a rich girl.”

Lauren: Yeah, but the lyric “if I were not the rich girl that I am so I can be an avatar for my unwealthy audience” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Gretchen: Gwen Stefani at the time explained that as she was talking about the time before she had found commercial success when she used to be broke – which, maybe, you know, okay.

Lauren: A different level of hypothetical there.

Gretchen: Two levels of hypotheticality.

Lauren: We’re seeing this really interesting development over the last century or so in English where the subjunctive is changing in English.

Gretchen: Sometimes people say that this is “losing the subjunctive,” but interestingly, in both cases, it’s a past form. “If I was” and “if I were” are both using the form that is associated with the past – “was” or “were” – to refer to an event that is very much not the past. In fact, it hasn’t happened.

Lauren: Ugh, this is why it’s so hard to learn it as a second language speaker.

Gretchen: The subjunctive is something that often comes up when people are learning languages like French, Spanish, Italian – in German, it’s called the “conjunctive,” but it’s the same thing, the conjunctive and the conditional – because these languages have more fully-fledged forms for the subjunctive that they use to express a range of meanings that English speakers know how to express but aren’t used to thinking as all of the same kind of thing. Sometimes, I think it must actually be really hard if someone speaks one of those languages first and is coming in and trying to learn English, and they’re like, “What do you mean I just have this one easy form that I use for all this stuff, and I have to learn, like, seven different ways of expressing it now?”

Lauren: [Laughs] For sure.

Gretchen: I think this must actually also be hard because English doesn’t have one unified subjunctive. We have a whole range of extra stuff. You can just use the subjunctive for all of them? That’s so easy!

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, you could be like me and whenever anyone talks about the subjunctive, in my head I just hear, “if I was-slash-were a rich man-slash-girl.”

Gretchen: I’m glad that you’re covering the full range of possible forms there with “was” and “were.” I remember feeling confused about this form in the classroom and trying to use the subjunctive where, a lot of the times, the context that you’re talking about things are very remote and seem kind of artificial. The thing that really made me feel more comfortable using the subjunctive and recognising it was just encountering it in the wild in a bunch of contexts where it was like, “Oh, yeah, this is what this has to mean.” There’s a particularly useful song for the French subjunctive, if you like, which is on a classic Celine Dion album from the 1990s.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: The song is called, “Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore,” which is the title which translates sort of like, “So That You Love Me Again.” The “you love” is subjunctive. It’s hypothetical. It’s not the case, otherwise you wouldn’t have a song to write, but it’s saying all the things that the speaker would do so that the other person loves them again.

Lauren: Really looking forward to the Celine Dion/Gwen Stefani mashup that really helps people learn the French and English subjunctive forms.

Gretchen: Sounds great.

Lauren: The subjunctive is one of a set of different ways that we can talk about whether things are real or not. They’re also a subset of irrealis categories that are about trying to make the reality that you want to happen. There’s a great list on Wikipedia to check out. I feel like this was written by a linguist who is like me and remembers that there are different types of irrealis categories but never remembers their formal names.

Gretchen: This is definitely one of those cases when it’s like, if you know Latin, you just name everything with Latin roots, and then it sounds fancier than “the wish subjunctive” and the “want-to-make-people-do-things subjunctive.”

Lauren: Yes. We are gonna use the fancy names here, but like me, you’re absolutely not obliged to remember them. You can just click on the Wikipedia link whenever you wanna think about –

Gretchen: Every single time.

Lauren: Yeah. Let’s both pick our favourite two of these categories.

Gretchen: But, Lauren, we’re both gonna pick the “hortative” because it’s so cool!

Lauren: It is, and I just used it with “let’s.”

Gretchen: You just used it. “Let’s” both pick our favourite two subjunctive forms. The hortative is something that exhorts – it urges. It’s often found with “let” in English. Something like “Let us love each other,” “Let it snow,” “Let there be light” – imploring, insisting, or encouraging by the speaker. Sometimes, a language will have a specific form potentially used for the hortative, or this will be one of the categories that something like a subjunctive or another irrealis form can be used for. What’s one of your favourites if you can’t have the hortative?

Lauren: Well, if I can’t have the hortative, I will go for the category where an event is hoped for, expected, or awaited, which is the “optative.”

Gretchen: The “optative.” I want to opt into this coming event. Do you have an example of the optative?

Lauren: Something like, “May I be loved” or “May they get what they deserve,” which sounds threatening or hopeful depending on the context.

Gretchen: Can you use something like a “if only”?

Lauren: In Russian, to do something like the optative it would be literally translated as something like, “if only” – “If only she came back” – to do that expected or hoped for thing.

Gretchen: We have a “may something happen,” “if only something happened,” maybe “I wish something had happened.”

Lauren: I love Abkhaz – which is the language that Sarah Dopierala works on; we interviewed her for a bonus – I love that it has two different optative forms, and they both do slightly different things. In Abkhaz, you have Optative 1, which is to curse and to bless, and then Optative 2 is to express a wish, a dream, or a desire. The first one would be something like – the form of greetings is literally “May you see something good,” which is a blessing.

Gretchen: That’s a lovely greeting, yes.

Lauren: It’s a lovely greeting. I quite like. Optative 2 would be something like, “I wish she’d drink the water.” You get these two different forms that give you an idea of different ways you can do an optative.

Gretchen: I mean, I guess technically – we did a whole episode about the imperative, so that’s things like, “Drink the water,” and “See something good,” “Come back” – that is technically a type of irrealis because if you’re commanding someone to do something, it hasn’t happened yet.

Lauren: Ooo, yeah, so now you can go back and look into the whole imperative episode as an irrealis episode.

