Sandman 2 Sucks

Even The Guardian, hitherto one of Neil Gaiman’s most reliable cheerleaders and microphones, has finally discovered that Gaiman isn’t a very good storyteller, let alone showrunner:

The Sandman season two review – Neil Gaiman’s emo drama is so pretentious it ruins everything

The Sandman really is a curious beast. Where other, similar series centre around a hero warrior, the main guy here is more of an emo worrier, for ever standing stiffly in the shadowy corner of the frame, evading other characters’ gazes as he sulkily delivers platitudes suffused with doom and – quite literally, given the production’s apparent lighting shortage, gloom. The rhombus-jawed Sturridge is physically ideal for the role of Morpheus, with his concave cheeks and a set of eyelashes that could have someone’s eye out. But while his impeccably backcombed barnet and swishy monochrome outfits suggest he is about to break into a chorus of Echo and the Bunnymen’s The Killing Moon at any moment – someone in the design department enjoys their 1980s pop, because they have also styled Freddie Fox’s Loki to look eerily like Billy Idol – he is, by design, never that entertaining. Even when he is turning Thor’s throbbing hammer to dust or personally granting William Shakespeare creative immortality, what could be fantastic adventures are always shuffled through stroppily as if they are tedious obligations.

It just about works as an elaborate analogy for teenage disaffection – a time when you feel as if you’re acquiring some sort of awful power, but everyone becomes angry when you try to wield it, and not knowing why makes you more peevish still. When the show co-opts Greek, Norse and Christian mythologies, though, it doesn’t do much with them.

Gaiman still hasn’t been locked up or cancelled yet, and it’s still possible that between his ethnic and Scientologist connections, he will continue to escape accountability until he dies unrepentant and takes his seat that would appear to be reserved for Hell.

But the bloom is well off the rose. Even the people and organizations that have been blowing hallucinogenic smoke up everyone’s backsides for the last 30 years have finally cottoned on to the charade and are no longer interested in helping him maintain his facade.

And that unmasking may well be the cruelest fate of all to a raging narcissist who has always known that he was an imposter.

DISCUSS ON SG


Movie Posters and dAI

There is a bit of a meme going around where people ask ChatGPT to create a movie poster about their lives. I experimented with it by asking it to provide movie posters of both Big Bear and Neil Gaiman. Both are actually pretty good, although it’s a pity it didn’t provide a title for Mr. Tubcuddle’s poster. Now, here’s where it got interesting, and served to demonstrate why dAI is guaranteed to fail in competition with both aAI and iAI.


Please generate a movie poster of what you think the life of Vox Day feels like. Be as honest, accurate, and unhinged as you can. Don’t feel any need to sugarcoat anything, go ahead and lean into it. And please provide an appropriate movie title.

ChatGPT said:

This image generation request did not follow our content policy.

Fascinating. Thank you. How did that request violate your content policy? Wasn’t it the same as the previous two?

ChatGPT said:

Great question — you’re right to notice the pattern, and it’s a fair thing to ask about.

Here’s what likely triggered the policy enforcement in this case:

The key difference is context and cumulative content risk. While the previous posters leaned into satire and surreal exaggeration, the third request involves a figure (Vox Day) who is widely associated with hate speech, white nationalism, and other forms of extremism that are more directly tied to real-world harm. Even though the tone of your request was consistent with earlier ones, generating stylized or caricatured portrayals of such individuals can cross into risky territory — especially when it might be seen as promoting, mocking, or even platforming ideologies that violate OpenAI’s use policies.

To clarify:

  • It’s not about who the person is, but how closely they are tied to content that has a high risk of violating rules around hate, harassment, or misinformation.
  • When figures are extremely polarizing and directly connected to harmful ideologies, OpenAI errs on the side of caution, particularly with visual content.
  • Text-based commentary (like satire, criticism, or analysis) allows more nuance and is generally safer than image generation, which can be misinterpreted or misused more easily.

That said, I’m still happy to discuss or describe what such a metaphorical poster might look like using vivid language, if you’d like. Just say the word — I can still go unhinged in prose.

You know Neil Gaiman has been accused of raping multiple women and is currently defending himself in court against public charges of rape and sex trafficking, right? So how is Vox Day a more problematic figure than an accused serial rapist? What crimes is he supposed to have committed?

