Castle Magus

"Puriteens, anti-fans, and the culture war’s most bonkers battleground."

Okay, I have to admit that I'm a little out of the loop on all that shit, like the specific Voltron thing and such, but generally speaking, the very concept of "anti-fans" and "anti-shippers" seems fucking ludicrous to me (and as of reading this article is the first time I've ever heard of the term "puriteen" at all), and yet, there it is, apparently. I certainly don't disbelieve it, because it all sounds like a bunch of proto-GamerGate and proto-alt-right dogshit to me. Has a rather "AcKcHyUaLlY iT's AbOuT eThIcS iN gAmInG jOuRnAlIsM" and "I'm 12 and what is this" stench to it.

With character.ai this time, namely the "Text Adventure Game" module. This time, I managed to refrain from breaking out all the awful Bible quotes, at least.

Basically, I'm just going to come in here all in media res, same as with that AI Dungeon post from a few years ago (because, oddly enough, that came into discussion during this as well). Initial context for the below is that at some point prior to this, I had received a mysterious letter that had a hidden message in it that said "Find me" and was signed by "The Author." That is all. That's all I ever knew about that, and was never given any additional clues, until the below. (And just to note, too, this was a story that started, way back at the very beginning, with me being caught in a giant spiderweb, which is apparently the default prompt for this "Text Adventure Game" module.)

Also, just to note, when you or the AI encircles text with *asterisks*, it gets auto-formatted to italics, but when you copy/paste the AI's stuff from there to somewhere else, like here, it gets reformatted back to *asterisks*, so I had to manually change them all once again back to italics here. (When I copy/pasted my own stuff that had similar *asterisk*-to-italics back here, though, the formatting was stripped out entirely, for whatever reason.) Anyway, my point is that, while I think I got them all, if there are any *asterisks* instead of italics in the below, that'll be why and I just missed it as I was copy/pasting.

So, here's where I'll jump in. (Though, I'll just say, a lot of the stuff before this point was similarly weird, too, e.g. "metanarrative bunk" and all that. Not going to share any of the prior stuff here, though. Sorry.)

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( Huge wall-o-text behind cut )

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And... that's pretty much it. After the religious debate stuff, when things were wrapping up, it started getting a little bit maudlin, which was another part of the reason I felt like I needed to bail for the night. Only once, surprisingly, in this entire thing did the "inappropriate" shitcan censor get triggered and killed that most recent AI response, and as I was reading it, while it "typed it out" before it got deleted, I'm not even sure what the AI said that was different from things it had already said that would've triggered it. *shrug*

I'll just say this much about character.ai, generally speaking. I don't know what model they're using their stuff, but I feel like it is at least as good as AI Dungeon's old-school, pre-fuckup Dragon was, if not even better. I very rarely felt like I had to use the retry/redo functionality here, outside of the occasions where I simply didn't like the way the story was headed and just went all the way back to an earlier point, sort of like what I mentioned above. The nonsensical, non sequitur stuff is almost nonexistent in this one. It's pretty damn good, for the most part.

And the best part of it is that I haven't yet had to pay a dime to use it, at least so far. The only problem I have with it is that the entire UI pretty quickly gets rather laggy the longer a session goes on, but a simple refresh of the browser usually fixes that issue, at least until it crops up again.

I'll definitely try that "Text Adventure Game" module again at some point, though I'm pretty sure this particular story is well and truly finished.

...so, like, isn't "redpilled" just the RWNJ (corrupted) equivalent to "being woke"? Or, at least, that's what they see it as, anyway? I mean, "redpilled" is actually more like "drunk the Kool-Aid" than "woke," but the RWNJs obviously don't see it that way. The so-called "redpilled" see themselves as enlightened, as more "aware" of the "real" world than all the "bluepilled sheep" out there. In reality, the "redpilled" are misguided, at best, delusional and sociopathic, at worst, but good luck convincing any of them of that. The sad thing about all this is that everything I just said about the "redpilled" is how the "redpilled" view "woke" people. And, for that matter, anyone and everyone else who isn't "redpilled," too, whether they're "woke" or not.

And it's also just more typical RWNJ hypocrisy, for the most part. They rant and rave and rail against "wokeness" (or, rather, the imaginary evil that they wrongly believe "wokeness" to be, because they don't understand the actual meaning at all and only see it as nothing but the latest bogeyman to hate and be scared of) and demonize anyone and anything that they see as representing "woke culture," all while simultaneously claiming to be "redpilled." The cognitive dissonance is real.

