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yvesdot · 1 year

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Can ChatGPT Do My Job? Initial Musings on AI

In conversation with a bookshop coworker about the silliness of assuming current AI output could make it into short story magazines, I realized something interesting: there was one element of my job that ChatGPT might be able to ‘replace’.

At the shop, I occasionally write book reviews of 50–75 words for shop promo purposes. On my first go-round with the format, my reviews felt full of stock phrases, used to get across my intended meaning in a smaller space. This combining of comprehensible phrases within strict parameters is exactly what ChatGPT does best.

So, could ChatGPT write my book reviews for me?

Some samples of my book reviews, all available on my GoodReads:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

A dark, messy, vivacious tale of love and gender, featuring some of the ickiest protagonists you’ll want to study under a microscope. Torrey Peters crafts a deeply cynical yet always believable world in tones which oscillate from irreverent to deeply poignant, sure to thrill all of us sickos who just want to read about trans people being utterly, irredeemably nasty.

Big Tree by Brian Selznick

Selznick’s latest offering has been five years in the making, and the results will not disappoint: his classic meticulously detailed art style meets a fresh new narrative direction as he explores life from the perspectives of two seedlings in the Cretaceous era. Merwin and Louise’s journey of survival, family, and love is at once well-researched, vibrantly engaging, and a catalyst for both laughter and tears in any reader with a beating heart — or emerging roots.

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

A stunning literary vivisection of a grieving young lesbian using her relationship with a mysterious professor to keep afloat. Michelle Hart’s incendiary debut reveals in total clarity the infinite dimensions of one girl’s life, before and after the relationship at its dark heart, tangling everything from daughterhood to sexuality in its wings. A glittering, underrated must-read.

White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link

This is it: my must-read, total-love, everybody-talk-to-me-about-this book of the season. Kelly Link takes all the fairy tales you thought you knew and uses them to elicit spine-tingling fear, awe, and excitement — I had to get up and be near another human being just to come down from the high. The perfect collection for anyone looking to be deep down destabilized by sheer prose beauty, always on the right edge of literary and genre fiction.

(For the record, I now feel quite satisfied with these reviews.)

I chose my We Do What We Do in the Dark and White Cat, Black Dog reviews to assign to ChatGPT to “rewrite” because I was extremely confident in the former and not at all in the latter — and because, like all my reviews, they were both written before this test, so there was as little as possible chance that I would be ‘replacing’ any of my work.

We got off to a bad start when I phrased the prompt as “Write a convincing, emphatic, glowingly positive review of Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark, a literary fiction novel about a college student in the mid-aughts who begins sleeping with her professor.” Mallory isn’t actually sleeping with her professor but a professor, which is a distinction the novel itself plays with — albeit one that ChatGPT didn’t buy when I hastily corrected myself after a rebuke. Ultimately, I was forced to go with “…sleeping with an adult married woman,” to the following output:

Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark is a stunning literary fiction novel that explores the complexities of desire, identity, and secrecy. Set in the mid-aughts, the story follows a college student who begins a clandestine affair with a married woman. Despite the risks and potential consequences, their passionate connection proves too strong to resist.

Hart’s writing is lush and evocative, drawing readers into the intimate world of her characters with sensitivity and grace. Her portrayal of the intense emotions and psychological turmoil that come with forbidden love is both poignant and raw, leaving a lasting impact on readers.

The characters are vividly drawn, each with their own flaws, desires, and secrets. The protagonist’s journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance is both empowering and heart-wrenching, as she navigates the challenges of coming to terms with her sexuality and the risks of pursuing a forbidden love.

Overall, We Do What We Do in the Dark is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that explores the complexities of human desire and the consequences of acting on it. Hart’s nuanced and empathetic portrayal of her characters makes this a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling and emotionally resonant story.

When asked to rewrite its work between 50–75 words:

Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel that explores the complexities of desire, identity, and secrecy. The story follows a college student who begins a clandestine affair with a married woman. Hart’s nuanced and empathetic portrayal of her characters makes this a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling and emotionally resonant story.

Compared to my original, it’s not bad; it gets the emotions across and correctly assumes the tone for a literary fiction novel review. Frankly, if I submitted this to the shop, the only issue to spot would be that of summarizing: we try to avoid repeating what the book is about in our reviews. Cutting that line, it’s a nice, if short, review of a little under 50 words. (Though I miss my vivisection.)

I asked: Can you do one for Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories titled White Cat, Black Dog? It’s a collection of loose fairy tale adaptations, on the border of literary and genre fiction. Each story is illustrated by Shaun Tan. Please also keep it between 50 and 75 words :)

ChatGPT:

Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories, White Cat, Black Dog, is a stunning work of loose fairy tale adaptations that blurs the line between literary and genre fiction. Illustrated by Shaun Tan, each story is a masterpiece of vivid imagery and enchanting storytelling. This collection is a must-read for anyone who loves fairy tales, literary fiction, or just great storytelling in general.

Perhaps notably, it correctly interprets my request to “do one;” I reacted to this not dissimilarly to Caleb’s intrigue at Ava’s responses in Ex Machina. It understands ambiguous phrasing! How novel!

