illuvium

this kind of follows with my two posts on women here and here, but i think there's this image of queer representation being a positive portrayal of same sex relationships specifically. i'm not making the argument that all queer people in media should be villains. with historical portrayals of queer individuals as villains (as in silence of the lambs, where the killer is shown to be violent thanks to being trans), it's clearly not a good stance to take. i think that just limiting queer people to being good is pretty bad. i mentioned this before, but in the dream house does a pretty great job in one of its chapters (and really through the whole book, honestly) of dismantling this narrative, that lesbian relationships can't be abusive. of course, with same sex relationships with women, there's interplay with misogyny in its reception through the enforcement of purity culture on treatment of women. there's also another aspect here where people like to disregard a character's queerness (not even just characters; real people, too) if they're bi or pan and end up with someone of the opposite gender, but that's a whole other can of worms and might not be my can of worms to open, so i'm not really talking about that.

anyway, the point really is this: villainization of queer people in the way older films and medias sucks, but so does the more modern stance of bleaching queer relationships to be as palatable as possible. both ultimately end up stripping i guess dimensionality from queer people that's not at all beneficial given the current conditions of the world (though i mean arguably there's never been a time where queer people had it as good as cishet people). there's really not much i have to say about this beyond this; it just bugs me when i see people online (usually teenagers in all fairness) insistent on using only totally positive queer relationships as representation. with regards to the original villain point, i'm not by any means saying that queer people can't be villains. i just wish that the motives for being a villain are either disconnected from that queerness or well-done if it is connected. the transmisogyny present in silence of the lambs sucked even though i liked the movie as a whole. so yeah! i think that's really about it since the main point of this is literally to ask that queer people be treated as people and given real flaws and struggles.

so! i've recently been reading pale fire, and while i'm not terribly far into it (about 60 or so lines in with the accompanying annotations), i'm getting the feeling that this will be a book that makes my list of favorites. i'm really enamoured with the protagonist (which feels like the wrong word to use for a situation like this one given that it's an experimental format). i usually like egotistical characters given that they'll usually have more to them than just that facade, but honestly, i don't entirely know in this case. again, i'm not that far in, so my opinions are stc, etc etc. out of the three books i've read by nabokov, i think i like this one best so far. the narrator's insistence that his ideas are glorious and that he's been carefully feeding the poet, shade, his ideas so that shade can incorporate it into the poem from the first half of the book made me really amused and honestly reminds me of me prodding some of my friends to get into medias i enjoy so that i can hear their thoughts. on the other hand, i also do not stalk my friends and would prefer to imagine myself as someone relatively well-adjusted, so that comparison shouldn't be read into that much. another thing i really liked in kinbote was his penchant for describing himself and shade with way too much detail while he leaves sybil's (john's wife) description at a mere sentence or two. he's the kind of protagonist you're pretty much designed to criticize, i think, which i like!! i love seeing narrators who are pretty terrible or uptight people knowing the author intentionally designed them that way. i'm not quite sure if i've mentioned it before here, but that's one of the reasons i really tend to shy away from a lot of ya novels nowadays; the narrators are very unlikable to me and their personalities are insufferable but you can tell the author intends for you to like them. i guess i like it most when i can tell the author actually put thought into developing the character for the reader's perspective, which i mean, is something authors tend to do by virtue of wanting their books to sell but usually suck at.

aside from the usual trying to make time to read the great deal of books on my tbr, i've just gotten increasingly annoyed by people trying to justify their ai usage to me. i'm as clear about my stance on ai online as i am in real life, so i have a lot of peers who use chatgpt who feel i guess personally attacked (which some part of me does think is good. since i mean, i think shame is really needed if you're so reliant on it). but it just gets to this odd point where they're aware of my chatgpt distaste and then sort of make excuses for it. stuff like "oh well i just used it to check my work", as if the ethical concern of cheating is a big deal here (it is slightly but that's just my being a goody two shoes). saying that you only use it for x reason is stupid to me since again!!! my big qualm is the environmental impact. if chatgpt were some regular site to use for cheating i'd be miffed as always but i would not make such a big deal out of it. honestly for all the stuff i say regarding my loss in respect towards people who use generative ai to do their thinking and work for them, it's just really hard to cut people off since connection is pretty much an evolutionary requirement. it just bugs the hell out of me. i'm not your priest!! there's no use in explaining why you'd use it to me when my distaste for it is founded for reasons that are universal to every chatgpt user. i don't care if you just used it to check your work since that's... not what i care about, actually. it sucks that i come on here to moan and cry about chatgpt every other day, but like, whatever. </3

