Category: Uncategorized

Day 2

Laura Highcove

Yesterday was a day of shock and the five stages of grief. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take the day off. I let myself mourn, I let myself worry, I let myself rage. I distracted, and created, and loved. And Tumblr was what snapped me out of it, because of course it did. Tumblr, the liberal bastion that is making so little money that it has only been minority corrupted by capitalism.


But today it’s time to start looking into what to do. Firstly, managing the emotional toll. First step, re above, was just letting myself feel everything I needed to. Without judgement, without shame. We, as a country, lost something yesterday, even the people who voted for it. Taking care of the mental health aspect of it is the most important, because everything is filtered through that lens. Ignoring your mental health (which includes tamping down your feelings) is the best way to lose before you even start.


Then on to the practical! Found a good article, in that someone on Tumblr posted it and I saw it, titled: ’’ Now this article is not messing around. There’s a certain amount of being an American that has seeped into my bones. We’re ’Murica. We’re awesome. A beacon of democracy, the land of the free and home of the brave and all the rest of that rhetoric, which really is the main reason for the rise of the MAGA regime. (Is anyone calling it that yet? I feel like it makes the most sense.) I’ve been aware and watching the slow(?) descent of the once powerful USA with a sad acceptance but somewhere I still believed in it. That America would stay the country I love.


Which is why I was so shocked (along with like…everyone) when Trump won in 2016. And even more shocked when he won two days ago. Because I assumed democracy would work, because ’Murica! We’re supposed to be free and safe and inclusive…right?


And reading this article was a slap on the face. “People who have lived under authoritarian regimes’. That’s who I’m accepting advice from. Because that’s an actually, real threat. Trump’s rhetoric, 2025. It’s fascism. (Oh good, scrivener doesn’t ’know’ the word fascism. I have to teach my word processor ’fascism’. Sigh.) we’re talking about direct comparisons to Hitler and the Nazi regime and not in a childish Internet argument where I don’t like your opinion so I’m comparing it to Hitler and Nazis, but in a very real world, adult, we are staring at fascism in the face in the United States of America way. We have been living the rise of a new fascist regime in real time.


People who are so scared at the charges in the country, who were then manipulated into even more fear, and remained so narrow minded in that fear that they voted for that…man. That they believe that things will get better if we kill all the immigrants, and the blacks, and the trans, and the gays, and put the women back in the kitchen to be used for sex and baby-making like God intended! And those fears will allow democracy to be overthrown. Safety over freedom.


Am I over-reacting? I sure as pie hope so. I hope that we collectively look back at this article in four years and you laugh at me, tease me about these predictions while we celebrate our new freely and fairly elected president. I hope. I really hope.

Untitled

Laura Highcove

Fear
Rage
Disbelief
Pain
Dizziness
Numbness
It was such a unfathomable outcome that I simply didn’t believe. I didn’t think people could be so hateful. So scared… I watched it happen in other countries, and I didn’t believe it could happen here. I’m going to watch my country crumble. The country that has surrounded and supported me, even though it wasn’t always the best. Even though it held back much of it’s love because I was born with a vagina. Even though. And it will go kicking and screaming as it’s raped by misogyny and racism and religious intolerance, but it will go. I will watch its gasping cries knowing that what I did wasn’t enough, and that all I can do now is sit in what privilege is afforded me, shielded while I whisper ‘I’m sorry I didn’t do more. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.’ And wait to see if it swallows me too.

No One Needed Umbrella Academy Season 4

Laura Highcove

There were lots of problems with Umbrella Academy Season 4, and truthfully, if you want a good overview of the individual plot lines and character issues, this video brings up almost everything I would, plus some things I forgot.

What I want to talk about is the ending. Yes. Spoilers.

So the entire story is that Hargreaves released the merigold, which created our characters, and with it a ton of timelines and an equal number of world ending scenarios. The Umbrellas stave off one world ending only to find another looming. So the ultimate reality is that for the Umbrellas to actually save the world they have to wipe the marigold (and themselves, who were created by the marigold) from existence.

We watched the Umbrellas, abused misfits that they were, working to do good, to make things better, to fight for good, to struggle and fail. Their quirky lives, their vivacious humor, as they lived their lives trying to navigate their traumas and their powers and each other. Saving the world, only to have it hurtle toward another ending.

This is not a matter of not liking that the story didn’t have a happy ending. This is the fact that not only was it a shaggy dog story, but the message was: no matter how hard you try or what your intentions are, you are worthless because everything you do only makes things worse. You were born wrong. You don’t belong. You can’t improve or change it. The world will be better off if you literally never existed in the first place.

I apologize if anyone is trigger by this; but that’s the point.

