Eclectic Writer and Artist. And as far as I know the first Jewish Korean Adoptee writer pro-published in SFF. Double gray-a. BA in Anthropology concentrated in systems. Minor in Comparative Lit.
I know there is an inherent agreed on, in the US constitution separation of Church and State. I want that for Corporations too.
This isn't saying, I think all corporations should not exist and therefore are evil.
It's saying that corporations should not be able to:
Bribe hired, elected or appointed government officials or their families at any level (South Korea has this law)
Donate to candidates (overturn Citizens United)
Be considered people
Buy sports college or school sports teams
Donate large sums to private or public schools
Own more than 100 real estate properties in any county, this includes all subsidiaries and LLCs which should be at least transparent to the government in a singular list at any time and can be requested by the residents. This also applies to corporate management companies, where they should also be limited to number of properties they own and they should be subject to being able to pass basic knowledge of all ordinances on housing every say 5-10 years?
Corporations SHOULD
SHOULD pay fair taxes under our laws.
SHOULD pay fair wages under the law.
I'd also like:
And media corporations cannot be owned by people with other interests or sectors (Computers, Social Media, etc) If they have to file a separate Trademark category in order to get a trademark to run the news media, they should be prohibited from owning it.
Oh, My God, I own a major toy company and want to own a media company too. I think that should be considered a conflict of interest and not allowed.
I'm ALSO a bit on edge about them being able to own sports team in towns in order to get favor of the city in question.
I actually think this is quite a conservative and progressive position... if you're drumming about "traditional values." In the past when could corporations "at the founding of the Constitution" as the Right wingers like to say, do any of this type of influence?
The only function of a corporations is to own and run businesses that are separate from the state, schools, and public life.
SK also needs to limit corporations... I'd hard, hard suggest they do similar and up workers' rights for men and women. And limit corporate landlords and landlords when they do Jeonse through escrow agreements.
I DID listen to one US congressperson who is for mandatory volunteering in the community, which I like aesthetically, but I also think that it should come with on site job training for all people allocated by interest and that there should be room for pay for lower income people by doing that volunteering since some people don't have the luxury of doing unpaid labor, even when in college. This might also ease some of the job market problems worldwide, in general, if trades had workers with training and a way to ease them in. (BTW, which would help some of South Korea's problem with young men also after mandatory army service if jobs were forced to be made available by corporations and minimum wage forced to be paid by those workers and pay gaps forced closed between top and bottom.)
Governments should be able to regulate corporations to help workers, but corporations should not be able to control the levers of government.
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as someone who has just done a full press junket with a publicist and some quite deliberate crafting of messaging to market myself in a specific way, I'm pretty well placed to say this -
it is CRAZY how many "news outlets' are just AI slop regurgitating stuff that other outlets have done actual reporting on. For every article that an actual journalist spoke to me about and wrote there are two or three slop clones of it, and even more shortform video summaries. I took a quick look at TikTok and it's WILD to see the lines that me and my team crafted being vomited up by AI voices. I mean, it demonstrates pretty clearly that publicity works cause it's saying a lot of the things I want it to say (plus a few false things it's made up) but wow, the degrading impact this tech is having on the public information sphere and the hard work of entertainment journalists is PALPABLE
You're a female dog because you hate corporations who steal from people and give people cancer.
COWARDS.
So it was bait and they are cowards. Good to know.
First, NB, so shut up. OMG, I'm going to be referring to the goddess Artemis by calling you a Bitch. Like that's really an insult. Artemis isn't my favorite, but she was cool. I had K-chan give me a huge argument on why Artemis is the best Goddess ever.
Second, you're really that mad I write and maintain a list on anti-AI.
No one is on your side except corporations. I hope you get that.
You're saying, "Oh whoopee, I'm in favor of giving people cancer and destroying their homes. Why don't you let corporations steal your personal information and ideas?"
And my reply to that is: "Why don't you go rent an apartment in one of the data centers and listen to 10 airplanes taking off all at once all day every day and breathe in those cancer fumes and then not be able to go to a hospital. And then you can lecture to all the rest of us about how you have slept 100% fine, and have a clean bill of health."
Go ahead. I'm sure people will watch that video and you'll get 2 million likes if you survive say 2 years in one of those things with a bill of health before and after. You can have a segment where you directly smell those cancer fumes and drink the water that residents complain about. You worship them so much, so show up how much you want that. Go ahead, suck their waste.
