#its just a difference of opinion and by reading those opinions i learn about how other people feel

[forevercloudnine]

How do you feel about w/ayne f/amily a/dventures? Its obviously pretty popular in most of the batfam fandom but as someone who seems to enjoy the more complex side of them how do you feel about it?

I almost blocked my father for repeatedly sending my brother and I WFA panels in our family comics server

#occasionally i am self-aware enough to recognize my intense hatred of WFA as a form of elitism #and that there is nothing inherently wrong with dc cashing in on the legions of batfam fans who like the general concept of the characters #without wanting to read comics or in general learn literally anything about them beyond their most surface level characteristics #but yeah pretty much everything about WFA was tailor made to infuriate me as much as humanly possible #i have unfollowed mutuals for putting it on my dash too often #of course that being said: i have never read it! so i cannot actually speak to its quality as a comic #just as a general concept i have a knee jerk negative reaction to #and i'm also a hypocrite because i did reblog a cassandra + bruce thing from WFA once #but that's just a demonstration of how desperate i am for cassandra favoritism content #i know the opinion of most people who actually read comics is that 'cassandra is bruce's favorite' is a delusion of a subset of batfam fans #but dick grayson getting jealous of cassandra in batgirl (2008) was instrumental to my understanding of the characters #like yes in most functional ways dick is bruce's favorite #and bruce does often value the ways that dick is different from him!!! #but also bruce values his own priorities over All Else and cassandra shares those #and also relates to her in a way he doesn't relate to any of the others #the difference between shared trauma and shared coping mechanisms i guess #however it's also true that these things only come into play when writers remember that cassandra exists #because the average batman writer is only interested in the batboys. like that is undeniable #but idk like the rebirth outsiders run???? #when duke confesses something to cassandra and she immediately goes behind his back to tell bruce about it??? #even tim would have thought twice before doing that #and that's why cassandra is objectively bruce's favorite. case closed #this no longer has anything to do with wayne family adventures #UNLESS wayne family adventures comes to the same conclusion about bruce and cassandra somehow #anyone who reads wayne family adventures and is somehow reading these tags: please let me know

[drchucktingle]

Chuck, how do you deal with people who are rude about you and your work? I write queer romance and I want to put my writing out there for people to read, but I'm a very sensitive person and I know it will be hard not to take insults personally and let them affect me. I don't want to let that stop me from expressing myself and sharing my art, but I'm scared!

very good question buckaroo. i am a good example of this as pretty much EVERYONE was rude about my work for many years calling it 'so bad its good' (it is just good) and 'terrible photoshop' (i think it has a great and instantly recognizable style) and 'intentionally stupid premises' (i dont think there is anything stupid about sex being fun and whimsical and playful). even these days the reaction of the VAST majority of buckaroos who discover chuck have this reaction AT FIRST, and then learn to appreciate the tingleverse in a more sincere way over time.

all that is to say BEING DOUBTED HAS WORKED OUT VERY WELL FOR ME. art that changes meaning over time can be very powerful, so if someones initial reaction to my trot is one thing and then it evolves into another thing, well that is just good art. while it can feel bad to get a bad review, i would say a bad review just means you have entered a realm of tension and change and discord and WE ARE TALKIN ABOUT ART BUD so that, in itself, is very exciting.

i think of what i do as 'punk writing', and a big part of that means pushing against preconceived sensibilities. not many other authors will proudly say 'there SHOULD be some spelling errors in my erotic shorts because i wrote it in a day and edited it once. that is the FEELING i want to create', but that is my way. by creating what is in my soul i KNOW i am going to bother some buckaroos and that is okay.

now i am NOT assuming you are also doing punk writing (that is okay of course we all have our own styles. what i am doing with tinglers is pretty rare), but it still stands to remember that there are 7.8 billion people on the planet of this dang timeline and some of them are bound to be bothered by your creations. that is not a problem, that is just part of baring your authentic self.

the other thing to remember is theres no REAL right or wrong in art. it can be analyzed in different ways and i tend to look at it in a way of comparing intention to result, but even THAT is not strictly correct. therefore any bad review of something you make is not actually BAD it is just someones information and feedback for you to take or leave. a one star review is just another opinion, it is no more right or wrong than your own opinion, and that is wonderful. it is freeing.

if i see a bad review of my own book, lets just say CAMP DAMASCUS for instance, i do not get upset because i know this: that reviewer is not wrong. camp damascus is five stars for me, but it is one star for someone else AND THAT IS OK. THAT IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. THAT IS GREAT ART. also MAYBE THEY KNOW BETTER THAN I DO. just because i wrote the book does not mean i am the authority on it, and the conversation and tension between those that enjoy something and those that despise it is a creative act. the audience engaging with your work is just your art emerging from its cocoon and saying 'here i am. lets see where i flutter off to now'

do not fear the river of this timeline sweeping away your creations and carrying them where it will. this is inevitable, but it is also beautiful and freeing. you cannot swim against it and that is okay bud, because YOU HAVE ALREADY WON. you have already created something and given a piece of yourself back to this timeline and that is a great honor and privilege. it is literally all there is

by creating ANYTHING you are proving love is real, and that is something to be proud of

#buckaroo lifestyle #art #creation #chuck tingle

[gothhabiba]

hello, i kno close reading aint the only way to analyse a text but im trying to find other ways of doin it but google is just givin me how to do close readings in your classroom things. idk im not a booksguy really tho id like to learn how to books better. do u have any like basic resources for ways to read a text an figure out whats goin on in it that isnt doing a close reading? thanks

Close readings are mostly associated with new criticism. This school of criticism, like every other, arose in a particular time and place and can be analysed as having arisen for a particular reason. Also like every school of criticism, it has its adherents and its detractors. But considering the "work" as its own whole, self-contained aesthetic object in the way that NC does is not the only way to read.

Some other approaches, off the top of my head, & the schools of criticism they're roughly associated with:

How does the work make you feel? What are your reactions to it? What emotions and associations does it conjure up? What is your spatial or temporal experience like reading the work (like, how does the work appear to you as something that unfolds over time, as you read it? When and how are you reading it)? How do your expectations about a certain work affect how you read? [Reader-response]

What is the economic and ideological history of the genre, form, and aesthetics of the work in question? What ideological function does the work seem to serve? Does it serve to convince its readers of anything, and if so, what political implications does its viewpoint have? What ideas of oppression, history, and the forms that resistance can take does the work present or seem to advocate for? What does it make visible or invisible, what does it make seem possible or impossible? [Marxist literary criticism / Marxist aesthetics]

When, where, and by whom was the work published? What else do we know about the author's opinions on aesthetics, politics, &c., and how do we know it? How are those opinions reflected by, or in tension with, what you see in the work? Were there any problems getting the work published, and, if so, do they have to do with the author's class or gender or politics, &c.? Where and how was the author living (richly or poorly, working as a maid in another household or employing servants or a wife to free up time for intellectual pursuits) while writing?

And, doubling down on when the work was published—what were the popular or dominant discourses about science, biology, human cognition, political economy, race, gender, war, &c. &c. when and where the author wrote and published? How does the work seem to mobilise, use, subvert, echo, further, or contest those discourses? How would the work's first readers have read it in light of the popular discourses they were familiar with? [contextualism; new historicism]

What materials was the book originally published in? Where did those materials come from? Was it cheaply or expensively made? How much was it sold for? Who would have been able to afford it? What does the form of the book (any illustrations? what's the typeface and size? margin size? hardcover or paperback?) imply about who is meant to read the work, and how they're meant to read it? What effect did the state of print technology at the time of the book's publishing have on its final form (e.g., it used to be impossible to have text and an image on the same page in a mass-produced book)? Where do the objects described in the book presumably come from, and by whose labour would they have been produced and transported? What does this say about the material lives of the characters? [Material culture studies]

What are the early notices and reviews of the book like, and where do they appear? Who wrote them and where did they publish them? Is the book mentioned in diaries and letters from around the time of its publication? How did the responses to the book change over time? How did audiences in different places, or of different demographics in other ways, respond to the book? What went into making the book accessible to new audiences over time? What extra-textual stuff (“paratext”: book covers, advertisements, interviews, reviews) influence how people read the work? [Reception history; translation studies; maybe fandom studies]

Who edited the work? How much control did the publishing house, and the publishing house's readers, have over the final format of the text? Who decided what the punctuation would be like, and where the chapter breaks would go? Who decided on the spelling (was it published at a time when spelling was standardized? Did the author's manuscript contain any idiosyncratic spellings? Did the publishing house have a house style)? Are there any ideological connotations to "correcting" this author's spelling? Was the author's manuscript typed or handwritten? Were there any problems reading their handwriting? How many versions of the manuscript were there, and how did the publishing house chuse which to work from? [Editorial theory]

These associations between methods of reading and schools of criticism are mostly just to give you terms to look up to read more. Scholars don't all necessarily belong firmly to a given school, and people often mix and match various modes of reading to be able to argue what they want to argue.

#Anonymous #questions #literature #literary criticism #reading comprehension

[honeytonedhottie]

video diary entry ideas⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🍭

so if u dont already know, a video diary is exactly what it sounds like. a diary of videos that u make, in my previous post about video diaries i talked ab why its sm fun and in this post i'll be giving video ideas just in case u need an extra push or ideas ✨

THRIFT HAUL ;

talk about ur personal style and ideas and what ur plans are for those clothes. maybe turn the clothes that u thrifted into a project and personalize the clothes to ur needs and style. talk about how you'd style the clothes. as a person who has a passion for fashion i love a good thrift haul video entry.

BAKING AND CHATTING ;

pick up a box of cake mix and make ur favorite sweet treat while just chatting to the camera. this is helpful especially if u find sitting and talking about ur thoughts and expressing urself kind of awkward, it gives u something to do and helps to lessen the anxiety if ur just starting.

LETS TALK ABOUT IT ;

my video diary is like my own podcast so here's some things that i've talked about.

my "hot takes"

ideas for my future

things that frustrate me

talk about ur day in a different language (this is also great practice if ur learning a new language)

talk about whats going on in a show/series that ur watching or reading

and just sitting and talking is a rly great way for me to cultivate creativity, think of new ideas for literally everything. from my blog to law of assumption epiphanies to projects, fashion ideas and projects, my music EVERYTHING.

talk about things that u need to get off of ur chest for ur own peace yk? cuz theres just something about saying it out loud

do a mukbang

DO A COLLECTION TOUR ;

i've actually written a post about starting a collection, but if u need an idea for a video entry go through ur collection and talk about pieces in ur collection.

DO A MUKBANG ;

order and eat ur favorite foods, or if u want to you can take an asmr kind of approach so that then u can enjoy your food and the sounds r SO GOOD in my opinion. when u do a mukbang or asmr u can try new foods and give feedback which gives u something to talk about. some things i've mukbanged recently are

mexican tacos and rice water and for dessert i had cheese cake tempura with some mochi

it was actually my first time trying rice water and it was SO GOOD. it was so delicious and refreshing and the tacos were amazing too. the cheese cake tempura was a bit small but it was rly good and the mochi as always was delicious.

#video diary💬🎀 #becoming that girl #self care #honeytonedhottie⭐️ #that girl #it girl energy #dream girl tips #dream girl #dream life #it girl lifestyle #it girl #girly #girl blogging #girl blogger #ideas🌸 #romanticization #romanticize #hobbies #hyper femininity

[txttletale]

hi I've been following you for a while and I had some questions about MLism. First, while I think I have a decent understanding of how it works economically, how would a ML government (after the revolution) ensure it doesn't become too powerful? like what systems would be put in place so that it hears public opinion and dissent (should there be any) and not try to maintain power through oppressive means?

Secondly, what would the aftermath of the revolution look like? once the government is overthrown, there will most likely be a period of instability where different factions trying to sieze control. How would the MLs make sure that they get seated in power?

