#ai image generation is a whole other story

[mushiemellows]

On Rivd and AI

So last night I made this post and said I'd elaborate more in the morning and when I had the time to do a bit of research. Upon doing said research, I realized that I had misunderstood the concerns being raised with the Rivd situation, but that isn't the case any more. However, some of my thoughts on ai still stand. Heads up, this is going to be a long post. Some actual proper blogging for once wow.

I'm going to discuss the Rivd phishing scam, what can be done for fic writers as ai begins to invade fan spaces, and my elaborated thoughts on Language Learning Models. Warning for transparency: I did utilize chat gpt for this post, NOT for the text itself but to provide examples of the current state of LLMs. Some articles I link to will also be ai generated, and their generated quality is part of what I'll be warning about. This is not a generated post and you can tell because I've got those nifty writing things called "voice" and "style."

ANYWAYS:

Okay so what was the Rivd situation? So two days ago this post was uploaded on tumblr, linking back to a twitter thread on the same topic. I saw it late last night because I was traveling. A reddit post was also uploaded 3 days ago. According to google trends, there was a slight uptick in search traffic the week of June 23rd, and a more severe uptick last week (June 30th-July 6th). That's all to say, this website did not exist until last week, caused a stir, and immediately was put down.

Rivd is not longer up. Enough people contacted its web hosting service Cloudflare and they took the site down. This happened yesterday, from the looks of it.

So, then, what was Rivd? And more importantly, what was the point of scraping a chunk of ao3 and re-uploading it? There seems to be 2 possible theories.

1) The more innocent of the two: they genuinely want to be an ao3 competitor. I can't look at the website any more, and very little positive results appear when googled, but I did find one ai-generated puff piece called "Exploring Rivd: The Premier Platform for Movie-Based Fanfiction" posted to Medium last week by one "Steffen Holzmann" (if that is your real name... x to doubt). This account appeared the same week that Rivd had that first little uptick in google queries, so it is undoubtedly made by the people running the website themselves to create an air of legitimacy. Medium appears to be a safe enough website that you can click that link if you really want to, but you shouldn't. It's a bad generated article, there's very little to glean from it. But it is a remnant source on what Rivd was claiming to be, before it was taken down. Here's the conclusion from the article, the only portion that gave any actual information (and it barely offers any):

Rivd is the ultimate platform for movie-based fanfiction, offering a diverse range of content, a supportive community, and robust interactive features. Whether you’re a writer looking to share your work or a reader seeking new adventures in your favorite movie universes, Rivd provides the perfect platform to engage with a passionate and creative community. Start your journey on Rivd today and immerse yourself in the world of fanfiction.

There's a second article by Holzmann titled "Mastering the Art of Fanfiction Writing in 2024" that's essentially similar ai bull, but trades explaining that fans can write Star Wars fic for explaining that you can make OC's and maybe get a beta (not that that's advice I've ever heeded. Beta? Not in this house we don't.) This was posted six days ago and similarly spends half the time jerking Rivd off. That's all to say, if they are to be believed at face value, this website wanted to just be a fic hosting site. Scraping Ao3 would have made it seem like there was already an active user base for anyone they were attempting to attract, like buying your first 50,000 instagram followers. Anyone actually looking to use this as a fic site would have quickly realized that there's no one on it and no actual fan engagement. There's already fan community spaces online. This website offers nothing ao3 or ffn or wattpad or livejournal or tumblr or reddit didn't already.

Similarly, it reeks of tech bro. Between the scraping and the ai articles, the alarms are already going off. According to that Reddit thread, they were based out of Panama, though that doesn't mean much other than an indicator that these are the type of people to generate puff articles and preemptively base their business off-shore. Holzmann, it should be mentioned, also only has 3 followers, which means my tiny ass blog already has more reach than him. Don't go following that guy. The two comments on the first article are also disparaging of Rivd. This plan didn't work and was seen right through immediately.

If fan communities, and those who write fic know anything, it's how to sniff out when someone isn't being genuine. People write fic for the love of the game, at least generally. It's a lot of work to do for free, and it's from a place of love. Ao3 is run on volunteers and donations. If this genuinely is meant to be a business bro website to out-compete ao3, then they will be sorely disappointed to learn that there's no money in this game. It would be short lived anyway. A website like this was never going to work, or if it was, it would need to ban all copyrighted and explicit materials. You know, the pillars of fic.

So then what was the point of all of this? Unless there was a more nefarious plan going on.

2) Rivd was a phishing scam. This is so so so much more likely. The mark for the scam isn't fic readers, it's fic writers. Here's how it works: they scrape a mass of ao3 accounts for their stories, you catch it, you enter a lengthy form with personal info like your full name and address etc. requesting they take your work down, they sell your data. Yes, a lot of personal info is required to take copyrighted materials down on other sites, too. That's what makes it a good scam. Fic already sits in a legal grey area (you have a copyright over your fic but none of the characters/settings/borrowed plot within it. You also CANNOT make money off of fic writing). So the site holds your works ransom, and you can't go to Marvel or Shueisha or fuck it the ghost of Ann Rice herself to deal with this on your behalf. Thankfully, enough people were able to submit valid DMCA's to Cloudflare to deal with the issue from the top.

Remember this resolution for the next time this situation arises (because of course there will be a next time). Go through higher means rather than the site itself. These scams are only getting more bold. Me personally? I'm not going to give that amount of personal info to a website that shady. Be aware of the warning signs for phishing attacks. Unfortunately, a lot of the resources online are still around text/email phishing. We live in a time where there's legal data harvesting and selling, and illegal data harvesting and selling, and the line in between the two is thin and blurry. Here's an FTC article on the signs of phishing scams, but again, it's more about emails.

I should note, I do not think that Rivd is connected to the ransomware virus of the same name that popped up two or three years ago [link is to Rivd page on PCrisk, a cypersecurity/anti-malware website]. It's probably just coincidence.... but even so. A new business priding itself on SEO and all that tech guy crap should know not to name itself the same thing as a literal virus meant to scam out out of a thousand dollars.

That's all to say, this was absolutely a scam meant to take personal info from ao3 writers. And that blows. To love art and writing and creation so much just to have your works held hostage over data feels really bad. Of course it does!

So, should you lock down your ao3 account?

That, to me, is a little trickier. You can do as you please, of course, and you should do what makes you feel safest. Me personally, though, I don't plan on it. I really, really like that guests can interact with my work from the outside. Ao3 still uses an invite system, so a lot of regular users still don't have accounts for any number of reasons. I read a lot of the time logged out anyways. I started writing again last year after all the info on the ao3 Language Learning Model training had already come out. Like I talked about in my last post, I set out to write things that a computer couldn't produce. (from here on out, I'm going to be using One Piece fic as an example, simply because that's what I write. It's also in a really prime position for a lot of ai discussion due to the size of the fandom and the size of the original work)

I'm going to be honest, I'm not all that afraid of my work being scraped for LLMs to train off of. Text generators have existed for a decade now, but they really popped off last year. LLM's are at a point, though, where the tech is sort of stagnating after the initial boom. The flaws of current ai chat bots are so baked into the flaws of ai itself that they won't be ironed out soon. They make up info, they're easily manipulated, they simply are not people. The flaw here is deep- you can trace it to the fact that we don't know enough about neuroscience itself, and even then neuroscientists don't make ai. Ai programers do. Complex info already has to make one synaptic jump without losing any understanding from person to person, and then it has to be perfectly abstracted for a machine to comprehend. It can't be done with the tools we currently have. I DO hate to admit it, but there are some decent uses for ai. if you are specifically a python programmer. The rest of us? Maybe not.

