#the mags medium

[a-cryptid-called-magetha]

forgot to post this piece of sidon i did recently!!!! <3

[mortal-kingss]

won’t you indulge him?

[courtjester69420]

Need him bouncing and moaning on it. And by it haha…. Let’s just say…. Therapy

[meownotgood]

MAGS HI HOW R U!!!!!!! i missed checking ur blog all the time but i shared ur gale x reader fic w my friend (they got me into bg3 and we are both so normal abt gale) and AAUAUUAUAUAYG!!!!!!! so GOOD!!!!!!!!

also got lookup aki and i fully understand all the accessories u bought for him.. i keep taking silly pics hes just such a little goober and i love holding him like 🤲 hes so cute

anyway …. imagining aki in a normal no-devils au as ur coworker .. he has a crush on u but keeps it very respectful at work, but he also loves helping u clean up/hes quick to help out customers if ur already busy. he Loves being scheduled around the same time as u and usually ends up clocking out + leaving kinda late bc he just wants to talk to you :( and hes always texting outside of work (you get flirty with him late at night but dont address it in the morning) .. i started a new job so imagining aki working w me has made it a lot more easy to manage cries

- 🐙

(also a closing thought tht popped into my brain just now: playing with gales hair and braiding it)

HI LOVE!!! I'm doing good! and I hope you are well :D good luck with your new job 💞💞💞

aw you'll make me emotional... thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed my fic 🫂 I'm very honored!! it was super fun to make and I'm excited to write more gales!!!!

lookup aki is pure seratonin, he has so much love in his little fat head. I must kiss it every time I see him. they truly made him so cute it should almost be a crime

aaaakiiii 🥹 aki in a no devils au will make me emotional because he finally can rest a bit... I think he would be very different but a lot more comfortable to be his awkward self lol. he thinks he's bad at flirting but the simplest things he does always make you fall head over heels. your coworkers comment on how handsome he is but he never talks to them as much as he talks to you (he has an obvious crush, apparently he doesn't know he's making it obvious). he comes up with dumb excuses to meet with you outside of work, offering you come over for dinner for no special reason at all, because he's nervous about asking you to hang out. honestly... so boyfriendly.....

and you have spare gale thoughts for me??! I AM SPOILED!!! I feel like if you played with gale's hair he would fall asleep so fast... just relaxing with you... my bg3 oc has little braids in her hair so I imagine her trying to put matching small braids in gale's hair..... haha

[pronouncingitwang]

being a snob in the privacy of your own home is so important actually

[p-clodius-pulcher]

I don’t know what this is called (I continue not to know anything about literature I’m sorry) but MMMMMM THE SHAPE OF THE WORDS

[piastri]

another vcarb disasterclass

[attackcopterblog]

TRUE VELOCITY & FN AMERICA ANNOUNCES MANUFACTURING PARTNERSHOP ON LIGHTWEIGHT MEDIUM MACHINE GUN

True Velocity in collaboration with FN America has announced a global manufacturing partnership on True Velocity’s Norma lightweight medium machine gun. Released statement “Texas-based ammunition and weapon system manufacturer TV Ammo, Inc. (“True Velocity”) and FN America, LLC (“FN America”), a global leader in the development and manufacture of military small arms, have announced a strategic…

[jesncin]

The Portrayal of Noah Ikumelo's Disability in Spurrier's Hellblazer and Dead in America run

Noah Ikumelo is a divisive new character introduced in Si Spurrier's 2019-2020 Hellblazer 12 issue solo (illustrated by Aaron Campbell and Matias Bergara, colors by Jordie Bellaire), he continues appearing as a recurring character in Hellblazer Dead In America (2024, 11 issues) Spurrier's long awaited continuation of his original run. Introduced in the very first issue as a Black, mute (hearing, but unable to orally speak) teenager who predominantly uses BSL to communicate.

We'll be discussing how Noah's disability was portrayed, how effective it was narratively, and thoroughly analyze the limits and ableist biases comics have as a visual language. Spoilers for Spurrier's Hellblazer and Dead In America run below. CW for ableism, racism, SA, police brutality, and general violence.

Disclaimer!! I am an able-bodied person with only occasional interactions with the Deaf community and am still studying ASL in my own time. All of these observations are made from an outsider perspective. I feel that starting a critical discussion from any source of knowledge for other more informed perspectives to follow up on is better than having no discussion at all.

However! I can offer some valuable perspective as a ~classically/formally trained~ comic artist- because we'll be discussing some inherit biases with how comic artists are trained to illustrate communication in this visual medium. I'll also be talking about lettering, which I'm nitpicky about so if I'm an expert on anything, it's those things.

I won't be going through each issue in as much detail as these first few issues for the sake of set up, but I will stop every now and then to discuss the portrayal of some scenes.

Let's start with Noah's very first appearance in Hellblazer 2019 #1. Noah is introduced as one of the very young members of a gang called the Ri-Boys. He's tasked with kidnapping a magic specialist to help get rid of murderous angelic spirits in their local park that are getting in the way of their prime location for selling drugs. He kidnaps John Constantine, who is quickly informed that Noah is mute.

Noah doesn't sign at all in this first issue, opting instead to communicate with a little notebook tied around his neck.

Despite K-Mag's (the gang leader) justification for recruiting teenagers as a "refuge" from a world that hates them, he's not afraid to treat Noah as disposable. He opts to send Noah's able-bodied friend (named Isa) on an errand instead of Noah because they "don't need no tongueless splesh backin' on ops-" and threatening Noah's life in order to get John to cooperate. So narratively the set up is clear: even though this gang is meant to provide jobs for the marginalized, it's still a bigoted organization that doesn't treat Noah well.

After accompanying John to the park where the angelic spirits murder another junkie, Noah is so traumatized by what he witnesses that he throws up on his notebook- rendering it unusable. Issue #2 starts with Noah raving in BSL (the image at the very top of this essay) to his gang mates that ignore him. When John asks if anyone knows sign language, he gets no response. It's clear that Noah is an outsider even among the Ri-Boys. Regardless, by the end of the issue in the following day, Noah is back to using his notebook (I guess he got a new one).

So. The notebook. I'll be honest I hate the notebook. It's such a clunky thing for Noah to carry around his neck, and it's clearly a set up so that Noah throws up on it and can't communicate to people who don't know sign.

