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imsobadatnicknames2 · 4 days

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How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art of the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is a much of a violation of copyright law as stright up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thinbg to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition as standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

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midnight-in-town · 5 months

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My take on Sir Crocodile's past, including the possibility of the CrocoParent theory

(Because I can't help thinking about it, in the midst of Kuma and Bonney's heart-wrenching flashback...)

Crocodile is one of the few Warlords we still hardly know anything about, but we're bound to know about his past at some point (same for Mihawk with whom he's currently working, as well as Moria who stole like half (?) of the Rocks Pirates' corpses), starting with the panel that launched all the theories, back in Impel Down :

Thanks to Kuma's flashback, we know Ivankov used to be a slave to the Celestial Dragons up until God's Valley. As for what happened at God's Valley, we don't know the full story yet but what we know is that...

...the Rocks Pirates were defeated and disbanded by the alliance between Garp and Roger. Some (?) of them were cloned by MADS (like Stussy for a still unknown reason) and Roger then became the next biggest threat of piracy.

Their leader's name was Xebec and other people have already explained that it possibly is related to Sebek/Sobek, an ancient Egyptian deity represented either in its form or as a human with a crocodile head. And, as we all know thanks to the Alabasta arc, Sir Crocodile is strongly associated with Sobek/Sebek too.

From there, it's not a stretch to imagine that Sir Crocodile is Rocks D. Xebec's child and was also present on God's Valley, which is how Crocodile and Ivankov possibly first "met". Ivankov witnessed Rocks' defeat as well as his child's survival...

...probably thanks to Whitebeard. Because, considering how the government tracked Ace and Luffy because of their dads, it's clear that any child of Xebec would be hunted by the government just as much and, like he did for Ace, Whitebeard probably saved and offered shelter to Xebec's kid for a while.

Whitebeard saving Croc as a child on God's Valley could be the reason why Croc seemingly hated Whitebeard so much : Whitebeard saving him instead of avenging Rocks, his captain, on God's Valley and then later probably defeated Crocodile, when Croc decided to become a pirate and went after the One Piece, could explain the animosity that we saw during Marineford.

Anyway, because of God's Valley, this could be the secret Iva knows about Croc: he's the surviving child of Rocks D. Xebec, thanks to Whitebeard.

Whitebeard choosing to save him rather than his Captain and then later defeating him could also explain why Croc has strong issues when it comes to trusting others :

Another hint that Croc is related to Rocks is Blackbeard. A popular theory/understanding in the fandom is that, while Luffy inherited Roger's Will, Blackbeard inherited Rocks' (leading to the idea that Rocks vs Garp & Roger will be paralleled with Blackbeard vs Luffy & Koby). This is especially interesting, considering that Blackbeard replaced Croc as a Warlord after he was defeated and sent to Impel Down, which is when they met :

Crocodile also has a lot of "mannerisms" hinting he's a D. He's strongly interested in the Void Century, poneglyphs and the ancient weapons.

Additionally, upon learning during Marineford about Ace's and Luffy's being hunted by the Government because of their fathers, he intervened to protect them...

These acts, outside of the CrocoParent theory (see below), can be explained by Croc's own experience of being hunted because of who his father was, but also by what Ivankov said to Law, who's also a D :

To conclude, I'm a strong advocate that Sir Crocodile is actually Rocks D. Crocodile and he obviously couldn't keep his father's name, in order to avoid being hunted during his entire life by the Government.

But what about the CrocoParent theory?

Well, as much as I'm an immense and dedicated fan of this theory (full explanation here), a part of me doesn't trust Oda to be brave enough to go down that road, even if I'm also eagerly waiting for him to. :D

Whether Croc was afab or amab though, the theory that he's Rocks' kid still applies. The only difference is that, if Croc was afab, then on top of knowing about who his father was, Iva also helped Croc with transitioning, thanks to their devil fruit.

Of course, it's probably through meeting Iva that Croc then came to meet some members of the Revolutionary Army, like Dragon. He gave birth to Luffy, transitioned afterwards with Iva's help and his actions at Marineford (protecting both Ace and Luffy) are not only because he used to be hunted as Rocks' kid, but also because he just learnt that Luffy is Dragon's son and thus his own child. :))

After all, to quote Dragon in the latest chapter of Kuma's flashback...

... "a child is their parents' weak spot" seems to ring to the same bell as Croc's "if you want to protect something, do it right" (like giving up on raising Luffy and leaving him in a remote village of East Blue, to avoid him being hunted by the World Government).

Anyway, long post, sorry about it! I hope we'll know soon about Croc's past. Let me know if I missed some hints ! :D

#one piece #sir crocodile #rocks d. xebec #monkey d. luffy #emporio ivankov #crocomom #dadodile #monkey d. dragon #portgas d. ace #whitebeard #blackbeard #impel down #marineford #god's valley #op theory #op1101 #my analysis #<- also lmao Dragon being like 'plz don't talk about my kid it's like a threat to me' despite knowing very well who Kuma's kid is #it was immensely funny to me

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sumikatt · 5 months

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(Has alt text.)

AI has human error because it is trained on “human error and inspiration”. There are models trained on specifically curated collections with images the trainer thought “looks good”, like Furry or Anime or Concept Art or Photorealistic style models. There’s that “human touch”, I suppose. These models do not make themselves, they are made by human programmers and hobbyists.

The issue is the consent of the human artists that programmers make models of. The issue—as this person did correctly identify—is capitalism, and companies profiting off of other people’s work. Not the technology itself.

I said in an earlier post that it’s like Adobe and Photoshop. I hate Adobe’s greedy practices and I think they’re evil scumbags, but there’s nothing inherently wrong or immoral with using Photoshop as a tool.

There are AI models trained solely off of Creative Commons and public domain images. There are AI models artists train themselves, of their own work (I'm currently trying to do this myself). Are those models more “pure” than general AI models that used internet scrapers and the Internet Archive to copy copyrighted works?

I showed the process of Stable Diffusion de-noising in my comic but I didn’t make it totally clear, because I covered most of it with text lol. Here’s what that looks like: the follow image is generated in 30 steps, with the progress being shown every 5 steps. Model used is Counterfeit V3.0.

Parts aren’t copy pasted wholesale like photobashing or kitbashing (which is how most people probably think is how generative AI works), they are predicted. Yes, a general model can copy a particular artist’s style. It can make errors in copying, though, and you end up with crossed eyes and strange proportions. Sometimes you can barely tell it was made by a machine, if the prompter is diligent enough and bothers to overpaint or redo the weird areas.

