Did I just unsubscribe from a writer I've been following for years because they advocated for using AI? You fucking bet.
They suggest it's use as a tool, citing writers who hesitated to jump on the internet being left behind and I think that displays a rather big misunderstanding of the nature of problem.
Their point was gen AI can "help us think" but there's growing studies show us that it does anything but. Here's one paper on skill atrophy from AI use. There's more than a few of them plus some articles like this one from Forbes. Essentially using AI for a particular skill shows degradation in thelat skill.
Fact is brainstorming, research, analysis. Planning, outlining, writing, editing are ALL skills writers need to develop and practise. Not offload to a machine and surrender critical thought.
These skills are vital and transferrable to other aspects of our lives. My ability to critically examine a body of text to parse meaning works in enjoying fiction and digging through mixed messages in news and on social media. My ability to research and develop ideas from multiple sources also helps me fact check misinformation online.
These skills are so important, too important to cast aside for convenience.
I'd rather use my brain and do the work. Maybe ai will shift and better tools will arise, but I have put too much work into developing my skills to be content with the half assed result of the plagiarism machine.
Fuck that.
Exit: I've updated this post with more information. Check it out.
I absolutely understand the appeal of using ai to create things. We love creating things! It's humanity's favorite thing! We've been doing it from the start and we absolutely love getting to share the thing!
And! we live in a culture where immediate validation and praise is a primary influence on how we perceive our self worth. The interaction is more important than the creation, but the Thing You Created is necessary to receive the validation. If the thing you make is Bad and people do not praise you, it is crippling to your desire to try again. We live in a culture where the expectation is immediate turn around.
oh? you took three days to create a thing in response to a trend? lol. cringe. you missed out and its already boring and we're going to mock you for it no, if we look at it at all.
Fucking of course the ai is appealing. It's not going to be excellent, but it will be done, and you can post it, and people can tell you that you're pretty. It's not going to be exuberant praise, but crumbs are better than a kick in the teeth.
Then, add in how much we can be manipulated by stories and someone else's confidence. Like. We call them con(fidence) men for a reason. And humans love certainty so much that we will actively ignore things that break from our belief because its fucking scary with the bedrock of your life wobbles. We are terrified of it collapsing, and it will fuck you up for a long damn time if it does collapse. Source: me. I had this happen. It's why I have compassion for maga people who bought the lie and keep clinging to it.
The idea that the future you expect, that the bedrock of your life, is going to collapse and you'll have to start from scratch is existentially devastating.
You want the comfort of confidence. You want the security of someone else shouldering responsibility. So. how is that making ai so seductive?
Because the fucking thing was taught that lying was better than saying I don't know. I'm not going to track down the article bc I am ranting right now, but the thing talked about a 30% rate. Even if it's less than that, doesn't matter, because what it learned was that a confident lie got marked as a good response. Aka, traumatized children lying to parents because "I don't know" wasn't an acceptable answer.
So now you've got a program that gets punished for saying I don't know, that you can easily access and ask a question to, and it will confidently provide An Answer. And you asked! So you probably don't already know teh answer! You aren't fact checking! You wanted an answer, you got an answer.
But it's Calvin's Dad! 'the sun is actually the size of a quarter, see? The world used to be in black and white, and color is a recent thing, and the reason photos stay black and white is bc its a photo but paintings turned to color bc all the paint turned into color.
It's the offer of a silver bullet that fixes everything. It's the hand held out saying hey, accept jesus, and never be afraid of death again.
Could you fact check? sure. Could you do your own research? sure.
But now some of the responsibility is on you, and you don't want that. Being responsible for something sucks! If it's someone else's job, then if it goes wrong, its someone elses fault! That's always been a problem for humanity, but holy shit is it an issue now. You won't just get corrected by a guy sitting at the table. The whole damn internet might show up and dogpile you. You make one mistake on tumblr --- fuck it --- someone shows up to piss on the poor, and you're getting dragged for filth for the next year.
Scary! Intimidating! Dangerous!
But!!
You're a human and you desperately need the validation of participating. Yes, shut up, even shitposting counts as creation but I'm not diverting into that explanation. So how do you minimize the risk to your own identity and self worth??
Off-board it!
If people hate the art you posted, welllllll, they don't actually hate you, because you didn't make it, and you didn't invest yourself in it. Now you can participate, while shielded from the scary stuff! And all the while, a big strong confident voice is telling you the answers to things. No labor involved, no risking that you'll misunderstand, no open rabbit hole where you have to go learn the goddamn growing environment for flax so you can talk about a group wearing linen!