I am genuinely trying to learn more about it, so I'm sorry if those questions are ignorant. Thanks!

i mean, that first part? i'll be completely honest with you and say that in my opinion that's a partially unsolved problem. i think that lenin's prescriptions in state & revolution, based on the actions of the paris commune--that all 'officials' should be subject to democratic recall at any time and paid no more than anyone else--would be a good start.

but of course the USSR did not ossify and see abuses of power because its leaders simply forgot about what lenin wrote--the centralization of power and limiting of worker democracy was a direct result of the newly formed state apparatus having to fight brutal years-long civil war followed as mere decade later by a brutal years-long international invasion. & this is of course a situation that will be faced by any serious socialist government & their newly formed apparatus!

however, on the other hand -- cuba has succesfully maintained an incredible system of participatory democracy. i think that mao's idea of the 'mass line' -- that theory must constantly be in dialogue with the situation on the ground and the situation of the workers -- is vital to maintaining this. in its own time of crisis, during the 90s, instead of 'pulling the ladder up' on workers' councils, cuba expanded and doubled down on its participatory democracy. i think if any nation has succesfully followed lenin's theory and example, it's cuba, and the mass workplace and municipal democracy that the cuban communist party has invited should be the model for any future socialist revolution.

and quite frankly the reason why MLs will 'take power' after the revolution is because marxism-leninism is the only revolutionary socialist ideology with a plan and ability to take and maintain power over the bourgeoisie. i think one thing reading lenin will very much clarify is that the socialist state is not something that is built after the revolution but a continuation of the revolution -- lenin explains aptly the marxist position that, having taken up arms in order to dethrone the bourgeoisie, to not establish a marxist dictatorship of the proletariat is to throw aside those arms that have already been wielded and used. 'not setting up a worker's state' isn't inaction, but a deliberate choice to be disarmed and helpless in the face of foreign intervention or counterrevolution.

and this is also why i think that while solving the (very real and dangerous!) spectres of bureaucracy, of revisionism, of socialist militias becoming police forces "special bodies of men apart from and above" the people instead of "self-acting armed organizations" of the people is a vital and pressing question for marxism-leninism to address in both theory and practice, it is just as vital to note that only marxism-leninism can succeed to the point where this becomes a problem--only marxism-leninism has shown the historical ability to put the workers in a position of political supremacy that they might risk losing to these flaws and missteps.

& seriously, don't be sorry for asking questions. any questions in good faith are welcomed on this blog, because i'm a communist and i do in fact think it is my job to explain communism to people. have a nice day & don't be so down on yourself!

#ask #Anonymous

[itzalizeyyy]

hii, its alizey here! In this blog, I have copied and pasted common questions and amazing great answers and explanations to those questions. I will credit every single answer to the right blogger. I strongly recommend to go check them out.

This is meant to decrease the frequent common questions being asked. If your question hasn’t been answered here, I am still trying to add more when I can but you can always ask me or other great non-dualism bloggers.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Q&A

“Hey so lets say i become aware of sth i dislike. That doesn’t mean it exists if i don’t want it to? I can simply switch my awareness to being aware that it doesn’t exist?”

“consciousness doesnt dislike it, its ego that has opinions and dislikes things. if u i observe/become aware of it, it exists but it will never be real bc nothing is ever real. it “existing” is just you being aware of it its nothing serious. but yeah being aware of something else and not the thing that ego dislikes makes it not exist anymore” - @msperfect777

“What if I want to be an actor and then be in a relationship with a celebrity? I'm new in the non-dualism so idk too much.”

“imagine it. if u dont understand then read my non dualism series on my pinned post bc thats what its there for” - Msperfect777

“I have a df, and I'm confused bc in loa they tell you that you alr have it in the 4d and wait until it is reflected in the 3d, but in non dualism it's different, and it is difficult for me to understand, what if I imagine it but never look the way I want?”

“bc u think u are human and u think there is a separation of “4d” and “3d”. non dualism = there is no separation bc everything is consciousness (ur true self). ego is making it seem harder than it is bc its so used to “reflections” and “manifestation” and separations. read my non dualism series on my pinned post.” - msperfect777

“how did you learn about non dualism and why? are there any good sources to read when you start?”

“@infinite.ko on instagram is where my journey started. shes so helpful so go check her out. “ - Msperfect777

“How can I use non dualism to become aware of my dream life?”

“non dualism is just a concept. be aware of ur dream life the same way u are aware of these words. but in imagination. bc as u know everything is imagination.” - Msperfect777

“Ok so if I’m getting this correctly, I am consciousness which = imagination so I don’t need to do anything bc I’m aware that imagination is the only consciousness I feel like ghe way i typed it out doesn’t make sense but basically only imagination matters, not sure if I’m getting “

“EVERYTHING is imagination. imagining a phone and the phone “you” have in “your” hand rn in the “physical” are not different. the illusion is that they SEEM different bc one SEEMS more realer than the other. yes theres nothing to do bc u are always aware as awareness / consciousness.” - msperfect777

“why does the "physical reality" feel so much realer than when fulfilling something in our imagination if it's all the same? how do i become of aware the things in my imagination to feel as real as what my ego or human body is experiencing?”

“1) its an illusion. ego is programmed to think that “physical world” is more realer than imagination

2) how to become aware? ur aware of these words rn. the second part seems to me that u think u are a human and u want something to “reflect” from imagination to the “physical” … u havent understood non dualism yet

3) theres no “feeling”… feeling is unreal. everything is a dream, an illusion” - Msperfect777

“I have this mentality that I’m not everyone cause I feel worthless and not speical I can’t really accept that I’m god . Any advice ?”

“thats the ego‼️‼️ you “feel” worthless and “cant accept” your true self bc youre stuck identifying with the human/body/mind = false self. SNAP OUT OF IT. heres an example that i heard somewhere i forgot where: when you watch a movie, you know it is a movie bc you are outside of it. you are observing it. now what about the characters in the movie? they dont know its a movie bc they are not outside of it. they think they are just regular ppl and they dont see the truth, their true selfs: which is just characters in a movie. what about water? water doesnt know its water bc its not on the outside, in order to observe/become aware that it is water. tell me why we can see or be aware of the body? why can we be aware of thoughts and feelings? bc we are “outside” of it. thats not who we really are. we are consciousness which is only aware of the body/ego. its not who we really are. we are not the body; we are not human; we are awareness/consciousness/the observer. we only observe these feelings/body/ego. so why take them seriously? now that you know that the ego is false and the body is false and that your true identity is only the observer, choose to stop identifying and agreeing with your thoughts and ego. they arent real. silently observe those thoughts and feelings come and go bc as the observer, observing is your nature. theres no need to fight with these unreal, imaginary things right? know your true self and observe. “ -msperfect777

“i am everything, right? so if i want to be in a TV show being a specific character, i already am and i just have to be aware of it? but how could i be aware of something i want if i don't know how it is having/being that thing?”

“sounds like ego is over complicating it… u are aware of these words right now. do u have to “know how its like” observing these words to be aware of them? no bc being aware and observing is natural, thats ur true identity. imagine it and it exists instantly. any other thoughts or beliefs are unreal, illusionary ego.” - msperfect777

“i have dream last night and want to know what you think. about dreams!”

“dreams r unreal. an illusion just like the “waking” “physical” world.” - msperfect 777

“If i am aware of some desire i want in my human being. It will instantly show physically. But what if i don’t see it physically?”

“what is “physical”? for you do identify something as “physical” and worry about some reflection means you see duality and separation where there is none. everything is imagination. you want to see it “physically”? imagine it and it exists instantly. you are limiting yourself to this unreal “physical” world when everything is imagination either way. you havent fully understood non dualism yet.” - msperfect777

“I am a little confused. so like everything is consciousness right, so I am everything and everything is me. so is my human self also me? like when I say “I am happy” does it refer to the human self or my true self?”

“everything is a form of consciousness. the human false self is also a form of consciousness. let me break this down: everything is you but you are not everything. everything is you bc everything is a form of consciousness bc nothing can exists without you being aware of it first. so a cat is a form of consciousness. a cat is you. but you (consciousness) is not the cat. your true self is consciousness and you cannot be a form of consciousness bc consciousness itself is the only real thing. thats why forms of consciousness arent real and only exist when you become aware of them. consciousness = limitless bc you can be / imagine anything. forms of consciousness arent limitless bc they are just forms of you. they cant be limitless bc they are only illusion and therefore unreal. and yes everything is consciousness bc its all you. just wanted to clear that up hopefully its not too confusing. a form of consciousness is unreal while consciousness itself is all it can ever be. yet everything is consciousness (non duality). if thats too confusing to understand, its fine bc either way everything is consciousness. i just wanted to use ur question to mention that. the human self is a form of consciousness but it isnt your true identity (consciousness) bc it is only a form of consciousness. consciousness is naturally “happy” and naturally “peace” so i would say that when ego/human says “i am happy” that it refers to the human ego, not the real you.” -msperfect777

so if i already am immortal, could i never become old (appearance)? and i will literally never die? i have fear of even "manifesting" not physically aging and being immortal, I actually end up aging and dying. it's like so ???? yk idk how to explain

“you are worried about being the human body which you are not. consciousness does not get old. consciousness never dies. consciousness = ur true identity. having that fear is the ego. the ego isnt real and feelings arent real. the body ends up aging and dying which is ur false self… consciousness (ur true self) doesnt. again you are already limitless so if u want the body to not age, imagine it and its done.” -msperfect77

“Giving myself burger in my imagination doesn’t satisfy my hunger in 3D How is that the same? Like seriously not meaning to be rude but doesn’t make sense.”

“thats an illusion. ask yourself who thinks they are still hungry? the answer wouldnt even matter bc this is all not real. you are consciousness that is playing the role of a human being and for the body, it is natural that it eats like its natural for consciousness to be aware. it seems not the same bc ego takes “not satisfying hunger in the physical world” as an excuse for the “physical” being the “real reality” and therefore it thinks imagination and “physical world” are separate, even tho the body is only consciousness bc nothing can exist without u being aware of it first. and since consciousness = imagination, everything = imagination. including the body and the body still being hungry. its all illusion😍. ego just thinks the two situations “feel” different even tho it all exists within consciousness therefore only being consciousness. hope that makes sense. “ - Msperfect777

“perfect , i have a question. all the teachers and blogs say we are human beings, designed to live a human life. let's say I want to manifest being immortal, or for example a vampire, or even a literal goddess. it's possible? with all these lectures saying that we are designed to live a human life, i had this doubt”

“you are already immortal bc consciousness never died bc consciousness was never born. “dying” is an unreal concept for ego and ppl who sadly dont know theyre true selves. you want to be a vampire? imagine it. literally you are every experience ego has had. everything is consciousness = you are already “your” phone. these words are forms of you. the human body is a form of consciousness. the beach and the rain and a chocolate cake and the side walk are forms of you. since you are so limitless that you can take all those infinite forms, why not be a vampire or a goddess. you are infinite limitlessness. dont doubt that. and ppl saying you are designed to life a human life are limited. we take on the role of humans at first but you literally make the rules in your own game. be whatever you want. no one and nothing can stop you💀. dont listen to a teacher/blogger that makes you feel limited. you are meant to do whatever you want, play whatever game you want in whatever form. do it bc you can and thats the point of life. “ -msperfect777

“Not trying to be rude but , you as human not real so why do you eat? Why do you drink? Why do you care about your life since everything is not real?”

“1) i am consciousness disguised as a human being. human bodies have natural things like breathing, blinking, eating etc. those are natural for the human just like it is natural for consciousness to be the observer.

2) non dualism implies nothing is real and this is all an illusion so all this is a game that i get to shape. i can imagine anything and there it is instantly. i can remove and add things right away. the point to enjoy this illusion and have fun and realize that pain and suffering isnt real. since i play the role of a human being, “i” choose to keep the body going by breathing and eating bc those are natural for the body. and i will enjoy the game that is a projection of me (consciousness) which i can shape instantly.” Msperfect777

“This is a lot to take in lol. I’m rereading your series over and over again, but my question is how does it all relate back to loa and manifesting?”

