#god it's depressing

[nokingsonlyfooles]

The Writers' Strike and Dystopia News Today!

Just finished listening to the most recent Trash Future (it's great, find it wherever you listen to podcasts, because you don't live under a rock and of course you listen to podcasts). It's about the writers' strike.

Their guest (a Hollywood writer) recounted an interview with the Russo brothers (the team behind The Avengers films, among other things) where someone asked them what they were hoping AI would do for movies. The Russos thought it would be super fun to come home some day, tell your smart speaker you want to watch a 90 minute romcom starring your photorealistic avatar, and Marilyn Monroe's photorealistic avatar, and sit back and let it be instantly generated and served. And what's wrong with that?

A lot. There is a lot wrong with that. Just for starters, the uncanny valley lives and you'd relate better to a simplified cartoon cat than a photorealistic Marilyn (who is dead, and whose acting career should not continue without her consent). Also, if AI actually could generate decent movies like that, everyone involved in the entertainment industry would be out of a job, including directors like the Russos!

But the Trash Future crew didn't say this, so I'm gonna: You know what this is? This is capitalism trying like hell to control the means of production. The means of production for a story is the human imagination, and, although it has tried, capitalism has failed to monopolize and control that. It can control the resources you need to publish, and copyright will prevent you from publishing certain things, but that's only controlling the expression, not the thing itself. It can also try to control what you see, but if you really want something, you can always make a version of it yourself and self-publish, even if it doesn't get as much traction as a corporate-approved project.

You know what a creatively sterile corporate executive would really like for Christmas? An imagination that can be built from scratch, altered at will, and owned. And if AI can do that for 'em, they can finally kick all those useless, expensive, delicate human creatives to the curb.

I'm working on my art manifesto. It's slow going because I have a lot of other things to do, and I keep backing away and telling myself, Art doesn't need you to save it. This really isn't necessary. Check your ego, the most you can accomplish is like a wet fart in a hurricane, and that's okay. But stuff like this... These corporate interests that want to kill Art (and not like Dada, I mean REALLY. FUCKING. KILL IT.) have already defined the battle they want to fight and they're making moves.

They want you to stop being a producer. They want you to stop competing with the media they buy and curate that you have to pay them for. Ultimately, they'd rather not even buy these things before selling them to you, they want an AI slave to tell stories that they can own outright. And they want you to come home and plop down on your couch and not even consider writing a self-insert fic to entertain yourself, or finding a Reader/SugarKane (see, that's a character Marilyn played, rather than a reanimated corpse) story somewhere. They want you to pay money to CorpseFucker Monthly (or whatever they'd call it), put in your order and consume it. And when you're done with that, you can slam some more money on the counter and have another one.

We are tired, and we are delicate, and we need support. Telling stories is hard. I've often wished I could just read what I'm writing, instead of doing all that work, because that's really all I want. I want my story to exist so I can read it and enjoy it and connect with other people who read it and enjoy it. I don't want to stare into a white void until my eyes bleed, trying to think of a way to express what X character is thinking and why they're going to do a thing that makes the plot go. I don't want to rip into my trauma looking for Milo's motivation, I just want to feel better seeing him learn and grow.

But although that is what I want, there is not a magic box that can do that for me, and if there were, the people in charge of the box would not ask it to generate my story. I'd have to pay them for the privilege. And if I wanted to share it and build a community around it, I'd have to pay for that too. I didn't make it. It's not mine. All I did was dash off a prompt - that's not special, no one cares, go away and let someone else have a turn with the box. You are disposable, and your story is disposable, all that matters is that rich people got a little richer.

This is not new. The owners have been pushing for this since the advent of the printing press, if not longer. But they finally have a way to do it for real. They just need to frontload as many human imaginations as possible to train the box, after which any further input will not be required.

They already have all our work that they bought, and paid for, and have the rights to. And they have everything that fell into the public domain too. And, of course, they have everything stored on their various servers that they may leaf through and steal.

We do know this, and we're fighting back, but we're fragmented and disorganized and it's hard to pull back and see the whole picture. Yes, we are having a writers' strike, and thank God, but it's for reasonable paycheques and job security. Writers should have those things! But there is no fair compensation for the total commodification of Art. That's like... buying carbon offsets while the planet burns. (I know, I know, we're doing that too.)

Every word, every image we put out there is fodder for the magic box. Copyright is not going to save you from this, that's not what it's for. If they want the rights to your thing, they'll just buy them - probably not even from you. (And I'm giving my thing away, so I'm just as screwed.) They are going to do this, and we're not going to stop them.

The only question is, are we going to be able to build some kind of corporate-independent structure to tell and share our stories, and support each other... or when they yank the rug out from under us, are we gonna fall?

[ace-of-hearts-and-spades]

Hhhhh. Trying to decide whether it’s safe enough to travel to Tennessee for a couple days or if the risk is too big.

[zenathered]

I just found out the most hilariously amazing thing.

[lavendorii]

completely independent and well adjusted woman

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I met God and he was depressed.

[stage1midboss-art]

older art from when i was REALLY brainrotting abt him

[panthermouthh]

And I said, “Hello, Satan

I believe it’s time to go.”

[kazzikkiii]

just gonna leave this here.

[hazbin-hotel-aesthetics-quotes]

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO!

[maybmila]

Prev / Next

[dawnbreakersgaze]

The fact that Dr Zayne is saving people who want to live

And Dawnbreaker Zayne is mercy killing people who want to die

And both are obsessed/disturbed with each other across space and time

Really has me fucked up in a lot of ways and I'm not okay about any of this

[afflatusssss]

It was the weight of guilt that sent Icarus crashing down a second time; he wondered if he was always destined to be punished for loving something brighter than himself, even in death.

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Jason learns how to dream walk and terrorizes his family before they become aware of his resurrection.

(it backfires)

[whatafrenchmistake]

[welcometogrouchland]

Disgustingly messy and crusty sketch dump but I couldn't get my own terrible theory out of my head and ended up making a bunch of sketches about it. Also at the end a bonus dickbats and Damian doodle bc I was reading an issue of their Batman and Robin run (IDs in Alt)

[lgbtiwtv]

god. god. the significance of the diary pages about claudia’s assault being torn out raggedly by Louis, clearly in a fit of guilt and anguish and trauma, vs the diary pages about louis mourning lestat and regretting killing him being removed with surgical control and precision. by armand. this wasn’t a heat of the moment action it was deliberate and calculated and I can’t stop thinking about it