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mariacallous · 9 months

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In the early weeks of 2023, as worry about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools was ratcheting up dramatically in the public conversation, a tweet passed through the many interlocking corners of Book Twitter. “Imagine if every Book is converted into an Animated Book and made 10x more engaging,” it read. “AI will do this. Huge opportunity here to disrupt Kindle and Audible.”

The tweet’s author, Gaurav Munjal, cofounded Unacademy, which bills itself as “India’s largest learning platform”—and within the edtech context, where digitally animated books can be effective teaching tools, his suggestion might read a certain way. But to a broader audience, the sweeping proclamation that AI will make “every” book “10x more engaging” seemed absurd, a solution in search of a problem, and one predicated on the idea that people who choose to read narrative prose (instead of, say, watching a film or playing a game) were somehow bored or not engaged with their unanimated tomes. As those who shared the tweet observed, it seems like a lot of book industry “disruptors” just don’t like reading.

Munjal is one of many tech entrepreneurs to ping the book world’s radar—and raise its collective hackles—in recent months. Many were hawking AI “solutions” they promised would transform the act of writing, the most derided among them Sudowrite’s Story Engine (dubbed in a relatively ambivalent review by The Verge’s Adi Robertson as “the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates”). Story Engine raised frustrations by treating writers as an afterthought and, by its very existence, suggesting that the problems it was trying to bypass weren’t integral to the act of writing itself.

Last month, Justine Moore, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, provided a sort of bookend to Munjal’s “AI-animated books” proposal. “The three largest fanfic sites—[Archive of Our Own], Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad—get 3 billion-plus annual visits in the US alone,” she wrote. “Imagine how much bigger this market could be if you could chat with characters vs. reading static stories?” The thread was likely a reference to Character.ai, a startup that lets users chat with fictional heroes and villains; Andreessen Horowitz led a $150 million funding round for the company in March. The comment also came after the revelation that large language models (LLMs) may have scraped fanfiction writers’ work—which is largely written and shared for free—causing an (understandable) uproar in many fan communities.

Setting aside the fact that fandom role-playing has been a popular practice for decades, Moore’s statements felt like a distillation of tech’s tortured relationship with narrative prose. There are many kinds of fanfiction—including an entire subgenre in which “you” are a character in the story. But those are still stories, sentences deliberately written and arranged in a way that lets you lose yourself in an authored narrative. “Imagine having such a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of reading fanfiction—let alone reading fiction more broadly,” I wrote in response to her thread. What’s so wrong with people enjoying reading plain old words on a page?

The tech world has long been convinced that it understands the desires of readers better than they do themselves. For years, VCs have promised to upend books and the structures around their creation and consumption. Some came from within the publishing industry, but like their counterparts “disrupting” other sectors, including film and TV, many more did not. And for the most part, despite tech’s sometimes drastic (and often negative) effects on other industries, book- and reading-related startups failed to alter much at all. People are still buying books—in fact, they’re buying more than ever. Pandemic lockdowns brought a perhaps unsurprising boom in sales, and even though numbers slipped as restrictions lifted, print sales were still nearly 12 percent higher in 2022 than they were in 2019, and sales of audio books continue to increase dramatically year over year.

One reason books haven’t been particularly disruptable might be that many of the people looking to “fix” things couldn’t actually articulate what was broken—whether through their failure to see the real problems facing the industry (namely, Amazon’s stranglehold), or their insistence that books are not particularly enjoyable as a medium. “It’s that arrogance, to come into a community you know nothing about, that you might have studied as you study for an MBA, and think that you can revolutionize anything,” says writer and longtime book-industry observer Maris Kreizman. “There were so many false problems that tech guys created that we didn’t actually have.”

Take, for example, the long string of pitches for a “Netflix for books”—ideas that retrofitted Netflix’s original DVDs-by-mail model for a different medium under the presumption that readers would pay to borrow books when the public library was right there. Publisher’s Weekly keeps a database of book startups that now numbers more than 1,300; many of them are marked “Closed,” alongside a graveyard of broken URLs. There were plenty of practical ideas—targeting specific demographics or genres or pegged to more technical aspects, like metadata or production workflows. But many more proposed ways to alter books themselves—most of which made zero sense to people who actually enjoy reading.

“I don’t think they’re coming to that with a love of fiction or an understanding of why people read fiction,” Kreizman says. “If they were, they wouldn’t make these suggestions that nobody wants.”

The “10x more engaging” crowd has come in waves over the past two decades, washed ashore via broader tech trends, like social media, tablets, virtual reality, NFTs, and AI. These tech enthusiasts promised a vast, untapped market full of people just waiting for technology to make books more “fun” and delivered pronouncements with a grifting sort of energy that urged you to seize on the newest trend while it was hot—even as everyone could see that previous hyped ventures had not, in fact, utterly transformed the way people read. Interactive books could have sound effects or music that hits at certain story beats. NFTs could let readers “own” a character. AI could allow readers to endlessly generate their own books, or to eschew—to borrow one particular framing—“static stories” entirely and put themselves directly into a fictional world.

AI isn’t remotely a new player in the book world. Electronic literature artists and scholars have worked with various forms of virtual and artificial intelligence for decades, and National Novel Generation Month, a collaborative challenge modeled after NaNoWriMo, has been around since 2013. Even now, as much of the book world loudly rejects AI-powered writing tools, some authors are still experimenting, with a wide range of results. But these bespoke, usually one-off projects are a far cry from the tech industry’s proposals to revolutionize reading at scale—not least because the projects were never intended to replace traditional books.

“A lot of interactive storytelling has gone on for a very long time,” says Jeremy Douglass, an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, citing everything from his early career work on hypertext fiction to the class he’ll teach next year on the long history of the pop-up book to centuries-old marginalia like the footnote and the concordance. “These fields are almost always very old, they’re almost always talked about as if they’re brand-new, and there haven’t really been a lot of moments of inventing a new modality.”

To VC claims that AI will totally alter books, Douglass takes what he calls a “yes, and” stance. “What people are actually doing is creating a new medium. They’re not actually replacing the novel; they created a new thing that was like the novel but different, and the old forms carried on. I’m still listening to the radio, despite the film and game industries’ efforts.”

Tech entrepreneurs rarely pitch “yes, and” ideas. In their view, new technologies will improve on—and eventually supplant—what exists now. For all of his interest in the many forms of interactive fiction, Douglass doubts that most books would benefit from an AI treatment.

“There are extremely pleasurable aesthetic systems that aren’t intentional,” he says. “But how often when I’m reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X or The Joy of Cooking do I think, ‘If only a chatbot could augment this on the fly’? And it’s partly the fact that some communication is deeply intentional, and that’s part of the pleasure. It’s handcrafted, it’s specific, there’s a vision.”

That isn’t to say that Douglass thinks there’s zero appetite for AI in literature—but it’s “probably a very small slice of the pie. So when you say ‘all books’? Almost certainly not. For the same reason that we’re not reading 100 percent pop-up books, or watching all of our books on YouTube, or anything else you can imagine. People are doing that too, but it’s extra.”

The exact size of that small pie slice remains to be seen, as does the general public’s appetite for instant novels, or chatting with characters, or hitting a button that will animate any book in your digital library. But those desires will likely need to come from readers themselves—not from the top down. “If you just give the tools to everybody, which is happening in spite of venture capital, as well as because of it, people will figure out what they want it for—and it’s usually not what the inventors and the investors think,” Douglass says. “It’s not even in their top-10 list of guesses, most of the time. It’s incredibly specific to the person and genre.”

The recent history of publishing has plenty of examples in which digital tools let people create things we couldn’t have predicted in the analog days: the massive range of extremely niche self-published romance, for example, or the structural variation and formal innovation within the almost entirely online world of fanfiction.

But when the tech industry approaches readers with ways to “fix” what isn’t broken, their proposals will always ring hollow—and right now, plain old reading still works for huge numbers of people, many of whom pick up books because they want to escape and not be the main character for a while. “That’s a good thing,” Kreizman says. And as AI true believers sweep through with promises that this technology will change everything, it helps to remember just how many disruptors have come and gone. “In the meantime, tech bros will still find VCs to wine and dine and spend more money on bullshit,” Kreizman predicts. But for the rest of us? We’ll just keep on reading.