The hardest, more exhausting stage of learning any craft is when your eyes are bigger than your skill. When you can look at the drawing and be unhappy because you know it isn't right, but your skills haven't caught up. It's miserable there. It's easy to drown in that gap, and it requires a hell of a lot of motivation, internal or external--- in my case, I was in grad school and Mary chased me with a stick --- to clear that gap. But its not only one gap. It's hundreds of them. You constantly find new ones and have to do the deep inhale and put in the work
Work is exhausting! It's so fucking exhausting. I know. I get it.
And then the digital One Ring shows up and whispers in your ear, hey, hey, you're incredibly talented and sexy, why don't you just let me help you out for a second, and everyone will see that and then they'll want you carnally.
And dayum, but doesn't that sound nice? Except its a lie! It's fucking Sauron corrupting you!
But. I. Get. IT.
the world is depressing and youre being fed a curated algorithm of excellence because the mediocre art doesn't hit the popular lists. You only see the perfect one, not the two dozen drafts that came before it. And the whole time, people are getting paid a whole much of human money to confidently say that This Thing is Excellent. If you hear it enough, you start to believe it, and you start to emulate it, and you think hey, if they can skip some steps and get called amazing, I can too!
and the whole fucking time, its because you're human
you're human and you want the validation that comes from sharing something with other humans. You want to make something, and see another human being touch it, and have them tell you that you're pretty and valuable and you did something good. We're in a world that constantly shows you all the ways you're not up to snuff with those other people.
Fucking of course we'll listen to the serpent offering a way to feel more human. It's all we've ever wanted to be, and getting to have it faster would feel so damn good.
I'm never getting over the fact that Arthur, on every single date he goes on, talks about Merlin. Brings Merlin along. Aggravates the living hell out of Merlin right in front of the salad.
Vivian, Elena, Gwen, and Mithian are the epitome of, "Hi, this is my boyfriend, Arthur. And that's Arthur's boyfriend, Merlin."
It's really freaking rich that Arthur made a joke about Merlin being sheltered with no tact with women - meanwhile, this literal castle-bound prince cannot function without his best friend, manservant, and boyfriend.
or why I refuse to give Rick Riordan any more of my time and money:
I feel lied to by the author. He made a show I was looking forward too even before it was announced that it was happening. I grew up with the PJO!verse and I looked forward to it being a part of my adult life as a live action tv show. And the way the show was marketed made me feel nostalgic. Then came the casting announcements... I was admittedly bummed that the acting choices strayed so much from the books, but I was hoping for the story to remain mostly as it was told in the books. At least that's how it was marketed, so I felt in the right to have these expectations. Well, what do you know...they changed a whole lot of stuff, and they're continuing to do so.
Now, just to be clear, the changes are not my real problem (would I have preferred the show to be closer to the books in looks and story? sure, but that's a personal preference). My real problem is that the marketing strategy was to bank on my and other older fans' nostalgia only to not deliver what was advertised and promised. Had Riordan been upfront about his desire for a rewrite and marketed the show as such I would've had zero issues and would've happily tuned in. Now I'm left feeling like I was being lied to and supposed to not have any complaints about it. Well, I'm done giving my money to someone who thinks I'll throw it at him despite his attitude.
If you like this show and will continue to watch it, I sincerely wish you a good time with it. But aside from talking about the PJO!verse and related stuff on tumblr, I won't be giving this kind of content from Riordan my time of day.
one thing i see often about movie cherik specifically is people assuming erik is staunchly anti-telepathy but this is simply not true. there are multiple times when erik tells charles to stay out of his head, yes, but these are all moments when he is exceptionally angry. we know erik likes that charles thinks there’s good in him, and we also know he disagrees. he tells charles to stay out when he believes his anger will make charles see his true nature.
but there are also moments where he welcomes charles inside his mind. when they train in first class, charles asks “may i” and wiggles his fingers, and erik agrees without hesitation despite having no idea what charles plans to do. he trusts him. multiple times throughout the prequel movies, when he is without his helmet, he brings up the fact that charles could make him do whatever he wishes. he is joking, but the fact that he can joke about it at all shows just how deeply he trusts him. he never shows disgust or mistrust towards charles ability- in fact his whole fight is that no one should have to hide their mutation
even when he puts the helmet on the first time, he says “sorry charles, it’s not that i don’t trust you” he simply knows that he is disappointing him- knows that without the helmet, charles would be able to stop him, but also knows he wouldn’t, and is therefore saving them both from the what ifs when he chooses to wear it
tldr; erik never actually had a problem with charles inside his head! and it drives me crazy when that’s the whole basis of fics even though erik trusts charles more than he has ever trusted anyone else from the very moment they meet
If I had a dollar for every single time a female character failed to fulfill her potential, I could buy a small country at this point. The fact that this is still happening is ridiculous.
