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pestilentbrood · 5 months

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VERY long Ramble incoming

honestly now that I'm looking at the auraboa lore situation, I'm just disappointed. There was such POTENTIAL in the idea of the Loop and the horror of a new generation inexplicably being disconnected from it, forcing the newly hatched children into a world totally separate from that perceived by their parents (I mean, hell, they perceive TIME differently!).... but then the writer(s?) just fell ass backwards into Icky Tropes.

I feel like I can see what the idea was, especially with the recent alterations to the Encyclopedia entry... It seems like staff fundamentally understands the true Horror potential here, but... Instead, through the short story, they proposed it through the lens of a condescending outsider character, turning the fears of the older generation into something trivial. And also weirdly demeaning the Auroboa's situation by portraying them as overreacting.

Why... why would you do that? Like, from a storytelling perspective? What's gained from that? Why not embrace the true horror and even Emotional significance of that disruption? Why instead go for "ohh we NEED outsider help we NEED to be saved because we are so helpless and it is so Silly that we, creatures who have never experienced such things, do not know what sleep is"????

And if they WANTED to have a condescending outsider, I feel like they COULD have done that, but it would have to have that character realize the horror at some point. And make it obvious that their attitude towards distressed parents and children facing Eldritch Shit and the Sudden Deconstruction of it was not cool!

(or at the very least be a bit more...idk. Consistent with said outsider character? Juniper just goes from "omg I am so honored that the fascinating creatures of the behemoth have chosen me to speak to" to "oh their wasting my time because they don't know what sleep is. I'd rather be sleeping!! 🙄" like girl... c'mon now. Why are we trivializing it like this. Do you want me as the reader to be invested in their plight or not.)

I mean come on. They're beings connected through one networked hivemind-like system, yet each still maintains a silver of individuality that allows them to move freely throughout the Behemoth that they care for. And they've got an eldritch understanding of time that no other dragon could understand. They're seeing the future, past, and present unfold simultaneously. They're witnessing the birth and death of the world at the same time, and have no way to communicate it to other dragons. The best they can do is maintain their home, and even then, they see its roots spread and decay all at once.

And then the newest generation is suddenly disconnected. An inherent link between parent and child and all dragons in-between, that has existed since the creation of their species, is just suddenly GONE for the newest births. With NO explanation for it. The children have no easy way of communicating with their parents. The children are experiencing time in a way that was not meant for their species. They've forcefully been shoved into a circadian rhythm that they are Not! Built for!

The only way a parent could communicate properly with their child would be when the latter is sleeping, something that is also completely foreign to this species. It would be terrifying for all involved!!!

They are literally experiencing eldritch horror from the perspective of the eldritch being forced into the mortal.

Like why WOULDN'T there be panic!!! And why would that panic be trivialized! Why are we only shown the perspective of an outsider who looks at this situation and goes "Oh the silly tree beasts are being so silly over nothing, it's no big deal!"

That and the way the auraboas talk to outsiders. Like. There was such potential there. Real opportunity to explore how ancient, time-bending beings would communicate to someone who couldn't even BEGIN to understand the intricacies of it.

Instead we got what feels more like baby talk (even described as though they were hatchlings enunciating their first words, which... I dunno man, maybe we don't want to compare them to children like That) and less like... Beings that experience all of time at once. I mean, the hatchlings and the adults speak the exact same way, and that doesn't make any sense given the literal time barrier going on.

I totally get why people thought there was just a language barrier and that auraboas had their own language, thus causing the disjointed speak, and not that it was because They Do Not Experience Time Like We Do. And I feel it would've been far easier to get it across by just... I dunno. Do anything else?? I saw someone on here suggest they speak in the "wrong" tenses, or using multiple tenses in the same sentence, which I think would've been far more clear.

Like, as opposed to "saplings wilt! saplings silent!" just "the saplings will wilt in silence, they've wilted in silence, they are wilting silently." Said all at once like all things are true simultaneously. And if we're going for hivemind, have each auraboa speak in a different tense, all at the same time, and have them switch it up every time. Have our outsider get confused and be like "which is it? are they wilting now, or have they already wilted?" and the cluster of auraboas respond in a cacophony of yes's, no's, and maybe's all at once.

Would've probably gotten across the "alien" vibe they were supposedly going for far better than wide-eyed desperation for an outsider's guidance conveyed through disjointed, in-world described as baby speech.

And also maybe would've had less accidental connotations. Because as it stands, I completely see why people have made the connections to the real world where they have. This doesn't read like eldritch timey-wimey intrigue, or even a respectful look at how younger generations can become detached from their families' cultures over time and the struggles that come with it. It reads like a culture being perceived by an ignorant outsider who (despite supposedly respecting these dragons) scoffs and rolls their eyes because the tree beasts with their funny words are being silly again, and that Hey, isn't it actually a great thing that the children are fundamentally different in all manners now? Because now they can join the rest of us in the "real world."

Yknow. Ick.

(I Personally think it would've been better to have the perspective be one of the Auraboas themselves, especially one of the children, to really understand what was going on here. Give us the full brunt of the mind of a creature experiencing all of time interwoven as one shape. The waters fall and the oceans crash with waves. They've now fallen to drought. The ocean has yet to be born. Caves have been carved out through the waters' currents. And when I break from this timeline, I open my eyes to see a child, the child not yet born, the child born now, the child born yesterday. Why can't I hear it? Why couldn't I hear it? Why won't I ever hear it?)

I dunno. People more qualified than me to speak on this matter have already torn the lore apart, I'm just... dropping my own two cents. Potential got weirdly squandered and we ended up instead with unfortunate implications and tropes that could be connected a liiiittle too awkwardly to irl situations.

*Also, before anyone points out: Yes, I know the hatchlings aren't COMPLETELY detached from the Loop and can join it when they sleep. But the fact is, these thangs never had to sleep before. That wasn't in their species' nature. So that's still weird and foreign for them on both sides. And since the hatchlings now have a circadian rhythm, they can't stay connected to the loop permanently. And also Also, seeing as the previous generations aren't experiencing time linearly, who's to say they even recognize when their child joins the loop? They'll speak with an echo of their child when that child was last asleep ages ago, not knowing that it's not them presently, because there is no 'present' for the older generations.

#i also really really do not understand the ''word count'' explanation given by staff.#I'm honestly rather lenient with ignorance happenings like this so long as they're remedied but.#cutting out important details of lore Fundamental to the understanding of it? For? ''Word count''?#Like firstly. Surely someone on the team is skilled enough to pull that off right? To get all that needs to be said in a short story?#but secondly. w. why is there a word count limit to begin with. This is Your House. Why are you limiting yourself unless this is like #a paid-by-word situation and they don't have the money to afford something longer #but like it feels like shooting yourself in the foot if you're going to write something that leaves a ton of information vague instead of #properly explaining your lore so there's no unfortunate misunderstandings. But I dunno. I'm just rambling #flight rising #fr auraboa #I'll probably be incorporating my Own version of the lore regardless of what the staff decides to do with this presentation of it #or just ignoring it outright hskdgjhskjh we shall See #Also if anything I've said here is Wrong in some way or comes across ignorant in and of itself. Let me know

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kenmaiii · 25 days

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after two years i finally draw the favorite

#my art #still learning honestly. idk how to explain it but some medias youre so fixated on and obsessed with u instantly want to draw everyone #for me dunmeshi has always been the opposite. series and characters i enjoy sm i cannot bring myself to pick up a pencil #for some reason. it got a lot worse once the anime started airing idk. simply forcing myself to get some of my energy out. in a way #dunmeshi #dungeon meshi #thistle #dunmeshi thistle #thistle dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #>_< series i was into since late 2021. yet u wouldnt know that unless u follow my side twitter account. sowwy ig #i do this with a lot of franchises honestly. cannot bring myself to draw even if i think abt the characters constantly. ie skip to loafer #u will nvr catch me calling this guy sissel sorry. save that name for Mr. Ghost Trick. another thing i. also. dnt talk abt. which i adore #i need to get better at talking abt and expressing myself for the things that i enjoy. ive been wanting to draw laios for a good #while too but im scared. for some reason. u-u should nvr let a white man do that to me honestly.#for now i'll thistle tho. maybe we will get kabru namari or mithrun next from me >_< i have to talk myself into it #i think the closest way i can explain why i cannot bring myself to draw for some series is that i dnt want to mess up somehow #like 'ilu so much [character] what if i cnt draw u the way u deserve even tho i love u sm what if its not enough.' <- leaves it to sm1 else #tbh [scratches head] i prefer the version with less coloring ^-^ but i realize the one thats more colored would get more eyes on it... hm

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bethanydelleman · 1 year

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Mr. Darcy Proposal #1: It is an honour and a privilege to be loved by me.