Gretchen: In principle, we could’ve done an entire hortative episode and an entire optative episode, but we decided to think about the macro category for a while first.

Lauren: My final category is one for when you’re not necessarily sure about the thing that you’re talking about, so you can’t be entirely certain if it’s real or not. This feature shows up in Yolmo. I wrote about it for my thesis. I wrote about it for a whole year before saying it. It turns out that I hate to say the word “dubitative” – /d͡ʒubɪtɛɪtɪv/?

Gretchen: /dubɪdəˈtɪv/.

Lauren: /dubətɪv/. /dubɪdətɪv/.

Gretchen: “Indubitatatative.”

Lauren: I’m very happy to write it for a year, and then I gave a presentation, and I was just like, “Oh, this is a problem.” But it is a grammatical category in Yolmo, and I do have to talk about it because it’s one that crops up in a whole bunch of languages. In English, we use a word like, “might,” you know, “I might make a cake,” “He maybe made a cake.” We use lots of different words for showing a lack of certainty. In other languages, it’s part of the grammar. In Ojibwe, which is an Algonquian language in North America, there is a specific suffix. The difference between saying something like, “aakozi,” meaning, “He’s sick,” or “aakozidog,” which is something like, “He must be sick; I guess he’s sick; Maybe he’s sick.” Like, “I can’t see inside this person’s head. I’m not a doctor. I can’t say for certain whether they’re sick, but they look pretty miserable.” I find having a grammatical form for whether you’re certain about something is so handy.

Gretchen: Technically, if you’d like, I did look up how to say this word. Oxford says /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/, but you know, language is pluricentric. You can say it however you’d like.

Lauren: I’ve definitely heard all of those different pronunciations from different people over time. I guess I will just continue to be uncertain about the way it’s pronounced.

Gretchen: Would you say you have “doubt”? Would you say you’re /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/ or /dubɪdətɪv/ about how to say “dubitative”?

Lauren: I would definitely use a dubitative grammatical form about my certainty about pronouncing it if we had one in English.

Gretchen: Excellent. I think my final form that I’m excited about – because I’m not counting imperative because we did a whole episode about that – I want to talk about a form that you can use to express a desire or a wish of the participant. If you wanna say something like, “I wish she loved me” – you have desire – you can use a /dəzɪdɹ̩ətɪv/ – I think that’s the only way it’s said. There are languages from Japanese and Mongolian to Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European that all have desiderative forms of some sort.

Lauren: Aww. I like when a nice form crops up across a bunch of languages.

Gretchen: I think that that desire to try to impose order or predict what people are gonna say or what’s gonna be reality is part of what makes irrealis forms, like the subjunctive, complicated and confusing for people to learn is that they’re trying to talk about this whole class of events that haven’t happened yet and may or may not ever happen, which itself is confusing and chaotic to try to predict the future. It’s not the grammar’s fault that we’re using it to speculate about the unknowable.

Lauren: For sure.

Gretchen: One thing that we do know is that there is a fun etymology related to trying to impose order and predict the future of what people are gonna be like.

Lauren: I love a fun etymology story.

Gretchen: Have you ever wondered why the Greek Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac are both called “zodiacs” even though one is months and the other one is years?

Lauren: I have never thought about this before. Is it something to do with the fact that – I mean, they both have cycles of 12 animals, so they definitely have a lot in common even though they don’t work on the same 12 rotation cycle.

Gretchen: Well, interestingly, it has nothing to do with 12, but etymologically, they come from the Greek “zodiakos kyklos,” or “zodiac circle,” which is literally a circle of little animals.

Lauren: Oh, “zo” as in “zoo.”

Gretchen: Yeah!

Lauren: But “diak” just is the diminutive “little”? Oh, that that is very cute.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s “little animals.”

Lauren: How adorable.

Gretchen: There’re lots of tools that people use to make sense of the uncertainty or unknowability of reality in the future. Some of those tools are grammatical tools. Some of those tools are –

Lauren: Cute little animals.

Gretchen: Circles of little animals. Sometimes, that tool is etymology because people also use the origins of words to try to make sense of uncertainty even though etymology is also not destiny.

Lauren: We believe that so strongly that we made it into a sticker.

Gretchen: When you’re thinking about what’s real and what’s not real, when you’re wondering what’s knowable or unknowable, what’s certain or uncertain, the irrealis is a form that connects you through time and space to generations of other people who have also wondered what’s real.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or go to lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them, including IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch like our new “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and stickers at lingthusiasm.com/merch. My social media and blog is Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @gretchenmcc on Bluesky, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk to other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus episodes include my excursion to linguistics summer camp, a.k.a. the LSA Linguistics Institute, a linguistics advice Q&A episode, and swearing in science fiction and fantasy. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

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[Music]

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#linguistics #language #lingthusiasm #episodes #transcripts #podcast #episode 87 #irrealis #morphology #syntax #semantics

[nova-alien-rants]

been thinking a lot about the concept of black and white thinking.

i've always been told "you think in extremes too much, your mind exists only in black and white," and i'd be lying if i were to say that isn't true about myself. but the more i've worked on my own black and white thinking, the more i've come to realize the rest of the world is just as guilty of this very thing they don't hesitate to call me out for.

and this isn't to say that those who have called me out on my own thinking and behavior are mean, bad, or anything like that by any means. i just find it to be an interesting irony how i'm constantly told i struggle to live in shades of gray when those who tell me this have the same exact issue, albeit maybe in slightly different ways.

i will say that my black and white thinking has significantly improved, hence me coming to this realization as i outgrow my old outlook on the world and society as a whole. i don't believe myself to be anywhere near perfect but i do think it's worth mentioning that so many issues would be solved if people were simply more self aware and willing to work on this prevalent flaw.