BTW, this was done in a tone that's not CAPLOCKS TRUMP ANGRY. But in a, "Meh, coward aren't worth much, are they?" Show how brave you are, troll. Buy someone's ailing home at market price (with inflation included) before the data center moved in and live in one of the data centers. C'mon. You are obviously so rich to want to suck the butts of corporations. Show us you sucking in those fumes too.
Book Discourse needs to challenge 2 things: Classics are always good and not biased, Books aren't influenced by Lit Agents
Probably selection bias by Youtube algorithm, but there are a swatch of videos that state things like Classics shouldn't be questioned.
And Lit agents don't shape book discourse because they are helpless and stuff. (and not really gatekeepers and clutch their pearls over that idea) ==;;
So, I've been an editor at manga translation company and I did reject one manuscript handed to us. So yes. I do know about the publishing industry. I can absolutely tell you minutia like Jack London for his time period was paid more for is short stories than Jane Austen was for her books. And also that relative to the times, Jane Austen was paid less than PoC authors today, making the amount that white male authors paid today egregious. And then I can launch a whole discussion into it.
I can also go over the history of Literary agents as illuminated by Stephen King in the first edition of his book, "On Writing" because I semi-memorized it and then his more recent 7th edition retort of, "Agents aren't evil."
And I absolutely can break down the idea of where conflict in stories come from with the whole Man v. nature with dates because that's my mini Anthropology project on this blog that very few pay attention to. lol The fact that the whole thing started as an accident is hilarious, BTW.
I also have a degree in Anthropology with a minor in Comp Lit, so yes. If you want me to go over the influences from Dante's inferno and Troubadours on current Romance genre, I absolutely can and so on.
So let's go over the assumption that Classics are good because they are classics and therefore shouldn't be questioned on why they are classics.
Are Lit professors getting even lazier? Or is it that students are failing to engage in Literary discourse completely.
A GOOD Lit professor will not say a Classic is a classic because it was designated a classic. If you have such a Lit professor, they need to go back to college.
A GOOD Lit professor will argue that all of the Literary tools you learn in class can be applied to any media. Cat in the Hat? Absolutely. Captain Planet. Sure. My Neighbor Totoro. Yep.
And instead of saying that circular logic, they will ASK why is this considered a classic and WHEN was is considered so. And what flexibility and lack of flexibility do classics have? Should this really be considered a classic? Are we examining it wrong? What lenses should you study this classic through? Historicism? Cultural relativism? Does readercism add anything to this picture.
They should ALSO entertain the idea that often the books that are considered classics tend to disinclude whole classes and identities of people.
For example, people discussing the KJV Bible, absolutely often want to ignore that KJ I would be through contemporary eyes gay or Bi. He might have "hated sodomy" but he had male favorites, where he might have liked oral sex with them, but as Historians like to say, "We aren't sure."
Likewise, I can question if the portrayal of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is fair since the conception of him dates to a questionable Bronte paracosm of a Black man which in parts makes me cringe as it's elucidated. Just because I launch a criticism does not mean I do not understand the book. It means I have to wrestle with this extra information I have and my modern conceptions of race compared to the lackluster (in my opinion) portrayal of this recycled character. I absolutely understand it is not a love story Romance, but being critical of a classic to that degree puts me in no obligation to like it. (Especially since Abolitionists and other intellectuals of the time period, I felt, did better in many ways)
One could criticize me for my lack of willingness to look at my Readercism without a historical lens, and that is a fair assessment, but it is not fair to say that all Classics for their time period were "good" because later critics deemed it so.
For example, Anthony Trollop, well, was considered trollop in his lifetime, being mainstream popular books, but intellectual trash according to contemporary people. But he was later rebranded as a Classic. BTW, his story driver is obviously morality OVER AND OVER again, it drives this home and the plot points live there.
Jane Austen also fell out of favor for a time.
Does that mean for the time she was not considered a Classic, she can't be considered a classic now?
One can distantly hate a classic, but still like the execution. One can also think that something doesn't deserve to be a classic and something is better.
Likewise I'm allowed to not particularly love Mr. Darcy, but absolutely think that Henry Tilney is hot stuff.
