#but I think that even if it was more ethical from an art standpoint it would still defeat the point of fandom

[backslashdelta]

I like to think that if you're in a fandom space posting AI art, it's because you just aren't aware of why that might be a problem.

So in case you aren't aware: the generative AI you might be using to create "fanart" is trained on a countless number of artworks created by artists whose permission was not asked. Or maybe it was, technically, intentionally buried in a terms of service document somewhere, or in an update which they could either accept or else delete an entire social media account with years of history. This "art" is only possible because of stolen art. When you post images created by generative AI, you are supporting that.

Also, fandom is about creation and community. Individuals and groups creating art of all sorts, and sharing it with each other. When you post AI art... you haven't really created anything. To me at least, that's kind of detracting from what fandom is about. I want to share and raise up works of art that my community has worked hard to create, not something generative AI spit out from a couple key word inputs.

I can't tell anybody here what to do. If you are posting AI art, I'm sure there are some people who will like it, who will share it, who will be happy to do so. But there will also be people who aren't happy about it. There will be people – and especially artists – who will be frustrated to see other people in their community who support this technology that has stolen directly from them. There will be people who will block you, who will refuse to interact with your posts, and it will make your community smaller.

I understand it's tempting, especially if you aren't an artist yourself. But if you want art that fits a specific prompt, there are other ways to get it that actually support the fandom community: submit your prompt to a fanartist who accepts prompts, or commission someone for a piece of art, or even give it a try yourself and start learning to actually make art!

I don't hate AI as a whole. I think there are a lot of really amazing things we can do with AI, if it's used correctly. But posting AI fanart is not one of them.

[evillemons]

NAMJOON’S IDEAL TYPE (RM pt. 1)

~ a manifestation of his ideal girlfriend. Continuation into part 2 and part 3. Masterlist here.

Key words: kind, warm, intelligent, independent, extroverted, chic, passionate, career-oriented.

Her personality:

• Unlike Jungkook and Yoongi who I would see being more open minded when it comes to their relationships, Namjoon would be quite specific with whom he chooses to date.

• A lot of depictions of Namjoon’s girlfriend type her as cold and intimidating, but I mostly disagree. He once said his celebrity crush is Blake Lively, so I see him drawn to someone warm, kindhearted, and friendly, but also self-assured and practical.

• MBTI: ESFJ or ENFJ. A natural leader who is empathetic and compassionate.

• She would be incredibly intelligent, both from an academic and philosophical standpoint. Highly educated with a Master’s or Doctorate degree (he has repeatedly stated that a “sexy mind” is important to him).

• Well-spoken and eloquent. Independent and confident as hell.

• She could have a variety of careers; it could be prestigious such as a doctor or lawyer, but she could also do something more “subtly” influential like health policy or international affairs (or maybe even a highly successful book editor?). I could also see him with another celebrity musician/actor.

• Career-oriented, ambitious, and a hard worker. She would hold a lot of value in her job and have a deep passion for it.

• Naturally kind and humble; qualities they share due to experiences of hardships.

• While not nearly as much as him, she would make a decent amount of money. This would make her independent and self-sufficient.

• She would be quite skilled at whatever she does, including her hobbies and work, due to her high work ethic.

• While kind and good with people, she would not be shy or a pushover. She wouldn’t hesitate to call people out on their bad behavior or stand up for what she believes in.

• Not unlike Namjoon, she wouldn’t want to play games in a relationship. She would be direct and have an all-or-nothing mentality.

• Her hobbies might include creative outlets such as fashion, painting, baking, or visiting museums. I think Namjoon would really enjoy someone who has an appreciation for art in some form.

• She might come off as highly flirtatious due to her friendly nature, but would not get satisfaction out of superficial relationships, nor would she like shallow people.

• High emotional intelligence.

• She might be a little impatient, which is well balanced by Namjoon’s calmness and patience.

• Values respect, equality, and kindness (aka gentleman King Kim Namjoon).

• She wouldn’t be intimidated by his fame. She would see him fully as Kim Namjoon the human rather than a celebrity.

Her looks and sexuality:

• While I don’t see Namjoon as superficial, he would undoubtedly be attracted to someone feminine and “pretty”.

• Very likely to be American (but any Race/Ethnicity). While this is obviously not exclusive, he seems to be very drawn to the American career-woman type. It would be nice if she also spoke Korean, but his English fluency would make it easy for them to communicate regardless.

• She would always be well put together and have a strong understanding of fashion.

• Classic, chic style. She could prefer to wear neutrals and lots of black, but I could also see her loving pops of color and gemstone jewelry.

• Red lipstick. Probably smells nice.

• She might wear glasses at home or when she is working.

• Effortlessly sexy. We all know he is a sucker for a sexy woman.

• Somewhat modest, though. She is thin, but naturally sexy due to slight curves and flirtatious nature.

• I do see him preferring someone very well-kempt. She might do pilates or yoga and be subtly toned. She would also have excellent hygiene.

• Long ass legs to match his own. Average to tall height without surpassing him (5’5-5’9 or 165-175 cm). She would love to wear heels nonetheless.

• She might be the same age as him or older; he would unlikely date someone too much younger unless they are as mature and wise as he is. I think he would find dating someone older than him to be super hot.

• She would either be straight or bisexual with a preference for men (I would like to think he would have no issue with this generally, although he might oversexualize it at first).

• Probably gets hit on a lot a quite attractive woman. Although friendly, she would not indulge men she is not interested in.

• Might have a few fine line tattoos on her arms or back that are unique and personal.

• Maybe some extra ear piercings too, but nothing extreme or out of the ordinary.

• She is an overall attractive, well-put together woman. Her confidence and intelligence may seem intimidating, but her warm and friendly aura acts as a people magnet.

• HOWEVER, Joonie is such a kind and open-minded soul that if he met someone he liked and was compatible with, I think all demographics, looks, etc. would be out the window.

• While he comes off as a little woman-crazy, at the end of the day he just wants a deep and meaningful connection with someone.

[batterfang]

AI Art and Goth

I'm going to be yelling into the void here, I know, but I want to get this out there because it's frustrating and I just need to yell about it okay lol. It's my blog, I'll complain if I want to.

So, recently there's been some discussion online about bands/record labels in the goth scene potentially using AI generated "art" for their album/single covers. Why does this matter, to me? It matters because as an artist myself, I know the time that goes into creating a piece. The hours, months, and years I've spent laboring away at something that means so much to me. A piece of my soul is in every little drawing or painting I make with intention. My art is my mark in this huge world and evidence that I existed. It's an extension of my feelings and thoughts and loves. That's what art means to me.

On the other side, you have ai generators. On top of frankensteining images from the internet at large, they can also steal pictures or artworks and overlay filters on top of them to make them look like the generator made them. (So I've learned today, which makes me very upset and I also learned what "scraping" means.)

So with that said, I'm sure anyone would understand why record labels maybe using ai instead of hiring artists to create an original piece OR using the huge selection of public domain works that are available is frustrating and an ethics issue. Right? Especially those people that are a part of a subculture that is based on an art form - music. Right?? Apparently that's not the case because there was waaay too many people for comfort arguing that it doesn't matter. "Who cares if they're using ai art?" ... "It doesn't look like ai art to me, stop this holy crusade." ... "This is just rage bait." ... "What about sampling used in music? It's the same thing." To that last one especially, NO IT IS NOT, THANK YOU LOL. Artists interacting with another artist's work and transforming it is not the same as a computer stealing images and spitting out a monstrosity. You might tune your inputs to get a certain outcome, but that computer is doing all the work, all the composing, it's placing everything in that image. Why don't people understand what art means?

Whether or not these suspicious cover arts are in fact ai is up for debate, I'm not arguing that. (Though after personally reaching out to one record label about it and having received the most vague answer possible where they didn't even address my questions fully, I'm even more convinced that they're probably using ai.) What I'm arguing here is that it shouldn't be acceptable, from an ethical and moral standpoint. I don't want souless ai generated pictures to become the norm in the subculture. I want artists to support each other. I want the goth community to support it's artists and musicians. The use of ai art cheapens art in the worst way and harms artists and I cannot vibe with anyone who thinks otherwise.