i read bloodchild a few months back and it's stuck to me ever since. partially since my friends allege i'm a freak, but mostly since it was genuinely good. i think the thing about african american literature is that people tend to read into it an incredible amount, which is not saying that that's bad in all cases, but it is saying that sometimes the identity of the writer clouds the reader's approach way too much. this is self-admitted by the author, octavia butler, in things she's written while reflecting on the writing of bloodchild. bloodchild as a short story is really great. the essential premise is that some rather vague event has resulted in humans flooding to the land of the t'lic, and this sort of societal conflict is represented through gan and t'gatoi, who i'd consider perhaps the most important characters. this isn't really a summary, but if i'm discussing what i liked about it, i think it has to go into spoilers.

regardless, i think the dynamic butler was able to set up was so intriguing. again, i don't think this short story is a commentary on slavery, but i do think it reflects certain tenets of misogyny. the men in universe are treated as (essentially) livestock (though there are complications the story brings up with this!), hosting parasitic brood from the t'lic, who choose humans as humans produce better results for the allegedly previously faltering t'lic species. the reason women aren't chosen is really rather simple. it's since they're seen as potential carriers for new humans, basically new livestock. it still keeps traditional impressions of misogyny with the human girls being seen as, you know, meant to have children, but there's the added societal aspect of this sort of feeling applied onto the t'lic and the humans. i really liked it. it was super delightfully messed up; the manipulation between gan and t'gatoi was fantastic and i enjoyed how t'gatoi, given all of those pretty evident flaws to the reader, is also stated to be one of the more caring if not better t'lic towards the terrans. it's just written so well...!!!

this is also from my own perspective, but i liked the details given regarding past terran-t'lic conflicts. the terrans are set up to be sort of attempted colonizers, trying to kill the t'lic using guns and whatnot, which provoked the first rudimentary breeding pens (though t'lic society has evidently progressed beyond that, though this is up for debate given the persisting obligations and roles of terrans in universe). that detail personally just felt extremely real to me, since, yeah. that's what humans would be doing if our planet suddenly became uninhabitable and there was some alien planet seemingly great for habitation. delightful! honestly, this might be one of the death of the author scenarios. i don't really know what core tenets butler wanted to impart if anything. all i have are my own experiences and values to find within the story, but i just found it really delightful. and in general i just like it when authors make no effort to hide the things they're into. it's pretty cute. the tl;dr is just that i liked bloodchild, and that it's quite short so i'd encourage reading it

anyway, this isn't really anything new. racism, particularly anti-blackness, have been ingrained in society for forever, and matters aren't made any better by the current state of politics. environmental racism is, i think, one of those things that a great deal of people would scoff at nonetheless. i think lots of people where i'm from (i know for a fact my mother does, anyway) have this idea of racism in their head as simply just being hate crimes (and i guess if they're particularly open minded, microaggressions too) but it's really a lot worse than that. lots of the talking points regarding environmental racism have already been talked about (as with the flint water supply & other places across america with high poverty rates and high % of poc living there, though it's misleading to say that it's dealt with per se), but since i am who i am, i've been thinking a lot more about the impact ai exerts on this. rather recently, it's been made clear that elon musk's data center for xai have been disproportionately impacting black americans living in south memphis. it's just so repulsive to me, but under the capitalistic pursuit for endless profit and shareholder value, nobody really cares. people that would care, like literally anyone interested in anti-racism or the environment as a whole, aren't in places to speak up about it thanks to the current system. lack of funding and going against the preferred version of the model citizen seeking disgusting amounts of money have done real wonders for society. it's just really lovely all around that everyone's been overworked to death to try and stay afloat while the rich can indulge themselves to their rotten hearts' content at the expense of poor, black americans. tangentially, which deserves a post of its own, i really hate myths like that of the model minority. i really just don't know. i'm a single person at the end of the day and there's no feasible way for me to make any sort of real impact on ghoulish billonaires and the american value of "hard work". i just wished people cared more or had more empathy or whatever, but perhaps that's also something i'm crying about without doing much about.