What Lit professors should be driving home is that you can argue these things using the tools they gave you to examine the text.
Yes, Northanger Abbey is both a Comedy of Manners and a short-lived parody of a Gothic novel, where the plot driver doesn't live on morality for all of it, but does live on it for large portions of the plot. (Typical for the time period, BTW, as I said, Morality was the most popular plot driver from about Aristotle to Shakespeare until the advent of the Printing Press and then the Rotary Printing press)
I have to admit, Anthony Trollop isn't a bad person, but I still don't like him that much as a writer. I also think his hand is a bit too heavy in places, which, BTW, aligns me with his earlier critics, who thought he was a bit too much of a blunt force object, which I found out after I read him.
On the other hand, I hate the dickens out of Dickens as a person, but I have to begrudgingly like his writing style and approach to poverty, but still loathe to deal with his weird moralities around women.
Edgar Allen Poe, I find delicious as a character to think about (especially when portrayed by Jack Black in Drunken History, BTW), and I admit that my personal favorite story of his is not the favorite of everyone else, probably being one of the least adapted short stories of his because most of it is psychological, but shows the strength of what stories can do.
I mostly hate Aristotle and think he's a dick, but still respect that I'm missing half his text. I vehemently disagree with him, even with historical context.
I still have mixed feelings about Shakespeare and I admit most of my indignation over him is with his scholars over than Shakespeare's writing itself. However, David Mitchell's portrayal of him, often runs rent free in my head along with the fact that there was a report there was supposed to be an episode of Ben Jonson included and I WANT TO SEE IT (Why, perchance, was the show cancelled before I saw the performance?), at the same time my head is going over all of the details of the show.
And I think I'm allowed to have and debate these opinions if it's an open dialogue, no?
At the same time, one can wonder at who isn't getting mentioned and published and those who are marginalized at published on what grounds? Why are they getting published? Are they compromising some part of their identity to get there? Why was Percy Lubbock erased from the conversation about conflict? Should E.M. Forester be more popular than he is? Is Baldwin only liked because he was with someone white? Why are so many Black men civil rights leaders who are chosen to publish married to white women?
The conversation should not end because it is a classic, it should start with the question, "Should this be a classic, or are there things more deserving?" Who gets to decide and why do those people get to decide? Should Literary devices be relegated to only LIterary, or what the start of that category a way to push intellectual discourse into college and PoC and women's books as token and specialized insertions? What happened to the disabled writers and characters in conversations?
Why exactly is so many contemporary-written Regency Romance so conforming of contemporary gender roles and delete any mention of slavery in the time period?
This is what you should be doing with intellectual discussions of books in the first place.
A classic is NOT a classic because it's a classic. It's a classic because a bunch of academics deemed it so and worthy of study, but any piece of media should be worthy of study. Even those easy beach reads.
Agents have no influence over books
Iunno, I wonder if Romantasy is going to fall victim to the whole, "End of Romance" discussions that mostly white straight women have about Romance without thinking about other voices. (The whole white discussion of Romantasy is so new and never done before gets a deadpan from me, whose been reading both Romance and Fantasy from the first time I could read. And seriously, no one consumes Xianxia??? Ooohhhh, but it's not like US Romance and it fails the US romance definition... Yes, that's why you consume outside of your country. Not to mention Japanese Fantasy Romance as well.)
I, personally, still think the comp model of getting new books is clearly failing and it's still locking out the marginalized people from the market or asking us to write like the privileged people, rather than innovate.
For me, I'd absolutely love if someone could mainstream apply the feeling of sensory overload and form it into a book without trying to make abled people happy.
I'd also LOVE it if a horror writer could totally write the Uncanny valley as a story structure. Creeping and increasing disgust and dread... isn't that the superior Horror story structure rather than Syd Field's? and then dump you in the Uncanny Valley forever to never recover.
But as long as agents keep gatekeeping on "What is correct" and "we have to submit it this way" and Editors likewise aren't willing to take risks in particularly the UK and US markets, frankly, other markets are going to kick our butts on innovation, IMO.
Those intellectual questions of if one is being asked to write like a white straight abled NT (Mostly Christian) man comes to the fore, especially if those in the industry are unwilling to really consume outside of the US and also take on emic POVs of things like Disability, trauma, queerness, etc.
