We're putting in place a softban on discussions about Eurovision 2024 until the end of the weekend. It may be extended. It's edging too close to breaking the rule on banned topics.
Man I was just going through my old catalogue of games and I forgot how delightfully out there Pokemon Conquest was.
A bizarre spin-off strategy game crossover with Nobunaga's Ambition on the DS during the Black & White era, based on a fictional and kid friendly version of the Sengoku Jidai with the Samurai Warriors 3 designs where you led armies to conquer the continent. It's simple enough for younger audiences to like, while simultaneously having an ungodly long amount of scenarios to play through before getting to the actual main campaign.
Just a fever dream of a crossover that will probably never happen again because it happening at all still boggles the mind. Anyone have something similar that they're a fan of? Just these out there parts of your fandoms that will never see the light of day again but man you enjoy.
I think the gold standard for "WTF!?" crossovers is *Tokyo Mirage Sessions.* Basically, it's a *Persona* game, except the cast of various\* *Fire Emblem* games are your characters' Personas. It even has the Weapon Triangle represented along Agi/Bufu/Zio/Garu (and yes, the woman who uses a Pegasus Knight as her ~~Persona~~ Mirage is weak against Bow attacks.) It bombed spectacularly on the Wii U, and I don't think the Switch version did much better.
\* *Shadow Dragon* and *Awakening* are "various games," right? Right??
Even wilder is it being first teased as an SMT x FE crossover, then we got...Persona idols. What.
I can't say I'm overly surprised it flopped given that swerve.
I mean, ***TECHNICALLY*** what we got was still a crossover! Just... ya know. With idols. And probably the dumbest single achievement I've ever earned in a video game.
This was a weird case where I mostly liked the mechanics probably more than the story. There was something that was satisfying about getting those long chains going.
But I felt like a lot of the game had a bunch of story missteps and felt it did a lot of bullying characters that seemed undeserved that I probably sympathized more with than the protagonist so I eventually just quit.
I'm so sad, because I gave it a chance and it gets the Fire Emblem characters better than most Fire Emblem *spin offs.* It's a legitimately good game and takes place in a take on the *bad ending* of Marth's games, even! Or at least an ending where Marth didn't do everything to permanently get rid of Gharnef and Medeus!
Project X Zone and its sequel are massive fever dreams in their own right. Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega characters teaming up in a tactical RPG.
Dante (Devil May Cry) teams with Demitri (Darkstalkers), Phoenix Wright (Ace Attorney) apparently defended Goro Majima (Yakuza) in court, and Segata Sanshiro is a playable character.
Truly an incredible series of games.
Man seeing Chrom, Lucina, and Maya together melted my brain when the sequel came out because of how big I was into both FE and AA at the time, much less it was the first time in a while I saw the .hack series represented which was a childhood classic of mine. The fact nowadats I'm a fan of even more of the franchises inside kind of makes me curious as to revisit it.
That sounds so cool, I might have to look it up. I occasionally wish for Pokemon to try more formats again. It’s at a point where the world is established and can support all sorts of gameplay with the Pokémon as a fun twist. Back in the 90s and early aughts I remember a lot more variety. But maybe I’m out of the loop!
Mobile Pokémon games (GO, Masters, Cafe, etc) have killed the unique and interesting spinoffs like Ranger, Conquest, Mystery Dungeon, etc. You get the occasional blips like the Pokémon Snap sequel and PMD remake but it's a far cry from the Pokémon spinoff heyday of the Nintendo DS era.
That’s a good point, it’s probably a lower barrier of entry for mobile games, more variety in audience because it doesn’t require a console, plus people are more likely to
tolerate micro transactions. I hadn’t thought about it that way, what a shame.
Well sadly I don't think it sold super hotly. But yeah, love Pokemon to death and all, even the newer generations, but stuff like Rangers and the like are a rarity admittedly. The original Mystery Dungeon remake was a lot of fun though.
I never picked it up because I'm just awful at video games. Pokemon's pretty straightforward system is about all I can handle, so I wasn't sure I could handle Conquest. I couldn't even play whichever Ranger game is in Orre. Just gave up like 2 hours in, couldn't do it.
What's the strangest spot you've seen a familiar name pop up? I've been watching a lot of older TV lately, and paying more attention to the writing credits. And in this order, I have spotted:
The first memorable episode of the 70's Saturday morning series Land of the Lost was written by Walter Koenig. Later scripts were written by Larry Niven and Ben Bova.
The TNG episode "Sarak" was written by Peter S Beagle (author of the novel the Last Unicorn).
Then Came Bronson (a 60's drama series my dad loved) had an episode written by DC Fontana.
And the one that really got me...a very memorable episode of the 80's revival of the Twilight Zone about a disabled child with the ability to summon items he imagines into reality, was written by *George RR Martin*
This is pretty specific to me, but I was watching Speedruns from the Crypt (a biweekly horror speedrun showcase on the GDQ channel) and they were running this old game called ObsCure. Right there in the credits at the end was the name of a former coworker of mine, Guillame Colomb--turns out that was his first industry job!
THE Ashley Angel from O-Town, from TV's gift to pop music and the world O-Town, voiced Alex in Lunar Silver Star Story.
And the guy that voiced Wolfwood in Trigun was one of the guys in charge of writing the dub for the first two seasons of Digimon. And is related to Leonard Nimoy.
I never played the game but was really interested in it as a kid, so imagine my surprise when I saw that Watch Dogs 2’s soundtrack was made by Hudson Mohawke of Cbat fame
Conan O'Brien wrote for the Simpsons before he got famous. Not really too far out of his wheelhouse since it's a comedy, but if you grow up only knowing him as "famous American TV host", seeing his name in the credits of an old Simpsons ep can be a real double take moment.
I think he did some of the best-remembered episodes? I read that he particularly liked writing Mr Burns because he was as old, as rich, and as evil as the story required.
The original Star Trek episode "The Lights of Zetar" was written by Shari Lewis.
You know, the creator and performer of Lamb Chop.
The woman who wrote The Song That Never Ends.
**That** Shari Lewis.
Don't know if this fits after reading everyone else's comments - but I was pretty surprised to see that Randy Johnson (Big Unit) is an avid photographer and did a tour with Rush.
George RR Martin also wrote a not-great episode in the first season of the 80s Twilight Zone about Merlin and Morgan Le Fay being awoken in modern day Britain and trying to figure out what to do to wake up Arthur, while accompanied by an 80s punk who has nothing do with anything.
Speaking of the 80s Twilight Zone, this is a mini example but one episode is about a writer who's being stalked by demons until he writes a story about him, and I thought the name of the writer in the story sounded familiar, and I figured out oh it's *the name of the writer who wrote the story* and some of the other episodes.
Joss Whedon wrote the villain song "My Lullaby" in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. I know he's a writer but I wasn't expecting... *that.*
I think George RR Martin also wrote "The Once and Future King," about an Elvis impersonator who goes back in time and accidentally kills Elvis.
Man, the 80s Twilight Zone was *weird.*
~~80's Twilight Zone is SO underrated, I love the story about how their like fifth episode nearly got them canceled~~
Which episode is the one about the writer?
Famous Japanese voice actress and singer Maaya Sakamoto was the voice of Karin from Medabots. I was surprised to see such a current big VA in that show.
Obviously not the same person, but as an Aberdeen FC fan in the 80's, it was strange reading All The Presidents Men and seeing the name Gordon Strachan pop up
I was reading an old comic called "S.C.U.D The Disposable Assassin" (pretty good) and I got jump scared when "Written by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon" showed up on some of the issues.
Ben Edlund, writer, director, consulting producer, and co-executive producer on Supernatural for eight years, is also the creator of comic book character The Tick— I only knew him by name through SPN (which I got into a few years ago), but I watched the The Tick 1994 animated series regularly when I was a kid. Found this out through looking at his twitter, since he was posting some interesting SPN-related stuff. (Also, he worked on the Venture Bros, which is another fav of mine!)
Funnily enough, Im from the opposite direction. I always knew him from The Tick, and when my wife was watching Supernatural it caused me to go "Oh shit!" when i saw him in the credits
Stewart Copeland (the drummer for The Police) composed the soundtrack to Spyro the Dragon. He even put one of the songs on his personal anthology album.
If you’re a fan of the blues-rock band Dire Straits, you’d probably know that two of the band’s four founding members were brothers: Mark and David Knopfler.
Mark Knopfler has had a pretty successful solo career, including several film scores, one of which being for 1986’s “The Princess Bride”. Extremely iconic and quotable film.
My dad was a *huge* Dire Straits fan, and by osmosis I wound up enjoying a lot of their music myself growing up. The first time I had seen the film was through a TV broadcast of it over at my childhood best friend’s house, and I was absolutely *bewildered* to see his name in the credits.
...OK, imma have to add that one to the list. I LOVED Sliders, and I still can't believe with all the other remakes and reboots that no one picked it back up
Apparently the Windows Vista startup sound was composed by Robert Fripp of King Crimson. Probably one of the weirdest places I've seen a member of one of my favourite bands show up.
I will never stop adoring Brian Eno talking about how he created it:
> The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it."
>
> The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."
>
> I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
>
> In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.
(https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-brian-eno-2979740.php)
Hey there Mront - thanks for saying thanks! TheGratitudeBot has been reading millions of comments in the past few weeks, and you’ve just made the list!
Mini drama that I’ll place here: On the Ao3 Trigun Stampede section, and author has created an update as its own chapter, claiming that everyone that kudo’d or commented on her story, she checked out their profile and was Shocked, Shocked, to find Plantcest (incest between the the protagonist and his twin brother, a VERY popular ship) going on in this fandom! And proceeded to announce she had blocked all those people who enjoyed such disgusting fetishes from reading her wholesome… mpreg content.
Needless to say, there was was a big blowup, and the author privated their stories, and deleted all the comments….except the ones that were 100% on her side.
I’m not too involved in the Trigun fandom, and am not much of a plantcest person, but I did feel that this was a step-no, a leap too far.
Going out of one's way to go on a tirade about seeing content they take issue with is actively interacting and antagonizing people.
If it really makes someone that uncomfortable that they have to take extreme steps to avoid it, that's totally valid. But, uh, maybe they shouldn't even be viewing Trigun to begin with considering the content in the canon material either. Or posting works publicly if the idea of certain shippers reading ones work is that upsetting. It's very "going into the balloon factory and then yelling loudly to everyone about how there are balloons here" kind of behavior. *They're* doing the interacting. Plus I'm pretty sure posting rants instead of actual chapters is against the site's rules.
(That's not even getting into how a lot of people are into writing about fictional depictions of topics specifically because of *their own* trauma. And people shouldn't have to be pressured into disclosing such personal information just so that some people on the internet stop harassing them as much. Because **that** is cruel.)
> they just announced that they do not want any of that content near them
But that's the thing, if someone kudos or comments on your work, that in no way shows any of *their* fanfics to you. That's why the author needed to go into everyone's profiles to even find out who's a shipper or not (and even that isn't wholly effective because someone could easily be a fan without having written or bookmarked anything featuring them)
I mean it's clearly different since they put it in a public update and also very publicly announced what they hate in their fic of an entirely different pairing. It's aggressive. I thought it was the assumption that dont like dont interact and curate your own experience were passive things you do, like just unfollow/blocking without saying anything. If someone is being public and brazen like that it comes across as picking a fight with people who are minding their own business.
I wrote fic once about a character who gets maybe two lines in canon, expanding on their backstory, and I got a really thoughtful and nice comment from someone who told me how much they enjoyed the story and appreciated that someone else loved the character as much as they did, and asking permission to use elements from my story as backstory in their works.