I don't like generated fic, I don't read it on principle. Checking on ao3, though, there's only 4 total generated op fics (3 in spanish, one in english, 3 xreader, 1 zosan but 2nd person zosan? and the author edited the framework the computer generated text. I still didn't enjoy the fic, tho.) But that breaks down to .005% of all op fics. I went into chat gpt and asked it to generate a drabble for me based on One Piece, and this is what it wrote:

[Image ID: A screenshot of chat GPT. The first line shows my prompt. It reads: You- write me a short 100 word fanfiction based on the manga One Piece. Next line, Chat GPT- "On the shores of an uncharted island, the Straw Hat Pirates stumbled upon a hidden treasure trove. Among the glittering gold and jewels, Luffy discovered an old, weathered journal. Inside, he found sketches and notes detailing the adventures of a legendary pirate who once roamed the Grand Line. Excited by the prospect of a new adventure, the crew set sail. following clues left in the journal. Along the way, they faced formidable foes and forged new alliances, unraveling the mysteries of the lost pirate's legacy. With each island they conquered, they grew closer to uncovering the ultimate treasure- a legacy that would shape their own journey." End ID]

Okay so like, this blows, yeah? 75,000 One Piece fics to train off of on ao3 and it still can't like, write a decent little story. This reads more like an episode summary or a book dust jacket blurb. Drabbles have an internal structure that make them interesting, much like a single sentence short story. You have to get very baby shoes never worn with them, yeah? Ai doesn't understand that, it just knows how many words it has to generate. It doesn't have any sense for creative language, metaphor, simile, poetry. I asked it to write me a poem and it wrote me the same poem with thesaurus replacements each time it re-generated one. A lot about dreams and stars and midnight and whispers, over and over again. The same rhyme scheme and cadence too.

It's also- vitally- so unhorny that it's almost a crime. For a test, I asked it to generate a story about a uhhhhh robot and an archeologist kissing. Just to see what it would give me. I ran 4 tests, a robot falling in love with an archeologist, a robot kissing an archeologist, an archeologist kissing a robot, and an archeologist falling in love with a robot. All 4 were incredibly chaste, quiet little drabbles about the innocence of discovery or whatever the fuck. Here's one of them:

[Image ID: A screenshot of chat GPT. The first line shows my prompt. It reads: You- write me a short 100 word story about an archeologist kissing a robot. Next line, Chat GPT- "Int he dimly lit chamber, Professor Evelyn Porter stared in awe at the ancient artifact- a remarkably lifelike robot buried for millennia. As she leaned closer to examine its intricacies, a surge of curiosity and admiration swept over her. In a moment of spontaneous fascination, she brushed her lips against the cool metal of its cheek, a gesture of reverence and connection across ages. The robot, dormant for eons, stirred faintly in response to the unexpected contact. It was fleeting, almost surreal exchange between past and future, bridging the gap between human exploration and technological marvels of ancient civilizations." End ID]

So like, some of these phrases gets to what's vaguely intriguing about this dynamic, sure. But at the end of the day it's still uhhhh chaste as hell. A reverent kiss??? Not what I want in my fic!!!! This is all to say, LLM's can scrape ao3 all they want, that doesn't mean they can USE what they're stealing. The training wheels have to stay on for corporate palatability. I'm stealing, I'm taking these dolls out of Shueisha's grubby hands and I'm making them sexy kiss for FREE.

In my opinion, the easiest way to keep your work out of the hands of ai is to write something they cannot use. If the grey area of copyright lies in how much is transformed, then motherfucking TRANSFORM it. Write incomprehensible smut. Build surreal worlds. Write poems and metaphors and flush out ideas that a computer could never dream of. Find niches. Get funky with it. Take it too far. and then take it even farther. Be a little freaking weirdo, you're already writing fic so then why be normal about it, you know? Even if they rob you, they can't use it. Like fiber in the diet, undigestible. Make art, make magic.

Even so, I don't mind if the computer keeps a little bit of my art. If you've ever read one of my fics, and then thought about it when you're doing something else or listening to a song or reading a book, that means something I made has stuck with you just a little bit. That;'s really cool to me, I don't know you but I live in your brain. I've made you laugh or cry or c** from my living room on the other side of the world without knowing it. It's part of why I love to write. In all honesty, I don't mind if a computer "reads" my work and a little bit of what I created sticks with it. Even if it's more in a technical way.

Art, community, fandom- they're all part of this big conversation about the world as we experience it. The way to stop websites like Rivd is how we stopped it this week. By talking to each other, by leaning on fan communities, by sending a mass of DMCA's to web host daddy. Participation in fandom spaces keeps the game going, reblogging stuff you like and sending asks and having fun and making art is what will save us. Not to sound like a sappy fuck, but really caring about people and the way we all experience the same art but interpret it differently, that's the heart of the whole thing. It's why we do this. It's meant to be fun. Love and empathy and understanding is the foundation. Build from there. Be confident in the things you make, it's the key to having your own style. You'll find your people. You aren't alone, but you have to also be willing to toss the ball back and forth with others. It takes all of us to play, even if we look a little foolish.

[escapedaudios]

I know it's uncouth to publicly drag another voice actor, but considering that this talentless fuck is using AI voices now I can hardly consider him a fellow VA anymore so it's open season on him. Let the record show that I hate Tingly Tones and I have had nothing but disdain for him from the first time he ever interacted with me. I've never seen someone so deeply involved in making audio roleplay have such a cynical point of view on the medium, it's practically contemptuous the way he disregards even the faintest sliver of integrity.

What the AI generated FUCK am I looking at here. AI generated images, AI generated text to speech, AI mods on his own voice because he burned every bridge he ever had and can't get anyone to collab with him anymore. I suspect he even uses AI generated scripts, seeing as he's a known script thief and God knows this fucking fraud could never string a coherent paragraph together, let alone a script. This dude sincerely sees audio roleplay as a cheap way to get clout and money. He can't even come up with a pitch. He's begged me to collab before, not by actually offering a role or a project mind you, but simply by kissing my ass and hoping that would get me pull all the weight for his sake in exchange for the offer of a nondescript feature on his dogshit channel.

He's tried every cheap in the book to try and grow his channel. Following every stupid trend and popular search term, mass-generating AI images, animating his audios with AI, trying to duct-tape stolen scripts into cohesive ongoing stories, trying to ride other's coattails every time a new VA starts to gain traction, spamming everyone (including minors) trying to peddle his NSFW Patreon. Everything other than actually making a good audio, an ability that he does not have and never will have.

The fact that this hack has more subs than many far more talented VAs is actually disgraceful. The number of Patrons he has bankrolling this slop is embarrassing. Attention coming to channels like this makes the whole audio roleplay scene look like shit, the fact that this garbage even exists is insulting to the medium. If Tingly Tones has zero haters, I'm dead. May his teeth crumble and his tongue rot away.

[local-dragon-haunt]

hey! i’m an artist and i was wondering what about the httyd crossover art made it obviously AI. i’m trying to get better at recognizing AI versus real art and i totally would have just not clocked that.

Hey! This is TOTALLY okay to not have recognized it, because I DIDN'T AT FIRST, EITHER. Unfortunately there’s no real foolproof way to distinguish real art from the fake stuff. However I have noticed a general rule of thumb while browsing these last few months.

So this is the AI generated image I used as inspiration. I will not be tagging the account that posted it because I do not condone bullying of any type, but it’s important to mention that this was part of a set of images:

This is important because one of the BIGGEST things you can use to your advantage is context clues. This is the thing that clued me in: right off the bat we can see that there is NO consistency between these three images. The art style and outfits change with every generated image. They're vaguely related (I.E. characters that resemble the Big Four are on some sort of adventure?) and that's about it. Going to the account in question proved that all they posted were AI generated images. All of which have many red flags, but for clarity's sake we'll stick with the one that I used.

The first thing that caught my eye was this???? Amorphous Blob in the background. Which is obviously supposed to be knights or a dragon or something.

Again, context clues come into play here. Artists will draw everything With A Purpose. And if what they're drawing is fanart, you are going to recognize most of what you see in the image. Even if there are mistakes.

In the context of this image, it looks like the Four are supposed to be running from these people. The thing that drew my attention to it was the fact that I Didn't Recognize The Villains, and this is because there is nothing to recognize. These shapes aren't Drago, or Grimmel, or Pitch, or any other villain we usually associate with ROTBTD. They're just Amorphous Blobs that are vaguely villain shaped.

Which brings me to my second point:

Do you see the way they're standing? There is no purpose to this. It throws the entire image off. Your eye is drawn to the Amorphous Villain Blobs in the background, and these characters are not reacting to them one bit.

