the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.
people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.
"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."
the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.
the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.
at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.
"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.
this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.
just once i would like to see one of those typical batman almost dying scenes where he comes super close to death and then last second his brain is like “no! gotham needs you” and then he survives with the power of whatever the fuck but instead of “gotham needs you” it’s “your children need you”
like yeah gotham is your city to protect or whatever that’s fine and fun but where’s the like… “you have kids at home bruce”
Robin chose Steve. Robin made the conscious and deliberate decision that she could and would trust Steve. She already liked him! She had fun working and bantering with him! They were already on their way to being weird little bffs and the torture just expedited the process. Steve chose Robin just the same! He thinks she's fun and cool and likes her so much! He chose to be honest and open with her too, putting himself out there.
Even though their interests on the surface level don't match why wouldn't they share them? Steve clearly caves when Robin wants to watch a movie he doesn't think he'll like, Robin can watch a March madness game or five.
Stop trying to take away their bond oh my god people can be close to more than one person!!! Their best friend doesn't have to be dismissive or mean or whatever in order for a romance to be special to them!
Yesterday Wilbur logged in for the first time since the beginning of the QSMP, found out he has an egg of his own he initially didn't want to take care of but now is his beloved daughter Tallulah he would kill for. He made a deal to get revenge of Slime for killing Tilín with Quackity.
Quackity in his grief decided he wanted to kill all eggs and tried to get Fit to help him, but he refused and said he would only aid him by providing tools, but he wouldn't kill any eggs himself. Quackity then tried to kill Tallulah after Wilbur logged off, but after reading all the signs she has written to Wilbur he was unable to do so and called off the plan, instead going to sleep at Tilín's grave again (and then he logged off and said today there's gonna be a big announcement).
After that Spreen finds a fucking dragon that attacks him, and as the day goes on we see how the dragon seems to be hostile towards the eggs instead of caring for them, even targeting the ones with two lives specifically.
Bad, Foolish and Maxo started questioning the intentions of the duck and if he's evil, as well as the eggs really being dragon eggs. Bad theorises all the eggs were set up to die from the beginning, seeing as the quests are becoming more and more dangerous. He also suspects Quackity of being allies with the QSMP admins, though Maxo believes Quackity just needs time and support to get over his grief. Foolish, on his part, is starting to suspect Bad of working with the admins to make everyone suspect each other.
Fucking binary code thing that was after Arin appeared again and attacked them, once again targeting the eggs with two lives. Then the QSMP admins themselves told them to give up in the chat.