#but that sure doesn't mean my writing ir art will be good

[elgaladwen]

Fictober 2024 - Day 5-6

Prompts: "It's a new day, let's go!" & "I'm not giving up."

Fandom: The Lord of The Rings Online (OCs)

Warnings: N/A

The morning was bright and brimming with potential as a tawny lynx trotted up a hillock, two elves not fair behind, their voices low on the wind as they conversed about the lands around them, excited for a new day of exploration and adventure.

“Ah, pity we broke our fast already,” Nimardril, the much shorter of the two elves, was saying as they reached the top of the small rise. “Wouldn't this be a lovely place for a picnic?”

Other small hills, all adorned with wildflowers and the occasional boulder, dotted the landscape around them, eventually rising to loftier heights as they approached the nearby mountains, before eventually becoming lost in the mist that had yet to burn away.

“We may stop whenever we wish, not just to eat.” The taller of the two elves, Daerhovan, chuckled. “Or did the ways of the pariain rub off on you during your last visit to the Shire?”

Nimardril snorted as she did indeed stop, drawing in a deep lungful of the clean air while she looked about, almost jumping as her gaze fell to Verya the lynx, who was now right in front of her, staring up at her expectantly.

“You know I can't give you jerky so much!” She uttered to the feline, who apparently had decided it was a good time for a picnic too. “I promised Daerhovan!” It was hard to resist the large, unblinking eyes, though, and she felt her resolve start to falter, before Daerhovan stepped up to her side.

“You would not wish for your hunting skills to grow slack, mellon. It is the same for Verya, since we cannot always be here to feed her.” He looked from one of his companions to the other, tone stern, but his pale green eyes bore nothing but kindness.

Reluctantly, Nimardril drew her hand away from the pocket where she kept the strips of dried, cured venison, shooting an apologetic look to Verya, who let out a puff of breath, and turned away to stalk through the tall grass.

“That is wise of course.” Conceded Nimardril. “But our whole friendship is built upon jerky. What if she doesn't like me anymore?” She was mostly joking, yet the smallest of worries did exist.

“I'm sure you two will be just fine bonding over the jerky you still slip her when you think I do not see.” Daerhovan huffed, and Nimardril could not help but laugh.

“Ah, so she and I need to work on our stealth, I understand!” She replied cheekily, before the pair fell into companionable silence.

Not long after they'd started walking again, Verya having rejoined them with a limp hare clutched in her maw, they spotted an opening into one of the larger hills, the dark space ringed with rock.

“Could this be a barrow?” Nimardril wondered aloud as they moved to investigate. Not hearing or sensing any immediate danger, and with both elves loving to explore ruins, they were soon inside with crudely fashioned torches, venturing down a steeply sloping path.

They'd gone deep enough for the air around them to be quite cold and damp by the time the passage opened into a round chamber, the far end barely visible in the warm, flickering glow of their torches. There didn't seem to be any other door leading out, nor were there bodies or anywhere obvious that any might have rested, had this place once be used for burial. Instead, there were metal pipes and contraptions on the wall, strange to Nimardril's eyes, and long rusted, looking nearly the same color as the stone behind them. She moved to examine an iron wheel, testing it out, and with little surprise, finding it stuck fast. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Daerhovan crouching atop a stone carving in the floor, mostly worn away by age, but soon enough she was absorbed in the wheel again, pulling out her most slender stiletto, and using it to push away and scrape some of the accumulated rust from the spot the wheel met the wall. More swiftly than she would have guessed, Nimardril got the wheel moving again, and gave a soft shout of triumph as she turned it with all her might, half expecting water or steam to appear somewhere in the room, but though she couldn't hear much over the harsh grinding of stone and metal, all she did catch when she stopped again, was a faint click to her side. “Sorry, all that noise for nothing, I guess!” She uttered cheerfully as she turned toward Daerhovan- Only to see that he was no longer there.

Frowning, Nimardril held her torch higher, peering around the room. Had he slipped away in that short time without telling her? But no, there was Verya, pawing at the worn stone carving in the ground, and as she bent to examine it more closely, she could see gouges etched into it, as if it had slid under the stone next to it countless times. Icy fingers of dread seeped into her heart, making her throat tight with worry. “Daer… Daerhovan?” She called, softly at first, then again loudly, her voice echoing back to her ears in mockery, but with no answer from the other elf. “He's down there, isn't he?” She uttered to Verya, who slowly blinked back at her in the way Nimardril took as affirmation.

