qlaroskuro

just another creature who loves storytelling • creating a fantasy world to explore • writing comes first and takes longer, so visuals here serve for conceptual support • use gen_ai for complex visualizers, it is a tool among many

[qlaroskuro]

Hey Tumblr!

Here to share some creative worldbuilding based on the stuff I learn daily: mainly cultural history, social anthropology and linguistics. And a bit of lived experiences: queerdom, migration, and optimism amid constant change.

I am working on a fluid, dynamic universe for my future books. Some would say this world is a giant tree. Or is it a space manta ray moving through galaxies? Or a vast, endless ocean where things fall upwards... Let us see.

[gotham-at-nightfall]

Wonder Woman vs. Darkseid

By Matias Bergara

[artapir]

Baby cuttleseal, Midjourney 6.1 + preferences

[qlaroskuro]

A great inspo for a fantasy setting with strong emphasis on ecosystems and their peculiar niches. Hope to do this chimaera vibe justice in writing.

[redslug]

Don't mind me, just trying to see how far I can take neuroslug without intervening via straight up drawing. As it turns out, pretty far

[qlaroskuro]

Isn't she a darling🤍

[reachartwork]

re: "outlawing AI"

i am reposting this because people couldn't behave themselves on the original one. this is a benevolent dictatorship and if you can't behave yourselves here i'll shut off reblogs again. thank you.

the thing i think a lot of people have trouble understanding is that "ai" as we know it isn't a circuitboard or a computer part or an invention - it's a discovery, like calculus or chemistry. the genie *can't* be re-corked because it'd be like trying to "cork" the concept of, say, trigonometry. you can't "un-invent" it.

even if you managed to somehow completely outlaw the performance of the kinds of linear algebra required for ML, and outlawed the data collection necessary, and sure, managed to get style copyrighted, you can't un-discover the underlying mathematical facts. people will just do it in mexico instead. it'd be like trying to outlaw guns by trying to get people to forget that you can ignite a mixture of powders in a small metal barrel to propel things very fast. or trying to outlaw fire by threatening to take away everyone's sticks.

the battleground is already here. technofascists and bad actors without your ethical constraints are drawing the lines and flooding the zone with propaganda & slop, and you’re wasting time insisting to your enemies that it’s unfair you’re being asked to fight with guns when you’d rather use sticks.

as a wise sock puppet once said; "this isn't about you. so either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"

-----

Attempts to prohibit AI "training" misunderstand what is being prohibited. To ban the development of AI models is, in effect, to ban the performance of linear algebra on large datasets. It is to outlaw a way of knowing. This is not regulation - it is epistemological reactionary-ism. reactionism? whatever

Even if prohibition were successful in one nation-state:

Corporations would relocate to jurisdictions with looser controls - China, UAE, Japan, Singapore, etc.

APIs would remain accessible, just more expensive and less accountable. What, are you gonna start blocking VPNs from connecting to any country with AI allowed? Good luck.

Research would continue outside the oversight of the very publics most concerned about ethical constraints.

This isn’t speculation. This is exactly what happened with stem cells in the early 2000s. When the U.S. government restricted federal funding, stem cell research didn’t vanish, it just moved and then kept happening until people stopped caring.

The fantasy that a domestic ban could meaningfully halt or reverse the development of a globally distributed method is a fantasy of epistemic sovereignty - the idea that knowledge can be territorially contained and that the moral preferences of one polity can shape the world through sheer force of will.

But the only way such containment could succeed would be through:

Total international consensus (YEAH RIGHT), and

Total enforcement across all borders, black markets, and academic institutions, at the barrel of a gun - otherwise, what is backing up your enforcement? Promises and friendly handshakes?

This is not internationalism. It is imperialist utopianism. And like most utopian projects built on coercion, it will fail - at the cost of handing control to precisely the actors most willing to exploit it.