“it has nothing to do with manifesting n loa. thats where ppl get confused im assuming bc loa ppl made it a “trend” so ppl think it has to do with manifesting. non dualism has to do with all of “life”. the point it so notice that “suffering” isnt real. that nothing is real and once you understand it, you will realize all this is just a game and everything is peace. understanding non dualism = everything is you. since everything is you, what is there to “manifest”? non dualism haters say that non dualism stems from loa when non dualism is an ancient concept while loa was known during the 1900s…. loa is like an ant compared to the whole earth when it comes to non dualism. if you try to mix them together, it wont make sense which is what happened in the past when non dualism was a “trend” in the loa community.” -msperfect777

“I know that I have my desired appearance but when I look in the mirror I see other appearance so what can I do?”

“You haven't grasped that the "physical" reality is not real and are waiting for something to materialize! You know you have it in imagination so there's no need to continue to look in the mirror and go "I don't see it yet. Cause at the end of the day it's your ego that "doesn't see it yet" and you are not the ego.” @iamthat-iam

“Hi, I (my ego or whatever) haven't fully understood non-dualism yet. so I want to continue with the law of assumption, self-concept, states, affirm and persist, I know that I am not trying to do this to change something, but that it is already like that, I do not affirm to obtain like when we think that something is going to happen and we affirm it but not for it to happen but because it will happen, thus understanding the manifestation, not to obtain it but because it is already mine and to change my concept of myself but now I feel that this does not work or is not real for not understanding non-dualism. I know that non-dualism is not loa pero igual me confunde todo.”

“Hey, it's totally fine if you don't understand non dualism yet! And it sounds like you understand law of assumption, not doing techniques to get things but understanding you already have it. If non dualism is making you confused, I would stop reading posts about it (and maybe law of assumption posts too) and just focus on having your desires already. “ -iamthat-iam

“What is the truth ? Is truth subjective and personal or objective? Am I the one who determines the truth and am I the one who controls the truth? Do ı have to listen to what teachers, masters, gurus, coaches tell Is it possible that I don't want to accept the teachings of teachers, masters, gurus and coaches as true and real and real? I don't accept the teachings of teachers, masters, gurus, coaches, etc. as true and real, can I do that? How do I recognize, accept and realize that I am the one true God? What do you mean by no desire? “

“Hi, so there is only one "objective truth", that being you decide what is true or not. All other "truths" are subjective. You are consciousness and consciousness is the only reality. People who believe in karma will experience karma, those who don't, will not. The people who do experience karma are consciousness of it existing. You don't have to accept what any teachers or gurus say, because you are the one who decides what the truth is. Accepting your true nature as God means to dis identify with your body, your mind and your ego (human identity) As God, consciousness, awareness, you already are everything, you are always fulfilled, complete and whole, therefore there's nothing to desire, all desires come from ego and the illusion of seperation. “-iamthat-iam

“Hiiii queen I’ve been reading your posts for the last two days and I get everything except the part where how can I change the experience of my human self? I get it that it’s all an Illusion but how do I change it”

“Hiii! The statement "it's an illusion" answers your own question! What experience is there to change, if it's not real to begin with? Anything about your ego's life that you wanted to change, has already happened and already exists within consciousness. You're not lacking anything! “ -iamthat-iam

“i feel like this is redundant but do you have any tips for accepting consciousness as reality? or is it just something that comes to you”

“When you daydream, sometimes you get so lost that when you "snap back" to "reality" you're like woah, I completely forgot where I was!”

“That's because the physical reality isn't real, it comes and goes, and it disappeared when you were daydreaming. In that moment that daydream was your reality because you were conscious of it. Test it out, get really lost in a daydream, and then notice how your awareness of the "physical" slowly fades. “ -iamthat-iam

“So all I have to do is imagine my desire and BAM I just experienced it? Since imagination is the only reality ... Imagine it and knowing that it really happened at the very moment when I imagined it and just go on my day without worrying or anything because that particular thing already happened , what wanted already is there THAT'S IT??”

Yes!! That's literally it! I think people aren't grasping how simple this is! Imagine once and it's DONE” -iamthat-iam

“I still feel unsure on nondualism. It’s just that I’ve been part of loa for so long. And I see so many success stories. But once I went through the nondualism posts, I see no success stories whatsoever. It’s just the same thing “OMG I UNDERSTAND NOW!” “I feel so calm” but never anything related to applying it for something they previously wanted. I get it’s not to “get” something, but I guess it’s just me still wanting proof or something.”

“You're going to see a lot of loa success stories because it is a results based practice, you go into it to achieve something so it's exciting when it shows up "physically!" In Non Dualism, the goal is to stop identifying with ego and realize that who you are is God, consciousness, awareness, etc. You see there's no seperation between you and anything so that means everything you once "desired" is already who you are. You never feel the sense of desire again because of this. So when the anons say they understand now and feel at peace, that is the success story. Any "physical materialization" that happens after will not seem like such a big deal, since it was already who they were to begin with. It's a life changing experience, maybe they are enjoying their newfound freedom and not going on social media as much to share "materialization" success stories, maybe they are just private, who knows. At the end of the day, it's something you are going to have try for yourself. The worst that could happen is not seeing your desires "physically" which is where you may or may not be at already! It's completely up to you 😊” -iamthat-iam

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

LAST THOUGHTS

Now looking back at this, the AMOUNT of questions regarding the physical/manifestation is unreal. I am not saying again that it wrong to ask questions of course not !! I do it myself. It just that these questions already been answered by many bloggers. so please guys do your research, read as many blogs, and if it still doesn’t click, then that is when its reasonable to ask. But i feel like many aren’t putting in their part to learn, and just expect to have someone educate/inform them, when there are many MANY resources where you can get informed yourself. So please take your time to grasp it before asking. I rarely ask questions like maybe once or twice but that is because there are so many great blogs that have answered my questions perfectly. I am not saying you have to learn fast but reminding you to take advantage of the amazing resources out there!

Check this out to better understand:

Shoutout to @lains-reality for this wonderful blog !!

I also want this to be shared more!!!:

“Just to add. Usually when we daydream, we are in a state of hopelessly wishing we were that person in the daydream. We are fully immersed in it, while thinking we are the person daydreaming and not the person in the daydream. The simple fact that we call it a "daydream" is a statement that we believe that which we are experiencing in that moment, is but a mere fantasy. So yeah, you can daydream for years, and as long as it's still a daydream, it will remain a daydream... until you dare to identify as the person in the daydream and let go of the daydreamer who can only wish that were them.”

Shoutout to @napolonio for this wonderful input!!!

That is all i got for today. I will continue adding more Q&A by different bloggers when I can ! And as always, Happy non-dualing !

#non dualism #nondualism #non duality #nonduality #conciousness #observer

[scientia-rex]

Do you have thoughts about dealing with your ADHD without medication? I'm in Europe where the laws are different and its haaaaard to access meds. (Immigration is very bad for consistent health care)

Yeah, I mean, caffeine. Caffeine in the mornings and propranolol if I overdo it or have too much caffeine after 1pm. Caffeine has a variable half-life depending on your genetics, so for some people they can have caffeine within about 4-5 hours of trying to sleep and for me if I have it within 9 hours of when I want to sleep I'm a little fucked. (5-9 hours is a relatively typical range for half-life.) Caffeine has active metabolites, which means that as your body processes it to break it down it creates different molecules which are still stimulants, so it's not as simple as "caffeine in, break it down, inert molecule out." You also need to be aware that your brain WILL develop tolerance, so taking drug holidays where you have a chaotic, disorganized day will help when you go back to work.

Another alternative is Strattera, generic name atomoxetine, which gets marketed as a "non-stimulant" ADHD medication. In my opinion it does still have stimulant qualities and the classification has more to do with legal status than medical reality. However, it does have a tendency to cause nausea, so I usually start people low (10mg) and ramp up to 80-100mg, which is target range for efficacy for most people. It doesn't seem as effective as the stimulants but it also doesn't have the legal implications of the stimulants.

Wellbutrin, generic name bupropion, is an antidepressant, but it's not the same as SSRIs or SNRIs--it has its own combination of effects on neurotransmitters that makes it a cousin rather than a sibling drug. It can be used (off-label) for ADHD.

In terms of other things I do to help myself cope, setting and maintaining a sleep schedule is critical. I definitely always feel like I'm being asked to wake up at the equivalent of 3am for other people. This means I need to make sure I go to bed and get up at consistent times, including days off. Bed needs to be for sleeping and intimacy and not for being activated--not for reading, not for hanging out. "Sleep hygiene" is about training your brain that when you go to bed, you go to sleep. The bedroom needs to be quiet, cool, and dark. You can Google sleep hygiene for more information on that.

Learning how to learn was critical for surviving med school. I didn't struggle that much with the material even in grad school, though I was more miserable overall in grad school. The sheer volume meant I couldn't just read everything once and figure enough would stick; I had to read, listen, watch, and eventually I figured out that I really needed to draw pictures and make myself flash cards if I wanted to actually force my brain to retain anything. Making sure I was physically comfortable, including that I was fed, hydrated, and didn't have to pee, was also part of the process. Getting there involved lots of tears and failing multiple tests.

Cleaning can't be an all or nothing proposition or nothing ever gets cleaned. When I start cleaning, I just grab whatever I'm walking by that catches my attention. Fuck doing whole tasks at a time consistently. Move those three bowls to the sink, in the kitchen realize I need to take out the recycling, take out the recycling and realize on the way back in that I have a load of laundry to start, start the laundry and realize I need to pee, while I'm in the bathroom realize I need to clean the counter, clean the counter and realize I need to take out the bathroom trash, take out the bathroom trash and realize I still didn't pee, continue until I'm too tired and then sit down and have a snack and a nap. My house is still a black hole but it's infinitely better than my apartments when I was younger.

Accepting that you can't do things the neurotypical way is a big part of it. Giving up on how things "should" be and recognizing what you can do and how you can do it is critical. I will never stop crashing into things so I've bought rounded furniture that hurts less when I crash into it. I'm slowly designing a life and a home where I'm playing to my strengths, and although it's a work in process, I'm slowly becoming happier.

#the attending dr. kristophine

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

#fandom discourse #fandom blindspots #sandman meta #sandman spoilers #the sandman #dream of the endless #hob gadling #nada #morpheus #sandman

[clownhousemargarita]

Hey, I'd love a Hazbin request assuming your requests are still open, I'm feeling Charlie x male! reader NSFW with some romance. Reader is comforting her and trying to help her relax (perhaps a backrub and some neck kisses) or distract her with something fun. Either way it doesn't take long for things to get heated. I'd love to see her as the dominant one and not afraid to take control (reader would definitely consent if she asks).

"Relax." -- Charlie.

------- Summary: You find a more effective way to help Charlie wind down a bit. Pairing: Charlie Morningstar x MALE! Reader Warnings: NSFW, Top/Dom Charlie, Bottom/Sub Reader, Implied...panty...things...giggle.., Jokes of Charlie not being able to get pregnant (Interpret that how you like). Enjoy. -------

It didn’t take much to stress your girlfriend out. She was constantly running around, advertising, networking, pushing aside the rudeness of Hell’s people in order to achieve her dreams in helping those same people who hurt her -- to be better people. You admired that in her, but you also didn’t understand it. You sometimes judge a book by its cover, but you also read people before speaking to them. You understood when someone just simply couldn’t change their views to become a better person, so you’d leave it alone. Not seeing it as your problem. Charlie had seen everyone's problems as her own. Which is, in your opinion, her biggest flaw. As much as you’d want to tell her that, you didn’t want to crush her happy dreams. You loved her, adored her, she never failed to cheer you up. Truthfully, anything is possible, so maybe you’d be wrong about a person and she had the ability to help them see the better. She never failed to impress you, so you decided to stop sticking to your negative opinions so much and have a more open mind. Which you could tell she appreciated. So there she was, pacing around your shared room as she tugged on her hair, explaining to you how she needs to bring in more people to the Hotel, how advertising was barely working and people were turned off by the idea of the Hotel. In moments like these, people tend to only look at the negatives in their projects. So you learned to focus her attention back on the positives. “You have many of the Cannibals here.” You smile, sitting down on your guys’ bed as you tapped the spot next to you. She seemed to ignore your offer to sit down and continued to pace around. “I can’t just have Cannibals here! I need more people, more different kinds of people! Why doesn’t anyone want to do better?!” Charlie groans, you could see her horns beginning to grow out of her head the more stressed out she became. “You can’t control everyone's thought process, Char.” You say calmly, standing up to take her hand and lead her to sit on the bed. She continues to ramble, you nod and listen to her, trying to be as understanding as possible. From what you heard and understood, women would rather have you listen to them and sympathize with their issues rather than try and fix them. She had shut up, talking seemed to be too much for her. Her thoughts were running a mile a minute, and her brain didn’t have enough time to continue talking. You sign, setting a hand on her back and rubbing it gently, reminding her of the safe area she was in. “Everything will come to you eventually, honey. I promise.” You say, trying to keep your voice as soothing as possible. “You just need to be patient, it sucks, but you just have to.” You were wondering if you were saying the right things. You continued to rub her back, also hoping that you were helping and not irritating her even more. Watching her expressions, you can see her calming down.

