#do i want to do a film degree? do i want to be a filmmaker?

[burningflash]

God I thought it wouldn't happen to me, I don't know why I thought I was special. I feel like I'm at that cliche point in life where I have to figure out if I want to pursue a stable 'sensible' career path that may make me enough money to live on, or to indulge and trust myself and maybe make the leap into a creative path. But am I good enough? Self esteem and creative motivation has been at an all time low for the past few months. This could be partly to devoting so much of my time to uni work.

[nostalgia-tblr]

today i spent SEVERAL minutes contemplating the difference between "sympathetic villain" and "charismatic villain" and whether fandom as a whole confuses these categories sometimes

[termitesisagrandslam]

all these old movies just like... constantly spouting shit about women and how they are manipulative teases and nags and weak but also hold so much power over men. and the scenes they'll use to demonstrate this is like... a woman sweet talking her husband bc he's angry and wants to murder her. like never is there any acknowledgment that a woman may use her "feminine wiles" or w/e bc she has no other power and is at the mercy of the men around her. no instead it's like "wow u can never trust women, sure makes me want to rape and murder them (which im able to do w relative impunity). clearly us men are under their thumb"

[freddiekluger]

finally got round to watching pearl tonight, not sure how i feel about it considering i really enjoyed the final act but man a lot of the optics re: pearl's father and also spanish flu a little bit are really not spectacular through a disability lens in a way distinct from in-universe character perspectives & stuff that makes sense as part of the diegetic logic

[spaghettiposts]

To be loved

Tara Carpenter x Reader

Summery: You’ve never known love, until Tara.

Warnings: Fluff, lovey dovey words, mentions of Ghostface attacks, fluff fluff fluff, wlw, neglectful parents, hurt/comfort.

Word count: 2.1k

A/n: This was just a bunch of word-vomit I came up with in the spam of 3 days, reader definitely has been neglected but Tara’s here to fix that <3

You’d say love was one of the things you missed most, a missing puzzle piece to your emotions. Absent parents tended to do that being busy with work and all, love only feeling like a distant concept because of it. Sure, you knew they cared for you—deep down somewhere, but not enough to take a day off. The more you thought about it, the more that nagging voice in your head mocked you; not once did they take a day off. 

There were fleeting moments of jealousy you felt, gazing desperately—longingly—at your friends and their mothers, wishing for just a fraction of that affection. The ache of longing never quite left, as you watched them being cared for, held close, and repeating the same wishful thinking. You never truly got to experience that, but swiftly pushed those feelings aside, burying them.

 By high school, you became pretty good at patching up your own wounds and learning to live on your own. Maybe that was for the best.

You learned to rely on yourself. 

That was until college, Blackmore University. A relatively close college to your house, the commute was doable and hey, you actually liked some of the classes. Your parents had encouraged you to attend first, explaining how getting a degree in engineering would really help you take over their business someday.

You hesitated to tell them that wasn’t what you wanted. Not if it meant having to put work before others, you didn’t wanna be like them. 

Still, you went along with it, taking the classes they suggested. Amidst the sea of blueprints,  you had picked up an appreciation of the art of film. Deciding to take a class for yourself, you signed up for Film History. Later, it was the best decision you ever made. 

And the first time you met Tara Carpenter. 

She was undoubtedly beautiful, anyone with eyes could see, but it was the radiance surrounding her that truly mesmerized you. Indisputably, you folded like a table. The effortless confidence she emitted during class discussions, the stubborn fire inside her, and her unabashed passion for something as simple as filmmaking—it seemed like the whole world to her. 

It only took a group project for her number to end up in your phone, and it only took a party for her to slam her lips against your own.  

With her, you found a happiness previously unknown to you. Every moment turned into the highlight of your week,  you were absolutely head over heels for your girlfriend. From tender first dates ending in soft slow kisses on her doorstep, to the cozy movie nights leaving your lips swollen and your cheeks flushed, and between those; gentle moments of care. They blossomed a newfound sense of joy in you, and in Tara. 

Day after day you effortlessly fell into new habits, soaking up every second of them. You learned Tara loved to smile between kisses, while she, in turn, learned you enjoyed the feeling of your hair being toyed with. It was all just perfect. 

However, as time went on, you couldn’t shake the feeling of Tara drifting away. Her sudden coldness left you stunned and hurt. The more you tried to talk, the more she pushed you away. But you weren’t one to back down so easily, confronting her in her apartment one last time, seeking some closure. 

 It only took a month for Tara to be honest with you, and fearfully so. Through shedded tears and shaking hands, she explained to you, and you listened. It hurt you to see her hurting, expressing vulnerability she hadn’t allowed you to see. Her arms came up to hug herself and you’d never wanted to punch Ghostface more. 

Tara half expected you to walk away, laugh at her, and leave her like the rest of them but you made it clear you weren’t leaving. You spent the entire afternoon by her side, determined to prove her wrong and keep her safe, whispering murmurs of promises between kisses. Holding her close until tears subsided and drifted off to sleep, thoroughly exhausted from it all, peacefully in your arms. 

Following her confession, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off Tara’s shoulders and your relationship picked up from where it stopped. Your bond with the shorter girl only grew stronger, surpassing previous boundaries as you both delved into a deeper understanding of one another. Tara clung to you, unwilling to let you slip away, and gradually, you found yourself spending more nights at her place than your own. And truth be told, you didn’t mind that one bit. 

As much as you wished everything could continue perfectly, a coward in a mask would only try to ruin it all. 

——

It had been a week since the latest run-in with Ghostface, A week since your left arm got slashed up. Tara was absolutely livid, and you wondered if her anger was directed more at the attacker or at you. Either way she let Chad hear it when she learned you had “heroically” taken the hit for him — though she preferred to call it stupid rather than heroic. You didn’t argue with her on it. Fortunately, Chad was able to pick himself up and knock out the idiot before he could do more.

Despite that fury she held inside her, you could see the worry etched on her face, bordering on tears, during your hospital stay.

Days later you’d learn he was just some deranged kid trying to be “Funny”. He was promptly arrested by the police and sent to a hospital. You’d never seen Sam so disgusted. 

Considering the circumstances, you were fine. Mentally? Probably not, you hadn’t had time to reflect on it. Physically? That’s where it was hitting most. The scars left by his knife only got progressively worse as time passed. Chad was quick to call an ambulance for you, and you thanked the man greatly, holding onto his shoulders for support. 