Now I'm not saying that all images have to have a story behind them, but if this were created by a person, it clearly would have had one. Our group here is not telling a story, they are posing.

This is because the AI does not see the image as a whole, but as two separate components: the setting, and the description of the characters that the prompter dictates. I.E. "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other"

Now obviously the most pressing part of this prompt are the characters themselves. So the AI prioritizes that and tries to spit out something that WE recognize as "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other".

This, more times than not, is going to end up with this stagnant posing. Because AI cannot create, it can only emulate. And even then, it still can't do it right. Case in point:

This is not Hiccup. The AI totally thinks this is Eugene Fitzherbert. Look at the pose. The facial structure. The goatee. The smirk. The outfits. He's always next to Raps. Why does he have a quiver? Where's Toothless? His braids? His scar??

HE HAS BOTH OF HIS LEGS.

The AI. Cannot even get the most important part of it's prompt correct.

And that's just the beginning. Here:

More amorphous shapes.

So these are obviously supposed to be utility belts, but I mean. Look at them. The perspective is all off. There are useless straps. I don't even know what that cluster behind Jack's left arm is supposed to be.

This is a prime example of AI emulating without understanding structure.

You can see this particularly in Jack, between his hands, the "tassels" of his tunic, and the odd wrinkles of his boots. There's just not any structure here whatsoever.

Lastly, AI CANNOT CREATE PATTERNS.

Here are the side-by-sides of the shit I had to deal with when redesigning their outfits. Please someone acknowledge this. This killed me inside. THIS is most recognizable to me, and usually what I look for first if I'm wary about an art piece. These clusterfuck bunches of color. I hate them. I hate them so. much.

Anyways here's some other miscellaneous things I've noticed:

Danny Phantom Eyes

???? Thumb? (and random sword sheath)

Collarbone Necklace (corset from hell)

No Staff :( No Bow :(

What is that.

So yeah. Truly the best thing to do is to just. study it. A lot of times you aren't gonna notice anything just looking at the big picture, you need to zoom in and focus on the little details. Obviously I'm not like an expert in AI or anything, but I do have a degree in animation practices and I'm. You know. A human being. So.

In conclusion:

(Y'all should totally reblog my redesign of this btw)

[jadeazora]

Which Pokemon Villains are homophobic:

Giovanni: Would founding 🌈Rainbow Rocket🌈 count as rainbow capitalism? (It sounds like the name of a company that manufactures dildos, tbh.) I don't think he's supportive, but it doesn't bother him either. All he cares about is if you do your job well. He has men and women in his organization both thirsting for him. Have you met Archer? (His only true loves are money and power; Silver feels more like a precautionary heir.)

Archie/Maxie: are divorced. Also this was an image the official Japanese Pokemon Twitter fucking dropped with the caption "they're getting along well!" Definitely not homophobic:

Cyrus: dgaf. His whole thing is purging the world of emotion, so love's got to go too. (Pretty much everybody is under fire here.) He probably doesn't give a shit what you do in the meantime tho.

Ghetsis: 100%, no fucking doubt in my mind, regularly calls people slurs. His list of slurs is also *VERY* comprehensive.

N: Who do you think Ghetsis's favorite target is? I feel like he's completely chill with it, tho is personally entirely incapable of discerning the difference between romantic love and the love between friends.

Colress: If it isn't his "how to draw out a Pokémon's true strength" research, he doesn't care. You do you. 👍

Lysandre: His whole thing is beauty, and beauty isn't limited to gender or sexuality, and love is a beautiful thing, so why limit himself? Bro's pan.

Guzma: He takes outcast kids off the streets and gives them a home. No way he's homophobic! You got disowned? You're a fellow outcast in his eyes, and your home is with Skull now! (He's dating Plumeria, but is bi to me.)

Lusamine: initially, probably not since she's super controlling and not really a supportive mother to begin with, but since she does end her story wanting to do better for her kids, I feel like she would come around eventually and try to be better.

Piers: Nah, he's with Raihan and his little sis "fancies" Gloria. Next.

Rose: I feel like he would probably engage in some rainbow capitalism here and there, but he's generally friendlier than the other CEO-type villains personality-wise and there's several members of the Galar League who feel bi/gay (Nessa, Piers, Raihan), he wouldn't really be homophobic.

Volo: I don't think he cares that much, but if he can use homophobia to manipulate somebody, he totally would call them a slur. It really just depends what tool he has in his arsenal he feels would be the most effective way of manipulating you.

Penny: she literally calls your mom so pretty her brain glitched. I feel like she could get mad enough to doxx you if you tried to bully gay/trans kids in her presence.

Sada/Turo + the AI: As scientists, they're too wrapped up in their work to care (hell, they barely paid their own son any mind) and the AI knows being gay is something found naturally across species, so homophobia doesn't make much sense to them. Sada also strikes me as bi, and Turo strikes me as ace (with him, I think it's the outfit).

[ai-art-thieves]

they're calling us ableist for pointing out ai art XD

Ok. Let me understand what's going on here

You try to alert someone about this, but it didn't go too well and now rjalker is demanding for a witchhunt for anyone that goes against crippled-peeper.

And I thought shit like this only happens on twitter....

Might as well clear my name and debunk the claims present here.

To clarify, transmisic is not a misspelling of transmisogynic. It is another word for "transphobic".

First of all, I had never interacted with crippled-peeper before I got the tip from anon. At all.

I never even heard of that user before in my life.

I probably bet that the users that rjalker claim to be ableist or transmisic have never heard of or interacted with crippled-peeper either.

Next point:

Let me answer rjalker's question with a question. Have you ever seen JPEG artifacts before?

And, more specifically, do you know the difference between ai pixel art and regular pixel art?

The fact that it don't show evidence/proof that the icon is not ai generated and shows examples of jpeg artifacting clearly shows that its post is a reactionary response. (I know this sentence structure sounds kind of weird, but I'm trying my best with the pronouns that I have been provided.)

Luckily, I can debunk that claim right away because I am quite familiar with pixel art myself.

I have done my fair share of sprite edits.

And before this user claims that I'm stealing another person's art, no. I am not. My main account is @magicalmysteryperson, and here is the proof.

Here's links to the pieces as well.

Now, with that out of the way, allow me to prove why rjalker's claims make no sense.

By redrawing the image from scratch. Here's the image.

here's the original, for reference

Already something is amiss.

There are a whole bunch of varying line weights and splotches that are considered by most sprite artists as serious faux pas.

Some parts of the image are blending with each other.

The gradients with both the floor and the wall are way too smooth for an image like this.

And the small leaves on the soil are an extremely big give away that the image was ai generated.

I am not demonizing the person for ai generating their icon.

Yes, ai art is bad, but some people do use it, even disabled artists.

I'm not going to demonize someone just because they play with that tool.

It's the dishonesty that is the main issue here.

Remember: their story behind this icon was that they made it over three years ago.

And their stance on AI on September 25th, 2024:

However, the claim that they made the image over three years ago is put into question when in 2021, 2022, and 2023, they had various other icons... as well as using ai art constantly.

The images in the latter two screenshots have not been archived by the wayback machine, and these posts have been scrubbed by the user. Again, everything prior to 2023 is scrubbed from the account.

I will also do what rjalker did and provide wayback machine links. here, and here, and here, and especially here.

Now, let's tackle the second claim: "It's JPEG compression".

Here's both the png and the jpeg files of the plant I drew.

Note that with the jpeg compression, you can also see that even though the image looks softer, there is still a form of pixelation. It's still made up of little squares, not rounded splotches.

You can simply look up "compression artifacts" and find that what's going on in crippled-peeper's image is not the result of jpeg compression artifacting.

If you want to see what my image looks like in a bigger form, here you go.

I have also did numerous forms of jpeg compression to see if I could replicate what crippled-peeper did.

I wasn't able to.

I just got more cronch and more pixels.

And before rjalker claims that the icon was an ai upscale of a jpeg...

I upscaled my own images on various sites to check if that claim even had any legs to stand on.

While some of the effects were present, it wasn't enough for me to replicate what crippled-peeper did unless I made the same thing with an ai image generator.

Until crippled-peeper has proof that the image was made over three years ago and made on a tablet in the hospital, the allegations presented here stand.

