So Unrelated But Have You Guys Heard About What's Going On In The Uk? Our Main Gas Company Has Been Breaking

Where’s Metallica when you need them?

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

Artists, speak out against this predatory practice! Our art should not be exploited without our consent, and we deserve to be compensated when our art is exploited for commercial use. 

Day Thirty-nine

of @the-wip-project‘s challenge

Q39: What kind of traits make a character interesting?

A39: A character who is trying to be better ethically than how they had been brought up/ trained.

Marked for Later List

I have over 50 fanfics on my Marked for Later list at AO3. This number never seems to decrease from 50 mainly because with each story I read, I check out the author’s other works and/ or their bookmarks. I am so grateful for the fanfic authors who have shared their stories as well as taking the time to recommend other stories. My Marked for Later is the kind of endless loop I actually like, the more fics I read, the more fics I add to it!

You can find my bookmarks here

https://www.thedailybeast.com/state-department-to-lgbt-married-couples-your-out-of-wedlock-kids-arent-citizens

I just found this in my drafts and I can barely remember making it bye

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The 100 (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Octavia Blake/Lincoln Characters: Clarke Griffin, Lexa (The 100), Raven Reyes, Lincoln (The 100), Octavia Blake Additional Tags: Apology free work, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Smut, POV Lexa, Fix-It Summary:

This fic is a canon divergent fix-it-fic for Seasons 3 and 4 picking up in Season 3 after episode 4. It is mainly written from Lexa’s POV. It will explore: what happens when Lexa realizes that she is enhanced by an A.I.; how Lexa communicates with the commanders and vice versa; The City of Light; a myriad of alternative tropes which will keep Lexa alive and Clexa endgame. Expect a huge dose of Lextra angst and drama as the story unfolds.

There will be smut and violence.

Day Thirty-Five

of @the-wip-project‘s challenge

Q35: How do you describe sounds?

A35: There’s a lot of silence in my current wip. It’s a way to voice the loneliness the main character feels. Plus, most of the story takes place in winter in my home town where, at least during the era the story is set in, the accumulation of snow dampens all sounds.

You have given me something to think about, though. Will make sure that I don’t forget to describe sounds, or lack thereof, in my text.

Sigh. Gen X erasure, again. That’s fine. Not.

I identify as a fattie queer. All other sexual orientation labels feel like a lie to me and don’t fit right when I wear them. I’m queer.

queer is literally a slur. like you’ve never been called that in a derogatory context like most lgbt people? you think your experiences escaping homophobia make it okay to justify the use of a homophobic slur?

queer is an identity.

it has also been used as a slur. there is no denying that. but using a word as a slur does not make it a slur. because before queer is a slur it is an identity. before it is derogatory it is a label. the use of queer as an identity is infinitely more important than the use of queer as a slur because the people who identify as queer are infinitely more important than the people who use queer as a slur.

say a lot of people decided they hated me. despised me. were disgusted by me to the point where my own name became a slur. would you tell me not to say it? would you tell me i could no longer be helena, and instead must come up with a euphemism for the name that belonged to me decades before it belonged in the mouths of bigots?

because that would make you an enabler.

you would tell me i can’t say my name anymore because some lowlife decided he could use it to insult me?

you would tell a gay man that he can’t be gay anymore because some teens in the early 2000’s started calling everything they didn’t like “gay”, and now he has to say “same sex oriented male identifying individual”?

does that enrage you? because it should. that’s exactly how you sound.

you are telling me i cannot use my label. you are telling me that when my great-uncle shouted until his face was red and he spat tobacco and the word queer at my feet, he was right. he was right to insult me, and i was wrong to say my name.

you are shitting on every single one of our predecessors. you are slandering every person who fought for their rights to exist and and be tolerated and be celebrated in their countries, every person who was lost to the aids epidemic, every person whose country criminalizes love and gender expression, every child whose parents abandoned them for straying from the norm, every person who was born and will die in the closet longing to be themselves. the queer umbrella is a safety net, a security blanket, the comfort of being known without being pressured to tell. it is near and dear and important as fuck to every member of the lgbt+ community and you are a blight upon the earth you walk.

how dare you speak upon my experiences with homophobia. how dare you disguise your own homophobia as activism. and how fucking dare you have the audacity to come to my blog and hide behind an anonymous ask and preach to me about how i’m oppressing myself. go look at the fucking wikipedia page for queer and read about how 1980s lgbt+ activists, especially lgbt+ people of color, fought to call themselves queer in a world that still hates peculiar things. and here you are forty years later spitting queer back at their feet.

i don’t give a fuck if people start using my name as a slur. my name is still helena. i will not change it. i chose it, i like it, and it belongs to me. it does not belong to bigots no matter how badly they want it. your discomfort with my identity is not my fucking problem.

i am helena. i am queer. die mad & go fuck yourself