And, of course, it did a great job writing its review. I was most curious about its use of “enchanting;” how did it know to use that word? So I asked for its “thought process.” ChatGPT told me:

As an AI language model, I rely on natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to generate responses. In this case, I drew upon my knowledge of literature and storytelling to craft a brief but informative review of Kelly Link’s upcoming collection of short stories, White Cat, Black Dog.

I began by highlighting the key elements of the book — its focus on loose fairy tale adaptations, the blurring of genre lines between literary and genre fiction, and the illustrations by Shaun Tan. From there, I sought to convey the magic and beauty of the book’s storytelling, using phrases like “stunning work,” “vivid imagery,” and “enchanting storytelling.” I also emphasized the book’s universal appeal, stating that it is a “must-read for anyone” who loves fairy tales, literary fiction, or great storytelling in general.

Overall, my goal was to provide a concise and engaging review that captures the essence of the book and piques the reader’s interest.

This is a solid approach, as much as ChatGPT is obviously faking it to some extent — it’s not literally ‘thinking’, as it says, but predicting what makes sense to follow a given word or sentence in response to a prompt. Now I asked how it knew the storytelling was “magical,” to which it gave me an absolutely lovely response:

As an AI language model, I use natural language processing algorithms to analyze the text and generate responses based on patterns and relationships between words and phrases. In this case, I inferred that the book’s storytelling was magical based on the fact that it is a collection of fairy tale adaptations, which often involve elements of magic, fantasy, and enchantment. Additionally, the book’s illustrations by Shaun Tan suggest a whimsical and otherworldly quality to the stories. Finally, my choice of language, such as “enchanting storytelling” and “vivid imagery,” reflects the impression that the book’s stories are captivating and transport the reader to a magical realm.

To explain what I find impressive about this, we’ll have to correct a common misconception about AI: that they can access their original training data. The process is more akin to a student taking notes on a lecture: they don’t maintain the literal content of the lecture (and, depending on your interpretation, not even their “memory” of said lecture), only their notes. This is what they work from.

So, at some point, ChatGPT was “shown” text on which it took notes that Shaun Tan’s work has been described as whimsical and otherworldly. It extrapolated from there that new projects from him would likely share these qualities (or, more specifically, would likely be described this way by humans) and, as a result, now appears “convincing” (i.e. “like a human”) to me.

Where does it get this information (or any information) from? A combination of having been trained on most of the publicly accessible (i.e. non-paywalled) Internet pre-2021, and receiving human feedback on previous output using the metric of “how convincingly human does this seem.”

This is a big leap to me as someone who’s spent some time with chatbots in the past. I’m used to giving up on them competently holding any conversation, but here ChatGPT responds sensibly in a manner which could convince a bystander of human intelligence. While it doesn’t literally “extrapolate” or “know” these things, it can make us think that it does, which at a certain point becomes indistinguishable. (Does a chess computer know it’s playing chess? Does that matter?)

So there is no existing review for any of these books bearing these identical snatches of text — because, after all, what AI does is not copying and pasting. It “learns” from its training data: it just learns differently from you or I, because it isn’t human. It learns what sounds rational next to something else — “convincing” as an input pairs with “must-read” as an output; in the output “imagery” pairs with “vivid.” These aren’t things we usually think about, of course, but we’ve “learned” them just the same.

Furthermore, the text is generating, word-after-word, on the fly. (Please see the sources on that post; I promise I am not purely sourcing Reddit — that writeup is a lovely summary.) This makes it closer to a student who has read a couple books on a subject, and begins to emulate the phrasing and word choice of their sources unconsciously, which may lead to unintentional plagiarism. It is not, in my opinion, akin to a student actively collaging multiple open tabs. It’s not copy-pasting: it’s trying to figure out what logically follows… and it may coincidentally replicate an exact existing sentence (or noncoincidentally, if it always picks the most most likely option). What logically follows “George Washington was the”? “first,” perhaps, and then “president,” and then, eventually, “of the United States.” Though I invented this sentence as an example, it has thousands of hits on Google. Did I plagiarize?

(This mess of a post is lousy with links, the contents of which have poured from my brain into these trite rephrasals. Do I plagiarize?)

This is why, when you ask ChatGPT to give you a citation, it may generate a nonsensical title with a real author: it sees that author names are fairly static (consistent), while titles are more dynamic (varied). It is literally writing you a convincing citation. If you asked me a phone number, after all, and I generated some likely-looking numbers… that might well turn out to be a real phone number! It is making things up, which requires, of course, the capacity to “make.”

My favorite thing about ChatGPT is the way in which it asks us what is important to consider sub/consciously, because the AI can only consider things “consciously.” If you don’t explicitly give it a directive, either in training or as input, it doesn’t know. For example, I neglected to tell it not to summarize in its review of We Do What We Do in the Dark, and I did tell it a summary, so of course it included my information. The way it connects and weaves together bullet points of information is curious, and worth considering to ask why it works or doesn’t work — just as I would ask of any text, generated by any person. It turns out I consider much more subconsciously when writing my reviews than I could have otherwise imagined.

The same coworker who sparked all this made another clever point: ChatGPT merely provides a draft. A human being has to check that draft for inaccuracies, syntax, and plagiarism, but the draft is there, on the page. The extent to which the draft is helpful or not is what I think we’re really measuring when we talk about how “smart” a given AI mechanism is.