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spinchs-field · 1 year

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What are proshippers?? I'm genuinely curious and have seen a lot of proshipper dni so i'm a bit confused :/

i love your blog btw you're funny as shit

edit: this post is almost a year old. i see you people. i’m not going to debate you. i don’t want to be around you. you people make me so insanely uncomfortable. i don’t care what you have to say. i will block you for interacting with this post in any way. the topics you post about and ships you support are triggering for so many people. and i don’t mean in the “ohhh you’re triggerrrrrred” way. i mean it reminds people of their fucking trauma. please just leave me alone. i want to live my life. get some therapy and please stop being so confrontational. i turned off reblogs for my own mental well-being. go away.

thank you! i’m not the best at explaining things, but a proshipper is generally someone who supports, makes, and/or consumes content related to incest, pedophilia, or both. they’re oftentimes people who say that fiction doesn’t affect reality, and that support the consumption and creation of fictional incest and pedophilia. i hope this helps

#the crops #proship tw

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kamreadsandrecs · 8 months

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By Elizabeth Minkel

#books #writing #publishing #leechware #artificial intelligence #ai #technolog

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elektramouthed · 2 years

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The danger, though, is that framing storyworlds in purely textual terms serves to “other” them, to reinforce a reader–text relationship which is neither emplaced nor embodied, that can’t account for the wider body of relations influencing the creation and consumption of storyworlds. [...] storyworlds aren’t nearly as removed, or indeed as static, as the reader–text approach sometimes assumes. Jenkins suggests that though storytelling remains the fundamental mechanism by which we communicate from culture to culture, that something is indeed changing in terms of how we create and engage with narrative. He argues that new storytelling structures are emerging which may appear “fragmentary” if viewed according to old criteria, but which are affording audiences the ability to “make the connections on their own time and in their own ways” (2008:120–121). The challenge is whether existing structuralist approaches can not only accommodate the spatial and participatory nature of transmedia storyworlds (and of particular media like videogames), but also whether structuralist approaches can account for the multiple affective relationships between transmedia participants and such storyworlds.

Colin Harvey, from Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Storyworlds

#colin harvey #fantastic transmedia: narrative play and memory across science fiction and fantasy storyworlds #nonfiction #essays #on transmedia storytelling #on media specific approach #on dialectical dynamics #2021 reads #2021 undergraduate thesis sources

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adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me · 3 months

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I am periodically reminded of why I do not participate in community discussions - whether in person or on-line. My daughter says I'm neurodivergent. As part of that unofficial diagnosis from a college student, I see connections and make leaps in my thinking that others just don't see. Any time I participate, I am brought up short by people's reactions that I have not anticipated, and that seem to have no relation to the discussion at hand - indicative that my points were completely missed and led people into the weeds.

In the comments of this particular article, the subject of Western abuses in the name of Christianity came up. To my mind, specific liturgies and rites can't be immediately be castigated for their origins.

Society is a fabric, or a mosaic of many different parts. Orthodox societies are composed of different elements and components then are Western societies - think of those elements as different pieces of colored glass and mortar, or perhaps threads and pigments. The elements could be considered to have a flavor corresponding to their various cultures.

That Western Societies are dysfunctional is beyond question among outside observers, The United States, I think looks particularly dysfunctional, even to Western Europe. Rampant poverty, unsustainable production and consumption, societal distrust of almost every civil institution, the list could go on... Our tapestry is tattered, worn, with gaping holes - if it were a mosaic, I would say large pieces of colored glass were missing, or the edges have been chipped off.

Orthodox societies may not be perfect, and I would say could be as wildly distorted, if not more so than Western societies - I would offer the modern "Russian Federation" and Ukraine as cases in point.

However, my feeling is that Orthodoxy has the potential, as the Bride of Christ, to repair the cultural tapestry. Though modern political realities show that just as in the West, Orthodoxy can be distorted into a caricature, a mockery, of the Life in Christ, that is in no way a given. Care is needed.

Specific Rites, Liturgical variations, and all the rest need to be sensitive to the mosaic, the tapestry... Whatever is going to be created, or rather repaired, by their implementation. The goal should be to fix the tapestry, mosaic or whatever so that the culture can become a complete whole - or at least as close to a complete whole as can be attained on earth. The first time this happened, it was with the Greeks, later the Persians, and so on...

Throughout Orthodox history not only have the Bishops been instrumental in this, but the laity has been part of this creation also. There are cases in Church history where the laity has refused to abide by council rulings and persisted in reversing bad decisions. I could be wrong, but I think both Arianism and Iconoclasm were defeated this way.

Managers need not apply.

I have great faith in the triumph of Orthodox Christianity.

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." -- 2 Timothy 1:7

#Eastern Orthodox Christianity #Glory to God for All Things #Thoughts

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kammartinez · 6 months

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By Elizabeth Minkel

#books #writing #publishing #technology #leechware #artificial intelligence #ai

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govindhtech · 7 months

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Information usage: Modern search

Generative AI, notably Large Language Models (LLMs), are ushering in a major technological shift. These models are leading information interaction transformation.

LLMs for content consumption and creation offer companies great potential. They may automate content development, improve quality, diversify services, and customize material. Explore the transformational influence and create your company plan now to uncover creative methods to boost your firm’s potential.

LLMs are used in many fields. Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new invention, simplifies data interactions to boost company efficiency. It summarizes email conversations in Microsoft Outlook, highlights significant discussion points, suggests action items in MicrosoftTeams, and lets users automate activities and develop chatbots in Microsoft Power Platform.

According to GitHub data, 88% of developers reported greater productivity and 73% reported reduced time spent looking for knowledge or examples.

Changes in search

Remember when we entered phrases into search boxes and clicked on multiple links to get information?

Modern search engines like Bing are altering things. They intelligently evaluate your inquiry and source from numerous online sources instead of delivering a long list of links. They also convey the material clearly and concisely with references.

Online search is becoming more user-friendly and useful. We’re shifting from countless links to simple solutions. Our internet search habits have changed.

If organizations could search, browse, and analyze internal data as easily and efficiently, it would alter them. This new paradigm would let workers quickly access company knowledge and use enterprise data. This simplified experience is made possible by Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), a combination of Azure Cognitive Search and Azure OpenAI Service.

Increasing LLMs and RAG: Bridging information access gaps

Natural language processing approach RAG integrates huge pre-trained language models with external retrieval or search algorithms. Adding external knowledge to the generating process lets models use information beyond their original training.

RAG is explained in detail:

Input: A query is input to the system.

Retrieval: The RAG system examines a corpus for relevant papers or sections before responding. Any input-related texts might be included in this corpus.

Generation and augmentation: Recovered papers provide context to the original input. This data is given into the language model, which outputs.

RAG can access and use updated internal and external data without much training. A crucial benefit is using the newest information to make more accurate, educated, and contextually appropriate replies.

RAG in action: Business productivity revolution

RAG may boost staff productivity in certain situations:

Summary and Q&A: Summarize large amounts of information for simpler consumption and sharing.

Data-driven decisioning: Find patterns and trends in data to get insights.

Personalization: Tailor interactions with individual data to get customised suggestions.

Automation: Automate repetitive operations to boost productivity.

AI is being used in more sectors as it evolves.

The RAG financial analysis method

Consider financial data analysis for a large organization, where accuracy, speed, and strategy are crucial. Let’s utilize Contoso, a fictional corporation, to demonstrate how RAG use cases improve financial analysis.

1. Summary/Q&A

Scenario: ‘Contoso’ has completed its fiscal year and produced a hundreds-page financial report. The board wants a key performance indicator-focused summary of this report.

Sample prompt: “Summarize ‘Contoso’s’ annual financial report’s main financial outcomes, revenue streams, and significant expenses.”

Results: The model summarizes Contoso’s annual revenue, main revenue sources, significant expenses, profit margins, and other financial data.

2. Data-driven choices

Situation: As the new fiscal year begins, ‘Contoso’ wants to assess its income streams and compare them to its primary rivals to better prepare for market supremacy.

Sample prompt: “Analyze ‘Contoso’s revenue breakdown from the past year and compare it to its three main competitors’ revenue structures to identify market gaps or opportunities.”

Result: The model shows that ‘Contoso’ leads in service income but trails in software licensing, where rivals have grown.

3. Customization

Scenario: ‘Contoso’ will send investors a customised report showing how the company’s success affects their money.

Sample prompt: “Using annual financial data, create a personalized financial impact report for each investor, detailing how ‘Contoso’s’ performance has affected their investment value.”

Result: The model generates investor-specific reports. An investor with a large interest in service revenue streams would notice how the company’s dominance has boosted their profits.

4. Automation

Scenario: ‘Contoso’ gets financial accounts and reports from its departments quarterly. Manually aggregating them for company-wide perspective would be immensely time-consuming.