And please, do not harass rjalker.

I get that it made a post that, while it had the best intentions, was poorly researched and reactionary.

But I don't want that post to ruin its life.

I want that post to be used as a teachable moment.

To think before you type or post.

Don't let your gut control you. Just stop and think.

You don't want to post a call out post that completely backfires and hits you instead.

Not that it matters, they already blocked me.

[maxwellatoms]

Do you think the new division of Cartoon Network Studios will end up exploiting and abusing AI to make new cartoons of their old properties?

I wouldn't put it past any studio to do this.

We're at the end of The Animation Industry As We Know It, so studios are going to do anything and everything they can to stay alive.

The way I see it is:

AI "art" isn't actually art. Art is created by humans to express ideas and emotions. Writing prompts allows a computer to interpret human ideas and emotions by taking other examples of those things and recombining them.

Just because something isn't art doesn't mean that humans can't understand it or find it beautiful. We passed a really fun prompt generation milestone about a year ago where everything looked like it was made by a Dadaist or someone on heavy psychedelics. Now we're at the Uncanny Valley stage. Soon, you won't be able to tell the difference.

It's not just drawings and paintings that are effected, but writing and film. It's every part of the entertainment industry. And the genie is out of the bottle. I've seen people saying that prompt-based image generators have "democratized" art. And I see where they're coming from. In ten years, I can easily see a future where anyone can sit down at their desk, have a short conversation with their computer, and have a ready-to-watch, custom movie with flawless special effects, passable story, and a solid three act structure. You want to replace Harrison Ford in Star Wars with your little brother and have Chewbacca make only fart sounds, and then they fly to Narnia and fistfight Batman? Done.

But, sadly, long before we reach that ten year mark, the bots will get hold of this stuff and absolutely lay waste to existing art industries. Sure, as a prompter I guess you can be proud of the hours or days you put into crafting your prompts, but you know what's better than a human at crafting prompts? Bots. Imagine bots cranking out hundreds of thousands of full-length feature films per minute. The noise level will squash almost any organic artist or AI prompter out of existence.

AI images trivialize real art. The whole point of a studio is to provide the money, labor, and space to create these big, complicated art projects. But if there are no big, complicated art projects, no creatives leading the charge, and no employees to pay... what the fuck do we need studios for? We won't, but their sheer wealth and power will leave them forcing themselves on us for the rest of our lives.

The near future will see studios clamp down on the tech in order to keep it in their own hands. Disney does tons of proprietary tech stuff, so I'm sure they're ahead of the game. Other studios will continue to seek mergers until they can merge with a content distribution platform. I've heard rumors of Comcast wanting to buy out either WB or Nick. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. The only winners of this game will be the two or three super-huge distribution platforms who can filter out enough of the spam (which they themselves are likely perpetuating) to provide a reasonable entertainment experience.

400,000 channels and nothing's on.

I do think that money will eventually make the "you can't copyright AI stuff" thing go away. There's also the attrition of "Oh, whoops! We accidentally put an AI actor in there and no one noticed for five years, so now it's cool."

One way or another, it's gonna be a wild ride. As the canary in the coal mine, I hope we can all get some UBI before I'm forced to move into the sewers and go full C.H.U.D.

[niiwa-angel]

Justice League Uncanny Valley Headcanons.

The members of the Justice League are all very uniquely trained and most of them aren't human but have to ACT human in their day to day lives. But despite them trying their best, normal humans can still tell something isn't quite right.

Clark Kent has no give to him. Superman is the Man of Steel but as Clark Kent, people find it awkward to hug him, shake his hand, or cuddle because his muscles and skin feel too tough.

Diana Prince is weirdly strong. Her coworkers struggle to move cases of artifacts because they're heavy but she has no trouble. When they ask, she always just says she knows the right way to hold things or push them but never elaborates.

Bruce Wayne is just a normal human, but he's trained himself into a weapon. His reflexes are sharper than anybody else's. Whenever he gets caught on camera catching something before anybody else, or dodging something most people couldn't, he always waves it away as "dad reflexes"

Barry Allen moves very deliberately. Every action looks like it's rehearsed and planned, yet he's twitchy when he thinks nobody is watching.

Hal Jordan spends so much time in space that it's vacuum has removed his scent. It's not something most people would notice but when they spend a lot of time with him, they get the sense that something is missing.

Arthur Curry blends in pretty well in Atlantis but in the surface, some of his Atlantean traits seem odd. His webbed feet and hands are particularly noticable. "A birth defect" he'll say and never elaborate on. Everyone else is a little nervous to ask

John Jones looks photoshopped. His features seem too semetrical, his expressions are too well done. He almost looks like an AI generated image, but he's standing in front of people, they can reach out and touch him. He's real. But his features just seem too perfect.

Clark Kent knows things before they happen. He knows when a storm is coming, he warns people about incoming hail before their weather apps even alert them. He'll look in the sky for a few minutes and eventually, everyone else will see a plane or helicopter coming from that direction. He'll ask people about their colds before they even show symptoms.

Diana Prince seems wise beyond her years. She'll tell stories from when she was younger but will never give anybody an exact age. When asked, she'll just laugh and say "older than I look" and eventually, people are too unnerved to keep pushing.

Bruce Wayne makes no noise when he walks. He's a ditzy playboy, always leaning on things, talking loudly about nothing, and he loves a good cocktail... And yet his steps make no noise. He can sneak up on people, despite his size and clumsiness. It's completely out of character and it confuses people at Galas and parties.

Barry Allen is very prone to static shock. He'll shake someone's hand and zap them, only to apologize and say he's nervous. Touching him feels like holding an overcharged battery and nobody understands it. Sometimes people's arm hair stands up around him and people have to explain it as goosebumps or the chill, because there are no other explanations.

Hal Jordan drops things a lot. Not in a clumsy way, not like "I didn't put the whole bottom of the cup on the edge of the table" kind of way. He'll just straight up let go of things he's holding. He always has some excuse. He was looking into your eyes and got lost. Someone pretty walked by. But sometimes he does it and seems just as confused as everyone else.

Arthur Curry's skin feels bumpy and cold. It's like his circulation is terrible but he never complains about a chill. When he isn't wearing a long sleeve, people notice that his skin has a weird looking texture, but some brush it off as old scars.

John Jones seems to know everything another person is about to say, even before they say it. He's answering questions that haven't been asked, only thought. "Good intuition" he'll say or "I'm a detective" but it makes people nervous.

[aihoshiino]

What do you think Ai represents in the story in a thematic sense?

This is probably gonna be The low hanging fruit answer of all time but I think Ai pretty straightforwardly represents "love" and (at least in the first chunk of the manga), Aqua and Ruby's relationships to her and their memories of her are sort of, subtextual proxy for how the two of them relate to love.

Ruby throws herself into love as eagerly as she does with everything else - as a kid not only starved of novel experiences but love specifically, she idealizes it and gorges herself on it as soon as she has an avenue to engage with it. She's incredibly open and willing to love and be loved by other people, which in turn is represented by her having a relationship with Ai (& eventually, her memories of Ai) that is on the whole a lot healthier than Aqua's.

By contrast, Aqua is a person who deeply struggles with the idea of loving others and being loved in turn thanks to his absolutely dogshit self image and rock bottom self worth. @penguinkyun put it in a way I really vibe with a couple weeks ago:

i think its both that [aqua] feels like he doesn't deserve the love that he gets and that his love is "wrong" — its a bit complicated because its not outright said but aqua loves to put himself in the villain role every time because he refuses to acknowledge that hes losing the idgaf war severely and because he hates himself so much that he believes all his actions or at least most of them are inherently manipulative — exhibit a: akane and ruby finding goros body, aqua entirely blames himself for it despite having literally nothing to do with the actual corpse discovery. hes very similar to ai in that they both hate themselves deeply and believe they dont deserve love and both having similar issues with love in general, even though they're not the exact same

Obvs we see this reflected in their other relationships (as Lace points out here re: AquAka), but their bond with Ai is both formative and foundational and useful as a lens through which to analyze their other relationships.

Within the context of OnK's commentary on the industry, Ai is also the celebrity and discussions of the way idolhood and celebrity culture affected her in particular also function as proxies to discuss these issues in the industry as a whole.

