Creativity is not Optional

Common eider

This needs to be immortalized because it's what made me turn on the sound. And they were right

Was reading a fanfic the other day and realized there was something strangely familiar yet off putting about the way the story was written. The paragraphs are all structured too similarly, there is no rhythm or tension to the phrasing, the characters read too flat and their characterisation was off despite the fact the writer went to pains to describe their character points repeatedly. The character arcs felt weak, with no true evolution - and the adverbs, all the fucking adverbs.

And then I realized I HAD read this author before.

The author was AI

So fucking depressing.

The paragraphs structure goes like this.

Their dress and expression are described in overly florid language. Their mood is also described in the most overblown prose imaginable. They gave a line of dialogue. It fits the storyline vaguely. And then sooooo many adverbs are added after their dialogue, to describe the way they said their line

And ALL the paragraphs are structured the exact same way.

Okay kids buckle up for the INSANE story I just heard from my little brother

**As a disclaimer my brother is a cis straight dude who only dates the most basic white girls you can find. He's very emotionally aware but doesn't linger on his emotions, just processes them and moves on (this is wild to me)**

He calls me on my break just to say hi, that he’s driving back to Denver from visiting his girlfriend, to which I respond “didn’t you break up with your girlfriend (of like a month) last month” and to which he says “yeah I have a new girlfriend, we’ve been together four weeks but I went up to spend the weekend and meet her friends” and I’m like ok great this is already ridiculous

So we’re chatting and I’m teasing him about how he doesn’t sleep with people on first dates and he says that he’s changed his policy, it’s just that he won’t have sex with them if he’d rather be doing something else, so I joke that I’ve had that where I’d rather be watching the show Chernobyl (true) and he says “yeah or watching a movie with my housemate” and I say hey bud that’s kind of gay and he says yeah I actually had a weird gay moment last night

And I go oh???? And he goes yeah, I was at the bar with the girlfriend and some of her friends and one of them was a guy and we were hitting it off, doing a little flirting as you do with your bros at the bar~

And then my cis straight brother goes on to explain that sometimes when you’re out with the homies and you’re having a good time and the vibes are right you just give em a little kiss, like just a kiss on the mouth between bros, “no tongue or anything like that but just to express that you’re close and having a good time”

I’m like “My dude that’s not a thing” and he’s like “between confident straight men it is” and I’m like “NO IT’S NOT"

So there we’ve got my brother having casual queerplatonic relationships with his homies at the bar, and he’s telling me this and I’m obviously speechless, so he goes on and he’s like “so because this guy and I were hitting it off I go in for a little kiss and he fucking swerves me” and I’m like yes my guy but because my brother is actually very good with respecting boundaries he was like “ok man great communication, won’t do it again"

BUT

Apparently my brother and the dude and my brother's GIRLFRIEND who has been there the WHOLE TIME go outside (I assume to have a cigarette but he didn’t tell me that part) and the guy turns to my brother and is like “man I should have kissed you when you offered it” and my brother is like “cool good shit man” like in the most bro way possible and then the guy grabs his face between his hands and just PLANTS a big one on his mouth

And THEN the guy panics and shoves him down on the ground!! And my brother has the normal reaction to being shoved on the ground unexpectedly which is to say “what the FUCK” and the girlfriend says “what the FUCK” and the guy goes “what the FUCK” and leaves

And my brother ended the story there and was musing on it like "this guy obviously has some complexes to work through about his sexuality, no confident straight man kisses another confident straight man and then panics and runs away”

Which took me out at the KNEES lol

And that, dear readers, is the batshit story my brother told me!

OH MY GOD AND

AND

I told my coworker this and they were like I’m actually shipping him and his roommate and I was like HUH because I hadn't considered that and then later my brother sent me a photo of his housemate wearing sexy handcuffs

nice

#WILD#this is so validating for fic writers everywhere#your blorbo Can In Fact Be that oblivious

love the prev tags

(source)

thank you yes, I did need this today

Kontent

Theres no fukin betterer way zum flyen.

why did they start breeding busses to have flat faces. they can't breathe

if you think this

looks better than this

you're part of the problem. I'm so tired of all the excuses like "oh they look cuter!" "why do you care?" THEY CAN'T BREATHE. People intentionally breeding these vehicles to give them health problems because they "like how it looks" makes me so mad

Actually, flat faced buses can breathe fine! This is a case of convergent evolution, but the two types of buses are not genetically related.

Pointed nose buses are decended from trucks, and have their engines located in the front. This requires the larger nose in order to provide the space for the engine as well as adequate ventilation.

Meanwhile, flat nosed buses are actually descended from city buses (which in turn descend from trolleys), and were domesticated due to their greater maneuverability and capacity.

Contrary to popular belief, flat nosed busses typically do not experience breathing problems. Their engines are located in the back of the bus, with a large breathing vent located in the rear.

These buses also have a different structure to accommodate this change, typically including doubled back tires, a different weight distribution, and a change in location of the emergency egress door from the back to the left side.

I used the phrase "waiting on tenterhooks" and then thought "what the hell is a tenterhook".

It's these things! So when you're waiting on tenterhooks, you're stretched tight like a piece of cloth. Very evocative, now that I know what it means.

like 40% of english idioms are just Textiles Again

official linguistics post

goat fight. non-negotiable.