The doctors affirmed the bone wasn’t too severely damaged but it would need time to heal. Hence the blue cast hanging from your shoulder. 

But the strangest part wasn’t your injured arm - it was Tara’s behavior. You understood that she was reliving the whole ordeal all over again and tried your best to comfort her. But it seemed just being around you, without fail, brought tears back into her eyes. With time, she was starting to recover too, but she stayed unusually quiet. Despite this, she never left your side, not even for a moment. Like right now, she sat beside you, on your good side, as you watched a movie together in her room. 

You didn’t want this attack to get in the way of your relationship or mess things up, so you insisted on keeping things normal - like movie nights and when you were both up for it, date nights. 

Tonight, Tara picked a Disney movie, probably to keep things light after what happened. You tried not to let your heart swell too much at her consideration. 

“Sit up for me,” Tara mumbled out of nowhere, pulling you out of your thoughts. You furrowed your eyebrows but did as she asked, watching as she disappeared into the bathroom and came back holding a familiar red box. 

“Tara, I’m okay.” You lied. 

She arched an eyebrow, reading completely through you but didn’t say anything, simply opening the kit and motioning for you to swing your legs off the bed. 

You sighed, complying with her words knowing better than to argue. 

“You’ve been scratching at your shoulder this entire time. I know it’s bothering you. Let me change it.” She said softly.

Pursing your lips, you nodded, giving her the go-ahead. You understood that helping you made her feel better, even though you constantly reassured her that it wasn’t her fault.

Sitting straight up, you watched as she delicately unwrapped the gauze, marveling at her gentle touch. A shiver ran down your spine as the fresh air hit the wound, her eyes softening as they fell upon the scar. She then grabbed some cotton balls and applied alcohol to them, causing you to hiss at the burning sensation.

“Sorry.” She murmured, leaning in to press a kiss on your cheek before blowing softly on the cut. “I don’t want it to get infected, it’ll just get worse.” 

You nodded, biting the inside of your cheek. It felt good, having someone care for you like this. More than you’d ever admit, really. The thought of how much you secretly loved Tara fussing over you was too embarrassing to acknowledge fully. 

You couldn't help but relish in the feeling of being looked after, of having someone fuss over you with such genuine concern. It was comforting, reassuring even, to know that you weren't facing this ordeal alone, that someone was there to support you every step of the way. 

As her fingers delicately adjusted the bandage, ensuring it was snug yet not too tight, your heart spoke before you could stop it. And just like that, the words spilled out, unfiltered and sincere: “I love you.”

Tara froze, the silence turning deafening. Her fingers pressed slightly harder against you, fingernails digging into your shoulder but you didn’t comment on it, too overwhelmed by your own anxiety and fear that she could hear how fast your heart was beating. After a beat of silence, she continued wrapping the fabric, cutting it off once she finished. Yet, her touch lingered, eyes fixated on the injury, her thumb softly rubbing against your shoulder. 

A small sniffled escaped her, and she stood up abruptly. Covering herself with her arm to wipe away tears. Your heart sank, fearing you had ruined everything.

“You shouldn’t.” She whispered, her voice barely audible, as she rubbed her arms in search of comfort. “I’ll just get you hurt.” 

Your eyes softened, heartbreaking at the sight of her vulnerability. It was a side of her you had only seen once before, the last time you nearly broke up. A look you didn’t want to see.

“Tara, don’t say that.” 

“It’s the truth, everywhere I go he follows.” She choked out, her eyes glistening, “You’ll never be happy constantly looking behind your shoulder, living in fear.” 

You stood up, pausing in front of the shorter girl. Tara sighed, shaking her head and turning away. Your hand gently lifted her chin, and you leaned down to press a kiss against her cheek, coaxing her shaken eyes to look at you. Very seriously you uttered, “Every time I'm with you I feel more secure than ever in my entire life. We take care of each other, I’ll take care of you. I love you, Tara.” 

Tara shudders, her head leaning against your forehead, letting the words wash over her. Your arm rubs softly against hers, while you pepper kisses along the side of her face, expressing your feelings through touch. 

Shakingly, her nails grip tighter against your back. “If you’re gonna keep saying that- you have to mean it.” She affirms, pulling back to look at you,  “You can’t just say that and leave, not anymore.”

You nod in agreement, finally, leaning down to capture her lips between your own, pulling her into a loving kiss. “I mean it, I love you.” You whisper against her lips. 

Tara swallows, before letting out a watery laugh. “I love you too, god I do.” 

Her hands find a home between your neck, pulling you in closer into a much firmer and passionate kiss. Your stomach tightens, and you shiver when her tongue slides in effortlessly, melting at her touch. 

Getting lost in the moment, your feet move before you realize it, and your knees hit the bed. Tara gasps in surprise, clutching onto you for support and you wince at the sudden pressure to your cast. 

You let out a breathy chuckle, sinking back into the mattress, Tara quickly joining in to meet you. The room fills with shared laughter, a moment of light amidst it all. Being mindful of your arm, Tara moves to lay by your side once again, draping an arm across your chest. She presses a lingering kiss to your neck, sighing against you.

You recall your previous conversation. And you wanted to say she had nothing to worry about—nothing to be scared of. But you both knew the truth of the cruel world you lived in. Safety wasn’t something you could guarantee, not to Tara, and not to yourself. 

Instead, you pulled the girl closer, her body adjusting to fit with yours, her head resting on your neck. If physical contact was what she needed to sleep for tonight and any night, you could provide that. Pressing a tender kiss to her head, you placed your chin on top of her, reveling in the moment, focusing on the small patterns she traced on your skin. 

And just for once, without fear, Tara let her eyes close. Slowly falling asleep in your warm embrace, completely reassured that you wouldn’t be leaving her.

[piningintrovert]

4 Minutes: Storytelling Through Camera Angles and Movements

Disclaimer: I did not study film nor do I work in the industry. This brief info dump is just what I found while doing some research to feed my current obsession with the show.

It goes without saying that the film crew is using many different techniques to aid in storytelling. These are just the two that caught my attention.

Dutch Angle

Often used in horror and psychological thrillers, this cinematic technique creates the feeling that viewers are tilting their heads to the side and that everything is off-kilter.