Mr. Darcy Proposal #2: It is an honour and a privilege to be loved by you.

The sexiest pronoun change in the English language.

#let me explain how lucky you are that I am unaccountably obsessed with you #pride and prejudice #mr. darcy #the first proposal is so bad #the second proposal is swoon worthy #tell me no and I'll leave you alone is the hottest sentence a man can utter #elizabeth bennet #jane austen #she knows how to make them sexy #Trying to keep my post brief so I just talk more in the tags

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snixx · 4 months

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the quickest way to get me to follow a blog on tumblr dot com is a post with "lesbian" and "byler" in the same sentence tbh

#lesbian bylers are a different breed. like that's all i need to know about you tbh #we have that telepathy thing going on like oh...OH. okay. i SEE you #it's because byler is such a quintessentially lesbian coded ship in a way you just can't explain to anyone else #like you guys get it. that's all I'll say. i already know we're gonna have Shared Experiences #there's a reason these white boys have captivated me so entirely ok. and y'all get it #byler #let's go lesbians #lesbian byler moots ily #we are so same actually #lesbyler #millow

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eldstunga · 1 year

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I love your art and artstyle sm, but I got a fucking jumpscare for following the tiefling tag of your character. Id absolutely follow you if I wasnt scared of scrolling in public and getting tits in the feed

Thank you! Sorry but also not sorry, most of the nudity gets a mature tag which should prevent that, but I won't censor artistic nudity on my end. When the old ban hit it got scary to tag stuff clearly because their filters would sniff that shit out immediately and I'm not confident it's gone.

There are worse ways to go than Tiefling Tiddy Jumpscare

#nudity #asks #.txt #imagine trying to explain to my group why my character's naked in all these pictures :))))#Let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can help #after years of tiddy ban there's no way I'll stop posting nips now tho

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ladysophiebeckett · 6 months

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La Oferta de Michel \ Los Planes del Futuro de Betty y Armando

#ysblf #yo soy betty la fea #betty la fea #mystuff #i wanna say this is self explanatory #but like #u know--let me explain anyway---#michel wanted to do everything for betty without really consulting her--'i'll take care of it' he says as soon as she says she wants discus #the costs. that is not equal partnership.#that is not her having a say. and she's already been through various stages of her life where everyone gets a say in her life except her.#when armando discusses their plans for the future--its implied that he and betty had a discussion together.#they talked about the cost (he's gonna sell his apartment) and its a house they saw and betty loved.#they made plans for their life together. michel's offer was if anything a step back fm the independence she gained at the end of her arc.#and michel doesn't moisturize. why would u want that in ur life?

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general-illyrin · 5 months

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"Maedhros’s anger does not burn, the way Fëanáro’s does; Maedhros’s anger is molten, a corrosive collapsing that threatens to melt everything in its path."

Quote from @chthonion's incredible fic "The Harrowing"

#chthonion if you want me to delete this just let me know and I'll do so.#This quote is amazing and explains so much about the two in such small space and with such beautiful imagery!#I have had this quote in my head for months since I first read the fic and I decided to actually do something with it #maedhros #feanor #silmarillion #silm #silm edits #(well technically not but it's close)

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wildflowercryptid · 7 months

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your harrow drawing gives me LIFE

AJSFJSKJDF; THANK YOU!! 😭✨ all of the positive reception on my harrow drawing (and my tangle tower stuff in general) has really warmed my heart, i really appreciate all the kind words everyone have left on it...

to properly show my appreciation, please enjoy this harrow microorganism inspired by the game's map sprites!

— credit to @whisperingrockers for harrow's design again. pls go check out her tangle tower stuff, it's all extremely good.

#i love the game's lil map sprites so i had to make one for harrow #if anyone wants a tutorial on how i did the boil effect just let me know and i'll try to explain it in another post #applying the effect itself wasn't too hard but i had some trouble w/ the file size (which was mostly my fault bc the gif was way too long)#i also couldn't get the transparency to not look weird so that's why she's just. standing in the void #BUT YEAH. thank you again to everyone for being so kind it really means a lot!!#detective grimoire #tangle tower #harrow hawkshaw #🎨 : mj draws #asks #tw gif warning

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bonefall · 1 year

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Herb Guide for Warrior Cats: Epilepsy

Requested by an Anon!

A guide to providing treatment to a Warrior Cat OC with epilepsy. Still requires a bit of a leap in logic as nothing can replace our friend phenobarbital, BUT, if you would like herbs and strategies for managing a Warrior’s epilepsy, this guide is for you.

I researched herbs historically used for epilepsy, chose plants growing wild in a ‘common’ clan biome (temperate Europe and North America), and removed things that a cat could not use. Because of the nature of epilepsy, I also delved into some other treatments and strategies your medics can use!

So, keep in mind, this guide is written for a Clan doctor treating an epileptic cat. NOT from the perspective of a patient who has it.

I would recommend doing extra research into first-hand accounts of what it’s like to live with epilepsy when creating your patient character.

Disclaimer Time! I tried to filter out as much ‘quackery’ as possible, but remember that I am not a vet nor do I have formal training in pharmacognacy. You are also not a vet. This is for fake battle cats. LOOK AT ME. YOU WILL NOT USE THIS ON YOURSELF OR A REAL ANIMAL.

Below the cut is:

What is epilepsy?

Diagnostics

Non-herbal treatments

Managing the different types of seizures

Preventative herbs

What is epilepsy?

‘Epilepsy‘ is the broad term for dozens of different disorders, resulting in recurring epileptic seizures. A warrior could be born with it, develop it over time, or get it after recovering from brain injury (stroke, infection, head trauma, etc).

Epilepsy also varies wildly, and can be so mild it’s hard to detect, or so severe it could put the cat in too much danger to do warrior duties at all. For most cases, however, the warrior would still be able to do normal tasks* as long as they don’t hunt or patrol alone.

* = Head injury and stress from fighting can worsen epilepsy. Going on battle patrols is a risk the warrior must be made aware of.

Diagnostics

So before anything else, your medic will want to identify what triggers the seizures, if anything. There isn’t always an identifiable trigger such as a flashing light/quickly moving object, but seizures can be made worse by stress, lack of sleep, or hunger. Taking note of the warrior’s state preceding a seizure would be extremely helpful for treatment.

Does Wheatwhisker seem to have more seizures when she’s doing certain activities? When she has one, did she sleep well the night before? What has she been eating lately? She may be able to feel it coming-- including sudden intense emotion, an oncoming headache, hot or cold sensations, so on.

Like dogs, cats can detect oncoming seizures. A good medicine cat would take note of all the behavior before its onset to reduce their frequency.

NON-herbal treatments

Once correlation and causes have been identified, the medicine cat should have some lifestyle changes to suggest.

For example, Wheatwhisker has more seizures when she is tired, so the medic prevents her from going on dawn patrol. They’re sometimes triggered by the fluttering of bird wings, so she’s been told to hunt small mammals instead.

