Inevitable Surrender

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
tenshinokorin
autistichalsin

Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:

  1. Fiction is not reality.
  2. You can enjoy things in fiction that would be awful in the real world. Like playing a murderhobo in a game! In the real world, being or supporting a murderer-thief would be pretty damn awful, while in the game it's just good fun. Same with anything else you choose to do with the pixels on the screen, like kinks that don't affect anyone real, so they're okay in fiction, but would be pretty damn bad in real life.
  3. No one else is responsible for your online experience. They are required not to harass you, but they are not and never will be obligated to not post about ships, kinks, or tropes you dislike just to avoid you seeing them. It's up to you to blacklist words or phrases, block tags, or even block users as needed to avoid seeing content that upsets you.
  4. No one can force you to read anything against your consent. Any content you don't like seeing can be instantly avoided by closing out of the offending post/fic.
  5. You are not owed an online experience free of discomfort.
  6. Nothing that happens in your imagination can ever make you a bad person. Words you write or read about fictional characters will never make you a bad person.
  7. The claim that media consumption influences real-life behavior is intellectually dishonest and serves only to excuse the behavior of real offenders.
  8. Fiction is a safe way to explore horrifying or confusing concepts. Therapists agree that fiction, even (or especially) about taboo topics is a good coping mechanism, especially, but not exclusively, for trauma survivors. Fiction is to adults what play therapy is to children. This doesn't stop being true if the work in question is of a sexual nature.
  9. Sex isn't an inherently worse or better motivation than anything else. A work written to create feelings of arousal isn't dirty, shameful, or in any way less pure than works written to entertain, provoke moral questions, or for other reasons. And worth noting is that multiple purposes can exist in the same story, especially fanfiction.
  10. You aren't entitled to an explanation for why someone reads, writes, or otherwise enjoys certain works, kinks, tropes, ships, etc.
Pinned Post thoughts truths
thebiscuiteternal

Anonymous asked:

When weiting Quark, how did you valance keeping the character likeable with his grey morals? Was it more or less difficult than writing Garak (for the same reasons)?

writergeekrhw answered:

It was definitely tricky. Quark does some pretty terrible things early in the show, notably in “The Passenger” and “Invasive Procedures,” which probably could have made the character deeply unlikeable. I think what mollifies that are a few of things:

  1. Armin is a terrific actor and keeps the character relatable even when doing despicable things.
  2. Quark isn’t doing anything wrong by HIS culture. He’s a very moral Ferengi and we tried to convey to the audience that everything he did was motivated, at least in part, by his culture. Additionally, Quark evolved over time to become more culturally flexible (settling the strike in “Bar Association” for example) and more “good” from a human perspective.
  3. Quark never means to hurt anyone. Even when he arms bad guys or lets them onto the station, he doesn’t directly harm anyone. In his mind, he’s just a merchant providing goods and services and it someone does something bad with those goods and services, well, that’s on them.
  4. Worth noting, Quark has several redeeming qualities. He loves his family. He’s a convivial host and a good listener. He treats his customers relatively well. He’s also the least violent character in the entire cast, barring maybe Jake. And he’s a snappy dresser!
  5. Quark is funny. Viewers will often forgive the sins of funny characters more readily than humorless ones.
  6. Quark’s worse transgressions often backfire on him, making him suffer at least as much as anyone else. This is common with comedic characters and an old trick to keeping them likable.
  7. Quark is, on the balance, more helpful than harmful to the rest of the characters. During the Occupation, Quark helped the Resistance, and while he got paid, he still took tremendous risks on their behalf. In the pilot, Sisko identifies Quark as a key member of the station community, to the point of forcing him to stay. Sisko sees his value and hopefully that helps the audience see it too.

So the creative team spent a good deal of thought and effort on keeping Quark likable despite his misdeeds. I think we succeeded for most viewers, though there are probably many who never warmed to his character.

Still, keeping Quark likable was an effort. It was definitely harder than doing the same for Garak, largely because Garak was recurring and never really a hero. Garak’s moral ambiguity is part of his charm. Quark was a regular and viewers, especially back then, expected series regulars to be “good guys.” That said, we didn’t want Quark to be a pure hero, but we still wanted viewrs to like him. It was definitely, as you say, a balancing act.

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Originally posted by waspstar

livrelady

#that’s a pretty good breakdown!#it’s interesting to mention how by his own cultural standards he is a moral person#because my feeling is that Garak would not feel the same way about himself#he’s done bad things that other Cardassians would agree are bad#entirely regardless of what Federation people would think about them#but ofc what’s fun about them in comparison#is that Garak did them because he believes in a higher cause that justifies compromising himself#and Quark doesn’t particularly have any equivalent motivation#he cares about himself his family and his business and not much else#ds9#<- prev#star trek#one of the things I really like about ds9 is its occasional examinations of how cultures can work against their own people#while garak has done things that are bad and that other cardassians would agree are bad he still did them for cardassian ideals#and quark has numerous episodes where he wrestles with ferengi culture even as someone trying hard to meet its standards#it's not limited to the morally grey crowd or the less 'heroic' cultures either#the federation and bajorans and etc all get this treatment too (X @sunderwight)