Sample prompt: “Automatically collate and categorize the financial data from all departmental reports of ‘Contoso’ for Q1 into overarching themes like ‘Revenue’, ‘Operational Costs’, ‘Marketing Expenses’, and ‘R&D Investments’.”

Result: The model effectively aggregates the data to provide ‘Contoso’ a consolidated picture of its quarterly financial health, identifying strengths and weaknesses.

LLMs: Changing business content creation

Businesses may enhance staff productivity, optimize operations, and make data driven choices using RAG solutions. As we adopt and improve these technologies, their applications are almost endless.

#govindhtech #technology #technews #news #tech #ai #generativeai #automation #llm

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t--amodernicarus · 1 year

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CONSUMPTION

Now that we have talked about the production of Tumblr and what exactly is keeping the lights on, let's discuss who its consumers are. As the site’s attempts at attracting revenue have been unsuccessful, I’m focusing on the personal productions of Tumblr’s users, specifically its fandoms. From true crime to Doctor Who, fandoms have a special place on Tumblr that isn’t found on many other websites, and many of Tumblr’s biggest money-makers use fandoms to garner “commissions” (art or writings usually from a fandom that are created in exchange for a fixed rate) from other fans. This consumer base is unique to Tumblr, as its wholly separate from Tumblr as a company. Tumblr simply serves as a very convenient platform in which users can find those who share similar interests.

In their video The Story Of The 20,000 Dollar Furry Commission, YouTube creator Izzzyzzz talks about the story of a fandom artist being paid $20,000 to create a portrait of their “fursona” (a fictionalized creation by members of the “furry” fandom, in which they use a heavily designed anthropomorphized animal for affirming or lewd purposes). This sale is, of course, on the extreme side, but it can help define how popular commissions can be. The prices of these commissions can range from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on the complexity of the art, the popularity of the artists, and so on (Izzzyzzz, 1:50). Many Tumblr users use commissions as their basis of income, usually waxing about a lost job, vet bills, or other relatable grievances that can attract fans who want to help. Of course, there are a few subsets of fans who want commissions no matter what, and many artists have commissions open during certain times, like during the premier of a new season of a show, and so on. I have attached an example of a commission here so you can see how users sell or buy art.

#consumption

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shyuch · 1 year

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Database Animals

Azuma is unrelenting.

The Evolution of Otakus:

It's interesting to learn this much information about the etiology of Otakus. Their so called "obsession" with the consumption of media used to be something that had real meaning, or weight to it. Their attachments were based on a story line that the author had wrote, therefore the authors were given credit where credit was due.

However, as Otakus "evolved" they began to stray away from the narrative; the reason they liked the things that they liked was because of something more shallow; the characters themselves. They inflicted a moe-feeling, where it was something alluring about the character that essentially forced them to want... more of the character themselves.

It no longer had something to do with the story. As long as the character of the product was sufficient to satisfy the previous interactions of moe-feeling, then it was enough for the Otakus to accept it.

This in turn, could be exploited by franchises to keep "slapping" characters on non-associated products in order to attract the attention of the Otaku, even if it had nothing to relate to the story whatsoever. It is the Otaku that fills in the gaps in their head, by association with the character itself.

By then, the whole genre had been essentialized. It was a database of moe-feeling inducing elements just recycled in different arrangements. According to Azuma, there would be no more original creations, as the post-modern era, it allows anyone to create simulacra or the simulacra, and as long as the quality is as of the original, it would be accepted as gospel.

Kinda Related to Me?

youtube

This is kind of a side note, but I had never realized that I participated in this sort of "mad movie" making. I was never an Otaku, but I had also not read this article then, so I just made creations like this because it looked cool. It's crazy though, how much Azuma shuns upon this, with saying that this needs no creativity to produce.

An Example I Thought of:

Look at Doki-Doki Literature Club.

Attractive characters

Simulacrum

Definitely lots of moe feeling sprinkled in (with the characters)

Constant switching of Destiny (which girl are you meant to be with?) and love?

Evokes a lot of "fake" emotions

Monika (Don't want to spoil it)

Recycled Assets?

Everything that Azuma has dreaded about in this excerpt seems to appear in this game. I thought it was a great game when it came out, but now that I see it in a different light, while I still see that it is a good game, I see more of the "Database" element of things. How the assets are reused, with a strict path and dialogue, and having you date characters which are conventionally attractive. I do think that it is still a good game, with the end of the game having a dramatically different trajectory than of traditional dating simulators, but still, the database element is still there.

Some Thoughts About Azuma:

He seems to treat Otakus as sub-human. He says they are animalistic, only finding out ways how to satisfy their inner wants. Then, he gives us a little hope about Otakus, saying how despite being perverts they do not engage in perversive acts, and saying how they indeed to socialize. However, then he immediately says that this sociality is all false, they only do it to gain more information about the database, and all of the in person meetings have none of the "traditional" social interaction meaning within. He also states that they find reality in the fiction.

All of these points make me question Azuma's points. He does support his statements with a lot of facts, but why does it at one point all seem emotionally charged? It seems like it was a rather personal critique of the Otaku culture rather than a unbiased one.

Overall, very interesting reading.

#Youtube

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sandyzakk · 1 year

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What is the Metaverse? an article makes it clear

”Metaverse” is a name that has emerged with the development of the Internet in recent years, so what is “Metaverse”? To understand the wave of exploration of the Metaverse, it is necessary to understand the ins and outs of the Metaverse, so that we can better grasp the current coordinates of the Metaverse, avoid missing the opportunities brought about by the origin and development of the Metaverse, and be able to clearly understand, fully prepare, Actively adapt.

Two Origins of the Metaverse

Metaverse Development Company describes a vast virtual space, which is the Internet of the future. The first generation of Internet is the era of personal computers (PC), the second generation is the era of mobile Internet, and the third generation of Internet is the future Internet, which is composed of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, digital twins, big data, Internet of Things , cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other digital intelligence technologies, it will be a persistent, shared, three-dimensional space.

The social and technological origins of the Metaverse reflect the dialectical unity of productivity and production relations.

1. Social origin

In the 1950s and 1960s, Western society was full of material desires, and people indulged in the consumption of symbols and objects in the trap of superficial affluence. Later, the “middle class” rose in some parts of the world. Their holiday and leisure time increased, and their working hours were relatively reduced. Many people gradually lost themselves in material consumption, their interpersonal relationships gradually became empty, and society was constantly objectified and alienated. Under the shadow of cynicism and hostility, people want to find spiritual sustenance, pray for spiritual purification, and get some comfort.

Man has biological and spiritual functions, which are integrated and inseparable. In order to survive and develop basicly such as food, clothing and housing, human beings always exert their biological functions and rarely use their mental functions. However, spiritual function is still very important, and human beings yearn for the spiritual world more in higher-level needs. However, only when people’s physical labor is less and material needs are guaranteed to a certain extent, can the real world and the spiritual world be better connected. The replacement of human labor by robots has just such a development trend, and it is believed that there will be conditions to fully exert human mental functions in the future. That sci-fi universe will conditionally become reality.

2. Origin of technology

The initiation and development of science and technology is the most reliable way to turn an ideal and science fiction into reality. What people can think, technology will generally shape for us. The development of science and technology makes this sentence more and more like the truth.

One is to create a virtual environment. The emergence of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the 1960s, which generated the earliest virtual environment, seems to reflect people’s urgent needs for a virtual spiritual world.

The second is the small integration of virtual technology. In the 1990s, virtual reality and augmented reality set off an upsurge. After Qian Xuesen learned about virtual reality technology, he thought of using it in the level of human-computer integration and human brain development, and named it “Spiritual Realm”. The combined experience brings the combination of human and computer into the era of deep integration.

As virtual reality and augmented reality are gradually merging, the two complement each other to form mixed reality (MR), which enables real-time interaction between synthetic objects and real objects.

Two Developments of the Metaverse

After the creation of the Metaverse Development Services it must not only move towards the ultimate vision of people’s science fiction and ideals, but also respect reality, follow the rules, and advance step by step and conditionally. In particular, it is necessary to clarify the difference between long-term and short-term development, so as to prevent confusing the setting of different goals for long-term and short-term development. For a while, some people mistook the long-term development for the short-term development, and lost their rational guidance on the development of the Metaverse, resulting in ups and downs in related investments. Therefore, we must be vigilant against the recurrence of such phenomena and protect people’s confidence in the development of the Metaverse.

1. Long-term development

There is an ultimate vision for the future development of the metaverse, which is to usher in a metaverse era. As an era, regardless of the participants, functions, and technological conditions, recent developments are different.