A change in diet can also reduce the frequency of seizures. Fatty foods specifically, such as red meat, eggs, and large fish. Trout and carp would be the two easiest* things for a warrior to hunt on a regular basis-- though if the given Clan can’t catch those, it may be worth it to consider trade with another group.

* = If your warriors can cook with fire, fat drippings can be cooked back into the epileptic warrior’s meals. This would make the special diet much easier to prepare than always catching specific prey.

Managing the Different Types of Seizures

Generally there are three types of seizures- ones localized to a specific body part, ones that may seem like “daydreaming”, and ones that cause the well-known convulsions. Less severe seizures are more common.

Seizures do not usually cause pain on their own, except for fatigue in the muscle or headaches. Injury is sometimes caused by external forces, such as slamming against something during a convulsion, falls, tongue biting, or hitting sharp objects.

After any seizure, nausea or a headache may develop-- feverfew will soothe headaches, mallow or fennel will soothe stomachaches. Even if the Epileptic warrior does not take regular medication, the cannabis and valerian root mentioned in the ‘preventative herbs‘ section can be taken on occasion to help the warrior relax post-seizure.

-Localized

One part of the body (leg, head) seizes or convulses. Can usually be self-managed by the warrior, loss of conscious is uncommon. Rest in a quiet area would be the best treatment afterwards. If the muscle fatigue is bad, kneading the limb will help.

-Daydream

The warrior will seem suddenly ‘absent,‘ like they’ve left their body, for typically less than 15 seconds. They may simply wobble and stare ahead (even pausing mid-sentence), or seem to ‘faint‘ and fall over, but in any case they will not remember the seizure. Prevent them from falling on something dangerous, if this seems likely.

In many cases the warrior will just be able to keep going about their day in a few minutes, or even immediately. If not, just like before, let them rest in a quiet area.

-Convulsions

A panicked cat may make convulsions worse by fearfully running around as a seizure starts-- if a warrior MUST be prevented from doing this, it’s VERY important that they are not completely pinned or restrained. JUST kept laying down. Do NOT attempt to stop the convulsions themselves.

Such a circumstance will be extremely rare in a Warrior Cat setting, where the cats are capable of reasoning like a human. There may be a situation where an epileptic cat needs to be brought out of harm’s way-- that’s fine.

Clear the area of anything sharp or hard that the convulsing warrior could hurt themselves on, like stones, or brambles. Roll them onto their side, if they aren’t already. Lastly, cushion their head with something soft, like moss, if possible.

After the seizure is over, the warrior will probably be disoriented and confused. Don’t overwhelm them or offer food or water until they’re fully alert again. Once they do, they might have partial paralysis, nausea, muscle soreness, a bitten tongue, or any variety of symptoms. Just like before, bring them to a quiet area to rest.

If your warriors wear restrictive accessories, such as belts or collars, the medicine cat will remove or loosen them during a seizure if possible.

-what NOT to do

There’s some harmful ideas out there you may have encountered, so here’s some things to keep in mind your medics would NOT do to treat a cat having convulsions:

They would NOT pin them down (this even happened in the books once yikes) Why: This could cause injury to both the restrained, and the restrainer.

They would NOT put anything in their mouth Why: Could damage their teeth or jaw, it does not prevent them from biting their tongue. (also; while tongue biting is common, it is a total myth that an epileptic will choke on/swallow it)

They would NOT start firing out questions as soon as the seizure is over Why: The warrior will likely be disoriented, and not in a state to answer properly. Give them a minute.

Preventative Herbs

Once a seizure is happening, it will have to play out. Warrior cats do not have the medical capability to stop one once started. The anticonvulsant herbs here will help to reduce the frequency and severity of seizures... but they can’t eliminate them entirely.

Anticonvulsants will need to be taken on a regular basis. Stopping these suddenly will cause dangerous side effects; if the warrior’s epilepsy isn’t severe, or herbs are a scarcity for your Clan, it may not be the best choice to medicate them.

Chamomile

Common, and naturalized all over the world. In high doses, this herb will poison a cat. Careful preparation is required to make it safe for the epileptic warrior-- it needs to be steeped in water, like tea*. The leaves should not be eaten.

* = If your cats don’t have fire to brew tea, that’s fine, it can be soaked cold.

This herb also has a side effect of drowsiness. It may make the warrior lethargic and less responsive.

Cannabis

Cannabis is a golden herb for a thousand reasons, it can be made into rope, paper, cloth, oil... but, the thing of note here is CBD oil. Cannabis grows wild all over the world, but ESPECIALLY in North America-based Clans (where it’s called Ditchweed)

Ditchweed has high CBD content, and low THC content. This makes it safe for your warriors (and also prevents them from getting high). Your cats will NOT smoke it, which will damage their sensitive respiratory systems, they will eat it like a standard herb.

Because cannabis is a depressant, this treatment is best for warriors not involved in active tasks. Epileptic warriors that prefer calm, camp-related activities will use this herb. Den-building, tunnel digging, helping the medics, crafting if your Clan makes accessories, so on.

Valerian Root

Known as a sleep aid in humans, Valerian has VERY interesting effects on cats; this is the only Epilepsy treatment that can avoid lethargy entirely. However, in contrast to cannabis, valerian will mostly be found in Europe-based Clans.

(with both, however, it is possible to find each in the other continent.)

Valerian Root has catnip-like effects, perking a warrior up and often filling them with energy. There are some cats for whom this herb will act like cannabis, calming them down, but if there’s a choice, the Epileptic warriors who enjoy active tasks will prefer this herb. Hunting, fighting, patrolling, so on.

#If you know something about epilepsy that I missed please let me know!#I'll add it right away #Especially if you have epilepsy or help someone else manage it #I don't have anyone epileptic in my life so I just tried to do good research #I also tried to boil it down to the simplest terms possible with the idea it's a practical OC writing guide in mind #So that's the reason I didn't explain cluster seizures or what a grand mal is; or primary vs #-secondary epilepsy. I tried to avoid putting too many terms into it.#Focused on treatment alone #Clan Culture #Clan Herbs #Warrior cats #Herb guide #Seizures #Epilepsy

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 9 months

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Adorned by stars | Changing States

When he hits the I-70, Jeremiah slots George Michael’s Faith into his ’98 Accord and drives with the windows down. His mother would chide him for two reasons: a) he’s wasting fuel and b) it’s begun to storm. But he likes the way the wind shears through his hair like a nail breaking drywall and he likes the way spats of rain settle on his skin like constellations because on the road, he isn’t just a hand for someone else to hold, a body to handle, a man who looks at another man and fears how much of himself he’s lost in his reflection. No. On the road he is the sky, adorned by stars of his own making, relentless in his abundance, blinking in the absence of any other light.

A little Changing States aesthetic & excerpt!

i'm so normal about him i'm so normal i'm so normal i'm so-

#i can't wait to explain more about this project when I actually get into it #like there's no plot rn but the vibes are impeccable #BUT I DO HAVE A LOGLINE: after a whirlwind romance devastatingly ends #jeremiah moves back to his hometown in maryland for support #only to receive word there’s been a death in the family the day he's set to arrive.#“WHIRLWIND ROMANCE DEVASTATINGLY ENDS” YEAHHH BYEEE #harrison fucked this man up i'm MADDDDDD #you know that scene in BB where harrison's pissed off at the congregation and turns and goes DO ANY OF YOU WANT PITCHFORKS???#the answer rn should be yes BECAUSE WE'RE HUNTING HIM FOR SPORT (quoting That Post) anyway let me be serious #CW: death/grief talk #like i said this is a little autofiction-y in the sense that last yr my family had a maryland trip planned and right before we left #there was a death in the family (I didn't know the person well but it affected my parents/grandparents/uncles a lot)#so what was a trip to just see family was a trip to go to a funeral #anyway I was thinking about those circumstances and what that's like (like packing funeral clothes when they weren't originally in the plan #and what that funeral was like/how interesting it is that times of grief are also times where family reuintes #as I saw people who wouldn't have ever met me or last met me when I was very little #it was also joyous in ways etc while also being incredibly sad to witness the grief anyway so I was drawn to write about that #because I think about that trip a LOT (I was getting back into SV at the time)#and that was the first time I'd been in MD in a long time (just like this is the first time Jeremiah's been in MD in a long time)#for me it was 4 years so maybe I'll make it a similar timeline for him!#anyway Jeremiah means so much to me ughhhh I’m so grateful I created him #changing states

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the-fandom-crossroads · 2 months

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My Thoughts on the Alastor Ace Erasure rampant in the Hazbin Hotel Fandom

Disclaimer i am one Ace and don't speak for all Ace's when I say the fandoms treatment of Alastor makes me uncomfortable. I was and still am open to shipping alastor with other characters. But the constant Acephobia and Ace Erasure I see in this shipping content is to a point where I have to point it out.