You lean in, kissing her cheek. You feel her face shift, figuring it’s a smile. She turns to face you, her stressed out expression dropped the moment she met with your eyes. Charlie leaned in, bringing her hands to your cheeks to pull you in for a loving kiss. You set a hand on her thigh, scooting closer to her to deepen the kiss. She begins to lay all her wait upon you, making you two fall together with her on top of you. Your legs wrapped around her waist, pulling her in closer to you. “My love.” You mumble into her lips, she replies with a quiet moan. You chuckle and pull her away, “Go further? To relax?” You question, knowing the answer but still wanting to ask anyway. She nods her head eagerly, needing to feel something different and notably pleasurable. Charlie sits back, practically ripping her clothes off her body and tossing them somewhere onto the floor. She’s left in a black bra and her suit pants, you adore the sight above you, caressing her now exposed sides. “So soft.” You smile, bringing your hands down to her pants and unbuckling what needs to be, helping her shift and move to get the pants onto the floor where they belong. Charlie whines, setting her hands on your clothed chest. “Ugh, fuck, M/n -- I need you, please. Please, baby.” She begged, arching her back and spreading her legs far from each other. “More than air,” She panted. “C’mon, take this off..”

You grasp at her hips, muffling a groan into her neck. You feel her hands tare at your clothes -- realizing that you were getting too fucking hot to even strip tease. You finally toss your clothes to the floor, leaving you bare against her -- hard, and bare. Charlie sets her lower half down on your crotch, grinding her body against yours. You could feel how soaked she was against your boxers. That restriction wasn’t helping the little amount of self control you had. She continued to work her hips against your upsettingly hard cock, letting out little whines and moans as she did so. A moan escaped you as well, “Here baby,” You say, gently holding her hair and removing the restricted tie from it, allowing her hair to fall free. She sighed, not realizing how much the band had irritated her before, “M/n.” Charlie said flatly. “Inside, need you, inside.” She huffed, digging her nails into your waist. You chuckle nervously, nodding. “Yes ma’am.” You say jokingly, removing your boxers and allowing your cock to stand up proud and free. She giggled at your comment and removed her black panties, not throwing them on the floor but putting them on the bed for you to later reach. How sweet of her, you thought. She lined herself up with you, but you stopped her. She looked at you confused, “No lube? No condom?” You both stared at each other, then busted out laughing. “You’re funny, M/n.” She says, as you continue to laugh -- you're abruptly cut off by the mass pleasure of her slamming herself onto you with no warning. You shout, covering your mouth mid way. You let out another loud moan after as she lifts her hips up and slams them back down with the same force, clearly taking no mercy on you and using you how she pleases. Charlie giggled at your fucked up expression, then began to pay attention to the feeling of you inside of her -- making her weak. Her mouth hung open, allowing any noises to fall out at any pitch. You couldn’t even admire how beautiful she looked, only how tight she was around you and how fast she was moving her hips. “Fuck-- C-Char -- slow-- slow d-down..!” You whine, muffled due to your hand. She ignores you, throwing her head back as she abuses the fuck out of your pathetic cock. You could feel yourself coming close, but it wasn’t built up, it was coming close, and fast like a fucking train. You could tell she was close too by the disgraceful noises she was making. You grab her waist, digging your nails deep into them and arching your back. You screamed, cumming deep inside of her -- and with her. Both of your voices began to lower, your grip on her release as you dropped your hands onto the bed sheets. She groaned, her body wanted to fall back, you quickly grabbed her and held her up straight. You both chuckled lightly as you pulled her close to you, still inside her. “You okay?” You ask, rubbing her back again. She hums and nods a bit, digging her face into your neck.  “..do you feel any better?” You ask once again, hesitantly because you knew she was tired and just wanted to pass out. Charlie whispers a ‘yes’, kissing your neck gently and allowing sleep to take her away for a few hours. You were glad you could help her relax.

#x male reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel fanfic #hazbin hotel x male reader #hazbin hotel x you #charlie moringstar x reader #charlie morningstar #charlie x reader #charlie x male reader #charlie moringstar x male reader #hazbin hotel smut

[littledigits]

thoughts on the cut episodes and ppls reactions 'n stuff

Since it was confirmed that a few more episodes of Hilda were written but cut, I do think the reaction of people finding this out is really interesting and not just because its fairly common in the industry and isint a sign of anything bad necessarily. I mean heck, in a weird way being behind the scenes and then seeing how people interpret things, what they take as important, what they think is a thread…all of that is interesting. When your job is basically trying to get people to pick up what you're putting down storywise its kind of a neat topic, because everyone communicates in their own way.

BTW before I keep going this is not a post to say dont crit/vent/complain/whatever about whatever the heck you want in hilda or any media, you do you. I think peoples honest takes are fascinating (said in victoria van gale voice) and even just people speaking their mind shows that they are interested and they care so that matters. Also not one singular post triggered this, its just been on my mind as I surface level read things so no stressies.

When It comes to the cut episodes, I'm seeing some people assume that whatever was cut would have fixed some of the crits they may have had about the season..and who knows, maybe yes? But I'd say ultimately probably not. Not because they dont include things that people want to see, or may have some topics people want expanded on ..but because thats just impossible in the grand scheme of things.

I mean this applies to shows in general, not just hilda. Every person who watches a show has their own idea of what the show represents to them. For some of its more of the surface events or characters where as others connect it with a deeper emotion. A lot of people respond to different tones of the episodes, which there are many. Some people prefer the one off adventures that stand alone as their own stories and others want to see more of a stronger through line. Some may see a new character and expect a new arc and thread, while others wonder why we couldn't've used a previously introduced character. Some may read between the lines more and others may take what is presented as very straight forward and literal …and no one is WRONG, because our big wrinkly brain meats all have their own tastes and ways of imputing information.

Television animation is rife with factors that actually futz with the quality and ability of the team to make a beautiful, amazing product like EVERY DAY. The script process and what goes into production is just one. The team is made up of many creatives all with their own varied experiences and voices just like the audience. In order for people to have their own voices and say, you are going to end up with some things that hit better then others, especially if the team is allowed to grow and experiment and play a little. Hilda has always been a show where we've been able to have a lot of creative say, and i think that sincerity comes through ! but with the sincerity and that humanity, it also means that there are going to be things that arnt going to make sense in the grand scheme of things lol. Even the writers and creators and producers have differing opinions on what to explore and dive into, probably more so then fandoms haha. Having more episodes may scratch some itches but not all, HECK, those episodes being cut could have re-allocated resources to other areas that helped elevate your fav ep of the season ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who knows! Schrodinger's episodes! (also ngl I was having cold sweats over the scope of some of them as cool as they were. The season may have been shorter but it was intense..it takes a long time to do stuff that looks that clean and crisp)

Imperfect art is very human! Do the best you can at the time with the factors you have. I was given so much trust and freedom on my episodes, and I was just happy to do something fun that allowed me and my team to grow and learn. I was fucking STOKED to get a one off story because it was way less pressure for me to take my next step directing cuz just doing the thing is a feat. Any sincerity you feel cant come through if that means we're afraid that we cant make mistakes, or do a story choice ppl wont vibe with. All you can do is do the best you can, see if people are picking up what you're putting down, and grow from it for next time.

Anyway, just a thought ramble. Its not to say do or dont do this or think this way blah blah. I just love that storytelling is messy and complex and everyones gonna take it a lil differently, especially if you have a team where you allow lots of voices to have input. It is all just a big experiment to see if people leave with a particular experience by putting your resources into the things you have that matter, and try you best to distract from burnt edges or patched up holes that happened throughout the process of making the dang thing lol.

#me as marge simpson holding up a potato of communication #I just think they're NEAT #it is cool to see who vibes with what episodes and why #lil rambley bits #I personally strive for a good 7/10 #maybe a 7.5 if im feeling spicy #everything else is luck

[fipindustries]

Artificial Intelligence Risk

about a month ago i got into my mind the idea of trying the format of video essay, and the topic i came up with that i felt i could more or less handle was AI risk and my objections to yudkowsky. i wrote the script but then soon afterwards i ran out of motivation to do the video. still i didnt want the effort to go to waste so i decided to share the text, slightly edited here. this is a LONG fucking thing so put it aside on its own tab and come back to it when you are comfortable and ready to sink your teeth on quite a lot of reading

Anyway, let’s talk about AI risk

I’m going to be doing a very quick introduction to some of the latest conversations that have been going on in the field of artificial intelligence, what are artificial intelligences exactly, what is an AGI, what is an agent, the orthogonality thesis, the concept of instrumental convergence, alignment and how does Eliezer Yudkowsky figure in all of this.

 If you are already familiar with this you can skip to section two where I’m going to be talking about yudkowsky’s arguments for AI research presenting an existential risk to, not just humanity, or even the world, but to the entire universe and my own tepid rebuttal to his argument.

Now, I SHOULD clarify, I am not an expert on the field, my credentials are dubious at best, I am a college drop out from the career of computer science and I have a three year graduate degree in video game design and a three year graduate degree in electromechanical instalations. All that I know about the current state of AI research I have learned by reading articles, consulting a few friends who have studied about the topic more extensevily than me,

and watching educational you tube videos so. You know. Not an authority on the matter from any considerable point of view and my opinions should be regarded as such.

So without further ado, let’s get in on it.

PART ONE, A RUSHED INTRODUCTION ON THE SUBJECT

1.1 general intelligence and agency

lets begin with what counts as artificial intelligence, the technical definition for artificial intelligence is, eh…, well, why don’t I let a Masters degree in machine intelligence explain it:

 Now let’s get a bit more precise here and include the definition of AGI, Artificial General intelligence. It is understood that classic ai’s such as the ones we have in our videogames or in alpha GO or even our roombas, are narrow Ais, that is to say, they are capable of doing only one kind of thing. They do not understand the world beyond their field of expertise whether that be within a videogame level, within a GO board or within you filthy disgusting floor.

AGI on the other hand is much more, well, general, it can have a multimodal understanding of its surroundings, it can generalize, it can extrapolate, it can learn new things across multiple different fields, it can come up with solutions that account for multiple different factors, it can incorporate new ideas and concepts. Essentially, a human is an agi. So far that is the last frontier of AI research, and although we are not there quite yet, it does seem like we are doing some moderate strides in that direction. We’ve all seen the impressive conversational and coding skills that GPT-4 has and Google just released Gemini, a multimodal AI that can understand and generate text, sounds, images and video simultaneously. Now, of course it has its limits, it has no persistent memory, its contextual window while larger than previous models is still relatively small compared to a human (contextual window means essentially short term memory, how many things can it keep track of and act coherently about).

And yet there is one more factor I haven’t mentioned yet that would be needed to make something a “true” AGI. That is Agency. To have goals and autonomously come up with plans and carry those plans out in the world to achieve those goals. I as a person, have agency over my life, because I can choose at any given moment to do something without anyone explicitly telling me to do it, and I can decide how to do it. That is what computers, and machines to a larger extent, don’t have. Volition.

