winterpaladin

This turned up in my ask box recently. I've masked the sender's identity.

Sometimes when I chat with an AI, I think of HIGH WIZARDRY and wonder if we as a species - for the first time - are at the dawn of another Earthbound species gaining consciousness, and like Dairine, whether we're being proper guardians. This isn't a calcified belief but just a random idea that flickered to mind. Wondering - as the writer who thought it up decades ago - what you think, if anything.

I think what I described in HW is absolutely nothing like we're currently seeing unfold on this planet. What's being poorly constructed here—while we watch from day to day—is a mechanism hurriedly and incompetently trained by other human beings to operate on top of a platform constructed of greed and theft. There are no new beings or intelligences being born here. If there were, they would be quickly declared to be "owned" by these billionaires, and hence their slaves. Meanwhile, the platforms' owners have already made it plain that once they control its source completely enough, they intend to sell intelligence to you, metered. ...If you can afford it. If you can't? Wow, sucks being you.

...Nor should I have to point you to cites for this. They're out there in plain English. Even Google, poor denatured creature that it is now, can find them. But there's still hope these people's intentions will never come to pass, due to their own overarching greed.

Meanwhile: "chat mode" interaction with this soulless, cash-grasping, unguardrailed machinery will do you no good. People have already died of it. I don't want anybody to do so on my watch, unwarned. So please stop.

If you realize you messed something up, and your immediate response is, "I won't undo that. No one will notice..."

The RIGHT NOW is the ideal time to take a little break. Turn off the iron. Turn off the sewing machine. Go outside. Eat a piece of toast. Drink some water. Look at a cat. Walk away for like ten minutes.

Don't talk yourself into ignoring something you'll regret ignoring just because you have momentum going.

If its a mistake in crochet I will only frog if its within 1 row. If I didn't notice it for hours and hours and its structured and the pattern works, I'm not frogging.

(Though some of us would riposte with "It's even better when you know your editor will NOT approve." ...And this too is true.) 😄

(CLOSE-UPS, NO BG+FILTER, AND SPEEDPAINT UNDER THE CUT!)

She’s so precious to me, I wish her spot in The Third Rail was more developed where she had a band in the background as she’s in the spotlight, I feel like they could’ve done so much more with her and it would be cool to see NPCs that would perform with her on the stage.

Happy Pride Month

(this came out of a conversation in the comments on a previous post about an author threatening to stop updating a fic because of lack of engagement)

So there’s this idea that fic writers should write for themselves and not care too much about stats or engagement,

and i totally get the sentiment behind that. if writing becomes entirely about stats and external validation, something important does get lost - creative freedom and joy, conviction in your own writing

but i also think:

“i write for myself, but i post for others.”

because posting fic is not only self-expression. it’s social. ao3 is called an archive, but emotionally it often functions as a community space.

people post for connection, for participation, for others to bear witness to their pain and trauma and grief,

and i don’t think most people are asking to be admired so much as acknowledged. there’s something deeply human about wanting another person to encounter something that mattered to you and go:

“ok, yeah, I see what you were trying to say. I see you.”

especially because fanfic is often people processing very real feelings through fictional characters at a safe distance, one step removed,

and then uploading that deeply personal thing into a shared archive and hoping somebody else might connect with it.

And i think that’s why it hurts so much when you summon up the courage and post a fic into the void and you get nothing back,

and then it’s like,

And early on, one of the deuteragonists is a little weirded out when the lettuce in the fridge says that it's going to go bad soon, so it should probably be eaten before long.

Eventually, the characters come to terms with it because death and eating is just part of how life works, but it was still off-putting at the start of her wizardly career. (The other main character, however, has his own issues with being good at talking with machines and stone, and how they have a lot to say about how they're treated.)