First off I'm so tired of the "loopholes" folks list off for why they want to write smut with one of the only cannon ace characters we've gotten in years. I had to blacklist "nonsex repulsed asexual alastor" on ao3 because they aren't even bothering to list him as greysexual. Sure an ace can have sex with a partner once or twice. But they act like nonsex repulsed means the ace person can be written having sex every other chapter. AT THAT POINT IT'S NOT AN ASEXUAL PERSON ANYMORE.

At this point I'd honestly prefer it if they just said their fic au is that he's a homosexual. Because half the time them trying to work in "he's still ace guys! he's just also okay with doing a different sex position for each day of the week!" just comes off as Acephobic. And the few times they write him uncomfortable with the start of the sex it just sounds like Acerape or corrective rape. "He just doesn't know he likes it cause he's a virgin." or "he's uncomfortable until this partner starts making him feel good". The WORST ones are the "heat" fics where they have alastor think about if he had proper control of his body he wouldn't want to be having sex right now. because at that point it's just a date rape drug and they are using a fanfic trope to FORCE him to have sex against his will. And it's just so fucked up man.

Yes he is only confirmed as Ace and not Aro. Viv is intentionally not saying he's Aro because she knows it's a lost cause to tell the fandom he's not romantically into people. Because fandom will ship him regardless. So she prioritized making it clear he's at the very least Ace in cannon and there's no plans to give him a partner in cannon. I feel like the HuskDust bits in the final series is because she saw how much the fans shipped alastor and angeldust after the pilot. Alastor was locked in as Ace by the time the pilot was released and she said it on multiple streams afterwards that he would be Ace. Giving AngelDust a different love interest target just seems like the easiest way to shoot down the biggest Alastor ship at the time without saying she's doing it to sink the biggest alastor ship. Of course fans just latched onto Vox and Lucifier but made it worse by feeling the need to say Alastor's ace before putting him in a sexual situations anyway.

Sexuals have thousands of cannon sexual characters to choose from, from countless other series but they feel the need to fight to make the one Ace guy have sex. We get an Ace character and fans immediately try to work around it to still write smut with him. Aces can't even have one character. I'm looking up fics about a psychopath cannibalistic serial killer because he's the only Ace rep I've seen in years that isn't just fan headcannons and I'm getting punched in the face with so much Acephobia and corrective rape, it's horrifying. Aces can't go through the tag of a cannon ace comfort character without facing triggering amounts of acephobia. And that's just wrong. How can the fandom see this as okay??

If he was a gay character constantly being written into a straight ship with people excusing it as "well sometimes gay guys will have sex with women" people would be up in arms about gay erasure. But because it's an Ace character that they personally want to still ship with characters it's not Ace erasure. He's just an Ace that likes to have lots and lots of sex.

ALASTOR IS ASEXUAL. If you are in anyway trying to write Alastor in character or close to cannon. Then he does not desire sex that is the basic definition of Asexual. But yall can't except this tumblr sexy man doesn't want to have sex (because everyone wants to have sex\s). So you bend over backwards trying to explain to an actual Ace person why we are sometimes pushed or pressured into sex and how that's okay. How it's okay for you a not Ace person to write this Ace character being forced into sexual situations. Because "sometimes" Aces have sex. You're right we do sometimes have sex. I'm not saying everyone has to write Alastor as a virgin. But he's had sex once or twice in the last 80 years at most. It's more likely he's gone the last 80 years without any desire to have sex at all. So to go from that to suddenly having sex even once a week is too much sex for him to suddenly put up with. God my Ace brain can't even wrap my head around having sex every week (do you sexuals really do that?). And I haven't gone 80 years free from sexual expectations. To expect Alastor to magically be open to a bunch of sex is ignorant at best. Regardless of what character or ocfemalereadersona you try to push him to have sex with.

I don't know what else to say other than that i'm just tired. Tired and sad. The Ace community should be celebrating the fact that we finally have another Ace character in media. A character the show and creator have openly and constantly confirmed is Ace. But instead we are having to defend ourselves from our own terminology being weaponized against us to erase that characters Ace identity for smut fics.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin alastor #ace #asexual #ace erasure #corrective rape #if i need to tag it as something else let me know #lgbtqia #aroace #this is not at every fanfic writer #i've read some great fics that put alastor in queerplatonic ships #i've seen fics of rosie or angeldust putting together #and explaining to alastor what ace is #it's the smut writers that try to claim their alastor is still ace i'm tired of #long post #it's late i'll spell check in the morning

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abitoflavender · 2 months

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a super depressing one-shot that may be a part of a series I want to make

(tw: abuse) (i did not proof or reread any of this. i wrote it in 10 minutes at a rapid fire pace and decided to post it bcs im eepy) (also plz read the tags before commenting!)

Chara and Frisk were curled up on the couch, each of them covered up in at least two throw blankets. They were having a Pixar movie marathon–they had both caught a cold that past week from school, and the cold, December weather, and Toriel had insisted they’d stay home until they were both feeling well. The sun was out, but blocked out behind the thick, blackout curtains that were closed. Though the heat was up and on high, it felt as though the frigid temperatures were seeping through the windows and the front door, hence the two being under a couple of blankets, as well as wearing fleece pajamas. There were Gatorade bottles and half-eaten sleeves of Saltine crackers on the floor in front of the couch, a bottle of liquid cold medicine on the end table beside Frisk.

They were watching all of the Pixar movies in order, starting two days ago. One or the other, or the both of them, typically ended up drifting off during each movie, so it was taking them awhile to finish them all. They were on Coco, one Chara didn’t find particularly interesting.

“It’s just like that other movie about the Day of the Dead.” She said to Frisk, keeping her tired gaze on the TV. Her voice was raspy from coughing for the past few days.

Frisk glanced over at them, too comfortable in their spot in the corner of the couch, cocooned in two thick blankets and their head sunk deep into their pillow to actually move their head to look at Chara. “What one? There’s another Disney movie about it?”

“No, it wasn’t Disney. It had these snakes and this guy in a room with a bunch of candles. I think they fought a bull, too?”

“Ohhh,” Frisk sang, “The Book of Life?”

Chara looked over at Frisk with a little grin, “Yes, that one. They’re literally the same movie, except for the fact that Coco doesn’t get killed to enter the Land of the Dead.”

“That movie doesn’t have music, though.” Frisk brought their focus back onto the movie.

“Yeah, it did. The guy sang that ‘I love you too much’ song to the girl, remember?” Chara sat up a bit, her movements slow. She pulled her blankets up over her shoulders, sitting up and against the back of the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest.

“Well, it’s not as good as the songs in this one, duh.” Frisk snickered, their voice quiet, just above a whisper.

Chara kept her snarky look on her face, continuing to look down at Frisk, “Never said it was. The story was just better.”