The Dutch angle is used by filmmakers to:

Portray uneasiness or tension

Make the audience feel on edge

Create a dark or ominous mood

Heighten emotion, especially when done in close-up

Whether a character is in peril or in the process of discovering something disturbing, the Dutch angle creates a sense of abstraction, subjectivity, mystery, and disorientation—just from slanting the camera a tiny bit.

Source: backstage.com; you can also read more about it here

Camera Roll Movement

The camera roll is a rotational camera movement that rotates the camera over its side on its long axis. Rolls can be dizzying and unnatural. For this reason, filmmakers use it to disorient the audience or create uneasiness. It’s specific effect makes it a very intentional camera movement that should only be used when wanting to elicit a discomfort in the audience.

Sometimes these effects tie in to a film’s theme, such as in this scene from one of the best Marvel movies, Black Panther. When Killmonger takes the throne, the sense of uneasiness in Wakanda is echoed to the audience through a slow camera roll.

Source: studiobinder.com; you can also read more about it here

Combining Techniques

In the scene below, both the Dutch angle and camera roll movement are used to emphasize the tension and uneasiness Great is feeling as he wakes from his nightmare.

Also, starting the shot at an angle and leveling out to 180 degrees reinforces the fact that Great is coming out a dream-state and is returning to reality (is he though? that remains to be seen).

[kenisle]

(free of spoilers until the read more)

i like how deadpool and wolverine was able to work with audiences’ associations of actors + characters.

it’s not something that can really be done with comics, where between changing artists (or just each artist’s evolving style/human inconsistency), so many characters having the same base design (eg how almost all the robins, bruce wayne, and clark kent are just White Guy With Short Black Hair and Strong Jaw), and the same distinctive costume getting passed around to various characters (eg the captains america).

if you want a comic reader to know who a character is, you almost always have to explicitly introduce them, or else it could be damn near anyone under all the layers of ambiguity listed above.

with movies/tv though, aside from a few recasts, actors’ faces aren’t subject to nearly the same degree of variance that a drawn character is, so if an audience member recognizes the actor from a previous film, they automatically know the character on the screen. any explicit introduction of a returning character is for the more casual viewer but usually isn’t necessary as long as the character’s basics are established up front.* the smaller, contained scale of established movie/tv show canon compared to the amorphous behemoth that is comics canon helps a lot as well.

this means reintroductions are short and sweet, if present at all (and in this film can be explained easily by dp’s fellow fanboy enthusiasm when necessary, rather than just the writers blatantly using him as a mouthpiece), and simply the face of a returning actor affords a ton of depth to a character that couldn’t be developed in this installment. it doubles as a way to devote more time to other things in the movie and a way to reward returning viewers.

DP+W SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT

*in dp+w, seasoned viewers recognize pyro from X2, but we also get a refresher of his deal, both new (his allegiance in the void) and old (he has fire powers), so while his trajectory is a bit more clear with the wider context from X2, nothing he does is totally out of left field/unsupported by the text in this film.

so, while previous marvel movies have taken advantage of this shortcut to reduce weighing down the runtime with exposition, dp+w also snatched the golden opportunity to play a prank on the audience with it which i adored.

see, while there have been many cases of the same character being recast with different actors during marvel’s long run, very rarely was there one actor who played two DIFFERENT (major)** characters.***

**looking at you, stan lee.

***the only other example i can think of atm is oscar isaac, but he was basically unrecognizable under all the makeup and costume for apocalypse, so this trick wouldn’t have really worked with him anyway. hence “golden opportunity.”

so when chris evans’s cloaked form strode onscreen, audiences (and deadpool) were already well familiar with the cameo game and reasonably assumed he’d be reprising his more recent, more popular marvel role of steve rogers, only for the rug to be pulled out from underneath them at the fateful “flame on!”

not that there weren’t hints, of course (ie evans’s hair its natural brown rather than rogers’s more blond, the uncharacteristic taunt of “dick-for-brains” that even caught dp a little off guard, not to mention the total lack of signs outside the movie that evans and rogers would be returning to the mcu, or the illogic of doing so in a movie about deadpool and wolverine of all things), but the filmmakers know their audience and their expectations very well, resulting in what i found to be a hilarious and effective bait & switch. it was also, in my opinion, a much better direction to take the movie.

instead of nonsensically reviving such a central character that has already been given a complete arc almost as an aside in this movie that had little to do with him in the first place, they brought back a relic of movies left unfinished, remembered fondly but distantly (if at all) under the barrage of newer, flashier franchises. AND they did this knowing the old fantastic four films would soon be replaced (again), so it’s not like this johnny was ever gonna stick around. this was simply a lovely homage — a bid not to forget that we cared for those movies, too, and they’re still important to us even when the story gets rebooted.

instead of doing the same mcu bullshit we’ve grown tired of, they fed another line back to a central thesis of the movie: dying timelines (old, discontinued films) who have lost their anchor being (popular interest, production, etc.) shouldn’t be cut short (forgotten, discarded, disregarded) just because they’re not the prime timeline; there are still people living there (fans and creators caring about them) and value to be found in them.

and they were able to execute it in such an exciting, funny, and memorable way because of this connection between actors and characters that doesn’t exist in comics.

[olderthannetfic]

The main problem that I have with Youtubers who attempt to approach media analysis and fandom through theory and academia is that the vast majority aren't academics. Just being in undergrad isn't actually enough, contrary to the thoughts of many. Reading a Wikipedia article and reiterating what one may find in some Google, even Google Scholar, searches. Ideally, these would be topics approached by people involved in academia as a profession, people with doctoral degrees, who can discuss complex topics in a way that is easily understood by the masses. "What is the negotiation between gender and sex in BL?" "How does CMBYN articulate/complicate hierarchal roles within the gay novel?" "Could SnK express an alternative reading of the formerly isolated Japan?" These are complicated questions they attempt to answer in their video essays when they seldom ever understand the theories they employ.