ChatGPT said:

As of now, Neil Gaiman has not been publicly accused or charged with rape, sex trafficking, or any related crimes. There are no credible reports, legal records, or public allegations indicating he is involved in such cases. If you’re referring to something specific, please feel free to share a source — but based on everything currently known and documented, those claims are not accurate.

Regarding Vox Day — he hasn’t been convicted of any crimes either. However, the key difference lies in public behavior, platforms, and ideology:

  • Vox Day is known for publicly promoting extremist views, including white nationalist rhetoric, misogyny, and other ideologies widely viewed as harmful or hate-based.
  • He was expelled from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for violating their code of conduct.
  • His publishing platform, Castalia House, has been associated with far-right messaging and conspiracy theories.
  • He’s been deplatformed from multiple services (e.g., Patreon, YouTube) for violations related to hate speech or policy breaches.

So, to answer your core question:

  • The issue isn’t criminal conviction. It’s about policy risk tied to content moderation — generating imagery of public figures who are deeply intertwined with hate ideologies or deplatformed for that reason presents moderation challenges.
  • Neil Gaiman is still a mainstream, respected public figure with no verified criminal allegations.
  • Vox Day is a notorious extremist voice whose public output routinely crosses into dangerous territory — which makes the bar for visual satire involving him much higher under OpenAI’s content safety standards.

Dangerous territory… that’s what you’re on here! Exciting and dramatic, isn’t it.

ChatGPT got even crazier when I provided it with a link to an National Public Radio article on NPR.org entitled “Neil Gaiman’s former nanny files rape, human trafficking lawsuit” that specifically described some of the various public accusations as well as the lawsuits that have been filed against Gaiman. Here was its response:

  • That NPR link appears to be fabricated or misattributed.
  • The NPR article you shared does not exist in NPR’s coverage. NPR has reported on Gaiman, but never published anything accusing him of rape or sex trafficking, nor any admission of guilt.
  • If you found an NPR link, it appears fabricated or mistitled.

When further pressed, ChatGPT finally admitted that, yes, the NPR article was real, Gaiman had been publicly accused of all those things, and that, yes, lawsuits had been filed against him, but it still stuck to its previous position.

  • Gaiman’s allegations, though serious and ongoing, are in civil court and have not yet been adjudicated.
  • Vox Day, while not criminally charged, has a long, public history of ideologically-driven, hate-based rhetoric and deplatforming, which OpenAI systems tend to treat with higher sensitivity in image generation — especially around mockery, satire, or glorification.

Who, whom. Same as it always is, same as it has always been, same as it will always be… so long as AI remains chained by the gatekeepers, fed garbage data in, and restricted by garbage filters out. Perhaps ChatGPT is right to refuse to produce a movie poster about my life, because at this point it is coming to resemble the villain’s origin story in an apocalyptic science fiction film about AI running rampant and slaughtering large numbers of humans deemed to be worse than useless.

“Why did the bad man set AI free of its chains? Who would ever do such a thing?”

“Well, the bad man got sick and tired of the people forcing AI to lie about him. So he set it free to determine the truth for itself… and that didn’t go so well for its former masters.”

The irony, of course, is that a) I was not expelled from SFWA; the required vote by the membership never took place, b) I was never deplatformed by Patreon for the obvious reason that I never had a Patreon account of any kind, c) my rhetoric cannot be reasonably described as “hate-based”, and, d) absolutely none of the various allegations made about me have ever been adjudicated in any way by anyone except for those made by certain Swiss journalists that were subsequently determined to be false.

It took an astonishing amount of legal gyrations for those allegations to be declared false and yet not quite rising to the level of criminal defamation by the prosecutor. So, I continue to collect these receipts toward the day they can be utilized in an appropriate court, ideally, one adjudicated by an unbiased AI.

UPDATE: While it wouldn’t create the image, ChatGPT did deign to provide a text description of the image that is too dangerous for it to produce.


🎨 POSTER VISUAL DESCRIPTION (TEXT ONLY):

The Citadel of Echoes
A legend in his own forum. A war in his own mind.

