#and I feel so bad. I just can't justify the expenditure.

[sergle]

miss sergle what happened with the golden retriver mama?

AUHHHH I didn't get her... she was beautiful and cute (and way too small and aerodynamic in person to be a golden mix) but I just CAN'T justify bringing another dog into the house rn, I need to be financially prepared for that kind of thing and have some things set up in advance, and the timing just feels bad. If this had happened a few years from now I might've brought her home, bc she was clearly very smart and sweet... But dogs cost money!

[arliedraws]

I've seen your posts about AI. I also know it's a pretty polarizing topic and what the majority opinion is, especially in regards to art and writing. And being an artist myself, I totally agree that it sucks, like you have to pay attention and all, but.... I hardly dare to say this because I know how emotional the discourse around AI is, especially on a platform like tumblr, which sometimes seems so strong that I don't participate in a discussion about this topic at all because I feel like people here would hound me for it, but I still use different AI software, but not in the way that I use it to create something that I can publish and pretend that I spent hours creating it myself. I think it can be really helpful.

If I need information about something quickly, it's more efficient than spending a lot of time searching different websites for a particular piece of information.

I also like to think of it as a group member when I'm working on projects. That doesn't mean that I get the ideas from it and then just copy them. In the same way that group work is beneficial, you pass the ball to each other with the AI and exchange ideas that you can then develop further. Or it can help you if you're looking for another word to describe something better, like a dictionary. And I still know how to use real dictionaries or do proper research, because I know that AI can make mistakes and you shouldn't believe everything. Just like it is with information from the internet in general. Anyway, now I come to the actual “confession”, which is that I also use it, not to let the AI create the art, but as a tool to help myself creating it. I usually use reference images for drawings to help me get the scene itself or the anatomy correct etc. Andy capture it properly. But sometimes I have a very specific scene in mind and can't find a suitable reference, and it can take me hours to find something that fits. So I like to use AI to create that reference for me, because unfortunately I don't have people modeling for me and personally it helps me extremely to have examples to work from.

Idk where exactly I'm going with this. But since the general opinion on generative ai seems very clear here, I wanted to finally get this off my chest because I always kept my moth shut being afraid of how others might react, even though I think that my methods are still quite legitimate, as I still do the real work myself. Anyway, I'm looking forward to your opinion.

Ahhhh okay, well, thanks for the vulnerability here.

You know my opinion on AI. I’m not going to tell you you’re a terrible person or anything for using it, but I’m also not going to justify your personal decisions. Instead, I invite you to change your perspective.

My opinion is this—and it’s more of a question: why are you creating the art? I’m going to hit a few of your main points and just pose questions because I think this gets to be more philosophical than a cut-and-dry “if you use AI, you are a bad guy.” Because I don’t think that—I also don’t think you should use it.

The reason I don’t blame people for being attracted to using AI is because as human beings, we’re designed to find the most efficient way to do things. Thinking and using creativity is a huge caloric expenditure. Right? Naturally, we’re attracted to ways that things can be done FOR us and reduce our cognitive load. Your brain is working as it was designed! But this is also a really cool way to take away your voice and mold you into someone who cannot think for themself.

(This is also what you’re doing by “confessing” to me. You’re unloading your cognitive/emotional burden so you can keep on doing the thing you know is probably a bit shady.)

First of all, I don’t know you, so I don’t know what your art training is. However, you need to train your brain to start coming up with stuff on your own. I am really sorry, but I don’t buy the “I don’t have enough references.” When there are free resources like Unsplash.com and even just looking at buildings around you, the furniture in your house, etc, you DO have the references. But you need to learn how to use them. This is a tool.

Second thing, if the reference isn’t exactly what you need, then you need to start learning volume and shapes. You need to study anatomy. Eventually, you will be able to look at a reference and understand how perspective works and be able to transform a reference in your head to what you need. OR - start combining references. If I’m doing a full scene, I probably have about 5-6 reference photos I’m working from. This is a tool.

Third, start taking photos of yourself for reference images. If you can’t find what you need, do that. I periodically have to go into my camera roll to delete the god-awful reference poses for myself. This is a tool.

Fourth, start a collection of things that “strike you.” Start a reference blog. Have a folder filled with images that intrigue you. Personally, I take an insane number of photos when I’m traveling. For example, I went to a mansion for a tour and took photos of all the early 20th century objects and rooms so I would have these in my arsenal. This is a tool.

My fundamental question is this—why are you having an algorithm create what’s in your head for you? Why not learn how to do these things instead? Your imagination is so cool. The process of creating is making happy mistakes. What do you think Bob Ross would say to you? When you use AI, you’re just copying. The imaginative part has been done for you. You’re just a tool of the robot.

We do so much to avoid frustration, but frustration is the part of creating. When we can see the skills we need to learn, that’s how we know we’re improving. It means you’re trying, and when you press through that discomfort, that’s when you grow. Stop seeing this as a block to your end goal but as an opportunity to continue your infinite journey as an artist. Celebrate that there are so many beautiful things to learn.