Scrambling back to the wheel, she wrenched on it again, first one way, then the other, trying to do anything that might open the trapdoor once more, but to her utter horror, the corroded iron snapped off in her hands, and she blinked down at the bent shape before tossing it away with a cry of rage.

Panic began to cloud her thoughts. Had she just caused her friend's death? Was he lying somewhere in pain? Were there things down there, deep in the earth, that might cause him harm? Cursing, she forced herself to calm, deep breaths of damp air filling her lungs once again, as she uttered to Verya, “Alright. I will find another way down. There are many strange spots in here that we've not examined.”

The feline followed her, keeping within the circle of the torch’s glow, and Nimardril was glad for the company, even as she wondered if Verya blamed her as she blamed herself, for what had happened to Daerhovan.

Minutes passed, each feeling like an age to her, before Nimardril noticed a rotting wooden hatch in the ground, which disintegrated further as she dug her fingernails in to yank it up, revealing a rusted iron ladder. Both she and the large cat peered down into the darkness as hope began to rekindle deep within her. Surely this had to lead to where he'd fallen, since it wasn't too far away!

Raising her gaze again, she met Verya’s eyes, the slitted pupils wide in the dim light. “I don't think you can climb down there with me, so will you go back outside?” In answer, the lynx sat back upon her hind legs, not having to speak to signal she was staying put. Smiling softly, Nimardril nodded. “Ah, I understand. I do not wish to leave him either, but will you go if you sense danger at least?”

When the feline made no answer, Nimardril went on, her tone determined as she vowed, “I will not give up until I've brought him out. I promise.”

Verya gave her slow, deliberate, affimatory blink again, giving Nimardril the impression that she thought her rather dense, but now wasn't the time to dwell upon that. As quick as she was able, she fashioned and lit another crude torch, stabbing it into the ground near the hole, before putting out and stowing her own so that she could use both hands to climb.

“Alright. Well. I'll see you soon!” With that, Nimardril began to descend the old ladder with as light of steps as she could muster. Verya's face and the torchlight above becoming more and more distant when she did look up, despair for Daerhovan warring with the hope in her heart.

Notes: Apologies for the cliffhanger and the dryness here. I meant to also include today's prompt, but I decided to save the rest of the story for later, and other prompts. (And perhaps today's prompt still too!)

I'd blame the horrible writing on me sneaking this in between highly technical meetings today, but I find my writing way too dry and dull even when that isn't the case. This story feels worse than usual though, so I'm sorry to anyone who actually read this. Hopefully the continuation will be better!

Verya and Daerhovan belong to @loremastering on here, so I am just borrowing them, and of course anything I have them do is my own interpretation of the characters and not necessarily canon.

[boopidyboopidyboop]

Howdy!

I recently saw a reply you made in a post about feeding unfinished fic to large language models like ChatGPT. In there, you said that free-to-use AIs are "free to use because the company who makes them is actively profiting and taking aspects like phrasing, style, etc." I've heard of variants of this idea but could never figure out where it came from. Can you tell me more about the origin of that?

Well I'll start off by saying I'm not an expert in the field, and that AI technology is actually relatively "new" in terms of very recent rapid developments and it's in this stage where the future is generally uncertain. However, as early as now, people are already using AI for commercial works. There was a movie announced where all backgrounds were made with an AI, and a manga that was made near entirely with AI. The rhythm game Cytus has recently drawn ire from fans and even its own creators and designers for using AI generated art instead of the very stylistic art it used to use. The moral and economical issue here would lie in that they still charge the same amount for the game and it's already a game that is criticized by some for its high price point compared to other rhythm games. So not only are they earning more, in a way are putting less effort into the game. Those who purchase it would essentially be paying more for less and the money would not be going to the artists because their styles will have been copied but they themselves wouldn't be credited or paid.

Now for a more direct example, I've also heard reports that publishing houses are being spammed with hundreds of purely AI generated work. This of course directly negatively affects writers trying to get published if only by uhhh what's the word,,,, adding a bunch to the pool (sorry English is my third language).

I myself do writing for companies overseas by editing and writing the info on their websites. As someone from a third world country, this contributes to a good chunk of my income as the local economy is not great. Due to the recent popularity of bots like chat GPT, the market had dropped by a LOT and while at first it was my primary source of income, its not really sustainable anymore.