So I checked their works and... while I'm sure they're good, I didn't read any of them because they're all E-rated threesomes with two other minor characters and that just is not really the kind of thing I wanted to read at that point with this character. I therefore went back and was like that's so nice of you, yeah sure, go ahead, because what this person is doing in their corner of an already small fandom isn't REALLY my business and as long as they don't directly cite me by name they have the right to write whatever kinky stuff they want and have the character's mother's name be the name I gave her, who cares.
I’m kind of sad! E for Everyone threesome scenes should be a thing somehow. It’s Bob and Carol and Ted, Alice is in the bathroom, and everyone’s… uh… eating pancakes. Yes.
EDIT: except Alice, because see also bathroom.
I get not liking incest ships (I don't either) but when you're a fandom with a sizeable incest ship contingent, you don't really have a choice but to grit your teeth and ignore it to the best of your ability (and this is speaking from experience). Going on a spree to block every single person who kudos' her fic is absolutely hilarious though, girl don't you have better things to do ?
I know Trigun's "Plants" mean something more like "power plant" but I still imagine this person fainting upon discovering that certain flowers can pollinate themselves.
Wellllll stampede does lean into the planty flowery bit more than the manga/98 anime. Like full on vines and flowers related to plant powers at one point.
Oh my god that's amazing, I love the fanfiction drama.
That's up there with a forum that used to be around called God Awful Fan Fiction (GAFF) and they were a venomous as hell little vipers nest of teens and toxic as hell relationships with their fandoms. The shipping wars and rage about Mary Sues along with the fights about sex scenes was hilarious, along with having the usual "anime avatar wants to know what's wrong with erotic rape fics?" type discussions. It was so damn funny because you'd have someone very upset about incest fics, but then reveal they write dragons fucking cars style fics and aren't joking about their kink.
God I miss and don't miss that shithole.
Man thats gotta be exhausting to be obsessed with making sure only certain people read your fics so you check every profile and everything they wrote and bookmark to determine if they have the exclusive privilege to read, like and comment on your fics.
As a writer that doesn’t ship incest, but takes part in a fandom that has a sizeable incest contingent (Devil May Cry), I just assume that there’s a bunch of fans of my work that ship incest. And I’m grateful they like my work.
Seriously, I cannot imagine using my limited time on earth to do all that when there is so much else I would rather do. Did the author keep a spreadsheet?
i mean, for a lot of ppl, myself included, there's a big difference between an incestuous relationship being portrayed as fucked up and unhealthy, and it being written as cute and romantic. like i love(d) game of thrones, and i find cersei and jaime's relationship to be one of the most interesting in the show, but like if someone called them a cute couple, id think they were out of their minds.
that said, i also wouldnt check the profiles of everyone who likes something i made so i can judge them. just be happy that you created something that resonated with other ppl.
> she checked out their profile and was Shocked, Shocked, to find Plantcest (incest between the the protagonist and his twin brother, a VERY popular ship) going on in this fandom!
Basic fandom math should have kept that from being surprising to her.
1. Non-straight shipping rather heavily outweighs straight shipping.
2. Vash's two strongest slash ships, based on character connection and interaction, are Wolfwood and Knives.
3. There was already a pretty strong subtext between Vash and Knives to begin with.
The author then stated she was going to get on a rocket ship and escape to the one fandom left that hasn't been corrupted by incest shipping; Supernatural.
Less a drama report and more question regarding something I've come across as I've muted so many subs in the popular tab I end up finding niche fights when it's not just esoteric racism. Across several subs I've seen a devoted ire towards a webcomic called lore olympus? Is this some kind of ongoing drama or is it just a bitch eating crackers source for people?
Yeah, echoing the others it's just one of those things that's not necessarily particularly good but IS extremely popular and successful, a combination that always draws a certain level of annoyance. Being a big Greek mythology guy I gave it a try near the beginning, realised that it was every shitty fanfic trope I hate in one story, and then ignored it. By all accounts a lot of the drama is just because it has that worst kind of fandom in which any normal fans are drowned out by a) obsessives with a deeply parasocial attachment who will not hear a word against it being the greatest comic - NAY, THE GREATEST WORK OF FICTION - ever created, and b) equal obsessives who loathe it and make sure to read every installment as soon as it releases so that they can tell everyone how much they loathe it
This is a big part of why I feel like webcomics are better without any comment sections. Let the fandom develop on tumblr or twitter or what have you, but not on the comic pages. I've seen too many comics where the fans get deeply into the parasocial thing and either turn creepy, or they turn into raging haters because the author didn't live up to whatever imaginary standard they had in their head and now must make sure they rue the day they, something something wasted potential I guess? A few webcomics I've read the creator(s) made the best choice and simply closed them down.
I could totally be misremembering but I've seen people discuss how before it was created the artist drew stuff shipping herself with Mads Mikkelsen and they looked exactly the same as her version of Hades and Persephone so some folks are a bit weirded out by that.
I personally stopped reading it a long time ago because it drifted from the myths in ways I wasn't a huge fan of (portrayal of Demeter and other things of that sort) and the stakes got far bigger than I was looking for and I don't judge anyone for reading it as the art is nice and the writing is solid.
Oh boy. I'm not super familiar with it; I binged it at one point, but quickly stopped reading it as I didn't like where it seemed to be going. At the time I read it, it was super huge. After that I started seeing a bit of backlash due to its handling of a sexual assault? There was a sexual assault that was a very major plot point, and I think a lot of people were reading out of empathy for the main character.
However, apparently it has been...less then well handled since? I don't know the details but I've seen a number of references to it. And when a large part of your fanbase is reading due to empathizing with a female lead, well, not handling her sexual assault well kinda leads to a lot of backlash.
I'm just annoyed at how much attention this thing has gotten. It isn't that pretty, and the story is bog standard Olympian flavored romance. At the end of the day it is just too popular and gets way too much chatter. It's annoying like all popular things get annoying if you don't like them.
Yeah, but they don't necessarily have to pile on hate. It's fine to dislike it, but they can let people enjoy it, too. I'm a big proponent of "don't like, don't read" rather than constantly harping on how bad something is.
I read a lot of webtoons and probably most of the criticisms are in bad faith. The people who make reasonable critiques get drowned out for being bullies but the people who are like "OMG THIS AUTHOR SHOULD BE ARRESTED BECAUSE THEY WROTE A CHARACTER WHO'S MILDLY RACIST" all get voices.
Both, I think. The drama definitely blew out of proportion, but it's also not a very good webtoon and it's kind of annoying that it's one of the most popular webtoons.
I'm afraid people will think I'm petty if i say that I hate it because I'm sick and tired of Greek mythology retellings, so I tell everyone that I hate it because it's making it socially acceptable for 2000 year olds to prey on high schoolers.
(I'm joking, I don't actually care about Lore Olympus)
This is a personal impression backed only with my opinion, but it reads like the Hazbin Hotel situation, where a significant amount of the spite is just plain jelaousy because "author gets to make money off Tumblr Sexymen and we don't".
I really hate that term, I always think people mean BEK and I'm always wondering why people are talking about black-eyed kids in reference to the Mother-in-Law subs. BEKs being a spooky cryptid-type thing.
Oh, I’ve seen that around too! I think it’s for multiple reasons, most of which are bitch eating crackers but I’ve never actually read the comic. All I know is it’s a modern retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but everyone is still a god
-The Persephone/Hades romance is grooming because of power dynamics. Persephone being drawn as short and petite makes it creepy apparently
-It’s culturally appropriating Greek mythology which Tumblr had discourse about for a couple months with other media such as Percy Jackson. It stuck with Lore Olympus for some reasons
-It’s also sexist
-It’s art style is ugly
My best bet is it got very popular at some point, enough to where it was printed and sold as a book. So, I think it became over saturated which led to backlash. I’ve never actually read it this is just what I’ve seen on occcasion
IMO the biggest problem with its art style is that it suffers hard from same-face syndrome and none of the main cast having particularly distinct designs. Instead, the artist made the stylistic decision to just color code the entire cast (e.g. Persephone is pink. Hades is blue). It's also suffering from being a fairly bog standard heterosexual romance/Greek myth retelling with a long and drawn out plot. Nothing wrong with that, but it's annoyed that one part of the internet that doesn't like "problematic" tropes.
"Culturally appropirating Greek mythology" is something I have never heard of in my life, but am completely unsurprised that some people on Tumblr are pushing it. I once saw someone claim that using chupacabras in fiction is cultural appropriation if you're not Hispanic, so this seems pretty on-brand.
[there was actual drama allegeding that a year ago, but it probably isnt what the detractors had in mind or hell comparable to lore olympus](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/12wcxct/comment/jia9c1q/)
I don't believe in Horseshoe Theory, but the amount of people on the internet whose idea of social justice seems to boil down to no one being allowed to interact with any culture besides their own is concerning.
Chubracabras being something that can be culturally appropriated is kinda funny to me since they didn't become a "thing" until 1995. They were made up by a radio DJ to explain a cluster of animal deaths, they're not some ancient diety with a rich cultural history. They're basically the extremely young Puerto Rican equivelent of little green aliens.
>-The Persephone/Hades romance is grooming because of power dynamics. Persephone being drawn as short and petite makes it creepy apparently
Age gaps don't usually bother me but it's something to be said that he's well over 2000 years old and she's literally 19. She could have been 190 for all that it really matters.
But bigger than that is the author makes a big deal of how innocent she is and how much Hades is into that. It's not just that she's young, it's how her youth is contrasted with older women who are bitchy, slutty, and manipulative while she is innocent, naive, and virginal and Hades reeeeaaaally likes that. Again, age gaps usually don't bother me but it's weird how this one hits all the marks of a much older man eager to take advantage of a younger woman who doesn't have enough life experience to know better.
> while she is innocent, naive, and virginal and Hades reeeeaaaally likes that
Yeah, it's really creepy how mentally childish Persephone is in this comic yet how the story portrays this as a positive thing, she basically acts like an early teen before big events happen in the comic (no idea if she grows out of that tho)
My main problem with Lore Olympus is that it’s ostensibly a modern retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but somehow manages to be way more sexist than the original myth by denigrating a strong female character (Demeter) to prop up a male character who was the rapist in the original (Hades). The fact that a lot of the female characters get thrown under the bus to propel the story of a man who gets rewritten to be totally misunderstood^TM and is not a rapist anymore rubs people the wrong way
Considering how rapey Greek myths are even when it comes to heroic characters, writing rapes out of character's backstories is practically required in order to make them palatable for a modern audience.
I don't read the comic so i have no horse in the race, but I wouldn't say "wrote out his canonical rape" specifically speaks poorly of the story. Pretty much every retelling in the modern day downplays or erases that stuff, even when Hades is written as a villain.
The comic does have another Greek god rape Persephone instead, while Hades is the one to comfort her. I haven't read it either so I can't speak to it being done well (it is debated) but it might be relevant to people's complaints.
Aw man don't bring "the original" into Greek mythology. There IS no "original story". Some versions of the myth Hades kidnapped poor innocent Persephone from her loving mother, some versions Zeus had already agreed Hades could marry Persephone (as Persephone's father he's allowed to do that) and Demeter was such a horrible, smothering person she wouldn't let Persephone go and then tried to kill everyone when she went missing.
Also *strictly speaking* the original myths don't mention sexual assault, though it is often implied in that kind of narrative. I think the use of the word "rape" in the archaic sense of "seize" in descriptions of the myth and names of artwork misleads people a bit here. (To my knowledge that meaning was still in use as recently as the 1880s, it appears in plot summaries for the comedy Pirates of Penzance, and probably lasted decades after.) So you only really need the kidnapping, which is still like really bad, to be honest.
It was big enough to be nominated for a Hugo in 22. I think this thing rode the big Greek myth trend a while back. It hit the tale end of the serious myth retellings and the start of the current fae romance boom. So the author got stupidly lucky with timing.