why is it that when i say i prefer being on the cooler side than hot, people seem to think i love freezing temperatures? why is it that when i tell someone i don't have a huge sweet tooth, they believe i live my life completely devoid of all sugar? why is it that when i explain how severe my executive dysfunction is, they turn around and say they're shocked i'm not practically a vegetable?

why is it that when i inform someone of my disabled status, they retort with a sentiment on how i can't possibly be disabled because i can technically walk and do basic human tasks? why is it that when i bring up that my method of self love also involves some firmness they accuse me of not loving myself at all? does balance not actually exist for anyone? have i suddenly become the outlier?

it's honestly a very bizarre feeling to live with and one i'm not quite sure how to compartmentalize. am i supposed to feel angry? sad? confused? or maybe even none of the above? everyone has kept telling me to work on myself, and now that i have, it seems like they never did the exact thing they've kept hounding me to do.

does this mean i've outgrown them? am i supposed to call them out on this backwards phenomenon? are they even aware of it happening? am i supposed to help them with this issue, or accept that this is what my growth has led me to and drop them? but what am i supposed to do if these individuals are highly healed and intelligent in all other aspects?

i believe every single thing in the universe has two sides, two forces if you will; these two are always opposite, forever polar. but is the human race as a whole so used to merely allowing one or the other to fully prevail that they never stop to consider the fact that balance is a requirement for harmony? for peace, for happiness, for tranquility, for beauty, for contentment?

it's strange to witness those who advocate so loudly for balance to be convicted of the very crime they seem to oppose. i don't hate them for it, nor do i blame them. the more i think about it, the more i realize that it's likely because humans as a species simply struggle to truly view anything from a balanced lens. our ancestors never learned so we never had anyone to teach us. we are the first ones to make such a profound revolution in philosophical and realistic thinking.

and i don't believe that this will ever be something everyone will achieve. especially not those who have become so engulfed in their own egos they fail to even see outside of themselves, forget reexamining the very way they view the world on a fundamental level. they don't want to admit anything about them is wrong, especially not their thinking, so be it.

but i think for a very large number of us whom don't want to be like that and have seen the underbelly of society, whom have undergone unspeakable horrors, atrocities, torture, and abuse, we have no choice but to tear down the walls of how the world works and build our own from the ground up. we need to in order to stay sane. those whom have been more fortunate never needed to care.

but maybe the black and white walls needed to be demolished in order to be replaced with gray ones. maybe we will see a gradual shift in society's thinking. it's a particularly odd and frankly nerve-racking thing to think about sometimes.

#self help #self improvement #self reflection #self realization #self development #self awareness #growth #mindset #mental health #bpd #borderline personality disorder #trauma

[bengiyo]

180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us Ep 7 Stray Thoughts

I got a lot of food cooking today, so we're watching this while two things are simmering. Excited to see how In handles Sasiwimol's return after last week's reveals.

In almost looks like he exorcised something with how drained he looks.

Ah the first lie: Obscuring Wang's role in the leg injury.

Sangkam, like the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, is the one holding this entire operation together.

It's kinda uncomfortable to see Sasiwimol gloating about winning out over BL dramas in front of two queer men, particularly when I suspect she knows about both of them.

She scoffs at the suggestion of making her next project about a young man falling for his uncle. The awkwardness continues.

Sasiwimol is clearly concerned about what In could have revealed to Wang.

This framing on the couch is amazing. Sasiwimol is holding on to In's wrist, almost as if she's unconsciously restraining him. Wang is resting a finger on In's other hand and touching his leg against his. He's also on the side with the crutch. To me it looks like Wang wants to offer support, but cannot do so obviously by looking at In.

Well this conversation went about how I expected. Mol happy that Wang wants to study, then mad that it isn't a field she approves of at a location where she can observe Wang. Now confused and upset about his admission about his feelings for In.

Ah, there you are, my beloved architectural bars. Will you be able to shield In from Wang's admissions?

Oh ho! The bars have a new ally: the line of the window panels.

Wang pushes past the bars and demands In justify his determination to stay closeted. I love Wang's assertion that the world never belonged to the homophobes, and that he will not wait for them to die to live his life.

This is incredibly hard for In, because I don't know how he can sort his old feelings for Siam and his new feelings for Wang when there's so much overlap.

I also feel for Wang when In shuts down like this and just doesn't talk.

I was very invested in the completion of this bridge, but we still need to install guardrails.

It's interesting, that on many levels I can see Mol's read on the situation and that Wang has perhaps misplaced his desire for paternal love with In. It's possible she's right, but Wang is 20 and has a right to figure that out for himself. I'm feeling rather mixed at the moment, but generally am on the side of letting Wang determine the path of his love life.

Noteworthy that Mol never asks In for any perspective or what he wants. She just asserts that he must help her make Wang "normal" again, and that her life is full of disappointment. In must help keep her from losing her son. This is where she loses me, and it is not a surprise that she turns hostile to In when he doesn't show enthusiastic support.

I try not to be harsh against Sasiwimol, but I am deeply morally opposed to her inherently need to suppress and control all of the men in her life.

Though this dinner is awkward, I love this lightning effect. Feels very much like a stage production. Like it's supernatural in origin.

Okay, this fight is intense, and for once punctuated well by sound. In is correct that Wang should be a philosopher. He drew out of Sasiwimol what the major problem was immediately. He refuses to go somewhere with her until she confronts his truth, to which she responded that she does not care about his truth and will continue to enforce her worldview.

Oh my goodness, I need to know the tea about the night Siam drove away. Wang has clearly carried this for most of his life.

Wang asking the questions that define the core conflicts in play here, only for both In and Sasiwimol to run away.

Absolutely incredible work from everyone this episode.