As a sidebar, this is kind of why Ruby's ending of "surpassing Ai" kind of falls apart - within Oshi no Ko, Ai is THE symbol of celebrity and idolhood to the extent that every other performer in the series is evaluated by how they do and don't measure up to her legacy. The literal in-universe symbol of radiant charisma and captivating charm is Ai's symbol. She is given massive weight in the narrative as the embodiment and archetype of the perfect idol in a way that Ruby is not, so the attempts to be like "oh uh, ruby is a better idol than ai now btw" just feel sorta half assed LMAO

[crazysodomite]

my ai opinion *audience groans*:

i am intellectually open to the possibility of an ai-generated story being truly moving, or an ai-generated piece of art being worth analyzing and genuinely appreciating it.

but like, that just doesn't happen. robust ai tools have been widely available for a long time, including completely free tools, and none of this has happened. with all the artists there are in the world, no one used ai to create something that would genuinely move and inspire people, even as kind of a social experiment? not a single eccentric artist did some "actually, this beautiful thought-provoking story was ai-generated" to inspire genuine conversation around this topic???

at first i thought "people with genuine ideas are afraid to use it because of the backlash they would receive" but then i realized that there have Always been artists who have been doing their thing no matter the public opinion without fear of any amount of backlash, so that can't really be it.

i also thought "maybe there are such pieces but no one talks about them because everyone rejects ai art on principle and doesn't even try to consider it" but then again. even staunch defenders of ai aren't really providing examples of ai art that Genuinely Moved them on a personal level. and i mean, if you believe ai to be just a tool on the same level as any other, wouldn't it mean there would be whole recommendation lists of ai art and stories for people to look at and consider?

the most reaction ai-generated stuff provoked out of me was an eyeroll or an "oh, okay.". there are some people who use ai in their pipeline as a time-saving measure but still do a big chunk of the work by themselves. oh, okay... you can create 100 images of pregnant politicians or some other funny images. oh, okay...

theres soo much conversation on this topic and the only thing i've been thinking about is why nobody goes ahead and creates something interesting or incredible with 'ai tools'. the door is open.

like okay. i'm not even rejecting ai on a fundamental intellectual level, but i also don't see 100000 shitty slop pictures and articles clogging up literally EVERYTHING as a cost cutting measure as a contribution to art tools or whatever

i mean yeah the muuuch much much bigger and important issue is the labor violations in ai training and the fact that basically all major players in ai are just a list of the most evil corporations on earth. but people kinda treat these issues as 'not an issue in ai, but capitalism' and 'yeah the labor violations happened, but ai already exists, so...' or 'ai isn't even that bad compared to other stuff'

and i mean yeah... the issue at the root of everything IS capitalism. but i thought we were supposed to at least try to oppose harmful overconsumption of corporate products. but whatever

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I was rooting for Gabriel having a redemption arch, but even I know that what we got in the show was anything BUT.

How would you handle it? If you were to succesfully redeem Gabriel? How would you do it?

I'm not opposed to a Gabriel redemption arc, but it would be very hard to do without some serious and careful character development or serious edits to canon. My preference is option two because option one risks something that is a hard no for me: glorifying the cycle of abuse. We'll still talk about both paths because it's worth discussion and we'll start with the easy one, which is rewriting canon to remove the abuse.

Rewriting Gabriel

The easiest way to give Gabriel a redemption is to make him a good father. Someone who clearly loves Adrien in a healthy, non-possessive way. Someone who is at least trying to have Adrien's best interests at heart. Someone who is willing to let Adrien do things that make Adrien happy.

To make Gabriel into this kind of character, we would need to remove all - or at least most - of the manipulation. Things like when Adrien asked to no longer be a model and Gabriel used that as an excuse to make an AI Adrien and then told Adrien that his options were to either tolerate the AI or go back to being a model:

Adrien: Dad, I'm not really comfortable with having my face on all these rings. That's actually why I didn't want to be a model anymore, to avoid that. Do you understand? Gabriel: Of course, I understand, my son. But that's the point; it's just an image, it's not you! And since this image frees you from your obligations, we, the Agrestes, are able to spend more time together. But if you'd rather everything went back to the way it was before, just say the word.

We'd also need to get rid of every moment when Adrien seemed to fear his father like this scene from Illusion where Adrien spilled spaghetti on Gabriel and then immediately started freaking out like he was afraid of being hit or otherwise punished:

Adrien: Yes, I forgot my school bag. (spills the spaghetti on Gabriel’s clothes, but Gabriel remains calm) Oops! Oh, sorry, Dad! You must be so angry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

These moments are easy to write because they allow Gabriel to come across as evil and scary without the audience knowing anything about him. In other words, they work wonderfully with the whole "every episode must stand fully alone" rule. But if we ignore that rule and say that Gabriel is allowed to be nuanced, then we can replace this straightforward writing with more complex writing that requires you to watch multiple episodes in order to understand what's going on in the broader story.

In this new version of canon, we wouldn't have to change much story wise. We could keep the same general story beats. The only big change is that we'd see Gabriel struggle between his grief, his love for his son, and his desperation to restore his wife. This would mean little moments of nuance like Gabriel changing his mind about the day's akuma because his planned akuma would knowingly putting Adrien at risk and Gabriel won't do that, so he has to swap plans on the fly, leading to some of his more wacky akumas. This setup allows for a Gabriel who is still a super villain, but he's now a super villain with principles who refuses to let those he loves be harmed in his quest.

A more minor change is that Adrien's fear of his father would be replaced with a more complex setup. Instead of fear, Adrien is now held back grief because he's a teenage boy who is grieving and who knows that his parent is also grieving, but who doesn't know what to do about any of that. In this setup, the father-son conflict is not abuser and victim but two grief-stricken individuals who no longer know how to connect because a vital element of their relationship has forever changed. You know, the kind of setup you'd expect for a family where the relatively young mother died less than a year ago.

I've talked about this kind of setup leading to a corruption arc, but you could also use it for a redemption arc. If Gabriel never goes against his principles and always puts Adrien first even if it means losing Emilie, then you maintain Gabriel as a complex and nuanced character who would believably stop his quest as soon as he learned Chat Noir's identity or was otherwise put in a position to once and for all choose between his son and his wife. (Which could be how we get our next villain if the story doesn't end with Gabriel's lose.)

While I thought that the movie adaptation was too rushed to make it's ending really work, it does show the template for this path. A path I would have personally loved, but it's not the path we got in the show so let's talk about option two.

Redeeming Canon Gabriel

Whether or not he understands what he's doing, canon Gabriel is an abuser. He controls and manipulates his son without any concern for what Adrien wants because Gabriel seems to view Adrien as a perfect doll and not a real human being with his own wants and needs.

Quick senti rant: This is yet another reason that I hate the sentistuff. Because sentimonsters are so poorly defined, that the sentiplot does kind of validate Gabriel's POV and that's not a good thing. This is extra true since Gabriel's part in that plot ended with Gabriel essentially giving Marinette ownership of Adrien by passing on the rings. I talked about it at length here, but I think the only way to make the sentiplot work in the context of canon is for it to end with Gabriel realizing that he needs to view Adrien as more than a doll and I think the only way to really do that is to have Gabriel use the wish to free his son.

Back to the main discussion in which Adrien is a real boy and we ignore the senti complication!

In order for canon Gabriel to be redeemed, he must acknowledge his abuse and make recompense for what he's done. Adrien must also acknowledge his father's abuse and be allowed to decide what that means for their relationship as Adrien is the victim and, when it comes to reconciliation, the victim should be the one calling the shots, not the abuser. This is a complex and nuanced process that would take an intense amount of screen time to make work. I do think you could do it, but once again, it would require Miraculous to get rid of that whole, "every episode must stand fully alone" rule.

Off the top of my head, if I had to take this route, I'd have season five end with Gabriel losing. I also wouldn't let him die or do his grand plan. Instead, I'd have him lose without a big public reveal by having Felix or Nathalie reveal Gabriel's identity to Ladybug and Chat Noir. This would lead to Gabriel being stopped in an epic battle between our two heroes.