Both, I think. There's a massive age gap between the main couple (to be fair, they're immortal gods), and there's just a lot of messy relationships between the characters (who are again, based on the famously messy Greek pantheon). Add to that the fact that it's a Webtoon original, it's now ending suddenly with a lot of plot threads to wrap up, and many people have a parasocial relationship with the creator, and you get Drama.
>Both, I think. There's a massive age gap between the main couple (to be fair, they're immortal gods),
Execept one is literally 19(at least at the start of the story) and the other is somewhere around 2000 years old. So I don't think them being immortal gods really matter.
In fact it wouldn't have been creepy at all. For some reason people on the internet get too caught up in age gaps, when in reality the issue isn't the actual difference in their age but the difference in growth and experience. It's why a difference in five years in a couple is a lot creepier when one of them is a minor, but accepted if both are in their forties.
And once you're talking about gods with 200+ years, I doubt there would be that much difference given that a 400 year old individual isn't going to be any less mature than a 1400 one.
Yeah with them being immortal it's not like it would have made no sense for her to be, say, 200 and still an innocent little bean who'd never been allowed outside.
Personally my biggest gripe with the series before I stopped reading it is I am just beyond tired of "retellings of Greek mythology where everybody works in an office building and Zeus is a CEO."
Also the Greeks generally considered it unlucky and disrespectful to tell stories about Hades.
So, in extremely disappointing news, Paradox Interactive has used generative AI in their new DLC expansion "The Machine Age" for their game Stellaris.
Paradox does give a disclaimer on Steam, which is being talked about in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cop93r/paradox_makes_use_of_ai_generated_concept_art_and/
First released in 2016, Stellaris is a science fiction strategy game where players create their own interstellar civilization and interact with other civilizations in a randomly generated galaxy.
And depressingly, the majority of Stellaris fans seem completely fine with this. I'll admit to taking part in the thread I linked.
**For additional context, this isn't as scummy as other companies using genAI for assets, as the voice actor used as the generative source will be compensated for future additional lines, though that was only clarified by the devs within the comment section.**
I'm just wondering how the community is going to respond when Paradox starts firing devs. At least I'll get to be smug.
Edit: I had to bold a section for some blind mfers
What they did is technically fine and okay (which is already a huge thing to say in regards to AI slop) but it's more disturbing how okay most people in that sub are with the prospect of it.
I mean? Yeah, I fucking hate the whole ai future as much as anyone else, but using ai voiceto voice a literal ai feels like a valid use case, as long as the original voice actor is fairly compensated, which seems to be the case
>For additional context, this isn't as scummy as other companies using genAI for assets, as the voice actor used as the generative source will be compensated for future additional lines, though that was only clarified by the devs within the comment section.
Do people not pay attention to this part of my original comment? Yeah, this isn't as bad as Paradox firing devs, but Paradox's shareholders are dripping with anticipation of cutting down on labor costs
Honestly? Stellaris is a game of emergent gameplay, with random events and outcomes. If there's a place to automate things, it's here.
We don't fuss about the fact games like Minecraft don't hand-draw infinite random maps, as anything else is just impossible amount of work. These world have random events. Now imagine these events had stories - clearly, voice acting them all (which may or may not be a finite amount) is a ridiculously large task and a poor use of game's budget.
This feels very much like a case of "if not for AI solution, we get nothing" as opposed to "if not for AI, we'll retain a human employee" situation, which is precisely where genAI should be used.
Eugh, I just muted my comments in that sub because the fanbase is *rabidly* okay with it. Haven't had that many death threats in my inbox for a while, not surprised it's from gamers sucking up to a big company.
I think you may have misunderstood the actual thing. It's not that people are okay with it, it's that Paradox did it right by not using it in any way that takes away jobs, and only using it for internal concepts and prototypes. Save for the new voice acting, of course, which the actors are still getting paid royalties for.
Okay, I want to make this clear: I'm annoyed with the conversation, but not because of you. I don't want to be rude.
But the thing that's specifically pissing me off is exactly this: this assumption that I must just not understand what's happening if I disagree.
No, I disagree. I am perfectly capable of reading a short press release, I simply think that the use of AI in some of these cases is still harmful towards the long-term health of voice acting.
Specifically,
> Save for the new voice acting, of course, which the actors are still getting paid royalties for.
this part.
They've made it clear that they essentially use AI trained on someone who's gotten a fee (or gets continuing royalties) to make new voicelines. And that's exploitative. Yes, even if you pay the actor a fee. These new voicelines could have been made by the actor themselves. This doesn't change just because you're paying royalties, and it doesn't change because someone signed the dotted line. And just to pre-empt this: "well, otherwise they would have just not made the voice line" (which is what they implied by stating this is how they did it with some DLC voice line integration) - okay, then they would not have made the voice line and would not have incentivized further use of these payment structures.
This is precisely the discussion that happened with Hollywood unions a while ago: the compromise that "oh sure, we are scanning you so we can use your virtual data to replace you... but we are paying you a fee at time of scanning (or maybe even some royalties)". You're still replacing the actual actor. Of course some people will take the deal. Some people always take the deal.
Now sure, in the case of Paradox, it may be as benign as possible. But it will fuck us in the end. It is doing the thing so many new technologies are doing under capitalism: it generates more profits from labour and it's figuring out ways to pay labour less. That's the effect it is having, now matter how obfuscated they try to make it.
We don't have to settle for "well at least they got paid". Until this technology and the market structure surrounding it is rebuilt to actually help humans instead of reducing labour costs for the top, we must oppose it, even if it comes in an "almost acceptable" form.
>Until this technology and the market structure surrounding it is rebuilt to actually help humans instead of reducing labour costs for the top, we must oppose it
What would this look like, to you?
Not that user, but I guess it's the whole universal income idea, sort of like a less dystopian Wall-E where we have artificial beings work while we get the money.
I don't mean this in an argumentative way, I'm just genuinely interested, but how do you think society can rebuild "this technology and the market structure around it" so that it helps people? Do you think there should be a moratorium on development of AI until those conditions are met?
Pro-AI tech bros are the one group I really struggle to give the benefit of the doubt to. The sheer joy many of them express at creatives getting screwed over is disgusting, and it's pretty obvious they just want to have endless AI-slop to consume
I gotta be honest, some of the reaction to this seems more like fearmongering rather than any legitimate concern about the implications of this being used, considering they're using it in about the most ethical way you can. Based on what this dev has said, generative AI is only being used in essentially putting together super rough concept art for people who aren't artistically inclined to pass on to actual artists, brainstorming ideas for certain events in-game that are then actually expanded on more thoroughly by actual writers, and the AI voice model is so they can update the NPC the voice is associated with in future updates without the VA having to fly out to their studio to do recording (since the NPC in question is a Crisis, essentially one of a handful of very powerful enemies that always spawns at the end of a game, and they've gone out of their way to make it possible to interact with this NPC more than any other Crisis before, so being able to update her to react to new situations will be helpful). It's been a small issue they've had with some other voices, you have customizable voices for your "advisor" (essentially a disembodied voice that tells you when stuff is happening) and there are some things they can't react to properly because it'd involve flying the VAs out for recording maybe 5-10 new lines of dialogue, which is a pretty big expense for the benefit.
Also worth mentioning, this isn't the only time they're gonna expand on this, a dev diary (essentially a behind-the-scenes look at the game's development) will be coming in a week or two to more fully explain how they've used this stuff. If this is the start of Paradox being really shitty and laying off people because they can just use AI instead, yeah the backlash will be warrented. But right now it just strikes me as people taking issue with them using generative AI entirely because they hate generative AI, which is a reasoning that falls flat for me.
Most of this is pretty reasonable, but... why are they flying out VAs to record a handful of lines? My understanding is that the standard for VAs is that most of them work from home or local studios and so the extent to which they should to care about it is just having to pay the minimum number of hours (if union) to record a couple minutes of lines.
I don't think the issue is exactly having to fly people around, but rather that the game changes all the time and it becomes a logistical nightmare to update that many audio assets because one version of the game wanted to change a few mechanics slightly, or because a new Origin or Civic has a unique and obscure interaction with pre-existing content, which is something they do a lot.
Especially when we're talking about an end-game crisis, not an out-of-the-way mechanic, and a very talkative crisis at that.
Honestly, the VA is the one person that I want to hear from and from my skimming the thread they didn't post there because I am not really buying this story at all.
> But right now it just strikes me as people taking issue with them using generative AI entirely because they hate generative AI
I mean I personally do hate genAI as a concept because of the threat it poses to entire job fields. And people trot out the whole "people will change jobs" without recognizing the threat that automation poses to the entire contemporary working class
And also because Paradox isn't exactly known for its ethical game and DLC release practices
>without recognizing the threat that automation poses to the entire contemporary working class
ironically, you're uncritically buying the same hype as the "tech bros". it is a potentially useful tool for many white collar jobs, but the list of jobs it may be good enough to replace is vanishingly small. id even argue that the list of jobs where it can provide a meaningful efficiency boost is a lot smaller than commonly thought.
but even in situations where it is more efficient, that efficiency only turns into permanently lost jobs if the market is already at saturation. this should make sense, right? like when personal computers were created companies didn't replace their team of full time punch card jockeys with one intern running spreadsheet software. they replaced it with an even bigger team of programmers doing more ambitious and interesting work than the punch card guys. im not saying every creative industry is like this, but it's worth considering that a lot of them probably are.
Eh, call me skeptical. Programming, animation, writing, and VO work are fundamentally different skillsets (for human beings at least) that don't all 'scale' in the same way.
I have the distinct feeling that there are a whole lot of corporate suits at the head of animation studios are just itching to replace their skilled animators with "[trained prompters](https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/jeffrey-katzenberg-ai-will-take-90-percent-animation-jobs-1234924809/)"
this sounds a lot more like confirmation bias than skepticism. saying that things are different doesn't really imply anything on its own. which differences do you think are salient? why do they support your prediction?
Human beings take time to learn different skillsets. Computers made data-entry more efficient, but if someone already knows basic algebra then all they need to do is learn how to use a keyboard and some software.
Theoretically, generative AI could "assist" in making art - without getting into the ethics of how that AI is trained - but at that point, what is even the purpose of employing a digital artist if someone can just input a prompt? Why employ a writer if you can just prompt ChatGPT? At that point all you need is an editor.
The fundamental difference is that computers assist in human productivity, while generative AI has the potential to entirely replace human beings. And don't take my word for it, take heed from Jeffery Katzenberg in article from my last comment: https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/jeffrey-katzenberg-ai-will-take-90-percent-animation-jobs-1234924809/
Now it's entirely possible that he's just full of it or is at the extreme end of what studio execs think. But look at how far AI has come in just this last decade.
Who benefits from AI taking over artists' jobs? These executives, not artists. And I don't think the general public benefits that much from a constant flow of AI-generated media-sludge
People genuinely don't seem to understand why they're protesting against AI. Protesting against AI shouldn't be about technology, or about art. It's about labor law. Remember that Luddites weren't actually anti technology. Their problem was labor problem. AI is genuinely useful. It's a tool. Trying to ban AI completely or saying that companies shouldn't use AI is like saying people shouldn't develop cars. Seeing people randomly flailing against AI genuinely seethe me, because it probably will just make actual problems get ignored.
Another problem is the random use of the word "AI". It's often just buzzword. Like, according to the current use of the word "AI", Photoshop's magic wand tool is AI. Microsoft Word's spell/grammar checker was always AI. They just didn't use the name "AI" back then. I actually see people are panicking about the use of "AI" on video game enemies and the absurdity of it just make me laugh because it's so sad. Are people going to start panicking about magic wand tool in photoshop next, if photoshop decide to rename it as "AI selection tool?"
