illuvium

i think the treatment of fanfiction is super interesting for multiple reasons. there's treatment of it from inside the fandom & perception of it from i guess not even people outside the fandom, but people who don't interact with fandoms at all online. even thinking about things like people generalizing the types of works based on the site it's posted on is pretty funny. you don't see this with fanartists when they post works on both twitter and instagram, but when you see conversations about fanfiction, there's this immediate sort of assumption that anything posted on ao3 is superior to something posted on wattpad. i feel like it's then surprising, given how common these kinds of takes are within literally every fandom ever, to see the real treatment of fanfiction in fandom circles. generally speaking, i find that it's rare to find fanfiction that's given proper time of day despite having the same effort put into it as fanartists put into their works. it's a strange sort of contrast; as far as i know, there's not really any sort of stereotype regarding fanart in the same way there are all these discussions about fanfiction to the point of having these generalizations widely understood by tons of people on the internet. despite that more marked presence within common ideas, fanfiction really doesn't seem to be valued so much. comparatively less attention is paid to it and i find that writers are typically treated as more mechanical than artists are in the sense that people are far more comfortable critiquing writing and telling the author to produce more content.

as for the other thing i mentioned, of fanfiction's perception from outsiders, i think that's even funnier. it's like the treatment of fanfiction vs fanart inside the fandom but augmented exponentially. fanart's usually not seen is probably one of the reasons why, and the other reason why is what i've mentioned above of it not having any connotations (usually; there are always some exceptions and i've seen examples where youtubers or other content creators have brought fanart into videos to show some sort of disparity between the fanart & the actual content of the series). fanfiction's got something of a reputation, i think, for being more dirty in some regard? i don't really understand it, but there is more of a negative social meaning to saying you read fanfiction than there is for saying you like fanart that i'm really curious about. anyway, there's not really a meaning to this, and it's not a very ironed out line of thinking. i'll get back to this at some point if i'm up to it

this honestly falls in line with what my last post was talking about (blah blah blah, everything's connected, et cetera), but i think another real issue within society now is the resurgence of general tolerance for frankly horrific behavior. fatphobia has never not been an issue, especially for women, with pressures to conform to the typical beauty standard (which is another level of absurdity; the people you're being compared to are those with the money to burn on expensive treatments and those who don't have to do any sort of meaningful work a day in their lives), but i think it's become so much worse now. people are so comfortable being rude all the time and it's just appalling to see how much bigotry has made a comeback. lots of these issues are interconnected, too. when you look at those videos talking about stereotypical polyamorous couples, for example, it's always the same thing. there has to be a mention of they/them pronouns, the person has to be fat, they have to be clearly unconventional. fatphobia there is, of course, one issue, but it's also connected to queerphobia and intolerance for anyone that doesn't look like you or doesn't look like what you're into. people deride the 2020 levels of "sensitivity" too much, but that's preferable to being so callous with what you're saying.

these trends of having filters to appear fatter for the purpose of making fun of themselves and saying something like "oh, i could never", the eating disorder content masquerading as diet content online, the willful ignorance to their being fatphobic are all so incredibly intolerable. the response to defenses of people just living their life is that obesity is not to be promoted and that it's a health risk. that's a double edged sword; neither's being too skinny. shaming someone into developing anorexia is something i'd wager would do more than whatever consequences these people are fantasizing about. it's really not about being fat, it's about not conforming to the beauty standard. nobody would care about all these health risks (i'm not denying those exist, to be clear. it's just disingenuous to claim that fatphobes genuinely care for the health of those they bully when they evidently do not) if being fat were the beauty standard and being skinny was out of favor.

all of this is just to say that there's an acceptable level of queerness, which is clearly oxymoronic given the literal definition of queerness is of diverging from the social norm or rather, the social ideal. i think it has something to do with your looks. the more apparent the aspect of a person is, the worse it gets even to other queer people. for example, what i said regarding the nonbinary polyamorous person applies since 90% of the time the stereotype finds its basis on the person looking androgynous with shorter hair and whatever. it's not the best example, sure, but i think that it's still nevertheless true that the more apparent your divergence from the norm is, the more criticism you face even by those from your own community. people closer to that image of normalcy have tendencies to mock those further away from them on this hypothetical spectrum, and it's just really funny because they do that at risk to themselves. when you kick out the most "radical" from the group, you become the new radicals. they're just speeding up their turn on the chopping block, and for what? temporary laughs that only go to show their utter lack of empathy? i don't really know, but that's my stance & i just find it exceedingly ridiculous.