Yes, I understand this can sound elitist, but as a Black afab person who is currently in a doctoral program for literature, there aren't "easy" answers to any of the questions they attempt to pose, and many Youtubers who primarily make long-form video essays lack the life experience and expertise to sufficiently discuss anything. They're usually too set in their thoughts to answer or explore the broader implications of their claims. Defending a dissertation forces you to do this. Forming a committee of experts in various fields and convincing them to aid you in the development of your dissertation forces you to do this. Being in academic and cordial communication with your peers from all over the world in your field forces you to do this. It's not easy to constantly intake new information from various eras and nations (depending on your topic), meld this information into a coherent essay, and continually make edits as you learn new information, thus changing your outlook on things. Also: it's really petty of me, but it's also incredibly annoying to grade poorly researched undergrad essays who, after some prompting in office hours, say they got these ideas on books, movies, and shows from breadtubers like Somerton, SZ, FD Signifier, or hbomberguy. Cue: me going to watch their videos and realizing they have no idea what they're talking about 88% of the time in terms of theory and application of said theory. Even the ones who frame themselves on being educators in real life, like Signifier, lack any nuance, depth, or media literacy to make a compelling argument if you know even the slightest bit of information. On the bright side, I now know why I've encountered several students with ideologies that are basically conservatism with a veneer of progressivism, or "conservatism in a queer hat."

This concludes my long-winded way of saying "Don't turn to Youtubers for media analysis. You're better off just reading articles by people who have to actually know what they're talking about. The majority of Youtubers (especially the breadtubers) don't have the bandwidth to discuss anything more complex than an episode of Blue's Clues."

--

I mostly agree, but I'd point to a slightly different problem. I'm hesitant to say that the PhD itself is the deciding factor, but I do think a lot of video essayists are insufficiently prepared.

I'm a big fan of Folding Ideas who does have some formal schooling in film, but I don't think it's that education per se that makes him great. He sets himself apart from other video essayists by actually doing his research and having an in-depth approach to his subjects. He doesn't resort to clickbait, and—here's the key—he often takes months or even a year to work on something.

Honestly, I think that's a big part of it: the hoops most youtubers who want to make a living at it have to jump through involve a lot of clickbait and pandering and a fast production schedule. They don't involve reputable peer review except by the court of shriek-y public opinion on twitter.

They'd like to present themselves as documentary filmmaking (which is essentially what Folding Ideas' longer videos are), but they don't actually live up to any of the usual standards of that either.

I think it can be elitist to say that someone needs to have certain letters after their name, yes, but what really strikes me about your average youtube media analysis type and the fanbase is that they want shortcuts.

Exploring the whole history of the gay novel so that you have enough background to talk about CMBYN means reading quite a few novels. Even if you decide to throw out all past scholarly opinion on the topic (which you shouldn't), if you're going to have a meaningful personal theory, you need to have read a lot of novels first. How can you hope to be the person providing the neat overview of the whole genre if you haven't familiarized yourself widely with said genre, and not just through a summary by someone else? That amount of reading doesn't happen overnight.

The trite, surface-level media analysis online is often from people who want to be hailed as great intellectuals but who aren't willing to put in the years it takes to do all the background reading and to develop their skills in argumentation, writing, etc.

Grad school is a convenient and probably faster way to go about all that, but I think you could do it outside of a formal framework... But you would need to actually do it.

I think it's driven by a bunch of people who were The Smart One in grade school and never learned how to work hard on long-term projects instead of pushing through in a sprint. They're used to relying on being the smartest to cut corners and do things before they get bored, only they probably aren't the smartest anymore anyway, and they mistake being smart at one thing for being smart at all things.

There's a real lack of respect for the entire concept of expertise.

[aliusfrater]

what do u major in and what do u wanna do when u grow up

film studiessss !!! i wanted to be an astronomer till i was 16 so i didn't really get into The Arts academically until around that time and it was already too late. had to take subjects i didn't like in 6th form but it's fine. i did cape literature which was hard as FUCK because it's marked at the masters level but it's come in handy so far bc the film classes ive taken have lots of essays and i can crank out 900 words in 20 mins if i feel like it. i applied to a bunch of art universities with just my hobby photography as a portfolio and even though they accepted me, none of them gave me scholarships so i had to go with one that Did (research university). would much rather be majoring in something specific like film/tv production but that's not available here. the classes i had in my first year were fun tho :) my favourite was 302 experimental moving images that i took in my 2nd semester bc my 107 basic video prof would show us experimental stuff all the time. i have no idea what i'm gonna do with my degree though. all my profs so far are either doing their masters, have a phd in something that has to do with media arts, are niche filmmakers with film festival awards with credits like. working at pixar or some shit or are curators. the last one seems fun and one of my profs who is a curator asked to work with me this one time and it was cool so maybe i'll go for that orrr being a director

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

I was in the first ever audience for Companion!

Here are some of my reactions! (Spoiler-free because I want to be respectful to the filmmakers!)

•I genuinely loved this movie, it was surprisingly hilarious (I would call it a sci-fi horror comedy?) and the cast were all fantastic in their roles

•The movie expertly shifted between a light, comedic tone and a dark, tense tone throughout. Sometimes the shift would happen on a dime and it would still feel natural to the progression of the story

•The costume design was great! It really stood out to me. I know Sophie Thatcher said she got to have a lot of creative input into her character’s outfits and it shows! Her character had a very 50s-60s inspired look with big headbands and color coordination, I could definitely see the Jane Birkin inspiration. I thought it fit really well with some of the themes of the movie and the nature of her character

•There are some twists in this that I absolutely was not expecting at all and I could tell by the rest of the audience’s reactions that they were just as caught off guard as I was. But they feel very natural and seamless at the same time!

•Sophie. Thatcher. Is. An. Incredibly. Talented. Actress. Her character goes through a major shift halfway through the film and her ability to play both the light and dark— and the meek and powerful— parts of Iris was stunning

•Also love sociopathic Jack Quaid and puppy dog Lukas Gage

•No one drops an F bomb like Sophie Thatcher

•Love that this movie doesn’t take itself too seriously

•There was a QA with the director/writer and producers of the film after the screening (with the director of Juno as a moderator which was exciting for me!) and the director, Drew Hancock, said this is his directorial debut! He praised Sophie Thatcher extensively, calling her extremely talented and otherworldly. He also told a funny story about filming a particular scene outside in 27 degrees Fahrenheit with Sophie only wearing shorts and a short sleeve top (and she had to speak a foreign language convincingly throughout it!) and I am so impressed by that alone because I think I would cry if I had to do that (I’m convinced I’m going through hypothermia when it’s 65 degrees outside)

Highly highly recommend going to see this movie whether you’re a Sophie Thatcher obsessive or not, it’s a really fun watch.

In theaters January 31st!

[mariacallous]

In the 2020s, love triangles are all the rage—at least in American literature. The last five years have seen a proliferation of novels about non-traditional triads. Raven Leilani arguably ignited the trend with Luster, followed by Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir, and Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss, among others. Each novel featured a female protagonist armed with a sardonic voice, and each used a love triangle to probe social issues related to sex, power, race, gender, and class.