On personal experience alone, I've been able to communicate with deaf people through texts on a shared phone. We'd just pull up notepad and write to each other to bridge the language barrier. And (as I've been informed by @scoliwings!) if phones running out of batteries is the worry, there's also pocket-sized boogie boards as a handy means of communication. At the very least Noah canonically has a phone (he is texting John in the panel above), and the Ri-boys can afford an ipad that K-Mag uses. These boogie board devices are much more affordable than either of those items and far better than a notebook.

Throughout Spurrier's treatment of Noah's disability, there will continue to be a sense of "we haven't even exhausted basic options to bridge a language barrier yet-" and this one is the first instance of that.

[this is not how the panels look in the comic, I chopped and arranged the last panel to save up on tumblr blog image space]

To keep this essay focused on Noah's disability, by issue #3 after some plot stuff progresses, John reveals to Noah that he actually can understand BSL. It turns out he knows "a bit" of BSL from a relationship he had with a deaf man in the 90s. Regardless, throughout Spurrier's whole run, John is shown to understand Noah's signing fluently. You might be wondering why John kept this a secret. Was he withholding his understanding of BSL so he could "eavesdrop" on something Noah signs to his friends without knowing? Nope. This reveal had no narrative purpose; John gained nothing from hiding this from everyone and it retroactively makes earlier scenes weirder. John just decides to reveal this to Noah for no other reason than to be a jerk I guess?

Once John fixes the "murderous angels in the park" problem, he also convinces K-Mag to let go of Noah from the Ri-Boys gang so that Noah can live a more honest life going to school (we will never see this) and uh. Being John's new personal driver. John used to have a friend, Chas, who drove him around everywhere but with Chas gone now- Noah is narratively set up to take his place.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice something odd about the way the scene where John reveals to Noah that he understands BSL is staged: if John supposedly understands what Noah is signing, why is he walking away, yet responding to what Noah is signing behind him? Yeah. This is one of the most annoying artistic blunders throughout all of Spurrier's Hellblazer runs with Noah. Despite Noah being mute, other characters still act like they can "hear" him.

Sign language isn't a language you can passively listen to. When someone is signing, that means you have to be looking at their hands and facial expression in order to understand what they're communicating to you. A casual irl example- in art school us hearing students could draw in our sketchbooks as the teacher lectured. A deaf student we had that year had to clarify that was not something they were able to do. As whenever the lecturer spoke- that meant that student would have to look up to their interpreter translating the lecture. So they weren't able to catch up with the classwork the way us hearing students could.

You'll notice in the panels above, John is preoccupied and talking to someone on his phone. Yet he's "hearing" what Noah is signing to him. John self identifies as someone who knows "a bit" of BSL- meaning he's not fluent. But this doesn't go anywhere since John's functionally fluent throughout both runs. It's like having a character say they know "a bit" of French only to show them being fluent through the whole story. Why bother mentioning a language barrier if it wasn't going to matter?

In these panels, Noah is signing while facing to the side- as in he's not facing John directly as he's signing, which obscures his signs from being clearly read. This wouldn't be a problem for folks who are way more fluent with any sign language (they can recognize signs at many angles), but for newbies you'll usually have people signing with their torso directly facing the other person to be as clear as possible. And they'll sign a lot slower. Little nuances like that make it clear that no one on the Hellblazer creative team have conversed with deaf people before- but why would something so obvious not be considered in the artistic direction of this run?

Let's quickly go over comics visual storytelling and how comic artists are trained to tackle staging a "talking heads" scene. Scenes like this are when characters are having a long conversation, visually giving the scene a "samey" vibe. Our job as comic artists is to keep the visuals interesting, so there are a ton of tricks we're taught to vary up how a conversation looks. We'll have a character hold a prop, walk around, look away to something else, have characters multi-task as they talk (bonus if it's thematic to the conversation), basically outside of zooming in and out it's good to keep a character busy to give the scene visual variety. Anything to break out of that silhouette of two characters directly facing each other.

[these are not how the panels are presented in the comic, I spliced these panels from 2 different issues to save up space]

Therein lies the problem: these tricks rely on an able-bodied standard of communication in order to function. Having a character like Noah communicate in sign, relies on the character he's signing towards to be paying full attention. Tackling "talking heads" as a comic artist explains but doesn't excuse these horrendous instances where poor staging of the characters ends up accidentally implying Noah "has a voice" because the able-bodied characters sure seem to be able to "hear" him even though they're facing all sorts of directions. Again, this just means the artist and writer have to rise to the challenge of keeping the scenes visually interesting while being inclusive to the disabled character the writer introduced into this world.

While we're talking about comics, I'm just going to go ahead and say I'm not a fan of the letterer's choices to visualize Noah's dialogue. To differentiate from the other characters, Noah's speechbubble is more like a caption box- it's square and light green. Instead of a tail pointing out of it to indicate who is talking like a traditional speechbubble would, instead Noah's dialogue box has a long arrow coming out of it. The arrow pointing out is just so corny. It says: "look! here's where the words are coming from! His hands!! Whoaaa".

Moreover, the arrows ruin the visual flow of the comic pages. We humans are hard wired to look at where an arrow is pointing. It's what that symbol is designed for. It's why all those clickbait youtube thumbnails have arrows pointing on them, it steals your attention. The best kind of speechbubbles are unobtrusive to the art, complementing it. Having it so that whenever Noah has dialogue we get these annoying arrows that stick out of the page composition just ruins it. Here's what it looks like edited on other characters' speechbubbles. It's a lettering eyesore.

I see no reason why Noah can't have a speechbubble tail like everyone else. I personally like making the speecbubble tail a lil-squiggly when I'm drawing a speechbubble for a character signing. Differentiating the speechbubble enough but not to the point it's obtrusive to the page flow.

Additionally, Noah has "translation brackets" around his dialogue- it's a block of dialogue that starts with the "less than" symbol and ends with the "greater than" symbol to indicate a sentence being translated from another language.

<So you'll have a character's dialogue look like this in the speech bubble.> *

accompanied by a translation box clarifying that the dialogue is; [*translated from French, for example] in the first instance we see the language featured in the comic. Of course this isn't the only way to portray language in comics, sometimes letterers will go for using colored text to differentiate languages. There's no standard look! Noah's dialogue never featured an initial caption box that discloses what language he's signing in. I'm going to charitably presume that it's a stylistic move away from that practice so that the reader is put in the same confused position as John is upon first meeting Noah.

I don't personally have an issue with the application of translation brackets to Noah's dialogue. Because even though Noah is communicating in a type of English language (British Sign Language), what we're seeing written in the dialogue of the comic isn't a direct translation of what he's signing. Unless it's Sign Exact English, sign language has different sentence structure, grammar and syntax from spoken English. So if Noah signs something like "#BUS RED YOU SEE WILL", then that translates to him saying "You will see a red bus." in written dialogue. It's a translation of his signing, even if it's still English.

