— S1E03, Jiyi Guanli Ju.

The two friends!! Ecthelion and Glorfindel 😁😁

Both are SO cute 🥰🥰

I'm finding it immensely helpful to read books about AI, because my past grumblings of "it's bad for the environment" really pale in comparison to what I'm learning.

But im not finding it easier to talk about AI with the people in my life who use it. The evils are both enormous and complex. I cannot, on the spot and in casual conversation, recite the colonial and political history that led to entire towns in Chile being devastated by AI data centers. It is unseemly to bring up how many women have had miscarriages because of lack of access to drinking water worsened by data center usage in places like Uruguay. How racist surveillance of the public in South Africa has been used as training data for AI companies. How AI companies would not limit their use of drinking water even during Arizona's most severe drought in history. How this whole paragraph isn't even scratching the surface of what is evil about AI companies.

It's actually so much harder now to articulate my absolute hatred or to know how to approach these conversations.

EDIT: So far this year I've read, in order of quality/relevance:

planning to read these next:

some false memory merch illustrations; unnoticeably, i half cleaned the first two but im not redrawing all that

Character designs of "False Memory" (Flint Sugar & Studio Tumble / China).

do we think the blood that ran deng gave hui huo to drink when they first meet is ran deng's own blood, or blood from guan chao's oyster? (if an oyster, what's the pearl? is the pearl guan chao's pain? the inside of the elevator looks so nacreous...) there's something tragic about either option — ran deng sacrificing life/blood for others (living up to his namesake, a buddha), or guan chao's pain being the only source/wellspring of life in the desert (for all that ran deng gives himself to it in the end)

as a sidebar — an oyster in the desert is a fish out of water; i found it so moving that we see in the special ED that the desert was once a sea (+ a happy oyster... there's something equally tragic about that oyster suffering beneath the sun without reprieve)

wow, what an awesome donghua, i wonder what episode 4 is about!

i was then shot 57 times.

shout out to Guan Chao for not letting being dead stop him from having suicidal ideation.

Pearl

Elwing who looks exactly like her father my beloved. Dior clone in face and how it increases the heavy weight upon her shoulders but also comforts her, in that she can look into the mirror and see her father, in that she cant forget his face for it is her own, who pretends she is speaking to her father in the mirror. Elwing who looks nothing like her mother and it pains her immensely, Elwing who does not remember her mother's face and asks the survivors of the kinslaying what she looked like, trying to imagine her mother from these descriptions, Elwing looking in the mirror and crying because there is no trace of her mother, Elwing who wears her hair as her mother did. Elwing who meets Nimloth in Valinor. Elwing who has all the time in the world to memorize her mother's face

Stop making Elenwë the paper-thin image of a good (white) mother. Give her a character other than the peaceful good girl motherly ghost.

What if she’s only a few inches shorter or taller than Turgon? What if she’s a better architect? What if she’s more violent and more likely to support the most destructive option? What if she isn’t even an architect? What if she’s very charismatic as a person and was the reasons the lords of Gondolin even became friends with Turgon? What if she isn’t religious? What if she had issues with having a child? What if she wanted to bring Idril along know the risks and Turgon’s wish to stay behind? What if she hates Tirion with all her core and wanted them to move to Valimar (forgot the name)? What if she clenched onto the things she considers hers and never wants to let them go? What if she wanted power and to rule? What if she hated Fingolfin or Fingon or Aredhel? What if she would violently argue with Turgon over their opinions and loved him anyway? What if.

the greatest proof that no elves survived or were reimbodied from utumno in elf shape is that there was apparently nobody to stare down manwe and go "Your most beloved and redeemed brother? The one who stuck his fingers in my intestines to hear me scream? While giggling? That brother?"

I need these tags because they are so right.