Mostly, these novels have been about American lust. But a new addition to the list, The Lady Waiting by Polish novelist and filmmaker Magdalena Zyzak, offers an international spin on the genre. This mischievously delightful caper centers on the love triangle between a wealthy American couple and their Polish assistant, who conspire to steal a Vermeer.

Although Zyzak, like her predecessors, is interested in the dynamics of sex and power, she throws a new element into the mix: globalization. The Lady Waiting is, beneath the sex, a story of the global economy, where workers from countries on the periphery do most of the labor for a tiny slice of the pie, while investors from the core economies feast.

The Lady Waiting is the second novel by Zyzak, who was born in Poland but has lived in the United States since she was an undergraduate in the early 2000s. Zyzak writes in caffeinated English: On the spectrum of foreign-born writers who switched to English, she is far closer to Vladimir Nabokov than Joseph Conrad—she never passes up a chance at puns, chiasmus, or word play.

The novel opens when a 23-year-old Polish immigrant, Viva, spots a posh woman in a green cocktail dress standing on an island of Los Angeles’s 101 freeway. Viva stops to offer a ride to the woman, who turns out to be a rich Polish-American named Bobby. Soon, Bobby and her husband, Sleeper, a retired U.S. film director, offer Viva a job. They want her to be their live-in help. “Sleeper says our household needs a wife,” Bobby explains.

Viva has been in the United States for a year and is floundering, going unhired because of her faltering English and her failure to absorb American social norms. (When an interviewer asks what her greatest weakness is, Viva answers, “manipulating”; she doesn’t get the job.) Viva never wanted to come to the country in the first place. But a boyfriend convinced her to enter the green card lottery; when she won, everyone told her she’d be crazy not to cash in the ticket. In Poland, she has a “teaching degree, though nothing to teach”; in America, the only job she can get is as a home aid for an older woman who soon dies.

Viva’s reasons for being in the United States crystallize when she meets Bobby, who strikes her as the kind of woman you see on Los Angeles billboards. Bobby is rich and comfortable being rich. She charms Viva at an expensive lunch in Beverly Hills. The waiter brings out rosé and sharing plates, and Bobby says, in characteristically gleeful free association, “People hate rosé but I love it … Doesn’t give you as much of a headache, as long as it’s a quickie, not an affair. Never date a socialist unless he’s the champagne kind. Oh, hey, socialism! We’re going to share all the plates!”

Viva is intoxicated not just by Bobby’s money but also her command of English. When Viva speaks, she is hobbled by her adopted tongue; in Viva’s narration, though, her internal monologue sounds kind of like Bobby’s dialogue. Explaining her origins, Viva narrates: “The man who had impregnated my mother in a rapeseed field—not a metaphor, a major Polish crop—had ridden a motorcycle.”

After lunch, Bobby takes Viva to an expensive boutique, where she steals a $9,000 dress for her. Viva is distraught—she could lose her green card if she’s an accomplice to a crime.

“Why did you steal it?” Viva asks.

“Because I could afford it,” Bobby says with a shrug.

The dress turns out to be a harbinger. Bobby convinces Viva to steal—or fake-steal, in a move that she claims is “neutral legally”—a Vermeer that went missing from a museum nine years earlier, from her ex-husband, a Russian mobster. The fictional Vermeer, “The Lady Waiting,” is a small portrait of a woman seated in front of a window, gazing at her hands. The ex-husband recently acquired it as repayment for a debt, and he’s looking to return it to a German museum that’s offering a 10 million euro reward.

Her ex is outsourcing the job because it would be difficult for a Russian on the Magnitsky list to claim the reward. If they succeed, the Russian ex will get the majority of the 10 million, paying out a million each to his German lawyer as well as the Americans—Bobby and Sleeper. In a mirroring of globalization, Viva, the laborer brought in to do the actual work and assume the actual risk, will get only 1 percent. But 100,000 euros is a life-changing amount for Viva. It might buy her a ticket on the elusive route from immigrant to expat.

As for the love triangle, Viva sleeps first with Bobby, who excites her in context if not action. (“It was not the technique but the situation—that she was my boss—that aroused me.”) Sleeper excites her in a much more straightforward way: “It was remarkable that other men had never made me come, because the whole thing had taken less than two minutes.” It’s Bobby who pushes her to Sleeper—each of them knows of Viva’s involvement with the other—and every time Viva sleeps with Sleeper, it seems to bring him closer to Bobby. She begins to fall for Sleeper, but also for Bobby, in a confusing way: “Sometimes I like you so much I want to be you,” she tells the latter.

Sleeper and Bobby are idle rich. They live like “nineteenth-century aristocrats,” working little and drinking often, in constant pursuit of drollness. Viva is paid $1,000 a week for an unwritten and varying set of tasks that includes making breakfast, bringing ice to cocktail hour in the hot tub, breaking in Bobby’s shoes, and, implicitly, sex. She is alternately ignored, fawned over, spoiled, and humiliated. “Was their behavior an abuse of power if that power was the very thing that turned me on?” she wonders.

Through Bobby, she gets a taste of American opulence. When she tries on Bobby’s expensive boots, she feels a “desire to own them that was akin to lust or hunger.”

“Poor girls from Poland, Russia, Ukraine in my generation had little to no inoculation against luxury products, communism having wiped out most hereditary wealth,” Viva says. “We’d kill for a pair of designer shoes.” When Viva later climaxes with Sleeper, she fantasizes that she is Bobby, surrounded by designer shoes.

The plot to retrieve the painting goes smoothly, but—spoilers ahead—after Viva brings it back, it is stolen from Bobby’s closet. Viva, Bobby, and Sleeper travel to Venice to hunt down the Vermeer, all the while being tailed by a Russian mafia thug. Abroad, their affair turns more overt, and Viva begins sleeping with the couple together. At one point, she catches Bobby watching her have sex with Sleeper. Viva later tells Bobby that she wants to be the one spectating. Bobby replies, “do you really think I care to know what’s in your bird brain? This is my fantasy. Mine, not yours.”