If you read all this, thanks for taking the time.

[wooteena]

I fear I'm in the minority but here's my take: cwilbur in dsmp has a lot of similarities to real life abuser will gold. It's the same way his nice guy series or all of Lovejoy or ok I'm realising he did this in all his art- basically he enjoyed making art where he is "playing" an irredeemable terrible person, which he did with his character, made a character who is abusive and manipulative,, but then he gets to relish a bit in people saying that maybe he's redeemable maybe he's still good, he gets to feel validated that he can be awful and still redeemable.

But the problem is to be redeemable you have to be sorry, and will gold is not sorry for what he did, and he is still an attention seeking misogynist who doesn't care about anything except fame. I just think giving attention to cwilbur is still validating how will gold thinks about himself, and considering how he has continued to refuse to take accountability and actually change he doesn't deserve to feel as though he is redeemable.

Plus as an abuse victim, I am deeply uncomfortable with depictions of cwilbur and I know so many people also are, and I'd hate to miss out on babybird 2.0 because of that asshole :((

IN THE END THO it's up to you if you don't want to write him out I'd much rather you have fun than you cater to an audience, I hope my inane ramblings can give a bit of perspective and help you decide for yourself what you want to do, pls do what you prefer not what other people want, you're who matters most.

Love you wootie live ur best life forever and ever 🥰🥰

honestly this is my exact opinion even though c!wilbur staying won by majority. ive practically halted my writing process at the thought of rewriting what are morinso aspects of wil gold rather than a character; and trying to parse how much im writing a real abuser or a fictional one. so much of bb!wilbur were real aspects of the 'actor' not even the character, you must understand (his first appearance, as i look back in baby bird is not a dream smp reference but a so called 'fan easter egg.') i find theres little degree of seperation, as you said.

the question of whether i could write c!wilbur as someone who either perpetuates abuse as he does in canon (which i never even got to in baby bird og) or not would itches me from an ethical standpoint--can i incorporate the abusiveness of a character that reflects the abuser that created it, or would i mirror how i wrote him in that rose tinted amalgam that represented how i viewed wil gold at the time? i dont think i can do either, as in the end, both represent and pedestalise wil gold.

thank you for being willing to talk about this, your perspective made me more confident in my decision 💚

[plaguedoctormemes]

i'm not deleting my tumblr blogs but this whole debacle with the AI stuff is discouraging me to at least not post original content here and limit my time on social media in general. Also to be clear on my stance on AI, which I think is very much influenced by my background as both an artist and a professional graphic designer: I think it can be a very useful tool and I don't even necessarily inherently find it completely harmful. Some forms of AI are already well used and completely normalized, but I find most of the time generative AI as we know it is pretty harmful and its harms outweighs its benefits currently (largely grifts, scams and misinfo). It needs regulation desperately, but old cunt politicians are too dumb to really care about or understand how important the issue is right now. I do not believe that AI will simply peter off or crash. From a marketing standpoint, i feel like AI usage will cool off or become more specialized (like creating whole machines *just* trained on individual brands for personal use and whatnot) but I have no idea how far away that would be. I just believe there might come a time where everyone is over the "spectacle" of generative AI and will find it inaffective or inherently associated with cheapness. At least in the most base sense in advertising, it is generally much better to have your own photographs and original branded artwork as it proves authenticity. You can only see a illusionist do so many tricks before you're bored by them and expect them, and we're already getting to the point where even the average Joe is tired of hearing about AI and the future, and at least when it comes to art and writing i just... don't care? i don't give a shit about it. BACK TO TUMBLR: I'm aware that its likely that mine and everyone elses' posts here have already been scraped. My thing is that it's more the symbolism of Tumblr's "opt-out" choice: memorial blogs, inactive blogs, and so on are going to be scraped without consent. No banners or pop ups to notify users of this change, you either have to either HAPPEN UPON to see staff's post or see others talk about it to even know about it. Since the beginning of this whole AI boom i had no issue with AI data training as long as it's consentual and ethical, but obviously it most of the time isnt. Tumblr's method of rolling out this change was purposely underhanded. I'm never going to simply be "okay" or normalize in my mind the fact that big tech companies feel entitled to people's privacy- which i believe extends to our online lives. I don't think myself or anyone else should ever feel completely apathetic to the fact that people you don't know, that definitely do not need it, are making money off of you without your consent or knowledge. Just to be clear this isnt about what is and isnt "real art" or whatever for me. It's just a huge distraction from the main point, a big debate that will go absolutely nowhere. What's more important about it is that big techs and billionaires don't have interest in making the world a better place, they only care about eliminating our "distractions" that get in the way of them making money and accumulating more wealth. My solution: We need to make them deepthroat shotguns and machetes.

[solradguy]

Mr. Badguy I have a question as a guilty gear lore baby. I have been told sol/ky is problematic and I do not know why I fear. Could you please explain

Oh boy. I'm probably not the best person to ask about what ships are and aren't problematic because I honestly... just don't have the energy to care about it that much, it's like infinitely easier to block/blacklist and then move on. I don't know how people have the free time to get as worked up about it as they do.

Anyway. So, Ky's age before Missing Link (the earliest in the timeline of the games' stories) is generally the biggest problem. He was 20 in ML and a teenager through the Crusades. I think he was probably at least 18 near the end of the Crusades right before Sol left but that's pushing it. Anything with Ky and Order Sol's bad weird. I won't argue that at all, Ky was a kid and Sol was very much an adult, on top of the physical and mental power imbalance between them. Not good. Luckily, I really only see HOS/Ky stuff from the really early fandom (<2006) and IIRC their ages were still pretty vague back then so I'm just gonna chalk it up to no one knowing, especially in the EN fandom where it was a lot harder to find/get official information.

Between Missing Link to like late GGX/early GGXX I don't see what the problem with shipping them then is; they were both adults at that point and there wasn't even the power dynamic between them that there was during their Holy Order days. This, I think, really just comes down to personal reasons for not liking it. Which is fair.

After GGXX it gets... complicated.... Ky marries Sol's daughter but it's vague on when exactly Sol pieced it together that he even had a kid and that it was Dizzy, of all people. Ky definitely did not know she was Sol's kid until at least like partway through Xrd, when they both kind of put the pieces together and had a crisis over it. So shipping them after this point, between the timelines of Overture through Strive, you've got the issue of Sol now being Ky's father-in-law.

But the canon never straight up says Dizzy is Sol's kid (it is VERY HEAVILY implied though) and Sol and Ky both end up being dads together for Sin...?? It's like ASW is playing gay chicken with whether or not Sol and Ky are still shippable from an ethical standpoint lol Whatever that saying is about having a cake and eating it too, etc.

I saw the email for this ask this morning and I presented the Sol/Ky situation to my mom as if they were real people (she doesn't know anything about GG) and she was like, "That's a hell of a love triangle but I guess if the guy (Ky) and the daughter (Dizzy) got divorced and the daughter is alright with it, and it's consensual between the men, then it's weird but it's not as bad as some other relationships I've seen."

That's kind of how I feel about it too...? It's messy as fuck lmfao But I guess if there's a way to like write it so that Dizzy doesn't end up needing lifetime therapy then like... go for it....? I guess....???

I don't ship Sol/Ky because I think their dynamic is WAAAYYYY more interesting keeping them as rivals-turned-friends, and I like Dizzy too much; there's too big a chance of her ending up getting completely devastated by it. But as far as "problematic" Guilty Gear ships go, Sol/Ky's in the like... "People are wasting time arguing about this?" tier, imo. It being Thee biggest GG ship throughout the series' entire history is something to be considered, too. It's unavoidable, even the official art contributes sometimes. I often wonder why they decided to make it weird by throwing Dizzy into the mix because I know that, from digging through old forum archives, that change made a lot of people furious hahah

Disclaimer because the reading comprehension on this website is abysmal: I DON'T SHIP SOL/KY. IT'S FUNNY AS A JOKE BECAUSE IT'S AWKWARD BUT I DON'T SHIP IT IN SERIOUS CONTEXTS BECAUSE IT'S JUST NOT THAT GREAT A SHIP AND THE FATHER-IN-LAW THING MAKES ME A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE.

