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shotmrmiller · 1 month

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ik i've heard of penpals with cod but like getting simon as your dedicated pal for say, college or something would be terrible.

at first he's reluctant. why would he talk to some civvie that hasn't a clue about what goes on in the world he lives in? probably thinks him a recruiter or something, not a man who has removed the skin off of another just for a name of an enemy.

john tells him to suck it up, it's not like it can kill him.

simon gets the letter and it's... entertaining. you write, almost illegibly, that you really don't want to do this, that if it wasn't such a hefty percent of your grade you wouldn't even have bothered.

nothing but a poor man fighting a rich man's war. like some puppet, manipulated by a more powerful force-- not a single decision nor thought your own.

interesting. he hasn't been talked down to like this since his days as a private. granted, if you knew what he looked like you would've probably swallowed your own tongue but that's neither here nor there.

he chuckles under his breath, and picks up the envelope.

the stamp has a waterfall on it and it says harrison wright falls.

american.

he writes that you're right. he's nothing but a muppet with a hand up his arse. but what's got you so upset over the military? not like you suffer the consequences sitting pretty in your cozy home. the hardest battle you've ever fought is a school project.

the letter you send back has him rumbling with laughter. you're furious. he can see one too many holes from where the pen tore through the paper in your rage, and some words you crossed out with a singular line.

listen, asshole, you falling for the UK military propaganda is not my fault. no one made you sign up, idiot.

you continue on about him being a murderer which he gives a small hum to because you've no idea how right you are. simon vaguely wonders if you'd still write him if you knew just how many necks he's snapped with his bare hands.

you're quite abrasive, a little spitfire that holds nothing back, and it makes him achingly curious to know just who you are.

he pulls up your info on his personal laptop, and can feel his cock stirring just from your driver's license photo alone.

cute. very cute. you look soft, kind. a gentle ㅤsmile graces your lips. he almost doubts that the person on his screen is you, but the signature on your license and the letters you've sent is the exact same.

so very interesting. steel concealed beneath velvet.

he taps his fingers on the surface of his desk as he gazes at your charming, lovely countenance. pretty as a peach.

his chair creaks under him as he reaches for a pen.

simon's kept all your letters, the paper worn and almost in tatters from the amount of times he's read them-- ink smudged from him running his bare fingertips over each hateful word.

he can't wait for next leave; simon's heard that ricketts glen state park is beautiful during the fall.

#call of duty #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #cod mw2 #cod mwii #simon riley x reader

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empressxmachina · 9 months

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"The Business"

"You could squeeze a finger through that peephole and get me if you're so mad, but you haven't. You could, and yet you won't. Why?"

I was looking for stock photos and came across this guy, and then a whole plot prompt wrote itself in my head.

TL;DR: Esteban has little to lose, and he eventually gains more than enough from yet another problematic decision in his life, only now under the eyes and thumb of a six-foot-something (out of high heels) tigress and her team that barely reach his ankles if that.

A bit longer:

A life of endless loss and bad decisions led Esteban Gutierrez to what looked like a quick yet high-paying physical study on paper. The free alcohol at the initial interview should've been a red flag, but he was already off his rocker when he arrived, so nothing seemed awry in his eyes. With his grit and tough-skinned but chipped attitude, a particular senior "something" Lidia liked what she saw, and perhaps using her statuesque form to her advantage, she was able to draw in a new pet to play with. Sometime down the line, several interviews, background examinations, and nights of conditioning to post-training aftercare cycles later, the big dog wanted to bite back... again... as if the embedded shock apparatus just wouldn't be used again.

This picture was almost just the left half, but then you wouldn't be able to fully see how little of a fuck Miss Lidia cared, standing her ground with a force that could break that glass even more. We stan Amazons in this facility. I assume she's the Makima to Esteban's Denji, except without the [REDACTED]. All the while, that tiny blur of a welder in the back isn't paid enough.

Surely, I'll never come back to these two again. But if I were to, then maybe I'd collect content in this gallery.

Shedding the Blood of the Covenant, huh? ~Autodesk Sketchbook ~big man Esteban ~"Forklift" -Image by asier_relampagoestudio on Freepik ~[Lidia's upper half] "Young businesswoman standing in balcony drinking coffee holding smartphone in hand" - Image by Freepik ~[Lidia's lower half] "Young businessman shaking hand with businesswoman in front of modern building" - Image by Freepik ~"Close-up of glass door" - Image by evening_tao on Freepik ~"Hydroponics lab room on spacecraft with white circle podium empty3d rendering" - Image by vanitjan on Freepik ~"Portrait of a young worker at a large metalworking plant." - Image by standret on Freepik ~"Fire sparks from metal welding, iron cutting or fireworks." - Image by upklyak on Freepik ~[orange lift] Alf van Beem, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons ~warehouse ~gold mech armor

Circa October 2022.

Yes, I know lifts like that can't go that high. Do you know what else isn't realistic (yet)? Giants via secret serums. 😐

Obligatory Inspo Callouts: -Pacific Rim, among other mecha/Gundam/big monster content, but I liked its sizing a lot. Happy 10 years! 🥳 -GIANTLANDS by Angel because I have taste, and I liked the choice in size ratio, too.

#g/t #my art #weapon of choice #sw #giant male #look at this game of chicken #big mad... and little mad #photo manipulation #collage

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smellyprincetm · 9 months

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FUCKING HELL

#i gotta complain cause ik every1 in my life is tired of this #my fuckin ex is being annoying as fuck #that motherfucker deleted all photos of me(as he should) but left the comments ive made #just to have a narrative of me being a weird ex who still longs for him WHEN I LITERALLY TOOK THE BREAKUP AS A GOOD THING #cause IT WAS A GOOD THING.#but he lied and manipulated fuckinh everything and I JUST KNOW that he lied to his friends about me #we were supposed to be friends but im cutting fucking all contact. he can eat shit and die for all i care.#THEN he lies about not having my stuff. i know he does. for fucks sake just give them back so i can forget about you.#i never want to have you in my life again.#IM SO FUCKING ANGRY AND DISGUSTED #he just used me lmao #you couldve at least lied a little better. if youre gonna cheat and do me dirty OWN IT. dont be a fucking pussy.#IM SO DONE WITH THIS ASSHOLE SERIOUSLY #holy shit you could at least be a DECENT FUCKING HUMAN BEING AND COMMUNICATE #i was open with you. i told opened up to you. i understood you. i broke MY OWN BOUNDARIES FOR YOU. I WOULDVE DIED FOR YOU.#just for you to do this. with all love i hope you die. in the most painful way imaginable.#YOU KNEW THIS WAS THE WORST THING YOU COULD DO TO ME. YOU JUST PLAYED A STUPID EMOTIONAL GAME WITH ME.#FOR WHAT. FOR KICKS??? GLAD YOU GOT THEM.#apparently my fwb is gonna come w me to scare him lmaooo what the fuck #he has a strange thing towards owning me so i think he will be more than happy to piss off my ex lol

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ms-demeanor · 6 months

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Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

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