I was terrified and conflicted when I had first used Stable Diffusion "seriously" on my own laptop, and I spent hours prompting, generating, and studying its outputs. I went to school for art and have a degree, and I felt threatened.

I was also mentored by a concept artist, who has been in the entertainment/games industry for years, who seemed relatively unbothered by AI, compared to very vocal artists on Twitter and Tumblr. It's just another tool: he said it's "just like Pinterest". He seemed confident that he wouldn't be replaced by AI image generation at all.

His words, plus actually learning about how image generation works, plus the attacks and lawsuits against the Internet Archive, made me think of "AI art" differently: that it isn't the end of the world at all, and that lobbying for stricter copyright laws because of how people think AI image gen works would just hurt smaller artists and fanartists.

My art has probably already been used for training some model, somewhere--especially since I used to post on DeviantArt and ArtStation. Or maybe some kid out there has traced my work, or copied my fursona or whatever. Both of those scenarios don't really affect me in any direct way. I suppose I can say I'm "losing profits", like a corporation, but I don't... really care about that part. But I definitely care about art and allowing people the ability to express themselves, even if it isn't "original".

#i think its because i went on a open-source-only and self-hosting bender a few years ago that i think like this #the internet is built off of 'share-alike' software #so. i guess. i don't mind 'sharing'#like some sort of... art communist #ai art #long post #inflicts you with my thought beams #my art #responding to tags #ahha the ethics of labeling this ‘my art’ . lets just say #the tag is for so it’s next to the comic when you look in my art tag

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thatdeadaquarius · 1 year

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SAGAU / Isekai Genshin:

You can still use your characters! ... as in possessing them 👻

(all art by me down below, hope its decent lol - did it for u guys and myself i mean what )

Edit 9/7/23: 1,500+ NOTES??? BRO WHAT!! THABK YOU <3

Edit 12/24/23 + 4/5/24:

☆

My dumbass forgot to put this here .-.

Anywya this is a full length fanfic now ;)

PART 1 (you're here!) / Part 2

So.

You got sucked into a video game.

Crazy, but it happens ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

yknow how it issss

...you very quickly discover that unfortunately video game rules still apply...

which wouldn't normally be an issue! like, needing to use the bathroom in the middle of a fight? Nope! minor cuts and bruises like papercuts, only actual enemies or fall damage counting? hell yeah that'd be great (theoretically no chronic pains if you got that?? hmmmm unsure)

see the issue comes when you realize, you as a player, don't have a "character" that's all your own

there's aether/lumine yeah.. but bc the game's real now, they're their own people, and you didn't wake up to find yourself as a blonde twin...

the closest you can describe your form as is .. like a seelie?

or like the way ghosts look in game?

but a lot more "starry"

like your specterlike, but you look like you got filled up with stars and the milky way, maybe a reference of you being from another universe/world? (aether/lumine/dainsleif/khaenriah star symbol reference secret thEORY-)

but yah.

you also got just, white eyes.

like, not iris, not pupil. like your pupil and iris got erased

you gotta admit, at least you look really aesthetic now.

(u also got a little cape and hood on at all times, and you cant take it off to see your starrified hair >:/ ,very Blue Diamond-esque, look up Steven Universe, Blue Diamond if you dont know who im talking about)

so needless to say, as soon as you sort of glitched your way into existence you were HYPE

i mean ur ACTUALLY IN TEYVAT WITH THE BOYSSSS

...then you realize your a spooky-no-character-to-pilot-around-thus-no-character-model-body-for-you thingy

and that you cant touch stuff!! >:(

like wth!!!

thats just downright unfair.

so, you figure if you got no body to be.... you gotta find a new "character" to pilot >:)

...

I choose you, yellow fungi!

...

....

you're in the fucking woods (Sumeru somewhere obv, u knew that the moment you opened ur eyes),

what'd you expect?? an archon??

..wait a minute. can you possess an archon-

these kinda thoughts plague your first few days of irl genshin impact playing

a rishabold tiger? yep.

a sumpter beast? kinda slow and heavy feeling but yeah.

...you also try a ruin machine LOL

by far, the fungi and ruin machines are the best to possess, mostly because you can remain upright with those

(tho u did find some type of flying monkey that wasnt in game, but its like,, a real world and jungle now so that makes sense there'd be more complexity + stuff)

you do eventually think you should try and possess a person at this point... but ur kinda nervous 👉👈

its ur first time doin this okay nobody explained the basics to you youve been winging for a week now!

will your mind be replaced with theirs? it hasn't been so far with the creatures/bots

and as far as you can tell, they kinda just-

forget what happened or "wake up" after you possess them

(the tiger you were for a day looked confused as hell when it realized that there was a new pile of fruit next to it when it "woke up", it was your way of saying thank you to the animals of the jungle, u left them little piles of food you collected running around as them)

so THEORHETICALLY-

you should be good to go and possess a random poor eremite

... you figure you want to possess something human-like eventually even if you get a puppet body like wanderer/raiden so...

here goes nothing...

♤

so it's been 2 weeks since you've been forcefully yanked into teyvat, and by the second week, you were trying to possess eremites

which! worked out!

mostly..!

you kinda convinced the entirety of two eremite camps that a certain part one of sumeru's forests is hella haunted bc ppl keep "blacking out" and doing things they don't remember doing, yknow... like possesssion LMAO

they kinda ran off to escape you but, hey!

experiment #2: people possession, success!!

now you were kinda convinced of this when you realized no matter the angle the animals and machines of sumeru didnt react to you getting super close to them (you dont have to touch something to posses it, just look at it really, but you wanted to test limits, so you walked up to sumpter beasts and fungi and ruin machines)

but no one can see you.

you don't have a "character" most of the time, you can float and glide around the ground like scaramouche lol

you cant touch stuff bc of this, you cant smell stuff (u saw the eremites campfires & couldnt smell the smoke until you were them)

you cant eat stuff w/o a body, so.. it makes sense that the eremites and passing merchants, cant see you when you float around, trying to reorient yourself after 2 weeks of experimenting

:( ur only a lil sad about it... but mostly not bc lol u got possession powers so trade off u guess

the first time you see a vision-bearer you literally scream

LMAO

ur so lucky u cant be seen or heard

bc Collei would have def screamed back lol

needless to say u stalk the forest ranger- ALL DAY.

