#Too long for twitter

[bogkeep]

thoughts about the "it's ableist to demand people to create art without ai" argument

thankfully not an argument that shows up on my dash unless someone is dunking on it (though i prefer not to be exposed to it at all but what can you do), but i Do think it can be worth biting into the question of: Does True Art Require Effort?

like, if we just ignore the exploitative nature of generative AI for a moment, and the fact that it creates dogshit results and is probably not going to get much "better" than this.

the thing i tend to harp on is that i don't find it particularly meaningful to discuss back and forth whether or not ai generated pictures counts as Real Art or not, because we do not have a meaningful consensus on how to define art in a way that includes everything we personally think is art and excludes everything we don't think is art. it's an interesting discussion! but it's a distraction from, well, The Exploitation. i personally think ai generated pictures can be art - it just tends to be Bad Art. it's uninspired, boring, and makes a mockery of the craft - but that's something you can say about many artworks that's been crafted by real human hands, as well.

so technically i have already answered the question, but it's not what i wanted to talk about. what i wanted to look at was the relationship between Art and Effort, or as some may put it, Suffering. because there is a point where i agree- i don't think there's a necessary Effort Threshold something needs to pass to be considered Art. i don't think one has to suffer to create. and it is true that for some people, the act creation requires far more effort or sacrifice than it requires of others, be it because of disability, time restraints, a lack of resources... we have different situations! this is real! i myself have struggled with tendonitis, severely limiting my ability to draw, and it's not something you can just keep drawing your way through the pain for, lest you fuck it up even worse.

the first question is this: is Creation a human right? well, self actualization IS on the maslow's pyramid of needs, on the tippy top. i have no idea if the pyramid theory is considered Super Legit or not, but it makes sense to me. i think humans DO have a creative need that we express in a myriad of forms - not just writing and drawing! i think our brains yearn to Make Thing for the sake of Making Thing. i think it is very very sad that techbros are dabbling in the act of creation by writing prompts to feed ai generators, and i pity them for not having discovered a more fulfilling way to feed that impulse. i do actually think all humans should have time and tools for creative expressions, but that's an extremely broad sentence for me to say.

(a more adjacent topic is that art as a Product is more of a luxury than a Human Need, like it's not food or shelter. but also art is so deeply embedded in human civilization, and i do think it's a shame how often people consider it superfluous or even hedonistic. *i* think it's important to feed the soul with beauty and stories and expression, but i have no authority to make such a claim for all humankind.)

here is the thing. we have made many tools that have made creating art easier. we live in an age of photography and audio recording and digital art programs. the last one especially can give us a MYRIAD of shortcuts when it comes to creating visual art! nobody would consider it "cheating" to use the paint bucket tool instead of painstakingly filling in every area with a brush tool. we have increasingly more access to 3d models and various assets. *is* there a point where we draw a line in the sand and say, "you're not spending enough time to make this, therefore it is void"? i, personally, wouldn't. i wouldn't know where to draw that line. i have been reading webcomics for a long time, and i have seen how webtoon as a platform has slowly gentrified the medium and is forcing creators to create pages at an unsustainable, breakneck speed - it's no wonder artists are plopping 3D assets directly into their art to even make that schedule viable.

like, ultimately, generative ai doesn't make anything new we have never seen before - we've had photo manipulation for as long as photography has existed, what we consider "slop" has been churned out by greedy corporations for as long as it's been a way to make money - it just makes it much faster, and, crucially, without intention or creative input.

like, i think that's the big thing. whether or not Art can be created without Intent is a whole another discussion, actually. there was an article about someone leaving their glasses on the floor at a gallery, and people started treating it as part of the exhibition. your cat can take a random, unintended photo and you can call it art. once again, a very big and interesting discussion to have! but i think the throughline is that even if human intent was not involved in creating the art, human intent placed it in a context to make it art. art is a social construct! but! i do think intent can be the line between Good art and Bad art. unfortunately, this is another extremely complex discussion to have, because can we objectively call any art Good or Bad? what does Good or Bad even *mean*! do we even have time to delve into that!!