How much do we have to placate the masses over creating empathy for our worldviews by being true to them? But oh noes, too much critical thinking. Maybe Texas will ban that too.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Tumblr Does not Update the original post after it's reblogged.
💬 0 🔁 2 ❤️ 4 · Tumblr DOES NOT Update the original post after it's reblogged. · I'm trying to explain this for the n00bs that keep posting
BTW, other people have tried to make snippy/rude replies to my posting this, it's addressed in the post and I'll absolutely know if you didn't read the post.
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Real Reason versus Justification—Worldbuilding Enrichment
Yadda Yadda, Anthropology BA, concentrated in systems, though my real interest is in Multimedia trade and adaptation. But I guess you only need to know the anthropology part.
Anyway, I wanted to give you a really quick way to make your world building feel richer than it is, which I did cover previously, briefly and repeatedly, but I'm seeing people do less and less of in worldbuilding I've been reading lately.
This applies to Social Historcial/Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction Novels. Probably is the bread and butter of Absurdism (particularly Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass). I will come up with real world examples, and also books that did it well, did it medium well and did it clunkily.
Often culture does something, for a good reason, and then over time, people forget that reason and then come up with a new justification.
This is illuminated through Etic views (Outsider looking in) and Emic views (Insider explaining their own culture. One is NOT superior to the other and a good anthropologist as lectured in 101 can and will be able to switch between them fairly well to write about the culture in question.
The academic definition can be found here:
The concepts of Emic and Etic are fundamental in the field of anthropology, social science, and psychology. These terms help researchers in
Real World Example
they give in every anthropology class ever is that in India the cow is viewed as sacred and Holy, that's the Emic view. The Etic view is that eating your living plow in an agricultural society is often economically a bad idea.
I'll give another one that's more close to home. The view that you'll have 7 years of bad luck if you break a mirror is because often reflective surfaces are thought to contain the soul, (if you get into religion and magic anthropology this is in the whole Contagious v. sympathetic magic theory). This explains the mirror, but the 7 years is more arbitrary and dates roughly to the Roman belief that the soul renews every 7 years. So in order to counter this, you had to wash the mirror pieces in a body of water or in water. That's the 100% Emic view, if you come with the belief system and origins, even if you forget it.
The Etic view is the practical one. Oh, mirror pieces are sharp and you need to deter people from breaking glass on purpose. They are less likely to break glass in a window, but a mirror is a piece of glass that is free agent.
Often the Emic view does NOT give a date for first belief and tries to erase the name of the person who came up with it. Because what? It was forever and always, like gender. OMG, macaronis are at it again. Masculinity as covered by J. Draper, was invented around the same time (Always in crisis... which is the truth for all privilege, BTW) I mean can you and all of the people around you name the exact person who deemed that lace is only for girls off the top of your head?
The Etic view is often the outsider looking in. This isn't always superior either, because if you only take the Etic view, you can run into errors, like say Jospeh Campbell and the whole all people from the tropics are cannibals thing he promulgated. The Etic view is incomplete if you have an incomplete Emic view.
An example of this, for example, is the Etic view that Japanese are all submissive. But if you take a more advanced Etic view and look at the true Emic view of Japanese, one can see a clash between Japanese modes of socialization and communication and Standard (White) American communication. (Highlighted in a really fascinating story of Office Workers and Factory Workers book I read once)
In order to do a study, you need to be able to switch between both.
How to Apply this to writing?
Say you have a seven book series, and it covers 1,000 years of history, the facts WILL NOT stay stable over time.
I gave the example of the Stinky snail river soup and how we lost in our lifetime who invented it. *In our lifetime*.
Luosifen's origin is lost.
Humans have the worst amnesia. This is why archaeologists exist.
If you write one book and make them a famous character who is beloved, it is entirely acceptable to make them hated 100 years later through miscommunication and misunderstanding.
I mean people FORGET that George Washington OWNED SLAVES. !@#$ Do I have to repeat that? He also tried to chase a slave down. And that slave had an adjoining room to his bedroom.
So you need to create these things:
1. The creation of the idea with a reasonable explanation for why.
2. The forgetting/ amnesia of the reason.
3. The continuance of the tradition Into positive or negative, (often amplified/exaggerated)
4. The new justification when people can't remember why it was created.
I've gone over this with gender, story structures, food, and so on. So let's try Christmas.