Frisk scoffed, “Because the guy died?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, whatever, Chara,” Frisk yawned, “Great taste you have there.”

The two went quiet as Coco began to sing Un Poco Loco. Chara couldn’t help but hum along to the tune–a quiet hum, just in the back of her sore throat. Frisk couldn’t even hear it over the movie.

The song ended and the movie went on. The silence between the siblings ended with Frisk asking, hesitantly and softly, “Hey, Chara?”

Chara looked over at them, meeting their eyes as Frisk sat upright, crossing their legs and leaning back into the couch. Just off of the look on Frisk’s face–of which Frisk was obviously trying to downplay their emotions, but Chara knew them too well to fall for it–Chara knew that they were…nervous about something.

“Hm?” Chara hummed, “Is something wrong?”

“No, I’m–”

“I can go grab us some more Gatorade, if you want?” She shifted in her spot, ready to stand up before Frisk then blurted, leaning forward to her a bit.

“Nono, I’m fine. I just…”

Chara settled back into her spot, slowly, looking at Frisk with furrowed eyebrows and a confused look in her eyes.

Frisk pursed their lips, hesitating yet again, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, for a while. I just…don’t know how to ask it, or when I should bring it up, so…but I want to ask it.”

“Okay?” Chara raised an eyebrow, “What is it?”

Frisk shrugged off their blanket and took the remote from the coffee table in front of the couch, muting the movie. Chara watched them do so, realizing as Frisk pressed the mute button that they were about to ask a very specific kind of question.”

“Oh.” Chara mumbled, their head falling down at their lap.

“I-I don’t have to ask,” Frisk stammered, “I know it’s-”

“No, it’s…fine?” Chara looked back up at Frisk, “It’s fine. I guess I was just expecting something like, “did you think Ernesto was his relative?” or something like that. But, if you really want to ask something…else, that’s fine.”

Frisk remained quiet, pursing their lips nervously again. Chara sighed, scooting to her left and sitting right beside Frisk. She wrapped her arm around her sibling, pulling them gently into her in an embrace. Frisk’s body instantly relaxed into hers, leaning their head against her chest. She smiled softly, her raspy voice still having a certain reassuring, proper tone and manner to it.

“Hey, remember what we’ve talked about?” Chara rubbed Frisk’s shoulder with her thumb, Frisk’s eyes falling to their lap.

“No more secrets?” Frisk mumbled.

“No more secrets, and we gotta be open and honest to each other, because we’re the only person that we have who understands one-another, right?”

Frisk nodded, “Right.”

“Then ask away. No matter the question.”

They took a deep breath in, their body stiffening up as they slowly spoke, “...why did you go to Mt. Ebbott?”

Chara’s smile faltered for a moment before falling. The two sat in silence for a minute, the flickering from the TV in the dark room adding a certain feeling of awkwardness to the tense moment.

“I’m sorry,” Frisk whispered, their voice breaking, though not because of any tears. They cleared their sore throat before speaking again, “I know…it’s a hard question. I’ve been wondering about it for a long time now, and just…I just want to know.”

Chara slowly sighed, tightening their arm around Frisk. They looked up at her, an almost apologetic, yet incredibly saddened look in their red eyes. Chara met their gaze and gave them a quick, reassuring smile.

“It’s okay. I’ve…never talked about it before. Not even with mom or dad, or…”

“Asriel mentioned it,” Frisk nodded slowly, looking back down at their lap. “the first run that we did. I don’t know if you heard it or not, but-”

“I did, I just forgot about it,” Chara chuckled shortly, “there were so many runs, so many timelines…it’s hard to remember just one conversation, is it not?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“What did he say, exactly?” Chara continued to speak slowly and quietly. She didn’t hesitate on her words, but her tone clearly showed her fear, her battle to force herself to speak.

“He said that you weren’t the greatest person, and that you hated humanity? And that he knew you didn’t fall down for…a happy reason.”

Chara didn’t reply immediately. She took a moment to find her words, to say something…well, she needed to say the truth, but didn’t want to even think about it, let alone speak the words aloud.

“Okay,” she sighed, her tone instantly changing from fear to sadness, “I…he was right, it wasn’t good.”

“...can I ask what happened?”

Chara nodded, though Frisk wasn’t looking, She bit at her bottom lip, holding back so, so many emotions as she gripped Frisk’s arm tighter, pulling their warm body closer to hers. “I haven’t told this to mom or dad, or anybody else. I’ve never told a soul about…well, my…my human parents.”

Frisk held their breath, freezing for a second. Chara had began to speak so slowly, so softly, that Frisk was sure they were going to begin to cry any moment. They knew she wouldn’t let them know she was crying–she never cried, at least, if she could help it. Chara was right, and Frisk knew it–it was a hard question, and Frisk knew it was going to be an awfully sad conversation.

“They…they hurt me. Bad,” Chara began, closing her eyes tightly, resting her chin on the top of Frisk’s head. “Since I was little. They hurt each other, and they both hurt me. My entire life with them was just…wake up, maybe eat, get screamed and hit at, and try and sleep.”

“Nobody…nobody noticed? Didn’t people and teachers at like, your school notice?”

“No, nobody said anything. The other adults around knew that if they said anything to anybody, especially the authorities, that it would just make things worse, and the other kids…they were judgey. They whispered about it, but never more than that. Nobody could help–they didn’t want to.”

“...I’m sorry,” Frisk sighed, “I’m…I’m sorry, Chara.”

Chara hummed, nodding slowly and opening their eyes just a bit, looking down at the top of Frisk’s head, “One night, I…I overheard my parents in the other room. One of them was threatening to kill the other, and…”

She trailed off, closing her lips and going silent.

“Chara?” Frisk asked, remaining still. A few seconds of silence passed and Frisk carefully pulled themselves upright, looking up at Chara’s face, “Chara–”

Tears had filled Chara’s eyes. Her red eyes were wide and her breath was shaky as she stared in a daze down at her lap.

“Chara,” Frisk said, louder, feeling as though their heart fell into their chest. Without a second thought, they got up on their knees and hugged Chara, wrapping their arms around her neck and shoulders and squeezing her as tight as they could, being sick and all. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Chara began to sob, crying out loud with shaken breaths. With the movie muted, her cried carried across the house, and a second later Toriel came running from her bedroom.

“Frisk? Chara? What-” Toriel stopped in front of the two, looking down at her daughter with wide, saddened eyes. She was entirely expecting the sobbing to come from Frisk, not Chara…

“Chara, honey,” Toriel knelt down in front of the two, Frisk letting go of Chara. Toriel rested her paws on Chara’s damp, pale face, looking into her face with concern, “What is the matter?”

Chara pulled her arms out from beneath her blankets and jumped into Toriel’s arms, burying her face into her robe. Her sobs grew into bawling, gasping uncontrollably between each cry.

Frisk fell back into the couch, biting their lip and tearing up themselves. Toriel rubbed Chara’s back with one paw, the other running through her rust hair.

“What happened? Hey, it’s alright, it’s alright…”

“It’s my fault, I’m sorry.” Frisk blurted out, a tear rolling down their cheek. Toriel looked over at them, still holding Chara tight. She looked so small in her mother’s arms, like a small, helpless child.

“What do you mean? What is the matter?”

“I need…” Chara managed between cries and gasps, “t-to talk to you…”

She continued to cry as Toriel slowly let up on their embrace, resting her paws on her small shoulders as Chara sat on the edge of the couch. Her cheeks were rosier than usual, her face and shirt soaked in tears.

“Whatever it is, please…I’ve never seen you like this, Chara.” Toriel nodded slowly, saddened.

Chara glanced over at Frisk, giving them as much of a reassuring nod as she could, before looking back up at their mother.

“...about my human parents, and how I ended up with you and dad, and Azzy.”

Toriel stayed quiet for a moment, simply looking into Chara’s eyes. She nodded slowly, “Is that what this is about?”