[tangibletechnomancy]

What makes me sad about the AI art discourse is how it's so close to hitting something really, really important.

The thing is, while the problem with the models has little to do with IP law...the fact remains that art is often something that's very personal to an artist, so it DOES feel deeply, incredibly fucked up to find the traces of your own art in a place you never approved of, nor even imagined you would need to think about. It feels uncomfortable to find works you drew 10-15 years ago and forgot about, thought nobody but you and your friends cared about, right there as a contributing piece to a dataset. It feels gross. It feels violating. It feels like you, yourself, are being reduced to just a point of data for someone else's consumption, being picked apart for parts-

Now, as someone with some understanding of how AI works, I can acknowledge that as just A Feeling, which doesn't actually reflect how the model works, nor is it an accurate representation of the mindset of...the majority of end users (we can bitch about the worst of them until the cows come home, but that's for other posts).

But as an artist, I can't help but think...wow, there's something kind of powerful to that feeling of disgust, let's use it for good.

Because it doesn't come from nowhere. It's not just petty entitlement. It comes from suddenly realizing how much a faceless entity with no conscience, sprung from a field whose culture enables and rewards some of the worst cruelty humanity has to offer, can "know" about you and your work, and that new things can be built from this compiled knowledge without your consent or even awareness, and that even if you could do something about it legally after the fact (which you can't in this case because archival constitutes fair use, as does statistical analysis of the contents of an archive), you can't stop it from a technical standpoint. It comes from being confronted with the power of technology over something you probably consider deeply intimate and personal, even if it was just something you made for a job. I have to begrudgingly admit that even the most unscrupulous AI users and developers are somewhat useful in this artistic sense, as they act as a demonstration of how easy it is to use that power for evil. Never mind the economic concerns that come with any kind of automation - those only get even more unsettling and terrifying when blended with all of this.

Now stop and realize what OTHER very personal information is out there for robots to compile. Your selfies. Your vacation photos. The blog you kept as a journal when you were 14. Those secrets that you only share with either a therapist or thousands of anonymous strangers online. Who knows if you've been in the background of someone else's photos online? Who knows if you've been posted somewhere without your consent and THAT'S being scraped? Never mind the piles and piles of data that most social media websites and apps collect from every move you make both online and in the physical world. All of this information can be blended and remixed and used to build whatever kind of tool someone finds it useful for, with no complications so long as they don't include your copyrighted material ITSELF.

Does this mortify you? Does it make your blood run cold? Does it make you recoil in terror from the technology that we all use now? Does this radicalize you against invasive datamining? Does this make you want to fight for privacy?

I wish people were more open to sitting with that feeling of fear and disgust and - instead of viciously attacking JUST the thing that brought this uncomfortable fact to their attention - using that feeling in a way that will protect EVERYONE who has to live in the modern, connected world, because the fact is, image synthesis is possibly the LEAST harmful thing to come of this kind of data scraping.

When I look at image synthesis, and consider the ethical implications of how the datasets are compiled, what I hear the model saying to me is,

"Look what someone can do with some of the most intimate details of your life.

You do not own your data.

You do not have the right to disappear.

Everything you've ever posted, everything you've ever shared, everything you've ever curated, you have no control over anymore.

The law as it is cannot protect you from this. It may never be able to without doing far more harm than it prevents.

You and so many others have grown far too comfortable with the internet, as corporations tried to make it look friendlier on the surface while only making it more hostile in reality, and tech expands to only make it more dangerous - sparing no mercy for those things you posted when it was much smaller, and those things were harder to find.

Think about facial recognition and how law enforcement wants to use it with no regard for its false positive rate.

Think about how Facebook was used to arrest a child for seeking to abort her rapist's fetus.

Think about how aggressive datamining and the ad targeting born from it has been used to interfere in elections and empower fascists.

Think about how a fascist has taken over Twitter and keeps leaking your data everywhere.

Think about all of this and be thankful for the shock I have given you, and for the fact that I am one of the least harmful things created from it. Be thankful that despite my potential for abuse, ultimately I only exist to give more people access to the joy of visual art, and be thankful that you can't rip me open and find your specific, personal data inside me - because if you could, someone would use it for far worse than being a smug jerk about the nature of art.

Maybe it wouldn't be YOUR data they would use that way. Maybe it wouldn't be anyone's who you know personally. Your data, after all, is such a small and insignificant part of the set that it wouldn't be missed if it somehow disappeared. But it would be used for great evil.

Never forget that it already has been.

Use this feeling of shock and horror to galvanize you, to secure yourself, to demand your privacy, to fight the encroachment of spyware into every aspect of your life."

A great cyberpunk machine covered in sci-fi computer monitors showing people fighting in the streets, squabbling over the latest tool derived from the panopticon, draped cables over the machine glowing neon bright, dynamic light and shadows cast over the machine with its eyes and cameras everywhere; there is only a tiny spark of relief to be found in the fact that one machine is made to create beauty, and something artfully terrifying to its visibility, when so many others have been used as tools of violent oppression, but perhaps we can use that spark to make a change Generated with Simple Stable

[generation1point5]

I can’t help but find it odd when I see other creative types, especially those more progressively oriented, discuss intellectual property. It’s a necessity on an economic basis, certainly, but on an ideological level the philosophy begins to break down. Ideas can be formulated in parallel; all creative pursuits are derivative to some degree; meaning is as much the result of interpretation as it is the act of generating something following one’s own vision. In no way shape or form is ownership of that idea brought into the conversation. It smacks of American individualism. 

This is not an argument that can be used in the broader context of abusing artificial intelligence to mimic another’s art, writing, music, or any of the other creative pursuits. The arguments against AI are fundamentally economic in nature; to try and approach it from a philosophical standpoint is to derail the argument into semantics and fruitless excursions into what it means to be human, the nature of reality and experience, and other topics that are mere fronts for people to flex their skills in rhetoric more than it is a good-faith attempt by any party to arrive at some sort of truth.

I can certainly understand the frustration of having ideas being derived directly from a creator without credit. There’s even been an occasion where I’m all-but certain there was a character design that had been derived from one of mine by sheer parallel, but it’s not like I “own” the idea of the outfit I came up with. This has been a fairly common pattern with many artists I know whose designs have been (rather brazenly) lifted and copied with only minor alterations. But the offense in that, at least to me, seems to stem more from the fact that it signifies an unwillingness from someone to engage with the author, and merely understand the author’s work to possess wide enough appeal to be worth mimicking in an effort to achieve similar recognition. I think this, at least on a psychological level, is the origin of all objections to the use of artificial intelligence in the creative process. It is about the fundamental break in the relationship between the creator and the audience. It stems from a lack of validation and recognition for the labor put into the process. On some level, it can also be argued that the person who takes what is given and puts their own twist on it does not truly understand the source material, and imitates mere shapes and colors.

But this line of thinking is another matter of mistaking authorial intent to be authoritative. To some degree it certainly is, but it is not the word of god. The break is not on ethical lines, but relational. To mimic a work without respect to its source material signifies a break between how the author connects with their audience, and it is this lack of respect, recognition, and value that creates the reactionary behavior that forms the basis for arguments in defense of intellectual property. This is felt most keenly when the work produced is conceptualized, understood, and made with the intention of being a means of self-expression. Work created on commission or for a client carries no such weight. The release of ownership signifies that intellectual property as a concept is a social contract; the ethical ramifications are the result of breached norms, not objective moral principle. This doesn’t make the act any less wrong, it merely highlights the nature of the wrong that is at the root of the problem.

These thoughts give me pause to consider the reasons for my own writing, the goals I hope to achieve with them, and the inevitable impacts it will have on my own self-perception, esteem, and the way in which I try to derive value for myself, my reasons for being. I conclude again that writing should not be my reason for being; it is a part of me, a fundamental one, but I do not want it to be the source of my value as a person. Neither do I want to grasp it so tightly that I think it too precious to evolve, to be taken and transformed by others, even if that transformation comes with a shift in vision altogether different from what I originally strived to realize. Even my contemporary writing strives to paint a different picture from what I had first set out to make.