The reason for Christmas trees is said to be German, and the lighting of them is because of Winter Solstice (Etic reason, it's depressing around Winter Solstice and in temperate regions you need a reason not to kill each other stuck in the cold). The popularization is said to be Prince Albert, but some historians say that it was in England prior.
People forgot part of the Emic and Etic reason over time.
And now you have flashy display of Christmas lights and because of A Christmas Carol, you have the idea that Christmas is because it what? "Spreads joy to everyone" (Forget the non Christians, who are attacking Christmas. Look upstream to what I said about Privilege constantly feels attacked)
So why do we light Christmas trees and decorate them. If you said during Christmas celebrations it's to stave off depression and to keep everyone from killing each other, you'd get dirty looks. You get the secondary justifications: "It's fun" "It's to spread joy" "Because Jesus said so (though he literally lived in a desert/Mediterranean climate, so... where did he see fir trees, but ignore that part).
Examples from books
Through the Looking-Glass:
Painting the roses red. They don't know why they are doing it, but our Etic view is that it is strange.
The Emic view is that the white rose bush is there by mistake. But the Etic view takes over, why a red rose bush is more correct.
This is subtle and not a blunt hammer moment, which then leads to the Red Queen showing up.
Now we know why.
This is missing the exaggeration over time, though... so a better example probably I would pull from Anne McCaffrey's PERN series.
PERN
In Pern, despite the large discussion of dragons from the books, there is a secondary species that no one discusses... the "ship fish" or the dolphins.
The Dolphins of Pern is the book in the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. The Dolphins of Pern was first published by Del Rey /
Most of the books say they exist, but not why they exist, so there is a huge thing in the books where the characters can finally communicate with these dolphins and find out that Dolphins helped mapped the seas. There is an emic PoV of how they came to be, and the Etic PoV of how they came to be. However, the Emic PoV was exaggerated over time, which I thought was done well, though she could have gone harder on it.
I still have a view that this was a medium execution for me. I never bought the Emic view that well, and I know Anne McCaffrey was a victim of the 1960's fad on dolphins (which is also referred to in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's And Thanks for All the Fish) , but I still thought it was a little clunky in places. (I can hear someone object, "But, but it was published in the 1990's," Yeah, but Anne McCaffrey grew up in the 1960's... and the whole dolphins experiments is its own rabbithole)
Patricia C. Wrede in The Raven Ring Series
I think she handled it really well. Often she would have an Emic view of why something was done, not explained, but then through the action, the reader could figure out the Etic PoV, and this, to me, was far more enjoyable than having a whole book info dump to me why something existed.
Unfortunately, it didn't meet sales, and she ended up writing Star Wars movies as a book... TT But I wished to collect the entire series. In the Enchanted Forest series she often did this well. Where the belief was promulgated and the Etic belief you could kind of get from being an outsider.
L.E. Modesitt also did this fairly well.
Often he had outsiders coming to a society, so balancing both became important and often the character had to absorb the Emic belief for their magic to work.
I like when Historical dramas and books approach this with a sense of humour or they approach it with a sense of that's wrong. For example, showing how people believed that disabled people were disabled because of demons, which shows up in The First Jasmine (Chinese drama) where the disabled character is whipped for being disabled to "cleanse their soul" which is a good way to show how those beliefs can clash.
And Horror loves, absolutely loves to play with these back and forth. 地獄少女, Jigoku Shōjo plays with this a lot. What is true versus what is believed to be true and exaggerated.
I bet Star Trek fans can tick a bunch of episodes off from every series.
What to do then?
The basics is this, the sense of discovery it gives the reader without info dumping the etic reason on them directly often gives a fun to worldbuilding as they get to piece together the puzzle of the belief system they are exposed to.
This is also why I find the whole pseudo-Agricultural Christianity religion boring most of the time. Because it's taking things from our world, half understanding them, and giving no room for any sense of Etic discovery. Wonder comes from discovery. Give me some sense of wonder.
Remember, also, Christianity did NOT originate in Europe. !@# No matter what the white nationalists like to say. The bones of the religion are not agricultural. True Druidism is more agricultural than Christianity. Christianity is a Pastoral religion based in Judaism, so attributing it to an agricultural society who organically came up with it on their own makes no sense since a lot of the scripture and laws in Christianity and Judaism are very, very Pastoral specific to that region. Like the cursing of goats and calling them evil (I've gone over that one too in the Food Worldbuilding doc.)