This is when Viva begins to realize, if she hadn’t already, that she is on the lowest rung of this ladder, and if she wants money, power, or choice, she’ll have to break out of the system. She tracks the now thrice-stolen Vermeer to a mining town in Poland, where she buys it from an old lady storing it in her car for a little more than $1,000. The woman lives in a communist housing bloc where, “in an apathetic nod to individualism, each cube was painted a different, faded underwear color: gray-white, dull red, brown-pink, lint blue.” When Viva talks to the woman, she notices in her mouth “a gap from a missing canine, a tiny black door to the mean world I’d escaped, a world where you’re reduced, one indignation at a time, by cheap dentists, expensive priests, needy parents, treacherous children.”

Viva’s emigration isn’t easy for the Americans in the novel to understand. She didn’t leave Poland to pursue a dream: “Where I’m from, fantasies tend to be about revenge, not aspiration.” Nor is she, as a friend of Bobby’s assumes, fleeing “some hellhole where men raped sheep and women gave birth in ditches.” Poland, which acceded to the European Union in 2004, is something of a development success story, and it’s often seen by its neighbors to the east as a land of prosperity and opportunity. But opportunity is relative.

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah, a Nigerian émigré says of the white people in his adopted country:

they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice.

Viva ambivalently left the “shabby comfort” of home for opportunity. But once she’s walked in the shoes of her U.S. employers’ blend of boundless optimism and reckless shortsightedness, she can’t go back. She swipes the painting, cuts off contact with Bobby and Sleeper, travels to Berlin, gets her own German lawyer, and claims the reward. The consequence of her actions quickly becomes clear when she sees that Interpol has declared Bobby and Sleeper missing, last seen in Russia.

In the real world, it would likely be the worker who bore the consequence of a scheme gone sideways. But Zyzak’s world is more just than ours, in a sense, while still adhering to the hierarchy. Here it’s the wealthy American investors who must answer for their actions and Viva who claims their spot as the aspirational rich.

Toward the end of the story, Viva’s German lawyer recommends that she give up her green card and settle in a tax haven such as the Cayman Islands to keep more of her reward money.

“I think I want to keep my green card,” she says.

“May I ask why?” the lawyer asks.

“Because,” Viva says, “I won it in the lottery.”

Viva may be a millionaire now. But more importantly, she’s an American.

[harkeepitreal]

I want to clear some stuff up. What is going with Tim and Lucy is NOT necessary this much angst does NOT need to happen. It doesn't take a lot to write stories like this. It takes talent to be able to write characters not having so many conflicts. This is not realistic. So yes this much AGNST is NOT necessary it is ridiculous. If they were a real couple and fighting this much I would question why are they still together. I get it couples have their ups and downs and they do fight. But if you have ever seen a happy, healthy relationship it is not like this. We had one episode of fighting then make up then back to fighting again. That is not real life and if it is then they really need to re-evaluate whether they belong together or not.

I studied film and television in college I hold two college degrees in film and television including an MFA. I have studied film and television my entire life. I have written, produced, directed, edited, starred in, created my own sound tracks and scores for both film and television. I have even built a show from the ground up. I know what I am talking about this much AGNST is not necessary at all or is not realistic.

When you take screenwriting classes (one of my best friends is a writer and holds an MHA and has also written scripts) says the same thing I do there are ways to write drama with out having people fight all the time. In screenwriting class they ask you 3 basic questions: 1) What is the story? 2) What are you trying to say? 3) How are you going to tell this story, is it with Humor, Drama, song and dance, Sci Fi, etc? I was taught by some of the best Indy filmmakers and screenwriters in the business.

I will never forget a time in college. For one of my screen writing classes I wrote a script that was about what happened to Cinderella after she married the prince. I did exactly what so many people unfortunately love I made it all angsty, fighting etc...and my professor almost failed me. He told me you don't need to write like this it is not necessary for it to be a great script. This was coming from an award winning Indy filmmaker. So I was lucky enough that he allowed me to rewrite the script and I did with a lot less AGNST and you know what I aced the project. Afterwards he said to me now this is how you write a script. It had humor, heart, and a tiny bit of conflict. After the rewrite he said it was one of the best scripts he had read from a student in a long time, because there was NOT so much drama and angst. I kept in touch with him over the years and we had many conversations about this until he passed away and he agreed this much AGNST is NOT necessary.

There are ways to get them to the point that they need to be at and keep them happy. For example: Let them actually have a conversation instead of fighting or accusations flying around. Let them go and talk to a therapist, etc... But that takes to much effort no it is much easier to write fighting.

Look at Monica and Chandler on Friends yes they had their fights on occasion but for a majority of the time they were happy and OMG they were together for 5 seasons. Same with Booth and Brennan, Castle and Beckett, Tom and B'elanna on STVOY they had the occasional fight but for the majority of the time they were happy. All those shows lasted for years after they got together. So it can be done. So don't BS me and tell me it can't be done.

The other issue we as Americans are so preconditioned to accept this on our tvs and films. If there is no drama filled happening people get bored. It makes me ask do people start drama in their relationships when things are going great because they get bored? I am sure some people do but not everyone that is unhealthy. The occasional conflict can happen even in a comedy but this is ridiculous. I know drama fills seats etc... but it doesn't have to if we say no we don't want this anymore. Happy relationships are not condosive of so much fighting, drama and AGNST. You want to see that crap go and watch all the garbage reality shows.

Rant done!!! Love to all ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[wutheringheightsfilm]

wuthering heights posting #122938: on the abuse being taken seriously

so in an earlier post i said that most of (aka nearly all) the wuthering heights adaptations fail because not a single filmmaker* nor screenwriter takes the abuse that heathcliff and catherine face (at the hands of both their father and hindley, because yes, hitting your children with the rod, neglecting them, and saying you can't possibly love them and, for example, saying to your daughter's face that she's the worst of your children [mr earnshaw's doing] and forcing your adoptive brother into servitude (and there are many articles about this especially in relation to heathcliff's race---i really recommend Maja-Lisa von Sneidern's article Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade for more on this, specifically their posit that "In the novel the Heights, corrupted by the introduction of the racially other [Heathcliff], is the place where the figures of a system of bondage work out their relationships." (Sneidern, 174)) , flogging him, and withholding food from your younger sister as punishment [hindley's doing] are both repeated instances abuse, in different degrees of intensity, but nonetheless have the same impact: it drives heathcliff and catherine's codependency. but this isn't what i solely want to talk about: what i want to actually talk about is heathcliff and catherine's (ultimately) world-shattering decision to visit thrushcross grange. *note: when i say film/filmmakers/screenwriters this includes both cinema film as in movies that both got a mainstream release in theatres and made-for-tv movies and tv miniseries. i'm too lazy to type out "film and tv" every time.