Star Trek: DS9-related animated gif still didn't really gel with DS9 myself but ...yeah Quark was definitely one of the characters that I appreciated ...Quark's mother is absolutely golden though
weedle-testaburger
weedle-testaburger

i have this hot take with age verification that I'm not only against it because it's intrusive and gross to adults, I also just don't think it's fair to kids and teens either. preventing kids from seeing anything explicit on the internet is basically just a stepping stone to trying to blinker them to the struggles of marginalised people and understanding the world.

and off the back of that, i have an even hotter take: you won't stop teenagers wanting to see explicit stuff and it's not worth trying to. you should be trying to prevent them interacting with adults who might try and take advantage of them through them sneaking into 18+ spaces, not blocking them from privately figuring out their sexuality

83244genesis

I want to preserve the internet that I enjoyed when I was younger. Maybe that's just nostalgia but I think not letting kids discover weird stuff online is a bit like not letting them play in mud. If you shelter them too much they never develop an immune system or get the enrichment that you had when you were younger. Does clicking a box that says I'm 18 stop anyone? Of course not, but it does make you responsible for what you're viewing, and I think that's a better system than forcing everyone to scan biometrics or some shit just to exist online or anywhere. Don't let privacy be something that our generation and older got to enjoy but they also get to pull up the ladder on and decide that others don't deserve that.

weedle-testaburger

Well said!!

weedle-testaburger

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@curiousauthor exactly! that's the thing, you can't and shouldn't try to police the internet in that kind of repressive way, and less invasive ways of keeping adult and minor spaces apart where it's sensible to are a way better solution than forcing adults to give up extremely sensitive personal info and minors to be babies

thoughts age verification the internet is for porn ...and other things but-- listen: getting online in 1996 was nothing but a blessing for me so I will defend the fuck out of it
faronswoods
kosmogrl

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manwhorewednesdays

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

extremely important information things to keep in mind
letshareapapou
ittybittyvampires

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nuxtamara

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Oh jesus, I thought this person was exaggerating until I dared try this out of morbid curiosity. I hate the state of society 🤮

elfgrove

#and that's why people who think they can use gen ai 'in a smart controlled way' are kidding themselves #it is a tool but it's being used on you not by you #anti ai

Dr. Damien P. Williams (wolven on BSky), "Fascist Bullshit: How ‘Generative AI’ Enacts & Enables Authoritarianism and Eugenics" at the symposium Philosophy, Disability, and Social Change 6 conference, from January 2026

fuck AI potential autoplay
faronswoods
pangur-and-grim

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

spirkkock

my friend just had an art show and they were communicating with the gallerist over email. They could clearly tell that the gallerist was using AI to respond to their emails, but just rolled their eyes and moved on.

and then on the day of the show, my friend asks, "where is the camera I requested?"

gallerist: "you didn't request a camera"

my friend: "I did, and you confirmed that you would have one here."

gallerist: "that isn't true."

and then she proceeded to pull up the email thread, and my friend could see that every single email they had sent had been summarized by AI, and that the gallerist had then had AI write a response to them based on the AI summary, and that the AI had detected that they needed a camera, and confirmed on behalf of the gallerist that they would bring a camera, but because the gallerist had offloaded the work of actually reading and responding, she simply hadn't actually made any note of it herself, therefore didn't bring it, nor did she even know one was needed.

so my friend had done all of this communication about their needs and expectations to be able to make the show possible, and the person whose job it was to read that information and get it done had simply.... not read the information and not done it. because AI.

oddsconvert

My biggest issue with AI currently, not even delving into the pressing environmental issues, is how it's affecting cognition and mental endurance. We are legitimately dumbing ourselves down as a society, people are offloading the most mundane, everyday, minimal-brain power required tasks to AI and it's STUNTING them!

I'm actively watching people around me lose their critical thinking skills, their linguistic ability, their decision making skills - empathy! My parents ask AI everything, and accept it as gospel even when it's blatantly feeding them misinformation or clearly doesn't know.

My brother's girlfriend lost her grandad recently, and her family used AI to write the eulogies and speeches for the funeral - she was CRESTFALLEN - nothing from the heart, no personal words to honour or remember the man she loved! And I work with high school kids, where AI was blocked from their computers in an IT lesson, and they had to write ONE sentence on a simple newspaper article...they spent the hour lesson trying to find ways to bypass the AI block and use chatgpt, rather than write the sentence because its "too hard. I don't know what to write. I ain't reading allat".

https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school/ - Please please read this MIT study on chat gpt's effects on critical thinking - it's terrifying.

"ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study."

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if in a couple decades time, AI use is attributed to links with something like dementia. Your brain operates on a use it or lose it principle, cognitive stimulation is so vital - and too many people are passing the buck to LLM's. I know people who don't know how to even write an email, make decisions, or REPLY TO A FRIENDS MESSAGE without using AI now.

Rant over. AI fucking sucks.

fuck AI