Now these examples don't all use language based examples but they do show that the creation of AI art forms so far is mostly just harming artists and from the examples such as Cytus and just,, life in general I suppose, as "young" as commercial AI is, we can likely assume that corporations don't intend on making their AI for purely wholistic reasons. The art AI midjourney was even found using stolen art after saying that they don't. AI writing, I believe, is going to be more finicky than AI art and as such, I expect theyd want to do a lot more fine tuning before using it to write whole textbooks while art bots are already being used on book covers and movies, only because you don't need to fact check art.

Sure people can see something is wrong, but with the sheer amount if it used, it's rapidly adapting to fix the anatomical issues in its art. Written work I think would need to be double checked a lot and by a human before they release one making bold claims such as "You can't buy food but you can buy paint thinner from home depot instead" (an actual AI result generated by Quora when I was trying to find a place to eat that Google tool as the top rated answer on the website and proudly presented to me). But that doesn't mean it won't eventually go as far as to take someone's job entirely. It's already starting to take mine.

For a clear cut example, sorry to say I can't name one myself, but you can look at the way AI is already being used this early on and how it's already being used to substitute and replace some artists and writers and how apparently even fanfiction writers who do their work out of love, and look just a few years in the future based on the patterns that have been happening and the way corporations will always value profits over the heart of what they make, and for most the picture of what will happen is a very grim one for art.

The "Origin" of it differs from person to person. Some artists have seen their art put into AIs and their styles mimicked (art which will be very difficult to claim the person who generated it shouldn't be allowed to use for commercial purposes). Some writers who write more boring industry stuff that is very easy to mimic are getting their jobs taken away from them. Others without firsthand experience can only look at examples or patterns and infer a probable and large scale outcome similar to that of Cytus. All in all, to me the backlash and opinion that AI is copying peoples works is more of a social movement with no clear cut origin but a lot of evidence that points towards AI generated writing and imagery being a bastardization of the work of hundreds even if it's just a lot harder to see when it comes to a non visual form of art like writing.

Hmm I think if you want a clearer answer or example, the best personal one I can give you is an article I edited which was so poorly written I sent it back and they had a different writer do it. When it got back to me it was better, but extremely familiar. It repeated phrases from the OG article and had the same problems I had noted (strange wording, odd vocabulary, etc) so I asked them if they had wrote it. Apparently they just put it into chat GPT and told the bot to rewrite it without changing too much, so the bot mimicked phrases and words but changed the flow by adding conjunctions or paraphrasing, but to me, who has read the first persons work several hundred times, I still recognized the style, if I can call it that. The person profiting wasn't Chat GPT, but if the state of AI art is anything to go by, in a few years it could very well be.

(sorry about the long reply and if anything is messy or hard to understand. I am not an organized thinker.)

[saltymongoose]

OK so sorry for sending so much art but I think it's Crackpot time I like to think that at first Crackpot would be nice and friendly to player because 1) to not get punished and 2) to piss off Jeb since he seems to like them SOOO much. But the player is so genuinely nice and interested in him, he starts enjoying their presence (also the warmth which is always a plus). Also it helps he's on Phobos' good side (sorta) so he gets more chances to talk to them then Jeb. Also with the whole "Scrunkly" thing, Player might accidentally call him that which leaves his very confused, but they said it in a positive tone so he just gives a "thanks?" ALSO WITH THE GEN Z JEB ASK IMAGINE PLAYER CALLING CRACKPOT ALL THESE THINGS STARTS MAKING JEB JEALOUS AND MAD BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY MEAN,,, and going way back to the "Player fanclub" thing,,, Crackpot finds out and is like "OH MY GOODNESS!! THIS IS SO DISGUSTING!!! IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME EACH OF ALL THE MERCH AND ACCESS TO THE WRITING I'M TELLING PHOBOS" because he's just like that.

!Okay, first of all, omg they look so cute in this art! I don't know how you do it with these expressions, but they're perfect every time. I love it, thank you lol. <3333

Secondly, with Crackpot specifically, I actually think this is very likely. Crackpot (and everyone else in the Nexus) knows what happens when anyone speaks ill of you or does anything close to hostility when in your presence. At first, acting nice is a way for him to avoid any ire from the Director. But he'd also be blind if he didn't notice Christoff's odd fondness for you and considering Crackpot's rivalry with him, I can totally see him trying to get in your good graces just to piss him off lol.

(More under the cut because omg this response is long.)

The error on his part is that he didn't realize how nice you actually are. It's probably just because he expected you to be like everybody else in Nevada (just because Phobos and Jeb liked you didn't mean you weren't manipulative or out for yourself, like how most people associated with the Nexus were). But you're so genuinely kind? You ask him how he is, and offer to bring him coffee or treats from the break room (which you requested to be there for the workers to begin with). You compliment his mask and ask in-depth questions about his work. You never ridicule him, and you listen intently whenever he explains something. Even weirder, you don't ask for anything in return or use the information he hesitantly gives you for any selfish reason.