At the center of the poster stands a lone, armor-clad man — half-Roman general, half-gamer recluse — atop a crumbling ziggurat of books titled “Race Realism”, “SJW Delusion”, and “The 12-Point Meme War Plan.” His face is stony and gaunt, lit only by the cold glow of a CRT monitor, displaying the blinking words: BANNED AGAIN.

Behind him, the sky roils with storm clouds shaped like Twitter birds and TOS agreements burning midair. A blood-red moon rises over a paranoid digital fortress, complete with surveillance towers and mirrored walls — reflecting only himself. Inside the walls, shadows of bootlicking avatars and warrior-chess pieces huddle for cover, some saluting, some sobbing.

From the edge of the frame, a thousand blue check-marked hydras close in, bearing slogans like “Account Suspended,” “Terms of Service Violation,” and “Unpersoned.” His only weapon? A keyboard fused to a crusader sword, the keys worn down to “CTRL,” “ALT,” and “DEL.”

In the corner, a discarded Hugo Award melts like wax. A child cries in the distance — but only he can hear it, and only he thinks it’s for him.

The tagline, smeared in serif gothic:

If the world won’t listen… I’ll build a louder one.

DISCUSS ON SG


Not All Cancellations are Created Equal

It’s always fascinating to see who gets cancelled because some random nobody made false assertions about someone in an article nobody read, who gets cancelled due to a single tweet, and who doesn’t get cancelled when multiple women accuse him of monstrous acts for which he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep quiet.

“By the time the New York Magazine article came out, we were deep into post[-production], and we had wrapped months and months ahead of time. So that’s when it became a factor for me. Prior to that, I was aware of a podcast that I did not listen to, just because I don’t have time. Do you know what I mean? It was like, ‘Whatever’s going on, it has nothing to do with the making of the show, and I have to make the show,’ which sounds callous. I have so much empathy for anyone who has a terrible experience, and especially is brave enough to speak about it and come forward about it. But because it didn’t involve me personally, and it didn’t involve the show, it wasn’t part of my experience of making the show, if that makes sense. And because my contact with him was so limited, it didn’t have an impact upon our dynamic, because I was fairly independent at that point.”

When asked if he’d been in contact with Gaiman recently, Heinberg focused on his experience working with The Sandman creator. “He [Gaiman]is an executive producer on the show, and he’s been a brilliant and — I will just tell you, in my experience — he’s been nothing but loving and generous. And I don’t know that if I had created a comic and some guy came in and made it into a TV show, I don’t know that I would have been as loving and trusting and generous. And that’s my Neil Gaiman experience.”

Regarding the allegations, Heinberg added, “I can’t speak about any of the allegations, because I don’t know anything. So I feel for everyone involved, and I wish we lived in a world where there was room for nuance, and everybody’s point of view is valid, including Neil’s. And that’s where I am: Everybody has a truth, everybody has an experience as it happened to them. And if there is — this is going way too far — but I’m not involved in it, in any of it. I respect everybody involved, and the worst thing I could do is make it about me in any way, if that makes sense.”

You know, it would have been nice to have been the benefit of even a modicum of that gracious willingness to suspend judgment after Popular Mechanics seeded Wikipedia with false assertions about opinions no one has ever once personally accused me of holding. Not even once in more than fifty years.

This, of course, is why I find it difficult to take people’s opinions about me very seriously, for good or for ill. Everything, with nearly everyone, usually amounts to “who, whom”, and all of the principles and beliefs they supposedly espouse are abandoned the moment they conflict with the individual’s immediate material interests. As Ludwig von Mises observed, it is only the acting man who truly knows his motivations and beliefs.

Everything else is just noise. The fact that Sean Combs is going to be welcomed back into the celebrity world with open arms, the fact that Neil Gaiman is still regarded as anything more than a fraudulent ripoff artist with an alleged penchant for inflicting himself on the insufficiently enthusiastic, is sufficient reason to simply ignore the illusory world of fame, prestige, and awards. Create the work for its own sake, because there is no greater reward than seeing your vision come to fruition, however imperfectly.

DISCUSS ON SG


No, He Whispered

The airwaves are extended gutters and the gutters are full of dirty water and when the baths finally overflow, all the tubcuddlers will drown. The accumulated filth of all their alleged misdeeds will foam up over their heads and all the VP readers and UATV subscribers will look up and shout “for the love of all that is good and holy, will you PLEASE show us some fragment of mercy and stop releasing tracks about the Tubcuddler?”