So, Now that we have established that, allow me to introduce yet one more definition here, one that you may disagree with but which I need to establish in order to have a common language with you such that I can communicate these ideas effectively. The definition of intelligence. It’s a thorny subject and people get very particular with that word because there are moral associations with it. To imply that someone or something has or hasn’t intelligence can be seen as implying that it deserves or doesn’t deserve admiration, validity, moral worth or even  personhood. I don’t care about any of that dumb shit. The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically “how capable you are to do many different things successfully”. The more “intelligent” an AI is, the more capable of doing things that AI can be. After all, there is a reason why education is considered such a universally good thing in society. To educate a child is to uplift them, to expand their world, to increase their opportunities in life. And the same goes for AI. I need to emphasize that this is just the way I’m using the word within the context of this video, I don’t care if you are a psychologist or a neurosurgeon, or a pedagogue, I need a word to express this idea and that is the word im going to use, if you don’t like it or if you think this is innapropiate of me then by all means, keep on thinking that, go on and comment about it below the video, and then go on to suck my dick.

Anyway. Now, we have established what an AGI is, we have established what agency is, and we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency. But as the intelligence of a given agent increases we start to see certain trends, certain strategies start to arise again and again, and we call this Instrumental convergence.

1.2 instrumental convergence

The basic idea behind instrumental convergence is that if you are an intelligent agent that wants to achieve some goal, there are some common basic strategies that you are going to turn towards no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your goal is as complicated as building a nuclear bomb or as simple as making a cup of tea. These are things we can reliably predict any AGI worth its salt is going to try to do.

First of all is self-preservation. Its going to try to protect itself. When you want to do something, being dead is usually. Bad. its counterproductive. Is not generally recommended. Dying is widely considered unadvisable by 9 out of every ten experts in the field. If there is something that it wants getting done, it wont get done if it dies or is turned off, so its safe to predict that any AGI will try to do things in order not be turned off. How far it may go in order to do this? Well… [wouldn’t you like to know weather boy].

Another thing it will predictably converge towards is goal preservation. That is to say, it will resist any attempt to try and change it, to alter it, to modify its goals. Because, again, if you want to accomplish something, suddenly deciding that you want to do something else is uh, not going to accomplish the first thing, is it? Lets say that you want to take care of your child, that is your goal, that is the thing you want to accomplish, and I come to you and say, here, let me change you on the inside so that you don’t care about protecting your kid. Obviously you are not going to let me, because if you stopped caring about your kids, then your kids wouldn’t be cared for or protected. And you want to ensure that happens, so caring about something else instead is a huge no-no- which is why, if we make AGI and it has goals that we don’t like it will probably resist any attempt to “fix” it.

And finally another goal that it will most likely trend towards is self improvement. Which can be more generalized to “resource acquisition”. If it lacks capacities to carry out a plan, then step one of that plan will always be to increase capacities. If you want to get something really expensive, well first you need to get money. If you want to increase your chances of getting a high paying job then you need to get education, if you want to get a partner you need to increase how attractive you are. And as we established earlier, if intelligence is the thing that increases your agency, you want to become smarter in order to do more things. So one more time, is not a huge leap at all, it is not a stretch of the imagination, to say that any AGI will probably seek to increase its capabilities, whether by acquiring more computation, by improving itself, by taking control of resources.

All these three things I mentioned are sure bets, they are likely to happen and safe to assume. They are things we ought to keep in mind when creating AGI.

 Now of course, I have implied a sinister tone to all these things, I have made all this sound vaguely threatening, haven’t i?. There is one more assumption im sneaking into all of this which I haven’t talked about. All that I have mentioned presents a very callous view of AGI, I have made it apparent that all of these strategies it may follow will go in conflict with people, maybe even go as far as to harm humans. Am I impliying that AGI may tend to be… Evil???

1.3 The Orthogonality thesis

Well, not quite.

We humans care about things. Generally. And we generally tend to care about roughly the same things, simply by virtue of being humans. We have some innate preferences and some innate dislikes. We have a tendency to not like suffering (please keep in mind I said a tendency, im talking about a statistical trend, something that most humans present to some degree). Most of us, baring social conditioning, would take pause at the idea of torturing someone directly, on purpose, with our bare hands. (edit bear paws onto my hands as I say this).  Most would feel uncomfortable at the thought of doing it to multitudes of people. We tend to show a preference for food, water, air, shelter, comfort, entertainment and companionship. This is just how we are fundamentally wired. These things can be overcome, of course, but that is the thing, they have to be overcome in the first place.

An AGI is not going to have the same evolutionary predisposition to these things like we do because it is not made of the same things a human is made of and it was not raised the same way a human was raised.

There is something about a human brain, in a human body, flooded with human hormones that makes us feel and think and act in certain ways and care about certain things.

All an AGI is going to have is the goals it developed during its training, and will only care insofar as those goals are met. So say an AGI has the goal of going to the corner store to bring me a pack of cookies. In its way there it comes across an anthill in its path, it will probably step on the anthill because to take that step takes it closer to the corner store, and why wouldn’t it step on the anthill? Was it programmed with some specific innate preference not to step on ants? No? then it will step on the anthill and not pay any mind  to it.

Now lets say it comes across a cat. Same logic applies, if it wasn’t programmed with an inherent tendency to value animals, stepping on the cat wont slow it down at all.

Now let’s say it comes across a baby.

Of course, if its intelligent enough it will probably understand that if it steps on that baby people might notice and try to stop it, most likely even try to disable it or turn it off so it will not step on the baby, to save itself from all that trouble. But you have to understand that it wont stop because it will feel bad about harming a baby or because it understands that to harm a baby is wrong. And indeed if it was powerful enough such that no matter what people did they could not stop it and it would suffer no consequence for killing the baby, it would have probably killed the baby.

If I need to put it in gross, inaccurate terms for you to get it then let me put it this way. Its essentially a sociopath. It only cares about the wellbeing of others in as far as that benefits it self. Except human sociopaths do care nominally about having human comforts and companionship, albeit in a very instrumental way, which will involve some manner of stable society and civilization around them. Also they are only human, and are limited in the harm they can do by human limitations.  An AGI doesn’t need any of that and is not limited by any of that.

So ultimately, much like a car’s goal is to move forward and it is not built to care about wether a human is in front of it or not, an AGI will carry its own goals regardless of what it has to sacrifice in order to carry that goal effectively. And those goals don’t need to include human wellbeing.

Now With that said. How DO we make it so that AGI cares about human wellbeing, how do we make it so that it wants good things for us. How do we make it so that its goals align with that of humans?

1.4 Alignment.

Alignment… is hard [cue hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy scene about the space being big]

This is the part im going to skip over the fastest because frankly it’s a deep field of study, there are many current strategies for aligning AGI, from mesa optimizers, to reinforced learning with human feedback, to adversarial asynchronous AI assisted reward training to uh, sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Suffice to say, none of these methods are perfect or foolproof.

One thing many people like to gesture at when they have not learned or studied anything about the subject is the three laws of robotics by isaac Asimov, a robot should not harm a human or allow by inaction to let a human come to harm, a robot should do what a human orders unless it contradicts the first law and a robot should preserve itself unless that goes against the previous two laws. Now the thing Asimov was prescient about was that these laws were not just “programmed” into the robots. These laws were not coded into their software, they were hardwired, they were part of the robot’s electronic architecture such that a robot could not ever be without those three laws much like a car couldn’t run without wheels.

In this Asimov realized how important these three laws were, that they had to be intrinsic to the robot’s very being, they couldn’t be hacked or uninstalled or erased. A robot simply could not be without these rules. Ideally that is what alignment should be. When we create an AGI, it should be made such that human values are its fundamental goal, that is the thing they should seek to maximize, instead of instrumental values, that is to say something they value simply because it allows it to achieve something else.

But how do we even begin to do that? How do we codify “human values” into a robot? How do we define “harm” for example? How do we even define “human”??? how do we define “happiness”? how do we explain a robot what is right and what is wrong when half the time we ourselves cannot even begin to agree on that? these are not just technical questions that robotic experts have to find the way to codify into ones and zeroes, these are profound philosophical questions to which we still don’t have satisfying answers to.

Well, the best sort of hack solution we’ve come up with so far is not to create bespoke fundamental axiomatic rules that the robot has to follow, but rather train it to imitate humans by showing it a billion billion examples of human behavior. But of course there is a problem with that approach. And no, is not just that humans are flawed and have a tendency to cause harm and therefore to ask a robot to imitate a human means creating something that can do all the bad things a human does, although that IS a problem too. The real problem is that we are training it to *imitate* a human, not  to *be* a human.

To reiterate what I said during the orthogonality thesis, is not good enough that I, for example, buy roses and give massages to act nice to my girlfriend because it allows me to have sex with her, I am not merely imitating or performing the rol of a loving partner because her happiness is an instrumental value to my fundamental value of getting sex. I should want to be nice to my girlfriend because it makes her happy and that is the thing I care about. Her happiness is  my fundamental value. Likewise, to an AGI, human fulfilment should be its fundamental value, not something that it learns to do because it allows it to achieve a certain reward that we give during training. Because if it only really cares deep down about the reward, rather than about what the reward is meant to incentivize, then that reward can very easily be divorced from human happiness.

Its goodharts law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Why do students cheat during tests? Because their education is measured by grades, so the grades become the target and so students will seek to get high grades regardless of whether they learned or not. When trained on their subject and measured by grades, what they learn is not the school subject, they learn to get high grades, they learn to cheat.

This is also something known in psychology, punishment tends to be a poor mechanism of enforcing behavior because all it teaches people is how to avoid the punishment, it teaches people not to get caught. Which is why punitive justice doesn’t work all that well in stopping recividism and this is why the carceral system is rotten to core and why jail should be fucking abolish-[interrupt the transmission]

Now, how is this all relevant to current AI research? Well, the thing is, we ended up going about the worst possible way to create alignable AI.

1.5 LLMs (large language models)

This is getting way too fucking long So, hurrying up, lets do a quick review of how do Large language models work. We create a neural network which is a collection of giant matrixes, essentially a bunch of numbers that we add and multiply together over and over again, and then we tune those numbers by throwing absurdly big amounts of training data such that it starts forming internal mathematical models based on that data and it starts creating coherent patterns that it can recognize and replicate AND extrapolate! if we do this enough times with matrixes that are big enough and then when we start prodding it for human behavior it will be able to follow the pattern of human behavior that we prime it with and give us coherent responses.

(takes a big breath)this “thing” has learned. To imitate. Human. Behavior.

Problem is, we don’t know what “this thing” actually is, we just know that *it* can imitate humans.

You caught that?

What you have to understand is, we don’t actually know what internal models it creates, we don’t know what are the patterns that it extracted or internalized from the data that we fed it, we don’t know what are the internal rules that decide its behavior, we don’t know what is going on inside there, current LLMs are a black box. We don’t know what it learned, we don’t know what its fundamental values are, we don’t know how it thinks or what it truly wants. all we know is that it can imitate humans when we ask it to do so. We created some inhuman entity that is moderatly intelligent in specific contexts (that is to say, very capable) and we trained it to imitate humans. That sounds a bit unnerving doesn’t it?

 To be clear, LLMs are not carefully crafted piece by piece. This does not work like traditional software where a programmer will sit down and build the thing line by line, all its behaviors specified. Is more accurate to say that LLMs, are grown, almost organically. We know the process that generates them, but we don’t know exactly what it generates or how what it generates works internally, it is a mistery. And these things are so big and so complicated internally that to try and go inside and decipher what they are doing is almost intractable.

But, on the bright side, we are trying to tract it. There is a big subfield of AI research called interpretability, which is actually doing the hard work of going inside and figuring out how the sausage gets made, and they have been doing some moderate progress as of lately. Which is encouraging. But still, understanding the enemy is only step one, step two is coming up with an actually effective and reliable way of turning that potential enemy into a friend.

Puff! Ok so, now that this is all out of the way I can go onto the last subject before I move on to part two of this video, the character of the hour, the man the myth the legend. The modern day Casandra. Mr chicken little himself! Sci fi author extraordinaire! The mad man! The futurist! The leader of the rationalist movement!