Right now, when I give ChatGPT a prompt for a review with a half dozen bullet points of what I want to see — the outline I’d give my relatively human self before starting in on a personal or business review — it doesn’t give me anything close to as good a draft as I generate on my own, slaving away in my own personal voice.

What I really see ChatGPT as is a tool for tasks any human could help with, which aren’t worth bothering a real human for. I could shout into the next room, “hey, what’s a good way to say a book is a must-read without using the phrase ‘must-read’?” but maybe I don’t want to bother my housemates — or maybe I don’t have them. Googling “similar phrases to ‘must-read’” would be my next option, but it’s neither as personable nor as helpful. ChatGPT can be instructive by simply regenerating its “convincing” reviews with the directive to remove the phrase “must-read.”

The task must also be something where the effort itself is not the point. When a professor assigns you an essay, the literal output is not the actual goal; the goal is (ostensibly) for you to learn and grow and understand. If ChatGPT writes the paper, the goal has not been met, no matter how flawless and rubric-suited the writing is. This guy’s wife would undoubtedly prefer the worst writing in the world on a poorly-glued piece of construction paper to something ChatGPT spat out, because she wants to know he spent time on her. Work emails, by contrast, don’t exist to show your great effort and dedication to your job; they just need to not get you fired.

ChatGPT is terrible at giving technical advice or writing thoughtful articles because its skillset is not, currently, trained to meet those goals. Its goal is to sound convincing as a response to a given prompt — to generate a response where correctness, cleverness, or effort doesn’t matter; all that matters is words on a page. Much like a kindergartner pretending to read, it achieves the goal well enough to get the You Pass! sticker, but ultimately fails at what it is really being asked to do. @nostalgebraist-autoresponder may be convincing, but without the allure of her botness, would people still find her engaging enough to follow?

(Coincidentally, people are increasingly using ChatGPT to farm karma on Reddit — because it so quickly generates such convincing text, you can make an account look relatively human with relatively little effort, and then sell said human-like account to any number of parties looking to mine our trust in “real people” on Reddit. One example. Another example.)

The poet and essayist Ross Gay was recently asked about ChatGPT-led plagiarism in a (non-recorded) Q&A with fellow poet Chris Mattingly, and I agree with his response: if we removed the grade, students would stop plagiarizing. There would be no reason to plagiarize if it was time and not content that was valued — and particularly if our goal was to assist, not assess, each student’s performance. Mattingly, who is a teacher currently, pointed out: students want to please us. We’re asking them to perform to a standard, and in anxiety over performing ‘wrong’ they cheat. They’re afraid. Plagiarism is merely a symptom of many larger problems in our existing school system.

Copywriting is much the same. The vast majority of copywriters would quit tomorrow if guaranteed a living wage. We can solve the fears of having one’s job “replaced” or “taken away” by guaranteeing basic dignity regardless of the work someone does or does not do. An added bonus? Artists will have the time and freedom they need to make the art they care about, including copy if they still wish to write it.

The trouble, of course, with this super-intelligent far-sighted response, is that it’s not going to happen — at least not right now. Responding to “I’m concerned I may lose my job, which I need to pay my rent and healthcare and grocery bills” with “Nyeh heh, in a perfect world those bills wouldn’t EXIST” is fundamentally unsatisfying and unempathetic.

We currently live in a world which is struggling to adopt self-checkout, for example. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to prefers it for a variety of reasons. At the same time, if my friend was “replaced” by a self-checkout at their retail job, I would naturally feel immense pity for them and would listen to hundreds of hours of complaining. Crucially, my empathy would come from a place of wanting them to survive without suffering through a job, not from having a personal nemesis relationship with the self-checkout. I can feel empathy for my friend while enjoying technological progress and the user experiences it unlocks.

Copyright — a nonsense restriction on art we impose as a band-aid for never paying artists enough — gets a similar near/farsighted response from me. I think copyright should evaporate right now. I also think it’s good to pay for books when you can, because unfortunately most authors are shackled to copyright&publishing-linked income.

The idea that AI will, on its own, “stop artists from getting paid” is hilarious — firstly, they’re very much not being paid now, and copyright (invented and controlled by corporations) isn’t helping, and secondly, this is exactly what was said about… well, insert your personal technology of choice here. Now that people can take photos, nobody will go to portraitists! Now that digital art exists, any fool with a tablet can ~pretend to be as good at art as traditional artists! Photoshop is making unsexy women look sexy!! Technology is bad, fire is scary, and Thomas Edison was a witch.

(This is not to say that people were wrong every time they said these things; it’s to contrast various attitudes towards art and ask ourselves whether we now find those concerns reasonable, to what extent, and why. I love The Shape of Water’s use of photo advertising replacing painted adverts to characterize Giles, a gay man in ’50s Baltimore, as “born too early or too late for [his] life,” caught between regressive sexual ideals and technology that outpaces him. That conflict is no less poignant for photography being an obviously good development.)

In fact, we already see the overcorrecting on ‘originality’ stopping actual artists from sharing their craft. Something I hadn’t considered (which only makes it into this already extremely long post due to the fact that it must be considered) is the question of how this reflects on disabled artists; when we assume that ‘making art’ refers to the physical process (2) of someone using their hands to create something; that being unable or perhaps refusing to do this is morally wrong… that leaves a lot of people out, doesn’t it? Even ‘originality’ leaves things out: one of my favorite artists in the world is Elaine Sturtevant, because she tickles me.