but what we can say for absolutely 100% certain is that generative ai has no intent, no purpose, no thoughts. it is an algorithm, it does not have the ability to think or mean anything of its own. if it has a bias, it's because the people who programmed it have a bias, or because there is an implicit bias in the content fed to it. now, i don't want to go down the path of talking about how Real Art has a ~*Soul*~ or always has some kind of deep meaning. i don't think the millions of Cool Anime Eyes sketched in math notebooks have a deeper meaning. we create art for lots and lots of purposes - for fun, for practice, to make money, to tell our most vulnerable of truths in the only way we know how, and so on. it can be hard to tell how much of what we create is imbued with ~*intent*~, or even how much we are aware of it - i don't know if a 12 year old trying to draw the coolest edgiest sword wielding OC is thinking too hard about like, the contextual implications of design tropes... but they're making an effort to make their OC look ras as hell with the knowledge and tools at their tiny hand. when they are 24 they may look back at what they drew and redraw it with all the experience they have gained since!!

an AI can't replace a human doing creative work professionally because the skills and knowledge they are using is far more than just "picture look pretty" or "this text vaguely sounds like it was written by a human and isn't that super impressive". at best, or worst really, it replaces extremely overworked and over-exploited professionals who are not given time, resources and compensation to do their job *well*, such as ghost writers forced to write slop.

creation is more than the effort it takes to make it. it is *knowing* how to shape your clay, your words, your lines, to make them into what you want them to be and what you want them to do. it is knowing how (and when) to rewrite your draft, to pick out the best sketch, to make coherent thumbnails, tighten up the narrative, to evoke a mood, to play on themes. it is to build your skill with everything you make.

generative AI is a randomizer button. the one thing i feel fairly certain about is that it's very difficult to say *you* created something if all you did was write a prompt and a machine spat out a product at you. like that one seems fairly cut and dry to me. another thing i've seen a lot is people claiming to use genAI as a starting point, and then editing the thing to make it what you want it to be - and i can see the merit in that, sure! though i also think that the amount of editing and tweaking you need to do to make the thing workable is so substantial and grueling that you may as well make your thing from scratch, and now we've just looped back around to the Demanding Effort Is Ableism problem again.

using generative AI is giving up your autonomy in the process of creation. there are ways to spin art out of that (gestures at marina abramovíc's famous performance art where she just let the audience do whatever they wanted to her while she remained unresponsive) - but for the question of Creating Art As A Human Right And Need: why would you want to? what creative fulfilment do you get out of relinquishing all creative control? you're not... you're not *making* anything. maybe you came up with an idea - great start! - and then threw it out the window in the hopes that the wind would pick it up and take it somewhere exciting. god, even that sounds more like an artistic project than using generative AI. literally any metaphor i could make about this sounds more artistic and interesting than what generative AI is doing these days. i miss the time when AI generated pictures were incomprehensible and strange. i miss secret horses. i miss the time where i naively hoped computers dreaming up images would be like, artistically interesting.

most importantly, as many, many other people have said: disabled people are *already* making art. when my tendonitis was bad, i drastically reduced my drawing time and switched to only using tools that were gentle on my hands, and planned my drawings and drawing time accordingly. i think of my disabled writer friends using speech-to-text software. i think of sir terry pratchett, diagnosed with alzheimers, creating his last books by dictating to his assistant and making audio notes for himself. i'm thinking of the many, many creatives who have collaborated to create amazing things together. i'm not going to come out here and say that ~*Anything Is Possible If You Only Put Your Mind To It*~ or some other platitude that disregards your disability, i don't know you, maybe you will never have the ability or resources to work on the One beautiful creative project that lives in your heart. but i am nearly completely certain that generative AI is not your only option.

[janeiteoftheslums]

“Zack was Aerith’s FIRST love, not her ONLY love. Why can’t they just let her move on?”