I don't think there's an indisputably correct way to portray sign language in comics. Something like this will go down to personal stylistic choice of the artist. Maybe one artist decides they don't want to put brackets on ASL dialogue because they'd rather use that to differentiate English language from non-English language. There's an argument to be made either way! So long as you commit to your set of rules, I can at least try to engage with where an artistic choice is coming from even if I disagree with how it's done.

Unfortunately, that's not the case for Dead in America:

It's in the very last issue of the run, but well. You forgot the translation brackets there, guys. Sloppy work.

To wrap up Noah's arc in Hellblazer 2019, Noah is revealed to be John Constantine's son. John had a graveyard fling with Liza Ikumelo, a police woman (barf), thereby insulting a demonic spirit (and by extension, me, the reader). Many years later the spirit hunts down the woman, cursing her to an eternal sleep. Her child, Noah, was nearby and by proxy lost his voice from the incident. So it's John Constantine's fault that Noah's mute, and that Noah's mom is in a coma. Hellblazer 2019 ends with John feeling an immense guilt for forcing Noah to kill a friend, meaning they now have to flee the country. John doesn't tell Noah that Noah is his son.

So despite the poor portrayal of Noah's disability in this run, his character overall at this point was a really interesting addition to Hellblazer lore. He has a unique background of hardship; cursed by John's shenanigans at birth without even knowing it, and despite all of that he still has it in him to want to help and be kind. The reveal that he's John's son adds a layer of tragedy to everything- what does it mean to be another continuation of the Constantine family? Without even knowing it? There's plenty of angst on John's end of things, having unknowingly been an absent father for years. We get to see echoes between father and son in their actions. They're both from harsh backgrounds but humanitarians at heart, in different ways. It's very compelling stuff.

Years later, Dead In America is released as the long awaited continuation of this story. John, his friend Nat, and Noah are in America now, going on a long cross country road trip in a double decker London bus. Why? Just because. Noah and Nat take turns driving because John can't drive. In my opinion Dead In America is a bigger, more convoluted plot so I will stick to summarizing things that are relevant to Noah's disability.

This run has all the same problems as the 2019 Hellblazer run does with characters not being staged properly when Noah is signing to them, but it's the very first issue that reveals something particularly damning about how Spurrier views sign as a language.

As Noah is driving the bus he is instructed not to stop for anyone. But later that night he suddenly does. John berates Noah, only to be surprised that Noah is speaking (and sounding uncharacteristically posh)! John suddenly can't speak, instead he signs. This is how he realizes he's in a dream and regains his ability to speak. It's clear what's intended by the storytelling here. Seeing an able bodied person sign is part of the surrealism that makes this scene out of the ordinary. It's supposed to be odd that John is signing, because it's weird that Noah is the one speaking. Signing is a thing only disabled people do, not anyone else. This dream sequence is the only time a character other than Noah signs.

This single narrative choice has a drastic ripple effect on the rest of the run; it means that through both runs, no one ever signs back to Noah. According to the National Association of the Deaf, 72% of hearing parents with deaf kids don't learn sign language. This leads to deaf kids struggling culturally within their own families. Sign language expresses things that written or spoken languages can't. So having their own family not bother to learn sign is deeply isolating for deaf kids. By not having anyone but especially John sign to Noah, any narrative attempt to portray familial care and consideration between the two is undercut by this barrier. Sure John cares for his son in his own way, but not enough to converse with him in his own language.

This is when it became clear to me that Noah's use of BSL functions more as "a voice but #diverse" instead of portraying sign language as a culture and community of its own. It's like characters of color being written as white, where their identities are just a palette change. Only here, it's more of "this character is speaking, but with his hands this time" never mind how that drastically changes how a character navigates the world and how people interact with him. Attempts at writing Noah's disability in this run continue to be lackluster at best and insulting at worst.

Don't get me wrong, Noah is not a "whitewashed" character- his Blackness is integrated into the narrative of both Hellblazer 2019 and Dead In America... for better or for worse. By this I mean especially in Dead In America, Spurrier really likes to use Noah as a prop to show how racist America is. I don't think there's anything wrong with showing some uncomfortable scenes of Noah facing off American cops. In fact I like how this scene in the first issue shows the specific struggles a Black disabled person goes through, being double profiled as someone dangerous when Noah's attempts to communicate are misinterpreted as a threat- it sets the tone for how dangerous the country is for someone like him.

The original Hellblazer showed plenty of scenes where John is brutalized by the cops in both the UK and US, so gritty commentary is right at home with the character's stories. The difference here is there is almost a giddiness to inventing scenarios for Noah to experience profoundly racist situations at the expense of Noah's own characterization in this run. It becomes more obvious as we progress.

This is another nitpick but when John, Nat, and Noah meet up with Clarice Sackville (an elderly magician lady) in issue #2, Noah discreetly signs to John, calling Clarice a "wrinkled old hag" only for John to whisper back "Be grateful she can't sign, Noah." meaning "be glad she can't understand what you're saying". If there was any opportunity to use sign language as a means of discreetly communicating around someone who doesn't understand it, this would've been the moment. But alas, only disabled people use sign language, right guys. John can only sign in a weird dream sequence.

The punchline here is that Clarice actually understood what Noah was signing, making a jab at him for calling her a "wrinkled old hag". I don't know how she understood what Noah was signing when she was clearly facing away from him the whole time but well. That's basically a tradition for Spurrier's runs at this point. Technically John's dialogue isn't wrong here. Clarice "can't sign". She understands it, but doesn't sign. Because that's a thing only disabled people do.

Let's put a pin on issue #4 and skip ahead to Dead In America issue #5. This is essentially an anthology issue containing short stories of little incidents John, Nat, and Noah encounter on the American road. I will be discussing the second story, "One-Way Ticket" written by Aaron Campbell (ordinarily the main artist of Spurrier's runs) with art by guest artist John Pearson.

It's a story about a ghost guy who wants to go home but everyone ignores him (because they can't see him), John helps out by discovering his dead body and bringing the spirit comfort. It's a cute and cozy story if it weren't for the abysmal way Noah is treated in it, completely contradicting its themes. Noah is horrified at the prospect of John leaving him alone in the red bus, fearing the cops will show up. John responds "You're mute, just pretend you're dumb too." Even for asshole-John standards this is unnecessarily cruel. Dead In America started with Noah being profiled by the police, so Noah's fears are as founded as it gets. This short story may not be written by Spurrier, but it is written by the artist who DREW THAT SCENE.