Once Gabriel has been subdued and the full story has been revealed (because it would be so much more satisfying coming from Gabriel and not freaking Felix), Ladybug would contact the guardians to see if Emilie could be saved. This is a path Gabriel never had the chance to take because the Guardians weren't around until quite recently. (I'd probably make it so that Gabriel didn't even know that the Guardians were back.) The Guardian's answer would, of course, be yes, but it would require some special lost item or other BS that the heroes need to get/do first.

At the same time, we'd learn that there is a new bigger, badder villain. I'm thinking Tomoe, but Lila, Felix, and/or Nathalie are also options. No matter which one we pick, Gabriel would have knowledge about the new villain that no one else does. Knowledge that is not easily given. In order to save his wife, Gabriel agrees to help the heroes with the new villain and they agree to help save Emilie (they would have done that anyway, but Gabriel doesn't need to know that).

Over the course of this plot line, Gabriel would become less of a recluse and, as a result, he'd get out of his own head and start to regret his actions as he comes to view the heroes as people, not obstacles. This plot line would really lean into the idea that Gabriel never viewed his actions as real because he'd always planned to reset everything with the wish, so what did it matter if he hurt people? It was all just a bad dream that they'd forget once he'd won and set everything right.

Now that his hope of resetting everything is gone and his actions have actual weight in his mind, he'd be incredibly remorseful about the way he treated Adrien, so he'd pull away from his son. At the same time, he'd be bonding with Chat Noir, whose identity was never revealed. This would eventually lead to a reveal whose time and place was fully chosen by Adrien. A reveal that would only take place once Adrien felt that his father had truly changed and come to regret what he'd done.

Bonus element to this idea: the Gabriel-Adrien reveal would be our new identity shenanigan hook, meaning that the love square could reveal themselves without removing that element of the story. It would just have a new main flavor.

The Cycle of Abuse

I mentioned at the top that you have to be incredibly careful about redeeming abusers because it can glorify the cycle of abuse. I wanted to end by talking about what I meant by that as I think that far too many pieces of media accidentally glorify this cycle because they don't put the necessary effort into their redemption arcs. When it's media aimed at teens and adults, I just kind of sigh and stop consuming it. When it's media aimed at kids, I get legitimately upset because the cycle of abuse is already hard enough to escape without media helping you internalize it at a young age where you don't have the skills to understand fiction vs reality.

There are a lot of in-depth articles and books about the cycle of abuse, so I won't go too deep here. I'll just link one article and go over the basics which is that abuse is often not constant. In many cases, it follows a clear pattern in which there's an incident of abuse, followed by some form of reconciliation, followed by a period of true calm and happiness, but that calm and happiness never lasts. There will eventually be another incident of abuse and the cycle will start all over again. It's an existence of the highest highs and lowest lows where the victim has true hope that things will get better only for that hope to be cruelly dashed to pieces again and again.

This cycle is one of the many things that can make it hard for victims to leave or even identify the abuse depending on what form the abuse takes. After all, no one is perfect and we want to support our loved ones. If a person does something mean and then apologizes, we want to believe that apology. This very normal series of events can be paired with the cycle of abuse to keep a victim trapped because they think that they're a bad person if they give up on their abuser who is, "trying to get better," or some other excuse. But that's not what's actually happening. While the abuser is saying what the victim wants to hear and may even mean it in the moment, if they're not actually doing any work to change, then it's just another reconciliation round in the cycle of abuse.

This is why it's so important to have media that tells you that it's okay to give up on people. That their happiness is not your responsibility. It's also a big reason why I like the idea of redeeming character A while not redeeming character B. That setup lets you have that positive message of redemption while also presenting the idea that redemption is never a sure path. You can only redeem those who want to change (even if it's for a selfish reason) and who are willing to put in the work. A thing that you can really highlight and drive home when you do the A vs B setup.

Before we move on, I will note that there are abusive relationships that don't look like the cycle. The cycle is simply a very common pattern. The thing that makes it "special" when it comes to writing is that it's the type of abuse that's easiest to glorify and/or romanticize if you're not careful in your writing, which brings us back to Miraculous.

Miraculous actually demonstrated the cycle of abuse horrifically well in season five. In this season, we see things like Gabriel giving Adrien apologies and permission to call him "dad." Acts of reconciliation that were followed by blissful happiness for Adrien who desperately wants his father's love. But of course, that happiness never lasted. In the end, Gabriel always destroyed it with a new act of abuse because he is an abuser. An abuser who loves his son, but an abuser none the less because love doesn't stop abuse.

Because of this, if you want to write a realistic redemption, then you cannot give Gabriel a simple redemption where he apologizes and everything is suddenly okay. You have to differentiate his "true" apology from the others. You have to make it clear that this isn't just another round in the cycle of abuse both to tell a good story and so that little kids can hopefully internalize the difference between when you need to run away and when it's safe to stick around.

Another important element in getting this message right is allowing the victim character to be the one who is in charge of the reconciliation. Generally speaking, the victim should be super wary about reconciling because - for this to work - they need to be fully aware that there has been past abuse so that they can make a fully informed choice about what that means for them and their relationship with their abuser. It's not a true reconciliation if the victim is totally oblivious to the fact that they've been wronged.

Because of this, the true reconciliation will usually be a drawn out process wherein the abuser and the victim don't reconcile until the abuser has unequivocally proven themself as changed to really highlight the difference between an actual reconciliation and the kind of temporary reconciliation we see in the cycle. This why my hypothetical solution has a love square reveal and Gabriel avoiding Adrien out of shame.

That route allows Adrien to have full control over the situation as Ladybug can accommodate his needs, allowing Chat Noir to have 0 required interactions with his father. All required interactions are handled by Ladybug or other teammates so that all of the interactions that happen between Gabriel and Chat Noir feel like Chat Noir's freely made choice. This setup also allows Adrien and Gabriel to be on more equal footing in terms of power, an extremely important element of reconciliation. A lot of damaged parent-child relationships don't fully heal until the child is an adult and the parent loses their power.

All of the above is why I'm wary of giving abusers redemption arcs into happy close relationships with their victims (I'm much more liberal with redemption arcs into happiness with people they never hurt and/or where they're redeemed, but not super close with their victims). I'm extra wary in the context of children's media as it can be harder for kids to understand nuance and this is an incredibly important topic to get right.

That doesn't mean it can't be done. It can! It just requires a lot of effort to do it right. Most of the time, stories with this type of redemption feel lackluster and honestly make me a little sick to my stomach because it's so common to go the lazy route where a single apology is all that's required. It's why I'm super wary of the whole "enemies to lovers" thing. I like the concept it in theory, but more often than not, it ends up being abuser-and-victim to lovers, which is a hard pass for me. I don't judge people who enjoy that stuff in fiction or role-play settings, it's just not my cup of tea. Be it fiction or reality, I want couples that feel healthy and families/teams that I'd love to be a part of.

Since this was a serious one, let's end on a topical, but humorous short from ProDZ where he very accurately sums up your standard bad-guy redemption and why I don't like it. I love the redeeming power of love, but like all tropes, part of doing it well is knowing what story setups are suited to it and which ones are not.

[teoceearts]

teoceearts' $30 (USD) Summer Fakemon Flash Sale

Until Saturday, August 31st, 11:59PM MST, I'm offering fakemon commissions! If you have a little guy you'd like someone else to draw, I'm willing to be that someone else. Work is light at the moment and I unfortunately require money to pay for things that I need in order to live.

Some examples below!

DM here or email at teoceearts@gmail.com to discuss commission details and payment information. Credit teocee94/teoceearts when reposting your finished piece to other platforms.

Rules below the cut:

Price is non-negotiable per 'mon, and pays for a transparent, full-color, unshaded image file featuring both the standard and shiny variants that you as the commissioner can use and edit non-commercially as you see fit, including as a visual reference with which to commission other artists. This image file will be formatted similarly to the Mokira splash sheet above, but as a transparent image.

Each additional evolutionary stage, alternative form, or pose included in the commission will cost an additional $30. - Gender differences will be either free or an additional $10 pending distinction and complexity; Pikachu, Bidoof, or Sneasel would be free of charge, while Unfeazant, Meowstic, or Indeedee would cost extra.