Chara nodded, but Frisk spoke for her, “I asked about it. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Chara shook her head, her gaze still on Toriel, “you…you need to know about it. The both of you do.”

Toriel nodded again, lifting her paws off of Chara’s shoulders and taking a seat on her right. She lifted the fallen blankets over Chara’s shoulder, wrapping her up as Frisk scooted in closer to the two, leaning their head against Chara’s arm.

“Go ahead,” Toriel smiled at Chara–a smile that told Chara that, no matter she was about to say, Toriel would remain composed. While she knew that wasn’t going to be the case–not this time–Chara began again, her voice shaky and still raspy, with every few words being interrupted by a hiccup.

“My parents…hurt me. They hurt each other, and they hurt me, bad. Nobody at school said anything, ever, and neither did anyone who saw us at the store, or anywhere else. They were both always screaming. I don’t think I’d ever heard them speak…normally.”

Toriel remained quiet, as did Frisk.

(tbd)

#undertale story #undertale #one shot #from this comic idea ive had since 2016 #i'll make it one day #or maybe ill just write a fanfic for now #please let me know if you would read it #its called reset hehe #also chara uses she/her pronouns in this--a fact of which ill explain in detail if I post another one of these #artists choice!!!#chara #frisk #toriel

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hikayunas · 6 months

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there's something to be said about the (most likely unintentional) parallels between yuna and actual, real life man-eating tigers.

man-eating tigers typically only resort to preying on humans once they've suffered some sort of injury and are in chronic pain because of it -- in the case of the most prolific man-eater to date, it was dental injuries from a gunshot, but i believe porcupine encounters can also be a cause (don't remember my source though, so maybe take this with a grain of salt). the pain and the injuries render them unable to hunt their usual prey, and so, they eventually resort to preying on humans, growing out of their instinctive fear of us.

yuna resorted to 'preying' on the kamihama girls once she was also robbed of her ability to hunt her usual prey -- witches -- and was left in severe pain, though in this case, more emotional than physical.

(the most prolific man-eater is sometimes even referred to as the 'demon of champawat' or otherwise likened to a demon due to her ferocity, and james corbett described the (typical) tiger as 'large-hearted', which sounds awfully familiar...)

it may not be what f4 was going for, but it is something i like to think about a lot.

#magia record #kureha yuna #animal attack #just in case #if anything else needs tagging just let me know #anyway. i apologize for how gruesome this is #but man-eating animals are a major -- albeit a bit niche and 'weird' -- interest of mine #and if any of this needs explaining i'll gladly elaborate if asked #i just think a lot about the unintentional (?) parallels between yuna and. man-eating tigers in general #but also specifically the champawat tiger #demon of champawat...demon of futatsugi...#may or may not delete later but reblogs are on #have a good night everyone

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purinrinrin · 3 months

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A guide to AI art for artists

When AI art first hit the web I was amazed by the technology. Then later, when it came out that these image generators were trained on images by living artists scraped from the public web with no consent or compensation, my opinion of it was soured. It took a lot of effort for me to push past that distaste in order to properly research the technology so that I could help myself and others to understand it. This is why I’m compiling all the information I’ve found here. I hope you find it helpful.

Terminology

To start off, there are a lot of different terms out there when it comes to AI nowadays so I’m going to try to define some of them so you can understand what people mean when they use them (and so you can tell when they’re full of shit).

Artificial Intelligence. AI is a big buzzword right now in the tech sector and at times feels like it’s being thrown at anything and everything just to attract investors. Cambridge Dictionary defines it as:

the use or study of computer systems or machines that have some of the qualities that the human brain has, such as the ability to interpret and produce language in a way that seems human, recognize or create images, solve problems, and learn from data supplied to them

It’s kind of what it says on the tin - an artificial, that is, human-created system that has abilities similar to those of intelligent life forms. (I’d argue comparing the abilities of AI solely to those of humans does a disservice to the intelligence of many non-human animals but I digress.)

At the moment when you read things online or in the news, AI is likely being used to refer to machine learning which is a type of AI.

Algorithm

The word algorithm describes a process based on a set of instructions or rules used to find a solution to a problem. The term is used in maths as well as computing. For example, the process used to convert a temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius is a kind of algorithm:

subtract 32

divide by 9

multiply by 5

These instructions must be performed in this specific order.

Nowadays on social media “the algorithm” is used to refer to a specific kind of algorithm - a recommendation algorithm - which is a kind of machine learning algorithm.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a term used to refer to the the use of a computer algorithm to perform statistical analysis of data (and often large amounts of it) to produce outputs, whether these are images, text or other kinds of data. Social media recommendation algorithms collect data on the kind of content a user has looked at or interacted with before and uses this to predict what other content they might like.

I’ll explain it in very simple terms with an analogy. Consider a maths problem where you have to work out the next number in a sequence. If you have the sequence 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 you can predict that the next number would be 12 based on the preceding numbers each having a difference of 2. When you analyse the data (the sequence of numbers) you can identify a pattern (add 2 each time) then apply that pattern to work out the next number (add 2 to 10 to get 12).

In practice, the kind of analysis machine learning algorithms do is much more complex (social media posts aren’t numbers and don’t have simple relationships with each other like adding or subtracting) but the principle is the same. Work out the pattern in the data and you can then extrapolate from it.

The big downside to these algorithms is that since the rules behind their decision making are not explicitly programmed and are instead based on data it can be difficult to figure out why they produce the outputs they do, making them a kind of “black box” system. When machine learning algorithms are given more and more data, it becomes exponentially harder for humans to reason about their outputs.

Training Data and Models

Another term you’ll come across is “training” or talking about how an AI is “trained”. Training data refers to the data that is used to train the model. The process of training is the statistical analysis and pattern recognition I talked about above. It enables the algorithm to transform a dataset (collections of images and text) into a statistical model that works like a computer program to take inputs (a text prompt) to produce outputs (images).

As a general rule, the bigger the dataset used for training, the more accurate the outputs of the resulting trained model. Once a model is created, the format of the data is completely different to that of the training data. The model is also many orders of magnitude smaller than the original training data.

Text-to-image model AKA AI image generator, generative AI

Text-to-image model is the technical term for these AI image generators:

DALL-E (OpenAI)

Midjourney

Adobe Firefly

Google Imagen

Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

The technology uses a type of machine learning called deep learning (I won’t go into this here. If you’d like to read more; good luck. It’s very technical). The term text-to-image is simple enough. Given a text prompt, the model will generate an image to match the description.

Stable Diffusion

Stable diffusion is different from other image generators in that its source code is publically available. Anyone with the right skills and hardware can run this. I don’t think I’d be incorrect in saying that this is the main reason why AI art has become so widespread online since stable diffusion’s release in 2022. For better or worse, open-sourcing this code has democratised AI image generation.

I won’t go deep into how stable diffusion actually works because I don’t really understand it myself but I will talk about the process of acquiring training data and training the models it uses to generate images.

What data is used?

I already talked about training data but what actually is it? And where does it come from? In order to answer this I’m going to take you down several rabbit holes.

LAION-5B

Taking stable diffusion as an example, it uses models trained on various datasets made available by German non-profit research group LAION (Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network). The biggest of these datasets is LAION-5B which is refined down to several smaller datasets (~2 billion images) based on language. They describe LAION-5B as “a dataset of 5,85 billion CLIP-filtered image-text pairs”. Okay. What does “CLIP-filtered image-text pairs” mean?

CLIP

OpenAI’s CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) is (you guessed it) another machine learning algorithm that has been trained to label images with the correct text. Given an image of a dog, it should label that image with the word “dog”. It does a little bit more than this as well. When an image is analysed with CLIP it can output a file called an embedding. This embedding contains a list of words or phrases and a confidence score from 0 to 1 based on how confident CLIP is that the text describes the image. An image of a park that happens to show a dog in the background would have a lower confidence score for the text “dog” than a close-up image of a dog. When you get to the section on prompting, it will become clear how this ends up working in image generators.