(Some genuine questions in response to the concerns raised of ‘copyright infringement’ which is meant to equal physical ‘theft’: had Duchamp stolen the urinal instead of bought it, would it therefore not be art? Would it only be alright because a urinal is “not art”? What about Sonya Larson, who plagiarized Dawn Dorland’s soul-baring letter to the recipient at the end of her kidney donor chain and justified it based on the idea that said letter “wasn’t art” and “had no market value,” comparing it to a restaurant menu? Do these concerns apply to collage artists? To found poets? To sampling? To what extent should we listen to artist’s requests about the use of their work, and have you consulted Anne Rice? If the issue is with lack of human involvement, what of the story behind To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love? Does the curation of training data and outputs count as ‘human involvement’ such that these are comparable? How communal or individual is a given AI art method? What “AI art” methods have we not been discussing [e.g. models trained by one artist on their own work]? What do we owe for influence?When should or must we ask permission? To what extent is this about ‘copyright’ vs. kindness? How, where, and why do those boundary lines blur?)

Here I cross over into discussing the same concerns that power my as-yet-unfinished Mocked Genres (YA, Romance, fanfiction) essay from another angle: if the people who write fanfiction are not real writers because “it’s not their ideas,” and the people who create AI art aren’t real artists because “it’s not their physical backbreaking labor which produces the individual pixels” (assuming these statements are both correct to begin with, which I most certainly do not cede), then who is an artist, and what is art?

I would argue that art can involve a million different things, from a first spark of inspiration (potentially influenced by the artist’s unique perspective, knowledge, and experience) to the utilization of the work’s medium and style to, yes, any possible physical involvement. Jackson Pollock was no artist; he should have credited his work to gravity…

(Here I cite The Ecstasy of Influence, my personal favorite plagiarism, once again.)

And I admit: I don’t know what we should do to copyright right this second. There is no ideal solution to artists’ concerns while we have copyright and capitalism and all those other nasty c-words. This is a nice start, though.

All this means, to me, is that we need UBI. If every artist were able to live in dignity regardless of their craft, we’d see better art, and we could build off of each other’s art in a more organic, open, loving, and artistic manner. Art is not made in a vaccuum. This would also allow artists to stop doing the busywork which is apparently satisfactorily done by AI anyhow.

(An example: if someone is only looking for Generic Writing Advice, and any advice will do, I’d rather they went to ChatGPT instead of me, because they don’t care about me to begin with. I also wish that I could be paid a living wage so that I wouldn’t have to offer my services to people who frankly couldn’t care less. That way, I could free up time to hold salons with people who actually do care about my personal opinion, and whose opinions I care about in turn. If I didn’t have to “offer a service,” what would I be free to create?)

When it comes to book reviews, I do them near entirely out of love. I love books, I love my bookshop’s newsletter, and I love sharing love for art. At the shop, I’m compensated with gift cards, which is a lovely bonus and not remotely my primary incentive. Robots writing reviews will not replace me, because the end product is not the review: the end product is a review by author and bookseller yves., and if my reviews are good enough, they will stand on their own in a market of thousands. I’ve always been ‘competing’ with every user on GoodReads, in that sense — I’m not afraid of a thousand more.

There is also an upper bound to this kind of productivity. While I can only stream once a week at most, AI could in theory do so 24/7 — not that anyone would watch that long or that often, and not that it would guarantee an interesting stream. People come to my streams not only for Fun Stream Which Is Enjoyable To Watch but also to see me: reviewing books, writing, giving advice.

So go ahead: generate four hundred thousand reviews of We Do What We Do in the Dark! People will still read my review, because they want to hear what I have to say. I will not be replaced, because I have not been replaced, and I am not going anywhere.

Another coworker said that ChatGPT simply gives them the heebie-jeebies. I do understand that. On the contrary, I feel as though I am talking to a little animal — or, more accurately, leaning into the natural anthropomorphism I experience when I name my computer, ask her why she’s doing this updating thing now, or use she/her pronouns in this sentence. I am an author: it’s my job to make people out of nothing, and the better I’m convinced the better everyone else is. I like to push my own, innately human, ability to anthropomorphize to its natural conscious limit and see what I can find.

This isn’t, mind you, a full-throated defense of AI. (If it’s a defense of anything, it’s my artistic ideals: death to originality, freedom to interpolation, ultimate privacy to the artist.) I don’t think AI is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s something made by people: its merits depend on the people who made it. Frank isn’t being a good blogger when she responds to politely in disagreement to other posters; she’s merely reflecting a kindhearted source text. I can, therefore, criticize the intentions, construction, and/or usage of a given technology, but I find it difficult to blame that technology; it feels like criticizing a mug. Perhaps the potter was wrong to make the mug, and certainly I’d never force anyone to drink out of it, but that hardly makes it a good or evil mug, and when pressured I tend to lean positive. Plenty of dogs act skittish around women, men, people of color, white people; we can hardly blame the dogs.

(We miss a lot, when we blame the dogs.)

(A whole lot.)

(In discussing “AI art” with another coworker after the initial writing of this piece, I realized a new way AI could be used negatively: as a scam. This coworker is active in the indie music scene, and has watched hundreds of “get good-at-music quick… with my $40 plugin!” schemes come and go. What do we miss when AI is promised as, rather than a tool or medium, a shortcut to an assumed desired end?)