I didn't splice the panels above, that is exactly how they are presented in the comic. Not only do we have characters facing away from Noah as he's signing again (a tradition even guest artists continue to perpetuate it seems), but it's followed up immediately with a ghost being grateful that John recognizes him. The irony that John gets told that after ditching his son. Why not make the story about Noah relating to the ghost? Remember that scene where Noah is signing to the Ri-Boys and they all ignore him? He and the ghost could connect over how they're ignored and treated as disposable, how accommodation for people like them is considered an inconvenience, how no one cares when their life is threatened.

When John returns from discovering the ghost's dead body, just like clockwork Noah is being searched by a cop. Only now it's treated like a joke instead- with Nat taking a smoke on the side and John just slapping a spell on the cop to make him stop.

This nonchalant carelessness for the portrayal of cops is a big departure from how ACAB John was in his original Hellblazer run. John was a man who could outsmart and kill the Vampire King only to be immediately beat up by cops afterwards. He's called homophobic slurs for defending the dead body of his sex worker guy friend. It paints this image of a guy who can overcome the supernatural but doesn't stand a chance against mundane human cruelty. Because that kind of thing takes more than a magic trick to defeat. But in Dead In America, cops are a mild inconvenience to John. He can just cast spells on them and move on. It's disappointing how even in a run that's supposed to be a return to form for Hellblazer, John isn't as radical as he was written in the 80s and 90s. The cops don't have the kind of threatening authority they had in the older comics. Don't worry, it gets worse.

Let's hop and skip ahead to Dead In America issue #9. For plot reasons, John went missing. He disappeared to Hell and back for four weeks, separated from Noah and Nat. When he reunites with his friends, they want nothing to do with him. They're now running their own little film studio, shooting a film that metatextually reflects their road trip adventure. Again, for plot reasons. They're teaming up with a metamancer to speed filmmaking along. Nat's the director and Noah's the producer. He's practicing magic, and even found himself a girlfriend, Liz! She's an Asian girl though and that worries me. Because Asian love interests are usually seen as narratively disposable. A racist character assumes Noah is using "mind magic on her" because there's no way Noah would end up with someone so "hot", right? Right.

[spliced panels from issue 9 and 10]

Issue #10 is when we get very much needed perspective from Noah and Nat's point of view. Nat always wanted to be a writer, while Noah longs for a life of normalcy. The two narrate their backstories, building their life up to meeting John, to where they are now with their film studio.

We learn how Noah got into using magic, and. Urgh. Sick of dealing with a language barrier as a disabled person, Noah uses magic to communicate with people. It's another case of "we haven't even exhausted basic options to bridge a language barrier yet-" I get it, throughout this run Noah doesn't have his notebook, and he doesn't appear to have his phone either (perhaps to hide from the authorities tracking them down) but to that I say pocket-sized boogie boards are still an affordable option that won't get you tracked down by the cops. I'd even prefer him buying another notebook over this. In this issue he's even seen with a phone, so what do I know.

"huh! I just remembered that I, an American, actually do know British Sign Language! Hah how could I forget something like that ho ho" it's just so trite. Like we're not even going to try and grab a paper and pen to communicate? We're skipping to using dark magic instead? Okay. Worst of all, so you're telling me the racist loser was right about Noah?? That Noah wouldn't have a chance with Liz if it weren't for magic? What are we doing...

I'm not including the panel here but after Noah narrates "I won't use this shit to coerce people-- I'm not him. But... making things easier? Simpler? Why not?" the following panel is of him and Liz getting funky style in bed. Even with Noah saying he won't "coerce people" he still says that magic can make things easier. Simpler. There is this uncomfortable implication that Noah "made it easier" for Liz to sleep with him. Sure it can be read that he got close to her through them communicating on the same page. But when their relationship isn't developed, narratively she just kind of exists as a prop for his desires. To quote Noah himself in Dead In America issue #4: "It was rape."

Time to revisit that pin. So issue #4 is about John and Noah masquerading as an exorcist and...an enslaved person to trick a small town into revealing a coverup: a girl was assaulted by six boys in their local football team, ending her own life from her story being pushed aside for the bright future of the football boys. Noah is so infuriated by how she was mistreated that he beats up one of the boys. It's a heavy story about how far a town will go to protect the future of boys while discarding the life of the girl, who to this day is anonymous. If you're wondering whether Noah pretending to be an enslaved person was necessary to the con, I can assure you it really wasn't.

What's frustrating here is that are we really supposed to believe that Noah, a character who was willing to risk his safety by beating up a rapist, would then go ahead and "make it easier" to sleep with a girl later? Remember. The reason he did that was because his disability was apparently holding him back. Are we really having it so the only person of color in John's cast for this story did this? That if he wasn't disabled, he wouldn't do this? It's frankly disgusting.

Through John's silver tongue trickery, he pulls shenanigans that cause Nat and Noah to get arrested. Despite Nat being known to be violent, Noah is the one who is brutalized by the cops and put into solitary confinement. Because racism. Spurrier really wants you to know that American cops are so racist, guys.

I wonder where all this energy was for his Hellblazer 2019 run taking place in the UK. Where the only cop characters were noble people of color who are looking out for each other. Noah's own mom was a cop, even. He'll show Noah looking tense in a car as cops walk by in Hellblazer 2019, but for Dead In America? Noah is profiled by police three times, made to play an enslaved person for John's ends, and is in the receiving end of so many bigoted characters' racism. Spurrier is selective about his portrayal of cops when it suits him.

At this point it's transparent looking back at the treatment of Noah's character throughout Dead In America, that there's a giddiness Spurrier (and technically Campbell) have in crafting racist scenarios for Noah to go through. But it's okay because they have John say a lamp-shading comment to assure readers that the writers recognize "This Is A Racist Thing Happening".

Reading Dead in America reminded me of the discourse surrounding "Strange Fruit" a comic by Mark Waid and J. G. Jones. I won't belabor explaining the plot, but what they have in common is this self congratulatory "giddiness to put Black characters in compromising situations" I keep describing. Like, they didn't have to create a naked Black Superhero named "Johnson" who doesn't speak and wears a confederate flag while dealing with racists in the Jim Crow era South but...these white writers just didn't have a choice! It's the rules of story! John has to pretend Noah is his property!