I am not offering new or revamped forms of existing, official Pokemon, including convergent/regional fan-designs or special forms like Megas! The design must be unofficial; either your own original work or that of another artist not affiliated with GameFreak, Nintendo, or The Pokemon Company and their design teams. If the design is not your own, credit the original designer so that I may tag them and/or link to their original design in the description.

Some kind of visual reference and a loose lore rundown of your concept are required. If all you have is a crumpled notebook-paper stick-figure sketch and a slapdash Dex entry, I'll work with it. I am willing to redraw AI-generated fakemon if you have no other visual reference of any kind, but I ask that you do not prompt new generations specifically for your commission.

I am not helping conceptualize new fakemon whole-cloth, which is beyond the scope of this offer. I reserve the right to creative liberties in interpreting your design. However, all proposed changes will be discussed with the commissioner before finalizing the piece.

You are not permitted to profit off of my artwork, edited or otherwise, without my explicit consent. This includes AI seeding. Do not feed my work into an algorithmic generative machine. Do not produce stickers, pins, or other merchandise of my work for the purpose of sale. Production for personal use is a different story which we can discuss, and licensing for sale is beyond the scope of this particular offer.

[zkbigbang]

ZKBB 2024 Basic Guidelines

What is a Big Bang?

A Big Bang is a collaborative event where writers are paired with artists and beta readers to write and edit a long fic with accompanying fanart within a specific period of time. In a traditional Big Bang, writers come up with their own story idea, and artists and betas bid for places on writers’ teams based on the story ideas submitted.

What are the story requirements for this Big Bang?

All stories should be centered around Zuko and Katara and their relationship.

Oneshots should meet a minimum word count of 6,000 words when completed, and multichapters should meet a minimum word count of 10,000 words before the end of the event.

Stories must be rated G or T on AO3

Big Bang fics must be new, standalone works. No continuations of existing series or published WIPs are allowed.

Story ideas should be secret before the start of the event to allow for fair, anonymous project bidding.

What are the roles and expectations for this Big Bang?

Writers will be expected to come up with their own story ideas, meet word count checkpoints throughout the event, share their progress with their team, and communicate with their team and the mods as needed.

Artists will be expected to create at least one finished piece of art for their project(s). Any type of art is welcome. Artists will be asked to meet several checkpoints throughout the event, and should share their progress with their teams as the event continues.

Betas will be expected to work closely with the writer and provide advice and feedback as the story is written. All beta readers should be able to provide SPaG feedback, and may be asked to provide additional support with plot and other creative decisions.

Other information

All participants are required to be active in our event Discord server. Work space within the event server will be provided for every team, and separate servers for individual projects are not allowed.

Members who are inactive for three consecutive weeks may be dropped from their project(s) or the event as a whole.

Members who miss formal check-ins (see our event schedule for dates) or fall behind on their progress will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Members are welcome to announce their participation in the Big Bang, but should not discuss specifics about their project(s) publicly until after posting begins (or for writers, after the reveal date).

Use of any AI text or image generators is not welcome in the Big Bang.

Additional role-specific information will be posted over the next few days! Feel free to contact us with any questions.

[deepdreamnights]

Vidu 2.0 - First Reactions

I am in the Vidu Artist's program, so I've had a chance to play with version 2.0 before the official launch on the 15th. What I'm working with is a pre-launch build, and has improved day-to-day, so this may not reflect the final release.

I haven't yet had a chance to give it the full paces-run-through it deserves, but here's some early samples, and early thoughts. (Converted to GIF because you can only upload one video per post.)

The short version is that everything has been incrementally improved: Better coherence, better prompt responsiveness, better motion, and way, way better speed. Without doing exact time-tests it's say it's at least 25% the time to generate a video of the same dimensions.

While there's still some of the "smudge-blurring" that you got with 1-1.5, it happens less frequently, and is more mitigated with an image/animation that match.

Motion varies gen-by-gen, but impressive results seem to be the norm.

While his sticks are somewhat flexible at full framerate, the cat drummer's cymbal hit struck me as particularly nice.

Control and Coherence

While the roar may not seem particularly impressive, roars, howls, and other emotional outbursts didn't work well in previous versions. Aunt Acid's fumes and drips are are particularly fun, and while it still has problems with her tail, PteroDarla's crest and wings are actually working the way they should (after a number of attempts).

For a long time, I've wanted the last shot of the TMax opener to be Max starting with a zoom-in on the eye going out to a roar and pose. While this isn't quite where I want it, 2.0 is the first time I've gotten him to go through the whole sequence. Which is promising.

Weird Stuff Works

What remains impressive about Vidu is how well it handles concepts and characters that are off-the-beaten-path. Hailuo just released a character consistency feature that only works with humans, but here...

Here's my friend Cole's OC, the Waffler (Intergalactic Bounty-Hunter.) He's one unbalanced breakfast. He's also rather resistant gen AI replication because he's an SD space man with a waffle for head, a very specific waffle for a head turned at a 45 degree angle. Vidu 1.0 wasn't able to work with him, almost always giving him a mouth or rotating his waffle, if not completely glitching out. 2.0 is much better to handle it.

The numerous dino-anthros above are all in the "Tricky for AI" box. If I was into doing what could be gened easily, however, I'd just be pumping out an endless parade of pillowy waifus.

In my defense, I classify SexBomb as more of a 'strifu'. This particular one was an attempt to see if a toony image prompt could be rendered live-action with text prompting. Long story short it can't, but it can produce some interesting effects like the faux-posterized background.

I've had AI gen close to her costume before, but it never adds the fuse or does the boob-window right, and here we are.

One of my old bits of Transformers fanart of the Pretender Monster Icepick served as the character model for the one on the right.

Fantastical Creatures in general are a lot easier to execute in this version as well.

And... Action!

Motion is a lot more natural this time around.

Weapons fire (though sometimes a bit literal) tends to come out of the barrel semi-consistently now, characters can fight the waves without melting themselves and...

A giant rubber monster can eat your protagonist (if you're lucky.)

Quirks and Flaws

Nothing is perfect, and all AI you see is curated. So lets talk areas to be improved.

A lot of stuff presently generates with multilingual gibberish captions sometimes, which I expect is an early model bug. Versions 2-3 of Midjourney would have similar artifacts, and that sort of thing isn't hard to correct for.

There are still issues with blurring/smudging, especially with things like tail-tips, hands, and any motion the robot doesn't quite get.

Sometimes stuff shapechanges or appears that ought not to, like the knight's floppy second blade.

Or speed gets off requiring being fixed in post.

And stuff just goes dumb sometimes, which one should expect (and in my estimation, desire) from any generative system, artificial or analogue. Should the water go on the fire rather than the firemen? Yes. Do I regret this gen? No.

One quirk of the system is how it resolves incongruous multi-prompts. I've been accustomed to Midjourney, which, when generating an image must blend everything requested. You can put two completely different backgrounds in as image prompts and it will blend them into something new and wacky.

Vidu resolves problems like having two background images at once by taking advantage of the 4th dimension. Confuse the robot too much and it will just cut/fade from one idea to the next.

And then there's stuff that just happens, like, a shot being perfect except a painted (and thus ought to be static) background object animating beautifully (going retro is a path wrought with irony) and the robot deciding it'd rather do CG-style than 2d.

And while it doesn't show up great in the gif of Max at the construction site there, 2.0 is more vulnerable to interpreting bad transparency-clipping as part of the character design, so be careful if you're using transparent PNGs.

Also, if you slap a character and a background together without elaborating on the setting with the text prompt, it will often slap the background back there as a static backdrop and produce a very "greenscreen-y" effect.

Rather than laden this post down with more animated GIFs, I'll be setting up a batch of them as posts for the upcoming days. At least, that's the plan.

[mi-i-zori]

Writing Resources - Masterlist

This masterlist will host the links to the posts and threads I've saved as writing resources. None of them are mine - all the credits go to the amazing people who made them.

Characters

Author, Narrator, Protagonist, Hero... Who is What ?

Creating Black Characters With Intent

Describe Your Main Character Sheet

Emotionally Reserved Characters

Flaws to Give to Your Characters

How to Introduce Your Character In 3 Steps

How to Show Emotions (They have a whole series for this, please go check it out !)