Liberal moralism often derides socialist or communist futures as "unrealistic.", as you can see in the absurd, hyperbolically, pants-shittingly mad reaction to Alex Avila's video. Yet the belief that machine learning can be outlawed globally - a method of performing mathematics that is already published, archived, and disseminated across open academic networks the globe over - is far more implausible. literally how do you plan on doing that? enforcing it?

The choice is not between AI and no AI. The choice is between AI in the service of capital, extraction, and domination, or AI developed under conditions of public ownership, democratic control, and epistemic openness. You get to pick.

The genie and the bottle are not even in the same planet. The bottle's gone, Will.

[qlaroskuro]

This

[qlaroskuro]

Honestly shocked to see so much unhinged hate against generative ai here. People really acknowledge it's inevitable to reuse same tropes time and again for centuries; they have also accepted colloquial prose, photography, hard techno and genre cinema, proving that both canon and good taste are circumstantial; they use digital channels to ensure a following (hey tumblr, old friend) and they also write fan fiction using ready-made settings because it's easier and still fun, yet experimenting with something as liberating as ai seems to many an Abomination that kills art and real artists. Real artists, I say, embrace change and explore, each one in their own way. Be nice to people, and if you don't like their shiatt, don't waste your passion, better go do something yourself. Live by what you preach, sweet peach🌸

Personally, I use gen ai for visual prototyping to accompany my writing, organise voice notes, help with housekeeping within texts, experiment with style and the art of prompting itself. I invest a lot of time (the free time I have beyond day job, which is light years from being a proficient visual artist) and mental effort into conceptualising it by choice, and all of the half-baked stuff that comes out has value for me, just as an early ballpen sketch is valuable to the evolved artist as a touchstone. If you choose other modes of creativity, own them and lead by example, not by being toxic online👁️👁️

PS Of course I will focus on publishing hand-drawn stuff first, after seeing a lot of pushback on this platform. However, as a curious guy, I could never refuse the new magic power we've got, and I choose to be upfront about it.

PPS Water waste arguments are a very, very special kind of rubbish, since we all use the same cloud infrastructure while browsing and doomscrolling tumblr and virtually any_other_platform.

[qlaroskuro]

An unrelated sketch of mine, to give the gist of my aesthetic: I like flat backgrounds and simplified silhouettes, and I am looking for a literary style to match.

[qlaroskuro]

Tried prompting new world visualisers today, here's a set of beautifully textured yet incomplete iterations (fiery mess on the belly is where an ice capped ocean should be, working on that...):

- made with Dalle based on my hand drawn sketch shown in a previous post

Subscribe so I don't give up😁 will reveal more lore soon!

PS I blazed this earlier to try out the boosting mechanic, along with three other posts dedicated to my worldbuilding project in progress, and had no idea it would provoke such a 💩storm. I had no idea it would reach tens of thousands of ppl beyond the minimal 2,5k limit, either, which proves that I'm not the only one interested in how ai can contribute to artistic endeavours on tumblr, though. Many important lessons learnt, but dropping ai is not one of them🌚

[qlaroskuro]

I guess the worst thing about worldbuilding is making final choices. I'd always wanted to write about a world that was a giant cosmic tree; but the idea of a space whale was also quite compelling.

The final choice I've made is rather semiotic in nature: to blur the real shape, representing it as a tree, a space creature or some other thing (a ridiculous mineral ball with hot liquid core revolving around a star??) depending on the worldview of a given character. Hope to tie it all into a single "material" concept later in the process, but the current prototype layout is fun to meddle with, even if imprecise:

The second image is Dalle, based on my drawing. I really enjoy prompting with my own artwork, the result is usually much more exact, however weird the idea.

[prokopetz]

The worst thing about speaking a language natively is that your brain will insist on applying the Rules™ even when there's nothing to go on. You can look at a damn keysmash and some chthonic gremlin in a little professor hat living in the back of your skull will go "I think that one's a verb".

[qlaroskuro]

I now do this badly in at least four wondrous tongues. Each time it's like stumbling upon an undeveloped word fetus