#180 degree longitude passes through us #Ben watches

[meldelamel]

So, why DO you love papyrus? (I love him as well he is litteraly the best ever)

First of all, I really appreciate your question, I love talking about Papyrus! Secondly... Oh, boy, you don't know where did you get yourself into 🤣 /j.

Short answer: I have a deep personal connection with him, and he makes me sooooo happy. I smile everytime I see him! He also makes me laugh and I feel so safe with him.

Long answer (AKA "the essay"):

Cw: Mental health.

Well, I have some trauma related to how people treated me my whole life. Obviously, not everyone is a villain, but I've been hurt SO many times by people I trusted and loved that... I have huge trust issues and insecurities 😅 I've always been different from others, and with childish interests (treated as a baby in school since I was a little kid, which made me feel like I was this weak thing and I couldn't take care of myself), and not everyone accepts that kind of thing in a person. So, I feel very identified with Papyrus in that sense. We both share that unique, different soul, which is sometimes judged or misunderstood. As Papyrus says, "Why does someone as great as me have to try so hard to get some recognition?" (I know that the phrase is not exactly like that, but you get my point. I relate so much). He just wants to be liked and accepted, he wants company, just like me. And now we are going into something more philosophical that is going to sound weird, but who said that I didn't experience things in a weird way? 😂 I have a strong connection to my inner child, and that inner child feels safe when I see Papyrus. I don't know, it's like peace, understanding. He's like a blanket for my inner child, like a hug, like a "you are not alone". Also, one thing that makes me feel much safer with this character is how kind and accepting he is. I feel that the slightest I screw up, everyone is going to hate me, because many have reacted like this when I have shown parts of myself that I only let out with people I trust. I know if Papyrus was real and saw those parts of me, he wouldn't stop loving me. If he accepted the actions of the genocide route and tells you how he still believes in you and how you can be a better person, damn it, how is he not going to accept my insecurities, my demons, my way of acting? It is something that reaches an incredibly personal level, it is incredible how a character in a video game can make me feel so safe, so protected, so free to be myself. I cried when he told me that he believed in me in the pacifist route. I don't know, these are things I know that he says because he means it, and that no one has told me before. And again with childish interests, I repeat myself, he knows when to be serious and when to talk about his imaginary store, and that is so me... He makes me feel so valid. I am also a person who, in front of my loved ones, likes to be taken care of and sometimes I act silly on purpose just to be lovingly corrected and recieve a pet like a lil cat (like when Pap says to Sans "What is a laboratory?", when he clearly knows what it is), but it's only sometimes, I need to be taken seriously. I'm like an onion personality wise, I may be difficult or confusing, but It's something I can't help and I need to be accepted as such. I don't know, being different, misunderstood, being alone but needing love is something Papy and I have in common. And I think I'm going to shut up now because if not I won't stop 😅

I apologise for this essay aaaah 🙇 Please have a wonderful day!

#my life #papyrus #undertale #mental health #long text

[strawberryraviegutz]

Anyways have I ever told you guys how much I love Envy the Jealous from Fullmetal Alchemist? He’s such a cool character. How cans someone manage to be pretty and handsome at the same time🥰

But then again the whole point of his character is the fact he’s supposed to be androgynous. He’s also got a really REALLY nice voice too. I love how raspy it is. And his laugh.☺️

I have some pictures of him too! Wanna see? I have tons in my gallery :3

Such a pretty smile they have. Though Envy can be scary at times, but my point still stands. Oh! They also got other outfits/skins from events and collabs. One example being the Halloween event in fma mobile. In the Halloween event, Envy was a vampire and if one thing really love it’s vampires and Envy has sharp canine like fang teeth so it fits him really well.

He was also a prince at one point too! That was from a collab the fma did with a Japanese romance game called yume 100.(or in English 100 sleeping princes. I think it was 1000 sleeping princes?? Cant exactly remember.)He looked so dreamy as a prince☺️☺️

(though his routes were real scary and sinister but it’s Envy he’s gonna be scary and or sinister-)

There are so many things I love about Envy. His voice, his long whispy green hair, mesmerizing violet eyes, his lean muscular build, his cool outfit and the fact that said outfit is based off of what gymnasts and or yoga people wear. It’s enough to make a girl get all giddy and kick her feet while gigglin’. Really wish they had kept his acrobatic like fighting skills in brotherhood. Would’ve love to have seen him do twirls and flips in the air. Since we’ve seen he’s capable of doing flips based on what we’ve seen in the first fmab opening and he can jump pretty high too and is agile with his movements and some of the moves he does in fma mobile are pretty cool too. Guessing he can be sloppy and or reckless with his movements sometimes.

I sorta relate to him too. Obviously the shit he’s done is beyond awful and I don’t think they were ever ok what do ever, but on a philosophical level I know what it’s like to be jealous of others. Jealous of those who have better lives, those who experience love and or friendship. Wanting to feel loved and desired and or cared for, yet not being able to have any of that. I’m also a misanthrope like him too. Idk if I’d call ourselves kindred spirits though..but I like the thought of that.

I don’t like humans for similar reasons as to why Envy hates them. Though Envy is 100x more extreme with his hatred so to speak. My distaste towards humanity stems from my trauma. We also struggle with a lot of baggage with again, Envy being 100x worse, that and a part of me holds somewhat a bit of faith in people. Though what had just occurred a few minutes ago only proves our point about humans being just absolute dumbasses sometimes..