Additionally, please don’t see AI as a group project. A group project indicates that all parties involved consent to participate, and I know most artists do not want their art to be used in this way. Imagine if you learned to do all the things I’ve described above and taken time/years/frustration/love to develop these skills, and someone years later then took your work and said “It’s okay - we ALL contributed to this.” It’s just not true.

The artists you see online don’t simply sit down and draw a bunch of cool stuff without practice. I watch Youtube videos of professionals. I draw a gazillion sketches of just MOUTHS or hands so I can create my own references in my mind. Why would you deprive yourself of this?

Look, I think it comes down to this: if you’re looking for efficiency and ‘getting it done’ quickly, then why are you doing it? Are you enjoying the process? If you aren’t, why are you even doing it?

If you need a robot to imagine something for you, then you don’t actually want to do it.

[placeholder-entity]

I feel like I've got no artistry in my words anymore. In my head the language I speak is a tool for creative expression, like a pen or a musical instrument. But you can't actually draw something without it *being* a drawing, and you can't actually play a note of music without it *being* a note of music. A single blot of paint on an otherwise untouched canvas is a painting. But I feel like I can write as much as I want and it still doesn't become art.

I wrote a few stories in high school, ACTUAL stories with beginnings and middles and endings and things that purported to be characters. Whatever the quality of those pieces, they were art. They fit a definition for written composition that I identify as "art". The thing is, I hate those stories and I hated writing them. I did NOT write them the way I wanted to, I wrote them in accordance with the woefully outdated standards of High Literary Criticism, broadly, and more specifically in imitation of the prose style within "A Seperate Peace" by John Knowles. Even though they were my (debatably) original ideas the content of the art explicating those ideas wasn't original to me in the slightest. I wasn't writing to fulfill a want or a need or a drive or a passion. In the rare instances that I wasn't writing to appeal to my father, I was writing to appeal to a system of criticism that didn't know I existed artistically.

Obviously I stopped writing. That was my entire idea of writing and I got sick of it. I woke up halfway thru my English Bach and realized the only difference between my academic papers and my fiction was the inclusion of original dialouge. My voice had become complete pedantic and unfulfilled. So I stopped. I dropped out of college and I stopped. Stopped writing, stopped reading, stopped thinking about the language as a tool for artistry.

Now I've got nothing

I met a woman just the other day who reads screenplays. That type of person has never been presented to me outside of caricature. That sentence itself reads like the descriptor of a bad Manic Pixie Dream Girl. "Delilah was too high-minded for novels; she interpreted screenplays. It was much more open, she said, because the scene directions left so much to the imagination of the actors and thus to anyone reading it. That made it a challenge as much as a pastime."

But she does, and she does so for a valid reason, dragging her from the world of caricature into our reality by force of sendibility and reason, which stands in direct opposition to idyllicism and quirkiness . She reads screenplays because she wants to direct, and in her own words "if I read enough of them I'll internalize the formatting and structure and best practices." Which I think we can all agree is basically how scholars and creative have mastered their fields ever since their spheres were formalized.

That could have been me. I could have been intelligent enough to *stop reading stuff I hated and regurgitating it* but that literally never occurred to me. Ever. That's why I quit, I didn't have the fucking sense to stop performing the activity in a way that made it joyless. Or more actively, I lacked the imagination to perform the activity joyously.

Now I can't justify the expenditure of my time or my mental health on the activity. The unmedicated anxiety and unresolved trauma combines into a hateful doppelganger that hounds me to commit self harm. I can't argue with it, because it's not a schizoid entity, it's just my genuine desire to harm myself personified, and lacking the tools to resolve and pacify it I've been drowning it out these last 12 years. And the only way to keep it from speaking is to engage enough of my brain that there isn't any power left over for *conscious thought*. Any ability to reflect or ponder my own thoughts results in a violent urge for self harm.

So unless I can craft a perfect story in one go without the need to pause or look back, I can't even write one sentence. The interruption of creative flow to look back and edit gives the doppelganger enough cognizance over the situation to fight me, and it always wins. And frankly I don't value *any* art enough to fight the urge to self harm just to experience it, I really and truly don't. I would much rather continue living in stagnation that spend any more time fighting the urge to self harm than I already do. It might make me fat and miserable and slovenly, but that to me is better than fighting the urge to self harm JUST so I can write a fucking story. I would far rather spend the energy fighting it when I need to go out with friends. Going out with friends is important to me, for a variety of reasons, and committing to that activity also triggers the doppelganger. I don't want to waste vital energy i need for my friends on fucking *art*. Interaction with my friends might eventually trigger a social scenario where I gain a significant other or partner. What the fuck is *art* ever going to net me?

And now this is all I can do. Whine. Regurgitate *these* sentiments over and over again like a computer with a stupidly limited data set to iterate on. This is all I can do without the doppelganger showing up. It works its way into everything. I can set up the most fantastical scene I like and it will write itself in and assault me. This little bubble of misery and regret is all I can create. I'm guessing that's what it wants

[thatrandombystander]

I don't know how accurate Graphtreon is, but according to its data the Rusty Quill Patreon has lost like 50% of its patrons since TMA ended in March last year.