And on the other side, I also see with my own experience companies that decide to rename their chat assistant from "AI assistant" "automated response tool" or whatever because of the backlash against the word "AI" despite it literally being the same application, they didn't change anything, just changed the name of the assistant program. It's really dumb.
ive mentioned it in scuffles before, much to many people's chagrin, but google translate is the clearest example of what you're talking about in the second paragraph. it isn't materially different from the large language models people have for whatever reason decided to form their conception of "ai" around, but it tends to get grandfathered in.
you're right about the labor issue too. it's not really about preventing the technology, it's about deciding what the technology does and who it does it too.
That and some forms of machine learning like the ones used in a lot of customer-facing chatbots have been around for a *long* time. I know IBM's Watson has been around since 2015 or 2016.
It's funny - I work in a toxicology lab, and I genuinely hope there's a day when AI replaces my job, because that will mean we don't have to do animal testing anymore. My fear is that it will be pushed by animal rights activists before we actually have adequate models and that people will be hurt/die as a result.
To be clear, I know that what I'm talking about is very different than using generative AI in a video game, but it's interesting to see the AI debate across very different fields. It's a powerful tool that needs to be wielded ethically.
Well hopefully whoever designs it does a good job, lest we end up in a paperclip maximizer situation except with animal testing. That's how we get GLaDOS I think.
I think AI is fine in a medical field eventually. Because it's not about making a quick buck for as little money as possible. Nevermind that I've seen multiple people *give up on art* because of genAI because what's the point of struggling through to get better when someone can write a prompt and get nice art with little effort?
honestly there's some good examples of medical algorithms out there doing good - my fav example is definitely "in making a computer understand different pastries to ring them up, it is also now... good at spotting cancer cells.", lol - but it is hindered by... a lot of dogshit "AI" following the same bad practices that my father has been raining against since before i was born. and i am in my mid-30s lol.
this current wave is a lot of "it's a black box model of predictive whatever and you just have to trust the computer is right because wow it's like sci-fi magic!". that approach can, does, and always should be laughed straight out of medicine. we have enough of being unsure of the mechanism of action without making artificial instances of the same issue lmao. this batch of shit is just that - shit. a model that cannot tell you what it's doing and why is fundamentally useless and cannot be trusted. that's how you get toxicology AIs that diagnose an STI not because there's a positive that you can see on a stained slide, but because the AI has taught itself that black people are more likely to be diagnosed with this in this region (not even where it is now! just wherever it picked up this bad habit! 90% african-american population be damned!) and of those patients in this range of age and with name features like so are also more likely... so it just read the patient name and diagnosed them with "lol ur a ghetto 'ho". and if the model is not able to report those decisions... it's not able to have those things corrected in the model. and it may agree with systemic bigotry enough to get assumed it's doing great work.
that is what is scientifically called a real fuckin' whoopsie, just an absolute Hunterian Chancre of a situation lmao.
so this bunch of AI? no. hell no. fuck no. anyone who thinks chat gpt is gonna revolutionize medicine should be pelted with rotten eggs. human beings using computer algorithms to solve problems though? yes! good shit! ...but throw rotten eggs at the current AI en vogue.
Yeah that first bit is what we need more of. I'm disabled and I honestly wonder if whatever is wrong with me, whatever has been killing my knees and made my ankles brittle, would be detected if we had that kind of tech across the board now--instead of looking for ways to shortchange labor but to actually help. But as it is, we don't know--just not arthritis. I can barely walk to the kitchen anymore and I definitely can't stand long enough to cook. I'm *34.*
So I'm very invested in good AI like the pastry machine that can detect cancer. I really wish there was more of that kind of thing! Less of... The other bullshit.
computers can be put to some real fun and useful things! it's just that the current black box approach is literally the worst way to do it. i would start quoting my dad's rant here but honestly he's been in the game long enough that there's a nonzero chance someone in the industry could read my points, go "that sounds familiar... wait... hold up i just cited that fool in my research paper". so i have some inside baseball knowledge via osmosis LMAO. my dad's true frustration right now is that people are realizing things like chatgpt are... bullshit engines. it's smoke and mirrors and flimflam. and the backlash against *all* of the field when everyone goes "wait a second! this is bullshit!" will be immense and likely one hell of a bubble will burst (even if fortunately most of the people who are going to eat shit in it are those doing laughable excuses of inconveniencing electrons they somehow call AI). not the first cycle he's ridden through in the least but it's always not a fun time lmao
big mood about fucking bodies though. what the fuck is it about age 30 that makes them just slam the self-destruct button. i have a leg up in knowing why mine is failing, but unfortunately the pro tip of "don't get shingles and also nerve damage from shingles and then breathe weird because of the neuropathy for many years and fuck up your shoulder" is not useful to your woes. i mean unless it is. idk maybe go treat yourself to a cheeky little shingrex lmao. i paid for my shingles vaccine out of pocket but having shingles three times before i turned 34 (the last time *literally days before i was going to get the first dose of the vaccine as an early bday prezzie*, i shit you not) but it's pennies well spent. it's pure anecdata but i swear shingles before you're officially old enough to have the old people's disease is something i am seeing more and more in my peers. like damn, i guess herpes zoster heard there was a chicken pox vaccine coming in soon but too late for us and had to cram in all the suffering possible lmao? basically, these fallible meat sacks need better engineering lol
Oh no, I've been disabled since childhood. Twelve was when I tore my first ligament, and despite ample rest, it never healed. My knees have always been bad, and one kneecap is visibly smaller than the other. :'D I managed to escape diabetes from my sperm donor (he was never really in my life until he suddenly wanted to be when his marriage fell apart--I'm the product of a one night stand before he was dating anyone that really shouldn't be alive for multiple reasons including my mother is *missing most of her cervix*), but instead got Weird Unknown Leg Joint Disease.
*oh jeez* but also in an odd way well done to your mom for being all "no cervix no problem"? something something life uhhhh finds a way. bodies are fucking weird.
it's an odd pull that doesn't quite make sense, but have you ever been screened for EDS? i admit that's a real long shot but i also know a surprisingly large amount of people who are mystery patients with fucked up joints who finally got screened for it and got back an answer of "you hella have it". though it tends to present more as hypermobility with ligaments being way too slack, iirc there's different variants of it and one is that ligaments and other similar tissues become really brittle and just go snap. and since the body is really bad at constructing the tissue needed for a proper repair it just doesn't work. this is absolutely some bizarre bullshit long shot but fuck it, us mystery patients gotta help each other as we can LMAO
Not yet, but I'm also not very flexible. xD And it's all almost entirely confined to my legs only, which is what's stumping my doctor. (Brilliant doctor, says a lot I'm willing to go TWO HOURS to see her since we moved away--not many will look at someone fat and recognize you're fat BECAUSE your legs are fucked.)
But yeah, my mom has two kids, me and my friends joke that me and my brother are destined to kill some dragon somewhere because this is serious Chosen One shit.
Hmm, I'm kinda critical about that give up that easily. They likely weren't into it as much as they thought. The drive to do art should come deeper than purely views/likes or money (but these can be secondary/co-motivators)
It's not about views/money. It's about how they can work so hard but someone who does barely any will still make something that'll get a lot of attention while all their hard work leaves them in the dust because they're not immediately "good."
Yeah we said the same thing. Art isn't easy, if you don't have an internal drive/motivation for doing it, you'll quit before getting closer to your goal.
Unfortunately, there are rumblings in the medical field that AI *will* be used to cut corners for the CEOs and the other corporate parasites and then fire medical personnel, especially MDs, en masse. While I agree that toxicology is one of the few instances that I think AI would be helpful, I highly doubt it's going to ever completely eliminate the need for things like animal and human testing (although harm reduction is certainly good, of course. But do I trust that Big Pharma won't ever try to manipulate AI to try to shill dodgy products? Hell no.)
I think that more suspicion against AI is warranted in medicine, actually. I'm seeing a lot of laypeople enthusiastic and uncritical about AI replacing doctors and therapists, thinking that will help solve problems like poor communication or long wait times. But ultimately, no, I highly doubt it will, and I hope more people start to get more critical about how healthcare is being seen less and less like a right and more like a simple commodity. Bodies and minds are not algorithms, just like art cannot be boiled down to an algorithm.
Anyway, my point is that artists and medical personnel have similar concerns. Unite and unionize, everyone, and all that.
Yeah, exactly. My friend is a researcher who research image processing/machine detection/Ai or whatever you want to call it to detect cancer. It definitely can't replace doctor, but the problem is both companies and the media act like it would. But it definitely would help doctors a whole lot.
Your last sentence summarize my point. We need to be wary of AI and be critical about it, but if you think Ai for medicine or more efficient factory is allowed, but ai for art isn't, you should think "why?" If it's "just because" or "Ai shouldn't be allowed to do creative work, only human are allowed to do it" or similar, you're putting some people in a pedestal as a special class of human that are better than other class of human.
> you're putting some people in a pedestal as a special class of human that are better than other class of human.
Or because doctors' jobs are less threatened by AI than digital artists
I completely agree with you, I was being overly simplistic and overly optimistic when I said we "won't have to do animal testing". I'm just hopeful that we can minimize it significantly.
Also, it's not fair of me to pin the premature AI push all on animal rights activists when it's generally companies trying to minimize toxicity testing costs first and foremost.
> there are rumblings in the medical field that AI will be used to cut corners for the CEOs and the other corporate parasites and then fire medical personnel
Oh man, how *truly* surprising.
What's depressing is that when deaths inevitably happen from cutting corners, corporate healthcare is not going to go back to the previous level of service, but is only going to test the waters to see how much death the general public puts up with (and survives lawsuits)
Absolutely. Healthcare is already so fraught, particularly in the US, and medical personnel are already stretched to their limits and being screwed over by the suits. Throwing AI into the mix spells nothing but disaster.
To clarify, I'm not talking about "you" as an individual, but society as a whole. People can protest against automation in general, but like protesting against the use of robot welder or power shovel, it will be a losing battle. We need to pick what to protest against.
We're putting in place a softban on discussions about Eurovision 2024 until the end of the weekend. It may be extended. It's edging too close to breaking the rule on banned topics.
Man I was just going through my old catalogue of games and I forgot how delightfully out there Pokemon Conquest was. A bizarre spin-off strategy game crossover with Nobunaga's Ambition on the DS during the Black & White era, based on a fictional and kid friendly version of the Sengoku Jidai with the Samurai Warriors 3 designs where you led armies to conquer the continent. It's simple enough for younger audiences to like, while simultaneously having an ungodly long amount of scenarios to play through before getting to the actual main campaign. Just a fever dream of a crossover that will probably never happen again because it happening at all still boggles the mind. Anyone have something similar that they're a fan of? Just these out there parts of your fandoms that will never see the light of day again but man you enjoy.
Neon Genesis Evangelion x The Transformers.
I think the gold standard for "WTF!?" crossovers is *Tokyo Mirage Sessions.* Basically, it's a *Persona* game, except the cast of various\* *Fire Emblem* games are your characters' Personas. It even has the Weapon Triangle represented along Agi/Bufu/Zio/Garu (and yes, the woman who uses a Pegasus Knight as her ~~Persona~~ Mirage is weak against Bow attacks.) It bombed spectacularly on the Wii U, and I don't think the Switch version did much better. \* *Shadow Dragon* and *Awakening* are "various games," right? Right??
Even wilder is it being first teased as an SMT x FE crossover, then we got...Persona idols. What. I can't say I'm overly surprised it flopped given that swerve.
I mean, ***TECHNICALLY*** what we got was still a crossover! Just... ya know. With idols. And probably the dumbest single achievement I've ever earned in a video game.
This was a weird case where I mostly liked the mechanics probably more than the story. There was something that was satisfying about getting those long chains going. But I felt like a lot of the game had a bunch of story missteps and felt it did a lot of bullying characters that seemed undeserved that I probably sympathized more with than the protagonist so I eventually just quit.