"Strange Fruit's desire to make big, albeit familiar statements about America's sinful past and do justice to both the subject matter and history often comes at the expense of considerate or even dimensional characterization."

-Vox writer Tre Johnson, 2017.

This is the kind of giddiness to indulge in fictional cruelty that isn't written with Black readers in mind. It's to entertain white readers with an exaggerated depiction of racism to make themselves feel better about being British. And if anyone's excuse is "well it's Hellblazer! Vertigo comics are supposed to talk about uncomfortable topics, John gets beat up by cops too back in the day", then need I remind you that unlike John, the sheer frequency Noah is put into these compromising scenarios is at the expense of his characterization.

Don't think that Spurrier's done playing with his "America Sure Is Racist" prop yet though.

As Noah (still bruised and battered) escapes prison, John pulls a couple more tricks on him: he "accidentally" reveals that Noah is his son, tricks Liz into faking her death to freak Noah out (we'll never see her again after this), and gets Clarice to pretend to die in front of him. All this angers Noah into attempting to kill John- but he stops. Because Noah still isn't that kind of person.

This is all part of John's plan, supposedly he made a deal with demons in Hell that if John himself is killed in the allocated time, he won't actually die. But his plan failed. Unfortunately for John, Nat is still filming their road trip movie, and whatever the actors do, the real characters do as well. A script change happens, and John ends up killing Noah.

But aha, this is yet another trick. By issue #11, Noah wakes up bruise-free and alive (he even gets to smash in John's stand in actor for good measure). Turns out, John's deal with the demons of Hell was for his son to live, instead- a selfless act that none of the Gods and demons saw coming. After John does some more silver-tongue talking to a Dream Entity, he's able to grant people some rushed happy endings.

Noah's mom wakes up from her eight year magical coma, the policeman hunting down Nat and Noah deletes his files, and Nat becomes the boss of a major studio- her writer dreams come to fruition. I don't know how Noah's getting back home to his mom, but shh shhh it's a happy ending, Spurrier promises.

So we have a twist to the usual Hellblazer story. Instead of John surviving at the expense of his friends and family, now John sacrifices his life to Noah and Nat so they can live freely. Last but certainly not least, as Clarice dies she gifts Noah the ability to speak. And when Noah does speak, he sounds so out of character I thought I was misreading things. Is this another lettering mistake? No? Then what is this random poetry.

I recognize what the narrative is doing here. It's John's fault that Noah's mom is in a coma and that Noah is mute, so the resolution to that conflict is for him to undo the wrongs he did to the Ikumelo family- which includes Noah being "cured" of his disability. The problem here is not only is this an exhausting continuation of the "disabilities getting cured" trope- so Noah can join the "easier, simpler" life of able bodied people- but also that a large facet of Noah's identity is tied to John's character development.

Noah might not be the main character, but he's the deuteragonist of Dead In America- the beating family heart that ties John to someone who would otherwise be a stranger. Instead of narratively endearing us to Noah's character, Spurrier seems content to just have Noah drive the bus only to make occasional stops to demonstrate how Racist America Is. It's such a fall from grace to the intriguing character we met in Hellblazer 2019. All that characterization of someone willing to help despite a life of hardship is just out the window.

[spliced panels]

My overall feelings about the treatment of Noah Ikumelo is that whatever representation he embodies feels like being thrown a really shitty party. Noah Ikumelo is an original creation for these two runs. Si Spurrier didn't have to make Noah a Black disabled teenager, but he did. Spurrier takes up that responsibility of representation by half-assing it. The kind of thing a guy who gloats about a bi-colored comic cover would do before accidentally calling the character in it "pansexual" in said comic. And then backpedal on twidder when called out for it. Half ass behavior.

Noah went from being this interesting exploration of unintended legacy to being a prop to make shallow commentary on American racism. Noah is never drawn consistently between artists but he sure is adultified a bunch to the point that I even see readers describing him as "basically an adult" when he's only 16-17 years old. I get that it's supposed to be tragic that he's forced to grow up too soon, but part of that tragedy is that he still is a kid. The portrayal of his disability shows how no research was put into being inclusive in either the writing or the art to the point it's downright nonsensical. The research amounts to looking up a sign language dictionary for words and that's it. This isn't even touching on how there was no recognition of the intersection between Black culture and sign language.

The problems with Noah Ikumelo are not unique to Hellblazer, or Si Spurrier or the Hellblazer creative team. They're a reflection of a predominantly able-bodied and white industry that is comics and media as a whole. The very way comics as a medium is taught carries with it an ableist standard for portraying communication. All this to say that tackling a character like Noah would mean doing the extra work to be critical of what we're used to seeing as the norm. But if you were just going to half-ass setting up a party for Black disabled readers, then why even bother y'know? It's not like Spurrier was held at gun point to create a disabled character. Frankly he was too busy crafting scenarios for guns to be pointing at Noah instead.

[huxhsz]

UYYY PHILIPPINES!!! 🔥🇵🇭🔥🇵🇭🔥🇵🇭 PHILIPPINES!! 🇵🇭🔥🇵🇭🔥🇵🇭

Anyway, I wanted to ask if your up for making hcs for all the boys? Or atleast for Caleb, Zayne, and Sylus hehe

Prompt: Introducing your boyfriend to your family at a cliche filipino party hehe so you got the nosy titas, energetic younger pinsans, and the titos hogging the karaoke machine and drinking before lunch barely starts.

Feel free to ignore this or do whatever you want with the idea. I'm just really excited to find another filo lads fan 🥹💖

Ingat and stay hydrated!! (JUSKO PO NAPAKA INIT PARANG AKONG BARBEQUE INIIHAW SA LABAS)

🍓 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ introducing him to your filipino family ── ★ !!

featuring: sylus, caleb, xavier, rafayel, zayne

note/s: ayy thank u so much for reaching out and super sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for a month 😭 it's been staring at me like a neglected tupperware in the fridge but anyway here i am finally replying LMAO bro ur family is never gonna let u break up with any of them LMAO good luck 😭😭😭

── 𐔌 SYLUS ؛ ଓ

si sylus yung mukhang bad boy na lowkey intimidating pero mabait sa bata kaya biglang magiging fan favorite

si tita baby: "alam mo nung high school ako nakipag date rin ako sa isang bad boy eh... kaso iniwan ako..." (habang may hawak na red horse)

sylus, deadpan: "… sorry to hear that po."

brings imported chocolate or some fancy snack from abroad tas ubos in 0.2 seconds kasi dinumog ng mga bata

sumubok mag-karaoke kahit alam niyang sintunado 😭 "tito ano next song?"

mga pinsan mo: "UY BAD TRIP KA SYLUS HINDI YAN YUNG TUNOG NG 'BAKIT PA BA' NI JAY R!!"

after the party habang nag-aayos ng gamit biglang lalapit si tita baby: "wag mong saktan yung pamangkin ko ha? kasi pag sinaktan mo…" (may hawak na tsinelas)

sylus, with a small smile: "opo, tita."