Collei goes on patrol around the woods? you go on a patrol.

collei goes to visit other forest rangers? you "visit" other forest rangers at base (lol u def possess a guy who was asleep on a bench nearby & wake up to go talk to Collei "in-person", poor guy was so worried he sleep walked/talked so hard he went to see Tighnari an hour later lmao)

welp, you decide this is your life now, follow Collei everywhere, talk one-sided to Collei until you can possess a forest ranger w/o it being suspicious (dont wanna turn the poor rangers into the terrified eremites from a week or two ago...)

then, after you get the courage and erase the paranoia that tighnari can just... somehow hear your ghostly bullshit-

u do the same to Tighnari (then Cyno when he visits! no u didnt squeal, so what, nobody can hear you- )

♧

Tighnari begins to get suspicious about 3 weeks into this routine.

he's been starting to collect and start a file on all the rangers or nearby villagers that've started randomly "blacking out/sleep walking" in the evenings usually

(u possess as close to nighttime as u can so it seems like sleepwalking)

So when Cyno comes back from a mission gone wrong,

having nearly been decapitated by a rogue flying ruin machine, only to black out and come to standing calmly 10 feet further than he remembered being 1 minute ago...

Tighnari's suspicions are confirmed, and he launches into researching this phenomenon.

his first thought is something like the aranara, but that doesn't account for the effect this thing is having on people

after all, what little forest spirit is strong enough to-

-control humans??

Tighnari begins to get the sense he's in over his head after he finds himself pushed into going into Sumeru City in order to collect more library books or ask around if the blackouts have spread to the city people

he answer is negative, on both accounts.

and he spends about one half of the day walking around, and the other reading up all he can on mythical creatures or ailments

Tighnari gives up for the day, and as he makes his way back to Ghandarvaville, he almost gets ambushed by some particularly nasty muggers

...and then he wakes up 20 feet away, his denro vision thrumming with power, full of worry and fondness for himself??, (just like Cyno said he felt happen to him..)

...Tighnari decides he needs reinforcements.

YOU GUYS-

UR LOCAL ZODIAC SIGN OBSESSED W/GENSHIN HIT A CHARACTER LIMIT ON A POST FINALLY. 😦

??? THIS WOULDVE BEEN LONGER BUT I BARELY GOT SPACE FOR THIS- I- EVEN THE QIQI POST DIDNT HIT LIMIT-

uh cya ig!!

Safe travels lmao,

💀♒️

♡the beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist @revonie / @hat-on-a-cat / @takottai / @sickly-falling (?) / @iruiji

(Sorry about the late tag! I forgot to update my taglist before i posted this 💀 my bad guys)

Also if the people who got put there who i couldnt find a blog for see this, idk what went wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - maybe check and see if ur setting for "being able to be searched/looked up" is turned on?? Idk man

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moki-dokie · 28 days

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since some people need a lesson on how to do this...

HOW TO APOLOGIZE:

Part a) acknowledge and take responsibility for The Thing you did that warrants an apology. ex: "I said something that was racist.". Part b) acknowledge the harm you have caused. ex: "I said something that was racist and deeply hurt you."

say you are sorry and mean it. nothing else. do not explain, defend, or excuse your actions in any way. that may happen later IF and ONLY if the person you are apologizing to asks you to provide a reason. say sorry, then full stop.

make a resolution to do better going forward. you will learn from this and do your honest best not to let it happen again.

you may ask forgiveness, but also know they do not owe you it. Also ask if there is something you can do to fix things. ex: if you broke something of theirs, you might offer to buy a replacement.

viola. you now know how to apologize for something.

here are some ways to NOT apologize:

"I'm sorry if what i said offended you that wasn't my intention."

there is no IF about anything here. you offended them, period. it doesn't matter what your intention was. you offended them. fix it.

"yeah i realize i said some fucked up shit i was having a bad autistic day."

you do not get to weaponize your own issues for guilt and pity points, regardless if you realize you're doing it or not. you still have to take responsibility for your disability (and mental illnesses too)and using it to shield you from admitting you fucked up is not how you do things. if the person you're apologizing to wants to know what triggered you to behave that way, then you can explain. it should not be part of the apology itself. that is deflection.

"i'm white so obviously i'm going to have some internalized racism but sorry if being a silly billy and having a temper upset some people!! totally working on that guys."

do i really need to even explain this like??? your internalized bigotry isn't a get out of jail free card. we all have it. its part of being human. however, it should always be the goal to move forward and actively fight against learned prejudices. you do that by owning up to them by apologizing when they come out. your white privilege isn't something you get to hide behind. i know, its hard to believe. furthermore, do not make light of a serious issue. you don't get to call yourself a silly billy or a bonehead when the word you are looking for is bigot. and you can say you're working on it all you want, but you need a way to be held accountable. take the opportunity to ask if there is anything else you've said or done that might be insensitive or prejudiced in some way. actually show you're actively doing something to be better.

#in light of a certain situation going on rn #but in general a lot of folks around here need to learn how to fucking say sorry

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jessiarts · 1 year

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Too many people are willfully misunderstanding why artists are protesting AI art right now.

All they hear is "Artists are mad at fun new tool and scared it will replace them, so they're trying to take it away from us!!"

Artists are not protesting the tool itself. Many even like the concept of the AI tools, believe it or not.

We are protesting that it takes and uses our work without our consent and without any compensation, all while the companies behind the tool are making loads of money off this practice.

We're fighting for regulation of the tool. Not only does it scrape work created by artists into it's database without the artist's permission, private medical photos have also been found in these datasets. None of that is ok.

From the start this tool should have only been fed images in the public domain, and any artist work fed to it should have come from artists who have consented to it and who were then also compensated whenever their work was used by the AI tool. There's also other issues like:

Sites like ArtStation and DeviantArt refusing to place AI in it's own category to separate it from human made art. Just like traditional and digital art get separate categories, so should AI generated art. (Also some are trying to hide when they generated something from AI and try to pass it off as done by their own hand??? If you believe it's 'just another tool,' why are you trying to hide it???);

How DA tried to pull a fast one and first made AI scraping an opt-out function and said that dead artists work would be scraped because they weren't alive to tell them no;

How the companies behind the tools are knowingly making money off the AI scraping artist work without artist consent;

People are selling AI art with no regard that their generated image likely contains work that another artist created;

Etc.

"But humans take inspiration from other artists all the time! The AI is just doing the same thing!"

First off, it's not. And I don't even mean that in a "AI art is soulless and can never be the same as Human Art!" way or anything.

I just mean these "AI" tools aren't 'true AI' like how you're thinking. They're no Hal3000 that actually make decisions on their own. They're algorithms programed by humans to search the acquired database and photomash together a product based on a prompt. They're not actually becoming 'inspired' by anything. (And it's not insulting the tool to say this either!)