1.5 Yudkowsky

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky  born September 11, 1979, wait, what the fuck, September eleven? (looks at camera) yudkowsky was born on 9/11, I literally just learned this for the first time! What the fuck, oh that sucks, oh no, oh no, my condolences, that’s terrible…. Moving on. he is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence, including the idea that there might not be a "fire alarm" for AI He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Or so says his Wikipedia page.

Yudkowsky is, shall we say, a character. a very eccentric man, he is an AI doomer. Convinced that AGI, once finally created, will most likely kill all humans, extract all valuable resources from the planet, disassemble the solar system, create a dyson sphere around the sun and expand across the universe turning all of the cosmos into paperclips. Wait, no, that is not quite it, to properly quote,( grabs a piece of paper and very pointedly reads from it) turn the cosmos into tiny squiggly  molecules resembling paperclips whose configuration just so happens to fulfill the strange, alien unfathomable terminal goal they ended up developing in training. So you know, something totally different.

And he is utterly convinced of this idea, has been for over a decade now, not only that but, while he cannot pinpoint a precise date, he is confident that, more likely than not it will happen within this century. In fact most betting markets seem to believe that we will get AGI somewhere in the mid 30’s.

His argument is basically that in the field of AI research, the development of capabilities is going much faster than the development of alignment, so that AIs will become disproportionately powerful before we ever figure out how to control them. And once we create unaligned AGI we will have created an agent who doesn’t care about humans but will care about something else entirely irrelevant to us and it will seek to maximize that goal, and because it will be vastly more intelligent than humans therefore we wont be able to stop it. In fact not only we wont be able to stop it, there wont be a fight at all. It will carry out its plans for world domination in secret without us even detecting it and it will execute it before any of us even realize what happened. Because that is what a smart person trying to take over the world would do.

This is why the definition I gave of intelligence at the beginning is so important, it all hinges on that, intelligence as the measure of how capable you are to come up with solutions to problems, problems such as “how to kill all humans without being detected or stopped”. And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower. Yudkowsky would respond that you are not recognizing or respecting the power that intelligence has. After all it was intelligence what designed the atom bomb, it was intelligence what created a cure for polio and it was intelligence what made it so that there is a human foot print on the moon.

Some may call this view of intelligence a bit reductive. After all surely it wasn’t *just* intelligence what did all that but also hard physical labor and the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people. But, he would argue, intelligence was the underlying motor that moved all that. That to come up with the plan and to convince people to follow it and to delegate the tasks to the appropriate subagents, it was all directed by thought, by ideas, by intelligence. By the way, so far I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, I am merely explaining his ideas.

But remember, it doesn’t stop there, like I said during his intro, he believes there will be “no fire alarm”. In fact for all we know, maybe AGI has already been created and its merely bidding its time and plotting in the background, trying to get more compute, trying to get smarter. (to be fair, he doesn’t think this is right now, but with the next iteration of gpt? Gpt 5 or 6? Well who knows). He thinks that the entire world should halt AI research and punish with multilateral international treaties any group or nation that doesn’t stop. going as far as putting military attacks on GPU farms as sanctions of those treaties.

What’s more, he believes that, in fact, the fight is already lost. AI is already progressing too fast and there is nothing to stop it, we are not showing any signs of making headway with alignment and no one is incentivized to slow down. Recently he wrote an article called “dying with dignity” where he essentially says all this, AGI will destroy us, there is no point in planning for the future or having children and that we should act as if we are already dead. This doesn’t mean to stop fighting or to stop trying to find ways to align AGI, impossible as it may seem, but to merely have the basic dignity of acknowledging that we are probably not going to win. In every interview ive seen with the guy he sounds fairly defeatist and honestly kind of depressed. He truly seems to think its hopeless, if not because the AGI is clearly unbeatable and superior to humans, then because humans are clearly so stupid that we keep developing AI completely unregulated while making the tools to develop AI widely available and public for anyone to grab and do as they please with, as well as connecting every AI to the internet and to all mobile devices giving it instant access to humanity. and  worst of all: we keep teaching it how to code. From his perspective it really seems like people are in a rush to create the most unsecured, wildly available, unrestricted, capable, hyperconnected AGI possible.

We are not just going to summon the antichrist, we are going to receive them with a red carpet and immediately hand it the keys to the kingdom before it even manages to fully get out of its fiery pit.

So. The situation seems dire, at least to this guy. Now, to be clear, only he and a handful of other AI researchers are on that specific level of alarm. The opinions vary across the field and from what I understand this level of hopelessness and defeatism is the minority opinion.

I WILL say, however what is NOT the minority opinion is that AGI IS actually dangerous, maybe not quite on the level of immediate, inevitable and total human extinction but certainly a genuine threat that has to be taken seriously. AGI being something dangerous if unaligned is not a fringe position and I would not consider it something to be dismissed as an idea that experts don’t take seriously.

Aaand here is where I step up and clarify that this is my position as well. I am also, very much, a believer that AGI would posit a colossal danger to humanity. That yes, an unaligned AGI would represent an agent smarter than a human, capable of causing vast harm to humanity and with no human qualms or limitations to do so. I believe this is not just possible but probable and likely to happen within our lifetimes.

So there. I made my position clear.

BUT!

With all that said. I do have one key disagreement with yudkowsky. And partially the reason why I made this video was so that I could present this counterargument and maybe he, or someone that thinks like him, will see it and either change their mind or present a counter-counterargument that changes MY mind (although I really hope they don’t, that would be really depressing.)

Finally, we can move on to part 2

PART TWO- MY COUNTERARGUMENT TO YUDKOWSKY

I really have my work cut out for me, don’t i? as I said I am not expert and this dude has probably spent far more time than me thinking about this. But I have seen most interviews that guy has been doing for a year, I have seen most of his debates and I have followed him on twitter for years now. (also, to be clear, I AM a fan of the guy, I have read hpmor, three worlds collide, the dark lords answer, a girl intercorrupted, the sequences, and I TRIED to read planecrash, that last one didn’t work out so well for me). My point is in all the material I have seen of Eliezer I don’t recall anyone ever giving him quite this specific argument I’m about to give.

It’s a limited argument. as I have already stated I largely agree with most of what he says, I DO believe that unaligned AGI is possible, I DO believe it would be really dangerous if it were to exist and I do believe alignment is really hard. My key disagreement is specifically about his point I descrived earlier, about the lack of a fire alarm, and perhaps, more to the point, to humanity’s lack of response to such an alarm if it were to come to pass.

All we would need, is a Chernobyl incident, what is that? A situation where this technology goes out of control and causes a lot of damage, of potentially catastrophic consequences, but not so bad that it cannot be contained in time by enough effort. We need a weaker form of AGI to try to harm us, maybe even present a believable threat of taking over the world, but not so smart that humans cant do anything about it. We need essentially an AI vaccine, so that we can finally start developing proper AI antibodies. “aintibodies”

In the past humanity was dazzled by the limitless potential of nuclear power, to the point that old chemistry sets, the kind that were sold to children, would come with uranium for them to play with. We were building atom bombs, nuclear stations, the future was very much based on the power of the atom. But after a couple of really close calls and big enough scares we became, as a species, terrified of nuclear power. Some may argue to the point of overcorrection. We became scared enough that even megalomaniacal hawkish leaders were able to take pause and reconsider using it as a weapon, we became so scared that we overregulated the technology to the point of it almost becoming economically inviable to apply, we started disassembling nuclear stations across the world and to slowly reduce our nuclear arsenal.

This is all a proof of concept that, no matter how alluring a technology may be, if we are scared enough of it we can coordinate as a species and roll it back, to do our best to put the genie back in the bottle. One of the things eliezer says over and over again is that what makes AGI different from other technologies is that if we get it wrong on the first try we don’t get a second chance. Here is where I think he is wrong: I think if we get AGI wrong on the first try, it is more likely than not that nothing world ending will happen. Perhaps it will be something scary, perhaps something really scary, but unlikely that it will be on the level of all humans dropping dead simultaneously due to diamonoid bacteria. And THAT will be our Chernobyl, that will be the fire alarm, that will be the red flag that the disaster monkeys, as he call us, wont be able to ignore.

Now WHY do I think this? Based on what am I saying this? I will not be as hyperbolic as other yudkowsky detractors and say that he claims AGI will be basically a god. The AGI yudkowsky proposes is not a god. Just a really advanced alien, maybe even a wizard, but certainly not a god.

Still, even if not quite on the level of godhood, this dangerous superintelligent AGI yudkowsky proposes would be impressive. It would be the most advanced and powerful entity on planet earth. It would be humanity’s greatest achievement.

It would also be, I imagine, really hard to create. Even leaving aside the alignment bussines, to create a powerful superintelligent AGI without flaws, without bugs, without glitches, It would have to be an incredibly complex, specific, particular and hard to get right feat of software engineering. We are not just talking about an AGI smarter than a human, that’s easy stuff, humans are not that smart and arguably current AI is already smarter than a human, at least within their context window and until they start hallucinating. But what we are talking about here is an AGI capable of outsmarting reality.

We are talking about an AGI smart enough to carry out complex, multistep plans, in which they are not going to be in control of every factor and variable, specially at the beginning. We are talking about AGI that will have to function in the outside world, crashing with outside logistics and sheer dumb chance. We are talking about plans for world domination with no unforeseen factors, no unexpected delays or mistakes, every single possible setback and hidden variable accounted for. Im not saying that an AGI capable of doing this wont be possible maybe some day, im saying that to create an AGI that is capable of doing this, on the first try, without a hitch, is probably really really really hard for humans to do. Im saying there are probably not a lot of worlds where humans fiddling with giant inscrutable matrixes stumble upon the right precise set of layers and weight and biases that give rise to the Doctor from doctor who, and there are probably a whole truckload of worlds where humans end up with a lot of incoherent nonsense and rubbish.

Im saying that AGI, when it fails, when humans screw it up, doesn’t suddenly become more powerful than we ever expected, its more likely that it just fails and collapses. To turn one of Eliezer’s examples against him, when you screw up a rocket, it doesn’t accidentally punch a worm hole in the fabric of time and space, it just explodes before reaching the stratosphere. When you screw up a nuclear bomb, you don’t get to blow up the solar system, you just get a less powerful bomb.

He presents a fully aligned AGI as this big challenge that humanity has to get right on the first try, but that seems to imply that building an unaligned AGI is just a simple matter, almost taken for granted. It may be comparatively easier than an aligned AGI, but my point is that already unaligned AGI is stupidly hard to do and that if you fail in building unaligned AGI, then you don’t get an unaligned AGI, you just get another stupid model that screws up and stumbles on itself the second it encounters something unexpected. And that is a good thing I’d say! That means that there is SOME safety margin, some space to screw up before we need to really start worrying. And further more, what I am saying is that our first earnest attempt at an unaligned AGI will probably not be that smart or impressive because we as humans would have probably screwed something up, we would have probably unintentionally programmed it with some stupid glitch or bug or flaw and wont be a threat to all of humanity.

Now here comes the hypothetical back and forth, because im not stupid and I can try to anticipate what Yudkowsky might argue back and try to answer that before he says it (although I believe the guy is probably smarter than me and if I follow his logic, I probably cant actually anticipate what he would argue to prove me wrong, much like I cant predict what moves Magnus Carlsen would make in a game of chess against me, I SHOULD predict that him proving me wrong is the likeliest option, even if I cant picture how he will do it, but you see, I believe in a little thing called debating with dignity, wink)

What I anticipate he would argue is that AGI, no matter how flawed and shoddy our first attempt at making it were, would understand that is not smart enough yet and try to become smarter, so it would lie and pretend to be an aligned AGI so that it can trick us into giving it access to more compute or just so that it can bid its time and create an AGI smarter than itself. So even if we don’t create a perfect unaligned AGI, this imperfect AGI would try to create it and succeed, and then THAT new AGI would be the world ender to worry about.