First, on the subject, the people who participate in the metaverse should be the majority. At that time, robots may replace the labor and work of a considerable number of people. Human beings are mainly engaged in intelligent labor. In addition, after the widespread use of robots, the distribution system will be changed accordingly. People’s material and cultural consumption may be guaranteed, and many people will be engaged in science and technology and research. , entertainment, games, creation and other intelligent labor to obtain spiritual happiness.

The Metaverse is a virtual world environment parallel to the physical world, which is just suitable for human beings to work on spirit, culture, intelligence, and creation. This is a bit like the description of the all-round development of people and the association of free people envisioned by Marx.

2. Recent development

Restricted by factors such as technology and social conditions, the recent metaverse can only be a partial and exploratory development. Although the individual technologies that make up the metaverse have matured in industrial applications, the integration of multiple technologies still needs to be continuously honed and perfected in the exploration and operation of the metaverse mechanism. Therefore, recent developments will have some deficiencies in comparison to future metaverses.

First, on the main body, extensive social participation will not be formed for the time being. Because most people do not have more time and mood to enter the virtual world due to real employment and material life needs. The metaverse being explored in the near future is likely to be a new generation of digital natives, intellectuals, middle class, leisure people. Even if most people come in, the technology and content are unbearable and unsatisfactory.

Second, in terms of function, some functions are still immature or have not yet been produced. The Metaverse, which incorporates the overall technology, cannot dabble in more industries, nor can it become a kind of daily life for people.

Prepare for adaptation

The sudden emergence of the metaverse is a bit confusing to many people. In addition to the above-mentioned origin and development of the foreshadowing, there are three aspects of adaptation.

One is progressive adaptation in technology. All kinds of commonly used network links are upgraded quickly without knowing it. Fixed telephones connect fixed locations, mobile communications and the Internet enable everyone to communicate with each other, the Internet of Things connects everything, and the Metaverse Development solution will connect locations, people, and objects in a three-dimensional scene.

The second is the adaptation from plane application to three-dimensional application. Now, we live in the real world, but we also live in some virtual worlds such as WeChat, blogs, and Douyin. WeChat is like a flat metaverse. Pictures, share all kinds of life. For most people, the personalities and social relationships shown in offline and online life are not much different. But there are also many people who are completely different online and offline. They are taciturn in life, but they talk endlessly on the Internet.

The metaverse of the future is a three-dimensional and dynamic version of every small flat metaverse seen today. Huawei, Ali, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com, ByteDance, Meituan, Xiaomi, Mate, Apple, Amazon, and all other technology companies we see today are advancing a metaverse of technological integration.

The third is the adaptation from partial application to extensive application. The current entertainment, games, conventions and exhibitions, training, education, sports, tourism, and some pioneering physical industries often use the metaverse, which is a kind of exercise for the future daily life and work application of the metaverse, which will naturally transition to the metaverse commonly used.

Consciously pay attention to the adaptation link, under the guidance of correct understanding, you will avoid detours, follow logic, and turn rational understanding into conscious behavior.

In short, to seize the opportunity of the origin and development of the metaverse and make their own choices lies in a deep understanding and adaptation to the wave of exploration of the metaverse.

#metaverse development #metaverse development company #metaverse

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wrongpublishing · 1 year

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In Fear of the Home (In Defence of the Gothic)

by Charlotte Goodger.

Frankenstein’s monster is a vegetarian. Carol J. Adams’s fascinating reading of Mary Shelley’s 1819 novel exists as part of a large body of evidence for the continued relevance of gothic fiction.

The Gothic emerged as a way of processing fears and trauma caused by domestic spheres, but it is now firmly considered the reserve of a by-gone era. It is the genre of melodrama, remote castles and the petty problems of the aristocracy. Of irresponsible scientists unruled by modern ethical procedures. Of vampires and ghosts too nonsensical for a 21st century world.

Firstly, I argue that enjoying gothic fiction is simply fun. Its very ridiculousness is entertaining beyond words. The Gothic transports us out of a world of mundane, but equally terrifying, problems and into a world so inauthentic that we don’t fear experiencing these problems ourselves. Consider Dracula (1897). How hilarious is the idea of an intelligent man, a solicitor, never considering that this mysterious, pale strange—feared by locals and owner of a quintessentially spooky castle—might be dangerous. It isn’t said often enough, but the Gothic is funny. So oblivious is Johnathan Harker that readers are hardly aware of the real-world anxieties beneath the words. And here, we arrive at the second, and more meaningful, reason as to why the Gothic still has a claim to relevance.

Where the Gothic seems too ridiculous to be included in the canon of so-called serious literature is exactly where its persistent relevance exists. As gripping as the supernatural can be, and entertaining is the melodrama and familial angst, the Gothic’s importance is in the symbolism behind these elements. Gothic is a symbolism-rich genre, and these symbols can be readapted by today’s writers to reflect their own fears.

After all, this is what lies at the heart of the Gothic and why it is loved by its fans. It’s a safe place where we can experience our fears at a distance and work out our emotions in a simulated environment. Take Frankenstein as an example. Although Adams studied the work’s emerging fears about meat consumption and its environmental impact, Shelley also wrote on her fears over motherhood and biological creation. One text, over two hundred years old now, reflects two very different terrors with equal skill.

Society is scared. That is an unavoidable fact, and it is, I argue, why we are seeing a resurgence in gothic film, TV and novels. Now, perhaps more than ever, gothic art forms are a form of catharsis. Their very ridiculousness helps us to purge ourselves of our fears.

I am going to use Daisy Johnson’s Sisters (2020) as an example. Johnson is a master of making the eerie out of the mundane, and the dilapidated, watchful Settle House is no different. I use this as an example because of how successfully she translates the old, aristocratic haunted house trope to the modern day dwelling.

Johnson’s protagonists, September and July, are sisters joined at the hip. They share clothes, thoughts and a cramped living space and may as well be twins. They have arrived at the Settle House after fleeing a school incident that scarred their family. Unknown until the very end, this incident reveals relatable fears centering unstable family relationships. This is only a more complex version of the fears of Shelley in Frankenstein, combining not only the role of motherly creation but the act of raising a family and living together as a unit.

The horror of the home is a bedrock of gothic novels. What we are seeing in modern gothic works is a gothic invasion of the average home, and the penetration of boundaries by unwelcome intruders. Gothic writing is still the rawest exploration ofmost raw way that we have of exploring domestic horror through art, as it is both adaptable and consistent. The basic themes don’t change, but its motifs invite translation into any number of settings.

The Settle House is characterised by half-seen things, entities disappearing around corners. The ‘hide and seek’ scene involves July and September engaging in a psychological game of separation that characterises anxiety over familial failure and separation. This theme is nothing new, but it can be read from a very safe distance when set in a castle. One can argue that a house, in the present day, in Yorkshire is closer to home for any person and cannot be as easily dismissed as ridiculous. Still, existing as fiction, I suggest that gothic horror will always have an inherent distance from our psyche and that elements of ridiculousness are likewise inherent to the genre.

In the age of pandemic, the applications of gothic are there for all to see. Worldwide trauma resulted from two years of fear, grief and confinement to the home. Thusly, the home is now —for most—jointly the sole place of safety and the site of horror that gothic fiction has always held it to be. It is important, now, that we have some way of processing and expressing our horror at our homes while keeping it at some distance.

It being far from being an outdated genre in the modern age, the next decade or so could produce some of the most fascinating gothic work we have seen for a generation. The gothic has always been a genre of entrapment, but a castle or Victorian mansion no longer seems nearly as claustrophobic as does a townhouse or a flat. Society-wide confinement on this scale has not occured for a long time, and new family conflicts have arisen around subjects such as vaccinations, rule-following and whether or not to go on holiday. I do not mean to sound like I am trivialising all of this suffering. Far from it. Gothic writing is a way of purging and processing genuine terror. Using it to write about the pandemic follows in the footsteps of writing on infant and maternal mortality, domestic violence and familial loss. Shelley, as I have said, wrote on maternal fears, having lost her own mother to childbirth at just days old. Susan Hill, too, a paragon of modern British gothic, used her writing to process the death of her child. Shirley Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House against the backdrop of her famously poor relationship with her mother.

It is an analyst’s downfall to lean too heavily on an author’s life, but in the case of gothic writers, that life can’t be ignored. Gothic relies on the expulsion of fear. It is, I argue, impossible to write truly gothic work if you have never experienced the fears about which you are writing.