Because FF7 is not real life, and you can’t insert yourself or your friends or anyone else into that situation to figure out what a character would or wouldn’t do. It’s a work of fiction, and the writers are explicitly SHOWING us Aerith hasn’t moved on—through her ACTIONS.

She’s still wearing the pink ribbon he gave her 7 yrs ago.

She’s WEARING pink just like he suggested, for the next time they meet.

From Crisis Core (recently remastered—go play it!), we know she wrote her 89th letter to him mere months before meeting Cloud.

And we know she’s not running after Cloud in Remake Chapter 2 and 8-9 because she’s looking for a new boyfriend, but because he’s dressed like him and is carrying his one-of-a-kind sword.

When he lands in her church, she asks him on a date in the exact same way her first love asked her.

She gets him to pick flowers with her, similar to how Zack built her a flower cart and went with her to sell flowers.

She takes him to the same park where she and Zack had their first date.

She looks into his eyes the same way she did with Zack—Mako eyes which remind her of HIS eyes, the color of the sky.

She says MANY of the same things she said to her first love, including “I’d like to spend more time with you” (the exact phrase in Japanese, unfortunately translated “I’m not sick of you yet” in English)

Why do we say she hasn’t moved on? Because it’s been canon since OG that Aerith sees her first love in Cloud, and that this is what initially attracts her to him.

You can say she’s ready to move on at some point AFTER these events, but her actions in Chapters 2, 8 and 9 of Remake are CLEARLY not those of a girl who’s left her first love “in the past”.

(Side note: regardless of what Aerith came to feel for Cloud before her death, she only ever got to know SOLDIER Cloud. She wanted to meet his real self, but this was not to be.)

Also, not long after the playground “date” is over, we are explicitly shown Aerith becoming aware of Cloud and Tifa’s feelings for each other. But that’s for another post!

[wacko-01]

Kinda hate being sober. What am I supposed to do with all this rationality? See problems and solutions with no will to enact them? The only real problem here is that I still erroneously believe I’m someone able to change or have some kind of higher purpose. Why believe that when I have crumbled in the face of all adversity? When I’m deaf to everything around me? It’s probably all because I like good things, and I could never stand being one of those who dislike those good things. It’s probably also why I’ve been wanting to get worse, let go of whatever pretenses I still hold, then I could change the image of myself in my mind and live an insignificant life while thinking insignificant things, instead of my current contradiction.

[arsonick14]

Another Vivid Dream

Somewhere far beyond my eyes

Exists the land of dreams and lies

Vividly I see a mix of truths and how I wish it could be

The two are intertwined, with little separation

What was fact and what is fiction?

A date with a pretty girl whose partner suffers from addiction

Dredged up memories of my Ma, track marks on her arm

Offering selfishness and neglect until she bought the farm

That she couldn't afford,  and so brought it into a townhome

Shirking the responsibility of it all, Leaving us to grow up on our own

Now I walk these streets alone, as a vigilante I will roam

Unable to stop the suffering of others, every win feels like a failure

[incredubious]

MODERN AU ACESAN !!!! first impressions with a guy who barely passes the No Shoes No Shirt No Service rule

[nigelgraz]

Alucard

[katherinemckay]

something my brain has been thinking over is how the wizard having no powers basically shatters elphaba's worldview, but it actually reinforces glinda's in a lot of ways? like it essentially proves her thesis of "it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" / "did they have brains or knowledge? they were popular" etc. so to me it makes sense that she would be frustrated at elphaba's approach, because in glinda's eyes, it was just confirmed that the only way power is maintained in their society is through perception & image. i think the wizard has confirmed for her that perception has more impact than actual aptitude/skill, so she sees elphaba's approach as 'hurting her cause forever' even though elphaba does have more actual power and ability than the wizard.