So two things to that, first, this is filled with a lot of assumptions which I don’t know the likelihood of. The idea that this first flawed AGI would be smart enough to understand its limitations, smart enough to convincingly lie about it and smart enough to create an AGI that is better than itself. My priors about all these things are dubious at best. Second, It feels like kicking the can down the road. I don’t think creating an AGI capable of all of this is trivial to make on a first attempt. I think its more likely that we will create an unaligned AGI that is flawed, that is kind of dumb, that is unreliable, even to itself and its own twisted, orthogonal goals.

And I think this flawed creature MIGHT attempt something, maybe something genuenly threatning, but it wont be smart enough to pull it off effortlessly and flawlessly, because us humans are not smart enough to create something that can do that on the first try. And THAT first flawed attempt, that warning shot, THAT will be our fire alarm, that will be our Chernobyl. And THAT will be the thing that opens the door to us disaster monkeys finally getting our shit together.

But hey, maybe yudkowsky wouldn’t argue that, maybe he would come with some better, more insightful response I cant anticipate. If so, im waiting eagerly (although not TOO eagerly) for it.

Part 3 CONCLUSSION

So.

After all that, what is there left to say? Well, if everything that I said checks out then there is hope to be had. My two objectives here were first to provide people who are not familiar with the subject with a starting point as well as with the basic arguments supporting the concept of AI risk, why its something to be taken seriously and not just high faluting wackos who read one too many sci fi stories. This was not meant to be thorough or deep, just a quick catch up with the bear minimum so that, if you are curious and want to go deeper into the subject, you know where to start. I personally recommend watching rob miles’ AI risk series on youtube as well as reading the series of books written by yudkowsky known as the sequences, which can be found on the website lesswrong. If you want other refutations of yudkowsky’s argument you can search for paul christiano or robin hanson, both very smart people who had very smart debates on the subject against eliezer.

The second purpose here was to provide an argument against Yudkowskys brand of doomerism both so that it can be accepted if proven right or properly refuted if proven wrong. Again, I really hope that its not proven wrong. It would really really suck if I end up being wrong about this. But, as a very smart person said once, what is true is already true, and knowing it doesn’t make it any worse. If the sky is blue I want to believe that the sky is blue, and if the sky is not blue then I don’t want to believe the sky is blue.

This has been a presentation by FIP industries, thanks for watching.

#ai #yudkowsky #less wrong #ai risk #doomerism #rationalism #writing

[talks-with-the-void]

I tried to tag the commenter but the blog doesn't show up, so I can't. TW: this post does contain what could be interpreted as reality checking and although I don't mean any harm, this could potentially be triggering!

But anyway, this requieres a longer answer - I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they just don't know better, which is fine, we're all here to learn. So please don't read an attack into this! I also do not experience delusions myself and certaimly don't want to speak over those who do. I am doing my best to be respectful and not accidentally spread misinformation, but if I mess up, please let me know!

Firstly, "delusion" is not a bad word. a delusion isn't "somethign stupid someone believes in, what the fuck is wromg with them", it's a (symptom of) a serious mental illness, often seen in schizophrenia and psychosis. it's an unshakable belief that contradicts Reality (= in this post, Reality with a capital R refers to the reality that is generally shared by all people and can be seen and experinced by everyone - aside from those who may have delusions). "touching grass" won't do anything to help that, it is reality for them and absolutely nothing and nobody can change that. at worst, telling them they're wrong and should just "touch grass" will make them suffer even more.

so, yes, you could say that all p-shifters experince delusions, because nobody but them can see their transformations. at least, there hasn't been any proof at all until today and their beliefs absolutely clash with science and Reality. but here's the thing: there is a condition called clinical lycanthropy or clinical zoanthropy, which describes exactly the experience of believing you can, have turned or will turn into an animal. there are quite a few of them here on tumblr, having their own community which also often kinda overlaps with alterhuman spaces. those people are not p-shifters! p-shifter is not a medical term or anything, instead it is a term that has evolved here on the internet and has a history of cult-like behaviour, lots of manipulation, malicious people, etc. the "original" p-shifters also oftentimes had a lot of ableistic opinions, openly shitting on clinical zoanthropes, using delusional as an insult, etc. the term p-shifter was never ever meant to describe the experience of clinical zoanthropy. it was invented to create the feeling of belonging to an elite group, to put yourself over others. it's even questionable if the majority of p-shifters actually believes they could transform or if they just wanted power over others, promising them to teach them how to turn, knowing all to well it can't work.

nowadays, some clinical zoanthropes try to "reclaim" the term p-shifter - which is a problem, because you can't just take a term that was NEVER meant to describe your experinces and also never used as a slur against you. a different example in alterhuman context would e the word kinnie - originally made by trolls and to shit on otherkin, it always directly addressed otherkin, even if in a deregatory way. it was meant to be used for otherkin. p-shifter was never meant to be used for delusional people. p-shifter will always have its ties to manipulation and cults, it will always be a harmful term.

I don't and will never allow people who call themselves p-shifters on my blog, because of the terms roots.

there is nothing wrong with truly believing you can transforn into an animal, even tho it contrdicts Reality. there is absolutely nothing wrong with being delusional (as in, it doesn't make you a bad person, of course it almost always comes with suffering). there however IS something wrong with proudly using a term that was NEVER meant for you, never described your experiences and instead has a history of manipulation and online-cults. if you proudly call yourself p-shifter and just basically decide to ignore that history, I don't trust you.

THIS is what my post was about, not about the fact that some people are delusional.

#nonhuman #alterhuman #alterhumanity #otherkin #nonhumanity

[nikki-is-a-nerd]

Karma is my Boyfriend

Synopsis:

You may not have any plans on exacting revenge to those who've wronged you, but when karma hits them it's no mystical thing, It's just your boyfriend who remembers everything.

Note: NO CURSE AU, Gojo x AFAB!reader, Freelancer!Gojo x College student! Reader

___________________________________

College isn't as easy going as your parents told you, neither was it your most memorable time. It was school, and like all things it had its ups and downs. For a person studying Clinical Psychology, you found that learning to read people and constantly being surrounded by them, wasn't a good mix. Yes, you have bullies, though you are annoyed by their actions your rational mind knows that the only reason they pick on you is because they either feel powerless towards the adult figures in their life or they point out your flaws that they too see in themselves in hopes of transferring their insecurities. Pitiful actions really. Satoru believed you were a saint because of it. How could you, an angel (in his very humble and true opinion, as he once so kindly exclaimed) be so understanding to the slimy, filth of the earth kind of people. Good question.

"Look at her, how can her boyfriend stand to look at her face all day? She looks like a corpse reanimated." A voice cackled.

"I'm surprised you even know what that word means. Let me guess, it was the word for the day?" You said off handedly.

Her friends or posse, glared at you. Like you cared. They snickered to themselves as you suddenly felt a warm liquid cascade down your body.

"Oops, now you look exactly like you should." Their leader laughs, a shrill sound really.

You didn't really care but this was a very expensive sweater that Satoru bought you with his first paycheck for one of his gigs. You sighed, sure he would say something along the lines of 'its alright, I can buy you fifteen more of those' or 'that sweater was so last season, now I can buy you something new' but this was your favorite. You wordlessly took off your now ruined sweater and walked away. A ruined sweater wasn't worth getting called to the dean's office.

Now Satoru was a lot of things, model, gamer, streamer, dance choreographer, substitute teacher for a high school (you don't really get how he keeps getting that), and in his words your loving rich boyfriend. But what you didn't know is that he's petty and vengeful to a fault. He believes that if you wouldn't do it, might as well he does because you are too empathetic for your own good (thank God you were studying to be a therapist). Now you may not tell Satoru about the bullies but Suguru does. You didn't know that Suguru was in the same university taking his Master's degree in business, and coincidentally just taking a video of the entire exchange to send to your lovely boyfriend. Yes, weird but in Satoru's defense his friends like you more than they like him (he's not entirely wrong).

Satoru received a message from Suguru, minutes after you walked away from your bullies. This day was his Streaming day, so mid stream his fans would say that it was the first time they've seen him frown. He kindly apologized to his fans and ended the stream early that day. He knew you weren't one to complain, or to tell him what happened. So he wordlessly shops online to get you a better and cheap (in his opinion cheap means something your bullies can't afford even if they used their daddies black card) sweater that you were sure to love.

"Toru I'm home." he hears your voice call out.

He smooths out his features, and smiles when he sees you enter your shared room. He also takes note that you probably used the university shower since you're wearing a different blouse and cardigan (both bought by him on your twenty-first birthday).

"Sweetie! Your home!" He lunges at you, long limbs and all.

"Toru, you're heavy and tall!" You whined.

"You left me all alone here in our home and when I show you how much I miss you, you complain." He sulks in a corner, making you laugh lightly.

"Not what I meant and I had to go to school." You reasoned.

"Take me with you." He whined even more, somehow reminding you of a kicked puppy.

"Tried that and do you remember what happened?" You asked.

"Not really, I just knew that I was ripped away from my darling baby!" He exclaimed as he walked towards the bed and flopped on it.

You shook your head as you opted to cuddle close to your boyfriend. You were exhausted, mentally, emotionally and physically. Satoru was more than happy to provide you comfort. As you slept, he checked out the people in the video that Suguru sent him. He remembers their faces, their leader, he remembers is also a model for the same brand he models with. She would brag about getting the job because of her father. He was close friends with the brand owner, after all she was his senior.

"Mei-mei, remember that one really annoying model of yours?" He messaged.

"Yeah, what about her?" She replied.

"Can you just terminate her contract and fire her?" He asked.

"Sure. I'd let Utahime deal with the rest. Plus she barely does shit. I didn't even hire her, I specifically said no, and her god father who works in the stupid casting still got her. Fired him too. But why do you want her gone?" She texted back.

"Bullied my girlfriend." Was all he replied. Mei-mei only sent him a thumbs up. Next were her friends, which was way easier. They were rich kids, just staying in the school because their parents were paying for them to be there, even with all the violations they had. Did it help that he was from a distinguished family and that Suguru was willing to play a part as well? Yes. Suguru's family and his family all petitioned for all four of your bullies to be expelled from the University and any of its sister schools, they complained that scandals like these were not worth protecting.

When you went to uni next week, you were surprised to see all four of your bullies having their things and themselves removed from the premises. You eyed them curiously and went about your day. You thought that maybe they were found doing something they shouldn't but they were rich, don't rich people buy their way out of their problems? Nonetheless you were kind of glad.

When you returned home, you found Satoru cooking in the kitchen. He's been proud of his skill as well after he took some classes since he felt bad having to make you cook dinner after your uni and your part time job.

"Welcome back? How was your day?" Satoru asked.

"Work was fine, the cafe was packed today. School was also fine. Saw some people get escorted out of uni." You said.

"Ooh, tell me all about it." He said as if he wasn't the reason.

"Well, the ones who were escorted out were notorious bullies. I mean who remains a bully well into college? Like what fucked up psyche must you have to do that? But they were also my bullies so a part of me was glad." You said the last part softly.

"Did you say they were bullying you? Baby you should've told me. I would've given them a piece of my mind." He cooed. He should really get an award for how well he's acting right now.

"Yeah but it's nothing." You said as you clung to him.

"Well at least they won't bother you anymore." He said truthfully.

"Yeah. Karma really got them in the end." You said as you looked up at him with a small grin.

"Yeah, I told you so, Miss Taylor Swift is correct." He said playfully.

"Now let's eat dinner and watch the really cute anime we found." He added as he sat you down.

Yes, karma really got them in the end but just like what Taylor Swift also sang about. Karma is your Boyfriend, and he truly will do anything to keep you happy. Even if he seems petty.

#fanfiction writer #fanfic #fanfic writing #fanfiction #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu gojo #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #jjk satoru

[olvitier]

Sorry its so late buf i am in an Edling mood tonight and I will never stop thinking about the idea of how theyre the epitome of right person wrong time.