As with Shelley, and Hill, and Jackson, and every other writer who writes about the horror of the home, future writers of the Gothic will undoubtedly draw on fears around the family and anxiety over childhood. This is the other key element of the Gothic that makes it as relevant as ever today; the fears it reflects are not just personal. An author may draw on their own unique experience—what will make their novel different from any other— but every reader understands these fears. These fears are human, and are therefore annoyingly persistent. In this respect, the Gothic may be the most enduring of genres. And now that we have figured out a formula for expressing these fears safely, we may never stop.

In short, the Gothic is not only relevant, but more relevant now than it was twenty years ago. As a genre that deals in playing out our worst fears on a distant stage, the Gothic is being reinvigorated in a world of unstable politics, rampant disease and climate disasters. Not only are genre classics being reinterpreted to reflect new fears, but we are seeing an upsurge in new gothic offerings that more directly tackle the things that cause us the most anxiety. The Gothic is very much here to stay.

Charlotte Goodger a keen reader and fiction writer alongside writing professionally. She is always experimenting with new recipes, fashion looks and hobbies that feed into her writing. Find her at charlottegoodgerfreelance.com.

#review #gothic fiction #fiction #gothic literature #essay

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dwellordream · 2 years

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“...Consumption of tea, that quintessential beverage of the eighteenth-century lady, came under particular attack, precisely because of its strong associations with both femininity and consumerism. The growing ubiquity and complexity of the tea-drinking ritual led to the creation of many related products, including special furniture as well as porcelain and silver tea services. Scenes of women presiding over the tea-table even formed a subgenre of the pictorial conversation piece. The Spectator’s announcement that it aimed to furnish “Tea-Table Talk,” as a way of showing its commitment to female readers, made sense to its audience because of the metonymic association of femininity with tea-drinking – an association that the Spectator itself did much to encourage.

Promoting a new print in 1742, one advertisement promised it would “please all true patriots and true Britons,” while also entertaining “the ladies at their spinets, their Toylets or TeaTables.” The tea-table was recognized in both theory and practice as the special domain of women, the tea ritual as the feminine counterpart to the masculine worlds of the coffee house and alehouse. Yet the Spectator’s use of the tea-table metaphor also depended for its rhetorical effect on the reader’s recognition of the association between tea and feminine idleness, gossip, and triviality, presenting itself as a moral alternative to the usual subjects of tea-table chat.

Didactic authors thus frequently emphasized the dangers posed by the new habit. Tea was, first, seen as inherently unhealthy by many observers. Tea mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-nacks, which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this Manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren; or if they breed, their Blood is made so poor, that they have not the Strength to suckle, and if they do, the Child dies of the Gripes. More importantly, however, tea-drinking distracted a woman from her natural duties while encouraging her to give way to idleness and gossip, behavior that also seemed disturbingly “natural” to the sex.

A contemporary print showed women at the tea-table spreading slander while the figure of Scandal drove Justice and Truth out the door of the salon. “In Billingsgate, Stockmarket, &c. the Females scatter Scandal in plain English Monosyllables,” complained one observer, “But Ladies of better breeding make the Tea Table their Mart to disperse Scandal, and attack Reputations with great Elegance, and soft Language.”

The Female Spectator asserted that the tea ritual was hugely expensive and was “the utter Destruction of all Oeconomy – the Bane of good housewifery – and the Source of Idleness.” Even those who praised tea-table chat as an innocent diversion warned against the dangers of drifting into slander, reflecting the common assumption that women would be almost incapable of disciplining their tongues in such a setting.

Another fashionable pastime that required great supervision was novel reading. Didactic writers maintained a complex relationship to the act of reading, since their own works were obviously meant to be read and often employed similar devices to those of fiction. All agreed that women’s reading had to be carefully supervised. Reading was problematic because it took place in private and because of fiction’s power to stimulate imagination and desire.

Novels, as Catherine Ingrassia argues, were both associated with women and seen as dangerous because of these “feminine” associations: “The novel appeals to a woman’s ‘tender and amorous’ and thus feminine disposition; yet it takes the natural and feminine and perverts it by making it, in a sense, too feminine.” The goal, then, was to make women’s reading habits – like all their behavior – absolutely transparent even though reading itself was a private act; women should be exposed to nothing that did not reinforce the moralizing influence of a conduct book.

All fiction was tainted by association with stories of unrestrained lust, which many feared would awaken lascivious desires in its female readers. One early eighteenth-century author compared fictional works to “Poison”: Their Style, Matter, Language, and Design are pointed against the Defence of Vertue. They sully the Fancy, over heat Passion, and awake Folly; and like lewd Pictures, are the worse for being excellent. They kindle those Flames that cannot be extinguished without Trouble, nor entertain’d without a Crime. Nay, like the Fire of Hell, they are almost Eternal, and what is worse, the very Torment pleases.

Almost identical words were used in the Weekly Oracle, which went on to portray the feared results: Those Scenes set the Sex into a Fit of longing; for tho’ Women were made of Bone, they retain all the Pliableness of Flesh; and the Fable that kindles the Passion, shews her the way to carry on the Intrigue, and at length is turned into a real Story; but with this Difference, that instead of a Prince, Madamoiselle [sic] goes off with a Valet de Chambre. Another writer complained that fashionable education made girls of eighteen ignorant in everything except sexual knowledge, where they demonstrated a disturbing precocity.

He believed that these modern girls suffered from a defective education, “their Closets supply’d with the most ludicrous and obscene Pieces; Plays, Novels and Romances are introduc’d instead of the Practice of Piety, the Whole Duty of Man, or the Ladies Calling.” Behind such diatribes lay the constant, unresolved tension between attempts to deny female sexual desire altogether and fears about its arousal. Didactic authors sometimes listed those works they considered appropriate for women to read, usually emphasizing moral and religious works, as in the case above.

“We would not be understood to exclude Reading from the Employment of a young Lady,” said the Weekly Oracle, “but then let it be of such Books as will mend the Mind, such as agreeably point out the Mistakes to which human Nature, and more particularly the Sex, is liable; such are the Spectators, &c.” Wetenhall Wilkes did not absolutely rule out novels and plays, but he urged “Caution; lest such Parts of them, as are not strictly tied down to sedateness, should inculcate such Light, over-gay Notions as might by unperceiv’d Degrees soften and mislead the Understanding.”

Books were safe when they reinforced the ostensibly pre-existing, natural gender categories. All women’s reading should “improve them, as they are women. . . . They should all tend to advance the value of their innocence, as virgins; improve their understandings, as wives; and regulate their tenderness, as parents and mistresses of families.” Just as immoral reading could work to draw women away from their duties to home and family and encourage illicit sexuality, so good reading was seen as a method of channeling sexuality into its proper spheres of marriage and motherhood.

But writers’ awareness of the powerful influence of fiction worked in subtler ways as well. One crucial aspect of the naturalization of femininity in eighteenth-century conduct books was the writers’ own denial of their didactic role, even within this overtly pedagogical format. If a woman was naturally modest and chaste, then she would behave modestly and chastely naturally, with no conscious effort. Conduct writers thus presented themselves as simply reminding their readers to go along with their natural instincts, to behave in a truly womanly manner.”

- Ingrid H. Tague, “The Attack on Fashionable Society.” in Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690-1760

#ingrid h. tague #georgian #english #history #gender #women of quality

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zaffrenotes · 3 years

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[TRR: WD106] Avoiding A Blunder

Summary: Prince Liam has to fill in for Crown Prince Leo, and Murphy’s Law is put into motion at the end of his trip. Chaos ensues, condensed Wacky Drabble style. Fic Rating/Warning: M; alcohol consumption, minor health/medical emergency, anxiety/angst Author’s Note: All main characters belong to Pixelberry/The Royal Romance, I’m just borrowing them * Fictional versions of IRL individuals are included with affection; any other characters mentioned in this piece are my creation * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles Prompt 106: You’re gonna get us busted! * You have @the-soot-sprite and @ao719 to thank for this ridiculousness, lol - Soot reblogged a photo, Betsy sent me this request

and...this is what my brain came up with (PS - thank you both for the movie discussion) * For the purposes of this story, Triydalia is a fictional country that shares a border with Thailand * Word Count: 1999 😅 (7 minutes reading time)

Taglist (if your name is crossed out, I'll tag you in the comments): @/ao719 @burnsoslow @gkittylove99 @neotericthemis @ofpixelsandscribbles @rainbowsinthestorm @superharriet @/the-soot-sprite @choiceskatie @jaqren @aestheticartsx @bbrandy2002 @dcbbw @gnatbrain @jared2612 @kingliam2019 @ladyangel70 @lovingchoices14 @nestledonthaveone @princessleac1 @queenjilian @sfb123 @texaskitten30 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @yourmajesty09

Liam was used to filling in for Leo at a moment’s notice; participating in conference calls with ambassadors for early morning updates when Leo overslept, and attending meetings with ministers when Leo went AWOL. He’d grown accustomed to his brother’s antics, but he wondered how Bastien managed to keep his position, when he’d lost track of Leo’s whereabouts countless times.