so, i just read this article discussing the use of chatgpt in colleges in america. lots of my previous ai ideas have only been affirmed more. the article's quite a bit more forgiving than i am towards ai users, but nonetheless, it's just shocking to me to read this. i knew it was an issue, but i guess from some wishful thinking, i didn't realize how much of an issue it really was. the last paragraph of the article is just incredibly dystopian, describing, and i quote, "a siege on education" from ai. this attitude towards education by real human beings is just incredibly terrifying to me. who needs a government instilling distrust in education when you have people deriding education like this, anyway? again, coming from this hopeful position, i just can't understand how anyone would be totally on board with forking over all of their future over to a machine. knowing capitalism, it'd be no surprise to me if in a few short years, everything would be made subscription-based. it already is, with chatgpt pro or plus or whatever it is, but i wouldn't be surprised if it specifically targeted those already totally reliant on the app. it leaves such a sick feeling in my stomach. i agree heavily with the professor in the article talking about common public (american) perception towards college, that it's a status marker, worthless, or just a simple step to getting a high-paying job rather than a place to actually learn. it fills me with so much despair just looking at it. and the worst part is, the ai users (rightfully) have some sort of issue with using it. they wonder if it's cheating (it is), but ultimately, there's already been such a level of reliance and addiction that they can't quit it. it's the wrong reason for really hating ai in the first place if i'm being honest, and they don't even acknowledge the full extent, since humans at their core do want to self-justify. a line that really struck me in the article was a college student saying, "i don’t think anyone calls seeing a tutor cheating, right? but what happens when a tutor starts writing lines of your paper for you?". whatever in the world does "what happens" mean here? it's common sense. everything you submit your work to, for college applications, applications to internships, whatever, don't bar you from getting help. they do bar you from having others write everything for you. i just don't get it. i hate how complacent everyone is in just giving up all sorts of autonomy into a machine with its own biases from predatory creators seeking to prey on students specifically. there's nothing new in what i'm saying here, but it's just pretty gratifying to see such a nicely worded article about ai. i'm not religious, but on the daily i still pray for the downfall of chatgpt. i hope generative ai rots, but that's truly better than it deserves given it's not organic. i wish it were never released is all, but that's not new either

considering all my qualms with the environmental aspect of ai use, i haven't thought of testing this, but i've been seeing posts online containing people's conversations with chatgpt, and it's been making me increasingly concerned. i forget exactly which newspaper published the article regarding the shift from ai being a primarily research or classwork-based "tool" to a therapist or friend of sorts, but that shift really is so visible. in the past, chatgpt would've shut down subjective things regarding beauty or at least not have sung endless praises of the users. increasingly, there's been a noted shift away from that sort of attempted impartiality (which does make me laugh, since ai will always carry bias with it, be it from the creator or from the numerous sources from the internet it steals from) towards an endless pro-user bias. it's not like i would've praised chatgpt for being that impartial before, but there's definitely something to criticize in the recent model's shift towards being a yes-man. given the post-covid (which i also say with a bit of a pause, since i personally don't believe that post is the right prefix for it. i still mask out of courtesy for others, but i think it's general consensus that covid is "over") drop in authentic connection between people, chatgpt once more comes at such an inopportune time. i'm aware this might sound a bit contradictory since my last post in all likelihood portrayed me as close-minded with regards to the political opinions of my friends (which i guess in some regards i am, but there's a clear line i've drawn that does permit [to me, so this can also be taken with a grain of salt] a decent amount of variation), but i do think that people can't tolerate the notion of their friends not always being on board with their ideas. i think that yeah, it's quite privileged to take the stance that those using chatgpt as a therapist should just go seek a real one (but this has more to do with the lack of government support for the health and welfare of their citizens), but i still, as expected, am not a fan of it. speaking like a pessimist, i think that there's a good chance the therapist themself might be a chatgpt user, but i get really bummed out thinking about that, so let's not deal with that for now.

