this winter hasn’t been so rough

tbh i always though the end of TGF was exceptionally hopeful and happy given the content of the book. Theo lets go of his mother (symbolized by him hallucinating her and getting closure and then Boris appearing right after in the present), he lets go of his compulsive unhealthy fixation on Pippa admitting they could be friends if he merely tried, he mentions finding a therapist (a name Platt gave him), he buys back all the forgeries he sold thus making amends to Hobie, he speaks generously of his father's life perspective when he only before had loathing for him, he separates from the Barbours, and he spends quality time with Boris continually afterwards in Antwerp (just as Boris suggested -- come to Moscow, come to Antwerp). He suggests to Boris that he consider stopping drugs. He is free of The Goldfinch. He begins to see his tragedy as a stepping off point for a passion: to preserve beautiful things and value them and protect them.

He is hopeful about his future and it is like a breath of fresh air in the claustrophobia of the novel.

there has been a lot of talk about how ai will replace artists, musicians, writers, etc., and there are a lot of (rubbish) studies (probably written with or by ai as well) that compare ai writing vs trained human writers (think mfa students) and show that fine-tuned ai models (not the off the shelf commercial stuff) cannot be detected by trained readers (again, mfa students, etc) and are also preferred by readers. yada yada

sounds devastating at first, but the trends (at least in ai music) now pretty clearly show that there is a strong complementarity to human talent/insight and ai tools (technical corrections, style fixes, etc.) at the very high end of creative production. which is to say that good musicians' lives got easier because they have better tools now, whereas bad musicians or people thoughtlessly prompting and have no real effort/skill/insight are producing junk. i dont know if this sheds a positive light or no, but probably we'll see the same in writing more generally. so, my two cents is that the day ai can replace good writers is still far yet to come, and now more than ever is the time true talent and effort will shine.

nooo working at 2am is no good!! i'm sorry to hear that and hope things slow down for you soon. no, your original ask did not have bad vibes! although this follow-up ask is leaking... if not bad... at least pretty bleak vibes lol. i do not find "great artists will continue to produce great art, just ~enhanced~ by AI, while bad artists will use AI to produce junk" to be very soothing, as someone whose whole job is helping young people go from being not very good at something to being quite good at it through a lengthy process of trying, failing, getting feedback, iterating, and trying again -- ie, a process of learning. as a longtime teacher of writing, i care much less about what the polished final product looks like and much more about preserving the messy, frustrating, joyful experience of making things. i also have always experienced fandom as this incredible creative sandbox in which passionate amateurs can teach themselves creative skills (creative writing, art, gifmaking, fanvid editing, zinemaking, fiber arts, etc) within a community of other creative people who support their learning and share insights from their own work.

like my concern is not really "will the best AI-generated creative output replace or become indistinguishable from the best creative works made by people?" i am worried that AI tools will destroy the creative environments in which people develop their taste and experiment with different methods and engage in the slow, painstaking, messy process of learning how to do creative work for themselves. i am worried that in 5-10 years fic writers will never have the experience of writing a shitty first draft that doesn't measure up to your own expectations and feeling demoralized about it, then getting insightful feedback from a fandom friend who's acting as a passionate cheerleader & beta for you, which then reenergizes you to look at the shitty first draft differently, which prompts you to slog through the slow process of revising, ie the process of repeatedly revisiting your own work and looking at it from different angles and asking yourself, "this? no, this - no, what if this? what about this? OH no - it's this, it has to be this!" while your beta shrieks about how good it is and how much it's making them feel, all the way up to the moment where you finally finish the damn thing and get to release it into the world... after which you get to re-experience your own work many times over through people's exuberant reactions to it. i worry that instead, the second people hit that first demoralizing moment they will ask AI to fix things for them or to tell them what to do next, and the machine will happily oblige, and together they will cobble together something that looks "good" (ie polished, professional, whatever), but is fundamentally empty. because there is no work behind the work. no work, no friendship, no sense of community. no feeling of real pride in what you've created. no real, lived sense of how much you've grown through the process of putting in the time.