While Leo spent more time avoiding his duties as Crown Prince of Cordonia, Liam dutifully took on the extra responsibilities in stride. It often meant partitioning his already packed schedule to sit in on vital cabinet meetings or dining with visiting dignitaries, but sometimes Leo’s vanishing acts gave Liam the opportunity to travel.

Though their ambassadors handled the majority of day-to-day relations with other countries for trade, Constantine preferred to meet face-to-face when he could. One such time, a lingering cough turned to walking pneumonia, restricting Constantine to as much bed rest as possible. It also meant sending Leo to Japan for a meeting with the Prime Minister in his stead.

It would have been fine, if Leo hadn’t pulled another one of his disappearing acts.

A week later, Liam was seated on the royal jet on his way back from Tokyo, navy attache with espresso brown leather trim in the chair next to him. Across from him, Maxwell chatted with Anya over various Thai dishes. On the other side of the plane, Drake was in a heated discussion with leggy blonde Anitah while the ladies’ petite friend Donna observed in silence, fighting back a grin. “You’re an imbecile if that’s your opinion,” Anitah declared, raising her hands up in the air. “Are you sure that’s the hill you wanna die on?”

Drake smugly sipped from the crystal tumbler in his hand. “I’m right and you know it.”

“What are you two talking about?” Liam asked, relieved to think about anything other than what was in the bag and why it was so important he hand deliver it to his father.

“Fight Club being a better cinematic masterpiece than The Princess Bride,” Drake replied. “You guys agree, right? If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life, you’d want to watch Tyler Durden fight the system instead of some…” he paused to sneer at Anitah, who crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue at him, “...story about a swashbuckler rescuing a princess? She’s not even a real princess!”

“Fight Club is such a guy movie though,” Anya argued, turning in her seat to face Drake. “Princess Bride appeals to men and women, with a much larger audience.”

“Okay, that’s two for Buttercup,” Drake sighed. “Maxwell? Li?” He looked at his friends expectantly.

“Fight Club, definitely,” Maxwell said, nodding his head. He’d spent the better part of the trip doing everything to get into Drake’s good graces after the octopus incident on the first night in Tokyo.

Before Liam could respond, a commotion from the front of the plane made everyone’s heads turn, where a pair of Kings Guards and two flight attendants were seated near the galley. One of the guards slipped into the cockpit, rushing out a moment later in Liam’s direction, as the jet slowly tilted to the right. “Apologies, Your Highness. Do you or any of your guests happen to speak Triydalian?”

Anya slowly raised her hand. “I knew a bit when I was a kid, but I haven’t used it in years.”

The guard motioned for her to join him. “Please come with us, miss. The pilots need a translator.”

“Is everything alright, Remy?” Liam peered past the guard, eyes widening at the sight of the other guard and one attendant hovering in front of the other attendant in a chair.

“We need to land the plane, Sir,” Remy answered, ushering Anya up from her seat. “Ramona passed out. She’s breathing but unresponsive.”

Twenty minutes later and after a jarring landing, they’d arrived at a small airport in the Republic of Triydalia, at the edge of one of the country’s many jungle forests. Calling it an airport was generous - it was more of a cleared dirt path in the middle of the jungle with a shack for an airport tower, and a man that looked like more of a hunter than an air traffic controller. After a choppy conversation that required pantomiming and hand signals, Anya left with Remy and the man from the tower to fetch a tribal doctor, while Anitah and Donna assisted the other member of the cabin crew to look after Ramona. They were warned to remain as quiet as possible and to stay inside the jet.

Minutes passed by in tense observation; Anitah and Drake continued their debate in low whispers, growing louder as they defended their choices. Liam could see the pilots discussing something pointedly as they checked readings on the instrument panel and worked on calculations. One of them stepped out, claiming that he needed to stretch his legs, and walked cautiously down the runway. When he returned, the other pilot joined him outside, despite the original warning to stay inside. Liam peered out the windows and checked his watch, worrying about Anya and Remy, along with his father’s instructions to avoid delaying their return.

While the remaining guard headed towards the back of the plane to pace back and forth for the eighth time, Liam took it upon himself to speak with the pilots. The air was thick and stifling the moment he stepped outside. Around them, there was nothing but green, green, and more green from the wilderness that surrounded them, abuzz with tropical birds and insects. At his side he carried the blue attache, remembering the promise to his father that the bag wouldn’t leave his sight. He spoke in a hushed tone when he approached the pilots. “You’re doing more than just stretching your legs, aren’t you, Captain?”

Both men grimaced slightly. “Yes, Your Highness. Even if we pulled back to one end of the runway, we’re still at least five hundred feet short of clearing takeoff.”

“What if we worked to try and clear the brush on either end?” Liam offered, looking off into the distance.

“There’s no way to clear out the trees, even the young ones,” the co-captain answered. “We might be able to take off if we could drop some weight, but the larger concern is the longer we wait, we increase the risk of encountering someone who doesn’t want us here.”

Liam nodded gravely; months of civil unrest in Triydalia meant rebel groups assembled faster than the government could contain them. There was no guarantee of anyone’s safety, stranded on a remote runway. There was no telling what was wrong with Ramona while she was unconscious, and therefore no way to treat her without the aid of a doctor. Ensuring the safety of the crew and his friends could have been avoided altogether if Leo didn’t constantly opt out of handling the duties of his station. In that moment, Liam abhorred the never-ending list of responsibilities thrust at him as a result of having to pick up the slack for his brother, knowing if their roles were reversed, Leo would manage to find a way to leave Liam to solve problems on his own.

“Could you excuse me for a moment?”

He’d barely finished asking the question before walking into the tall grass by the edge of the runway. Ignoring the pilots’ calls to return, Liam sprinted into the dense greenery, dodging between vines and scanning the ground for tripwires until he could no longer see the plane over his shoulder. When he finally stopped running, he bent over, hands on his knees as he gulped in air. Liam looked down at the blue bag in his hand, wondering what on earth was so precious to reduce him to a courier.

Shaking the bag did nothing; it felt practically empty, though he could tell something was inside. He couldn’t open the bag to check, since Prime Minister Abe and his father were the only ones with keys, and PM Abe handed him the sealed bag when they parted ways. Liam wanted to throw the infernal “murse” the ladies had good-naturedly teased him for into the bushes. Perspiration dotted his hairline, and he let out a primal scream, before taking slow, deep breaths to quiet the worrisome thoughts racing in his head and bring his heartbeat down to normal.

Cursed courier bag in his right hand, Liam braced his arm against his torso, pinning it in place with his elbow when he bent his other arm up towards his face. Curling his fingers into a relaxed fist, he pressed his lips against his thumb, thick brows furrowing in thought. All around him, wild birds called to one another amidst the chittering clamor of insects hidden in the foliage. He was so busy running through scenarios in his head that he didn’t hear the quiet click of a camera, turning to look up only when he heard a branch snap in the distance.

“Watch it! You’re gonna get us busted!” Donna hissed to Drake. She pocketed her phone, elbowing Drake in the ribs as they crouched behind large leaves. She ticked her head in Liam’s direction. “Go get your boy, none of us are safe out here.”

After some coaxing, Liam headed back to the plane with Donna and Drake, walking briskly through the jungle, eyes trained to look for anything out of the ordinary. Liam was alarmed when he heard and then saw the engines running, until Drake explained the pilots were burning off fuel to lighten the plane. They’d begun to walk up the steps, when Maxwell popped out above them. “Whoo!” Maxwell exclaimed, digging for another snack from the container he cradled in his arm. “Feels like a sauna out here!”

“Lower your voice, Maxwell! Please!” Liam seethed. His features pinched together in disbelief. “Are you...eating? Now?”

“You know I stress snack,” Maxwell replied, shrugging his shoulders. He shoved another cookie into his mouth.

Liam’s eyes lit up and he took the stairs two by two, knocking on the cockpit door before swinging it open. “What if we unloaded whatever’s not bolted down? The decor, dinnerware, the food and drink?”

“That...would certainly help,” the captain replied, looking back over his shoulder. He turned to his co-pilot. “It could be enough to get in the air after burning off the excess fuel.”

“You heard the man, Maxwell,” Liam said, offering his friend a nervous grin. “Get Drake to help you start unloading the plane. Has Ramona’s status changed?”