As I mentioned before, the more images you have in the training data, the better the model will work. The researchers at OpenAI make that clear in their paper on CLIP. They explain how previous research into computer vision didn’t produce very accurate results due to the small datasets used for training, and the datasets were so small because of the huge amount of manual labour involved in curating and labelling them. (The previous dataset they compare CLIP’s performance to, ImageNet, contains a mere 14 million images.) Their solution was to use data from the internet instead. It already exists, there’s a huge amount of it and it’s already labelled thanks to image alt text. The only thing they’d need to do is download it.

It’s not stated in the research paper exactly which dataset CLIP was trained on. All it says is that “CLIP learns from text–image pairs that are already publicly available on the internet.” Though according to LAION, CLIP was trained on an unreleased version of LAION-400M, an earlier text-image pair dataset.

Common Crawl

The data in LAION-5B itself comes from another large dataset made available by the non-profit Common Crawl which “contains raw web page data, metadata extracts, and text extracts” from the publicly accessible web. In order to pull out just the images, LAION scanned through the HTML (the code that makes up each web page) in the Common Crawl dataset to find the bits of the code that represent images (<img> tags) and pulled out the URL (the address where the image is hosted online and therefore downloadable from) and any associated alternative text, or “alt text”.

A tangent on the importance of image alt text

Alt text is often misused on the web. Its intended purpose is to describe images for visually impaired users or if the image is unable to be loaded. Let’s look at an example.

This image could have the alt text: “A still image from the film Back to the Future III depicting Doc Brown and Marty McFly. They are stood outside facing each other on a very bright sunny day. Doc Brown is trying to reassure a sceptical looking Marty by patting him on the shoulder. Marty is wearing a garish patterned fringed jacket, a red scarf and a white stetson hat. The DeLorean time machine can be seen behind them.” Good. This is descriptive.

But it could also have the alt text: “Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox in Back to the Future III” Okay but not very specific.

Or even: “Back to the Future III: A fantastic review by John Smith. Check out my blog!” Bad. This doesn’t describe the image. This text would be better used as a title for a web page.

Alt text can be extremely variable in detail and quality, or not exist at all, which I’m sure will already be apparent to anyone who regularly uses a screen reader to browse the web. This casts some doubt on the accuracy of CLIP analysis and the labelling of images in LAION datasets.

CLIP-filtered image-text pairs

So now, coming back to LAION-5B, we know that “CLIP-filtered image-text pairs” means two things. The images were analysed with CLIP and the embeddings created from this analysis were included in the dataset. Then these embeddings were used to check that the image caption matched what CLIP identified the image as. If there was no match, the image was dropped from the dataset.

But LAION datasets themselves do not contain any images

So how does this work? LAION states on their website:

LAION datasets are simply indexes to the internet, i.e. lists of URLs to the original images together with the ALT texts found linked to those images. While we downloaded and calculated CLIP embeddings of the pictures to compute similarity scores between pictures and texts, we subsequently discarded all the photos. Any researcher using the datasets must reconstruct the images data by downloading the subset they are interested in. For this purpose, we suggest the img2dataset tool.

In order to train a model for use with stable diffusion, you would need to go through a LAION dataset with img2dataset and download all the images. All 240 terabytes of them.

LAION have used this argument to wiggle out of a recent copyright lawsuit. The Batch reported in June 2023:

LAION may be insulated from claims of copyright violation because it doesn’t host its datasets directly. Instead it supplies web links to images rather than the images themselves. When a photographer who contributes to stock image libraries filed a cease-and-desist request that LAION delete his images from its datasets, LAION responded that it has nothing to delete. Its lawyers sent the photographer an invoice for €979 for filing an unjustified copyright claim.

Deduplication

In a dataset it’s usually not desirable to have duplicate entries of the same data, but how do you ensure this when the data you’re processing is as huge as the entire internet? Well… LAION admits you kinda don’t.

There is a certain degree of duplication because we used URL+text as deduplication criteria. The same image with the same caption may sit at different URLs, causing duplicates. The same image with other captions is not, however, considered duplicated.

Another reason why reposting art sucks

If you’ve been an artist online for a while you’ll know all about reposts and why so many artists hate them. From what I’ve seen in my time online, the number of times an artist’s work is reposted on different sites is proportional to their online reach or influence (social media followers, presence on multiple sites etc). The more well known an artist becomes, the more their art is shared and reposted without permission. It may also be reposted legitimately, say if an online news outlet ran a story on them and included examples of their art. Whether consensual or not, this all results in more copies of their art out there on the web and therefore, in the training data. As stated above, if the URL of the image is different (the same image reposted on a different website will have a different URL), to LAION it’s not considered duplicated.

Now it becomes clear how well known digital artists such as Sam Yang and Loish have their styles easily imitated with these models - their art is overrepresented in the training data.

How do I stop my art being used in training data?

Unfortunately for models that have already been trained on historic data from LAION/Common Crawl, there is no way to remove your art and no way to even find out if your art has been used in the training.

Unfortunately again, simply deleting your art from social media sites might not delete the actual image from their servers. It will still be accessible at the same URL as when you originally posted it. You can test this by making an image post on the social media site you want to test. When the image is posted, right click the image and select “open image in new tab”. This will show you the URL of the image in the address bar. Keep this tab open or otherwise keep a record of this URL. Then go back and delete the post. After the post is deleted, often you will still be able to view the image at the URL that you saved.

If you have your own website where you host your art you can delete your images, or update their URLs so that they are no longer accessible from the URLs that were previously in web crawl data.

HTTP Headers

On your own website you can also use the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header to prevent bots from crawling your website for training data. These values can be used:

X-Robots-Tag: noai

X-Robots-Tag: noimageai

X-Robots-Tag: noimageindex

The img2dataset tool is used to download images from datasets made available by LAION. The README states that by default img2dataset will respect the above headers and skip downloading from websites that use them. Although it must be noted this can be overridden, so if an unscrupulous actor wants to scrape your images without your consent, there is no technical reason they cannot do this.

Glaze

If you can’t prevent your images from being crawled, you can prevent all new art that you post from being useful in future models that are trained from scratch by using Glaze. Glaze is a software tool that you can run your art through to protect it from being copied by image generators. It does this by “poisoning” the data in the image that is read by machine learning code while keeping the art looking the same to human eyes.

Watermarks

This defence is a bit of a long shot but worth a try. You may be able to get your art filtered out of training data by adding an obvious watermark. One column included in the LAION dataset is pwatermark which is the probability that the image contains a watermark, calculated by a CLIP model trained on a small subset of clean and watermarked images. Images were then filtered out of subsequent datasets using a threshold for pwatermark of 0.8, which compared to the threshold for NSFW (0.3) and non-matching captions (also 0.3) is pretty high. This means that only images with the most obvious watermarks will be filtered out.

Prompt engineering and how to spot AI art

We’ve covered how AI image generators are trained so now let’s take all that and look at how they work in practice.

Artifacts

You’ve probably gotten annoyed by JPEG compression artifacts or seen other artists whine about them but what is an artifact? A visual artifact is often something unwanted that appears in an image due to technologies used to create it. JPEG compression artifacts appear as solid colour squares or rectangles where there should be a smooth transition from one colour to another. They can also look like fuzziness around high contrast areas of an image.

I’d describe common mistakes in AI image generations as artifacts - they are an unwanted side effect of the technology used to produce the image. Some of these are obvious and pretty easy to spot:

extra or missing fingers or otherwise malformed hands

distorted facial features

asymmetry in clothing design, buttons or zips in odd places

hair turning into clothing and vice versa

nonsense background details or clothing patterning

disconnected horizon line, floor or walls. This often happens when opposite sides are separated by an object in the foreground

Some other artifacts are not strange-looking, but become obvious tells for AI if you have some experience with prompting.