elphaba does a 180 to breaking outside of the system because her belief in it has just crumbled, so she sees no value in adhering to it and trying to play by its broken rules. but glinda doubles down on staying inside, because its very flaws have actually further convinced her there's not a realistic path outside of it. interesting stuff

[theerurishipper]

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Part 1 <- Part 2 -> Part 3

Masterpost

[cbartonscoffee]

the pitt on twitter pt 6 (part 5 | masterlist)

[bogkeep]

being in aroace education mode has me all fired up...... one thing i talk about a lot when given the opportunity is Deconstructing How We Think About Relationships - in short, if we put all of our relationships with other people into a pie chart the 'romantic partner' slice is likely to be a very small slice but gets a disproportionate amount of Relationship Infrastructure compared to other categories, such as vocabulary, rituals, attention and narrative scaffolding - entire systems such as dating / finding "the one" / break-ups / the relationship escalator, etc. on the flipside, 'friend' is such a vast category consisting of a plethora of different relationship, all ranging from Friendly Acquantaince to Extremely Close Childhood Friend You Share Everything With, but we have a lot less language and structure for how we think about these relationships even though many of them can be deeply important and intense to us.

the line between romance and friendship is really blurry, maybe even non-existent, but it feels like the way we think about these categories is that Romantic Partner is this one very specific, formalised box of a category, while Friend is a vast and vague landscape where anything can happen - and it's on this free real estate we have built structures like Queerplatonic Partner. the concept has probably existed since forever, along with many other different types of relationships throughout time and cultures, but it's our current attempt at having a Word for it.

are you with me so far? i want to write a blog post about Deconstructing Intimacy.

just putting a CW here that i'm going to say the word sex a lot and touch on the topic of sexual trauma.

one of the very thorny things about This Whole Topic is that sex and sexuality is extremely political. we just do not live in a world where there's any neutral ground to stand on regarding sex. every demographic comes with a lot of assumptions and expectations and moral judgement tied to sexuality. some demographics are desexualised, some are hypersexualised, some are Both At Once, and in addition to that there's lots of stigma, moralizing, pathologizing, and lawmaking. just a whole mess.

so all of That makes it kind of impossible to fully Dethrone Sex. and by dethroning sex i mean stripping it of the baggage it's accumulated in our cultures. Sex Is A Thing You Can Do With Your Body (And Your Mind?). this does not have to make it any less or more meaningful to you than what it already is. what each person considers intimate is very individual. many people find hugging completely inconsequential and will hug anyone at any time, and for some people a hug is A Lot. For some people, sex is a very fun and casual activity, and for others it's Sacred and carries a lot of meaning and a very close bond. sex is intimate - it requires trust and vulnerability.

it is not the only way to achieve trust and closeness, nor the only thing that requires it.

whenever i take the bus somewhere, i trust the bus driver to take me there safely. i put my literal life in a stranger's hands, but it's a very casual affair i don't think about too much. it's not an act of intimacy, just someone doing their job.

i think the way we talk about sexual assault as the evillest most horribly irredeemably worse-than-death thing, and sexual trauma as a unique kind of trauma amongst traumas, is... indicative. and please do not get me wrong, SA is a horrible thing in every way. it's a violation of trust, vulnerability and personal space. it's an abuse of power. those are the things that make it so horrific - but it's not unique.

an abuse of power, a violation of trust and vulnerability, can happen in so many different forms. emotional abuse, non-sexual violence, medical abuse, et cetera - i don't think it's possible to place trauma into a hierarchy from least to most bad. trauma can be incredibly complex and it's different for everyone. if one day the bus driver on a whim decided to drive off a cliff, i think that would severely fuck up my ability to trust other people to drive me around. if i trusted someone with my innermost thoughts that i have never shared with anyone else, and they used them to be cruel to me, that would severely impede my ability to connect with others.

i just... don't think it does anyone any favours to separate sexual trauma from all other trauma - making it seem like sexual trauma is The Worst Trauma Possible You Can Never Heal From, and on the flipside, make it seem like Well Your Non-Sexual Trauma Cannot Possibly Be That Bad.

