#and i think the other writers and artists will too!

[leidensygdom]

So, one of the thoughts I've been having about AI of late (and the people defending them) is the people who try to defend it from an anti-capitalist, anti-copyright perspective. I can understand that there are AI bros that just like the convenience of cheap art (or even to run AI mills of any kind) and that they're being inflammatory or seeking to make a quick buck (and I hate them for it), but the perspective of "I'm defending AI from a communist perspective" it's truly the one that baffles me.

Like, let's be real. Who is pushing for it? Why is every large tech giant desperate to normalize it? Why are they trying to put it on every single thing you own? Why are they trying so bad to make the investment worth it? genAI is here because really rich people want it. Because it benefits companies. Because it's already been used to bypass any already ridiculous data protection the average person had, and data equals money to them, as they can use it to make increasingly more weaponized advertising. Instagram has been using it to generate images of people without their consent. Will ads simply include your face using their product? Who knows! But this is a massive concern for data privacy (and for consent)

People try to talk about artists who oppose AI as "entitled", "the biggest fans of IP law" and "acting as temporarily embarassed burgeoise who wants to ascend class through their art". The large majority of artists are already struggling to make ends meet as it is. Very few of the people you'll see complain online are doing much, if at all, through art. That one furry artist whose work you love who covers kinks and genders that the mainstream would not understand in 7 more decades isn't someone aspiring to be part of the upper class through they art. They literally just want to make a living.

Quite a large portion of internet artists are people who either make art that wouldn't fit the mainstream for different reasons (too subversive, too unique, too inflammatory, whatever), are disabled/ND people who have very limited options to make a living, or part of marginalized groups that have issues finding more standard jobs in bigger companies. Or several of these at the same time. These people aren't the evil capitalists you want them to be for trying to defend their work (and their livings).

Maybe, if AI existed in a world where everyone had an Universal Basic Income and their worth and chances of living were independent from their ability to commercialize their art, a lot of artists would care far less for it, or copyright, or anything. But it does not exist in a vacuum. The ones who are more staunchly vouching for AI are the actual big corporations that a lot of the people criticizing IP/copyright are usually opposed to. Can we talk about the way these corporations want to use AI to control social media? To standardize misinformation? How you can't generate a lot of things with it due to extreme sanitization? How it will tell you biased information as facts, knowing you won't fact check? How the use of genAI, ChatGPT and so is directly hurting people's ability to fact-check and have critical thinking? Maybe that's the most pressing issue, and the reason AI is being pushed as hard as it is.

Are the people who are at higher risk of losing their jobs to AI going to get compensated? Once companies start culling translators, customer service workers, videogame devs, writers and artists, VAs, and everything else they can replace, will they receive any compensation? No? Then maybe stand the ground with your fellow workers and hear their complaints about AI. Again, it does not exist in a vacuum, and as long as it doesn't, it will hurt a lot of people as companies seek to save up few cents.

But no, let's pretend that opposing AI is always made because every artist on the Internet is sitting comically massive piles of money they made drawing socially unacceptable queer art that gets them banned every other month from sites.

[tornoleander]

Sssnek BOI in your Cabinet (here to steal ur gender)

Agh he’s soooo much fun. >:D from AU by @spinjitsuburst -all design credit to them!

[cute-ellyna]

Throwing my two cents here, hoping it might help you, anon.

Reblogs are fewer than years ago, that’s universally true even for top-tier artists. As someone in the comments said, in my experience DA is actually a super responsive fandom (compared to others), and I’m only talking about tumblr here, because any social media has its own rules.

The thing with Dragon Age is that you not only paint known characters, but you very much probably want to paint your OC too (alone, with someone else, whatever). Which is amazing and the main reason why this fandom lasts so long, in my opinion: each one of us has this original character that they love deeply, which interacts in a world everyone else knows about.

Point is: you’re the only one knowing this character. People need to learn to love them, otherwise it’s more than natural they are not interested. Don’t take that personally.

Now, going back to getting attention… the one, real and only way to raise your exposure, in my experience, is INTERACT with other people. And don’t give up posting, also, but mostly interact.

I used to be kinda tumblr famous (or I like to think so) 10 years ago back in the Cullen days, and my work only started to be seen when I made a collab with another writer (not a famous one, mind me). And it wasn’t a matter of the quality of our work, but she started to care, so she reblogged my things, and her friends saw them and so on. And I started to comment other people artworks/fics, to engage in ask games, etc, and I grew an audience, and in the end they cared about my OC and isn’t it fantastic???