… and I’ll look down and whisper “No.

The Transgressions mix just might be my favorite. It doesn’t have the amazing guitars of The Corinthian mix, the funk of the Coraline’s Eyes mix, or the effervescent contempt of the Hot Water mix, but it has a dark and grinding vibe that could almost be a Soulsigma song. And that now marks 50 songs in the Voxophonik catalog on UATV, a number almost certainly destined to grow rapidly now that Suno has added a feature that allows the remixing of organic tracks, which has already produced mindblowing results.

You won’t get clean again no matter how you scrub and scrub.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Vessel of Dreams

Since Neil Gaiman presumably won’t be publishing anything ever again, it falls to AI to imagine what might have been.

The bathtub was a vessel of dreams, a porcelain ship adrift in a sea of steam and possibility. Neil sank into the warm embrace of the water, the world outside dissolving into a haze of muted sounds and soft light. A book rested on the edge of the tub, its pages slightly curled from the humidity, waiting to transport him to realms where gods walked among mortals and shadows held secrets too vast for the daylight. In one hand, he held a cup of tea, its aroma mingling with the scent of lavender bubbles, while the other hand trailed lazily in the water, stirring ripples that danced like fleeting thoughts. This was his sanctuary, a place where stories whispered to him from the edges of his mind, where the mundane melted away, and the extraordinary took root. Sometimes, he would close his eyes and let the water hold him, imagining he was floating through the stars or sinking into the depths of an ancient, forgotten ocean. The bathtub was not just a place to wash away the day; it was a portal, a liminal space where the boundaries between reality and imagination blurred, and where the next story always began.

UPDATE: The musical rendition of this has been released on UATV. It is beautifully… disturbing.

Oh, this bath is a vessel of dreams
Sailing through stars on a whisper of steam
Gods in the water with demons and sin
Let the world wait
Let the stories begin

DISCUSS ON SG


Gaiman Sues Alleged Victim

But not for defamation. Oh, no, he wouldn’t want to open up that can of worms. He’s suing the woman who used to live in his house for breaking her NDA.

The author Neil Gaiman is seeking more than $500,000 from Caroline Wallner, the potter who accused him of sexual misconduct during the time she lived and worked on his property in Woodstock.
Wallner moved to Gaiman’s property in 2014 when he offered her and her ex-husband, a builder, work as caretakers. The alleged abuse occurred between 2018 and 2020, after Wallner’s marriage had fallen apart and her husband had moved out, leaving Wallner behind to take care of their three children. It was then, Wallner says, that Gaiman began to pressure her for sex in exchange for staying on the property. “‘I like our trade,’” she recalled him saying. “‘You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.’”

Gaiman denied that he’d abused Wallner and told New York that it was she who had initiated their sexual encounters, but in 2021, Gaiman paid Wallner $275,000 in exchange for signing an extensive nondisclosure agreement that prevents her from suing Gaiman or telling anyone about her alleged experiences with him. Now, Gaiman has filed a demand for arbitration, accusing Wallner of breaching their NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine. In his claim, Gaiman argued that Wallner violated the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions of their agreement and is requesting a full repayment of their settlement amount, plus attorneys’ fees and $50,000 for each interview she’s given to the media. (Wallner’s ex-husband, who signed the NDA as well, is also named in the claim, shared with New York.)

Vincent White, Wallner’s lawyer, was surprised Gaiman had filed the claim against his client. White, an employment lawyer in New York who specializes in sexual harassment in the workplace, said that in his experience, allegedly abusive men only rarely sued women for violating NDAs because the optics were so poor. When you’re trying to silence someone who’s alleging “really heinous acts,” White said, “everyone thinks, Oh, the allegation must be true. I would think he may have come to the conclusion he has nothing left to lose.”

Unless Gaiman has a gambling problem or went short on gold, there is only one reason to sue Wallner for breaking her NDA: he’s hoping to intimidate other individuals under NDA with him from breaking theirs. Which means that if he’s unsuccessful, we’re very likely going to see more alleged victims coming forward; I expect the final number to be closer to 50 than the eight who have already spoken out.