#LISTEn listen most marvel fights feel so contrived and fake and like la-dee-da-superhero#but this one was REAL and had me on the edge of my seat and still does#partially bc of the street clothes not costumes#partially because steve is fighting 1 on 1 and gets stripped of his shield quick#and he has to show like his physical combat skills#and the ACTING on both their parts.. fucking ace#esp chris evans tho like his face looks PANICKED how often do u see captain fucking america panicked??#anyway in this essay i will (tags via @asterlark)

I think it’s also very important that this is a fight in which the characters *actually interact with their environment* in a way that feels real. Like, yes, have superpowers but there’s no cartoon physics involved, no obvious sense that this was filmed on an empty set with a greenscreen and the background was added later, or that they’re filming without even the people they’re fighting being present, just ‘look over here and make a hand gesture’. The shield gets stuck in a car, there’s that awful moment of the knife sliding along the side of the van that cues up with the mounting tension in the soundtrack. Bucky’s arm impacts the pavement and actually dents it, etc. They’re jumping over/behind the cars and getting thrown into them/into the pavement in a way that feels more visceral than just ‘whoosh there was a wire & we CGI’d in the rest’. t has a sense of real world space to it, and that adds to the feeling of real world stakes.

This is one of the few fight scenes I can recall seeing that makes a little knife look like a real threat. Like I am legit scared for Steve when that thing darts in, because he’s not wearing armor and it really feels like the WS could open him up like a can. I feel like movie fight scenes don’t usually hit that note with knives.

It’s worth pointing out that this scene WAS filmed on a actual set with actual asphalt and cars (with fall pads and stuff, but still). They really were interacting with their environment.

But as a fight nerd, there’s one other thing I want to point out about this fight, and it goes back to @mikkeneko’s point about the knife:

This isn’t a magic fight.

Yes, they’re both super soldiers. Yes, WS has a vibranium arm. Yes, Steve has a vibranium shield. But there are no magic blasts going on here. There’s no wuxia and minimal wire-work (mostly protective for the actors).

WS shoots at Steve until he runs out of bullets because that’s the most efficient way to murder him. Steve either dodges or hides his whole body behind his shield because that’s the most efficient way to not get murdered. The shield gets thrown, caught, thrown back, wedged in a car. Then it’s a knife fight. Throughout, it’s really obvious that neither of them are fucking around. WS is trying to just straight-up kill Steve, Steve is trying to not die. No banter. No dick-measuring. No quips.

This fight is brutal, efficient, and not flashy. Steve’s knife defense is textbook, and aside from that cool little flip that was almost too fast to clock, WS’s attacks are textbook. He’s doing his best to control Steve’s defense and open a hole to wedge that knife in. Steve’s doing his best to control that knife hand and keep just enough space between them that he can close those holes before WS can get to them. It’s telling that he’s paying so much attention to the knife that when WS finally gets through his guard, it’s with his empty, vibranium hand. (Still no idea why he tosses him instead of crushing his windpipe though, that was 100% movie logic.)

When Steve does that flying knee at WS, that’s not about flashy martial arts moves, that’s about brutal efficiency. Your knees and elbows are the hardest points on your body. Steve can engage in fisticuffs with normal people; he can knock out hitler over 200 times. He could also break his knuckles on WS’s face before doing any appreciable damage, and we watch him figure that out. So it’s not kung fu, it’s muay thai. It’s krav maga. Those flips aren’t for show - that’s pure Jiujitsu, the ruthless throws that are supposed to segue into joint locks and dislocations. That is the way to take your opponent apart, literally. He was trying to rip WS’s non-vibranium arm out of its socket.

That pile-driver? That was meant to break WS’s neck. A normal person would die instantly if Captain America pulled that WWE shit on them. We are into the gritty shit now. We have two extremely strong, extremely skilled men who are just trying to kill each other because the only way to win this fight is to die last, and it shows.

They scramble for position through the fight. When one move fails, they don’t bother breaking apart before finding the next-most-efficient killing move and trying that. This is what two people who are actually trying to murder each other look like - most street scuffles stay on the ground once they get there and don’t involve this much skill, but we can excuse that because it’s Captain America and the Winter Fucking Soldier. I still recognize the blocking of this fight as a real fight, not a spar. The urgency, breathlessness, the pragmatism, the messy transitions between moves as you just keep trying to improvise faster than the other guy… that’s all correct.

There’s no magic. There are fists, feet, elbows. There’s a shield and there’s a knife - the first and oldest human-made tools of war. There are chokes. There are joint locks. Not a word spoken. And it helps that they are really there - landing on cars, landing on asphalt.

No other MCU fight even comes close unless you’re including the tv shows, because that Daredevil long-shot hallway fight was pretty fucking badass too.

Do kids today even understand why podcasts are called podcasts?

Well, you see, kids, almost twenty years ago Apple produced a portable audio player called – wait, I need to go back further.

Okay, so in the 20th century, the new inventions of radio and television were known as broadcast media – no, wait, that’s not really the start either –

Broadcasting originally refers to throwing, or casting, handfuls of seeds onto prepared ground, typically used with grain crops, which, uh –

– the Agrucultural Revoution, which begain circa 10,000 BC in the Levant, was when humans began preserving seeds for replanting –

Honestly fuck AI for making me have to go on and on defending the dignity of toil like I’m some kind of protestant

stolen off instagram but i laughed so hard when i saw this

hang ten indeed friend

That's too many types of blade to be good at throwing

i love finding out what degrees my mutuals have. like what the fuck do you mean you do law? you’re a doctor who blog

"It's about the product." That sentence right there tells me everything I need to know about this person. Art is NOT about the product; it's about the journey. It's about creation. It's about expression. Capitalism/consumerism has really rotted people's brains to the point where even art has to be commodified, and AI is a symptom of that disease.

Nothing will ever trump learning how to write, how to draw, how to create. You can tell yourself that you're talented and that people like OP will be "outshone" by those using AI to "draw" all you want, anon, but at the end of the day, you lack skill and patience and even the will to try. And the thing that hurts you the most is that no matter how much work you steal, the creators of said work have the power to make more and you do not. You are a thief and a coward.