Now I’m almost starting all over since most of my audience isn’t here anymore, but I’m “creating my network”, I started talking with people and I expose myself more and more, like now answering to this lol, and now I have new tumblr friends, and it’s getting fantastic again.

Mind you, 2 things:

1) when I say “it’s fantastic again” I don’t measure my satisfaction here with numbers but with quality of interactions - which tumblr is PEAK for

2) I’m an introvert; when I say “create your network” I don’t mean it as a job, but as a “don’t be shy, open up, we are all weirdos here, probably more than you ❤️”

Sorry for the losing post :)

Is it just me or is there not really a community for artists within the DA fandom? I see writers lifting each other up and promoting each other's work all the time but artists barely get any exposure unless they're one of the top 5 most skilled. It's no wonder fandom feels quiet :(

Well that's largely because people don't reblog as often as they like things (that's not excusive to the da fandom) The top five, and we all know what you're talking about here, didn't get popular until they started drawing their conventionally attractive (<- not said as a negative thing) oc's with the most popular male characters for on a near daily basis and, this is the crucial part, people reblogged their art consistently to not only get them exposure, but to encourage them to continue creating. You're more likely to get reblogs on a drawing if it's a redraw of a meme or has a fandom favorite in it

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[great-tusk]

mutuals give me your favorite of your self-inserts. put them in my inbox or dms or somewhere please I wanna chew on them.

now closed until I finish the ones that I have, but I’ll probably open it back up when I’m done with them.

[pixelatedraindrops]

Yuma Kokohead.

~

AKA The easiest character for me to torment with illness 😷

A prime whumpee candidate.

I gave him a sprite edit for every basic illness known to man and made this category chart. I may have a problem. This sprite editing is addicting.

~

Shinigami you're not helping.

The lactose thing is just a headcanon. I've seen a lot of memes and shitposts with it and I was like, yes this is canon to me now

Shinigami just causally eating that ice cream right next to him to rub it in his face while he struggles to intake the milk, god what an asshole

TW// Emeto

alsotheaftermathofthesecondrow

Poor baby... ;-;

At least Shinigami has a non-existent warm beverage for him lol

Credit to this mini-fic for the nausea edit inspiration

~

Feel free to share your sick headcanons w me if you got any for him.

[avayarising]

This is not right.

Context: this is part of Death Metal, and all the universes are being destroyed. All the heroes of the main universe, and some from other universes, have gathered together on the eve of the final, hopeless, battle. They all know they are probably going to die. Batman asks Batgirl (Babs) to ‘gather the boys’, and she heads off, finding Robin first:

The Robin playing cards here is wearing what is obviously a Damian-Robin outfit, with grey sleeves, grey trousers, a red tunic with yellow bars across the front, and a grey cape with a yellow hood. Barbara addresses him as ‘Tim’. He excuses himself from the game.

(We saw Tim earlier in a Titans crowd scene, where he was wearing his usual short black sleeves and a hoodless cape. There’s no reason given for him to steal Damian’s outfit now.)

Barbara then rounds up Jason and Dick, on panel, and brings them along as well, and then we see this:

Apparently, Tim is still playing poker and will ‘be along soon’ (though he doesn’t turn up at all in the whole scene). Bruce says there’s no time and they will start without Tim. The Robin standing here, wearing exactly the same outfit as in the previous panel, then has to be Damian – and towards the end of the meeting is addressed as such.

What they are there to do, it turns out, is basically the Bat equivalent of a group hug. Bruce wants his kids there so he can look upon them and think sappy thoughts about how much he loves them.

There’s a moment where they pool some items of kit (the paucity of equipment here makes me think this is more symbolic, a kind of Communion, than anything practical) and the speech bubble coming from where Robin was last seen standing says ‘I won some bullets’, implying he was the one at the poker game.

So I am expected to believe that, on the eve of the end of all worlds, where everyone is fully expecting to die,

Bruce wants his sons and Barbara with him, for purely emotional reasons, and doesn’t ask for Cass or Steph (or for that matter Jarro, who has been clinging to and parented by Bruce for a good part of this event)

either Tim dresses up as Damian for no apparent reason or Tim was hiding behind the tent and takes Damian’s place in the poker game for no apparent reason when Damian leaves (and either way Tim would rather play poker with some randos than spend time with his family on the eve of the end of the world)

Barbara, sent to gather the batboys for a final batmeeting, lets Tim play poker and doesn’t insist he join them

Bruce, gathering his family for one last together moment, decides not to wait for Tim, even though he is apparently coming soon, and not to think anything more about him

Bruce has the audacity, the sheer effrontery, to think this of a group that does not include TIm:

[sciderman]

Do we know what music 616 Wade listens to? And how different is it from your Wade? I know that 616 Peter listens to classic 50s-70s music and dislikes/hates metal music, but i don't remember seeing anything mentioning Wades music taste.