── 𐔌 CALEB ؛ ଓ

bro’s already part of the fam at this point. like as soon as he steps in, he's giving out mano to the titos and titas. your lola LOVES him.

every time he visits, someone asks him to fix their electric fan or their car. like hindi pa siya nakaka-upo, may tatlong pinsan na nakaabang with “kuya kuya tulong naman sa...”.

tito na lasing at 3 PM: "kaya mo bang lumipad ng lasing ha?"

caleb: "uh... hindi po advisable yun tito." (deadpan face pero polite pa rin 😭)

all the younger pinsans follow him around kasi "kuya caleb!! kuya caleb!! can you make a paper airplane?? kuyaaa!!!" 😭

the titas are already planning the wedding kahit kaka-meet pa lang niya sa family 😭💀 "sayang naman kung hindi mo papakasalan yan, ha!"

kuya caleb helping out sa handaan kahit hindi siya pinapagalaw, like girl he’s at the grill, checking the isaw like a pro

── 𐔌 XAVIER ؛ ଓ

literally nasa sulok buong party, nakasalampak sa isang plastic na monobloc chair

mukha na siyang inaantok kahit kakadating niyo pa lang 😭

"xavier gusto mo ba ng coke?"

xavier, barely awake: "sige po." (pero hindi naman niya iniinom kasi nakatulog na siya 😭)

may batang tatabi sa kanya tas makikitulog na rin siya doon 😭

titas are like "ay ang cute naman ng boyfriend mo pero... okay lang ba siya??"

"ganito lang po talaga siya." 😭

pagkatapos ng party ikaw yung nag-aalalay sa kanya habang half-asleep siya, tas mga tita mo: "pakasalan mo na yan para maalagaan mo siya forever!"

xavier, still half-asleep: "okay lang naman." (???)

── 𐔌 RAFAYEL ؛ ଓ

"painter ka???" – "oo po." – "nako, may pera ba dyan?"

then they find out na HE'S RICH AS HELL and they’re like "ahhhhhh ibang usapan na to!!" 😭

rafayel looking all pretty and composed in some crisp linen shirt tas yung mga titos like "anong medium mo? oil? acrylic?" (as if they know art)

then the titas see his hands, all stained with faint traces of paint, tas biglang "naku, artist talaga, alam mong hardworking!!"

rafayel looking slightly uncomfortable habang pinapalibutan siya ng curious titas but he’s smiling politely (pogi pa rin kahit awkward 😭)

one of the titas asks if he can paint her portrait, and he’s like "sure po" tapos yung buong barangay magpapalista na rin 😭

he brings some fancy dessert like "oh, i picked this up from paris last week." 😭 tas ur tita’s like "naku anak, ang swerte mo naman!!"

ur lola IMMEDIATELY asks "mayaman ba pamilya niya?" tas u gotta be like "lola…" 😭

one of the younger cousins asks him to draw something and he just… whips out a full art piece in like 10 mins?? tas the kids are losing their minds 😭

ur titas are hovering over his shoulder like "ang galing!! dapat ikaw na mag-design ng mga debut invitation!!"

he just quietly sits in a corner and sketches the chaos of the party. later u see the drawing and he’s drawn u laughing w ur family… AND UR HOLDING HIS HAND IN THE DRAWING??

── 𐔌 ZAYNE ؛ ଓ

the moment mo i-introduce as a doctor?? instant favoritism

"anong specialization mo?"

"ah cardiology po."

"NAKU YUNG TATAY KO MAY HYPERTENSION!! ZAYNE ANAK MAY CHECK UP KA BA BUKAS??"

titas already setting up an appointment na parang wala siyang sariling ospital 😭

tita baby: "alam mo pag doktor talaga, jackpot ka na dyan iha!!"

every convo with a tita goes like:

"Dok, anong mabisang gamot sa ano..."

"Dok, yung asawa ko may maintenance, ano pong maganda..."

kahit gusto niyang umupo in peace, ang ending may mini-consultation booth na siya sa tabi ng pancit bihon.

ended up giving free medical advice halfway through lunch 😭😭 "Uminom po kayo ng tubig, wag masyado sa chicharon ha… Ah, may maintenance meds po ba kayo?"

hindi na siya makalabas ng sala kasi may pila ng tito at tita na nagpapacheckup na parang clinic 💀

"Dok, may kilala ka bang pwedeng magpa-check ng blood pressure ng mura?"

super chill lang si zayne habang may batang humihila ng manggas niya asking him if he's a superhero 😭

nagbibigay ng medical advice sa tabi ng karaoke machine habang si tito jojo kinakanta yung "MY WAY" sa top volume tas walang pumipigil kasi baka magalit si tito 😭

after party: bigla mong maririnig sa isang tita "yung zayne na yun... dapat pakasalan mo na yun ha?"

[a-cryptid-called-magetha]

double art posting in one day bc i realized ive been STARVING my tumblr mutuals. sorry divas. clones be upon ye.

[nikkodikko]

[Image ID: a The Magnus Archives comic in scales of greens, illustrating a moment from episode 129

The first three panels are close-ups of Jon.

Panel 1. Jon has a hand behind his head and is looking up, he has an expression of annoyance and embarassment on his face. He says "God knows what. and i can't talk to Melanie.

I suppose" and stops talking abruptly.

Panel 2. Jon lets his hand fall down his neck and looks to the side in embarassement, he makes an unintelligible sound.

Panel 3. Jon lets his arm fall down and looks Martin in the eyes, he has a sad and earnest look on his face. he says "I miss you"

The central panel is a medium shot of Martin and Jon.

Panel 4. Martin and Jon are facing each other, Martin is holding some files and has a look of disbelief on his face. he lets out a small laugh and says "Really?" Jon looks up at him with a sad expression and blushed cheeks.

The next two panels, in the corners of the page, are close-ups of Jon on the right and Martin on the left.