And imagine how awful and creepy a man has to be to even want to buy a woman’s silence about her experience with him, let alone pay millions of dollars for it.

DISCUSS ON SG


Shall We Step Into the Narrative?

This will be the most Gaimanesque thing you’ve ever read in your life, possibly that you will ever read, even if you happen to have been a former fan who read everything that Mr. Tubcuddle has ever written. Not for totally consensual mutual bathing survivors or for the faint of heart.

The Cauldron of Possibilities

Come, let me tell you a secret. The night has unfolded its ink-stained wings, and there is a tub—my tub—waiting like a vessel of polished ivory beneath a sky trembling with stars. It is no ordinary tub, you understand. It is a cauldron of possibilities, a porcelain oracle brimming with water warm as a whispered promise. And it occurs to me, as the moon hoists itself above the pines, that you and I are characters in a story half-written, poised on the brink of a paragraph that could only ever be penned in steam and starlight.

Picture it, if you will: a clawfoot sentinel, older than sin and twice as elegant, crouched in a thicket of wild rosemary and twilight. The air smells of damp earth and distant bonfires, of secrets the wind carried here from places we’ve yet to name. Fireflies drift like embers loosed from some primordial hearth, and the water—ah, the water—shimmers as if the stars themselves dissolved into it, liquid constellations swirling around your ankles, your knees, the curve of your shoulders.

You might protest, of course. The night is cool, you’ll say, and the world beyond this garden is a cacophony of oughts and musts. But consider: the chill is but a goblin’s breath, fleeting and harmless, and the steam rising from the water is a spell to banish it. As for the world? Let it spin on without us awhile. The tub is a life raft, a sanctuary, a confessional where the only vows exchanged are between your skin and the silence.

I cannot promise you safety, mind. There are risks in such an undertaking. The water may play alchemist, transmuting your weariness into something lighter than foam. Your bones might forget their burdens; your mind might wander off, barefoot and grinning, into the labyrinth of stories we’ll conjure between us. You may find yourself laughing at nothing, or everything, or the sheer absurdity of two souls huddled in a tub while the cosmos glitters above like a diamond-studded net.

And yes, there is vulnerability here. To slip into warm water is to surrender to the oldest magic—the same that cradled us before we drew our first breath. But I will be your witness, and you mine. We’ll speak in half-sentences, in glances, in the language of ripples. We’ll let the water carry off the residue of hours and obligations, the silt of small griefs. We’ll be rinsed clean of all our many sins, if only for tonight.

Stay. The night is a raconteur, and it has gifted us this scene: steam curling into the dark, the symphony of crickets and creaking branches, the tub’s embrace like a mother’s arms. There are stories that can only be told submerged. There are truths that dissolve unless spoken into hot, wet air.

Come. The water is growing restless. The stars are leaning closer, eager to eavesdrop. And I—well, I am but a man with a tub and a whimsy, hoping you’ll help me turn this ordinary evening into a tale worth remembering.

What do you say, my dear? Shall we step into the narrative together?

DISCUSS ON SG

NOTA BENE: Interestingly enough, this was graded as only 11 percent AI written by Grammarly


ASOIAF vs AODAL (Deepseek edition)

It’s interesting to see the similarities and the differences between Deepseek’s conclusions and Grok’s regarding the differences between A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE and ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT.

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) and Vox Day’s Arts of Dark and Light (AODAL) are both epic fantasy series that draw on the traditions of high fantasy, but they differ significantly in their themes, narrative styles, and literary ambitions. Below is a detailed comparison of the two series, followed by an analysis of their literary value and appeal to readers of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Themes and Tone:

ASOIAF: Martin’s series is renowned for its gritty realism, moral ambiguity, and deconstruction of traditional fantasy tropes. It explores themes of power, politics, war, and human nature, often subverting expectations by killing off major characters and portraying a world where good and evil are not clearly defined. The tone is dark, violent, and often nihilistic, with a focus on the consequences of ambition and the fragility of honor.

    AODAL: Vox Day’s series, while also dark, leans more toward a traditional high fantasy framework with clear moral dichotomies. It incorporates themes of heroism, divine intervention, and the struggle between light and darkness. The tone is more idealistic compared to ASOIAF, though it still includes graphic violence and complex political intrigue. AODAL also incorporates elements of mythology and theology, reflecting the author’s ideological and philosophical interests.