TRAUMA TOPIC ASIDE, i think the concept of intimacy has a tendency to get flattened into just the one kind. there are many, Many ways for people to be intimate, many activities that require some form of mutual vulnerability or physical contact, but it seems like we're just very used to placing Acts of Intimacy into the Sexual category. kind of like a venn diagram where the two circles are Sexual Intimacy and Non-sexual Intimacy that are largely overlapping. but what if, instead, it's more that Intimacy is a really big circle, and sex is just one of the circles within it?

the way i think this slots into the whole Relationship Infrastructure thing is that We Like To Categorize Things. if we see two people being very intimate in a way that's not explicitly sexual, it's tempting to think ah yes they are in love AND they're having sex, OBVIOUSLY, because they are clearly capable of having that level of trust and vulnerability together. but what if they're not? does that devalue their relationship? does it make them any less close? these are very chewy questions to ask even without bringing shipping discourse into it, and i would prefer Not To because sexuality is political and there is no right answer.

another way this flattening can be frustrating is all the times non-sexual intimacy is treated as Sexual By Proxy. let's say, for example, you're telling a story, and all forms of intimacy within that story get read as metaphors for sex, despite your actual intentions. there's nothing wrong with using metaphors for sex, especially since Sex Is Political and sometimes we gotta be clever about the storytelling - but it can get very messy if people read sexuality between characters who don't have that, especially characters between which it would be very problematic to portray that. we gotta be able to tell stories about all kinds of close relationships, and surely it should be possible without bringing freud into it at every turn.

intimacy is context-dependent, i would say. a moment of vulnerability can be platonic or romantic or sexual or maybe something else depending on a situation and all the factors involved. human connection is an boundless spectrum, not just a couple boxes.

did any of this make sense? they're just my Thoughts, i'm not a scholar on this i just

[tartzbake]

steve caught the winter soldier

[bacchuschucklefuck]

they licensed his ass

my finished piece of the FWMS (official name definitely 100%) thing we started a few days ago! I had fun I hope folks had and/or continue to have fun with the sketch as well.

[arsonick14]

When all the songs sound the same

And you cant remember their name

You know, I cant carry the tune

But you've got me over the moon

The lyrics slip my mind

But we're two of a kind

So I'll make up the words

You can put it to a few chords

Let's put our whole hearts into it

We'll have a blast, open up the pit

Who gives a damn about how we sound

We're gonna live it up til we're in the ground

If the music all sounds the same

We'll make our own and change the game

Doesnt matter if its midnight or noon

Being with you has me over the moon

Music's the love we share

We're two halves of a pair

So lets go and dance and sing,

Maybe you can give me a ring

[gyrmirr]

can i tell you that i'm empty?

[katherinemckay]

for good trailer really has me thinking about how excited i am to see act 2 glinda fully explored in a deeper and more up-close way like think of the material. being kinda forced into a regime role because you didn't have what it takes to be a fugitive and then settling into the comfort and praise of that role but still coming to the realization it's not what you Really want. and you regret what you've lost but you have to keep up the facade because your status is your only asset. and you're losing faith in a system you once believed in while still having hope that you can do good from the inside, but you're wondering how much good you're actually doing. and things keep spiraling further out of control and you know you're complicit in everything and hurting the one person you truly love. but you still feel like you have to play your part because there are people who look to you for comfort, and your entire life you've believed image and reputation are everything and you just can't give that up yet. and when you finally Are ready to really throw it all away for what's right, you realize you can't because you can only actually help by staying in a position of power. so now you'll live the rest of your life trying to actually make that change, but you can't tell the truth about anything you've learned, and you're doomed to be alone because you could never truly leave it all behind. you'll always regret that first choice, and yet you never could have chosen differently because it's who you are. save me ariana grande as adult glinda save me

[visions--of--collisions]

오늘의 손그림 by isa_for_you