There might be reason to info dump the Etic reason, but to be honest most of the time I'm not reading those genres for the Etic reason. Give me the immersion of a totally different and strange belief system.
I don't particularly care if the real reason they started killing dragons in the previous epoch was because they wanted the scales for armor. Give me the story about how collecting dragon skins makes the person a man and it's a Rite of Passage to do so and push the real reason in the background for me to figure out as a wink to me, the reader.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
#I went to Ellipsus and heads up (esp for people looking to print/publish)#they don’t have pages yet#and you can’t add words to your personal dictionary YET#they’re both in the works but it’s an adjustment for sure#but the ability to write and have it update on my phone to computer is deffff worth it
Scrivener creator is debating adding switchable personal dictionaries, (one can check on and off) but as I said, lower priority. Ellipsus seems to have it higher in their list. I'm still waiting for one of these programs to catch on and allow us custom fantasy/Sci-Fi dictionaries per made up language, so we can play around with them, It's an old request for Scrivener. You can upvote requests on the forums of both.
Super super helpful, but an addendum: Davinci Pro has AI features now, though I don't know if they're *Gen*AI. The free version, however, doesn't seem to have any. So it's 100% optional.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
This is on my list of things I want. But I can't vote for him. Texans, please, please vote him in. He's also been clearly at least AI regulations on data centers...
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Yeah, I had it on my old blog–it’s somewhere in there, but the page keeps reloading preventing me from finding it. And then people stole the list and then claimed they made it up. Per the usual, don’t steal kids, it doesn’t help anyone. (If you didn’t see the reason not to steal–did you read about the real history of the 3 and 5 act models and the gigantic mess of not citing sources which caused a bunch of issues later?)
This time I’m adding caveats to the rules of character agency with some jargon, ‘cause it makes me look cool, like Aelius Donatus using Greek? Nyahh, ‘cause it’s pretty easy to look up.
So, I watched the Chinese drama, The Longest Promise and I have to revise the definition after long, long frustration with that drama. Originally, I stated Character agency is:
1. The character makes a decision
2. Which affects other characters
3. Such that the events change direction based on those decisions
4. Preferably more than one time.
But I think I missed out on Character motivation and LEARNING from mistakes in agency.
Character motivation is the character either WANTING something, or the character NEEDING something. Sometimes these align, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the character needs something they don’t want, too, but either of these will add to the character motivation. It gives and shapes the character are in the end as they move through the story.
Anything the character has previously fully learned should be applied to the story later.
This can and could be delayed for a number of reasons, such as character age, the background of the character, or they are in an oppressive society.
The character can make the same sort of mistakes over and over, but usually the reader has a limit of 3-4 times before it’s annoying. If you made promises to change that character trait, then this does not apply, but usually promises to changes in the character arc are made in the first set (whether in the first 3-4 chapters, or in the first set of episodes for that week) The trait can be a virtue, flaw or quirk, doesn’t matter, but the story should commit to changing that thing about the character.
It is 100% possible to go through a story with little to no character change, however, you need the *other* characters to change drastically around the character which may include setting (Rip Van Winkle, if you will) If in the try-fail cycle the character fails to change, or make incremental changes, there has to be a really good reason given why–for example addiction. The character can also slip and fall, but the decisions made should be clear with clear consequences–positive or negative with something learned to get passive agency.
So my revised list is:
1. The character makes a decision
2. Which affects other characters
3. Such that they learn something positive or negative such that the lesson learned is applied subsequently to the next step. (This can fail for about 3-4 times or they learn the wrong lesson)
4. Such that the events change direction based on those decisions/lessons
I did a post on Character agency…
https://www.tumblr.com/kimyoonmiauthor/723032778922508288/character-agency?source=share
BTW, I created the list originally from excessive amounts of reading philosophy, psychology, taking therapy, and lots of thinking about it, after I reviewed someone’s piece on Nanowrimo, and then spotted that it lacked character agency, because the character went place to place because other people decided that she should go place to place. But then I ran into a block–what is character agency? There was no good definition, so I did some reading up, thinking about stories, etc and came up with a rough definition.
Could I cite my therapists that helped me with this and why? Sure, I could, but I kind of think I don’t want people to harass them, too.