That was the take away message from this story, and as a creator, I’m appalled by it. We, as creators, have a responsibility to our readers/listeners/watchers to cause no harm. The industry of storytellers as a whole is trying to change the harmful stereotypes and tropes surrounding LGBTQIA+ groups and POCs in stories because of the misinformation and negative feelings it perpetuates. And this story’s message was a painful misstep that no one needed.

You Are Not Lazy

Laura Highcove

You leave clothing all over the floor.
You abandon dishes to pile up on the desk, the coffee table, the sink.
You wear clothing out of the clean laundry pile.
You procrastinate chores over and over and over.
Your brain tells you, you can do it later. Always later.
You are not lazy.
You pick up a new hobby, obsess over it, then drop it.
You doom scroll through Instagram, YouTube shorts, Tumblr.
You read every article on Bored Panda.
You can’t keep focus on what you need to do.
You play a video game for five hours without looking up.
You are not lazy.
You leave things in mounting piles.
You obsessively clean.
You have so much to do but you can never start.
You are called lazy.
You are not lazy.
You say something that occurred to you and your partner says they just said that.
You are asked if you ever listen, if you care.
You don’t understand why you can’t just do this task, why you can’t focus.
You can’t grasp how time works, you’re early, or late.
You are not lazy.
You host worlds in your mind.
You have people living whole and complete in your consciousness.
You see beauty in the mundane.
You create because you must.
You bring joy and authenticity to those around you.
You are not lazy.

One Author’s Opinion on AI Generating Tools

Laura Highcove

What is your opinion on ‘AI Generating Tools’ (AIGTs)?

I mean that’s rather broad. Tldr: I see them as useful tools.

But the people who created these programs stole content to train them on without the creator’s permission.

Yes, and consider for a moment that the people who developed Midjourney put out a call and got artists to opt in with their art. Since we’re daydreaming, let’s even say Midjourney’s developers even paid! those artists.

It took longer to develop the program, cost a bit more, but Midjourney now exists! Would that change the argument against people generating pictures/stories and selling them? Would there no longer be an outcry against these tools?

I mean actors were/are signing over the rights to their likeness and being paid for it. But the argument was never about how much they were being paid, it was about how those likenesses will be used. Same thing with these tools. The method of their creation is a travesty, but it’s not the nearly the main argument.

And it’s creating tons of pollution. Like a ton.

Yes, that sucks, and I’m tired of being made to feel guilty about my individual contribution to pollution. Reducing pollution has to be done by the companies making that pollution, which requires government oversight. All I can do is try to vote for people who intend to require this kind of oversight.

So you’re using AIGTs?

Yes. To make pictures of characters, scenes. And to give me ideas; names of characters, personality ideas, or place names. My stories and my characters are my own, and I’m not using it to create anything I am then putting out whole cloth and/or charging for it.

And your Patreon?

I’ve been pretty open about that, here’s the link to that position.

So you don’t care about the artists losing their jobs?

Of course I do, but as much as it sucks, this is what happens with new technology. Every tool ever created has both improved productivity, and cost humans jobs. You wanna talk about computers themselves? Doesn’t mean it’s not painful and that people don’t suffer, but technological advancement is not something we can stop, or should.

But why should we let it replace humans?

It won’t. Maybe in the short term it will seem like it will. Greedy companies will try to save money by doing it. Non-creatives will generate pictures and words and sell them, and people will buy them.
But like I said before, this generated content is just a tool’s output. Like a camera can take the picture, but it is only art because of the human perspective.

Maybe this type of generated content will become it’s own form of art, a collaboration between a human and a computer. Maybe it won’t. But while AIGTs can recreate everything a person, and artist did, recreate the beats of it, the feel of it, it will NEVER be able to create on its own, because there is no self. It can’t predict what a person will create tomorrow because there’s no way to predict who a person will be tomorrow. Because these tools, however many of them there are, will never be more than a snapshot of what the world was up until the moment the most recent picture, song, video was input, and it will never go past that. It will never actually CREATE anything, it will only repeat, rehash, regurgitate.

So my fellow artists, keep creating, keep living, and loving, and experiencing, and struggling to share yourself with others. Because that’s what art is, and all it will ever be, because computers will never be able to predict the insanity that is humanity.

In conclusion:

Even if there were lawsuits that shut down each of the myriad AIGTs that exist now, the can of worms has been opened. It’s not going away. I understand the ’don’t use it’ argument of Chuck Wendig (and plenty of others) but it is a tool and I’m going to use it for idea generation and coming up with the f—ing SEO key-phrases and meta descriptions that are the bane of my existence. And I won’t say I’ll never change my position, nor am I saying that my conclusion is ‘right’ even now, but it is what I’m doing. Go forth, gather evidence, and make your own choice.

But please, never stop creating.

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PS: Just for funsies, the header picture of this article was generated in Midjourney v6 using the phrase “art made as a collaboration between a human and a computer” then iterated, chosen, and edited by me. You can click here for the full image. Use it however you like.