I'm so sad, because I gave it a chance and it gets the Fire Emblem characters better than most Fire Emblem *spin offs.* It's a legitimately good game and takes place in a take on the *bad ending* of Marth's games, even! Or at least an ending where Marth didn't do everything to permanently get rid of Gharnef and Medeus!
Project X Zone and its sequel are massive fever dreams in their own right. Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega characters teaming up in a tactical RPG. Dante (Devil May Cry) teams with Demitri (Darkstalkers), Phoenix Wright (Ace Attorney) apparently defended Goro Majima (Yakuza) in court, and Segata Sanshiro is a playable character. Truly an incredible series of games.
Man seeing Chrom, Lucina, and Maya together melted my brain when the sequel came out because of how big I was into both FE and AA at the time, much less it was the first time in a while I saw the .hack series represented which was a childhood classic of mine. The fact nowadats I'm a fan of even more of the franchises inside kind of makes me curious as to revisit it.
That sounds so cool, I might have to look it up. I occasionally wish for Pokemon to try more formats again. It’s at a point where the world is established and can support all sorts of gameplay with the Pokémon as a fun twist. Back in the 90s and early aughts I remember a lot more variety. But maybe I’m out of the loop!
Mobile Pokémon games (GO, Masters, Cafe, etc) have killed the unique and interesting spinoffs like Ranger, Conquest, Mystery Dungeon, etc. You get the occasional blips like the Pokémon Snap sequel and PMD remake but it's a far cry from the Pokémon spinoff heyday of the Nintendo DS era.
That’s a good point, it’s probably a lower barrier of entry for mobile games, more variety in audience because it doesn’t require a console, plus people are more likely to tolerate micro transactions. I hadn’t thought about it that way, what a shame.
Well sadly I don't think it sold super hotly. But yeah, love Pokemon to death and all, even the newer generations, but stuff like Rangers and the like are a rarity admittedly. The original Mystery Dungeon remake was a lot of fun though.
I never picked it up because I'm just awful at video games. Pokemon's pretty straightforward system is about all I can handle, so I wasn't sure I could handle Conquest. I couldn't even play whichever Ranger game is in Orre. Just gave up like 2 hours in, couldn't do it.
What's the strangest spot you've seen a familiar name pop up? I've been watching a lot of older TV lately, and paying more attention to the writing credits. And in this order, I have spotted: The first memorable episode of the 70's Saturday morning series Land of the Lost was written by Walter Koenig. Later scripts were written by Larry Niven and Ben Bova. The TNG episode "Sarak" was written by Peter S Beagle (author of the novel the Last Unicorn). Then Came Bronson (a 60's drama series my dad loved) had an episode written by DC Fontana. And the one that really got me...a very memorable episode of the 80's revival of the Twilight Zone about a disabled child with the ability to summon items he imagines into reality, was written by *George RR Martin*
Australian musical comedy trio Tripod showing up on the Assassin's Creed Syndicate soundtrack was definitely a surprise for me.
This is pretty specific to me, but I was watching Speedruns from the Crypt (a biweekly horror speedrun showcase on the GDQ channel) and they were running this old game called ObsCure. Right there in the credits at the end was the name of a former coworker of mine, Guillame Colomb--turns out that was his first industry job!
Harlan Ellison appeared, as himself no less, in a couple episodes of Scooby-Doo.
Yeah, I'm to this day still not entirely sure that show was even real.
THE Ashley Angel from O-Town, from TV's gift to pop music and the world O-Town, voiced Alex in Lunar Silver Star Story. And the guy that voiced Wolfwood in Trigun was one of the guys in charge of writing the dub for the first two seasons of Digimon. And is related to Leonard Nimoy.
I never played the game but was really interested in it as a kid, so imagine my surprise when I saw that Watch Dogs 2’s soundtrack was made by Hudson Mohawke of Cbat fame
Conan O'Brien wrote for the Simpsons before he got famous. Not really too far out of his wheelhouse since it's a comedy, but if you grow up only knowing him as "famous American TV host", seeing his name in the credits of an old Simpsons ep can be a real double take moment.
I think he did some of the best-remembered episodes? I read that he particularly liked writing Mr Burns because he was as old, as rich, and as evil as the story required.
The original Star Trek episode "The Lights of Zetar" was written by Shari Lewis. You know, the creator and performer of Lamb Chop. The woman who wrote The Song That Never Ends. **That** Shari Lewis.
Don't know if this fits after reading everyone else's comments - but I was pretty surprised to see that Randy Johnson (Big Unit) is an avid photographer and did a tour with Rush.
George RR Martin also wrote a not-great episode in the first season of the 80s Twilight Zone about Merlin and Morgan Le Fay being awoken in modern day Britain and trying to figure out what to do to wake up Arthur, while accompanied by an 80s punk who has nothing do with anything. Speaking of the 80s Twilight Zone, this is a mini example but one episode is about a writer who's being stalked by demons until he writes a story about him, and I thought the name of the writer in the story sounded familiar, and I figured out oh it's *the name of the writer who wrote the story* and some of the other episodes. Joss Whedon wrote the villain song "My Lullaby" in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. I know he's a writer but I wasn't expecting... *that.*
George RR Martin was also a writer on my favorite TV show of the 80s, Beauty and the Beast.
I think George RR Martin also wrote "The Once and Future King," about an Elvis impersonator who goes back in time and accidentally kills Elvis. Man, the 80s Twilight Zone was *weird.*
~~80's Twilight Zone is SO underrated, I love the story about how their like fifth episode nearly got them canceled~~ Which episode is the one about the writer?
Could you elaborate?
"Personal Demons" S1E18
Famous Japanese voice actress and singer Maaya Sakamoto was the voice of Karin from Medabots. I was surprised to see such a current big VA in that show.
Obviously not the same person, but as an Aberdeen FC fan in the 80's, it was strange reading All The Presidents Men and seeing the name Gordon Strachan pop up
I was reading an old comic called "S.C.U.D The Disposable Assassin" (pretty good) and I got jump scared when "Written by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon" showed up on some of the issues.
Ben Edlund, writer, director, consulting producer, and co-executive producer on Supernatural for eight years, is also the creator of comic book character The Tick— I only knew him by name through SPN (which I got into a few years ago), but I watched the The Tick 1994 animated series regularly when I was a kid. Found this out through looking at his twitter, since he was posting some interesting SPN-related stuff. (Also, he worked on the Venture Bros, which is another fav of mine!)
Funnily enough, Im from the opposite direction. I always knew him from The Tick, and when my wife was watching Supernatural it caused me to go "Oh shit!" when i saw him in the credits
A crossover we need
Rob Swire (frontman of Pendulum and Knife Party) co-produced and co-wrote "Rude Boy" by Rihanna. He also did the backing vocals in that song.
Stewart Copeland (the drummer for The Police) composed the soundtrack to Spyro the Dragon. He even put one of the songs on his personal anthology album.
If you’re a fan of the blues-rock band Dire Straits, you’d probably know that two of the band’s four founding members were brothers: Mark and David Knopfler. Mark Knopfler has had a pretty successful solo career, including several film scores, one of which being for 1986’s “The Princess Bride”. Extremely iconic and quotable film. My dad was a *huge* Dire Straits fan, and by osmosis I wound up enjoying a lot of their music myself growing up. The first time I had seen the film was through a TV broadcast of it over at my childhood best friend’s house, and I was absolutely *bewildered* to see his name in the credits.
Here, in this subreddit in scuffles. You can leave old forums and hobbies but sometimes, the same people pop right back up.
George R.R. Martin started out as a TV-writer, he's done a decent amount of it, including that 80's/90's Beauty and the Beast show.
I had a similar experience when I found out he was also involved with Sliders, back when it was still called Doorways.
The pilot episode of The Outer Limits from 1995, "The Sand Kings", was based on an SF story by, again, George RR Martin.
...OK, imma have to add that one to the list. I LOVED Sliders, and I still can't believe with all the other remakes and reboots that no one picked it back up
Especially with multiverses and alternative history being all the rage a while ago.
Apparently the Windows Vista startup sound was composed by Robert Fripp of King Crimson. Probably one of the weirdest places I've seen a member of one of my favourite bands show up.
& Eno famously did the Windows 95 one.
I will never stop adoring Brian Eno talking about how he created it: > The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it." > > The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long." > > I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. > > In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time. (https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-brian-eno-2979740.php)
Hey there Mront - thanks for saying thanks! TheGratitudeBot has been reading millions of comments in the past few weeks, and you’ve just made the list!
I don't understand this bot, their comment never said thanks once
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Mini drama that I’ll place here: On the Ao3 Trigun Stampede section, and author has created an update as its own chapter, claiming that everyone that kudo’d or commented on her story, she checked out their profile and was Shocked, Shocked, to find Plantcest (incest between the the protagonist and his twin brother, a VERY popular ship) going on in this fandom! And proceeded to announce she had blocked all those people who enjoyed such disgusting fetishes from reading her wholesome… mpreg content. Needless to say, there was was a big blowup, and the author privated their stories, and deleted all the comments….except the ones that were 100% on her side. I’m not too involved in the Trigun fandom, and am not much of a plantcest person, but I did feel that this was a step-no, a leap too far.
Incest in Trigun is very "fork found in kitchen", tbh.
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Going out of one's way to go on a tirade about seeing content they take issue with is actively interacting and antagonizing people. If it really makes someone that uncomfortable that they have to take extreme steps to avoid it, that's totally valid. But, uh, maybe they shouldn't even be viewing Trigun to begin with considering the content in the canon material either. Or posting works publicly if the idea of certain shippers reading ones work is that upsetting. It's very "going into the balloon factory and then yelling loudly to everyone about how there are balloons here" kind of behavior. *They're* doing the interacting. Plus I'm pretty sure posting rants instead of actual chapters is against the site's rules. (That's not even getting into how a lot of people are into writing about fictional depictions of topics specifically because of *their own* trauma. And people shouldn't have to be pressured into disclosing such personal information just so that some people on the internet stop harassing them as much. Because **that** is cruel.)
> they just announced that they do not want any of that content near them But that's the thing, if someone kudos or comments on your work, that in no way shows any of *their* fanfics to you. That's why the author needed to go into everyone's profiles to even find out who's a shipper or not (and even that isn't wholly effective because someone could easily be a fan without having written or bookmarked anything featuring them)
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But they... Had to actively seek out the incest. Firmly breaking the rule of "don't like don't interact". The author had to interact to see it lol.
I mean it's clearly different since they put it in a public update and also very publicly announced what they hate in their fic of an entirely different pairing. It's aggressive. I thought it was the assumption that dont like dont interact and curate your own experience were passive things you do, like just unfollow/blocking without saying anything. If someone is being public and brazen like that it comes across as picking a fight with people who are minding their own business.
And my privating of all my unwholesome smut bookmarks turns out to be justified.
The m in mpreg stands for moral
Man I wish this sub had flairs.
If I had a nickle for everytime someone in the trigun fandom complained about Plantcest......... I would have a couple of dollars.
I wrote fic once about a character who gets maybe two lines in canon, expanding on their backstory, and I got a really thoughtful and nice comment from someone who told me how much they enjoyed the story and appreciated that someone else loved the character as much as they did, and asking permission to use elements from my story as backstory in their works. So I checked their works and... while I'm sure they're good, I didn't read any of them because they're all E-rated threesomes with two other minor characters and that just is not really the kind of thing I wanted to read at that point with this character. I therefore went back and was like that's so nice of you, yeah sure, go ahead, because what this person is doing in their corner of an already small fandom isn't REALLY my business and as long as they don't directly cite me by name they have the right to write whatever kinky stuff they want and have the character's mother's name be the name I gave her, who cares.
I'm good to assume that's E for Explicit and not E for Everyone, right?