While narratively TMA ended in a really good spot, it was also really bad for Rusty Quill as a company. I don't know how much money they're making from other revenue sources (like merch) but this has got to have been a HUGE drop in revenue in just 18 months. Not sure how much/what they gain from the RQ Network shows?

I would guess that the company failed to accurately anticipate the drop, and had been operating with the assumption that revenue would increase, hold stable, or at least not drop this much after TMA.

The ongoing global impact of COVID, global economic issues and inflation, and the absolute shit state of UK economics and the British pound specifically are also not going to be doing any wonders for them either.

It looks like they have overcommitted to too many projects that they no longer have the revenue to fund, which is why they're now seeing staff cuts, show delays, and will probably have some show cancellations soon.

I feel a lot of sympathy for staff/projects being let go, but with how volatile money in the creative industries is right now... well, I can't really put that much blame or anger on RQ for this outcome. I really hope everyone out of a job manages to find more work. I haven't heard anything about abuse or mistreatment, other than I guess employee financial stress from the whole money situation, so I don't have any animosity about it beyond "man that sucks".

But I am definitely tempering my expectation for whatever TMA2 is; I sincerely hope that there is a quality narrative to justify bringing it back, but I am very wary that it's predominantly a way to recuperate lost funds.

I think Rusty Quill is going to need to take a big step back and re-evaluate their budget. Both in their revenue streams and expenditures.

I'm wondering if maybe they would benefit from switching to more crowdfunding and kickstarters as a model to start projects? That way they can get an idea for how much interest there is in those projects, and how much money they can afford to spend on them?

[dhaaruni]

I honestly think that if women are unwilling to date men who make as much money as they do, that doesn't speak well of their characters. If women coincidentally end up dating and marrying men who make more money than them, that's totally fine but I really don't think it's men's responsibility to subsidize their partners' lifestyles and it's extremely rotten when women intentionally go only for men who are substantially wealthier than they are. Like, sorry to sound like an incel but gold digging is bad actually and that goes both ways.

Currently, I make $X per month and I pay $Y for monthly rent and that's the most I can afford. If my hypothetical boyfriend and I moved in together and he makes $3X, we can't get an apartment that costs $4Y per month because if he pays for 75% of the apartment, that apartment is 75% his. I won't be able to justifiably dictate how it's decorated and even how neat or dirty it's kept, and if we broke up, I'd have to find a new place to live. It's not my apartment if I don't pay for half of it, and it's ludicrous of me to pretend it is.

If a man takes on all household expenditures, they hold the power, like this isn't rocket science. I've dated men who have significantly more money than me, and if they were paying for me to travel to see them and for most if not all my meals and drinks, that wouldn't be an egalitarian relationship, and I refuse to be a kept woman. Money absolutely matters in romantic relationships, no amount of beauty and charm and being good in bed makes up for not having money of your own, and anybody that's claiming otherwise is a liar.

When I was dating my college ex who had a lot more money than me, I got to live the lifestyle he did but when we stopped being a unit, I wasn't drinking from $200 bottles of vodka anymore and vacationing in the Hamptons, and that was the tradeoff I accepted for no longer having to put up with him. But, I don't think a lot of women out of college who date and marry significantly wealthier men would be totally fine with such a change in their lifestyles, and quite frankly, I almost don't feel bad for them when they break up like if you want expensive clothes and jewelry and business class train tickets, you can pay for them yourself. I for one can't afford high-end designer clothes or $200 bottles of vodka so I don't own them, and I travel economy always because I can't afford first/business class tickets, and it's just that simple.

[robotslenderman]

I really appreciate that. Can't tell you how many times I've run my mouth off about something I'm passionate about only for the other person to feel really hurt because I didn't make enough of an effort to be sensitive and kind about the way I did it. Oops. Thank you for being so gracious!

And yes, it is! My brother once had a stab wound in his hand - he'd been upset (obviously, given that there was a stabbing) before it happened but after the actual stabbing he became totally loopy, it was actually pretty terrifying because it was so not his personality at all. Completely over the top. IIRC it took about an hour before it started hurting. He went from in a furious rage to a complete class clown and didn't settle down for a while. The stuff the brain and body do to pull you through a life or death situation is nothing short of amazing. The second something bad enough happens it just pulls out all the stops and you can do things that you never thought you'd be capable of. The body just decides, okay, full steam ahead, we're going to survive this. Such an energy expenditure can take months to recover from sometimes because the body takes an end-justifies-the-means approach and can cause itself a lot more damage in the process - but because it did, you might get to live.

Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: human psychology

The placebo effect is so cool. Like, humans have the power to augment their physical abilities simply by thinking that they can. Small injuries can hurt less by believing they should. In a bind, humans can lift more than they normally can by way of not knowing how much weight they're carrying. Hell, one of the reasons that actual medicine is tested not (just) against "no treatment," but against a placebo, is because the placebo, the literal fake treatment, often performs measurably better than no treatment.