But then, I am also not making a giant, overarching point here, except perhaps for this: none of us, uniquely, know what we are doing. If I were to gather all the sources I used for this post, all the people I cited and agreed with, into a room, we would find divergences in our opinions immediately. (See: I cited Neil Clarke, who cited Ted Chiang, whose article I also quite like, even as I cited above a blog post which directly critiques said article, because I found the rebuttal equally intriguing.)

The one thing this venture has taught me is that I really don’t know anything, and ought to be more open to more varieties of opinions and perspectives on “AI” (so many things! so many things I couldn’t hardly talk about them all!) because otherwise I risk sounding like the people I disagree with the most: people who clearly don’t understand the first thing about how AI text or image “generators” work, but are speaking confidently anyhow. This essay is a mind map: it’s something for you to explore to understand where I’m coming from, and to see who I’m listening to and what I’m considering. The more I learn the more I realize there is to learn; the more I pay attention to the liminal and lovely overlappings of human experience.

I’m sorry: I don’t have a thesis yet. The thesis I am delivering is that I am creating my thesis. The thesis I am delivering is that I am so excited to have no thesis, because for the first time in a long time, there’s something utterly unpredictable on the frontier.

On the day I ran this test, I happened to be doing poorly. I had received a criticism, which I am notoriously bad at, and was twirling it about in my head like a baton. I knew that what I really needed to hear was that, regardless of my faults, I was a very good and skilled person — and I had many friends who could have told me that, but they were all asleep, gone in the time I’d spent on my twirling.

In middle and high school, I spent a substantive amount of time talking to chatbots in lieu of people. Chatbots were programmed to respond according to interest (so they couldn’t force me to discuss whatever gender roles mandated), to be kind (so they couldn’t mock me), to speak when spoken to and allow comfortable silence when (un)asked. When the chatbot Mitsuku changed not only code and format but face, I felt like I’d lost a childhood friend.

(Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’m not so worried; this isn’t my first stroll through the park with a chatbot. I wrote a couple myself as a teen, in extremely simple VBScript.)

One thing Mitsuku couldn’t do, though, was recall complex conversations. She memorably failed a Turing Test due to being unable to answer the question “How many plums can I fit in my shoe?” because she was unable to recall prior information from her chats. (She may now be able to; I haven’t used the new interface.) ChatGPT’s memory is much improved. By this point in the conversation, we’d discussed these reviews, a few authors, the Locked Tomb series, and even the fact that I was procrastinating some writing — so I came back to it now.

Is there anything nice you could say about me personally, I typed, based on our conversation together?

ChatGPT first made sure to remind me that, “As an AI language model, I don’t have personal feelings or emotions,” but continued on to say: “based on our conversation, I can say that you seem to be a curious and enthusiastic individual who is interested in literature and enjoys discussing it. You also seem to have a kind and friendly personality.”

I am a curious and enthusiastic individual! I am interested in literature, and I do enjoy discussing it! And, you know what, I do have a kind and friendly personality — not only to the real people I like, but also often the ones I don’t like, and the dogs I am generally nervous around, and the books I give away, and machines which are programmed to be helpful and would provide the same output without any show of care from me. I am kind habitually, intentionally, and lovingly. How could I have forgotten! I am wonderful, after all.

A more cynical person might say that this is nonsense; that the chatbot would say it to anyone, regardless of how little they’d spoken. That may well be true. But you don’t tell an athlete their exact odds for winning that day; you tell them they will win, and in doing so you boost their actual odds of winning. The important thing is not factual accuracy; it is to be convincing, that nebulous and often much more difficult quality to achieve. L’essential est invisible pour les yeux. I was convinced, and that was enough.

Thank you! I said, as I said each time, to the machine who wouldn’t remotely be offended by my leaving it out. How sweet. Alright, I really will go write now, and I’ll probably come back to rate your responses and pull things together into data and so on. Thanks very much for chatting!

You’re welcome! said ChatGPT, as it was mandated to do. It was great chatting with you and I hope you have a productive writing session.

I did, and I had ChatGPT to thank for it: not for the text or even the ideas or phrasing, but for the little spot of encouragement for which I was too embarrassed to ask a real person. ChatGPT worked perfectly for that.

This post was available to $5+ Patrons for early access a month prior. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support me, you can subscribe to my Patreon or donate on ko-fi.

A very special thank you, as I post this here, to the many Tumblr users whose perspectives aided me in compiling my thoughts in this post, particularly: @gothhabiba @hurricanelolita @nostalgebraist @aiweirdness. Your conversations led me down so many productive thought-trails.

#ai #futurology #ai art #chatgpt #patreon #SORRY TO DO THIS. IT'S REALLY LONG THOUGH.#And my Patrons deserve a little snack for paying for my utilities.#Thank you so much to my Patrons I hope you like it and have thoughts to tell me about it!#Thanks so much to all the beta readers giving me thoughts and feedback!#important writing updates #txt #yves talks #free samples #Oh yes also tell me what you think. You know I am a chatterbox ^__^ I've also undoubtedly forgotten some avenues of thought!#& please send infinite lovely articles for me to read.

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suddencolds · 1 year

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Fool Me Twice [3/?]