I’m so glad I rediscovered Fullmetal Alchemist sometime in 2021 and actually watched the whole thing properly this time. Envy is just..such an amazing character I mean they’re just..phenomenal! I have so much more to say that I can’t exactly put into words right now, but that’s fine I guess. He also helped me during some dark times in my life. I know he’s not actually real and is a fictional character, but nonetheless I’m still forever grateful to them for being my savior of some sorts. I really love Envy. I really, really do🩷💚🖤

#romantic f/o #villain f/o #self shipping #selfshipping community #selfshipping

[imhereforscm]

Have you read any books by J. R. R. TOLKIEN? If you have, can you please recommend something for a beginner? I want to read high fantasy novels which are hopeful ( meaning you feel peaceful and hopeful while reading them ). I am not very fond of G. R. R MARTIN's novels, they make me feel sad, everybody around me including my friends mock me because i don't like reading his novels. 😔 So i am truly lost and i don't know where to start. Please recommend some of you favorite books and authors as well. Thank you, i hope i didn't waste too much of your time and if you are Martin 's fan, i hope i didn't offend you by writing this.

Hello hello!🤗👋

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with these authors, so I can't recommend you anything from them. I'm sorry!💖

But in general, I'd love to recommend books I enjoy!😊❤️❤️

Classic literature:

• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (it contains religious themes and God plays an important role in certain part of the plot. I think it's portrayed in a positive way in that case though. But of course, I won't tell you what to like! Also, it's quite fast paced, but still dives deep into emotions and chemistry. I think it can be labeled as a type of gothic.)

• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (if you like regency and enemies to lovers, you'll find this book pretty nice. This one has a much slower pace than Jane Eyre. "Romantic academia" aesthetic.)

• The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (gothic, portrays heavy themes, such as su! c! de and graphic mu rd e®, so beware if you're triggered by those things. It's basically a moral trip through the mindset of evil and insane, of course nothing to follow into your life as a positive role model. Philosophical.)

A book I think is great for healing and is my comfort book:

• The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (Deals with the theme of su! c! de, but I think it does it well and the lesson/meaning it passes through its pages is a every emotional and beautiful one. This book is great comfort for me actually and has helped me before, where life was less than kind. It talks about the weight of our existence and how it impacts everything and everyone, even if we don't realize it right now.)

Murder mysteries:

• Anything by Agatha Christie!! I seriously adore her and Poirot is so intriguing. What stands out me about her books compared to other murder mysteries I've read, is that it investigates the case by a psychological level. It doesn't just look at footprints, fingerprints and DNA. It unravels all the skein of human nature, its emotions and mental states.

High fantasy:

• Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust (I've read high fantasy a couple of times before, but this one was the one I actually loved. It doesn't normalize death and murder, like a lot of high fantasy books I've come across and the characters are actually meaningful, having their own personalities, beliefs, fears and goals. Also, the protagonist is a bisexual icon and the book actually portrays healthy romance✨ Now, it has a gripping plot throughout the book and a lot of adrenaline, so idk if you're going to like it, since you told me you wanted something more calm and soothing.😅 But the internal development of the protagonist is so inspiring. How she learns to love herself and embrace who she is, whilst finding ways to use her abilities to their fullest potential.)

Also, liking something different from someone else is completely okay!! No one should ever make fun of you for your taste in things. You are a being as much entitled to their opinion as anyone else and you shouldn't suffocate your voice. You have every right to love the things you want to love and dislike the things you want to dislike (as long as you don't shame people who do like those things—I'm not saying you shame them, I'm talking in general to anyone reading this!💖).

And you didn't waste my time, sweetie! I enjoyed sharing my book recs with you.💖💖

#book recommendations

[hikari-ni-naritai]

I don't know that this is true for everyone, but I feel like a lot of people have like. A question or conflict or philosophical problem that kind of defines the core of who they are. The sort of thing that seeps into everything you create because it's so integral to how you see yourself and the world that you can't help it. And for me, it's the question asked by nisemonogatari. Which has more value: the real thing, or a fake that is indistinguishable from the real thing? And this has been crucial to my whole worldview ever since college, even if my answer has changed over time. It's something I explore often in my characters. Hikari, by all accounts, is indistinguishable from a true hero. But she and i both know that she's just faking it. It's not her nature and she used to be horrible. Does it matter? Does her true self determine who she is, or is it solely her actions? It's a question she has to struggle with. And I'm in exactly the same boat. I feel like if you cut me open and looked inside you'd find a heart as black as pitch. But do my worst thoughts affect who I am? Or is it just the way I treat others?

I think oshi no ko is tackling this in a really interesting way. I'm going to talk about it under the cut so don't read if you want to avoid spoilers for like, the first couple episodes.

Ai was always open about the fact that she was faking it when she performed as an idol. Which makes sense, obviously it's a performance and nobody would actually be who they are on stage. But she really took it to an extreme level. She was so determined to act out her fake love for her fans that (in a shockingly hikari-style way) she made an effort to remember the name of anyone she met as an idol. When she was stabbed by her stalker, who she'd met like maybe a couple times at meet & greet events, she remembered his name and had even kept the gift he'd given her on display in her house. And despite the fact that she was bleeding out, she had nothing but kind words for him. It's a fake love, she doesn't feel anything towards him, but like. Could it be meaningfully distinguished from a real love? Didn't the effort she put into faking everything during her entire idol career make her a true idol?

And then her kids kind of personify two opposing views on this question. Ruby desperately wants to become an idol and follow in her mom's footsteps, but she believes Ai was a true idol, and worries that she could never live up to that because she's not as talented and she would have to spend her whole life practicing just to get good enough to fake it. And she's dedicated to doing so!

Aqua, meanwhile, also recognizes that he isn't a natural actor, and comes to the conclusion that, since he would have to fake it, no matter how much work he put in he would still fail to measure up to the true stars, so there is no value in continuing his acting career. It's just something that's really interesting to me to see explored like this.