The manifestation of this potential differs between modern and fantasy settings, but the core failing remains the same -- these characters never fully become badass, independent women who are capable and skilled.
For fantasy dramas, the emphasis is literally on badass. To be clear, this badassery is not The Chosen One levels of insane skill but clearly being able to hold your own in a world of magic, fantastical creatures, mystical powers, and life and death stakes. These female characters themselves have these fantastical abilities and they are supposed to be powerful. They themselves, independent of any man, are a threat. Brain and brawn. The reaction to their initial introduction/full manifestation of their abilities is one of awe and fear because the reputation of being a badass woman precedes her. However, instead of being a vital part of the action and the overarching plot of the story, they are quickly sidelined and have no impact at all. They revert to just being there. They wear pale clothing to almost literally blend into the background, they have little dialogue and any individual goal or motivation they had prior vanishes. They function from a given point as mainly the love interest of the male character. To worry over the man, to bat their eyelashes, scream their name (it is one of the only lines of dialogue they have) and to occasionally use their abilities (now so much weaker) to save the man. The end result often is that they end up sacrificing themselves for the man. This entire disintegration of self usually has beautiful bgm attached to it because this dynamic is presented as The Definition Of True Love and the person they become is just a girl in luuuuuurrrvvvveee. Total bullshit.
For modern dramas, the emphasis is on being a smart and capable badass. There are no life and death stakes and the woman is neither witch nor demon but the area of life she inhabits, she dominates. She is skilled, intelligent, GOOD AT WHAT SHE DOES. In what I have noticed, this is underplayed immediately. The writer must assume that the audience is stupid and cannot put two and two together. In a world dominated by men, you do not become a female CEO by laughing like a hyena and tripping into a garbage can. You cannot survive if you are mediocre and average. Your existence enough is testament to a level of capability and intelligence. To pursue the career you want and rise to the top of that field despite outright hostility and ostracization from your family, you cannot be an airhead with no cares in the world. To claim power in cutthroat environments where you have no allies, you have to play high stakes political chess and mastered the art of subterfuge, manipulation and observation at the very least. Instead any career that the woman possesses is treated like a name tag and nothing more. She then becomes a caricature. Absolutely dramatic 300% of the time. Acting like she is five when she is in fact thirty five. Not thinking a single thing through. Flighty and impulsive. The points of conflict in the story, it is written that the female character either started or made worse. She becomes the problem. Then enters the calm, collected, cool, demonstrably intelligent male character who becomes the solution. He is cleaning up all her messes. She is made to feel grateful for his assistance, she couldn't have done it without him because she is not capable in any shape or form whatsoever. The capability and intelligence that the woman MUST POSSESS are never allowed to be part of the story. Her true self is trapped in a cage of perpetual mediocrity in order to make the male character look better. Once again, hypnotism through visuals, background music and filters attempt to make the audience forget who she could have become because look how her life has improved with Perfect Man male character. She wouldn't need saving if she could be her original smart, capable badass self.
It's like nobody paid attention to Legally Blonde. Elle Woods contained multitudes. She was smart and loved fashion and beauty. Through not picking one over the other, her particular blend of talents and interests ending up winning the case. She was no less intelligent simply because she refused to give up wearing pink or because she was friendly to strangers. The romance she later pursues does not force her to shrink herself to become convenient and easily palatable to the guy. Throughout the movie, Elle Woods remained a badass.
Female characters contain multitudes. They can be smart and kind. They can be capable and funny. They can be able to kill their enemies using only a spoon and be gentle with baby animals. They can be an active part of the plot without giving up their badassery. In fact, their badassery can be an instrumental aid in the protagonists' overarching mission.
Let them stand shoulder to shoulder with all the other protagonists as EQUALS. Let them stand side by side with their love interests AS EQUALS.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DIM THE LIGHT OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER in order to have the romance or plot exist.
LET THEM BE SKILLED AND INTELLIGENT THE ENTIRE TIME.
people low-key forgetting the fucked up shit that ikeda is saying in order to favor him after the reward game and even before the reward game is slightly annoying
like yes I get that he's your favorite but I've only seen one person acknowledge that he threatened to get someone deported, not to mention the shit he pulled with yaitabashi and tei today 😭
giving me flashbacks to how shocked I was when I found out people didn't hate hiroaki for the thing he said to Sasaki