Panel 5. Jon looks up at martin with a look of surrender and yearning and a deeper blush. He says "yeah"

Panel 6. Martin looks down at Jon with a surprised face. realising he was actually being honest. He thinks "oh." /.End]

still trying to figure out my designs for these two but after listening to MAG 129 the worms in my brain took over

i'm vv new to tma but i sense an hyperfixation coming

[courtjester69420]

devastating: this user saw a younger gortash mod and thats gonna be his whole day now

[lacontroller1991]

Out Cold (Albert Wesker x Reader)

Main Master List || Misc Master List

Warnings: 18+, canon gore/violence, medical jargon, vomit, guns, language

Word Count: 2k

Author's Note: Haven't written in a while and haven't written for Wesker but damn I had a good idea and I hope it does well! Based off the Walking Dead

__________

The room is freezing by the time you awoke struggling for air, a plastic tube blocking your airway as you pull it out, coughs wracking through your body as your throat burns. Sucking in gulps of air, you manage to gain back autonomy of your body as your heart rate calms down. As you calm down, your eyes trace around the room, dark and cold, as if no one has entered in some time. A vase containing flowers, wilted, rests on the bedside table with a knocked over note.

Piquing your interest, your hand reaches out for the note, bringing it closer for you to read in the dark light.

Get well soon. I miss you.

-Al

The note is short and terse, not like you expected any differently from your captain and lover. What you don’t expect is that the room is dusty and the flowers wilted. Something Albert Wesker would have rectified the second he noticed it. Leaving you to one conclusion, he hasn’t seen you in a while.

The thought of being abandoned by him causes your heart to sink in your chest, but with another look around the room it’s clear no one has been in here in a while. So what happened?

Last thing you remembered was being shot in the chest and falling to the ground while Chris shot the perp. The bullet proof vest did little to block the impact of the bullet as it ripped through you. From there, you can remember flashing lights, Wesker looking down at you with his eyebrows creased in a way that shows his worry, a mask going over your face, and then, nothing. How long has it been?

With a grunt, you manage to rip out the various IVs and catheters that have no use, leaving a mess in its wake. “I need a shower,” as you move to stand up, gravity wins and you fall down, barely breaking the fall with your arms. “Shit.”

The shower is ice cold but it does the trick to get rid of the grime that had accumulated from weeks of bed rest. At least you assume it’s been weeks. Grabbing your bag of clothes from under the bed, a medium size case with a note topples out on top.

I do hope you get this before someone else does.

Trust me and take the medicine.

-Al

Just what is going on? Shaking the confusion from your head, you follow his directions and open the case, a vial and a syringe neatly placed inside with your glock and 3 mags of bullets. 

Inject the green vial into your neck.

It’s simple enough instructions and despite not knowing what it is that you’re injecting into your neck, your trust in Albert outweighs your curiosity of what it is. Inserting the needle into your neck, you shiver as you press the injector, nearly gagging at the feeling of the medicine entering your body. After a minute, a surge of nausea takes over you, causing you to empty the contents of your stomach, clear fluid pooling onto the floor. 

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, your eyes look at the syringe with doubt. “What the hell is that?” Struggling to stand up, a series of rounds of gunfire snaps your attention to the door. You’re not alone. “Shit.” It doesn’t take you long to get dressed before you’re stepping out of the room, glock in one hand and a flashlight in another as you take in the view of the hallway. What was once sterile and clean was now filled with various debris and overturned furniture that accompanies a rotting scent that causes your stomach to do flips. 

The empty halls echo various sounds, including the gunfire and snarls. Gripping your gun a little tighter you round the corner as the gunfire grows closer. Maybe whoever is in the building can help you understand exactly what is going on. 

“Freeze! Don’t move!” A masculine voice calls out from further down the hallway and you can barely make out the glint of his gun, pointed at you. Raising your hands in surrender, a bullet rips past your head and into something behind you where a thud follows. Whipping your head around, your eyes land on a woman, maybe a little older than yourself, but the horror of seeing someone just murdered in cold blood covers over the fact that the woman herself is rotting.

“What the fuck?” The man doesn’t acknowledge you as he rushes past, placing two more bullets in the head of the woman. Satisfied with his work, he turns to you, gun pointed at you. 

“Are you bit?”

“What?”

“Have you been bit? Are you infected?” Infected? Bit?

“What is going on? Infected with what?” His face softens as he lowers his gun, quickly gazing around the area for any more threats. 

“Those things, they’re not people. They’re not entirely alive.” Pausing for you to catch up, he sighs as you try to wrap it around your head. “They’re zombies. Where the hell have you been?”

“Zombies.” Eyes flicker back down to the woman as you take in her appearance, skin practically molted off and eyes glazed over. Whoever she had been was not the person that now lays dead on the floor.

“So, who are you?” 

Your eyes flick back up to him, taking in his appearance. The man before you can’t be no older than 25 with a muscular build and shaggy hair that grazes his eyebrows. His arms are bare, showcasing some cuts that seem fresh while the rest of his body is covered in tactical gear. In one hand lies his gun and in another holds a briefcase. He’s obviously here on a mission, what great luck that you have to find him. “Lieutenant (Y/N) (Y/L/N), S.T.A.R.S,” at the mention of S.T.A.R.S, his eyes light up. 

“Oh boy, I found one of your members. I got to get this case back to her because she’s sick and whatever is in here will help her.” You feel guilty that your heart sinks at the announcement that it’s one of your female companions and not your lover, but at least it narrows who he found down to two. 

—-------

You and Carlos, whose name you found out, make it back to the room where they had holed up in record time, instantly running to Jill’s side. “Jill, it’s (Y/N). You’re going to be ok, Carlos is going to get you cured,” your hand runs over her hair in an attempt to soothe her though you know she probably can’t feel it. 

“All right, here it goes,” Carlos injects the serum into Jill. “This shit better work.” Nothing happens and your heart drops. Had you caused Carlos to be too late? Your thoughts are interrupted as a man bursts through the door, looking worse for wear as he clutches his side. “Jesus Tyrell, what happened?” The man doesn’t make a comment as he grabs the remote from the shelf, turning on the tv.

‘Attention all citizens. The contagion spreading throughout the city has been designated uncontainable. On October 1, Raccoon City will be completely destroyed in a missile strike. All residents capable of rational thought are urged to leave immediately.’ Your blood runs cold. Is this seriously how you are going to go out? A missile strike? Your attention turns back to Jill, pressing a cloth against her head to dry the sweat as the two men continue to talk to each other. 

“Come on Jill, wake your ass up.”

“Shit here they come,” Tyrell begins to sit up but Carlos pushes him back down.

“I got this,” his eyes land on you and Jill. “Do you got her covered?”