[astraltrickster]

Probably my last big serious post about AI art on this blog for a while (though there will be another in a few days just to drop the new blog I'm building), but,

Honestly I think one of the biggest things that's really pushed me toward wanting TO use it, as ethically as humanly possible, to help set a standard about how it should be used and trained,

Is watching people my own age and younger fall into ineffectually boomer ranting about it while the technology marches on.

Maybe it's just because my dad is like the ONE boomer who has, ALL my life, recognized the value in new technology and that's WHY he hates the disregard for privacy and other blatant middle fingers to all sense of common decency in its corporate implementation, but, well, even if for nothing else I guess that runs in the family because I very much feel the same way.

There are major ethical issues with AI image generation as it is in the culture today - partially by design. I do not pretend otherwise. There are issues of consent and IP law that need to be attacked from a legal, technical, and end-user end: on the legal end, where does "having a computer look at an image and learn from it like a human art student might" end and "using a computer as a plagiarism engine" begin? How can we digitally encode licenses and play around with search engines so artists can say "a computer may not even LOOK at my art for learning purposes," "a computer may ONLY use my art to learn what THIS SUBJECT looks like but if you even THINK about using one to compete with me for illustration I will SMASH it," or "hell yeah train an AI on my work I want my art style to outlast me!" - and for that matter, how can we ensure, legally or just culturally, that that last group isn't used to damage the livelihoods of their fellow artists? Because right now that's very much a threat, which sucks for everyone involved.

On the technical end, how can one algorithmically teach the computer to only learn a General Vibe rather than just straight up rip off someone's creation? How can we make sure every model RESPECTS that instead of loopholing around it? How do we build an anti-plagiarism algorithm and still let the program work to its full potential?

On the end user end, well, I'm sure there are a lot of approaches that can be taken; my own case is that I'm aiming to use it in such a way that even if I truly was cutting and pasting parts of existing art into my own pieces (which, whether or not that's what AI image generation does is more of a philosophical discussion than anything because on a technical level it absolutely is not), the final result and its purpose is so distinct, and I put so much of my own work into completing it, it makes it kind of ridiculous not to call it its own thing - it definitely doesn't compete against any of the artists whose work is likely to have been caught by the training algorithm, and that's both the biggest purpose of copyright law AND the biggest and most valid complaint about AI art in general. My hope is that similar approaches end up dominating the culture and defining what separates good AI art from bad AI art, because that is what the end users can do.

My point is that it frustrates me to no end seeing people recognize these issues...and think they can fix it with arguments about subjective issues like "it's ugly and soulless" (and almost just as bad, recognize that "ugly" not only is subjective, but the qualities that make it "ugly" can be changed with technological upgrades...and then use that fact to say that this PROVES it's ALL invalid and evil and the tech needs to be DESTROYED AND NEVER TOUCHED AGAIN), or confidently asserting blatant misunderstandings of what the tech does (again, it doesn't just cut and paste pieces of other people's art into its own; it studies images pixel by pixel to weight a probability function, then edits random noise to resemble that function), or lean on catastrophizing and honestly DANGEROUS philosophical arguments about ~REAL ART IS GOING TO BE DESTROYED FOREVER~ - like, look...I'm not saying you're there yet, especially since, like I keep saying, yeah, there are REALLY major ethical concerns here especially in the context of art existing as a competitive industry under capitalism, but when you start getting into This New Thing Will DESTROY The Very Concept Of Art And Culture And Must Be Stopped At All Costs...well, look, we've already seen fascist trads try to recruit from left-leaning spaces by starting from complaining about the bland minimalism that we hate because it's often a shitty corporate cost-cutting measure, and then taking the critique in that direction instead, so, really...be a little more careful of that.

None of these arguments truly address the heart of the problem, or propose a viable solution, because "ditch this new technology COMPLETELY, bury it, scorch the earth it's buried under, never look at it again, This Is Not A Place Of Honor" isn't a viable solution. You can't un-make a major technological breakthrough - you can legislate how it can be used, but you can't just roll it back. Furthermore, we shouldn't want to completely destroy it. AI image analysis and generation may be in its early stages, but even in these early stages, a model that was originally designed to recognize pastries is now being used to detect cancer. The more we refine it, the more potentially lifesaving applications we will find. Imagine a handheld X-ray scanner for periodic use on aircraft frames or other things where a structural failure would be absolutely catastrophic, that can find potentially fatal stress cracks while they're still microscopic - that's still a long way off, obviously, but it's not some kind of pipe dream like the fucking hyperloop that was never going to exist and only proposed to get rail projects cancelled; the base technology for every aspect of this exists and is being refined...including the algorithms that would let it recognize those cracks. In the form of image recognition AI. Which is just another aspect of image generation AI.

This technology is not just some frivolous techbro toy whose only purpose is to starve us peasants - even though, yeah, they sure do want to use that as one of its purposes. Again - you won't catch me denying that. You also won't catch me denying that some of the same shitty techbros absolutely want to roll AI tech out in life-or-death applications to replace humans WAY too soon, which are also applications where we're likely to ALWAYS want the human factor as a redundancy even if the technology becomes as close to flawless as anything can be (see: Tesla's self-crashing systems). It's bad. The whole techbro culture is just...bad. It's a problem. Even so, again, remember the bakery/cancer scanner success story. Remember the dangers of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Remember that the problem is that people - especially rich techy types - demand art but devalue those who make it. Remember that the problem isn't AI art existing at all, but AIs being made and trained with the intent that they will replace human artists, not as a means of automating a painful and tedious task and reducing the number of people who do it for need rather than enjoyment (something something about universal income not as a solution to the problem of automation but as the fulfillment of the promise of automation and all of that), but as a means of letting rich assholes have whatever they want without having to pay some uppity peasant who DARES to ask for enough compensation for their labor to not literally die. The problem isn't a new tool existing - the problem isn't even the fact that it makes art "too easy" (I could even make a major accessibility argument about that) - the problem is that its primary implementation is malicious. The problem is that harming artists for the sake of greed is a huge part of the point for these techbros.