And that's not even the point, but let's pretend for a just minute that what AI Art programs do is the same as a human taking inspiration- Even humans are not allowed to take too much of another artists idea/work with the intent to profit without getting in trouble. Even if that 'profit' is just internet clicks, people very much still do get mad at other humans for copying another artist's work and trying to pass it off as their own.

And that is what's happening with a lot of generated art. It will spit out pieces very similar or nearly identical to another artist's work and will often even include artist's signatures or watermarks in the product. Because it just photomashes, essentially. (Again, not a dig!)

And I'm not knocking photomashing, it is used in the industry. And I bet most artists are actually fine with the concept of a photomashing tool. However, even when humans in the industry use photomashing, they have to use their own photos, public domain photos, or have permission of the owner to use the photos they intend to photomash with. And we sure as hell are not allowed to use someone's private medical photos in our work either.

We're only asking that the work generated by AI Art programs follow these same standards. Again, we're only fighting for regulation, not to take this "new fun tool" from you.

But unfortunately that's all some who are already enamored with the idea of AI Art are willing to hear from our arguments.

It's easier to just believe that artists are simply "afraid of change" or "afraid of being obsolete" and are trying to rain on your fun than to look at our arguments and concede that, "Hey, maybe this tool was implemented in a bad way. Maybe artists do deserve the basic respect of being allowed to consent to their work being used to train AI, and to being compensated by the company behind the tool if their work is used. Maybe we should look into more ethical ways of implementing this new tool."

No one seems to realize that artists would not be fighting this tool if it was done right from the start and didn't just outright take our work to train the AI without our permission. Hell, artists release stuff to help teach/'train' other human artists all the time! We release full tutorials, stock images, even post finished art for people to use for free sometimes!

The difference is that when we do, we consented to do so. It wasn't just ripped from our hands by people who felt entitled to our labor for their own gain.

We're not trying to take away your fun new tools! We're only asking that your new tool does not come at the expense of abusing us!

I really don't think that's a hard ask.

#I'm worried that the link will hide this in the tags #so maybe reblog to spread this?#ai art debate #art theft #ai #ai art #no ai art #noai #ai art generation #stable diffusion #ai art generator #anti ai art #do better ai #support human artists #photomash

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evilscientist3 · 1 month

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so do you actually support ai "art" or is that part of the evil bit :| because um. yikes.

Let me preface this by saying: I think the cutting edge of AI as we know it sucks shit. ChatGPT spews worthless, insipid garbage as a rule, and frequently provides enticingly fluent and thoroughly wrong outputs whenever any objective fact comes into play. Image generators produce over-rendered, uncanny slop that often falls to pieces under the lightest scrutiny. There is little that could convince me to use any AI tool currently on the market, and I am notably more hostile to AI than many people I know in real life in this respect.

That being said, these problems are not inherent to AI. In two years, or a decade, perhaps they will be our equals in producing writing and images. I know a philosopher who is of the belief that one day, AI will simply be better than us - smarter, funnier, more likeable in conversation - I am far from convinced of this myself, but let us hope, if such a case arises, they don't get better at ratfucking and warmongering too.

Many of the inherent problems posed by AI are philosophical in nature. Would a sufficiently advanced AI be appreciably different to a conscious entity? Can their outputs be described as art? These are questions whose mere axioms could themselves be argued over in PhD theses ad infinitum. I am not particularly interested in these, for to be so on top of the myriad demands of my work would either drive me mad or kill me outright. Fortunately, their fractally debatable nature means that no watertight argument could be given to them by you, either, so we may declare ourselves in happy, clueless agreement on these topics so long as you are willing to confront their unconfrontability.

Thus, I would prefer to turn to the current material issues encountered in the creation and use of AI. These, too, are not inherent to their use, but I will provide a more careful treatment of them than a simple supposition that they will evaporate in coming years.

I would consider the principal material issues surrounding AI to lie in the replacement of human labourers and wanton generation of garbage content it facilitates, and the ethics of training it on datasets collected without contributors' consent. In the first case, it is prudent to recall the understanding of Luddites held by Marx - he says, in Ch. 15 of Das Kapital: "It took both time and experience before workers learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and therefore to transfer their attacks from the material instruments of production to the form of society which utilises those instruments." The Industrial Revolution's novel forms of production and subsequent societal consequences has mirrored the majority of advances in production since. As then, the commercial application of the new technology must be understood to be a product of capital. To resist the technology itself on these grounds is to melt an iceberg's tip, treating the vestigial symptom of a vast syndrome. The replacement of labourers is with certainty a pressing issue that warrants action, but such action must be considered and strategic, rather than a reflexive reaction to something new. As is clear in hindsight for the technology of two centuries ago, mere impedance of technological progression is not for the better.

The second case is one I find deeply alarming - the degradation of written content's reliability threatens all knowledge, extending to my field. Already, several scientific papers have drawn outrage in being seen to pass peer review despite blatant inclusion of AI outputs. I would be tempted to, as a joke to myself more than others, begin this response with "Certainly. Here is how you could respond to this question:" so as to mirror these charlatans, would it not without a doubt enrage a great many who don't know better than to fall for such a trick. This issue, however, is one I believe to be ephemeral - so pressing is it, that a response must be formulated by those who value understanding. And so are responses being formulated - major online information sources, such as Wikipedia and its sister projects, have written or are writing rules on their use. The journals will, in time, scramble to save their reputations and dignities, and do so thoroughly - academics have professional standings to lose, so keeping them from using LLMs is as simple as threatening those. Perhaps nothing will be done for your average Google search result - though this is far from certain - but it has always been the conventional wisdom that more than one site ought to be consulted in a search for information.

The third is one I am torn on. My first instinct is to condemn the training of AI on material gathered without consent. However, this becomes more and more problematic with scrutiny. Arguments against this focusing on plagiarism or direct theft are pretty much bunk - statistical models don't really work like that. Personal control of one's data, meanwhile, is a commendable right, but is difficult to ensure without merely extending the argument made by the proponents of copyright, which is widely understood to be a disastrous construct that for the most part harms small artists. In this respect, then, it falls into the larger camp of problems primarily caused by the capital wielding the technology.