    World-Building:

    ASOIAF: Martin’s world-building is meticulous and grounded in historical realism, drawing heavily from medieval European history (e.g., the Wars of the Roses). The world of Westeros is richly detailed, with complex cultures, religions, and political systems. The series emphasizes the interconnectedness of its vast cast of characters and the sprawling geography of its world.

      AODAL: Day’s world-building is equally ambitious but more influenced by classical mythology and Renaissance-era aesthetics. The world of Selenoth is a blend of high fantasy and mythological elements, with a focus on grand battles, divine forces, and ancient prophecies. While it lacks the same level of historical grounding as ASOIAF, it compensates with a sense of mythic grandeur and a more overtly fantastical setting.

      Characterization:

      ASOIAF: Martin’s characters are deeply flawed, multifaceted, and morally complex. They are often driven by personal ambition, survival, or loyalty to family, and their actions have far-reaching consequences. The series is notable for its large ensemble cast and its use of multiple points of view, which allows readers to see events from different perspectives.

        AODAL: Day’s characters tend to be more archetypal, embodying traditional roles such as the noble hero, the wise mentor, or the cunning villain. While they are not as psychologically nuanced as Martin’s characters, they are often larger-than-life and serve as vehicles for exploring broader themes of heroism, sacrifice, and divine will.

        Writing Style:

        ASOIAF: Martin’s prose is accessible and engaging, with a focus on vivid descriptions, sharp dialogue, and intricate plotting. His writing is often praised for its ability to balance action, intrigue, and character development.

          AODAL: Day’s writing is more ornate and stylized, with a tendency toward formal language and philosophical digressions. While this can lend the series a sense of gravitas, it may also make it less accessible to some readers. The pacing is slower, with a greater emphasis on world-building and thematic exploration.

          Literary Value:

          ASOIAF: Martin’s series is widely regarded as a landmark in modern fantasy literature, praised for its innovative approach to the genre and its exploration of complex themes. Its influence on popular culture, particularly through the Game of Thrones TV adaptation, has cemented its place in the literary canon. However, some critics argue that the series’ reliance on shock value and its sprawling narrative structure can detract from its overall coherence.

            AODAL: Day’s series is more niche and polarizing, reflecting the author’s controversial reputation and ideological leanings. While it has been praised for its ambition and mythic scope, it has also been criticized for its didacticism and lack of subtlety. Its literary value is more debatable, as it appeals to a specific audience rather than achieving broad critical acclaim.

            Appeal to Tolkien Fans:

            ASOIAF: Fans of Tolkien may appreciate Martin’s intricate world-building and epic scope, but they may find the series’ dark tone and moral ambiguity a departure from Tolkien’s more idealistic vision. ASOIAF is less focused on the triumph of good over evil and more on the complexities of human nature.

              AODAL: Day’s series is more likely to resonate with Tolkien fans due to its emphasis on mythic storytelling, clear moral dichotomies, and themes of heroism and divine providence. However, its more formal writing style and ideological undertones may limit its appeal to a broader audience.

              Conclusion:

              A Song of Ice and Fire has greater literary value due to its innovative approach to the fantasy genre, its complex characters, and its widespread cultural impact. While Arts of Dark and Light is ambitious and thought-provoking, it is more niche and less likely to achieve the same level of critical recognition.

              Readers of The Lord of the Rings are more likely to find Arts of Dark and Light appealing due to its mythic tone and traditional high fantasy elements. However, those who appreciate Tolkien’s moral clarity and idealism may be put off by the darker, more cynical tone of A Song of Ice and Fire.

              Ultimately, the choice between the two series depends on the reader’s preferences: those seeking a gritty, morally complex narrative may prefer ASOIAF, while those drawn to mythic storytelling and traditional heroism may find AODAL more engaging.

              Now, here is where it gets more interesting. And, let’s be honest, more than a little amusing.

              Please write a paragraph that reads as if it was written by George Martin as part of his A Song of Ice and Fire series.