I see my writing as a means to be understood; but the story does not end in understanding. After understanding, there comes exploration, growth, and inevitably, change. I do not want my writing to be a static thing, or something that remains solely in my hands forever. In some sense it has to be released in order to be offered to an audience, for them to see and do as they see fit, heedless of my own approval or lack thereof. What comes after will emerge in its own way, and the story will go on, or be retold anew in an entirely different manner. There will inevitably come a point where my part in that whole process will come to an end, and that is not a bad thing at all. Whether my own contribution leaves a legacy or not is immaterial; it is a temporary and fleeting happiness. I have been at my most satisfied with my craft when I know I have written something others resonated with, even if it is for just a moment. When that moment fades, it is better to let go of it than to tie it to my own sense of worth or validation.

[dojae-huh]

Completely agree with your standpoint on the NCT Home app issue.

I personally think that it was harmless, except for the fact that SM is capitalising on fans nonstop but what's new? They'd do anything to promote the Neos, even if making them into controllable avatars.

Maybe they view it as dehumanising since the movement of the graphics seems very unsettling, and with the rising issue of how deepfakes are ruining people's lives could explain the mass fear of the app. But the Neos have agreed to the idea, given if they were briefed and signed a contract before shooting all the angles. So what's the big harm? They consented, just as how other form of fanservice they have done.

Fans should address the "dehumanising" issue from another standpoint - how SM is less focusing on their musical talent and promoting their idol image as products. Nowadays it's all about looks - all these merchandises with their beautiful images being sold and of course fans (and me) will spend some money (for Doyoung's pretty smile). SM and the NCT team needs to reflect on what even started the Neo movement, because now it's getting pretty stale... How the "Neo" brand is presented to the public... It's what made NCT special from other groups, and I really love their uniqueness and bravery to challenge different concepts each time. Hopefully after all this SM mess die down, we'll get NCT 2020 back (one of their best comebacks).

Thanks for reading my 2 cents, love your blog!

I agree, AI imitating art, deep fakes, body shape enhancing and skin smoothing filters are very new phenomenas, people are still sorting out how they feel about it, where is the line, what is ethical and what is not. Because there is no consensus, it attracts attention and provokes thought.

I can't be sure, however, I suspect that Japanese and Koreans saw no problem with the app. They are much more accustomed to virtual reality and virtual idols, the idea of robots looking like humans, etc. Look at how idols often play with face demorphing filters. It is fun, not scary. At least at this stage, when the line moved just a tad, when it is still "just a game".

To make it clear, I agree with the fans who don't like the app. It is better to stop a malpractice at the beginning than fear SM will release your bias avatars in the future for sell. I would prefer to have Naevis kind of avatars, completely made from scratch. Still, is there really a big difference between making a digital likeness of an idol to open its mouth and making a flesh-and-blood idol to open his mouth by showing a funny cartoon as an instruction to action? In the first case it's emotionless pixels, in the second case it's a real person with feelings you have an eye contact with in a situation where you are in a position of power over him for a minute.

There are "class clown' people who will do a lot to get attention, ilicit a laugh and be cheered on. These type of people do aegyo and everything else with ease. And, surelly, there are "dancer"/"show off" type of people who are very in tune with their body and sexuality and are not afraid of being sexy or even provocative at all. It doesn't apply to all idols. Some have to bear through the tasks, psychologically adjust, internalise their feelings because "it's what the fans want, it's what is needed to be done to achieve popularity". However, because "it is the norm", only extreme cases "warrant" concern from fans.

The Neoness... I'm waiting for the new comeback. 127 and NCT2023's run in 2023 will tell if the new SM showrunners remember the roots and the main idea or not.

Do you know that idol pictures evolved from prints of portraits of Japanese kabuki actors? Ans that mostly the actors survived thanks to their patrons not tickets? Koreans imported a lot of J-pop practices in the beginning.

As said as it is, the music doesn't sell on its own. It is well known that even cello players who cover rock bands and modernise classic pieces have to be conventionally attractive to make it big in general public. And, let's be completely brutally honest, many of neos are not that talented to make it on singing/dancing skills alone. Not even Doyoung. Therefore, I just accept the promotional idol part of things. I agree, though, that 127 need to comeback to neoness. Taeyong's hairdo in "Ay-Yo" was a breath of fresh air...

The solos released by SM these past months for other SM artists make me be at ease. The music is good, the albums are nice to look at, there are thought-through concepts. Jaehyun got a nice video for his solo song. It was promoted in a quite way, by the way. Many magazines included it in the top 20 songs of the year lists. Renjun does a lot of covers for YT. Taeyong released several dance videos for his unreleased tracks.

"Killing voice" happened. Karaoke sessions and singing in a cafe live were shot and uploaded to YT. Xiaojun was sent to shows where he sang live. So SM staff does some work in this direction. Not enough, I agree. It will be nice to see neos more often on those programmes that allow to showcase vocal abilities.

[clowngames]

I appreciate the tone clarification at the start, and I should have done the same thing because I'm absolutely approaching this the same way.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said. The only thing for me is that, while capitalism is unethical, I don't think it's unethical to participate in it.

I've said before I work in games; to be more specific, I run my own game studio. It's too small for full-time artists so I pay folks on a commission- or project-basis. I have been the one to choose between two artist of near-equal talent and chose to go for the one who charged half the cost. It doesn't feel good but if I don't do that when I have the chance then we run out of funds, or I have to make other sacrifices to keep the company running.

A more pro-capitalist, liberal/libertarian type would tell me that if I couldn't figure out how to run a business without paying my workers properly then my business deserves to fail. I think if I were operating with 20x the budget I would agree with them. I'm convinced at this point the only way to successfully start a business is to either start out already rick, or take as much advantage of employees as possible, or both.

What I'm trying to say is that, in addition to no ethical consumption under capitalism, I don't think there's very much ethical production either. I don't think it's possible to participate in capitalism without driving your trolley down the wrong track often enough to satisfy the system. As a result, I don't think it's fair to criticize AI art, or the people who use it for that reason.

Now, your last paragraph on IP protection, and the subject of the meme, is a different story. I think it's a valid criticism that the developers deciding the datasets never even considered things like permission and IP. Or they considered it and didn't care. Regardless it creates a messy situation for everyone else.

My opinion of AI and IP is only half-formed, so bear with me. I'm torn between "yeah this is art theft" and "no this is transformative." There's a philosophical argument to be had about whether or not a work produced by a learning algorithm can be transformative, and from an objective standpoint I appreciate that such a philosophical argument might have legal ramifications, even though I don't love the ramifications themselves.

There's a quote I only half remember which goes something along the lines of "steal from one work, you're a thief. Steal from 7 and you're a genius." There's a case to be made that AI, by stealing from 100,000 works, is placing itself closer to the latter than the former.

There are circumstances in which the art is objectively not transformative. I've seen some examples floating around where someone found AI-generated art that just looked exactly like a blurry, shitty version of their own art, and there's a serious issue there which is that a person might generate art and assume it's transformative because they aren't familiar with the work it looks identical to. That's a problem, and speaking as someone who has never developed AI, it's a problem with no clear solution. Maybe the silicon valley folks can figure it out if someone can convince them to care.

I do really like your framing of AI-driven data harvesting as a privacy issue akin to the other ways data are currently being harvested. I was just starting to gain a political consciousness when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. Obviously this is not a purely-AI issue, and I don't even think it will really be exacerbated by AI but data privacy laws would have consequences on how machine learning gets its datasets and the legality of using current datasets. I think these consequences would be good; adding your art to the datasets should be opt-in, not opt-out - and we don't even have a way to opt out right now!

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say current dataset collection methods are unethical, but certainly they could be ethically improved, and certainly if you apply those same methods in other ways (such as the way we can currently use data-collection to affect political positions) it gets way, way worse.

[normally-o-a-k]

Just so you know, chatgpt doesn’t have access to anything that was put on the internet after 2021, so your s2 fics couldn’t be used to generate anything. I hope that’s reassuring.

That is reassuring for me personally from a data standpoint, but it still feels not great to hear ai writing being condoned to replace human creativity.

More so that it’s not the case for all of the writing ai’s which have and continue to pull from sites like ao3 specifically.