Let me finish this by posing a hypothetical. Suppose AI does, as my philosopher friend believes, become smarter and more creative than us in a few years or decades; suppose in addition it may be said through whatever means to be entirely unobjectionable, ethically or otherwise. Under these circumstances, would I then go to a robot to commission art of my fursona? The answer from me is a resounding no. My reasoning is simple - it wouldn't feel right. So long as the robot remains capable of effortlessly and passionlessly producing pictures, it would feel like cheating. Rationally explaining this deserves no effort - my reasoning would be motivated by the conclusion, rather than vice versa. It is simply my personal taste not to get art I don't feel is real. It is vitally important, however, that I not mistake this feeling as evidence of any true inferiority - to suppose that effortlessness or pasionlessness invalidate art is to stray back into the field of messy philosophical questions. I am allowed, as are you, to possess personal tastes separate from the quality of things.

Summary: I don't like AI. However, most of the problems with AI which aren't "it's bad" (likely to be fixed over time) or abstract philosophical questions (too debatable to be used to make a judgement) are material issues caused by capitalism, just as communists have been saying about every similarly disruptive new technology for over a century. Other issues can likely be fixed over time, as with quality. From a non-rational standpoint, I dislike the idea of using AI even separated from current issues, but I recognise, and encourage you to recognise, that this is not evidence of an actual inherent inferiority of AI in the abstract. You are allowed to have preferences that aren't hastily rationalised over.

#ask

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manykinsmen · 2 months

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something i want to point out is that the drivers themselves are some of the most exploited people working in f1. the main victims of this exploitation are rookies and younger drivers, but at some point pretty much all of them have been asked to:

work for very little or sometimes literally zero money (as is common for some rookie contracts), whilst usually having got themselves into debt for a shot of f1

deal with some incredibly dubious employment contracts, financially and otherwise

work inhuman hours with an incredible amount of travelling, which increases year on year

have very little to zero job security, being constantly under threat of being fired or replaced, even mid-season, even as a contractual violation

not take sick or injury days (and be in danger of being replaced if they do so)

put themselves in a great deal of physical danger, whilst the sport dithers about bringing in new safety issues or replacing/upgrading problem areas

race the same day as a death or serious incident on the track, often minutes after the event has happened

represent sponsors they personally ethically disagree with without complaint

share space with divisive political figures (like putin) and visit countries with ongoing human rights violations issues, sometimes literally at the track

endure bullying and psychological warfare from coworkers (teammates) without recourse within the team

endure bullying and emotional abuse from team principals and other key players within the team (*cough* red bull *cough*)

face potential repercussions for speaking out against their own exploitation, the exploitation of others, corruption or wrongdoing

curate their public life and image to meet the demands of their employers

which is why the gpda is so important. it’s the trade union that represents them and campaigns for their rights. their power as individuals, for most of them, is pretty low but collective action can bring the sport to a literal halt.

it’s also why we have to think about the expectations we have of them to answer for the terrible behaviour of their teams, their sponsors and the FIA or FOM more broadly. though they are the most visible people representing these machines, they are nowhere near the most powerful and in many cases are actually some of the least powerful people within the team/organisation/sport.

this is comparable to other sports, and we can see in the last few years domino effects within sports like gymnastics where scandals have broken about the present and historical treatment of their athletes (racist harassment in cricket, sexual exploitation in gymnastics, pressure to dope etc etc). motorsports is not an exception to this. high level athletes are vulnerable to exploitation of their bodies and also exploitation associated with young people as almost all get into the sport as literal children, and wherever there are children and young people there is exploitation.

as their career goes on, world championship titles, race wins and personal wealth can, in many cases, accrue drivers a degree of protection and power. in practice this looks like: lewis hamilton and sebastian vettel being happy to flaunt the FIA’s no political statements rules because they have/had seat security and were more than capable of paying potential fines, max verstappen feeling comfortable calling las vegas out for being more of a spectacle than a race and leading calls for better safety, charles leclerc being able to negotiate a huge amount of money from ferrari for his contract. however this can also drop off suddenly when a team believes they have outlived their usefulness (see mercedes refusing to give lewis more than a one year contract extension).

so, yeah, just something to keep in mind.

#f1

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carpisuns · 10 months

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the most hurtful thing about the rise of AI art, to me, is that the importance of lived human experience is up for debate.

you could say a lot about the ethical implications of it all and how it negatively impacts actual artists—how their work is being stolen and fed to bots without their permission, how they are losing ownership of their own artistic expression, how they're are losing their jobs because AI can "replace" them. but people will always find a way to talk their way around it. "if they didn't want people to use their art, they shouldn't be posting it online." "you can't own an artistic style." "the generated art piece is not actually their art. it's not stealing." and the real clincher: "i don't know what to tell you. that's just progress."

i feel like so many people see this issue through the lens of charlie bucket's dad getting fired from the toothpaste factory because a machine could place a cap on the tube more efficiently. but making art is not the same as screwing a cap onto a tube of toothpaste. it's emotional. it's meaningful. it's expressive. the end result is informed by the experiences and choices of the creator. and the viewer's experience is different knowing that a human is behind those choices—that there was real choice involved at all.

you could argue that AI art retains the inherent humanity of art, because it uses samples of real art made by real people—a whole collective pool of representative humanity. but it's not really the same. it's just an echo. an illusion. a mimic of life without the spark that actually makes it alive.

when i look at art, i want to think about the human behind it. i want to feel connected to them. i want to ponder their choices and notice their details and appreciate their skills. i want to look at it and feel something, because the artist felt something when they made it.

sometimes i see a cool piece of art and get excited. but when i realize it's AI, the emotion is gone. "what's the difference?" someone might ask. "if you liked it before, why don't you like it knowing it's AI? the image didn't change. it's still the same." and sure, visually it's the same. but emotionally it's not. i can't make a connection with it anymore. because there was no real intention behind it. i can't search for meaning in it, because there is none. when i look at AI art, even visually impressive art, i feel nothing. there's no wonder. there's no connection. the only possible feeling for me is, "wow, technology has come so far! neat."

it doesn't even have the appeal of "art" created by nature, like the Grand Canyon or the ocean or the night sky. those create a sense of wonder because there was no human involvement at all. the beauty came from the universe itself, and it feels like a gift from nothing and everything at once, and it's that beauty that so often inspires humans to make something in its likeness.

but AI art feels like a weird in-between of the art made with no hands and the art made with human hands. like pseudo-clay molded with empty gloves. it's sort of uncanny valley–ish. something almost human but not quite, so it always feels a little off. with human-made art, mistakes are understandable, expected, even endearing—a reminder that a person made this, and people are not perfect. but that weird offness of AI art just feels wrong. like a glitch in a simulation, reminding you that what you see was never real.

but really, even if AI was always completely indistinguishable from human-made art, the viewing experience would still be fundamentally changed. we make art to connect with each other, to see and be seen, to speak and to listen. but when i look at AI art, i don't know how to listen for a song. all i hear is the whir of cogs in a machine.