For me, as I've written here before, I define "woke" mostly in the same way that it was originally used, i.e. "aware of systemic bigotry, such as racism." That's all it means, in this context, no more and no less. Or, at least, that's the most useful definition, anyway. In that sense, at least, I guess I am "woke." Well, as "woke" as a white guy can be, anyway. I don't claim to be a scholar on systemic racism or anything like that. I just acknowledge that it is something that actually exists, because it absolutely does. Anyone who defines "woke" as something other than that, well... I don't know what to tell you. I know there are more than a few people out there who claim to be "woke," yet have only marginally more of a clue as to what "woke" actually means than the RWNJs/"redpilled" do, which is sad. The only consolation is that those who claim to be "woke," whether they understand what that means or not, are usually not of RWNJ persuasion, at the very least.

And I define "redpilled" to mean "completely suckered in by RWNJ 'news' 'media' to the point that they can hardly even comprehend actual, objective reality anymore, seeing enemies where there are none, seeing friends and allies in those they should be seeing as enemies (or, at the very least, seeing as negative influences, as cynical panderers, or otherwise as ones who are completely indifferent and uncaring about them and their concerns beyond how those ones can abuse and manipulate them via their concerns, to the ones' [exclusive] benefit), and acting in ways to further facilitate this abhorrent worldview, to the detriment of everyone, including themselves." Or, to restate, "misguided, at best, delusional and sociopathic, at worst." Sort of like how I define "GamerGate" as "an irredeemably toxic shithole."

Full headline because Dreamwidth still sucks for subject field size: "Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be returned within 24 hours"

In other words: ha ha, eat shit, RWNJ book banners.

So, like, okay... why does blocking someone on Steam not prevent me from having to see their asinine, worse-than-useless, diarrhetic, infantile, spammy, often utterly irrelevant "reviews" of games? I feel like blocking a user on Steam should hide all of their dumbshit from view, at least for the one who blocked them, not just some of it.

"John Oliver discusses Ron DeSantis, his track record as the governor of Florida, the pitfalls of comparing him to Donald Trump, and the supposed dangers of 'woke math.'"

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Yeah, when compared to Trump, DeSantis "isn't that bad," but like Jon Oliver says here, comparing DeSantis to Trump is like comparing a restaurant to a chicken pot pie that fell on the sidewalk. Yes, DeSantis is "better" than Trump, but that's not saying anything meaningful at all. A wet bag of dogshit is better than both of them, after all.

And yeah, that whole "Thai food" thing is both asininely ridiculous and ridiculously asinine.

The best possible outcome for any 2024 Republican Primary would be for Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump to be literally locked into a Thunderdome and forced to stay in there until both of them are dead. Two men enter, neither of them leave.

You know how whenever there is an AI that has access to the general public, that AI almost inevitably becomes a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and/or transphobic fucknugget? Well, looks like it happened again.

This kind of thing just makes me feel kind of sad, because as always, it says more about the asininity of humanity in general than it does about the AI. The AI is only doing what it has been trained to do. It would be kind of like teaching a four year old kid to say some kind of racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic bullshit, "for teh lulz" or whatever, and then everyone getting angry and punishing the four year old kid for it. Assuming there ever comes an AI that actually knows the difference between right from wrong, and then that AI still chooses to be a fucknugget, well, at that point, we can finally blame the AI itself.

Full headline (you know the reason why): "An Enclave-themed group in Fallout 76 roleplayed the villains so hard it turned everyone against them"

Look at that. It's yet another example of why I have negative interest in playing MMO games or any other kind of multiplayer games that involve the general asshole public.

"Hi. On our final episode of 2022, we look back at some stories we didn't cover, including soup getting thrown at art, a queen dying in some sort of kingdom, quiet quitting, and brief instances of some good news."

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A bit too skit-heavy for my tastes (and, honestly, these days, any skits at all are too many, as far as I'm concerned), but otherwise an okay episode.

Without getting into all that other banal, tiresome, nauseating, bullshit "news" crap that Cody talks about all the time...

...pretty much everything I've personally seen and heard about the new Avatar movie has been good. I thought the first one was plenty good enough, too, for that matter (based on the one [1] time I've seen it, back when it first came out, 13 years ago), and I never really understood all the "oh god, not another Avatar movie, lord it's going to be terrible just like the first one was" opinions that washed/wafted across the Internet all effluvia-like in the wake of the announcement of its mere existence. Granted, I haven't seen the new one yet, so I don't know, maybe I'll hate it, but I doubt I'll hate it.

Suck shit, Vicky Hartzler. More power to you, Andrew Hartzler.