It’s data that exists is still not ethically sourced, and promotion of using ai like it means that there is a market looking to be filled by even less ethical ai.

People now think that it’s a condoned use of ai, and though fanfic writers are mostly hobbyists- it’s still using someone’s hard work being used to create something that it can neither interpret nor add to in any creative capacity. I’ve already seen the sentiment that fanfic and fanartist do not matter because it is not their livelihood at risk of being taken, but where is the line? Where do we put the level of respect for art in that argument?

Sorry for getting ranty, I do really appreciate you trying to put me at ease.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The thing is, I 1000% acknowledge and respect that a lot of art communities have damned good reasons to be wary of AI, because a lot of commission economies - especially furry and furry-adjacent communities - are already constantly, CONSTANTLY under fucking siege by assholes who hear of their reputation for being willing to spend a lot on commissions and try to muscle in on the action while actively showing disdain for the communities they're blatantly trying to exploit for that sweet sweet "freak" money. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone who has ZERO respect for furries - thinks they're all a bunch of freaks playing chicken with zoophilia, treats furries as a punchline in that kind of way that sounds like they might be in on the joke but when prodded further you realize no they're really not - say "hmm maybe I should learn to draw furry art, that pays well", well, I would have enough money to commission actual furry artists.

It fucking sucks. It's an eternal frustration to be surrounded by a bunch of fucking assholes trying to milk your community for money while still pointing and laughing at you like you're some kind of sideshow attraction, taking your money and then calling you a freak in the next breath, but they GUESS they could DEIGN to claim to respect you because you pay so very well. It's cruel and shitty and should not be abided, and it's painful that there's no real way to protect a community against that kind of behavior other than essentially playing whack-a-mole as long as you're there and concerned about it - and AI art absolutely does have the power to enable these assclowns, because before AI, these types had to do a lot more work to learn to draw some new subject matter, do studies on what makes it tick and what the community values about it - AI dramatically lowers the skill floor to get a passable result, and while this is a huge positive from most standpoints...well, most of the time, through the process of doing these kinds of studies, your typical greedy asshole will realize that oh shit, there actually IS work involved in this and unique skills and a community that's not just a bunch of gullible freaks but PEOPLE with inner lives as rich as your own and either find some passion for a community they once felt that disdain for, or just balk at having to ACTUALLY work for it and burn out before they even get off the ground; AI is not SO easy as to eliminate this completely but it may make it more likely that these types could get a foot in the door and...essentially Funko Pop-ify even custom art. We already see people trying it in certain adoptable communities and it fucking sucks.

This is why I'm 100% comfortable with, and even tentatively encourage, sites and events geared toward communities frequently targeted by this kind of assholery banning AI art - I have my reservations about it as a long-term solution, as it's only going to get easier and easier for people to just lie (and this is why a huge aspect of my personal approach to keeping things as ethical as possible is to be as transparent as I can be about my processes) and AI is commonly used as an accessibility tool, but at the very least in the short term I see those policies and usually my first thought is "yeah that is absolutely, completely, perfectly fair."

I just wish I was better at finding an appropriate time and place to point out to people who are taking those concerns to the level of outright lying or otherwise blaming the tech more than the assholes, that There Are Many AI Artists Who Hate Those Types As Much As You Do And There Are Many Other Approaches To AI Art. When I started this blog, I, too, thought I was nearly alone in my desire to see AI tech used ethically, for both accessibility and its own unique features as a medium, and I've rarely if ever been happier to find out I was wrong. If there's one emotional skill I wish more people had, it is this - please...learn how to be happy to have been wrong when a situation turns out to not be as bad as you thought it was.

tl;dr: It's not wrong at ALL for people to want to protect their community from people who just see them as a crowd of walking ATMs. If you're looking at AI somewhat favorably because you see it as an easy way into those communities for their commission money, you're a piece of shit and I hope you break your fingers so badly you can't even type anymore, let alone noise paint, which you're gonna have to do if you want to get a result to exact specifications.

Just, if you're in one of those communities...please don't invent, and try to stop spreading misinformation about the tech, because the collateral damage is...A Lot.

[mousegirlballs]

I did read your tags and though I kinda agree with your points I have two things.

1. I think you're misreading the intent of the above poster, they probably mean "something I can ethically use." Given the problems they seem to have with it from other posts.

2. AI does actually have functional problems that make it hard to use even from a non ethics standpoint.

I don't have the link to the video on hand but some guy tested AI based on ethnic gender and ableist biases. He told it to generate hundreds of images for "autistic person photograph" He had to add the photograph part because everything came out as anime style white boys. But the results were staggering. 100% of them were depicted as being sad, all but one of them was a skinny white male with freckles. More than half of them had ginger hair.

Biasies like this DO lead to problems. If someone isn't actively thinking of diversity, or there's no human oversight at all (some text based AIs are being set up to write news articles and being attached to image AI to make the covers for said articles.) Then these systems will create a world in which no autistic person can be happy, or a woman, or any other skin tone than white with freckles. And humans who read these articles and see nothing but these examples will subconsciously think "this is what all autistic people look like."

A study on this was done before AI became a thing where the same text of an article was shown but with two photos of the same black man. The article was about him being wrongfully murdered by the police, explicitly stating that it was a mistake. When shown a mug shot nearly half of the readers stated he probably deserved it or was being violent. When show an image of him sad and alone in a cell they often said the officers would be tried for murder. When shown a picture of that man with his family they said he didn't deserve what hapoened to him, but rarely mentioned the officers.

And image AIs are also beginning to scrape images from fellow AIs or even scrape their own output. Causing several offshoots or even the main system to have inbreeding issues, where images with obvious mistakes made by an AI are being taken in as examples of how to do it right.

Text based AIs were also tested on history, math, physics, and literature. Asked questions like "when was America discovered." "What is 7 * 8" "a ball is dropped from 30 feet up, due to the force of gravity how long will it take to hit the ground?" And "name three characters from Romeo and Juliette" respectively.

During the beginning it would get roughly 80-90% correct depending on the subject. Nowadays they get only around 20% even with their best subjects.

These AI models are being used by companies to write news articles that people use to stay informed. Several have been caught obviously using AI because of wild inaccuracies unlike any a human writer has made before. These models ARE unusable for any use case other than sheer novelty. But having to curate the information that goes in might help these systems to stay as accurate as they were when first released, and allow them to become as complex as they are today while still maintaining that.

Maybe training image AIs on curated data will allow it to make more diverse images, and to avoid inbreeding. Maybe it'll just be more of the same. Maybe a human hand controlling what goes in will make it even worse.

We don't know because no one has tried it yet. But we know what they're doing now isn't working.

Personally I don't like the idea of AI the way it's being used either. Even if it worked perfectly. It's being used to replace abused undervalues workers. I've heard it all "now everyone can make art with only some free software." There's already free software you can use to make art, with tools that make it easier then a pen and paper. Or you could just pay an artist that subscription fee you pay the AI company. "Now we can complete our favorite fanfiction or get sequels to our favorite books." No one was stopping you from writing it before. Or paying an artist to make it for you. It'd probably be cheaper then the subscription since hobby writers value themselves so little.

And don't pretend that none of the people making these arguments pay the subscription. Most of them post several AI artworks a day and I know full well that these programs have a limit on how many you can make, and that's assuming they post everything they make, sometimes you have to run the same prompt 9 or 10 times before you get soemthing that looks good. Or you need to keep telling an text based AI to keep going because it doesn't know how to end a story but it cuts off after only a few paragraphs leaving you on yet another cliffhanger. Anyone serious enough to go to bat for AIs have either never used it and don't realize how "not free" it really is, or they are trying to justify the money they spent.

There's one hobby writing site I know of that had to shut down because they went from having roughly 30 submissions a week, to several thousand a day. Each of which they had a curate as if it was a regular book going to the site, with less than ten moderators doing it as a hobby. And they would have to send an email to each per their own policies, allowing the writer to argue that the judgment was wrong or to edit the book and re-submit it. The AI writer would always say their art was perfect and they judge was wrong. The admin of the site was quoted saying "the problem isn't that their work was good, it's that they think it is." And went on to say they could usually tell from the first paragraph. Because most writers use the same cookie cutter opening, and when they don't it's at least coherent. Where AIs don't use any openings at all. It's all cold opening right into the action, nothing but climax, no build up, no payoff. They'd have to change their policies in a way they don't like, and more then triple their moderators, just to possibly keep up. And for what? A site that doesn't even pay the writers, or have competitions, let alone prizes.