Keyword bleeding

Often if a colour is used in the text prompt, that colour will end up being present throughout the image. If it depicts a character and a background, both elements will contain the colour.

The reason for this should be obvious now that we know how the training data works. This image from LAION demonstrates it nicely:

This screenshot shows the search page for clip-retrieval which is a search tool that utilises an image-text pair dataset created using CLIP. You will see the search term that was entered is “blue cat” but the images in the results contain not just cats that are blue, but also images of cats that are not blue but there is blue elsewhere in the image eg a blue background, a cat with blue eyes, or a cat wearing a blue hat.

To go on a linguistics tangent for a second, part of the above effect could be due to English not having different adjective forms depending on the noun it’s referring to. For example in German when describing a noun the form of the adjective must match the gender of the noun it’s describing. In German, blue is blau, cat is Katze. “Blue cat” would be “blaue Katze”. Since Katze is feminine, the adjective blau must use the feminine ending e. The word for dog is masculine so blau takes the ending er, making it “blauer Hund”. You get the idea.

When a colour is not mentioned in a prompt, and no keyword in the prompt implies a specific colour or combination of colours, the generated images all come out looking very brown or monochrome overall.

Keyword bleeding can have strange effects depending on the prompt. When using adjectives to describe specific parts of the image in the prompt, both words may bleed into other parts of the image. When I tried including “pointed ears” in a prompt, all the images depicted a character with typical elf ears but the character often also had horns or even animal ears as well.

All this seems obvious when you consider the training data. A character with normal-looking ears wouldn’t usually be described with the word “ears” (unless it was a closeup image showing just the person’s ears) because it’s a normal feature for someone to have. But you probably would mention ears in an image description if the character had unusual ears like an elf or catgirl.

Correcting artifacts

AI artifacts can be corrected however, with a process called inpainting (also known as generative fill). This is done by taking a previously generated image, masking out the area to be replaced, then running the generation process again with the same or slightly modified prompt. It can also be used on non AI generated images. Google Pixel phones use a kind of generative fill to remove objects from photographs. Inpainting is a little more involved than just prompting as it requires editing of the input image and it’s not offered by most free online image generators. It’s what I expect Adobe Firefly will really excel at as it’s already integrated into image editing software (if they can iron out their copyright issues…)

Why AI kinda sucks

Since AI image generation is built on large scale statistical analysis, if you’re looking to generate something specific but uncommon you’re not going to have much luck. For example using “green skin” in a prompt will often generate a character with pale skin but there will be green in other parts of the image such as eye colour and clothing due to keyword bleeding.

No matter how specific you are the generator will never be able to create an image of your original character. You may be able to get something that has the same general vibe, but it will never be consistent between prompts and won’t be able to get fine details right.

There is a type of fine-tuning for stable diffusion models called LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) that can be used to generate images of a specific character, but of course to create this, you need preexisting images to use for the training data. This is fine if you want a model to shit out endless images of your favourite anime waifu but less than useless if you’re trying to use AI to create something truly original.

Some final thoughts

The more I play around with stable diffusion the more I realise that the people who use it to pretend to be a human artist with a distinctive style are using it in the most boring way possible. The most fun I’ve personally had with image generation is mixing and matching different “vibes” to churn out ideas I may not have considered for my own art. It can be a really useful tool for brainstorming. Maybe you have a few different things you’re inspired by (eg a clothing style or designer, a specific artist, an architectural style) but don’t know how to combine them. An image generator can do this with ease. I think it’s an excellent tool for artistic research and generating references.

All that being said, I strongly believe use of AI image generation for profit or social media clout is unethical until the use of copyrighted images in training data is ceased.

I understand how this situation has come about. Speaking specifically about LAION-5B the authors say (emphasis theirs):

Our recommendation is … to use the dataset for research purposes. … Providing our dataset openly, we however do not recommend using it for creating ready-to-go industrial products, as the basic research about general properties and safety of such large-scale models, which we would like to encourage with this release, is still in progress.

Use of copyrighted material for research falls under fair use. The problem comes from third parties making use of this research data for commerical purposes, which should be a violation of copyright. So far, litigation against AI companies has not made much progress in settling this.

I believe living artists whose work is used to train AI models must be fairly compensated and the law must be updated to enforce this in a way that protects independent artists (rather than building more armour for huge media companies).

The technology is still new and developing rapidly. Changes to legislation tend to be slow. But I have hope that a solution will be found.

References

“Adobe Firefly - Free Generative AI for Creatives.” Adobe. Accessed 28 Jan 2024.

https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/firefly.html

Andrew. "Stable Diffusion prompt: a definitive guide.” Stable Diffusion Art. 4 Jan 2024.

https://stable-diffusion-art.com/prompt-guide/#Anatomy_of_a_good_prompt

Andrew. “Beginner’s guide to inpainting (step-by-step examples).” Stable Diffusion Art. 24 September 2023.

https://stable-diffusion-art.com/inpainting_basics/

AUTOMATIC1111. “Stable Diffusion web UI. A browser interface based on Gradio library for Stable Diffusion.” Github. Accessed 15 Jan 2024

https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui

“LAION roars.” The Batch newsletter. 7 Jun 2023.

https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/the-story-of-laion-the-dataset-behind-stable-diffusion/

Beaumont, Romain. “Semantic search at billions scale.” Medium. 31 Mar, 2022

https://rom1504.medium.com/semantic-search-at-billions-scale-95f21695689a

Beaumont, Romain. “LAION-5B: A new era of open large-scale multi-modal datasets.” LAION website. 31 Mar, 2022

https://laion.ai/blog/laion-5b/

Beaumont, Romain. “Semantic search with embeddings: index anything.” Medium. 1 Dec, 2020

https://rom1504.medium.com/semantic-search-with-embeddings-index-anything-8fb18556443c

Beaumont, Romain. “img2dataset.” GitHub. Accessed 27 Jan 2024.

https://github.com/rom1504/img2dataset

Beaumont, Romain. “Preparing data for training.” GitHub. Accessed 27 Jan 2024.

https://github.com/rom1504/laion-prepro/blob/main/laion5B/usage_guide/preparing_data_for_training.md

“CLIP: Connecting text and images.” OpenAI. 5 Jan 2021.

https://openai.com/research/clip

“AI.” Cambridge Dictionary. Accessed 27 Jan 2024.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ai?q=AI

“Common Crawl - Overview.” Common Crawl. Accessed 27 Jan 2024.

https://commoncrawl.org/overview

CompVis. “Stable Diffusion. A latent text-to-image diffusion model.” GitHub. Accessed 15 Jan 2024

https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion

duskydreams. “Basic Inpainting Guide.” Civitai. 25 Aug 2023.

https://civitai.com/articles/161/basic-inpainting-guide

Gallagher, James. “What is an Image Embedding?.” Roboflow Blog. 16 Nov 2023.

https://blog.roboflow.com/what-is-an-image-embedding/

"What Is Glaze? Samples, Why Does It Work, and Limitations." Glaze. Accessed 27 Jan 2024.

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/what-is-glaze.html

“Pixel 8 Pro: Advanced Pro Camera with Tensor G3 AI.” Google Store. Accessed 28 Jan 2024.

https://store.google.com/product/pixel_8_pro

Schuhmann, Christoph. “LAION-400-MILLION OPEN DATASET.” 20 Aug 2021.

https://laion.ai/blog/laion-400-open-dataset/

Stability AI. “Stable Diffusion Version 2. High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models.” Github. Accessed 15 Jan 2024

https://github.com/Stability-AI/stablediffusion

#ai art #stable diffusion #machine learning #this got really long sorry i hope it still makes sense #i try to explain some very technical stuff that i dont fully understand myself so #if ive got anything wildly wrong pls let me know and i'll update #my writing

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