“Donna found the first aid kit just before she took off with Drake to go after you. Anitah found some smelling salts that gave her a rude wakeup call. Turns out her insulin pump shorted and she just needed some juice.”

Several more minutes passed as the group removed whatever they could from the plane, leaving piles of cookware, food, throw pillows, and even seat cushions to lighten the load. Drake whined when they gathered up the liquor, but he stuffed a bottle of whiskey in a cabinet by his seat. They’d nearly finished when Anya and Remy returned, running on foot. “That thing better be ready to take off!” Anya hollered, motioning for everyone to board. “Rebels on our tail! Time to go!”

Everyone scrambled back onto the plane; Liam relayed the urgency to depart to the pilots, who rapidly went through their flight checklist. Remy pulled Anya up onto the steps and they all clamored to buckle into their seats, the sound of gunfire in the air as the jet rolled forward and lurched up into the air, barely clearing the canopy.

Adrenaline pumping and breaths shallow, Liam looked around at his friends and the crew, thankful they were safely in the air again.

Liam thought he was having a stroke at twenty-four when he saw the contents of the bag. Constantine smiled with glee at the small gold cat, one paw raised.

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descentivity · 3 years

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Depression, Trauma, (and Most Importantly,) My Thoughts on Hello Charlotte EP1 & 2

Eating has been difficult for me for as long as I remember. It started off as an aversion to food, in favour of spending my time more efficiently on what my dumb little mind viewed as more important: Homework, video games.

Over time, it turned into anorexia. I had already gotten used to eating just under 500 calories a day, and my depression took my poor habits and twisted them into a cowardly and slow attempt at suicide.

On my road to recovery, I’ve found that years of poor eating choices have lead to my body struggling to process food. I have to eat at a painstakingly slow pace lest my stomach turns against me, and the smell of food is sometimes enough to diminish my appetite altogether. My bowel movements are, for lack of a better word, a shitshow.

This brings me to today, the 10th of August, 2021. 6 or so years of barely eating enough to survive later, I’m setting the world record for the slowest consumption of a fillet o’ fish in the history of mankind.

In my absolute boredom and unfathomable stomach pain, ManlyBadassHero’s playthrough of some random horror game (I can’t remember the name) appears in my YouTube recommended, and I’m reminded of a horror game I bought on sale on Steam, the last of a trilogy. In all honesty, I only bought the game because it was dirt cheap and one of my sisters’ names is Charlotte. I was too horrified at the time to process the story nor play the previous two games, so I did a quick achievement run and left it at that. I was certainly very confused as I had no idea who any of the characters or what any of the concepts were, but the gore had me too mortified to go and find out myself.

A year later, I’m looking the trilogy up on ManlyBadassHero’s YouTube channel, and decide to start from the beginning of his Hello Charlotte journey, in 2016.

Hello Charlotte EP1

I’m going to be completely honest with you, the first game really didn’t resonate with me too well. It was a cute, quirky, RPG Maker horror game, with two loveable main characters and an interesting world. However, with context from the third game, the events felt too self-isolated and inconsequential. Felix and Charlotte are in a little self-contained TV world created by a fictional race called Pythia - creatures with 3 or 4 eyes that can create miniature dimensions, once brought into a hivemind by an “Oracle,” which seems to be some sort of god. They all seem to be falling apart and have taken a horrific turn as most of the Pythia have been “executed,” and those who haven’t have either gone mad or into hiding in their own bubbles of (albeit temporary) safety.

The ending of the game is somewhat misleading, too. Once Charlotte and Felix escape the TV world by having Charlotte merge with the Oracle itself, the game almost plays off the previous events like they were all a story made up by a young and imaginative Charlotte. Did they happen at all? Is she a reliable narrator or point of view to begin with? (Spoiler alert, she is not.) The explanation for it all seems to be that Charlotte herself is a schizophrenic, though the legitimacy of this is brought into question in the third game, which I will talk about later. Altogether, the game didn’t bring out many strong emotions in me, and I was starting to zone out as I moved on to the second game’s playthrough.

Hello Charlotte EP2

What struck me as odd in the second game is that while the first game seemed to bring Charlotte out of her own strange, black-and-white world and back into reality, we’ve found out that she’s right back where we started last game. A black-and-white world, inhabited by her imaginary friends. Aliens, gods, and the like. However, Charlotte’s seemingly made-up world feels more alive this time. I’m not sure if this is the consequence of the game developer improving their skills or an intentional detail, but even more characters are introduced, and previously shallow tenants of Charlotte’s home are given more depth. The hazmat-suit wearing aliens have faces, personalities and whole backstories attached to them, now. Charlotte has a best friend at school named Anri, who has a obsessive crush on her. She’s friends with a bullying victim named C with horrible germaphobia, who has almost identical struggles to her (more on those struggles later.)

What also surprised me is the continuity between the first and second game. For some reason, I thought that this Charlotte would be starting from scratch, completely oblivious to the fate of the first game’s iteration. However, this concept only seems to be used in the third game, so I guess I was simply mislead. This game, in fact, takes place 3 years after the first, and the Oracle still lives on within Charlotte’s conscious. However, it’s a dying god, on its last leg. It had already been dying during the time of the last few Pythia, but it had used the last of its strength to free Felix and Charlotte from their world. As the Oracle’s health declines, so does Charlotte’s mortal body.

Unlike the first game, most of the themes in this game hit way too close to home. The feeling of second-hand helplessness when someone you barely knew ends their own life. Anri’s obsessive and outright manipulative lesbian crush on Charlotte, bordering on bullying. The schooltime harrassment and trauma Charlotte underwent. The fear and dangers of social interaction. Feeling unlawfully punished by your school teachers for seemingly nothing at all. Depression, self harm, and the primal urge to escape from it. Getting roped into others’ mental health, until both of your issues converge into a disgusting amalgamation of the need but severe lack of therapy and a break from it all. Delusions of what could’ve been and the possible, yet near impossible future ahead. Looking back on everything you’ve ever done and regretting every second of it.

While I ticked off the trauma presented to me on a silver platter in the form of a fucking RPG Maker game like a twisted bucket list, I found myself relating more and more to not only Charlotte, but the students around her. Scarlett, whose life was so perfect that nobody had even thought about her possible mental issues until it was far too late. Anri, who would lay down her life for a girl who simply doesn’t feel the same way. C, who desperately wanted to escape from reality by any means possible.

An interesting fact about Hello Charlotte is that there are numerous omnipotent beings amongst its cast. They aren’t shy about providing very in-depth character analysis to Charlotte, and in turn, to the puppeteer (I suppose now is a good time to inform those who are unfamiliar with the series that the puppeteer refers to a species, character, and the player, all at once. Charlotte has a puppeteer controlling her by the name of Seth. You are/are controlling Seth as the player. Capiche? Capiche.)

What this meant for me watching Manly’s playthrough was the feeling of two gods (in this game, at least) peering right into my soul, analysing characters that reflected my exact experiences and even my personality during my school days. I learned and realised things about myself that I simply hadn’t known before. Just like Charlotte, I’m simply looking for direction in life, and I’m too afraid to act without instructions. I found myself bullied, manipulated and abandoned by someone who simply wanted my affections, and only learned to miss them when they were gone. Like Anri, my desperation for love and approval from an individual in turn lead to anger and resentment for them. Like both Charlotte and C, I eventually turned to hurting myself to make all the pain go away, refusing help from others and developing a shell of false optimism and naivety to forget about the damage I had dealt to my body, personality and relationships.

As much as I hate to admit it on my little obscure Tumblr blog with 0 followers and 0 traction, I still struggle with these things. I have no direction in life, and wander aimlessly, hoping for one of my offshot attempts at content creation to take off. I find myself missing the girl who emotionally abused me to hell and back every day. I resent another girl for never feeling the same way I felt about her. I still don’t take care of myself, and spend every day in a state of denial about my physical decline and sickliness. I’m so incompetent emotionally that I spend days ignoring my own boyfriend, starving him of the proper relationship that he deserves all because of how broken, fragmented and distant my own mind is.

Hello Charlotte EP2 has four endings. All four of them, in my eyes, are bad.

In the first, C and Charlotte overdose together, leaving their mortal realm to become gods. They choose to ignore and forget the pains of their mortal lives, and live the rest of their godly lives in ignorant bliss. Do I want to forget about my depression and trauma? Learn nothing, and forget about everything that made me who I am today? Or worse even, do I dare take the plunge into “godhood,” and leave this mortal plane to end my suffering altogether?