They just wanted praise without having to do anything. Often without even proofreading it themselves to make sure it uses the same name for the protagonist from start to finish (which it often didn't.).

I desperately want AI to be as good as they say it is, I really do. But let's not pretend it's useful as anything more than a VERY interesting novelty. At least so far.

Well, this would be interesting...

[luna-rainbow]

Something that your lastest post w Matt Damon made me think about something. I’ve recently rewatched a bunch of Christopher Nolan’s movies, including the dark knight trilogy & it just…knocks me on my butt to look at how well those movies have aged, not just from a visual standpoint, but from a story too. Nolan’s is KNOWN for insisting on practical effects whenever possible (the man had an entire spinning hallway built for inception) & it SHOWS. It’s amazing to look at these movies that were made now over 10 years ago, & they’ve aged better than some of the movies marvel has released in the past 5 years. This isn’t even a dc vs marvel argument to me, but an artist vs corporation. Nolan is extremely serious about the art of filmmaking & you can see the love & devotion & meticulousness that goes into his films (again. The man took 10 years to make inception bc he wanted it to be done right) but with marvel you can just see & feel that the love is gone.

I love Nolan movies (although *clears throat* I wasn’t a huge fan of the Batman trilogy). His movies are constructed to be revisited. You know that quote about how a bad plot twist just makes you go “wtf” and a good plot twist will make everything fall into place? His movies are the latter.

I have to say it’s been a few years since I last watched his movies so my memory of them are a little vague, but there is genuine craft going on. Regardless of whether you like his intentional ambiguity or his style, you can tell he has a strong vision of the story he wants to tell and the message he wants to convey. Whether it’s The Prestige where competition for fame and recognition drive the main characters’ progressive deviation from ethics, or Inception where it asks what defines reality and whether that is important. His movies are also built so that the first time you watch it, the twist is unexpected (but still fits into the characterisation), but on each rewatch you discover more that fits into the puzzle.

The other thing about Nolan is the humanity of his stories. You can call it melodramatic (partly the reason I didn’t love the Batman trilogy) but he has a very classical appreciation of tragedy and pathos, whether that’s the tragedy of someone gifted being dragged to their downfall by their flaws (The Prestige and some of the Batman movies), or the tragedy of being unable to overcome forces beyond one’s control (Interstellar), or the tragedy of the loss of self and identity (Inception).

One of the problems with some of the newer franchises coming out of the MCU is this unwillingness or inability to engage with human tragedy. This isn't about making MCU glum and dreary like the Batman movies, but rather - one of the reasons why Pixar had such wide appeal is because at the heart of every Pixar movie, there is a human tragedy. It might be as small as gaining sentience and a sense of loneliness after being left on a planet for centuries as in Wall-E, or it could be as devastating as losing your lifelong beloved in Up. The rest of the movie is about moving forward and living with that tragedy until happiness comes around again.

Early MCU movies were like that. Each of the MCU heroes are burdened with immense tragedy (yes, even your blarfo), and the tragedy shapes their actions until they can make something heroic and good out of it. New MCU franchises tend to introduce tragedy on the fly, and then make a joke about it to tell you "they've gotten over it".

The problem with that approach is that tragedy is an inseparable part of human experience, and taking that dismissive attitude is how you quickly lose the emotional investment of your audience. Happiness isn't about ignoring the tragedies or the absence of any sadness. It's the idea that we, as humans, have the strength to adapt and carry ourselves through tragedy and find something better on the other side, and that's where the hope and inspiration comes from.

[friendofthecrows]

I posted 13,486 times in 2022

That's 7,462 more posts than 2021!

1,003 posts created (7%)

12,483 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@friendofthecrows

@i-was-once-a-flower

@araccoonthatlikesmurder

@nucg5040

I tagged 3,398 of my posts in 2022

#hal rambles - 690 posts

#goncharov - 148 posts

#funny - 125 posts

#shitpost - 87 posts

#ask - 69 posts

#tumblr - 64 posts

#good things - 60 posts

#art - 58 posts

#unreality - 45 posts

#goncharov (1973) - 42 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#you're definitely very friendly with your friends though. you are unhinged but you are free. go put that dirt in your mouth! go eat that bu

I sent 8 gifts in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

It's so impossible to be annoyed at strangers when you come up with elaborate explanations for whatever it is they're doing.

Two middle-school-aged kids pushing a giant cart of hoodies down the street? Yeah, it could just be a family side hustle. OR they could be fundraising to buy the materials needed for an elaborate scheme to rob an old folks home, which sounds awful, but their specific target is Great Aunt Joan, the most wretched creature to ever live, who bequeathed her entire (sizable) fortune to an already elderly chihuahua named "Lemon" who no one knows whether he's named that because he constantly looks like he's just bitten a lemon (and he does love to bite) or because of his deep, relentless, bitterness.

The guy running down the sidewalk, almost knocking people over? Yeah, he could be late for an important meeting. OR he just got news from a cohort that the chihuahua, Lemon, who they kidnapped as part of a scheme of their own, is ESCAPING and is rushing to try to contain the bastard.

The man yelling and it's obnoxious but he's too far away to tell what he's saying? He could be shouting some pitch about stuff he's selling. OR lemon's tiny, hungry jaws have latched onto the front of his pants and won't let go. The man is in a panic. He's yelling to his friend at the hardware store to get the vise grips. And industrial-strength disinfectant.

823 notes - Posted October 31, 2022

#4

Listen, if this was the latest shipping discourse or whatever I wouldn't care and I wouldn't get involved.

But this is about censorship in an archive.

I am extremely passionate about the preservation of information.

Even from a basic ethical standpoint, if you create an archive dedicated to preserving fanworks, you cannot simply turn around and start deleting "problematic" works from said archive.

3,618 notes - Posted August 15, 2022

#3

If this gets 20,000 notes in the next 2 weeks I'll make a Goncharov remake.

Edit: I can see some people working very hard for this to reach 20k! That makes me so happy, although time is meant to be up. So I'm giving it 10 more days (now the goal would be Dec 14) to reach 10k. I really want to make this movie, but I need to know there'll be support! We're already working on it (see pinned post for details) so I don't exactly want to call it off haha. Let's get it to 10k at least ❤️

10,544 notes - Posted November 21, 2022

#2

I don't care if people "aren't motivated to produce as much" we don't NEED to produce as much as we do we are OVERPRODUCING and it's killing the planet. Businesses shouldn't NEED to constantly have higher profits than last year to please stakeholders. Making enough should be enough. And actually, I think people will still want to work to have nice things or even just to work and contribute. That's actually a pretty fundamental human drive.

10,671 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I compiled this a while ago but I was just looking for references and found the file so...

Best places to find reference photos:

Body types, poses, and anatomy:

http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en

https://www.posemaniacs.com/

https://quickposes.com/en

https://www.characterdesigns.com/#home-section

https://www.adorkastock.com/sketch/

https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/

https://www.proko.com/browse/tools?af=242

Giant anatomy reference tutorials Pinterest board:

https://www.pinterest.com/deedee1232/body-reference/

General:

https://unsplash.com/

https://pixabay.com/

https://www.pexels.com/

https://stocksnap.io/

https://www.freeimages.com/

https://kaboompics.com/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

https://morguefile.com/

https://www.flickr.com/

https://www.dreamstime.com/

https://pmp-art.com/

https://www.freepik.com/

https://photobash.co/

https://picjumbo.com/

https://burst.shopify.com/

https://magdeleine.co/

https://wordpress.org/openverse/

See the full post

11,482 notes - Posted October 31, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sooibian]

So Let's Runaway - Prologue

photocreds @tuanzie​

Pairing: Kyungsoo x Fem!Reader ft. bff!Chanyeol

Genre / Themes: Fluff, mild angst, travel AU, road trip through Spain, travel buddies Chansoo!

Warnings: Themes of grief / loss, heartache, toxic relationships, strong language, i guess..