How to Write a Character Who's in Pain

How to Write Trauma With Humanity

OC Asks that Reveal More than You Think

Open Letter from a Poc for People Who Are Writing Characters of Colour

Questions for Crafting Problematic Characters

Tips : Nail Your Character's Mannerisms and Speech Pattern Down

Top-Tier Villain Motivations

What Will Your Character Do If...

Fantasy

Fantasy Guide to Education

Make and Interesting Wedding Dress in Your Fantasy Setting

Reasons Why Can't Your Characters Use Magic To Fix Everything

Some Locations and Structures to Include in Your Forest

What No One Tells You About Writing Fantasy

Good to Know

A quick Guide to Animal Symbolism

An Introduction to Small World Theory

Differences Between UK and USA Military Dog Tags

How Boat Pronouns Work

Medical Facts that are Commonly Overlooked

Medieval Dyes

Playing Music With a Bow! (The Archery Kind)

Realistic Travel Time

Roles on a Pirate Ship

Slater's Impromptu List of Military Reference Material

Sick/Poisoning Fics

Stop Doing This in Injury Fics !

Symbolism in Writing

The Anatomy of Passing Out : When, Why and How to Write It

The Anatomy of Punching a Character in the Face

The Symbolism of Flowers

Ultimate List of Weapons and Arsenal for Fantasy Setting: Purpose and Who Uses Them

What's the Deal With Archers and Animal Companions ?

Writing Notes : Herbal Remedies

Writing Reference : Medicinal Herbs

Horror

Creepy Things to Add to Settings

Horror and Comedy : 90/10 rule

How to Write Creepy Stories

How To Scare Your Readers

Most Common Character Flaws in Horror Fiction

"Never Were" and "Used to Be" Monsters

People Get Eldritch Madness Wrong

Romance

When the Romantic Tension is High

Tips

If You're Starving in a Post-Apocalyptic Fic

How to Figure Out if an Image is AI Generated

How to Make Your Writing Less Stiff

Pep-Talk - You Are Allowed to Be Proud of What You Write + List of YT Channels and Amazon Links for Writing

Resources About Survival in the Wild

Skip Google for Research

Some Writing Advice

The Neurodivergent Writer’s Guide to Fun and Productivity

Write Smarter, Not Harder

Writing Tip : Research

Vocabulary

Aesthetic Words to Fill Up Your Vocabulary

Archaic Words for Colors

Archaic Words for Hate

Bilingual Characters - German Edition

CoD - Spanish for Ale and Rudy Fics

Colours in Descriptions

IRL Operator Phrases/Terms - USA Edition

Gemstone Colors

German Pet Names

List of Wikipedia Articles - British and American Words and Differences

Scottish Phrases and Words for Soap MacTavish (or Scottish Characters in general)

Soft-Feeling Latin Words and Phrases

On Using Words that Indicate Sounds and Tones for Dialogues

Words to Use Instead of "Running"

Words to Use Instead of "Sighed" and "Frowned"

Writing Russian-Speaking Characters

Voices

A Guide to Write a Mancunian Accent

Growled, Roared, Snarled, Etc... A Brief Description

Writing Character Accents in Fiction

Worldbuilding

A Website That Walks You Through Creating a Believable Society

List of Random Things to Add to your Dark Coastal Settings

List of unique and imaginative types of government that can add depth to your fantasy world

Random Linguistic Worldbuilding

10 Worldbuilding Aspects you Probably Overlooked

Other

Backup Your Tumblr Blog

Disable Recall for Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs

How to Find a Post on Tumblr

How to Revert Back to an Old Version of Office that Doesn't have CoPilot

How to Turn Off AI Bots on Microsoft Word

Protect Your Stories on AO3

Show Me a 10ft Paywall, I'll Show You a 12ft Ladder

Mii's Blog Recommendations

@deception-united - I love the resources this person shares ! They have a masterpost that lists their useful posts, but they also complete some of these posts as answers to asks and reblog a lot of other resources.

@leisureflame - This blog has a lot of resources, advice and prompts ! The author also offers to help with other people's struggles too, which is immensely wholesome in itself.

@writers-potion - This blog has tons of amazing posts to help writers with their research. I keep coming back to it, and highly recommend checking it out ! Here are this person's extremely useful Masterpost (1) and Masterpost (2).

[pear-boy]

To anybody wondering what exactly happened to twitter on Brazil here's the full version of the story coming from a brazilian:

-Elon closes the branch offices in Brazil as some sort of protest.

-Supreme court sends an email to the legal representative to ask for the removal of about 14 far right/nazi accounts.

-Twitter doesn't respond, a daily fine of 20.000 reais and an arrest warrent for the national administrator (15 days to 6 months + fine).

-Elon takes away the coutry's legal representative. Foreign companies need an office and/or a legal rep to be allowed to operate in Brazil.

-The official twitter account posts about being censored in Brazil, mentioning by name the judge who had sent the intimation and arguing that it wasn't made public. The judge in question then commented under the post, leaving the whole document for anyone to read as they like. Twitter has 24 hours to appoint a new rep and pay their more then 150 million reais in accumulated fines or it'll be blocked in Brazil.

-Elon says he will not comply with the Supreme court's decisions and instead resorts t posting corny AI generated images on his account.

-24 hours pass with no other negotiations from Twitter and as such the process of blocking the site as well as shutting down related Starlink accounts and freezing both of their bank assets starts. (https://noticias-stf-wp-prd.s3.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/wpallimport/uploads/2024/08/30171714/PET-12404-Assinada.pdf)

-At this point the brazilian army sends a message to the supreme court stating that they were using Starlink for their own communications.

Elon had no problems with blocking accounts in other countries like in India but he had long been attacking the brazilian government since the 2022 election where former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro lost. Elon had been eyeing up brazilian lithium, Starlink was primarily sold to illegal miners in the Amazon and the military had been using it to coordinate about mineral deposits. Anyone can clearly see Elon's true intentions were to spread misinformation and destabilize the country for his own gain, we already know what his position with South America is when Bolivia nationalized it's lithium. Please spread the truth and don't believe this coward's lies, Brazil is a free, democratic sovereign country and he will stop at nothing until it's back at where it was in the 60's if it meas he'll have to spend slightly less money to make his stupid cars.

[lesbiancarat]

want to give my two cents on the AI usage in the maestro trailer--

i think seventeen doing a whole concept that is anti-AI is very cool, especially as creatives themselves i think it's good that they're speaking up against it and i hope it gets more ppl talking about the issue. i also understand on a surface level the artistic choice (whether it was made by the members, the mv director, or whoever else), to directly use AI in contrast to real, human-made visuals and music in order to criticize it. i also appreciate that they clearly stated the intention of the use of AI at the beginning of the video

however, although i understand it to an extent, i do not agree with the choice to use AI to critique AI. one of the main ethical concerns with generative AI is that it is trained on other artists' work without their knowledge, consent, or compensation. and even when AI generated images are being used to critique AI, it still does not negate this particular ethical concern

the use of AI to critique also does not negate the fact that this is work that could have been done by an actual artist. i have seen some people argue that it's okay in this context because it's a critique specifically about AI, and it is content that never would have been done by a real artist anyway because it doesn't make sense for the story they're trying to tell. but i disagree. i think you can still tell the exact same story without using AI

and in fact, i would argue that it would make the anti-AI message stronger if they HAD paid an artist to draw/animate the scenes that are supposed to represent AI generated images. wouldn't it just be proof that humans can create images that are just as bad and nonsensical and soulless as AI, but that AI can't replicate the creativity and beauty and basic fucking anatomy that's in human-made art?

it feels very obvious this was not just a way to cut corners and costs like a lot of scummy people are using AI for. ultimately it was a very intentional creative decision, i just personally think it was a very poor one. and even if some ethical considerations were taken into account before this decision, i certainly don't think all of them were. at the very least i feel like the decision undermines the message they want to convey

i would also like to recognize that i myself am not an artist, and i have seen some artists that are totally on board with the use of AI in this specific context, so clearly this is not a topic that is cut and dry. but generative AI is still new, and i think it's important to keep having these conversations