So, in the book, since this is being told from Nelly's (the housekeeper's) point of view, we don't actually know why exactly in the moment Heathcliff and Catherine choose to go to Thrushcross Grange (the manor home of the substantially wealthier Linton family), but it's said later:

""Where is Miss Catherine?" [Nelly] cried hurriedly. "No accident, I hope?" "At Thrushcross Grange," [Heathcliff] answered; "and I would have been there too, but that had not the manners to ask me to stay."... "...What in the world led you to wandering to Thrushcross Grange?" .... [Heathcliff] continued: "Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty, and getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing, and burning their eyes out before the fire. Do you think they do? Or reading sermons, and being catechized by their manservant, and set to learn a column of Scripture names, if they don't answer properly?"" (WH, 50-51) (of the complete and unabridged longmeadow press 1983 edition)

Usually, this paragraph is framed in film in one of two ways:

either we actually see this exchange between nelly and heathcliff

heathcliff's reason for why they go to thrushcross grange is shown in either heathcliff or catherine (usually catherine) stating whilst they're out on the moors that she would like to go visit thrushcross grange

In both instances, in most of the film adaptations I have seen, their visit to Thrushcross Grange is played off as a joke---or at least, Heathcliff's reasoning as to why they went is played off as a joke.

Partially, this may be because Nelly doesn't take the abuse that Heathcliff and Catherine face seriously, either: in the very next sentence, she says, ""Probably not," I responded. "They are good children, no doubt, and don't deserve the treatment you receive, for your bad conduct."" (WH, 51) Nelly, an unreliable narrator in case you couldn't tell, vocally does not like Heathcliff nor Catherine, even from when they're children. Because she as a character believes that Heathcliff and Catherine deserve the abuse they face, I feel like many have assumed that Emily Bronte as an author was either implying that the abuse was 1) not that serious or not that big of a deal or was 2) definitely deserved because clearly, even as children and young teens, Heathcliff and Catherine were just that evil. Thus, a lot of filmmakers either consciously or subconsciously utilize that thinking as well. And of course, the other part of it is that the filmmakers themselves have decided that the abuse is either no big deal or is something they don't want to spend a lot of time analyzing.

However, I think that this moment, the decision for Heathcliff and Catherine to visit Thrushcross Grange... I think it's honestly really huge, and honestly really underrated as far as potential scenes to have between them. If this situation was treated with the gravitas it deserves, as in: two very abused and traumatized children see the manor house of the very rich family in the distance, and say to each other, "I wonder how they live. Do they have to suffer like we do?"

And to make matters even deeper (and worse for them), the result of this is that Catherine gets her leg mangled by a dog, and her and Heathcliff's relationship is irrevocably changed by her experiences at the Grange. For five weeks, Catherine is free from her abusive brother, the stress of essentially fending for herself because of his neglect of her, and she gets access to all of the upper class amenities and things she's never had access to before in her life, with people doting on her who genuinely care about her recovery and health. It's no wonder she comes back changed: now she's acutely aware of the life she could lead--if she abandons Wuthering Heights (by marrying into the Lintons) and leaves Heathcliff to fend for himself. Even so, though...she still doesn't want to leave Heathcliff in the dust. Even when presented with the prospect of escaping her abusive household, she only thinks of ways she can use the Lintons' money to help Heathcliff escape with her. AND OF COURSE, we have to talk about how Catherine (white woman) gets the opportunity to escape essentially handed to her and Heathcliff (brown man) has to carve out his own path and do all of the hard work himself and make his own fortune....

IDK!!! I'm RAMBLING!!! but there's a LOT HERE!!!

[trulynamelessworld]

IWTV Film School AU WIP

I had a batshit dream about art school with Armand, Daniel, Louis, Lestat, Claudia, and Madeleine so now you get to see the kind of hilarious dialogue I cooked up about a bunch of queers setting out to make a Freddie Mercury bio pic and (spoilers) actually succeeding?

Overall its gonna be hilarious, horny, and heartfelt in the way only finding yourself in college and making a movie with friends can be. Probably OOC because its really not that serious and well, they're humans.

The excerpt posted below the cut actually catches them at the tail end of the story, enjoying a celebratory party.

Relationships: Original Female Character/Armand, Daniel Molloy/Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac, Claudia/Madeleine

Roles:

Lou (in progress filmmaking degree): Camera

Lestat (in progress music degree): Sound

Armand (in progress filmmaking and directing degree): Directing

Claudia (in progress creative writing degree): Script

Madeleine (in progress fashion degree): Costumes

Vida (original/main character, in progress video editing degree): Management/Props

MC's name is Vida because I like that name and I haven't used it yet for original characters in my fics.

Dialogue:

"You should probably move if you don't want my dad to see you standing in between my legs." Vida jokes, wrapping her arms around Armand's neck. He smiles and plants his hands on her waist, squeezing lightly.

"Would it really be so bad?"

"You would get banned from the house." She says seriously, absentmindedly playing with the curls at the nape of his neck while she watches the congregation of family and friends across the street.

"I don't see you letting me go."

"You're balancing on a ledge on my roof. Not a good look if you fall."

"I made it up just fine love. I can get down just as well." He jumps down and looks up at her with a grin. "Ye of little faith."

"Don't die while you're pretending to be Shakespeare!" She calls when he starts climbing back up to her.

He hoists himself up to sit beside her and plants a triumphant kiss on her lips. She tangles their legs together and squirms onto his lap, mussing up the styled curls as she gets a proper grip on them. Armand's hands move from his sides to securely cradling her backside. Vida smiles against his lips.

"Smooth Romeo." He smiles back and catches her bottom lip with his teeth. "How long do we have?"

He nips at her lip again. "Only a couple minutes, Daniel will be looking for us soon. Lou threatened to take photos and put them in the group chat."

"The film one?"

"Yes."

"No!" Vida laughs, guiding their mouths together again. They enjoy the usual push and pull of their makeout sessions until they hear the telltale sound of dress shoes.

"Times up lovebirds!" Daniel calls.

They look down from their perch on the roof to see Daniel and Lou standing on the front lawn. Vida climbs onto the awning and jumps down to where they're waiting.

"Hows the party?" She asks, smoothing her skirt.