“Yes, are you going to need help?” His hair moves with each shake of his head.

“No, make sure she doesn’t die,” he doesn’t comment more on the matter before he’s out the door, pushing various blocks of furniture against the door as a barricade, trapping you, Tyrell and Jill.

—------

Minutes pass as you frantically look between Jill and the door that blocks you from the rapid gunfire and snarls that lay outside. Why did this have to happen to you? Have you really been in a coma for that long? Why didn’t Albert come and get you? 

Your questions go unanswered as Jill groans beside you, blue eyes blinking the haze away as she sits up, rubbing her eyes. “What happened?”

“Jill?” Her head turns toward you in confusion as if she couldn’t believe that you’re next to her.

“(Y/N)? You’re alive?” 

She moves to sit up, grunting in pain while you aid her, a hand firm on her back as you sit next to her. “In the flesh. I just woke up today.” Her eyes widen as if she’s seen a ghost. In denial, she shakes her head, hair bobbing with each movement.

“No, that’s impossible. You were in a coma. How?”

“I don’t know,” you’ve been wondering that since you woke up. Judging by the date you’ve been out for at least 3 months and judging from what Carlos had told you about the outbreak, the hospital has been deserted for two weeks. “What happened to the others?” Her face drops as she looks away, tears threatening to spill from her blue eyes.

“Most of them didn’t make it. The ones that did, I don’t know where they are.” Your heart drops. Albert is dead?

“Wesker?” At the mention of your shared captain her face turns sour as if you had just given her a lemon. 

“That traitor.”

“What?”

“He’s been working for Umbrella this whole time. Everyone has died because of him.”

Your heart hammers against your ribcage while your head spins. What does she mean that he’s responsible for people’s deaths? Albert would never. Sure he is a cold and calculating man, but the man that you love would never. “I don’t believe you.”

She lets out a terse laugh that ridicules your stance. “Oh believe it. He made the virus. He and Birkin make the virus that is killing all of those people. He paid for it though. That monster that he made, it killed him.” That doesn’t make sense, you think to yourself, someone had been in your room and left you that case. The flowers too. If what Jill is saying is correct, then those flowers must have been several months old, not weeks.

Keeping your thoughts to yourself, you think back to the vial that you injected into yourself. How did Albert get the vial of medicine? Why was he asking you to trust him on it? What was in it? How did you not know that he was working for Umbrella? 

“You’re awake!” Carlos’s voice booms into the room disrupting your train of thought as he smiles widely. “Holy shit, it worked! Call the government. Tell them we got the cure.” He aids Jill off the bed while your mind continues to process everything. “Come on, we got to go.”

“I can’t.” Your words halt Jill, Carlos and Tyrell as they look at you like you’ve grown two heads. “I can’t go with you.”

“This whole city is about to be nuked if we don’t get out of here,” Tyrell comments with labored breathing while Jill rushes to your side, looping her arm through yours.

“Look, whatever is holding you back is gone. We need to get out of here.”

“Bu-”

“No but, I just got you back, I am NOT going to lose you again,” she tugs you along through the doors while Carlos keeps on the lookout. Begrudgingly, you follow along, promising yourself that you will find Albert Wesker.

[annabelle--cane]

mag 56 // mag 69 (nice) // mag 196

interesting to me that, in contrast to all the marionette imagery with visible external control, there's also a recurring motif of the web hollowing out its avatars and manipulating them from the inside. like in these instances it wasn't just about controlling them, but about removing their interiority entirely and using them as a medium or a vessel.

[txttletale]

Your discussions on AI art have been really interesting and changed my mind on it quite a bit, so thank you for that! I don’t think I’m interested in using it, but I feel much less threatened by it in the same way. That being said, I was wondering, how you felt about AI generated creative writing: not, like AI writing in the context of garbage listicles or academic essays, but like, people who generate short stories and then submit them to contests. Do you think it’s the same sort of situation as AI art? Do you think there’s a difference in ChatGPT vs mid journey? Legitimate curiosity here! I don’t quite have an opinion on this in the same way, and I’ve seen v little from folks about creative writing in particular vs generated academic essays/articles

i think that ai generated writing is also indisputably writing but it is mostly really really fucking awful writing for the same reason that most ai art is not good art -- that the large training sets and low 'temperature' of commercially available/mass market models mean that anything produced will be the most generic version of itself. i also think that narrative writing is very very poorly suited to LLM generation because it generally requires very basic internal logic which LLMs are famously bad at (i imagine you'd have similar problems trying to create something visual like a comic that requires consistent character or location design rather than the singular images that AI art is mostly used for). i think it's going to be a very long time before we see anything good long-form from an LLM, especially because it's just not a priority for the people making them.

ultimately though i think you could absolutely do some really cool stuff with AI generated text if you had a tighter training set and let it get a bit wild with it. i've really enjoyed a lot of AI writing for being funny, especially when it was being done with tools like botnik that involve more human curation but still have the ability to completely blindside you with choices -- i unironically think the botnik collegehumour sketch is funnier than anything human-written on the channel. & i think that means it could reliably be used, with similar levels of curation, to make some stuff that feels alien, or unsettling, or etheral, or horrifying, because those are somewhat adjacent to the surreal humour i think it excels at. i could absolutely see it being used in workflows -- one of my friends told me recently, essentially, "if i'm stuck with writer's block, i ask chatgpt what should happen next, it gives me a horrible idea, and i immediately think 'that's shit, and i can do much better' and start writing again" -- which is both very funny but i think presents a great use case as a 'rubber duck'.

but yea i think that if there's anything good to be found in AI-written fiction or poetry it's not going to come from chatGPT specifically, it's going to come from some locally hosted GPT model trained on a curated set of influences -- and will have to either be kind of incoherent or heavily curated into coherence.

that said the submission of AI-written stories to short story mags & such fucking blows -- not because it's "not writing" but because it's just bad writing that's very very easy to produce (as in, 'just tell chatGPT 'write a short story'-easy) -- which ofc isn't bad in and of itself but means that the already existing phenomenon of people cynically submitting awful garbage to literary mags that doesn't even meet the submission guidelines has been magnified immensely and editors are finding it hard to keep up. i think part of believing that generative writing and art are legitimate mediums is also believing they are and should be treated as though they are separate mediums -- i don't think that there's no skill in these disciplines (like, if someone managed to make writing with chatGPT that wasnt unreadably bad, i would be very fucking impressed!) but they're deeply different skills to the traditional artforms and so imo should be in general judged, presented, published etc. separately.