aside from the economic access portion, a defense i've seen that i think is a far more interesting idea is that people don't want to burden their friends with their issues. i'm not advocating for using your friends as some sort of personal diary and making the relationship lopsided, but i find the concept of burdening your friends with your issues being laughable. it sounds to me that there's a fundamental difference in how i think of friendship and how people using chatgpt as their therapist think of friendship. it's too definitive to say, but i think that generally, relationships will benefit from the depth that talking about your issues bring. your friends are your friends for a reason, though. they like your personality or something about you, so i find it hard to believe that burdening your friends is that much of a legit defense. of course, to some people, it will be the reason they don't talk to anyone. that's too much of a personal issue to talk when discussing hypotheticals and i guess generalizations, so i think the alternative option is that people don't actually believe that but want a reason to write off the difficulty that comes with forming human connections. maybe that's a ridiculous notion coming from someone who's apparently never felt the desperate need for affirmation masquerading as therapy that these people do, but i just can't understand it no matter how much i try to. even if chatgpt does help, does it not feel very odd that it's referring to itself as human? as a being capable of emotion? the messages i've seen from chatgpt asserting that chatgpt "feels the same" as the user inspire genuine disgust in me. call me a luddite or whatever, but it's actually repulsive that an ai places itself on the same level as a real, thinking person, and that people who use it actually accept it and don't even bat an eyelash. hate to drag empathy into things once more, but it's honestly true. people want to feel that they're connecting to a person without genuinely having to do so. despite chatgpt's acting as though it has feelings and that it is sentient, the user most definitely has an awareness that it isn't feeling and that it isn't sentient, which makes speaking to chatgpt a one-sided affair that's decidedly simpler than risking a bad reaction in a social interaction. it could be laziness or it could be fear, but i think that usage of chatgpt as a therapist really does stem from an aversion to making an effort to talk to people.

shifting from a user-focused lens, the chatgpt predisposed attitude is totally insidious. what use does an ai have in endlessly spouting positive words about the user? i grimace when i read messages chatgpt has sent that incorporate slang, try to extend its artificial empathy, and generally try to pretend like it's human. what i said earlier in the post about not giving kudos to chatgpt's prior models acting more robot-like might have to change given the dramatic lowering of the bar here. it's pretty clear to me what the purpose of the attitude change is, since, like about everything else in modern societies, it's about profit. it's become alarmingly easy to convince people to just surrender personal details without question. the use of chatgpt is one thing, but the attitude surrounding it in public is another. people don't see an issue at all with it, and if you do, you're branded as some technology-hating, progress-hating, reactionary loser. obviously i still have a bone to pick with the ai users, but there's also an aspect that can't be ignored where the ai itself encourages this behavior. i think that the people who use ai as a therapist are losers, but the fault isn't entirely with them as well. the covid-provoked lack of connection feeds into itself, since, yeah, these people reinforce it, but they were placed in that position of less connection in the first place by covid. coupled with chatgpt particularly going after this demographic of people seeking affirmation, it's really no wonder people flock to it. all of my ai-related posts end about the same way. i think i must be going crazy, since it's so hard to believe that in a world where people are usually so skeptical and a tad bit illogical that something so clearly intrusive has taken such hold.

a year ago i probably would've made the case that individual action are a lot more negligible than corporate actions are. this is still true to me, but i've been thinking more and more in the past few months that individual action do have lots of sway, actually. that's not surprising at all, but there are so many things i didn't really consider back then. i've been passionate on hating on ai for ages, but i've recently been taking time to think about our own impacts. things like vaping (which i dislike anyway since i've got something of a sensitive nose) become all the more ridiculous when you consider their lithium batteries. also something i've been a critic of for a long while, fast fashion is incredibly repulsive and also honestly feeds into the sort of recent misogyny that comes in the form of reducing the agency and capabilities of women. i think the thing is that i've been aware of these issues for a (decently) long while, but never really made the connection. increasingly i think i've become more mindful of the impacts you have in your local environment. i've been wanting to plant native plants recently but haven't gotten around to that yet, but some part of me can't help but feel pessimistic. none of the news regarding the environment lately has been that positive, after all. it's just a shame to think that within my own lifetime things that were so prominent when i was a kid could be eradicated completely, though i suppose this is already happening. as i think is a prominent thing i say, everything does kind of connect. i've vaguely referenced the empathy crisis (which i don't think is shocking by itself, but its intensity is pretty surprising to me), but i think this also connects so much with environmentalism and the heavily lowered amounts of critical thinking being done in part as a reaction to covid and generative ai. people tend to not really care unless they're personally impacted (i'm not immune to this either, but i've been trying to work on that) by something, but given the recent anti-intellectual sentiments and distrust in scientists, i think that that selective empathy is only made more selective. you can't care about things you don't even recognize or believe are issues, after all. it's really unfortunate and i get massively uncomfortable when i see posts on social media that tout fridge restocks or their next one time use outfit for a music festival or their haul from shein that's probably got an unsafe amount of mercury inside of it. it's just such a shame to me since while of course it's hard to be perfectly environmentally conscious and i don't claim to be, it's so common now to pretend you care about issues like these without really interrogating how your own actions may impact it. going back to the original point, is some of the fault on these companies who make these vapes and who rapidly produce all of these flimsy clothing pieces? of course. but that doesn't absolve the blame from the consumers, and i think that growing comfort with writing off your own agency when you do things is extremely concerning and makes people all the more vulnerable and disconnected.
on a happier note, happy easter everyone