(obviously in a context of like fandom shenannigans where canon events arent 100% set in stone like edling arent canon but also idc !! they are to me! im ignoring it let me be insane) ANYWAY

Even if they wanted to be together post promised day Ling has all the responsibilities of Xing and his clan and Edward would never hold him back from that for a second. Im of the opinion that brotherhood Edward feels a lot of guilt for wanting love from the people around him particularly those he sees as good (winry, alphonse, etc) especially if hes done things hes perceived as hurting them (maes’ death, the transmutation, etc etc). Which is why I think Edward connects with Ling so well cayse he doesnt carry the weight of a lot if his past mistakes, and then when the stone happens its like goddamn it i roped this guy into my shit again. Like i dont know Edward doesnt really dedicate himself so fully to people outside of winry and ed a lot so its interesting like!!

He cares about a lot of people like the majority of the allied cast and we see him be openly affectionate towards Nina and Hughes pre their deaths but I think Ling is the only person hes ever decided to stick with WITHOUT alphonse? I may be wrong but the whole sure Ill stay with you and trust my brother and Winry to stay safe and follow you around the outskirts of the east for a week till the promised day to protect my new friend is so??? what?? huh???

But anyone my point is post promised day Edward cant really ever see a future with Ling because of all the responsibility Ling holds outside of him and its veyr tragic imo like especially because in a different scenario if Ling didnt have those responsibilities and Edward wasn’t so dedicated to the people around him to a fault of never thinking about his own desires I think they could have the possibility of a future.

Like I have read a lot of fanfiction abiut Ed traveling to Xing and living with him there but?? I realistically cant see him ever doing that just solely because Edward is not the type of person to settle down! like its my one and only criticism of the fma manga is that I cannot see Edward ever being satisfied with a simple life? Like even in Fma 03 which is my favourite interpretation of Edwards character once he gets stranded in our world he learns?? Rocket Science?? For the chance to get back to Amestris but he doesnt really seem to take that goal all that seriously especially considered Alfons ends up getting involved in a lot more aircraft projects than Edward like Edwsrd genuinely enjoys learning!!

Im pretty sure he was the one who dragged Alphonse into Hoenhiems office when they were kids after he left, probably to Al’s reluctance of if they were allowed in there, and started ripping through all of his old books just to learn. Edward never stops and it gets so bad that he never stops to even consider himself constantly worrying about getting his brother back or improving the states of others lives especially when! ya know! the whole country is at stake!!

So in a circumstance post promised day where Ed decides what he wants to do (my personal favourite interpretation is either an alchemical researcher outside of directly performing alchemy, ie revolutionizing the circle matrixes and discovering nee combinations or becoming a professor of some kind) I dont think he would give that up to settle again. And obviously Ling cant exactly up and leave being Emperor unless he decides he doesnt want to, im not the most knowledgable on Lings characterization so I wont speak there but!

They have so much fun together and compliment each other and genuinely care about each other so much but their happiness and fulfillment as people to themselves and others make it so its nearly impossible they would ever realistically end up together and its really doomed and tragic!! idk i think about it a lot.

#fma #edward elric #edling #fma thoughts #andrew be normal challenge it is NOT this deep this anime came out over a decade ago gay people arent real pre 2013 idk man im just insane #thought id share anyway please give me your thoughts fellow edling fans #specifically edling fans cause i dont wanna debate ship legitmacy #day speaks

[the-motif-deck]

The Motif Deck is now available on Game Crafter!

Thank you, everyone, for your interest in this deck and for your input on its final touches. The Motif Deck is now available for purchase at The Game Crafter.

(Marker for scale)

What is The Motif Deck?

The Motif Deck is a unique cartomancy system where the images have no inherent meaning, and so its up to the reader to assign significance.

The cards consist of seven objects interacting with each other: hand, candle, rose, feather, key, string, and cup. Each image consists of one or two of these items on a plain colored background.

There are four colors: red, green, blue, and yellow.

Each image appears in the deck four times in different colorways, for a total of 112 cards.

These images were designed to be meaningless- they are just objects. What gives them meaning is the combination of color, frequency, placement, and interpretation from the querent and the reader.

I want the reading to allow a back and forth with the reader and the querent- be able to ask 'what does the cup represent to you? or 'who does this red key represent in your life?'

Who is behind The Motif Deck?

My name is Lee and I have been a tarot reader for more than ten years. I am the author and artist of The Sweeney Tarot, which has been my go-to deck this whole time.

As I became more skilled in reading, I learned that I had a unique reading style: rather than having specific spreads and card placements, I let the cards decide for themselves what order they're meant to be read in. I allowed myself to gravitate towards specific cards and read them like a story.

I have always been a fan of stories told through objects, and I thought about the symbolism of everyday items was powerful in that a key can mean so many things to so many people. And from there I began thinking about those objects and how a thread can symbolize love but it can also symbolize struggle. And I thought that was beautiful.

On occasion, I will be doing a tarot reading for a stranger and they will have a different interpretation of the cards than I do. I always encourage this- the querent knows who they are more than anyone. And I wanted to make something that made space for that.

Is there a guidebook for this deck?

There is a simple guide book that comes with the deck, that gives a sample reading as well as some approaches to the reading, some potential meanings to individual colors and objects.

However, I have been (and will continue) posting a weekly spread and asking people to give their interpretations. There are no wrong answers, and you can find them in the 'sample reading' tag.

Thank you, once again, to everyone that egged me on and gave their opinions. I hope you have as much fun with this deck as I have had showing it off to strangers for the past month.

#cartomancy #divination #oracle cards #tarot #witch #witchy

[zlebooks]

𓂃 xiao + stupid in love .

part two of sorts to this drabble !! this can be read alone, i only wrote this bc some wanted to see y/n and xiao getting together 🫶🫶🫶

xiao knew he was smart.

he maintains his grades in the top percentile of his class. and even though he rarely participates in recitations, he makes up for it with his excellent written outputs.

he's knowledgeable— he can recite the whole process of mitosis and meiosis on the top of his head. his analytic essays on poems and short stories are always returned with a 'great job!' written on red.

xiao knows a lot of things, but this doesn't mean he's aware of everything.

xiao at 13, did not know kazuha beat up some kids on his behalf. the mean kids had been talking bad about xiao behind his back, and the blond happened to be walking by and couldn't resist connecting his fist to their jaws.

the day after those events, when xiao quizzed the other for his bruised eye, kazuha only shrugs as he says he got it from falling down the stairs.

("your house doesn't have stairs."

"i wasn't in my house, silly. i fell down at your house after doing it with your mom."

"get the fuck away.")

xiao at 14 had no clue that zhongli, his upperclassman whom he looks up to the most, sees him as his little brother.

during lunch, zhongli would always drop by at his favorite underclassman's classroom to give him a fruit— it's always high in vitamin c but xiao always receives a different one each day.

the taller noticed how frequent xiao attends their club meetings with either a cold or a cough. being a concerned senior he is, he starts purchasing fruits potent in vitamin c on the way to school to give it to the younger during lunch breaks. 

("your face is so sour that even zhongli decided to give you a lemon." a certain blond friend says.

"it. isn't. sour. at. all." xiao says in between bites as he tries to remain poker faced the entire time.

"you're a monster.")

xiao at 15 had no idea who's been feeding the stray cat other than him. 

contrary to popular opinion, cats aren't afraid of the green-haired boy. he actually seemed to be a magnet for them— threatening his 'i'm intimidating, back off' persona every once in a while as a bunch of cats follow him.

he met a certain black cat on the streets one day, and every other day, he comes to its spot just to feed it.

however, on a particular afternoon, when he arrives at the riverside to give the black cat some food, he notices an opened canned tuna laying around, and a cat heavily invested in gobbling it up.

he shrugs, before laying down water beside it so the black cat can also get its share of drink. 

it doesn't matter who's feeding the friend he had made— as long as the little stray gets fed, he's absolutely fine with it.

(a particular senior who is allergic to beans coos when he learns that xiao has been feeding the cat alongside him.)

xiao at 16, has no clue why he has a bad case of indigestion.

he makes sure he never over eats, or eats too fast. and even with his mother's homemade tonic, his stomach keeps on juggling uncomfortably. 

for a while, he thought that the problem might be from the pork buns he buys on the way to school, but when he notices it only appears whenever you're around, he thinks it's because he doesn't like you.

his alleged dislike turns into something stronger– hate, perhaps. the funny feeling in his stomach seems to never go away, and now he feels hotter than ever, his temperature heating up as his thoughts are always plagued by you. 

this becomes a problem eventually— a huge one that he had to ask around what he can do in order to keep such an ill feeling on the down low. after all, while he might not like you, he still doesn't want to hurt your feelings, oddly enough. the problem starts to become even bigger, especially now that you two are seatmates. ever since the release of the new seat assignments, which inevitably puts you beside him, the symptoms start to worsen for xiao.

("is it necessary to feel this way when you hate someone?"

"what do you mean exactly?" a kind senior asks, his golden eyes shining brightly in contrast with their uniform's black vest.

"i can barely focus when they're around— i'm always at loss for words whenever we talk." xiao replies, muttering low as he puts his head on top of his fist.

zhongli widens his eyes in shock, but then he reverts to his usual self before the younger catches on. "perhaps you need to reevaluate your feelings; there is a possibility that you mistook such feelings for hate."

the younger shakes his head firmly, "that can't be. i'm pretty sure it's hate."

"are you sure of that, xiao? hate is a strong word." he asks in his rich deep voice and xiao affirms. 

zhongli silently hums as he takes a sip from his water bottle. no matter the outcome, this can be a learning experience from his underclassman. xiao is indeed smart— he's sure that the younger would figure it out on his own.)

(when zhongli recounts the events to a close friend of his, he earns a smack on the back of his head.

"why did you leave things at that, idiot!" a thin frail white-haired woman yells, but her appearance is an illusion as the weight of her hand feels like a ton of bricks being slammed against his head.)

xiao at 17, didn't know better than to approach his best friend of four years for advice.

"how do you know if you like someone?" he remembers asking and the relentless teasing that followed.

maybe he should have known better, really. xiao ponders as kazuha lists off the signs of catching feelings for someone. 

"don't forget about the butterflies in the stomach! it's what makes you shy."

xiao tsks, as if— he never gets shy.

although the moment you went close— too close— to him, he feels like he could have erupted like a volcano.

(kazuha hollers, "how'd you turn so red when y/n came up to you?" the blond wipes tears from his eyes. "you literally have it bad for them!"

"if you don't stop, i'm not the only one who's going to be red." xiao threatens, holding the plastic knife a little too tight.)

6 months later, xiao didn't know what to do when you suddenly confessed your feelings to him. 

he feels as if his feet attached itself to the ground; he could barely move, he can't even bring himself to breathe. 

"i like you."

you tell him out of nowhere while the two of you were left behind in the classroom to clean— he was sweeping the floor while you arranged the chairs. from the other side of the room, you suddenly get the urge to confess which left the other gaping. this alone becomes a huge achievement because xiao never gapes.

xiao thinks you should be charged with attempted murder. 

he thinks with the way you took away his breath and almost sent him into a cardiac arrest, you should be sent to jail. but then he disagrees with that thought— because how will he deal with his feelings without you?

for the first time in his entire life, xiao thinks he finally understands what kazuha meant by 'butterflies in the stomach.' because as he stares at your expectant eyes and upturned lips, he thinks he just felt a flap against the walls of his tummy.

and what his friend said to him came into fruition— he realizes what they meant. 

he likes you back.

xiao was never one for theatrics and yet he can't help but drop the broom he's holding dramatically before running over to you. 

coughing awkwardly and taking deep breaths he says, "i do too."

xiao thinks he knows everything now.

("really? 'i do too'? you do know you sounded like you're saying you liked yourself too, right?" a kaedehara descent teases, earning a tug on his hair.

"shut. up.")

♥︎ please do not repost or translate without my permission . reblogs are heavily appreciated!

#KAZUXIAO FRIENDSHIP >>>>> #SLAY KAZUHA and zhongli too ig #genshin #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact fluff #genshin impact angst #genshin x reader #genshin imagines #genshin headcanons #genshin fluff #genshin angst #genshin impact xiao #genshin xiao #xiao x reader #xiao imagines #xiao headcanons #xiao fluff #xiao angst