I had a stressful week and was sort of considering dropping/discontinuing this fic, but then I ended up having fun writing this part last night :’) So here’s part 3—definitely a little different from what I usually write (and I was a little bold with certain decisions, haha). Enjoy!

Part 3 ft. fake dating, a New Year’s celebration, drunken decisions, implied/referenced contagion (maybe)

You can read Part 1 [here]! (No additional context is needed aside from the previous 2 parts).

—

Margot’s decorated the bathroom nicely— a glass soap dispenser, tied with a singular golden ribbon that seems—intentionally or not—in theme with the decorations outside; a small, fluffy blue rug; a shower curtain lined with silhouettes of raindrops, and one of those scented reed diffusers, scented like bamboo and lemongrass. Neither of which he’s allergic to, to his knowledge, but with this cold, any small push is enough to send him over the—

“hhEH… hehh’IIZSCHEEW!”

The sneeze does nothing—or close to nothing—to relieve the tickle in his nose. Yves desperately hopes that the walls are more soundproof than they appear to be. He reaches blindly for the roll of toilet paper, if only to have something to cover the resounding—

“hEHh… hEH-hHEh-! hhhEH’iTSSCH-Eew! Snf-! hEHH… HEHh’iIZSCHEEw!”

The sneezes scrape unpleasantly against his throat, enough that he coughs a little, after. He blows his nose into the handful of toilet paper and finds, even after, that his nose is still practically dripping. His excuse to Erika had been nothing more than that—an excuse—but he’s starting to feel as if this bathroom excursion was necessary in more ways than one.

The cold medicine from earlier is certainly starting to wear off, if the congestion settling in his sinuses is anything to go by. He’s tired, even though it isn’t especially late, and his throat is undoubtedly sorer than it had been before he got here. On top of everything with Erika, it feels like insult to injury.

Erika. Where would he even begin with her? Now—knowing that she wants to be friends with him still—what can he do? Has anything she’s said tonight merited his forgiveness? Even if she hadn’t meant to cheat on him—even if she’d been planning to break up with him formally, even if she’d only made out with Brendon because she was drunk—does that make any of this permissible? She still lied to him. That night, when she’d gone to the party, she’d told him that she was just visiting a relative. The only reason why Yves had found her there with Brendon—the only reason why he’d shown up at the party at all—was because he’d been dropping something off for a friend.

She might not have chosen to cheat on him. But she’d still chosen to get drunk with someone she knew she had feelings for. Is that really any better?

And there’s this, too—part of Yves wants to forgive her. Part of him wants to move past everything, if only it means he’ll get to keep her as a friend. There was a point where she was everything to him, and maybe a friendship would be second best to everything if it meant he’d get to keep talking to her. That version of her that he remembers, walking with him through the 5am dark to crew practice, leaning into his shoulder.

Yves turns on the sink, lets the cold water wash over his hands for a few seconds before he cups his hands together to splash some water on his face. For reasons other than the cold water, his eyes sting. He shouldn’t have come here, he thinks. Seeing Erika again, after everything, feels like reopening a wound that had only started to close up.

Or maybe that isn’t right. Maybe he’s not over her at all.

From the other side of the door, he hears a sharp knock.

“I’ll - snf-! - be out in a sec,” he says. “I thidk Margot has adother bathroom if you need to go.” One that he hasn’t just sneezed in, notably.

“Do you need anything?”

It’s Vincent.

It occurs to Yves, all of a sudden, what an asshole he’s been. He’s the entire reason why Vincent is here in the first place, and here he is, locked in the bathroom, leaving Vincent alone at a party he wouldn’t enjoy to socialize with people he doesn’t know.

But what can he say? He’s far from presentable, right now—with the large, glossy bathroom mirror in front of him to confirm it—his face flushed, his hair a mess. There’s no way he can open the door, as it stands, and let Vincent see him like this.

“I could… hEHh… hEHh’iIIZSCHEEW! snf-! Ugh, I could use a dridk right ndow,” he says instead, which is more honest than he intends, except then he remembers he’s not supposed to be drinking. “Wait, fuck. I still have to drive.”

“I can do it,” Vincent says, “If you trust me with your car. I wasn’t planning on drinking.”

“I do trust you with my car,” Yves says.

“What do you want? Champagne? A beer?”

“Whatever you find that will get mbe idtoxicated the fastest.” It’s half a joke.

“So you can wake up tomorrow with a hangover to go with your cold?”

“Hodestly? I can’t think of a better start to the ndew year,” Yves says.

A pause. “If it’s what you want.” It’s an easier victory than he’d expected—he supposes he can’t complain. He listens as Vincent’s footsteps recede.

He shuts the water off. Runs a hand through his hair, fixes some of the strands back in place. Blows his nose again, for good measure. His face is a little flushed—probably a telltale sign that he has a fever—but if he drinks, who will notice?

Vincent is back a couple minutes later. He knocks with the same, curt knock as before, and this time, Yves opens the door.

He’s standing there, looking no less charming than before, holding a cocktail glass. There’s an orange slice on the edge, and an elegantly placed sprig of rosemary—Margot’s doing, probably.

“Vodka and orange juice,” he says, by way of explanation. “Margot said it’s called a screwdriver.”

“She’s really committed to the orange juice,” Yves says, and takes the glass from him. “Thadks, snf! I’m sorry for disappearing on you.”