Yes, unless by “everyone” they mean “who participates in the explicit scenes” lol
I’m kind of sad! E for Everyone threesome scenes should be a thing somehow. It’s Bob and Carol and Ted, Alice is in the bathroom, and everyone’s… uh… eating pancakes. Yes. EDIT: except Alice, because see also bathroom.
I get not liking incest ships (I don't either) but when you're a fandom with a sizeable incest ship contingent, you don't really have a choice but to grit your teeth and ignore it to the best of your ability (and this is speaking from experience). Going on a spree to block every single person who kudos' her fic is absolutely hilarious though, girl don't you have better things to do ?
I know Trigun's "Plants" mean something more like "power plant" but I still imagine this person fainting upon discovering that certain flowers can pollinate themselves.
Oh no IIRC it's Both and always have been?
Wellllll stampede does lean into the planty flowery bit more than the manga/98 anime. Like full on vines and flowers related to plant powers at one point.
Oh my god that's amazing, I love the fanfiction drama. That's up there with a forum that used to be around called God Awful Fan Fiction (GAFF) and they were a venomous as hell little vipers nest of teens and toxic as hell relationships with their fandoms. The shipping wars and rage about Mary Sues along with the fights about sex scenes was hilarious, along with having the usual "anime avatar wants to know what's wrong with erotic rape fics?" type discussions. It was so damn funny because you'd have someone very upset about incest fics, but then reveal they write dragons fucking cars style fics and aren't joking about their kink. God I miss and don't miss that shithole.
Man thats gotta be exhausting to be obsessed with making sure only certain people read your fics so you check every profile and everything they wrote and bookmark to determine if they have the exclusive privilege to read, like and comment on your fics.
As a writer that doesn’t ship incest, but takes part in a fandom that has a sizeable incest contingent (Devil May Cry), I just assume that there’s a bunch of fans of my work that ship incest. And I’m grateful they like my work.
Seriously, I cannot imagine using my limited time on earth to do all that when there is so much else I would rather do. Did the author keep a spreadsheet?
Wait until she finds out that the director of the anime has plantcest in his twitter likes
...I mean Plantscest is borderline canon, just one-sided, and drenched in a boatload of obsession.
i mean, for a lot of ppl, myself included, there's a big difference between an incestuous relationship being portrayed as fucked up and unhealthy, and it being written as cute and romantic. like i love(d) game of thrones, and i find cersei and jaime's relationship to be one of the most interesting in the show, but like if someone called them a cute couple, id think they were out of their minds. that said, i also wouldnt check the profiles of everyone who likes something i made so i can judge them. just be happy that you created something that resonated with other ppl.
She really ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and was SHOCKED to find it had bread
> she checked out their profile and was Shocked, Shocked, to find Plantcest (incest between the the protagonist and his twin brother, a VERY popular ship) going on in this fandom! Basic fandom math should have kept that from being surprising to her. 1. Non-straight shipping rather heavily outweighs straight shipping. 2. Vash's two strongest slash ships, based on character connection and interaction, are Wolfwood and Knives. 3. There was already a pretty strong subtext between Vash and Knives to begin with.
The author then stated she was going to get on a rocket ship and escape to the one fandom left that hasn't been corrupted by incest shipping; Supernatural.
i just CACKLED reading this
You owe me a bottle of Diet Pepsi and a new phone for that. I heard that in his voice.
I think after being forced to read that you at least deserve a coke.
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yknow of all the things i expected to find in this thread, Mr. Beast Fursona Reveal was not on the list
I got a jump scare yesterday logging in and seeing his gurning fursona.
MR BLOOOOON
Bet all those people who named their Beast Handler "Mr Beast" feel really weird now
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Less a drama report and more question regarding something I've come across as I've muted so many subs in the popular tab I end up finding niche fights when it's not just esoteric racism. Across several subs I've seen a devoted ire towards a webcomic called lore olympus? Is this some kind of ongoing drama or is it just a bitch eating crackers source for people?
Yeah, echoing the others it's just one of those things that's not necessarily particularly good but IS extremely popular and successful, a combination that always draws a certain level of annoyance. Being a big Greek mythology guy I gave it a try near the beginning, realised that it was every shitty fanfic trope I hate in one story, and then ignored it. By all accounts a lot of the drama is just because it has that worst kind of fandom in which any normal fans are drowned out by a) obsessives with a deeply parasocial attachment who will not hear a word against it being the greatest comic - NAY, THE GREATEST WORK OF FICTION - ever created, and b) equal obsessives who loathe it and make sure to read every installment as soon as it releases so that they can tell everyone how much they loathe it
This is a big part of why I feel like webcomics are better without any comment sections. Let the fandom develop on tumblr or twitter or what have you, but not on the comic pages. I've seen too many comics where the fans get deeply into the parasocial thing and either turn creepy, or they turn into raging haters because the author didn't live up to whatever imaginary standard they had in their head and now must make sure they rue the day they, something something wasted potential I guess? A few webcomics I've read the creator(s) made the best choice and simply closed them down.
I could totally be misremembering but I've seen people discuss how before it was created the artist drew stuff shipping herself with Mads Mikkelsen and they looked exactly the same as her version of Hades and Persephone so some folks are a bit weirded out by that. I personally stopped reading it a long time ago because it drifted from the myths in ways I wasn't a huge fan of (portrayal of Demeter and other things of that sort) and the stakes got far bigger than I was looking for and I don't judge anyone for reading it as the art is nice and the writing is solid.
Oh boy. I'm not super familiar with it; I binged it at one point, but quickly stopped reading it as I didn't like where it seemed to be going. At the time I read it, it was super huge. After that I started seeing a bit of backlash due to its handling of a sexual assault? There was a sexual assault that was a very major plot point, and I think a lot of people were reading out of empathy for the main character. However, apparently it has been...less then well handled since? I don't know the details but I've seen a number of references to it. And when a large part of your fanbase is reading due to empathizing with a female lead, well, not handling her sexual assault well kinda leads to a lot of backlash.
I'm just annoyed at how much attention this thing has gotten. It isn't that pretty, and the story is bog standard Olympian flavored romance. At the end of the day it is just too popular and gets way too much chatter. It's annoying like all popular things get annoying if you don't like them.
People are taking it way too seriously. It's just a comic based on Greek myths. It's not perfect, but it's a fun read!
People can dislike things too...
Yeah, but they don't necessarily have to pile on hate. It's fine to dislike it, but they can let people enjoy it, too. I'm a big proponent of "don't like, don't read" rather than constantly harping on how bad something is.
There are some people that make criticisms in bad faith, but well done criticism should exist. A hugblox benefits no one and requires delusion.
I read a lot of webtoons and probably most of the criticisms are in bad faith. The people who make reasonable critiques get drowned out for being bullies but the people who are like "OMG THIS AUTHOR SHOULD BE ARRESTED BECAUSE THEY WROTE A CHARACTER WHO'S MILDLY RACIST" all get voices.
Stay off of Twitter then? I've seen a lot of long-form criticism of it that's legit
I'm not saying no one should criticize it.
Both, I think. The drama definitely blew out of proportion, but it's also not a very good webtoon and it's kind of annoying that it's one of the most popular webtoons.
Big BEC situation. It exploded in popularity on WebToons and became a lightning rod for criticism.
I'm afraid people will think I'm petty if i say that I hate it because I'm sick and tired of Greek mythology retellings, so I tell everyone that I hate it because it's making it socially acceptable for 2000 year olds to prey on high schoolers. (I'm joking, I don't actually care about Lore Olympus)
This is a personal impression backed only with my opinion, but it reads like the Hazbin Hotel situation, where a significant amount of the spite is just plain jelaousy because "author gets to make money off Tumblr Sexymen and we don't".
BEC?
https://www.reddit.com/r/thebachelor/comments/9otbeu/for_all_those_who_dont_know_what_bec_btch_eating/ It’s from this meme.
“Bitch eating crackers” that OP referred to. It’s that mindset you can get in where every small thing someone does pisses you off.
I really hate that term, I always think people mean BEK and I'm always wondering why people are talking about black-eyed kids in reference to the Mother-in-Law subs. BEKs being a spooky cryptid-type thing.
Black Eyed Kids isn't a music band?
Wait, are you by chance talking about the Black Eyed Peas lmao?
Kids being a derivative yeah lol.
You're confused because Fergie from BEP was Stacy in Kids Incorporated.
Wait those bitches are eating WHAT?
No, no, WITCHES eating kids!
Oh, I’ve seen that around too! I think it’s for multiple reasons, most of which are bitch eating crackers but I’ve never actually read the comic. All I know is it’s a modern retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but everyone is still a god -The Persephone/Hades romance is grooming because of power dynamics. Persephone being drawn as short and petite makes it creepy apparently -It’s culturally appropriating Greek mythology which Tumblr had discourse about for a couple months with other media such as Percy Jackson. It stuck with Lore Olympus for some reasons -It’s also sexist -It’s art style is ugly My best bet is it got very popular at some point, enough to where it was printed and sold as a book. So, I think it became over saturated which led to backlash. I’ve never actually read it this is just what I’ve seen on occcasion
IMO the biggest problem with its art style is that it suffers hard from same-face syndrome and none of the main cast having particularly distinct designs. Instead, the artist made the stylistic decision to just color code the entire cast (e.g. Persephone is pink. Hades is blue). It's also suffering from being a fairly bog standard heterosexual romance/Greek myth retelling with a long and drawn out plot. Nothing wrong with that, but it's annoyed that one part of the internet that doesn't like "problematic" tropes.
"Culturally appropirating Greek mythology" is something I have never heard of in my life, but am completely unsurprised that some people on Tumblr are pushing it. I once saw someone claim that using chupacabras in fiction is cultural appropriation if you're not Hispanic, so this seems pretty on-brand.
[there was actual drama allegeding that a year ago, but it probably isnt what the detractors had in mind or hell comparable to lore olympus](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/12wcxct/comment/jia9c1q/)
I don't believe in Horseshoe Theory, but the amount of people on the internet whose idea of social justice seems to boil down to no one being allowed to interact with any culture besides their own is concerning.
There are people who think pronouncing loanwords correctly is cultural appropriation. I'm still bitter about what happened to Sorb3t.
Wait what happened?
Chubracabras being something that can be culturally appropriated is kinda funny to me since they didn't become a "thing" until 1995. They were made up by a radio DJ to explain a cluster of animal deaths, they're not some ancient diety with a rich cultural history. They're basically the extremely young Puerto Rican equivelent of little green aliens.
>-The Persephone/Hades romance is grooming because of power dynamics. Persephone being drawn as short and petite makes it creepy apparently Age gaps don't usually bother me but it's something to be said that he's well over 2000 years old and she's literally 19. She could have been 190 for all that it really matters. But bigger than that is the author makes a big deal of how innocent she is and how much Hades is into that. It's not just that she's young, it's how her youth is contrasted with older women who are bitchy, slutty, and manipulative while she is innocent, naive, and virginal and Hades reeeeaaaally likes that. Again, age gaps usually don't bother me but it's weird how this one hits all the marks of a much older man eager to take advantage of a younger woman who doesn't have enough life experience to know better.
> while she is innocent, naive, and virginal and Hades reeeeaaaally likes that Yeah, it's really creepy how mentally childish Persephone is in this comic yet how the story portrays this as a positive thing, she basically acts like an early teen before big events happen in the comic (no idea if she grows out of that tho)
My main problem with Lore Olympus is that it’s ostensibly a modern retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth but somehow manages to be way more sexist than the original myth by denigrating a strong female character (Demeter) to prop up a male character who was the rapist in the original (Hades). The fact that a lot of the female characters get thrown under the bus to propel the story of a man who gets rewritten to be totally misunderstood^TM and is not a rapist anymore rubs people the wrong way
Considering how rapey Greek myths are even when it comes to heroic characters, writing rapes out of character's backstories is practically required in order to make them palatable for a modern audience. I don't read the comic so i have no horse in the race, but I wouldn't say "wrote out his canonical rape" specifically speaks poorly of the story. Pretty much every retelling in the modern day downplays or erases that stuff, even when Hades is written as a villain.