It's odd but very refreshing for him. He starts to enjoy being around you and looking forward to your discussions (which happen quite often, even if his constant competition with Jeb can get a bit annoying). Your status and warmth are another bonus, as is the fact that he can actually hang out with you more often (a plus of being one of Phobos' favored scientists).

Jeb, of course, is less than pleased with your sudden closeness with Crackpot. For one, Crackpot is a moron. Book smart, but almost completely lacking in common sense (case in point, Plan Zed). He's egotistical, and a complete suck-up to Phobos. He doesn't see why you'd waste your time around him. Sure, he's nice to you (which is just grating), but Jeb doesn't understand why you'd bother with him - not when you have himself or Hofnarr to be around. It's even worse when you call him affectionate names from your world.

Crackpot has no clue what you mean when you say he's a "scrunkly scrimblo" or a "blorbo" but you say it with the most adoring tone that he can't help but accept it. Jeb knows what it means though (at least in the Gen Z Player version lmao) and he's a little ticked off at it, to say the least. He just gives the scientist the most scathing glare from across the room whenever he hears you say those words. However, this just incentivizes Crackpot to lean more into being your "scrunkly" or whatever. Like when Phobos is openly berating Jeb, Crackpot just says something like "This is why you're not the Player's Spoingle, and I am" just because it makes Jeb more annoyed. (Will he get punched for it? Yes. Maybe.)

(Although if he does it while Phobos is there, he'll have to explain wtf those terms actually mean; the Director is not going to allow anyone else to be anything special to you if he can't hold that position himself.)

Excellent point with the fanclub stuff too. I think that Crackpot would probably notice the club stuff going on passively before he actually gets to know you, so he wouldn't care about it that much at first. But he only gets to know its true extent when he actually searches for more stuff about it (and ends up walking into the room where they've set up all their "stores" for stuff related to you, and sees the boards where people talk about their fanfics).

Is he going to buy anything? No. But what he is going to do is threaten them just to get some of it lol. He'll talk down to the Agents while also claiming specific items for himself, speaking of how disgusting and volatile this is while making them write down what sites they use for the writing. They just give each other looks before cooperating, because it's not like Crackpot's being slick with what he's doing. He might even demand to be given some power over the fanclub (clubs have presidents and such, right?) so the agents in it just decide to secretly make up a role so he doesn't have that much influence over it. Unbeknownst to him, of course.

I can also see him flaunting his merch of you in front of Jebus, again, just to piss him off. Although knowing Jeb, he'd probably fire back with something about how your close relationship cannot be defined by mere things and materialism, so that might be another argument that'll happen lmao.

[rotzaprachim]

i realised i probably will never get here in in painter’s light so enjoy this my favorite fandom crossover/easter egg i’ve ever written:

(It’s from an au where declan stayed with his mother ergo canon + dialect differences)

6. Washington DC 

Age twenty, he gets a business call from a woman who has a statue to sell. Normally he doesn’t take these kinds of calls anymore, the ones that are meant to go straight to his mother’s number, but this woman sounds desperate in the way that has him thinking it’s better if he handles it than one of his mother’s hands in the city, so he buys two Amtrack tickets, and north he goes. Matthew gets sick after eating a microwaveable, foil-wrapped train burger from the snack car.  

He installs Matthew in the Met while he meets his contact. An old school deli, one of the kind that’s apparently disappearing fast, an endangered species, and she’s probably a local so it’ll be annoying or pretentious anyway, but she refused any of his options for fancier, more expensive wine-and-dine locations anyway so deli it is. He gets a lox bagel and a coffee and two black-and-whites in a bag to split with Matthew later while he sizes her up. She keeps looking at her hands but she’s calm with the person she called in from Boudicca, has something steely about her, like she’s dealt with bigger fish before and isn’t scared. There’s something about her that’s like him, he knows, thought they don’t say the magic word at all. He thinks she’s maybe thirty. 

“In the interest of not beating around the bush further, as it’s clear that’s what neither of us is here to do, let’s move on to the real action item.” 

“I have a statue to sell.” 

She shows him photos. The camera resolution isn’t quite what he needs to appraise it seriously, but he can see how shockingly life-like it is already. 

“How much d’you want for it?” 

“Fifty thousand.” 

He almost coughs up his coffee. 

“You haven’t been playing this game for long.” 