some people might point out that we're all just machines too. that AI's 1s and 0s are really no different from the synapses firing in our brains, and we draw inspiration from everything around us the same way AI draws from the samples in its generation bank. it's different to me, though. maybe i just feel this way because i myself am a creator, and i want to feel like i have something special to offer. but i have to believe there is meaning in the choices and expression of humans that there isn't in the choices of a program.

i'm sure this is just doomsday talk and it wouldn't actually happen, but the idea of AI eventually being handed the primary "creative" role over human beings is frankly devastating, even terrifying. i don't want to live in a world where all the art around me was generated automatically from a prompt and spat out onto a conveyer belt. it would be an inexpressible loss to me.

this isn't to say that AI doesn't have a place at all, or that we should abandon our exploration of technological advancement. i just hope that as this issue gets bigger, we remember the real point of art. when we are sad or lonely or angry, all of us turn to art. whether it's visual art or music or film or writing, art tells a story. we take comfort from the stories we tell each other, and it means something that those stories come from other people. art is and will always be a bridge between us and the rest of humankind.

so while our technology continues to develop, i hope we guard that bridge. I hope we protect the creative space of artists who want to tell stories. i hope we keep the demand for emotional expression high. i hope we honor the humanity of human-made art. if AI art is a truly reflection of us, i hope we keep looking toward the figure that cast the reflection, keep seeking the voice that started the echo.

#this has been in my drafts for forever but I was thinking about it again bc my coworkers were discussing ai #this is really long and over dramatic but idk! I get worked up about it if I consider it for too long lol!#ai #ai art discourse #mine #ai art

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strqyr · 5 months

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rewatching blake's explanation of the white fang's past in V1 to refresh my own memory and damn. definitely needed this bc my understanding of it had drifted quite far. . . .

from the sound of it, originally, the white fang was supposed to be for both the faunus and humans; a symbol of peace and unity between the two. but, due to the discrimination the faunus still faced from humans, the latter seeing the former still as lesser beings, its purpose changed; now, the white fang—which was formed "in the ashes of the war"—rose up as a voice for the faunus; and blake was there, taking part in every rally and boycott, meaning that the faunus war likely took place closer to the present day than it did the end of the great war.

then, five years ago, ghira stepped down and sienna, with a new way of thinking, took over. the once peaceful protests were replaced by organized attacks; setting fire to shops that refused to serve the faunus, hijacking cargo from companies that used faunus labor...

"and the worst part was, it was working. [...] so, i left. i decided i no longer wanted to use my skills to aid in their violence, and instead, i would dedicate my life to becoming a huntress." <- blake didn't leave just because she had issues with people dying, she left because she pretty much had issues with sienna's methods as a whole (probably explains why she was never seen with sienna in the adam short, while adam and ilia were). it just took her a while to reach her limit... or, it took a while for her to actually leave bc she thought her parents hated her and thus thought she couldn't go back home, so... waiting for an opportunity to attend one of the academies it is, then.

#rwby #blake belladonna

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shrimpmandan · 4 months

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The current state of AI discourse is baffling to me because I swear to god some people are just developing collective amnesia and dismissing AI art as "not actually being that bad" when the problems with it are significantly deeper than whether or not it's "real art". It being "real art" is irrelevant to it causing tangible harm. Like yeah I don't think someone AI generating an image to use as a reference is some massive evil, but in the greater scheme of things:

AI art is being used to spread actual real-world misinformation. Propaganda.

Ai art is being used to spread CSEM and other forms of revenge porn. It is also threatening the livelihoods of sex workers to some degree.

People are putting their favorite artists' works through a blender, without their consent, instead of paying them, because image generation is instant dopamine.

Big corps are trying to use AI instead of paying artists/writers because they're greedy fucks.

Most AI programs (with few exceptions) are scraping from existing works without the consent of the original artists.

AI voices are doing the same.

A common argument I've seen is comparing these things to like... digital art, photo editing*, voice splicing. You have to understand that the merit of these things isn't that "they take more time/effort". Effort is not an inherent facet of art. Plenty of tools exist to make art easier that we take for granted now-- many forget the discourse that kicked up when digital art was first gaining popularity. The issue is and always will be consent. Most artists do not want their works or voices to be put into AI databanks. The fact that most AI programs do not care for this, and that a lot of companies are trying to swindle their way into getting artist consent under the pretense of "well they didn't say no", is the main issue. We completely lost the plot when we started focusing more on "is AI art real art?" and "is it bad to use AI for any purpose?", because those are both irrelevant to the question of "is AI harmful?", wherein the answer is yes. This is also failing to consider that "real art" can also cause harm for similar reasons: sexual harassment/revenge porn, defamation, propaganda, etc.

*As a note, this is also ignoring the fact that a lot of people DON'T want their art to be edited or even heavily referenced. It's been commonplace in art usage terms for ages now. This is important to note in the context of AI discourse and copyright law. I also believe there is a difference between voice splicing and AI voices since splicing is more limited and way less likely to get someone actually defamed or 'replaced' as a voice actor, and is just a manipulation of existing voice clips mostly for silly shitposts.

AI CAN be helpful. AI can be used to create references, or make smoother rendering, or even just for fun. A lot of people used AI programs in their baby stages without thinking about how the images were generated or the actual consent of the artists involved, because it was a fun shiny new toy. I also like to think most people who have the means to pay an artist ultimately would. But the issue is not and never has been AI making art easier, or people using it for silly shit, or even people using it for serious art refs. The issue is AI mass-scraping existing artwork, being used to facilitate misinformation, and screwing artists out of jobs. Don't even get me started on AI fucking generating CSEM, or revenge porn, and additionally how it impacts the careers of sex workers.

AI is an issue in its current state. Yes, the panic about it taking over art as a whole was overblown, even if the fears were valid. The capacities of AI art is almost always slightly below the capacities of human-made art, and it's something that will quickly fall in popularity once it stops being the shiny new thing. People using AI to make art easier aren't the enemy either, especially since this can be beneficial for people who do it as a job-- shortening the labor time and all. That doesn't mean AI isn't an issue and that everyone critiquing it is actually just an elitist ableist cuck or whatever. None of this really would've been a problem if not for the mass scraping, resulting in both violations of artist consent, and also it picking up genuinely illegal/nasty content. That's what we should be focusing on. None of this "real art" bullshit.