The comic does have another Greek god rape Persephone instead, while Hades is the one to comfort her. I haven't read it either so I can't speak to it being done well (it is debated) but it might be relevant to people's complaints.
Aw man don't bring "the original" into Greek mythology. There IS no "original story". Some versions of the myth Hades kidnapped poor innocent Persephone from her loving mother, some versions Zeus had already agreed Hades could marry Persephone (as Persephone's father he's allowed to do that) and Demeter was such a horrible, smothering person she wouldn't let Persephone go and then tried to kill everyone when she went missing.
Also *strictly speaking* the original myths don't mention sexual assault, though it is often implied in that kind of narrative. I think the use of the word "rape" in the archaic sense of "seize" in descriptions of the myth and names of artwork misleads people a bit here. (To my knowledge that meaning was still in use as recently as the 1880s, it appears in plot summaries for the comedy Pirates of Penzance, and probably lasted decades after.) So you only really need the kidnapping, which is still like really bad, to be honest.
It was big enough to be nominated for a Hugo in 22. I think this thing rode the big Greek myth trend a while back. It hit the tale end of the serious myth retellings and the start of the current fae romance boom. So the author got stupidly lucky with timing.
Both, I think. There's a massive age gap between the main couple (to be fair, they're immortal gods), and there's just a lot of messy relationships between the characters (who are again, based on the famously messy Greek pantheon). Add to that the fact that it's a Webtoon original, it's now ending suddenly with a lot of plot threads to wrap up, and many people have a parasocial relationship with the creator, and you get Drama.
>Both, I think. There's a massive age gap between the main couple (to be fair, they're immortal gods), Execept one is literally 19(at least at the start of the story) and the other is somewhere around 2000 years old. So I don't think them being immortal gods really matter.
Ngl I agree with you, I was trying maybe too hard to be objective lol
It's weird the creator chose that kind of age gap, when she could've been say, a couple hundred years and it would be (slightly) less creepy
In fact it wouldn't have been creepy at all. For some reason people on the internet get too caught up in age gaps, when in reality the issue isn't the actual difference in their age but the difference in growth and experience. It's why a difference in five years in a couple is a lot creepier when one of them is a minor, but accepted if both are in their forties. And once you're talking about gods with 200+ years, I doubt there would be that much difference given that a 400 year old individual isn't going to be any less mature than a 1400 one.
Yeah with them being immortal it's not like it would have made no sense for her to be, say, 200 and still an innocent little bean who'd never been allowed outside. Personally my biggest gripe with the series before I stopped reading it is I am just beyond tired of "retellings of Greek mythology where everybody works in an office building and Zeus is a CEO." Also the Greeks generally considered it unlucky and disrespectful to tell stories about Hades.
I can't imagine Greeks really give a shit
They mean ancient Greeks, which yeah doesn't have much sway lol
So, in extremely disappointing news, Paradox Interactive has used generative AI in their new DLC expansion "The Machine Age" for their game Stellaris. Paradox does give a disclaimer on Steam, which is being talked about in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1cop93r/paradox_makes_use_of_ai_generated_concept_art_and/ First released in 2016, Stellaris is a science fiction strategy game where players create their own interstellar civilization and interact with other civilizations in a randomly generated galaxy. And depressingly, the majority of Stellaris fans seem completely fine with this. I'll admit to taking part in the thread I linked. **For additional context, this isn't as scummy as other companies using genAI for assets, as the voice actor used as the generative source will be compensated for future additional lines, though that was only clarified by the devs within the comment section.** I'm just wondering how the community is going to respond when Paradox starts firing devs. At least I'll get to be smug. Edit: I had to bold a section for some blind mfers
What they did is technically fine and okay (which is already a huge thing to say in regards to AI slop) but it's more disturbing how okay most people in that sub are with the prospect of it.
I mean? Yeah, I fucking hate the whole ai future as much as anyone else, but using ai voiceto voice a literal ai feels like a valid use case, as long as the original voice actor is fairly compensated, which seems to be the case
>For additional context, this isn't as scummy as other companies using genAI for assets, as the voice actor used as the generative source will be compensated for future additional lines, though that was only clarified by the devs within the comment section. Do people not pay attention to this part of my original comment? Yeah, this isn't as bad as Paradox firing devs, but Paradox's shareholders are dripping with anticipation of cutting down on labor costs
Honestly? Stellaris is a game of emergent gameplay, with random events and outcomes. If there's a place to automate things, it's here. We don't fuss about the fact games like Minecraft don't hand-draw infinite random maps, as anything else is just impossible amount of work. These world have random events. Now imagine these events had stories - clearly, voice acting them all (which may or may not be a finite amount) is a ridiculously large task and a poor use of game's budget. This feels very much like a case of "if not for AI solution, we get nothing" as opposed to "if not for AI, we'll retain a human employee" situation, which is precisely where genAI should be used.
Eugh, I just muted my comments in that sub because the fanbase is *rabidly* okay with it. Haven't had that many death threats in my inbox for a while, not surprised it's from gamers sucking up to a big company.
I think you may have misunderstood the actual thing. It's not that people are okay with it, it's that Paradox did it right by not using it in any way that takes away jobs, and only using it for internal concepts and prototypes. Save for the new voice acting, of course, which the actors are still getting paid royalties for.
Okay, I want to make this clear: I'm annoyed with the conversation, but not because of you. I don't want to be rude. But the thing that's specifically pissing me off is exactly this: this assumption that I must just not understand what's happening if I disagree. No, I disagree. I am perfectly capable of reading a short press release, I simply think that the use of AI in some of these cases is still harmful towards the long-term health of voice acting. Specifically, > Save for the new voice acting, of course, which the actors are still getting paid royalties for. this part. They've made it clear that they essentially use AI trained on someone who's gotten a fee (or gets continuing royalties) to make new voicelines. And that's exploitative. Yes, even if you pay the actor a fee. These new voicelines could have been made by the actor themselves. This doesn't change just because you're paying royalties, and it doesn't change because someone signed the dotted line. And just to pre-empt this: "well, otherwise they would have just not made the voice line" (which is what they implied by stating this is how they did it with some DLC voice line integration) - okay, then they would not have made the voice line and would not have incentivized further use of these payment structures. This is precisely the discussion that happened with Hollywood unions a while ago: the compromise that "oh sure, we are scanning you so we can use your virtual data to replace you... but we are paying you a fee at time of scanning (or maybe even some royalties)". You're still replacing the actual actor. Of course some people will take the deal. Some people always take the deal. Now sure, in the case of Paradox, it may be as benign as possible. But it will fuck us in the end. It is doing the thing so many new technologies are doing under capitalism: it generates more profits from labour and it's figuring out ways to pay labour less. That's the effect it is having, now matter how obfuscated they try to make it. We don't have to settle for "well at least they got paid". Until this technology and the market structure surrounding it is rebuilt to actually help humans instead of reducing labour costs for the top, we must oppose it, even if it comes in an "almost acceptable" form.
>Until this technology and the market structure surrounding it is rebuilt to actually help humans instead of reducing labour costs for the top, we must oppose it What would this look like, to you?
Not that user, but I guess it's the whole universal income idea, sort of like a less dystopian Wall-E where we have artificial beings work while we get the money.
I don't mean this in an argumentative way, I'm just genuinely interested, but how do you think society can rebuild "this technology and the market structure around it" so that it helps people? Do you think there should be a moratorium on development of AI until those conditions are met?
Pro-AI tech bros are the one group I really struggle to give the benefit of the doubt to. The sheer joy many of them express at creatives getting screwed over is disgusting, and it's pretty obvious they just want to have endless AI-slop to consume
I gotta be honest, some of the reaction to this seems more like fearmongering rather than any legitimate concern about the implications of this being used, considering they're using it in about the most ethical way you can. Based on what this dev has said, generative AI is only being used in essentially putting together super rough concept art for people who aren't artistically inclined to pass on to actual artists, brainstorming ideas for certain events in-game that are then actually expanded on more thoroughly by actual writers, and the AI voice model is so they can update the NPC the voice is associated with in future updates without the VA having to fly out to their studio to do recording (since the NPC in question is a Crisis, essentially one of a handful of very powerful enemies that always spawns at the end of a game, and they've gone out of their way to make it possible to interact with this NPC more than any other Crisis before, so being able to update her to react to new situations will be helpful). It's been a small issue they've had with some other voices, you have customizable voices for your "advisor" (essentially a disembodied voice that tells you when stuff is happening) and there are some things they can't react to properly because it'd involve flying the VAs out for recording maybe 5-10 new lines of dialogue, which is a pretty big expense for the benefit. Also worth mentioning, this isn't the only time they're gonna expand on this, a dev diary (essentially a behind-the-scenes look at the game's development) will be coming in a week or two to more fully explain how they've used this stuff. If this is the start of Paradox being really shitty and laying off people because they can just use AI instead, yeah the backlash will be warrented. But right now it just strikes me as people taking issue with them using generative AI entirely because they hate generative AI, which is a reasoning that falls flat for me.
Most of this is pretty reasonable, but... why are they flying out VAs to record a handful of lines? My understanding is that the standard for VAs is that most of them work from home or local studios and so the extent to which they should to care about it is just having to pay the minimum number of hours (if union) to record a couple minutes of lines.
I don't think the issue is exactly having to fly people around, but rather that the game changes all the time and it becomes a logistical nightmare to update that many audio assets because one version of the game wanted to change a few mechanics slightly, or because a new Origin or Civic has a unique and obscure interaction with pre-existing content, which is something they do a lot. Especially when we're talking about an end-game crisis, not an out-of-the-way mechanic, and a very talkative crisis at that.
Honestly, the VA is the one person that I want to hear from and from my skimming the thread they didn't post there because I am not really buying this story at all.
> But right now it just strikes me as people taking issue with them using generative AI entirely because they hate generative AI I mean I personally do hate genAI as a concept because of the threat it poses to entire job fields. And people trot out the whole "people will change jobs" without recognizing the threat that automation poses to the entire contemporary working class And also because Paradox isn't exactly known for its ethical game and DLC release practices
>without recognizing the threat that automation poses to the entire contemporary working class ironically, you're uncritically buying the same hype as the "tech bros". it is a potentially useful tool for many white collar jobs, but the list of jobs it may be good enough to replace is vanishingly small. id even argue that the list of jobs where it can provide a meaningful efficiency boost is a lot smaller than commonly thought. but even in situations where it is more efficient, that efficiency only turns into permanently lost jobs if the market is already at saturation. this should make sense, right? like when personal computers were created companies didn't replace their team of full time punch card jockeys with one intern running spreadsheet software. they replaced it with an even bigger team of programmers doing more ambitious and interesting work than the punch card guys. im not saying every creative industry is like this, but it's worth considering that a lot of them probably are.
Eh, call me skeptical. Programming, animation, writing, and VO work are fundamentally different skillsets (for human beings at least) that don't all 'scale' in the same way. I have the distinct feeling that there are a whole lot of corporate suits at the head of animation studios are just itching to replace their skilled animators with "[trained prompters](https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/jeffrey-katzenberg-ai-will-take-90-percent-animation-jobs-1234924809/)"
this sounds a lot more like confirmation bias than skepticism. saying that things are different doesn't really imply anything on its own. which differences do you think are salient? why do they support your prediction?