Anyway, I was also thinking long and hard after watching Longest Promise (Longest Disappointment, lol) Chinese drama and then watching Legend of Anle, (really good) and Destined (All 2023 dramas) and comparing how characters make decisions in those dramas compared to Chinese classic literature, Korean lit and dramas, Japanese dramas, and basically European and European-related canon. Are there types of agency?
There’s an argument to be made for no character agency can be a sum positive. There’s definitely situations where this may arise.
I disagree, though that Character agency is conflict+Character decisions.
Some stories have no conflict. We’ve gone over this several times.
So I think it’s more useful to think about *how* character agency is applied in a worldwide context through various writings throughout history, and not just the after-19th century, individualism that’s favored heavily in the US.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
I would move bluesky to pro now, as the devs have bragged about vibecoding the site (uses AI to generate it) and mocked their userbase for being upset with it.
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The plot isn't a good reflection of the publishing industry at all...
So Savannah Cade is an editor at a nonfiction small publishing industry house with a manuscript at another publishing company.
The manuscript has a critical problem: The main character of the manuscript "Isolde" is a passive character.
What strikes me about this hook, is that this is either some really bad white nonsense, where white writers get a huge leap of leeway that's not given to mostly PoCs, OR Savannah must be a terrible editor who doesn't meet up with her fellow editors and literary agents through email to read the industry.
Upsides of the movie
I like seeing Introverts as all of the main characters. There is often criticism that Introverts make terrible leads. I disagree. I think anyone can pull anything off with enough thought and skill.
The office setting wasn't that bad, though the building they chose looks nothing like any publishing building I've seen... I get it's visually stunning, but it's also an odd choice.
I get a plantation feelings from this... and it doesn't leave me feeling warm especially when there are no PoCs—if it is a plantation, then well, I could see why PoCs wouldn't want to go to work there.
Criticisms
Book editing in the movie
Re: Passive characters
Savannah gets a note that her characters are passive, especially her fmc. Passive characters, BTW, aren't bad reads, you just need to set them to succeed later by them being able to make decisions for themselves. You make promises up front and reasons they are limited in chapter 1 and promise that will change through the course of the book. But usually if it doesn't start to happen by about chapter 5, a point of change, (in a 25-30 chapter book) people will check out. That's pretty much true worldwide.
There might be a reason for a main character to stay passive throughout the book, but then it has to be illustrated and that's more like a psychological horror or Literary rather than a romance.
Re: Names
One of the notes was to change the names of the main characters.
"Isolde" and "Renaldo" change to "Johnathan" and "Riley." The note read in the movie at least that "Renaldo" is a bullfighter and "Isolde" is an opera singer.
No, Renaldo, is clearly a Latino biker bad boy with a cause and wants to do the world good. I'd be much, much more invested in him over a John picking up a book. John is a John Smith I'd forget. Though if he was a bullfighter, that would be EXCITING. Johnathan is a corporate exec who doesn't like nicknames and I'm about to roll over and croak on my boredom. Seriously?
Why do people think that Opera singers are BORING? You seriously think a story about a bullfighter trying to court an opera singer is boring??? I don't think so. That's a much more interesting hook than whatever this contemporary novel was. Isolde comes from the precursor of Romeo and Juliet. You already have half a plot there.
Riley I hate as a name. It makes me imagine things like Rye fields and an undetermined character who can't speak for herself. I watched this TV show that had a super passive character called "Riley" with the nickname, "Riles" and she was boring and I have to admit I hated the name ever since. I realize this is a super shallow reason, but I'm more inclined to read a book with names with a history than BORING names.
I like to choose names with a past that I can weave into the plot. (Yes, the names I chose for the pro story I published were carefully chosen)
Which story are you more likely to read? Renaldo the Bullfighter who faces bulls all day and could DIE with one wrong move who is in a long term lustful romance with Isolde, the opera singer... whom he has seen from afar and in passing, until his heart aches... and then he gets to meet her, and it's spicy as hell... but she has to leave to another town...
Or a story about a Corporate Exec who is an uptight prick who refuses anyone to shorten his name at all, who meets passive Riley from the small farm who grew up around Tennessee rye fields.
The first seems a lot more exciting to me. Latino spice, give me that. Grounded my ass. More like BORING. I think the names should be married to the plot.