All that said: I personally would say that using most AI programs-- no matter the purpose-- is unethical because of how most of them function. The only exceptions would be for programs that specifically use consensually obtained data. On this front, I would highly recommend keeping tabs on Adobe Firefly, since it's one of the very very few models out there that has stated a clear commitment to not violating the copyright and consent of artists or persons (it operates off of stock footage and public domain).

#this is a little all over the place so sorry lmao #but seeing the discussion shift on AI has been fucking BIZARRE to say the least #like. collective amnesia bizarre.#ai art discourse #ai discourse #anti ai #tw csem

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ghoodles · 9 months

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A bunch of noir headcanons because im normal i promise

- Either really sensory avoidant or seeking, it depends on the day

- Either way he's still pretty affectionate, on the avoidant days its usually just words of affirmation but otherwise he's the type of person to like pat someone on the back or something (there's actual movie scenes in itsv that supports this)

- The strongest sense of justice you'll see. He sees an injustice and soon enough he's interfering

- He will find a way to get information out of you if you have it, he used to work for the press, and is a private eye, and he was damn good at BOTH

- The color of his webs depends on how long its been since his last revival. Darker usually means its been less time, and it usually lasts for like a month or two before it becomes white again

- Intrusive thoughts about violence that he's just slowly become desensitized to

- Used to be all bark no bite before he got his powers, would get his ass kicked a LOT, but now, i mean, he still gets his ass kicked sometimes, but he's more capable of holding his own

- He has fangs and claws, because, come on, he's literally been revived like multiple times by the spider-god, she's had to replace something

- Speaking on that, a lot of his blood is significantly darker than his natural color, because of the god having to replace it

- Actually figured out how to use futuristic technology pretty quickly

- In shattered dimensions, he definitely thought Madame Web's voice was the spider-god talking to him before he was like "hold on she doesnt sound like that, who the fuck are you?"

- Swears like a sailor, but doesnt like younger people doing it

- Probably screamed in agony at seeing all the colors for the first time, especially in brooklyn during the night, thats gotta cause so much eye strain, especially in a black and white world

- Actually could see color in his world, but they were pretty dull colors, almost monochrome, but not

- Most people cant see the difference though

- Has met Miguel before (shattered dimensions) and was absolutely just in shock by the change

- A god at cooking, shit at baking, he tried to make cookies and almost burnt down the house

- Sometimes just feels like a puppet for the spider-gods entertainment

- Religious trauma is strong with this man, i can tell

- Derealization episodes where it feels like he's just not there anymore

- Back to his blood being darker the more he loses it, he has a full on breakdown over it once he realizes it, because he percieves it as a sort of indicator that he isnt human anymore

- The most unintentionally father figure acting person you'll ever see, he doesnt realize how many people see him as a dad, and if he does he's just extremely confused

- Had his gun with him the entire time in ITSV, just didnt want to accidentally scare someone with it

- Has a pretty good relationship with the other spiders in Shattered dimensions, but ends up getting a little iffy about Miguel once he brings up the canon events

- He almost fought him after Miguel brought up his uncle Benjamin and all his other canon events (ive only read like two issues of the comics im SORRY)

- The most vibrant color he saw in his world was the color of his spider-sense; a red

- For this reason, he can point out red really quickly

- Increased senses, to the point where it can become a hindrance

- Constantly on alert, checks so many things to make sure that he's not being followed

- Despite being naturally weaker than all the spiders, he can punch clean through walls

- He'd be bruised and a bit scraped by it but otherwise he's perfectly fine

#i cant decide if i want to put all the noir lore into one character or go the 'noirverse' route #i might just do both #while i was typing this Whats up danger started playing on my school speakers #just thought that was a bit silly #spiderman noir #spider-man #across the spiderverse #spiderman noir headcanons #i self projected on some of these #you can tell im normal right?

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antianakin · 9 months

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If you were in charge of the Star Wars Prequels how would you have written Anakin? (assuming the only thing you can't do is erase him from canon :P)

Would you learn into Anakin's evilness or try to make him more sympathetic?

Honestly? I don't have THAT much of an issue with Anakin's general characterization in the Prequel Trilogy. I think for the most part that Anakin is a really interesting character in the Prequels and pretty unique as far as villain origin stories and action heroes of the time tended to be written. The focus on Anakin as FEARFUL, as someone who CRIES a lot and is AWKWARD and honestly not suave or smooth AT ALL (unless he's giving himself over to darkness, generally) is actually a really interestingly novel choice to go for. And that unique aspect of him is, arguably, why Anakin was so despised in the Prequels for being "whiny" and "annoying" and people really did not vibe with this weird awkward dude as proto-Vader. Obi-Wan as the much more competent, smooth, suave character with all of the snarky one-liners comes off looking much better in comparison. Same with Padme, usually.

So I wouldn't actually change the CORE of Anakin, the journey he goes on and the way his vices tend to be shown. TCW has already done that, they've just replaced Anakin's less likable characteristics with Obi-Wan's much more affable personality. They gave him snarky one-liners, he's now suave and smooth and charming, etc. It's annoying and it's boring.

But there are two things that don't work for me that I WOULD change if I were capable of going back in time and influencing Lucas's mind towards certain rewrites.

One is that I would make his romance with Padme more believable. The problem with the romance in AOTC for me is that you can completely believe that Anakin would be into Padme, but it feels a lot more difficult to understand why Padme is into Anakin in return. Especially after he murders an entire village of people down to the last child (we'll come back to this one). So we need to be told more WHY Padme is so into him when he is this weird, awkward, whiny manchild. Like, sure, he's pretty, but being pretty isn't enough to explain why Padme is willing to jeopardize her entire career to marry him by the end of the film.

So Padme either needs to be more corrupt, more angry herself, more connected to this part of Anakin that desires power, or they need to show us a better genuine connection. One of the things from the extended/deleted scenes from AOTC that I think could've helped with this is the bits where Padme mentions she had thought she'd be a wife and a mother by now and we see how close she is to her own family when she takes Anakin there. We know how close Anakin was to his mother and I think it would've been REALLY easy to use that as an easy connection. You could even help along the next movie by having Anakin mention that when he was a kid, he'd always sort-of wanted a big family. He didn't HATE that it was just him and his mom obviously, but it had been a sort of dream of his that one day they'd be free and he'd find a beautiful wife and have a big family for Shmi to dote on later in life. This gives Anakin and Padme a shared dream that neither of them is allowed to pursue due to their chosen careers. They've both sacrificed a desire for a family in favor of duty to the galaxy so when they get together later, you can kind-of understand why. No one else gets it but each other, etc.