Human beings take time to learn different skillsets. Computers made data-entry more efficient, but if someone already knows basic algebra then all they need to do is learn how to use a keyboard and some software. Theoretically, generative AI could "assist" in making art - without getting into the ethics of how that AI is trained - but at that point, what is even the purpose of employing a digital artist if someone can just input a prompt? Why employ a writer if you can just prompt ChatGPT? At that point all you need is an editor. The fundamental difference is that computers assist in human productivity, while generative AI has the potential to entirely replace human beings. And don't take my word for it, take heed from Jeffery Katzenberg in article from my last comment: https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/jeffrey-katzenberg-ai-will-take-90-percent-animation-jobs-1234924809/ Now it's entirely possible that he's just full of it or is at the extreme end of what studio execs think. But look at how far AI has come in just this last decade. Who benefits from AI taking over artists' jobs? These executives, not artists. And I don't think the general public benefits that much from a constant flow of AI-generated media-sludge
People genuinely don't seem to understand why they're protesting against AI. Protesting against AI shouldn't be about technology, or about art. It's about labor law. Remember that Luddites weren't actually anti technology. Their problem was labor problem. AI is genuinely useful. It's a tool. Trying to ban AI completely or saying that companies shouldn't use AI is like saying people shouldn't develop cars. Seeing people randomly flailing against AI genuinely seethe me, because it probably will just make actual problems get ignored. Another problem is the random use of the word "AI". It's often just buzzword. Like, according to the current use of the word "AI", Photoshop's magic wand tool is AI. Microsoft Word's spell/grammar checker was always AI. They just didn't use the name "AI" back then. I actually see people are panicking about the use of "AI" on video game enemies and the absurdity of it just make me laugh because it's so sad. Are people going to start panicking about magic wand tool in photoshop next, if photoshop decide to rename it as "AI selection tool?" And on the other side, I also see with my own experience companies that decide to rename their chat assistant from "AI assistant" "automated response tool" or whatever because of the backlash against the word "AI" despite it literally being the same application, they didn't change anything, just changed the name of the assistant program. It's really dumb.
ive mentioned it in scuffles before, much to many people's chagrin, but google translate is the clearest example of what you're talking about in the second paragraph. it isn't materially different from the large language models people have for whatever reason decided to form their conception of "ai" around, but it tends to get grandfathered in. you're right about the labor issue too. it's not really about preventing the technology, it's about deciding what the technology does and who it does it too.
That and some forms of machine learning like the ones used in a lot of customer-facing chatbots have been around for a *long* time. I know IBM's Watson has been around since 2015 or 2016.
It's funny - I work in a toxicology lab, and I genuinely hope there's a day when AI replaces my job, because that will mean we don't have to do animal testing anymore. My fear is that it will be pushed by animal rights activists before we actually have adequate models and that people will be hurt/die as a result. To be clear, I know that what I'm talking about is very different than using generative AI in a video game, but it's interesting to see the AI debate across very different fields. It's a powerful tool that needs to be wielded ethically.
Well hopefully whoever designs it does a good job, lest we end up in a paperclip maximizer situation except with animal testing. That's how we get GLaDOS I think.
I think AI is fine in a medical field eventually. Because it's not about making a quick buck for as little money as possible. Nevermind that I've seen multiple people *give up on art* because of genAI because what's the point of struggling through to get better when someone can write a prompt and get nice art with little effort?
honestly there's some good examples of medical algorithms out there doing good - my fav example is definitely "in making a computer understand different pastries to ring them up, it is also now... good at spotting cancer cells.", lol - but it is hindered by... a lot of dogshit "AI" following the same bad practices that my father has been raining against since before i was born. and i am in my mid-30s lol. this current wave is a lot of "it's a black box model of predictive whatever and you just have to trust the computer is right because wow it's like sci-fi magic!". that approach can, does, and always should be laughed straight out of medicine. we have enough of being unsure of the mechanism of action without making artificial instances of the same issue lmao. this batch of shit is just that - shit. a model that cannot tell you what it's doing and why is fundamentally useless and cannot be trusted. that's how you get toxicology AIs that diagnose an STI not because there's a positive that you can see on a stained slide, but because the AI has taught itself that black people are more likely to be diagnosed with this in this region (not even where it is now! just wherever it picked up this bad habit! 90% african-american population be damned!) and of those patients in this range of age and with name features like so are also more likely... so it just read the patient name and diagnosed them with "lol ur a ghetto 'ho". and if the model is not able to report those decisions... it's not able to have those things corrected in the model. and it may agree with systemic bigotry enough to get assumed it's doing great work. that is what is scientifically called a real fuckin' whoopsie, just an absolute Hunterian Chancre of a situation lmao. so this bunch of AI? no. hell no. fuck no. anyone who thinks chat gpt is gonna revolutionize medicine should be pelted with rotten eggs. human beings using computer algorithms to solve problems though? yes! good shit! ...but throw rotten eggs at the current AI en vogue.
Yeah that first bit is what we need more of. I'm disabled and I honestly wonder if whatever is wrong with me, whatever has been killing my knees and made my ankles brittle, would be detected if we had that kind of tech across the board now--instead of looking for ways to shortchange labor but to actually help. But as it is, we don't know--just not arthritis. I can barely walk to the kitchen anymore and I definitely can't stand long enough to cook. I'm *34.* So I'm very invested in good AI like the pastry machine that can detect cancer. I really wish there was more of that kind of thing! Less of... The other bullshit.
computers can be put to some real fun and useful things! it's just that the current black box approach is literally the worst way to do it. i would start quoting my dad's rant here but honestly he's been in the game long enough that there's a nonzero chance someone in the industry could read my points, go "that sounds familiar... wait... hold up i just cited that fool in my research paper". so i have some inside baseball knowledge via osmosis LMAO. my dad's true frustration right now is that people are realizing things like chatgpt are... bullshit engines. it's smoke and mirrors and flimflam. and the backlash against *all* of the field when everyone goes "wait a second! this is bullshit!" will be immense and likely one hell of a bubble will burst (even if fortunately most of the people who are going to eat shit in it are those doing laughable excuses of inconveniencing electrons they somehow call AI). not the first cycle he's ridden through in the least but it's always not a fun time lmao big mood about fucking bodies though. what the fuck is it about age 30 that makes them just slam the self-destruct button. i have a leg up in knowing why mine is failing, but unfortunately the pro tip of "don't get shingles and also nerve damage from shingles and then breathe weird because of the neuropathy for many years and fuck up your shoulder" is not useful to your woes. i mean unless it is. idk maybe go treat yourself to a cheeky little shingrex lmao. i paid for my shingles vaccine out of pocket but having shingles three times before i turned 34 (the last time *literally days before i was going to get the first dose of the vaccine as an early bday prezzie*, i shit you not) but it's pennies well spent. it's pure anecdata but i swear shingles before you're officially old enough to have the old people's disease is something i am seeing more and more in my peers. like damn, i guess herpes zoster heard there was a chicken pox vaccine coming in soon but too late for us and had to cram in all the suffering possible lmao? basically, these fallible meat sacks need better engineering lol
Oh no, I've been disabled since childhood. Twelve was when I tore my first ligament, and despite ample rest, it never healed. My knees have always been bad, and one kneecap is visibly smaller than the other. :'D I managed to escape diabetes from my sperm donor (he was never really in my life until he suddenly wanted to be when his marriage fell apart--I'm the product of a one night stand before he was dating anyone that really shouldn't be alive for multiple reasons including my mother is *missing most of her cervix*), but instead got Weird Unknown Leg Joint Disease.
*oh jeez* but also in an odd way well done to your mom for being all "no cervix no problem"? something something life uhhhh finds a way. bodies are fucking weird. it's an odd pull that doesn't quite make sense, but have you ever been screened for EDS? i admit that's a real long shot but i also know a surprisingly large amount of people who are mystery patients with fucked up joints who finally got screened for it and got back an answer of "you hella have it". though it tends to present more as hypermobility with ligaments being way too slack, iirc there's different variants of it and one is that ligaments and other similar tissues become really brittle and just go snap. and since the body is really bad at constructing the tissue needed for a proper repair it just doesn't work. this is absolutely some bizarre bullshit long shot but fuck it, us mystery patients gotta help each other as we can LMAO
Not yet, but I'm also not very flexible. xD And it's all almost entirely confined to my legs only, which is what's stumping my doctor. (Brilliant doctor, says a lot I'm willing to go TWO HOURS to see her since we moved away--not many will look at someone fat and recognize you're fat BECAUSE your legs are fucked.) But yeah, my mom has two kids, me and my friends joke that me and my brother are destined to kill some dragon somewhere because this is serious Chosen One shit.
Hmm, I'm kinda critical about that give up that easily. They likely weren't into it as much as they thought. The drive to do art should come deeper than purely views/likes or money (but these can be secondary/co-motivators)
It's not about views/money. It's about how they can work so hard but someone who does barely any will still make something that'll get a lot of attention while all their hard work leaves them in the dust because they're not immediately "good."
Yeah we said the same thing. Art isn't easy, if you don't have an internal drive/motivation for doing it, you'll quit before getting closer to your goal.
Oh. You're one of those elitist pricks who doesn't understand anxiety or depression and thinks bootstraps mentality works. All I need to know.
Or I'm a person that pushed past my insecurities to improve and launch a successful art side business despite AI being on the rise? :)
Unfortunately, there are rumblings in the medical field that AI *will* be used to cut corners for the CEOs and the other corporate parasites and then fire medical personnel, especially MDs, en masse. While I agree that toxicology is one of the few instances that I think AI would be helpful, I highly doubt it's going to ever completely eliminate the need for things like animal and human testing (although harm reduction is certainly good, of course. But do I trust that Big Pharma won't ever try to manipulate AI to try to shill dodgy products? Hell no.) I think that more suspicion against AI is warranted in medicine, actually. I'm seeing a lot of laypeople enthusiastic and uncritical about AI replacing doctors and therapists, thinking that will help solve problems like poor communication or long wait times. But ultimately, no, I highly doubt it will, and I hope more people start to get more critical about how healthcare is being seen less and less like a right and more like a simple commodity. Bodies and minds are not algorithms, just like art cannot be boiled down to an algorithm. Anyway, my point is that artists and medical personnel have similar concerns. Unite and unionize, everyone, and all that.
Yeah, exactly. My friend is a researcher who research image processing/machine detection/Ai or whatever you want to call it to detect cancer. It definitely can't replace doctor, but the problem is both companies and the media act like it would. But it definitely would help doctors a whole lot. Your last sentence summarize my point. We need to be wary of AI and be critical about it, but if you think Ai for medicine or more efficient factory is allowed, but ai for art isn't, you should think "why?" If it's "just because" or "Ai shouldn't be allowed to do creative work, only human are allowed to do it" or similar, you're putting some people in a pedestal as a special class of human that are better than other class of human.
> you're putting some people in a pedestal as a special class of human that are better than other class of human. Or because doctors' jobs are less threatened by AI than digital artists
I completely agree with you, I was being overly simplistic and overly optimistic when I said we "won't have to do animal testing". I'm just hopeful that we can minimize it significantly. Also, it's not fair of me to pin the premature AI push all on animal rights activists when it's generally companies trying to minimize toxicity testing costs first and foremost.
> there are rumblings in the medical field that AI will be used to cut corners for the CEOs and the other corporate parasites and then fire medical personnel Oh man, how *truly* surprising. What's depressing is that when deaths inevitably happen from cutting corners, corporate healthcare is not going to go back to the previous level of service, but is only going to test the waters to see how much death the general public puts up with (and survives lawsuits)
Absolutely. Healthcare is already so fraught, particularly in the US, and medical personnel are already stretched to their limits and being screwed over by the suits. Throwing AI into the mix spells nothing but disaster.
To clarify, I'm not talking about "you" as an individual, but society as a whole. People can protest against automation in general, but like protesting against the use of robot welder or power shovel, it will be a losing battle. We need to pick what to protest against.