And that's why I've started my projects to take their own tools and fight back. Because, again, "soul" is subjective, it's determined by a culture and all of that, but the thing is - these clowns literally can't drop an art tool and just go "ha ha, artists, you're obsolete now!" because every single art tool ever created can, will, and MUST be used in ways these creatively and morally bankrupt goons could never dream of. The "soul" factor in art is like a mushroom; you cannot kill it in a way that matters.

At least...not to the concept at large. Unfortunately you sure can when it comes to the livelihoods of individual artists in the short- to medium-term in the environment we're living in-

So the sooner we build the standard for good AI art vs. crappy "soulless" morally bankrupt illustration mill AI "art", the fucking better.

#art #ai art #serious tag

[art-for-my-sake]

“Les Misérables" - encore

On Wednesday, April 12, 2023, I attended “Les Misérables,” my second time seeing it at the Kennedy Center, and the third time I’ve seen it live, and it was every bit as wonderful as before. I walked away from the performance feeling inspired and moved. It was a perfect example of the wonder and magic of live musical theater.

Because I’ve previously chronicled my experiences with Les Miz (here and here), I felt I wanted to add a few thoughts on this particular performance:

- The man performing Valjean (Nick Cartell) was wonderful. He sang notes that I felt resonate in my soul, like the very air was vibrating on such a pure level.

- Javert (Preston Truman Boyd) devolving from self-righteous to self-doubting felt clearer than some productions.

- I’m familiar with Les Miz, so it was peculiar to have some feeling of ‘prescience’ at various moments; I’m not usually upset knowing the outcome of a plot, but I found myself watching the characters interact and felt sorrow that they didn’t realize they were headed toward their doom. Maybe some of this was because this production had a sense of urgency; everything moved faster than I expected. There was very little lingering, some lines felt stepped on or like maybe the musicians were rushing. For the most part, it wasn’t a bad thing because the haste made the action feel more real. However, there were very few moments to stop and savor. It felt very fleeting.

Now we get to the biggest takeaway for me: Grantaire (Kyle Adams) and Gavroche (Milo Maharlika or Henry Kirk). For whatever reason, my favorite character is Grantaire. One of the students, he is the token cynic of the bunch. He is not actively involved in the planning of the revolution but instead drinks a lot and makes snarky comments (“Give me brandy on my breath and I’ll breathe them all to death!”). He is generally portrayed with a suggestion of homoeroticism towards Enjolras, the de facto leader of the students; it’s never explicitly stated, but it’s usually agreed upon. Grantaire does not support The Cause so much as he supports Enjolras. Gavroche is the Parisian street urchin who inserts himself into the group of students, delivering news or providing useful information.

In the lyrics, Grantaire has exactly one line directed to Gavroche, praising him for revealing Javert’s identity to the students. This could be the extent of their interactions, but I really enjoyed that they were given a friendship to be acted out in pantomime when they were out of the central action. They are both on the edges of the group – Grantaire because he isn’t truly committed to the cause, Gavroche because he is a child – so it makes sense for them to have a bond.

During the song “Drink With Me,” Grantaire is not just waxing philosophically about death, but making one last argument for abandoning this suicide mission.

“Drink with me

To days gone by

Can it be

You fear to die?

Will the world remember you

When you fall?

Could it be your death

Means nothing at all?

Is your life just one more lie?”

He’s getting into a confrontation with the others and Enjolras attempts to intercede. Grantaire spits his last line (“Is your life just one more lie?”) at Enjolras as he attempts to touch Grantaire’s face. Grantaire then storms stage left where he turns to face the wall, closing himself off from all the others. Gavroche follows, hesitates, then throws his arms around Grantaire’s waist from behind. It’s an awkward embrace -- Gavroche’s face is planted in Grantaire’s back -- but heartfelt. This child sees his friend in pain and does his best to offer comfort. And Grantaire accepts it; reaching behind, he pats Gavroche on the back.

Usually, Gavroche’s death is off-stage; we do not see him again after he climbs over the barricade to gather ammunition off dead National Guardsmen. In this production, Gavroche is returning triumphant over the center on the barricade when the fatal shot strikes. Enjolras, his hand outstretched to help Gavroche over, now holds the child’s body suspended for a moment before Gavroche tumbles forward into his arms. In that moment of suspension, Gavroche is spot lit center stage, his arms flung outward, the wings of the barricade rising to either side of him. I love that Gavroche gets the most visually striking death of this production.

And then there’s the tenderness of Grantaire receiving Gavroche’s body from Enjolras. Turning his back on the fight, Grantaire carries Gavroche away from the barricade, towards the audience. He stands downstage center somewhat in shadow, holding his little charge, for quite some time before moving stage right. Eventually, he collapses to his knees and lays Gavroche on the ground, carefully arranging the child and oblivious to the chaos behind him. It is only once he has finished whatever funereal rites he needs to observe that Grantaire joins the fray. This is not a Grantaire going boldly to death by standing next to the man for whom he harbors affection. This is a Grantaire consumed by rageful vengeance caused by the loss of the child who showed him affection.

By giving Gavroche an on-stage death, several things are accomplished. Firstly, Gavroche’s death is given the same gravitas as the rest of the deaths. It allows him to be mourned better, by both the characters and the audience. It also takes his death from the theoretical to the actual – children die when men fight.