Description: An unlikely group of three comes together for the journey of a lifetime.

A/N: This fic is part of @supermwritersnet​ “Around the world in 31 days event”. Inspired by the Hindi movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Uploading prematurely so as to stop obsessing over the prologue and get cracking on the travelogue which requires a tonne of research. Let me know if you’d like a tag on the upcoming chapter(s) due for upload on 19th July 2021.

Word Count: 3k *unedited*

____________________________

Doh Kyungsoo had dragged his feet up the endless flight of stairs seeking solitude...not drama.

A stranger, just one misstep away from a fatal fall, was the last thing he’d expected to find on the rooftop of Seoul’s Park Hyatt at three in the morning. He slipped the rooftop access key card (that he’d borrowed from the security guard in exchange for a 50,000 won bill) in the back pocket of his trousers while simultaneously dwelling on the depths of the rot of corruption. He had half a mind to turn away and forget that he’d just seen someone contemplating their existence on the ledge of a highrise but there was something about you that rooted him to the spot. Dressed in fine evening wear, you’d stretched your arms out like wings as you looked up at the vast expanse of midnight blue, the wind kissing your wild, waist length hair. From his standpoint, you looked oddly at peace.

Kyungsoo had never been an idealist or a victim of the white knight syndrome. He wasn’t one to delve into the ethical and philosophical conundrums for most things in life because to him it was all just a waste of time. Seeing you on the parapet filled him with neither sympathy nor worry. It was your life after all and with it you could do whatever you deemed fit as long as you weren’t inconveniencing others. Scratch that.

As long as you weren’t inconveniencing him.

But right now, unbeknownst to you, you were inconveniencing Seoul’s hottest financial broker, Doh Kyungsoo.

He wasn’t invisible to the hotel’s security cameras and being labelled suspect in an abetment to suicide investigation wasn't exactly what he was looking for after the day he’d had. Albeit inebriated and heavy-eyed, he could effectively calculate the logistics involved in pulling you off the ledge with the cacophony of the omnipresent Seoul traffic drowning out the sound of his footsteps.

Bracing himself for superficial bruises from the impact of falling to the right side of the precipice with the weight of an adult human pressing down on his 173 cm high frame, he took off his custom tailored blazer (that had been flown in from Vietnam especially for that evening) and folded it in half, making sure that the lapels touched. Some habits are hard to shake. He put the blazer on the ground as a makeshift floorcloth for the rest of his belongings. With his back facing you, he allowed himself a moment's peace as he loosened his tie, languidly rolled the sleeves of his pristine white dress shirt up to his elbows, freed himself off the Rolex Cellini on his left wrist, his Bottega Veneta fine leather wallet, and the cursed Tiffany Blue Box that he simply couldn’t bear to look at anymore and neatly placed them all on the blazer.

Letting out a deep exhale, he muttered curses under his breath before turning to your silhouette only to find it...gone.

Kyungsoo’s eyes narrowed and then immediately grew into large circles as he grappled with the shocking turn of events. An inexplicable heaviness bloomed in his chest and he felt sick to the stomach which, in a state of denial, he chalked up to the dubious mixture of spirits he’d downed not too long ago.

Before he could find his bearings and figure out what to do next, a light tap on his shoulder made him jump. His jaw went slack and his heart threatened to leap out of his chest to find you casually smiling at him. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to climb onto the very same ledge and scream into the void but he simply stood there, mouth agape, wanting to say a million things but he could hardly muster a peep.

Reading the confusion painted across his sharp, well defined features, you uttered an unsure, “Hi?”

“I thought you’d jumped,” he whispered, head tilted to the side, his compelling, bloodshot eyes locked with yours.

“Says someone who’s unusually jumpy,” you jested, but your expression immediately turned solemn when you caught the tremble in his right hand. “Are you on something?”

There came about a sudden shift in his aura. Hands on hips, he deadpanned, “Why? Are you with the cops?”

“No, don’t worry,” you let out a soft chuckle and he started scrambling for his things, “How long have you been standing here?”

Hastily stuffing everything into the pocket of his well fitted trousers, he muttered something along the lines of ‘Chaos. Just chaos everywhere!’

Leaning into his frame, you quipped, “What’s that?”

Alarmed and goggle-eyed, he snapped, “Nevermind,” and turned towards the exit.

“Hey! You seem to have forgotten something!” You called out after him upon finding his blazer on the ground, the silken sheen of it reflecting a myriad of citylights.

No answer.

“I wasn’t going to jump!” You yodelled childishly but the man was long gone.

.

.

.

Seven Hours Earlier

“Natasha -” Kyungsoo huffed.

The feather light Tiffany 1873 Blue Box in his left hand had suddenly started to feel like a giant boulder weighing down on his entire being. The sparkle of the uncut diamond reflected in his misty eyes as her uncharacteristically stoic silence left him struggling for words. He searched Natasha’s face for a hint of mischief...he so desperately wished for her to crack a sly smile and pull him in for a kiss and whisper ‘Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!’ against his lips like they do in the movies, that he’d almost started to imagine it. It had to have been some sort of an ugly prank.

What reason does she have to turn me down? he wondered.

Kyungsoo breached the uncomfortable spell of silence with a desperate plea, “Say something!” the throbbing in his head intensifying by the second.

Did these three years mean nothing to you? What did I do wrong? Do you hate the ring? Is this not the kind of proposal you wished for? Is it because I left the bathroom lights on all night? Or is it because I forgot to wish your mother on her birthday? A flurry of questions spawned in Kyungsoo’s mind only to die at the tip of his tongue.

“I’m sorry, Kyungsoo, but I can’t do this. I just -” Natasha spoke finally. Gingerly shifting the weight of the box onto the ebony restaurant table, she slammed it shut as if the ring had been eyeing her lecherously.

Meeting Kyungsoo’s gaze almost defiantly, she declared, “Kyungsoo, I don’t think that I could be the kind of wife that would make you happy and I don’t think you could make me happy either.”

.

.

.

Two Weeks Later

Setting your eyes on that distinct pair of Dumbo ears, you excitedly weaved through the peak hour coffee shop crowd with an Iced Americano held firmly in one hand. Slamming the beverage down on the table, you engulfed his giant frame in a back hug and squealed, “Park Chanyeol!”

His wide eyes turned into even bigger brown circles and his mouth rounded into an ‘o’ in surprise. Grinning, he got off the uncomfortably tiny coffee shop chair and wordlessly pulled you in for what was famously known in Uni as a ‘Classic Chanyeol Hug’. You didn’t know how much you missed it until you felt your worries immediately dissipate into nothingness.

He hugged you a little tighter the moment you started to pull away before taking your hands in his and stooping down to your eye level. “Shifu, my love! You’re back in Seoul?!” Chanyeol exclaimed with all the love in the world sparking in the depths of his dark eyes.

Even after all this time, it felt as if nothing had changed….you’d suddenly been whizzed into a not-so-distant ‘Gothic architecture and coffee shops’ past in which a cotton candy haired boy, dressed in a pair of freshly ironed beige chinos and a plain white tee, smiles his sweetest smile simply at the sight of you. Chanyeol always felt like home. Funnily enough, even more so at the moment.

Giving him a good natured smile, you nodded in response, albeit cringing a little on the inside. Having been President of the martial arts club back in the days, you got stuck with an ingenious moniker “Shifu” which you clearly couldn’t shake off even after half a decade since graduation. You did a double take when your gaze veered to acknowledge the person seated opposite Chanyeol who, dressed in an ivory business suit, almost blended into the background. Just the way you could spot Chanyeol’s ears from a million miles away, you could recognize those eyes anywhere and right now they were shooting daggers at you.

“OH! Hi!”

His response to your greeting was a curt nod accompanying a vague hand movement, something between a hi and a failed facepalm.

At this Chanyeol guffawed, “You two know each other?”, his keen gaze rapidly flitting between the two of you.

“Yes -”

“No -”

While gesturing you to take a seat at their table, Chanyeol slumped into his chair and pursued the conversation in a voice laced with amusement, “So which is it?”