In the second, Charlotte discovers that C isn’t who she thinks he is, and she finds him without a soul. Alive, but empty. Charlotte could not save him. Consumed by grief, she ascends and becomes a god, consuming the entire world around her. After all is said and done, she realizes her mistake. All of her friends are gone, C is still empty and unresponsive, and now she is alone. Sometimes, I feel as though I’ve already gone through this ending, many times over. Countless times I’ve let my depression become all-consuming and take over my life. I’ve pushed so many people away and hurt so many more, and for what? I have nothing to gain from every fit of depression, and the consequences make it seem nothing more but a selfish attempt to make myself feel better.

In the third, Charlotte is the only one who dies. In her last moments, the Oracle comforts her, like a mother cradling her child. They embrace, and say goodbye to each other, as Charlotte’s own life was the only thing keeping the dying god alive. At this point, I’ve started to draw parallels between the Oracle and depression. Depression isn’t always a horrible thing that beats you down and keeps you from being truly happy. Sometimes, wallowing in my own sadness and depression would be the only thing that keeps you sane, stable, and calm. The feeling of hopelessness really is bittersweet, and in desperate times, goes hand-in-hand with acceptance of one’s circumstance. Oftentimes, I find that this is the most realistic way I’ll go out. One day, I may just accept depression, and succomb to it. There may not be a struggle at all. Rather, a quiet, submissive hum, which will fade away into silence.

In the fourth and final ending, Charlotte and C die alongside each other. After her death, Charlotte confronts the Oracle, and wishes to save everyone, and for everyone to be unhappy. Of course, this is where the classic saying: “Be careful what you wish for” comes in. Because of her wish, everyone’s soul, what makes them individual and unique, is erased. After all, no one can suffer if they cannot think at all. In some ways, emptiness is pure bliss. This once again goes back to the bittersweetness of depression. The sheer emptiness it may bring on, at times, is bliss. Feeling nothing isn’t always a bad thing. It’s a way to cope with the horrors of the world. To remember nothing at all is such a tempting yet unattainable solution that I can’t say I haven’t longed for in the near or distant past. Charlotte, of course, is distraught that her friends are all gone, their identities and souls lost forever. Following this, she has one request to make of another god, the observer. She wishes to be killed, as all of her actions have lead to nothing but pain for others and herself. The observer, however, refuses this offer. Instead, he comforts her and takes her hand. They go on a journey together. He suggests that one day, she’ll learn to control her power, and she can recreate the world and her friends. As they leave, Charlotte reflects on her hopes and dreams for the journey. She hopes to learn to be kind, and not hurt others. She wants to change her ways, and become an honest, good person. Charlotte, slowly but surely, is on the road to recovery.

Putting the unsettling sequel to this game aside, maybe I could learn a little bit from Charlotte.

#tw suicide #tw depression #tw anorexia #tw self harm #disordered eating tw #hello charlotte #charlotte wiltshire #anri warhol #scarlett eyler #charles eyler #indie horror #review

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desperateground · 3 years

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since we're doing anti discourse i guess: the antis ive seen on their own blogs (as opposed to other blogs askboxes) seem more concerned with media that portrays pedophilia in a positive light, as that very much can influence people into thinking it isn't THAT bad. If portrayed as the bad thing it is, they dont mind. Personally, do you see a difference in something that goes "heres an adult in love with a child, how sweet" as opposed to "heres an adult in love with a child, isnt that fucked up?"

under a cut cause this got long

I would love to be on the internet where you are, because it sounds a lot more reasonable than the one I live on, where stuff like this just makes me go ???

the thing is that fiction actually does influence people’s perceptions of reality, and we ought to care about that! if a person grows up watching movies where cops break the rules but it’s OK because they’re the good guys; or where stalkerish and manipulative behavior counts as “grand romantic gestures” that obligate a woman to date a man; or where Black people are depicted as uneducated and violent, of course that is going to color their opinions of the world.

and there are a lot of really good conversations being had about issues like that, and we absolutely need to have those conversations about responsible media creation and consumption. this power can be used for good as well as for evil. many people cite shows like Will & Grace as helping turn the tide of public opinion against seeing “homosexuality” as deviant and instead seeing gay people as “normal” and “lovable” and “relatable.” superman was a beloved enough All-American Hero that a storyline where he fights the KKK is credited with helping turn the KKK from a mainstream fraternity into something seen as a fringe hate group.

so i would agree that a giant wave of media with positive depictions of pedophilia would be concerning.

however, we do not currently live in a world where “here’s an adult in love with a child, how sweet” is a major issue in media narratives such that people are absorbing the attitude that pedophilia is fine, cool, and good.

in fact, pedophilia is such a hated subject that we have a whole political movement in my country based on people calling anyone they dislike a “pedophile” and accusing them of all sorts of depraved shit involving children. most people who have sexual inclinations toward children are fully aware that these desires are at odds with society and that they will become pariahs if these desires were known to others.

(In fact, this level of ostracization can put people at a higher risk of offending, because they feel hopeless, have nowhere to turn for support, and figure if they’re going to be a pariah anyway, they may as well do the one thing they can think of that feels good. Forcing conversations about this to go completely underground means that you end up with awful groups like nambla dominating the conversation and convincing lost, lonely, frightened people to hop on board with their dangerous attitudes. if the only people safe to talk to about this stuff are people who will excuse, justify, encourage, and promote offenses against children, it makes sense that people would end up in their grip. You can read more here and here.)

much of the “media” that these “antis” are up in arms about is fan created content intended for a small population. the people creating content that riles up antis generally recognize that this is not mainstream content and use things like tags and content warnings to set it aside from other content. the notion that certain tropes in fanworks are going to bring about a massive cultural shift is a bizarre slippery-slope argument, and i think people's energy would be better focused on problems that are actually currently existing rather than a potential future where a few tags on ao3 have become dominant themes in network television and blockbuster movies.

another issue here is that when an “anti” uses the term “pedophilia,” it’s completely unclear what they are actually referring to. a reasonable person would assume that they mean “a sexual relationship between an adult and a child,” but the definitions of “adult,” “child,” and “sexual relationship” have gotten so blurry within this discourse that it’s impossible to determine what’s being discussed. i’ve seen people claim that any relationship is inherently “pedophilic” if the characters have any sort of age gap, if there is any sort of power imbalance, if they both belong to the same “found family,” or even if one looks younger in appearance.

so when someone says “fictional narratives that depict pedophilia in a positive light,” they may actually be referring to “fictional narratives that depict any relationship I don’t like,” which is such a vague and meaningless statement that it becomes completely useless.

finally, your actual question is whether I personally see a difference between stories where the narrative perspective seems to critique the relationship vs stories where the narrative perspective romanticizes the relationship. i think your question is...hard to answer, because there is just too much there.

first off, it’s not always easy to tell whether a story is “vilifying” vs “glamorizing” something. people watch movies like fight club and take away very different thematic messages about whether the protagonist is someone to admire and emulate. if we say that depictions of abuse are only “good” or “allowed” if the narrative clearly portrays the abuse as “fucked up,” then we’re going to have to establish a High Court of AP English Teachers to determine exactly what narrative devices are employed and how, and that’s just...not...workable.

also, some people like the “fucked up”-ness of these stories; if you’re trying to say that something is bad if people “enjoy it” or “get off” on it or “indulge” in the darkness of the content, then it doesn’t matter if the story itself is wagging its finger at the naughty, naughty reader. the taboo, the erotic, and the deviant are, and have always been, wrapped up in each other. you can depict something as “bad” and yet still “fun;” it becomes a useless distinction when talking about sexual content.

do i personally see a difference, when it comes to my own enjoyment? yeah, absolutely. i stopped watching game of thrones not because it included rape, but because the way the cinematography, musical score, etc. made it clear that the show was expecting me to feel a certain way about those images, and i didn’t appreciate that. i also didn’t appreciate the directorial decision to give more dignity to a dog’s death by cutting to black than to violence against women. i would probably not enjoy a book or movie that’s just about how awesome and fun it is to hurt people; though i did like clockwork orange - i found the narrator abhorrent, but interesting.

but i think trying to split hairs about what does and doesn’t count as Problematic or Allowable Content, or trying to tell people that what they create and/or consume is Bad and they are Bad for doing it, because its inclusion of dark themes is Doing It Wrong - it’s not helpful. it’s impossible to develop a standard for what is “doing it wrong vs doing it right” that makes any sense, and even if you did, enforcing it through campaigns of hatred and social vilification is not going to be effective.

#fandom #discourse #antis #anti anti #fandom discourse

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