Re: Time to write a draft of a Romance manuscript
THREE YEARS? OMG. I can do it in about 3-5 months. Deary... I get from first draft to publishing you would take that long, but that's to publication. In all that time that editor didn't once consult other editors in her industry, or get Alpha or Beta readers? REALLY?
By the time you get to draft 10-20, you're ready to chuck it and aren't as emotionally invested.
Plus you usually rack up about 50 rejections first as a white woman unless you have some nepotism. (Diana Gabaldon is the only exception I can think of and even she discourages people using her method. But she's also mixed heritage so a really huge exception.)
Romance, I hate to say it as someone who likes the genre is pretty formulaic and straight-centric.
Re: The page samples from the movie
He considered the question. "True."
She smiled, her eyes closing briefly, as if the word settled something in her.
They did not say I love you that night hovered at the edges of their [] present but unspoken. Renaldo sensed that
TT So terrible. How did that book get to publication without nepotism? Is that white nonsense too where white authors get more leeway than PoC authors? (I've covered this, where PoC writers have to get double the rejections and get stolen from where their premises are turned white by *some* Literary agents, and the bar by which they are measured is much higher, and measured against a white male, Syd Field, who is a SCREENWRITER, not a novelist.)
The other weaknesses from the movie:
I had no idea the guy she was trying to date and couldn't even bother to remember his name. TT Give me Renaldo. I would have remembered that name.
She seemed to be more interested in her friend than she was in the main lead. There wasn't enough build up to argue they should be together. Like I said, sometimes Romance is more like a court case. WHY should these two be joined in holy consecration of HEA of HFN? Just because he wasn't the editor, there wasn't enough for her to go after the book editor.
Her editor who literally is working on the book with her didn't leave her any specific notes?? Really?? She's an editor who survived the gulag of publishing to be at the top of her industry. Do you know what that means? She survived the horrible low pay of editors, entered when she couldn't be paid at all as an intern, was made to do copy editing of the early 1980's, to only find that her industry was collapsing in the 2000's and survived the massive layoffs and cuts to her industry, such as laying off editors, having no publicists anymore, and the semi-collapse, got through it to the 2020's and managed to retire somehow?? Even though we all know this industry pays crap. And she made NO notes in the margins on how to fix Isolde/Riley. BUT a publisher's son who is a third of her age, at least did better? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE???? (Plus hers is the much more interesting story. HOW did she survive all of that publishing chaos AND get to retire instead of switch industries?)
There was no emotional crescendo for me when the characters got together. I was so bored during the kiss, that was when I turned it off. Yes, Savannah changed her character because of the notes, but the person the Main male lead is—I really don't have a clue of any emotional connection they might have. (BTW, this is why asking a Demi if it lands is a good idea) There wasn't enough electric chemistry to ague for limerence in the film. And there wasn't enough suspense from the mystery either. So the crescendo lay flat. I didn't have the "Finally they are together" I had the "She's so dumb to not have figured it out." feeling and the "Meh, probably will break up in 4 months" feeling. And as I argued before, Romance is an emotional high of cheering that the characters belong together and they belong together forever or at least for a long time, not a time prediction of when they will stop liking each other.
Savannah did an all nighter and still has make up neat and tidy and her eyes are neat? And her voice isn't shaky? The direction on this was terrible. Her eyes aren't blood shot, she doesn't have a weak voice? She doesn't have the almost falling over from lack of sleep? Her make up isn't a mess from pulling at her hair because she's rewritten the sentence ten times and it still feels wrong? She hasn't been rubbing her face because it's still wrong? She doesn't felt built up as a character this way.
Most editors I know don't dress in Office Formal. They dress in formal casual, or for important meetings, which are few, Office casual? Costuming is odd on this one...
Next week Claire lost the manuscript and had to leave the industry, so the book got lost. "Revised manuscript.pdf" NO. Don't do this.
It should be Title of the bookBYAuthorname+date+Revised.
Also, if she's leaving the next week, there are still galley proofs to get through and the next editor might drop the book anyway. I've seen that happen too. The deadline isn't believable.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Both Bluesky and Affinity are pro-AI. Affinity was acquired by Canva. They merged all the apps into one added AI features. Bluesky is built using AI vibe coding. The devs there love AI.