I have a playlist devoted to songs that 616 wade's referenced canonically! i'm sure i've missed some, but these are just what i can remember off the top of my head

it's a bit of a patchwork - i don't think there's any common thread between any of them, i feel like wade's the kind of guy who just literally knows the lyrics to every song that floats across the airwaves. his brain is constantly on shuffle. i don't think there's one genre that he favours. it depends on his mood, how annoying he wants to be in that moment and – most importantly, the writer who's writing him's music taste, probably.

inexplicably though, if you were to ask me to attach some kind of genre of music to 616 wade specifically, it would probably sound something like my shiklahpool playlist - inexplicably. inexplicably.

[punkcherries]

everyone whittled me down and i watched arcane. it was alright

[honestlyvan]

Thinking about image model generated art and gifmaking is giving me some weird vibrations about how there really is some weird association of the virtuesvirtues of a medium with the virtues of the people working in it. Gifmaking being associated with KPop fans doesn't make the concept of frame interpolation racist, and someone marketing themselves as a cheaper alternative to some other artist doesn't make the concept of generative art inherently class antagonistic.

It's somehow reminiscent of CJ the X's distinction between "stupid art" and "evil art", how a medium that has a low skill floor can produce things that are very stupid and easy to perceive as low-effort but how that's not the same as them having something wrong with them. If you look at my animation tag, most of it is motion graphics done with AfterEffects, and while it's probably wrong to call it a low skill floor program the way an AI art generator is... there is still a world where instead of programmatically telling shapes to whizz by on a screen, a different Van would have drawn those same animations frame by frame, producing exactly the same animation.

And I don't think the fact that I did them programmatically somehow invalidates the artistic intent that went into them, y'know? I could open AE right now and produce a 250x250 looping gif of clouds and while I know how to do that quick, to make it look good and to make me like it, I would have to spend time considering how the various elements, colours, timings and whatever the particle system/noise generator I use spits out fit together. I would have to fiddle with seeds and levels and timings to make it look good. I would have to spend a long time just staring and thinking about what I'm making before I could make it good.

I don't know enough about generative art tools to know how much fiddling goes into them once they're taught and ready to go, but I do know enough about deep learning to know it's a haphazard, frustrating process that you as the artist have only limited control over, which is why it doesn't appeal to me. But I have made gifs in the past, and I know how that process requires an eye for consistency and composition, framing and colour that a lot of other visual artists don't have because they're not working with time as one of the creative dimensions.

And like... who am I, from my high horse as someone in possession of these skills, to tell someone who is still developing these skills or who has a different aesthetic concept of what is good than me, what they're making is low-effort. That's not my judgement to make. I didn't make it. Only the artist themselves can say if somehing was low-effort or not. I don't see why I should have so little faith in other artists to assume they have no interest in putting in any effort.

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

I think Jason might have wanted to become a fashion designer if he was 97% less intent on sticking with Robin as his career path

This isn’t a “Jason should’ve quit being Robin” post I’m just spitballing what he might’ve been interested in doing had he lived normally

[advestager]

A/I STAN IN THE DASH. I REPEAT A/I STAN GOT THROUGH MY FILTERS INTO THE FUCKIN DASH THIS IS NOT A DRILL

[sanchoyo]

ummm no im not a 'job hopper' haha...im like barbie. multiskilled. multicareered, even. put some positive framing on my impulsive and flighty nature please 😤

[milkochaa]

my obsession with tim drake came forth and tripled bc of a fic I've read at fucking 2am in the morning and I cannot stop,, would this be worse than my leon kennedy hyper fixation? It's possible bc I was down bad for tim since I was 14 or 15, u cannot take this away from me from my cold, dead fucking hands bro

[singingowlfeather]

I was just thinking about this. I don't see people berating GO fans for their art and writing fanfics the same way they do this to HP fans.

Yes, JKR is a heinous transphobes, racist, internalized misogynist, and should be boycotted, but NG has literally physically committed SA.

Feels like people are a lot less harsh on him than her.

Makes you wonder.

edit: I called Good Omens good almonds in the tags lol..

I mean I like almonds but not that much... :))

Genuinely confused as to why when JKR ended up being terrible, all HP fans were told to put down the books forever or they were just as bad as her (and have even been compared to Nazis) but with Neil Gaiman, there's all this support for fans who are mourning and trying to figure out how to go ahead liking his craft. As a fan of both terribad authors' work, the difference is very evident to me and I don't understand it.