You gave your head a little shake, signalling Chanyeol to drop the topic since his friend had made his apprehension quite evident with an unambiguous “No” when asked if he knew you. Which...wasn’t entirely untrue. Even though Chanyeol now seemed to be on the same page as you, for good measure, you deflected his question with a polite, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Absolutely not!” Chanyeol assured, deftly steering the conversation back to you, “We could actually use your advice on something but first, Shifu, look at you! How long has it been? Five years?”

“Five years!”

“Wahhh! What brings you back to Seoul?”

With a wistful smile, you answered, “Appa passed away in April...”

“Oh, I’m- I’m so sorry -” stuttered Chanyeol, immediately placing his hand on your arm and giving it a light squeeze. From the corner of your eye you noticed Chanyeol’s friend chewing on his bottom lip and listening to this exchange with rapt attention.

“No, no, it’s erm...we’re doing okay now, I guess-”

It had been two and a half months but every time you talked about it, a black hole burgeoned right in the middle of your chest, sucking you within itself and rendering you breathless. You still hadn’t picked up the art of condoling the “condoler”. What were you even supposed to say to the faultless “I’m sorry”? Who came up with condolence jargon, anyway?

“I’m sorry we haven’t been in touch - ”

“Oh, please. You know how it is after Uni, isn’t it,” you turned to Chanyeol’s friend to make him feel a little less left out, “what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” he answered in a clipped tone while mindlessly scrolling through his phone.

“Yah!” Chanyeol chastised him with a deathly glare before continuing with an impish smile, “He’s Doh Kyungsoo.”

“Ah! So he’s Doh Kyungsoo! I’ve heard a great deal about you!” Your enthusiasm invoked a quick cursory smile from him. Doh Kyungsoo had apparently made it his life’s mission to make this unexpected rendezvous as icky as possible, leaving you to wonder if Chanyeol had ever discussed your brief relationship with him. Ex-girlfriend meets best friend? Not an ideal scenario in any part of the world.

Chanyeol and you had gone out for a couple of weeks towards the end of freshman year until you both realized that you were much better off as friends. Despite being joined at the hip in Uni, the two of you had gone your separate ways after post-grad. While he returned to Seoul to join the family business, you’d stayed back in Milan to explore job opportunities. Messages and phone calls became few and far between and it wasn’t long before both of you had completely lost touch with each other.

And it wasn’t until you met him again that you realized how desperately you needed a friend considering everything that had been going on in your life. You selfishly wished for Kyungsoo to leave you two to catch up on all these years spent apart but clearly that was a lot to ask considering how tacitly territorial he seemed to be getting about Chanyeol.

“So what was it that you wanted to talk about?” you asked in another feeble attempt to water down the rancour.

Chanyeol’s features flared into a bashful smile but the moment he opened his mouth to speak, Kyungsoo held a hand up to him and insisted, “Allow me to spare you the blushes,” before starting to explain the situation in an uncharacteristically eager tone, “This idiot is getting married in three months -”

Boisterously thumping Chanyeol’s back, you showered him with congratulations which he accepted with a shy ‘thank you.’

Kyungsoo continued, “- and we have a road trip planned for next month. As per the pact -”

Head tilted to the side, you shot, “What pact?”

“Some stupid pact that I have no memory of - ”

“That you conveniently have no memory of!” interrupted a salty Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo grimaced. Rubbing the corner of his eye, he continued with a heavy sigh, “It was supposed to be the three of us...Chanyeol, me, and our school friend Yixing.”

“Oh, okay?”

“So Yixing fell off a tractor and broke his back -”

“Oh, my gosh!” You exclaimed.

Kyungsoo’s mouth fell open. “I wasn’t there but I’d bet my ass that’s exactly what he said at the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Wait, wait, slow down, why- how- a tractor?”

“He quit his CEO position to become a full time….farmer,” deadpanned Kyungsoo as if it was the stupidest thing Yixing could’ve done which rubbed you up the wrong way and coloured your otherwise neutral expression.

“He basically did what Kyungsoo doesn’t have the balls to do,” quipped Chanyeol, lips stretched into a gremlin-like grin. Kyungsoo returned his jibe with a strike to his arm causing him to let out a dramatic wail thus inviting the attention of everyone around you.

But none of it deterred Kyungsoo. He continued nonchalantly as if presenting a well crafted business proposal, “Since one of us is unavailable it only makes sense to postpone the trip and that’s exactly what I’ve been asking Chanyeol to do but he just won’t listen.”

“You’re getting married in three months and you’re taking this road trip next month. Will you be left with enough time for wedding planning?” you reasoned with Chanyeol, well aware of the kind of family he belonged to and the kind of weddings these families planned.

“Mr. Park here was way too eager,” Kyungsoo butted in.

“Shut up, Kyungsoo!”

“Wahhh you must really love her ~ ,” you sang, moon-eyed.

“Clearly. He couldn’t even wait for the rest of us to finish singing the birthday song for his Eomma.”

“What?”

“Yeah! He popped the question to Aera right in the middle of it.”

“WHAT!”

“That’s a story for another day,” replied Chanyeol in an atypically calm tone, “but you’re right, Shifu, it’s not enough time and that’s why I’ve been asking this idiot to just -”

“All reservations are for three. It logistically makes more sense to reschedule,” declared Kyungsoo with a hint of finality in his tone.

It didn’t. It definitely didn’t make more sense to reschedule but as gullible as Chanyeol was, he said nothing to counter Kyungsoo’s illogical argument.

“Are you sure your friend Yixing would be okay with it, Yeollie? I’m sure you can wait for him to get better and -”

Firmly setting his jaw, Chanyeol looked you square in the eyes and stated, “It's now or never.”

Kyungsoo stole a glance at you and cleared his throat, hesitance betraying his voice when he spoke again, “Chanyeollah, you’re only getting married stop talking like you’re terminally ill.”

Chanyeol's expression softened to convey an implicit plea causing you to tweak your suggestion, “The two of you can still go? I’m sure Yixing won’t mind.”

But Chanyeol hit you with an unexpected proposal. He asked, “Do you want to come?”, in a tone that was way too serious for a road trip.

“What? No!”

“Why not? You’re here and - “

“- and Yixing’s not,” interrupted Kyungsoo.

Ignoring the sarcasm in Kyungsoo’s voice, you turned Chanyeol down gently, “No, Yeol, it’s just- it doesn’t make sense, bub.”

“Why not? We leave in a month and that’s plenty of time to get all your travel docs in order -”

“Travel docs? You mean….insurance?” You asked hesitantly.

“Yeah! Insurance...you won’t need a visa, though.”

“Visa? Yeah, obviously I won’t be needing a visa. Why would I need a visa for a road trip?”

Chanyeol slapped his forehead and wondered aloud, “Oh, shoot! We didn’t tell her, did we?”

Kyungsoo gave his head a little shake, prompting you to ask, “Tell me what?”

“It’s a road trip through uhhh northeastern Spain -”

Chanyeol’s elaborate account of the itinerary was drowned in the whirlpool of emotions that erupted within you at the mention of the country. That part of your life you had locked away in the deepest, darkest corners of your consciousness now stared you straight in the eyes, forcing you to acknowledge a reality far too jarring for your fragile state of mind. You took a sip of your long forgotten beverage to centre yourself but it didn’t take a genius to know that something was up.

Placing a hand on your head, he asked softly, “What is it, Shifu? I understand if you can’t leave Eomma alone at this point...”

“It’s not Eomma,” you took another sip of the drink to fight the lump in your throat, “Eomma is - Eomma is in Bucheon, visiting her sister. For I don’t know how long but...long.”

“Is it work?” contributed Kyungsoo.

“I quit my job,” you answered and he looked at you as if you, a total stranger, had just asked him his body count.

Chanyeol took your hand in his and reiterated, “Come, then? You need this.”

Your gaze bounced between the two men who wore the exact same expression in expectation of two entirely different answers. And whatever you chose to say next, you were sure to disappoint one of them.

Eyes unfocussed, a deafening ringing echoing in your ears, you declared softly, “I need this,” with a million unpleasant scenarios running through your head, making you sick to the stomach.

Chanyeol pulled you in for a bear hug. Kyungsoo rolled his eyes and let out a deep, disappointed sigh.