The second thing I would change is the Tusken Massacre. I think that going as far as completely massacring the entire village is too far too soon. This is something that works only if you as the viewer don't truly see the Tuskens as equal to humans like Shmi or a people like the Jedi. The Tuskens aren't QUITE animals maybe, but they're also just savages who torture innocent women to death, so their deaths aren't sad for THEIR sake, the massacre is sad because of what it represents for Anakin - it's the beginning of the end. And obviously from a modern viewpoint, this really doesn't work anymore, especially with the way the Tuskens are being written these days. It also feels a little redundant with Order 66. It's not as impactful that he murders Jedi children when we already saw him murder Tusken children in the last movie. Baby murder is baby murder, there's no escalation in the evil he commits aside from sheer numbers I guess.

So I would probably have Anakin either choose to just leave the village quietly without killing anyone, or have him stop at just the guards/men and leave the women/children alive and either way he admits to Padme that he WANTED to kill them all and only just barely stopped himself. This also helps the romance aspect in that now you don't have to figure out why Padme is super chill with marrying a MASS BABY MURDERER and her moral code is a lot less gray. If he only killed the people who attacked him in the village or didn't kill anyone at all but just WANTED to, then you can dismiss it a lot easier. The rage is sympathetic and understandable and relatable, but Anakin is still mostly in control of himself. Padme can say that she's felt the same rage and not acted on it, so Anakin is the same. She can insist he would never murder Jedi younglings to Obi-Wan in the next film without sounding like an idiotic hypocrite.

(There's obviously a LOT of other issues with the Tusken Massacre in terms of how the Tuskens are written and presented in this film that could be rewritten to be a lot better and make the Tuskens more sympathetic, etc etc, but that's not really what you're asking me about and I'm not necessarily the right person to speak to that anyway.)

#star wars #attack of the clones #padme amidala #anti anakin #anti anakin skywalker #anakin critical #anakin skywalker critical #tusken massacre #anti anidala #anidala critical

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nalyra-dreaming · 3 months

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hi! i’m not sure if you saw today’s discourse on twitter but people are speculating on the alice, armand and daniel getup. what are your thoughts on this? some people think alice and armand are the same person but others think they are separate people and daniel was married to alice while still being with armand at some point. you’re one of the few people in the fandom whose opinions i actually do trust so i’m interested in reading your take on this lol

Hey!

I... just went and just scrolled over the timeline and I think I saw some of it...

So errr - thank you for your trust, I hope I can live up to it^^ - here's my two cents on this:

I do think Daniel's daughters are real, we only hear of them, but there's the helmets and I do think that the mind-wipe that obviously happened at some point happened a few years after the initial interview. I think that has likely to do with the daughters (the leaked music titles/hints would fit here) and when exactly the first pregnancy occurred.

So in my opinion this leaves us with two distinct possibilities:

Alice is Daniel's first wife. He gets his "shit" together for her, because she got pregnant. He also might confuse some of his memories of her with some of Armand's characteristics (the eyebrow standing in for the contact lenses), or events he experienced with Armand, like that dessert in Paris, because that's how brains work - they try to make sense of "what's there". It's where deja-vus come from, too. Daniel's mind has a lot of things buried it tries to make sense of, so that is nothing too surprising, imho.

Armand is Alice, the name replaced in Daniel's mind, and his daughters are actually by his second wife. That would mean that a lot of Daniel's memories and thoughts are confused though, and I'm not so sure I would lean into that, because I think it is contradicted by his career.

There's also the third possibility that Daniel's daughters (and Alice) actually never existed, and that the few items of them were planted, but that... I think that would be too far out, because Daniel would then have lived an illusory life, with repeated spell-binding and mind-wipes to keep him in it, to write his books as he did, and so on. I don't think that's likely.

Now, personally I think the show will take the route of 1).

If you know the Devil's Minion, Armand hunts Daniel all over the world after Louis attacked him (and in the show after Armand saved his life). In growing consternation and fascination, and an also quite fatal love.

We know that at some point something happens which leads in turn to someone wiping Daniel's mind. We know they kept tabs on him (the tapes turn up in his post box without postage^^), we know they are up to date on his medical issues. Louis refers to Daniel as "our boy" more than once, and Armand looks shocked when Louis quips offers Daniel the Dark Gift.

In the book, Armand only turns Daniel when he is about to die, and I don't think that will change here. If that will mean a combination of TtotBT, or QotD? We'll see. There's a lot of ways they could go.

But back to Daniel and his daughters.

We know these daughters are all grown up (and don't talk to him anymore). We know he is divorced, twice, and has had his ups and downs. These can be traced, the books exist, his career exists. His wife is mentioned in those books.

So there are decades of his life that he lived outside the "hunt" with Armand (and likely, in parts at least, Louis). Decades of his life that exist away from the vampires - and there has to be a reason for that.

For Armand to step back from his fixation on Daniel there had to be a very valid, very deep reason.

Obviously Daniel getting "Alice" pregnant would fit that bill.

Armand had wanted to keep Daniel human, had tried not to turn him. (In vain, ultimately.) Daniel becoming a father... now that would bring in a "reason" outside Armand's own reasoning that he could latch onto.

And, who knows where we are in the story wrt the reconciliation with Marius, maybe it was he who wiped Daniel's mind. But of course Armand is just as capable here.

So I think the hunts, and maybe years of relationship with Armand happened.

And then... something else happened. Maybe the frustration of being denied the blood led to Daniel leaving Armand for periods of time. Maybe he found solace with Alice. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was an attempt at normalcy. We'll see.

As a note though, because for me it kinda implied there - Armand... wouldn't mind Daniel being (having sex) with someone else, even if he were there. In the books the famous "cuck chair" is very much real, Armand gets Daniel a lot of people to have sex with.

I do not think they will go the route of Daniel being married while Armand is still "there".

I do however think that Armand is always somewhere close, has maybe interfered in Daniel's life in some aspects, too. Has kept tabs.

So that's my two cents on this :) Hope it made sense - let me know what you think?^^

>> Btw, if you are interested in a fanfiction take that is very well written, and likely very close to what we might see? I can recommend "The Forgotten Years", by @faerywhimsy and @cbrownjc - they did a fantastic job hooking into what we know already and what the books provide and merge it together. I'm reading it now, and I have a blast seeing it all fit^^.

#Anonymous #asks #ask nalyra #amc iwtv #iwtv #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #iwtv amc #iwtv 2022 #interview with the vampire #the devil's minion #armand #daniel molloy #devil's minion #the vampire chronicles #vc #vampire chronicles

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