Showing a friendship between Grantaire and Gavroche, giving Gavroche an onstage death, showing Grantaire’s grief and rage – all these things add to the already complex experience that is “Les Misérables.”

-l'art pour l'amour de moi

#les mis #les miserables #kennedy center #theater #musical theater #les miz

[unboundpower]

Ok ok. Probably the last of the OC talk I'll do here for now, but I want to kinda gush about some hella self-indulgent OC/Canon stuff of mine because I've been thinking about them for a long time now -

So. Amita and Vegito. They initially befriend one another in a pretty nonchalant way. Amita definitely catches (physical) feelings first, she was attracted to him the instant she first visited his stall at the farmer's market, and continued to keep buying produce from him for over a year before things changed.

Naturally, Vegito eventually found out she has cyclops blood because Amita's guard slipped and her third eye got exposed one occasion, and that really interested him. Because ya know, Tien does exist and all. So he brings up martial arts and ki; all that. Amita tells him she knows what ki is, can use it, and is something of a marital artist. That's more than enough to get him properly interested in her. She's capable of fighting and isn't totally ignorant unlike the majority of Earthlings. Granted, Amita stopped regularly training due to a massive depression hole she fell into for a few years in the past and was out of shape, but Vegito was more than happy to both train her & spar with her. He got familiar with her enough and he actually liked being around her, so he figured "why not".

To not ramble for too long about them; their relationship starts after they've developed a strong understanding of one another, and they each hit a very deep and special note for the other. Both of them are quite reserved and closed off, but Amita's stubborness in wanting Vegito to know that it doesn't matter he's a fusion, he's still a person like her, gets him to gradually open up over time and talk about his insecurities.

Likewise, after learning of her upbringing and related traumas, Vegito echoes the sentiment. Maybe they are both fucked up on the inside for reasons beyond their control, but they can be fucked up together. (And of course, their personalities just. Mix well. Amita's more serious and "responsible" than him but she also a tendency to be blunt and a shit-talker. Vegito knows he can poke fun at her and she not take it personally, with she able to do the same with him. It's a minor thing on a surface level, but looking into it, their dynamic helps the glue between them strengthen. Not to mention how Amita knows how to comfort him when he really needs it, and after becoming more in tune with his own emotions thanks to her compassion creating a space for him to feel "allowed to feel" in a sense, Vegito also learns how to comfort her. I'm sooooft.)

Next, Gogeta and Maya (my 2nd DB OC that I still need to draw). Unlike Amita who's part alien and has connections to her alien heritage, Maya is completely human in virtually every way. Blood, lifestyle, basic understanding of the world, etc etc. She's basically ordinary. Only "special" thing about her is that she developed a more philosophical understanding of life and death, due to her past job of being a EMT. That she had to leave because for the first time she saw someone die with her own eyes, and it heavily fucked with her mental health.

When Gogeta first meets Maya, he naturally assumes she's just like the average Earthling. However, after they encounter each other a few more times, Maya musters up enough confidence to ask him out. It's more so she was really curious of him, and wanted to talk to him a little more. He's thrown off, but figures he could accept. They were just going to a mere cafe to talk; it was no big deal.

…And it wasn't, until he let it slip that he "used to be dead" during the small talk. To his shock though, Maya was fascinated with that statement instead of being scared or disgusted. She even said "well, I'm happy you're alive now" with a genuinely cheerful look. Gogeta was still a little embarassed though, and didn't let much else slip at the time. His own curiosity of her still grew, and is what allowed them to keep meeting up, slowly forming a kind of odd but nice friendship.

The magic of their future relationship stems from this. Maya, despite being an ordinary human, isn't ordinary when it comes to things that Gogeta realizes he can actually talk to her about. She's extremely open-minded, and believes he's an honest person (and he is so the faith isn't misplaced), so she always listens keenly whenever he shares more about himself. He being a Saiyan + a fusion on top of that, that he can use ki and what ki is, that he can even fly - she takes it all in with no grains of salt. Despite how the two of them come from completely different places in life, Maya still sees him as someone like her regardless. He still experiences his own thoughts and feels his own emotions.

Maya is the first person that makes Gogeta feel…real. He still has Chi Chi, Bulma, and their children all in his life of course, but there's a big disconnection between them all because he knows he isn't Goku or Vegeta. Not only that, he keeps to himself so much that he has literally no one else in his life either. In his eyes, there was nothing that actually rooted him to reality. What was he even doing on this planet? Why did he stay? But where would he go or what would he do if he left? Was his own identity even his own? He technically shouldn't exist to begin with.

Maya and the sense of companionship he gets from her is what initially causes him to start thinking differently. She genuinely cares about him FOR him, with no pretenses or ulterior motives attached. What's more is that again, she is just a human who had no prior knowledge or experience with anything supernatural (unlike Chi Chi and Bulma, as points of reference). It blows his mind that the first person he sincerely feels close to is someone like her. Her sense of spirit and unwillingness to turn him away for being ""weird"" or ""wrong"" charms him greatly, as does how she just. Respects him as a fellow living being. Maya becomes even more charmed herself, because of the sweet, benevolent nature Gogeta truly has underneath the walls he keeps up. He comes off as being indifferent, even cold, but he's not for the people he grows to care for. The mutual attraction they develop for one another grows and lets the pieces fall in place.

(To bring this up for them as well; Maya and Gogeta's personalities definitely have the "opposites attract" vibe going. Gogeta is like "someone will die" and Maya is "of fun!" in that one meme. They're cute af.)

#ooc. #/ shoutout to anyone who actually reads all this. i hope my gushing made at least a lil sense \ #/ but im very soft for these ships real personal to me. i'll eventually draw more art of & write fics of them \ #/ because i can. who gonna stop me. \