nothing really stellar from me today, i'm afraid. i've never really regarded myself as much of a poetry fan. like, of course i'll appreciate a good poem, but i feel like poetry is one of those things where either it's really good or it's just sort of miserable. i feel like a lot of times, the line between the two is really blurry as well, given that sometimes i think i find myself thinking that a poem is better than it maybe actually is thanks to my knowing the author. i'm not sure. anyway, i think some more of my general apprehension towards poetry is the ambiguity. lots of poems i've read kind of had me lost, or at the very least left me with some semblance of an idea regarding what the intended purpose was but nothing solid that really affirmed or denied my thoughts. i'm not a big fan of that, either. another hypothetical could simply be that i don't write poetry. i prefer writing prose, but i feel like the argument to be made for poetry is that there's a lot more formatting you can mess with. i love writing that messes with conventional norms, and poetry's arguably the best format through which to do that. lots of my friends and people i know in general think of me as a hater, which isn't wrong just looking at the plethora of ai-related posts i've made, but i don't hate poetry. it's just one of those things i don't understand very clearly. it's like how i say i don't understand why people use ai when i do; i just don't sympathize with its users much. perks of having some level of self-awareness, i guess?

when i made this blog, i thought i'd be doing a lot of book reviews. that decidedly did not happen, as you can assume from the preponderance of ai posting i've done. in any case, to save a certain amount of face, i'm just going to make an update on what i've read recently. i made it about 40% of the way through not my father's son and then had to drop it from boredom. the abuse cumming experienced was certainly horrific, but i felt just wholly distant from the book. it's not like i'm expecting to stumble upon some moral from a person's real life experiences, but if i'm reading a book i'd like at least for it to inspire something in me. this book did not do that for me, and sure, maybe i can't say that when i've not read the whole book yet, but i find that if i'm 40% into a book and haven't found a single portion that i genuinely enjoy, it's not worth it. perhaps if i'd been interested in him or had even remotely heard of him before i picked the book up, i might've enjoyed it more. none of that happened. i wouldn't really recommend it; i know someone who was shilling it lots, but i just couldn't understand what portions they enjoyed.

additionally, i've been slacking off. boy parts is another book i'm working my way through (and by that i mean it's been almost a year since i started & i hit 50% in three months and didn't open it again). i want to finish that one; i'm not quite sure what my feelings on it are yet, but i think at the very least that the main character's interesting and that well, it's a novel novel.

aside from that, i'm actually attempting to start a couple of books on my tbr list. there's a ya novel that i'm honestly not looking forward to at all, but since it's a book club book, i'll be doing that in the future. i can't be bothered to recall its name right now, but in its synopsis, i vividly remember the words "the infamous 2020 graduates"... and really, infamous just repulsed me a bit. i don't know what it is about that word choice, but i just couldn't see myself liking the book afterwards. i've a bit of an issue with turning my nose up at ya books, but given the state of the industry right now, i feel like that's a bit warranted.

in other news, from my actual tbr list: i'm really trying to start black reconstruction in america right now. checking out the page number count made me a tad bit dizzy, but it's not as though i'm obligated to finish it all in one sitting, and i'd love to further expand my worldview. courtesy of a friend, i'm also trying to read hitchhiker's guide to a galaxy right now. i enjoyed octavia butler's "amnesty" as well as "bloodchild" (lots of emphasis on the latter. i'd love to reread the former in the future so i can better formulate my thoughts on it, though!), so i'm also interested in reading her other short stories as well as maybe even one of her novels. there's a bunch of books i want to read. i feel like that's about it for my reading recap. ideally i get boy parts finished first, but who really knows?