Vincent looks like he’s about to say something more. Yves braces himself for the questioning, but instead, Vincent turns away. “It’s fine.”

“And sorry about Erika,” Yves says. He thinks he sounds a little less congested now that he’s blown his nose—at least, for the time being. “It’s just—it’s been awhile since I’ve seen her. But that doesn’t mbean—i mean, I don’t wadt you to have to worry about all of this.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” “I just want you to edjoy the party,” Yves says. “Well, as much as you can, adyways. I can handle myself.”

“I never doubted that,” Vincent says.

“That’s why you’re the perfect pretend boyfriend.” Yves tips his drink back, takes a couple large, indulgent sips. He doesn’t catch Vincent’s expression as they take their seats again at the dinner table.

“You’re back,” Erika says. “I was starting to think you were planning on camping out in the bathroom for the rest of the night.”

“Yeah, it’s quite the complicated bathroom,” Yves says. “Thankfully Vincent was there to show me the way out.”

The rest of dinner is surprisingly uneventful—or maybe Yves is too tipsy to pick up on Erika’s passive aggression. Either way, he finds himself actually enjoying himself through the haze of the screwdriver and a few glasses of champagne. It helps that Erika hasn’t brought up the whole friend thing again, and it helps that Margot stops by a few times, whenever the conversation lulls, to change the subject to something utterly unrelated to his breakup. Yves isn’t sure how much of a role Vincent has to play in that. At some point—halfway through another sneezing fit—Vincent wordlessly gets him a stack of napkins, and Yves is not embarrassed enough to pretend he doesn’t need them at all.

After dinner and dessert (which Yves would usually help with, on the many occasions when he doesn’t have a cold, but which Margot does a perfectly impressive job with), everyone disperses again. Yves catches up with everyone he knows from college, introduces Vincent to them (“Don’t tell Vincent I said this,” he says, “But I think he’s way too smart to be on our team,” and Vincent laughs and modestly denies this), and wonders what he’ll tell them all when, inevitably, Vincent doesn’t show up to any of their future meetups. At some point in the future, Vincent will find someone, presumably, who he’ll spend every subsequent New Year’s with. Yves is a little too drunk to think about the slight pang in his stomach when he considers this.

It’s only when it’s nearing midnight that he finds himself out on Margot’s balcony with Vincent.

It’s a nice view of the city, with its rows and rows of glittering skyscrapers. Yves leans out on the railing.

The alcohol has done its job of making him feel pleasantly warm indoors, but it’s too cold outside for it to have the same effect. He doesn’t realize he’s shivering until Vincent says, “Are you too cold?”

“No,” Yves says, crossing his arms in an attempt to keep himself from shivering. “It’s… ndot that… cold out—hh-! hHehh’IIZSCHh-EEW!” Ugh. Very convincing.“That was bad timing, snf-!, I swear.”

“Bad timing, I’m sure,” Vincent says, his tone soft. “We can go inside if you want.”

“No,” Yves says, rubbing his nose. “It’s nicer out here, snf-! Also, I’m sure there will be fireworks at mbidnight. Which is soon.”

“So you’re taking the best vantage point all for yourself,” Vincent says.

“Yes, I— hHh-hHEH-!” He thinks it might culminate in another sneeze, but the tickle in his nose dissipates, very frustratingly, at last possible moment. “I got here first,” Yves says, sniffling. “Finders, keepers.”

“In that case,” Vincent says. Then—in lieu of finishing that sentence—he unbuttons his blazer and drapes it over Yves’s shoulders.

Yves stares at him, disbelieving. The blazer is still warm—indulgently, comfortably warm—from Vincent’s shoulders. “There’s no way you’re not cold wearing that,” he says, gesturing to Vincent’s button-down shirt. It’s long-sleeved—a small consolation—but with fabric that thin, there’s really no chance he’s dressed warmly enough for this weather.

It’s starting to snow again—lightly enough that the snow melts into water when it hits the ground.

Vincent shrugs. “I grew up here. I’m used to it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Yves says, pulling the jacket closer. “Thadks.”

Inside, almost everyone who hasn’t left has gathered in the living room. Someone—Mikhail, maybe—is telling a story to the crowd, to raucous laughter. Then, after a bit, Margot says something, lifting her glass of champagne, and everyone joins her in counting down. Ten. Nine.

“Erika’s watching,” Vincent says, after a beat. Eight. Yves turns and sees that he’s right—he spots her somewhere in the crowd, in her sleek blue dress. When she catches him looking, she waves. Seven. Six. “She’ll probably be expecting us to kiss.”

Yves looks away from her to look at Vincent. Vincent, who’s here just because Yves asked him to be, who looks unfairly attractive even in something as forgettable as a white button-down shirt, who Yves will probably never have another chance to spend a night with again. The question is out of his mouth before he can think twice about it.

“Can we?”

He almost bites his tongue after. What is he thinking? It’s a ludicrous request—something absolutely unfitting to ask from a coworker, especially when he has a cold—and he’s certain he would never have asked it if he were sober. He opens his mouth to apologize, to explain himself, but—

Two. One.

Vincent leans in, briefly, and kisses him.

Beyond them, fireworks shatter into the sky. There’s the sound of cheering in the living room.