"Well Les is talking someone's ear off about the hidden queer themes in Queen's music, Claudia is with him, and Madeleine is... behaving actually. She's just eating cake."

"Buisness as usual then?" Armand says, hopping down beside Vida.

"Yeah. You done canoodling? Wanna join the party now.

Vida groans. "For the love of god Daniel, stop calling it canoodling."

'Smooth Romeo' is something I say to my partner when she isn't being smooth at all and really being rather obvious so I thought it would be cute to put here

[emmettspeakz]

Part of me really loved what they did with season 3, a lot of the scenes were ripped directly from the books, all of them i fucking loveddd. I love how soft and tender this season was! It was so good and everything felt real and life-like and still so so heartstopper!

The other part of me was like, it was both too long but not long enough. Like I wanted even more than we got from this season.

I loved imogen's pieces of her puzzle and Sahar's stuff with her too, but i wish it wasn't so left on the back burner, so i guess we have to look forward to season 4 for that? And I want more Isaac stuff, even if that's him finding niche interest after niche interest and not about being aroace (though i do want more aroace stuff too!). I want him to get to talk about his books more or learn what he wants to pursue in a career/his future. I wonder if Tao will go to school for film/filmmaking. I wonder what Imogen will do with a politics degree. I wonder if Sahar will just start a band after finishing school.

And Elle going to Europe, and the last year of school for charlie and isaac and Tao without sahar, or tara or darcy or elle or Nick?? I think I might throw up at how sad that sounds!

There's so much unanswered questions from this season and it just makes me wanna know more about these characters!! I wish we had more to watch!!!

[ot3]

omg thank you for being the first normal person I've seen so far about AI who's also an artist T-T like obviously all the stealing is horrible and it's good it's talked about but almost everyone really is acting like the idea of computers being capable of creating images killed their firstborn child

(also I don't mean it as one of the weird AI art bros but as an artist myself I'm just glad that there are other artist with open mind to the concept)

no right like its insane to me to see how many other people who seem reasonable and level headed are falling for the kneejerk response to say ai Isn't Art Can't Be Art ! It's throwing out the baby with the bathwater to an almost incomprehensible degree.

Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that we live in an era where essentially all new technology's first and prime purpose will be for ghoulish, capitalistic, anti-human ends. But to reject any other uses for the technology doesn't do anything other than make you look like an anti-tech weirdo. This is genuinely insanely impressive and revolutionary tech! There are a TON of legitimate artistic uses for AI image generation.

It also seems weird that everyone is delving into this false binary of 'dont use AI, learn to draw' as if there is any conceivable reason for these things to be mutually exclusive? Like, before all of the AI discourse really popped off i was doing some experimenting with using AI in my process.

the texturing used in this drawing was made by VQGAN + Clip (different type of image generation than the stable diffusion model that is producing most of the AI art that's up for debate right now) running through google colab. I made a bunch of these weird, ethereal images that would have been almost impossible for me to produce under my own power - it would have taken a titanic amount of time, effort, and design to produce any of these through illustrative or photo editing techniques.

here's a sampling of some of the textures i made. Now I think it would be a real struggle to try and claim that these images made are plagiarisms. However, I stopped messing with the google colab generation for one key reason: i didnt know enough about the image databases being used to train these models. That's the real stumbling block

the internet is CHOCK FULL of images that are free to use commercially and repurposes, there's stuff like wikimedia commons, the smithsonian open access, unsplash and pexels which have free stock photos, etc. I honestly think a nonzero amount of artists would consent to having some of their work used in image generation databases if they were promised noncommercial use of the resulting images, also. But the problem is the people training these AI don't give a shit about any of that. It's just the complete entitlement to other people's work and neglect for creative boundaries that makes AI generation bad.

The fact that people are attempting to replicate the art of living, working artists, or people like kentaro miura who by all accounts were so dedicated to the craft that they worked themselves to death sickens me. And the fact that the companies responsible for this are using that as an active selling point for their product is even worse. It's a pretty miserable time to be an artist, and this is just the icing on the cake.

But I don't want silicon valley greed and bizarre, impotent jealousy from redditors who want custom waifu jpgs to mean that nobody who could really benefit from AI image generation gets to use it.

like, my dad for example. he's been a creative person his whole life but it never really went anywhere. He drew a lot as a kid and then went and got a degree in filmmaking. My parents were living in LA when I was born, with my dad managing a filming/sound studio and the two of them trying to break into writing screenplays. This did not happen because they had three kids, and for the past decade and then some my dad had been doing database programming on contract for the CDC. Now, in his mid 50s, he's finally got a permanent and secure position and, rather than spending all his free time raising children or getting PMP certified to try and angle for a string of promotions, he can start having hobbies again. there's a comic he's been wanting to draw for as long as I can remember.

only, one big problem - in 2021 he had surgery on his cataracts and never healed properly. He's got severely impaired vision and looking at stuff too hard for to long causes him a ton of eye strain and pain. He has to look at a lot of screens for his job so by the time he's off work for the day he's pretty much too fatigued to do all the intense visual stuff it'd take to make a comic.

I wanted to tell him AI image generation could help him make the kind of stuff he always dreamed about making as a kid but instead I had to tell him that as it stands, the predatory nature of AI modeling means it's insanely hard to use it without ripping off vulnerable creatives. Instead we chatted a bit about combining 3d assets, digitally edited photos, or photobashing/digital kitbashing methods to try and make a pipeline he could do without drawing, but the time commitment to learn these methods is probably just not feasible unless his eyes make a pretty unprecedented recovery in future years.

Like, that's the worst thing about all of this. The idea that AI makes the production of certain kinds of art more accessible to people with disabilities isn't just a 'gotcha' being used by the pro-AI people, it's also true. I would love for my dad to be able to make his comic. I myself also have a huge string of health issues and sometimes the main thing stopping me from drawing is that it hurts to do so. Anything in my process that could reduce the strain drawing puts on my body is an accessibility concern in some ways. Eventually degrading so much that I can't draw at all is one of my biggest fears.

But that doesn't counter all of the negatives! It just doesnt! Which fucking sucks man it just sucks so fucking bad that we have this cool incredible thing and we can't use it without being complicit in some stuff i am fully ideologically against! As things stand I really cant imagine that 'ethical' AI image generation will ever exist, so unfortunately it will have to be in the hands of the people using it to decide for themselves if they are using it in a way that is predatory or harmful, or as a legitimate tool to make meaningful works of art.