She doesn't’ say anything. 

“Fifty thousand, take it or leave it.” 

“What’s the material?” 

“Marble.” 

He considers. If it’s good up close he could probably resell it for four or five times that to some collector interested in neo-hellenic stuff. Not many people making original marble statuary these days compared to the market of the super-rich looking for shit to decorate their back gardens. 

“Can you show me?” 

Declan calls Matthew to tell him to go back to the hotel and get takeaway without him and follows the woman uptown on the bus. They get off in Spanish Harlem, a world away from the shiny robot skyscrapers downtown. She lives on the fourth floor of her building, in a narrow apartment somewhat rank with the smell of body odour and spilled beer, although she throws the windows open and has loads of potted plants about, like she’s trying very hard to get rid of the smell. 

“There.” 

The sculpture is unmissable. Life size and astonishingly, terribly ugly. Truly incredible in it’s attention to awful detail. A middle aged, balding, short man with a fan of cards in one hand and a beer swinging from the other, positioned exactly as if he’s just got up from sitting. Mouth opened, soundlessly screaming his head off. Declan sees it and flinches without even meaning too. His mother’s not had many men, but she had a few, when she was younger. But it’s just a statue. Just a statue. 

Still one of the weirdest goddamn things he’s ever fucking seen, and that’s saying something. 

Authentic marble though. 

“Formal education? Apprenticed to someone?” 

“Take it or leave it. Fifty thousand.” 

No more information. He knows exactly why she called him. He’s the kind of man you call when you don’t have information about the life-sized sculpture of a man in your sitting room and no information to give about how you made it, in the same year you report your husband missing to the police. When to the untrained eye, the two look identical. He’s that kind of man. 

He gets her three million USD for it. 

It’s all through an official channel so it’s harder to launder, get it looking legal. A million upfront, the rest leaked in increments over the next ten years. All shiny, all legal, all IRS-signed off. He personally takes out fifty thousand and puts it in a manila  envelope for when he meets her a few blocks off central station, an hour before his train’s scheduled to leave. He gives her the envelope. She gives him a white paper bag containing only blue sweets. It looks like a proper pick-n-mix haul, something he didn’t even think the States had. Whoppers, sour strings, taffy, gum, gummy sharks. He eats a sweet and sour wind-up before being able to stop himself, the sweet-sour crystals on his fingers like being a kid again. 

“You’re so young,” she says finally, like this didn’t occur to her the entire time he was selling what was probably her husband’s dead body. 

He shrugs, but he’s smiling. “But I got your done.” She can’t be more than ten years older than him, anyway, and most of her jobs have been harder. You don’t tell art world undergrounders your personal life, anyway, but he noticed all of the accoutrements of a maybe secondary-school aged kid lurking around her flat, Lucky Charms, mud scuffs on the floor in strange places, football jerseys in the hamper. She’d tried to hide the obvious things, no photos on the fridge or skateboard leaning against the door frame, but he had an eye for those kinds of details like other people had a head for figures, and he recognised the detritus of a teenager well, because he’d been one recently and he had one. 

She appraises him for a second. Her eyes are large and very dark brown, and they don’t let anything go. “Zeus?” she finally says, like she’s been thinking it for a long time, testing the waters. “Hera?” 

“Like the Greek gods?” 

He went through his greek mythology phase, for sure. Half of decoding what posh people write seems to be about knowing the ins and outs of the soap operatic turns of events people told each other for fun two thousand years ago, which is then called Classics. 

She looks at him longer, considers him. 

“Lugh, then? Bridgid?” 

“I don’t know what you mean by that.” 

She nods. “Sorry if- nevermind. Thank you for selling my statue.” 

“I hope you do well with it. With your… artistic career. Now, and I don’t fucking care if you blow throught he money in a year, never call me again. Never call this number again. Never call any number related to it. If your money never comes through do fine with a million and don’t go looking. Never.” They shake hands and part ways, and he never sees her again, but he does think about her a lot afterwards anyway, parsing their conversation out. No gods and no God either, as far as he knows. Strange fucking thing to ask. 

He’s learned enough by how Matthew is on trains - and on ferries, it transpires, and in strange taxis, and he doesn’t want to fucking think about the transatlantic flight he’s planning at some point - not to let him eat much before the train back to DC, for which he feels bad. While they were in New York he let Matthew choose a show and dutifully got some last minute Dear Evan Hansen tickets off a third party seller, got the good seats and the playbill they got signed after by the cast, Declan knows who to talk to for these kinds of things.