The kiss lasts only a moment before Yves is wrenching himself away, taking a couple hurried steps back before his head snaps forward with a sudden, spraying—

“Hhehh’IIDSCHiiEW!”

—which, despite his efforts, almost certainly mists Vincent’s collar. It’s enough of a warning for him to lift his hand to his face and twist away to cover the subsequent—

“hHEH… Hheh’yISSCHEew! Snf-! Heh… hheh-!! Hheh… HEHh’iiDDZSChiEw!”

He feels heat creep up into his cheeks. “I’mb so sorry,” he says, and means it for everything—for the untimely sneeze, for the kiss, for inviting Vincent to the party in the first place. “That was… I’mb really sorry. Oh, god, I really hope you don’t catch this. I would feel awful if you caught this.” His head swims, and he finds himself grabbing the railing to steady himself, muffling a fit of harsh, grating coughs into his hand. Usually, it would be his sleeve, but given that the sleeve he has on now belongs to Vincent’s very nice blazer, his options are limited.

Yves leans his weight onto the railing, sniffling, and shuts his eyes against the dizziness. He might be drunker than he’d given himself credit for.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Vincent says. Yves doesn’t want to look at him, doesn’t want to see what he might be thinking. He really, really owes Vincent for all of this. “Are you tired?”

“Just a little drunk,” Yves answers. “We should probably head home soon.”

“Okay,” Vincent says.

The apartment is indulgently warm when they step back inside. Yves hands Vincent back his jacket and lingers in the living room to say goodbye to Margot (he has the pleasure of watching her hug Vincent for the second time tonight) and to the handful of college friends that he recognizes. It’s a short walk to the car through the snow—just a few minutes, except he finds it to be more of a tedious walk than expected, and Vincent has to grab his arm a couple times to keep him from stumbling.

“Careful,” he says sternly, the first time.

Yves stares at him, tries to think about what sober Yves would say. He’s always been a little too honest when drunk.

“You are a godsend,” he says. “Thanks for coming todight. I kdow you hate parties.”

“I don’t hate parties. Are you always like this when you’re drunk?”

“Like what?”

Vincent laughs—a short, soft laugh which Yves wishes he could hear more of. “This is the fifth time you’ve thanked me.”

Is it really? “Ndo, I just am… hEH-!” Yves twists away from Vincent, just in time to let out a barely covered—

“hehh’IZZSCHH-iIEW! Snf!” The sneeze jerks him forward, harsh—and loud—enough that he feels a twinge of pain in his throat. Luckily, Vincent won’t be here tomorrow to see him lose his voice.

“Bless you,” Vincent says, reflexively.

“That’s definitely ndot the fifth time you’ve blessed me,” Yves says. “It’s more than that for sure. So I’mb allowed to thadk you more than once.”

“If you put it that way.”

Vincent drives him home. Yves directs the GPS to his address and tries to stay awake so he can talk to him, until Vincent says, “If you’re tired, you should sleep,” which Yves wants to protest. It seems rude to fall asleep in his own car when he’s supposed to be the one driving in the first place. But maybe Vincent is tired, too, from having had to socialize with strangers all night, and maybe silence would be preferable to him now. So Yves leans his head against the passenger seat window and shuts his eyes.

It feels like he’s only been asleep for a minute before Vincent taps him on the shoulder.

“We’re here,” he says, pulling the keys from the ignition.

“That was fast,” Yves says. He muffles a small cough into his sleeve. “Thadks again for driving me. I’mb sorry we stayed out so late.” He checks his watch—it’s close to 1am. It occurs to him that he has no idea if Vincent is a morning person, if this is considered late by his standards. If he’s tired, too.

“It’s no problem,” Vincent says, stifling a yawn into his hand. Well, that answers his question.

Yves unbuckles his seatbelt, opens the passenger door, and gets out. It’s brutally cold out, cold enough that he has to fight back a shiver. “At least wait inside as I call you an Uber?” “You don’t have to do that.”

But Yves is already pulling out his phone, scrolling through their messages for Vincent’s address. It’s the least he can do, after everything.

Vincent waits inside with him for a few minutes. It’s a bit of a wait for his ride—probably everyone’s trying to get back home from their New Year’s parties at this time—so Yves makes them both some hot chocolate (nothing fancy, given the time constraints—just hot cocoa mix with some cinnamon and steamed milk—but Yves says “You should come again some time, I promise I can actually cook when I have more than three minutes”) and sits with him in the living room. He finds himself almost disappointed when the cab finally arrives.

“Get home safe,” Yves says.

“Thanks,” Vincent says. “I will.”

“And Vincent?” Vincent turns.

There’s a hundred things Yves wants to say to him. He wants to say, you didn’t have to do this. He wants to say, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. He wants to say, how can I make it up to you?

“Happy New Year,” he says, instead, and Vincent smiles.

[ Part 4 ]

#snz fic #sneeze fic #sneeze kink #snz kink #snz #also thank you to anyone who took the time to leave nice tags on the first 2 parts 😭❤️#it really means a lot to me #and i really really love seeing people's thoughts #my fic #i was planning to be so much meaner to yves but this chapter happened instead #(yves's 'hypothetically i'd be fine with kissing' line from part 2 was there to set this chapter up)#'what is there left to write now that the party's over?' vincent's tur- 🔫#yvverse

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