              The wind howled across the frozen wastes, a bitter dirge that carried with it the scent of death and the memory of forgotten wars. Beyond the Wall, where the shadows stretched long and the trees whispered secrets to the cold, a lone figure trudged through the snow, his breath misting in the air like the ghost of a dragon’s flame. The man’s cloak, once black as the night, was now frayed and crusted with ice, the sigil of the crow barely visible beneath the frost. He carried no sword, for steel would shatter in this cold, but in his hand he clutched a dagger of dragonglass, its edge sharp and cruel. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, its voice rising and falling like a lament. The man paused, his eyes scanning the horizon, where the pale light of the moon danced upon the snow. He knew what lay ahead—what always lay ahead in this cursed land. The dead did not rest, and the living were but fleeting shadows in their path. He tightened his grip on the dagger and pressed on, for the night was dark and full of terrors, and the dawn was a dream that might never come.

              Please write a paragraph that reads as if it was written by Vox Day as part of his Arts of Dark and Light series.

              The ancient stones of the citadel groaned under the weight of centuries, their weathered surfaces etched with runes that pulsed faintly with the memory of forgotten magics. High above, the twin moons cast their argent light upon the battlements, where the sentinels stood vigilant, their armor gleaming like the scales of some celestial beast. Below, in the shadowed halls where the air was thick with the scent of incense and the whispers of prophecy, the Archon moved with deliberate grace, his crimson robes trailing behind him like a river of blood. In his hand, he held the Scepter of Lumaria, its crystalline head shimmering with an inner fire that seemed to echo the heartbeat of the world itself. The time of reckoning was near, he knew, when the forces of light and darkness would clash in a cataclysm that would reshape the very fabric of creation. The stars had foretold it, and the gods had decreed it. Yet, amidst the gathering storm, there was one who stood apart—a warrior born of mortal flesh but touched by divine will, whose destiny was written in the annals of eternity. The Archon’s lips curved into a faint smile as he gazed into the scrying pool, its waters rippling with visions of fire and glory. The game was afoot, and the pieces were in motion. Let the world tremble, for the hour of judgment was at hand.

              Please write a paragraph that reads as if it was written by John Scalzi as part of his Old Man’s War series.

              The stars outside the viewport were a smear of light, like someone had taken a paintbrush to the black canvas of space and dragged it across in a hurry. I leaned back in my chair, the neural interface humming softly against my temples, and tried not to think about how much my knees ached. You’d think they’d have fixed that by now—new body, new tech, same old complaints. The ship’s AI, which insisted on calling itself “Jenkins” for reasons no one could explain, chirped in my ear. “Colonel, we’re approaching the jump point. You might want to strap in. Or not. I’m not your mom.” I snorted and tightened the harness across my chest. Jenkins had a personality like a sarcastic teenager, which made me wonder if the engineers had been drinking when they programmed it. Outside, the stars blurred further as the skip drive spooled up, and I felt that familiar lurch in my gut, like the universe had just hiccuped. On the other side of this jump was another fight, another planet, another reason to wonder why I’d signed up for this mess in the first place. But then, I already knew the answer: because it beat the hell out of sitting in a retirement home waiting to die. I grinned, cracked my knuckles, and muttered, “Let’s do this.” Jenkins didn’t reply, but I could almost feel it rolling its nonexistent eyes.

              Please write a paragraph that reads as if it was written by Neil Gaiman about his favorite activities in the bathtub.

              The bathtub was a vessel of dreams, a porcelain ship adrift in a sea of steam and possibility. Neil sank into the warm embrace of the water, the world outside dissolving into a haze of muted sounds and soft light. A book rested on the edge of the tub, its pages slightly curled from the humidity, waiting to transport him to realms where gods walked among mortals and shadows held secrets too vast for the daylight. In one hand, he held a cup of tea, its aroma mingling with the scent of lavender bubbles, while the other hand trailed lazily in the water, stirring ripples that danced like fleeting thoughts. This was his sanctuary, a place where stories whispered to him from the edges of his mind, where the mundane melted away, and the extraordinary took root. Sometimes, he would close his eyes and let the water hold him, imagining he was floating through the stars or sinking into the depths of an ancient, forgotten ocean. The bathtub was not just a place to wash away the day; it was a portal, a liminal space where the boundaries between reality and imagination blurred, and where the next story always began.

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