(regarding ai, as per usual)
in any case, the promulgation of ai into literally everything is so disappointing. i'm doing a google search. if it's on a definition of a word, i can find it on one of the multitude of dictionaries there are online. there's no need for an ai chat recap. who on earth would want their messages to be rewritten by ai? it doesn't know what you intend to say with any degree of certainty, only you do. genuinely such ridiculous stuff. i should be able to do a regular google search without having this mandatory ai trash appear under my search. thanks a lot, i'd trust actual reputable sources over ai any day. and like, sure, there's the -ai trick, but that's hardly even a trick when it works about 25% of the time and never again. i'm being basically forced into seeing and accepting ai as part of my daily life when i want zero part in that, actually. the only thing i've found to actually work is to literally curse in my google searches. nowadays, i just have my whole searches inputted, and right afterwards, it'll be one of a variety of curse words. my go-to curse word is unfortunately able to be twisted with some of these searches, so i have to be doubly careful for something that i never wanted in the first place. which person decided that the best thing to add was an ai generated summary? what's wrong with just clicking on the first link like everyone else does? what kind of stupendous stupidity has infected the world? good god

i think it's pretty clear that i'm passionate about the impact of ai in society and in my life at the present, but i've more to say (shocker). i obviously care when others use chatgpt for the aforementioned impacts on the environment with each search, but even thinking more selfishly, i hate ai as a concept. i've never and will never use chatgpt or any of that other generative ai trash to do any of my work, but since i'm well aware that others are, it's making me more paranoid as a result. everything i write is my own and is created from all the influences of the writers i've read and whatever other interesting quotes i've picked up along the way like a raven with its treasures. with ai around, it's gotten more convoluted. i've had to be concerned about coming across as ai, especially when writing applications to things. it's just genuinely disappointing that i even have to consider this and that i have to worry that i don't come across as authentically human enough, which is honestly crazy when you think about it. kind of dystopian too; i, a real person, have to convince someone else that it's really me and not an ai generating my paragraphs. god.

what this reveals to me is perhaps more worrying, though. apparent trademarks of ai usage are more "advanced" synonyms of common words, but i really do think that these synonyms aren't advanced in the slightest. come on, delve as a red flag for ai usage? you learn that word in elementary school when you're being taught about penguins. all of this is just proving to me that there's such a decrease in literacy today, especially in the united states, that's just incredulously concerning. relying on ai is only going to augment that issue, too. elementary schoolers i know have used chatgpt. elementary schoolers! in the fourth grade! every year you're in school from elementary up until high school is crucial, but i feel like elementary is especially so. aside from the soft skills (which also are seeing, at least in my experience, a dramatic fall off), elementary school is fundamentally a time to be building your basic skills in things like reading and writing. if you have to rely on ai already to be writing basic essays, lord knows how much you'll struggle reaching high school and writing essays there. that aforementioned decrease in literacy ties into my opinions regarding booktok and the general condition of readers today, but that's also a post for another time.

all of this is to say that i'm positive ai will have excruciatingly averse effects on the current generation and the future ones, too. generative ai like this isn't something you can roll back so easily, which is a real shame since it's truly one of those things that i don't believe provide any benefit to the world. earlier today, i was watching people i used to respect or at the very least like go on chatgpt for the simplest matters. when i say that witnessing people go on chatgpt and rely on it in any manner like this drops my respect for them greatly, i mean it. in all honesty, i feel like i'm going crazy sometimes. i see online that people share similar thoughts to me, but in real life, i've not yet found someone agreeing with me. i see instead people spending their lunch breaks typing away at chatgpt and wasting all that energy.

i've mentioned in my pinned post and other places that i'm in fandoms as well. going back to ai and fandoms, it's doubly bad with things like character ai. regardless of the situation with c.ai and the suicide of a young boy, i have a hatred for the website. there's no point to it, which is what i say with every generative ai program ever, but it's doubly apparent here, with character ai. if you're truly so desperate to be able to talk to your favorite character, roleplay is right there. roleplay has existed for as long as fandom has existed. it's literally been part of fanculture forever. hell, i roleplayed in elementary school when the rage was warrior cats. ignoring all of that in favor of a lifeless chat robot is just ludicrous to me. you can make the case that the internet isn't safe. i'd be inclined to agree with that, but i just can't see how the alternative is to go to that soulless thing.

relating to fandom and also to my first post regarding generative ai, ai-generated fanfiction is ridiculous to me. reiterating: when i write fanfiction, it's with my own interpretations of the characters. it's a study of how i view them, what i think they would say, what situations i'd like them to be in and so on so forth. ai is not capable of the kind of analysis i am and that i do when i sit down to write. ai steals writers' works and plays pretend, acts like it can truly understand the characters and the manner in which you write. it can't do that. it doesn't have memory, it can't develop. you tell an ai to say that something objectively true is wrong and it'll say that. you ask it to confirm what it says right after, and it'll say that what it said was wrong not even two minutes ago is true. it's not based on logic. it's based on what it scrapes from the internet. it can never be capable of the sort of analysis real writers do when they think about what they're writing. even subconsciously, with tags like "out of character", you understand that your version of them isn't consistent. ai could never do that, because ai can't form its own analysis of anything. what makes me the angriest about ai-generated fic is that the person prompting the ai has the idea on their own. they have the ideas, they have that creative drive, and they can think, but they just refuse to, and that's the most grating part. i could never be satisfied with an ai-generated fanfiction. taking my ideas and absolutely butchering them? i'm a picky reader and a total grammar police, but i would prefer a poorly formatted and poorly written out of character fanfic made by a real person to ai-generated slop any day of the year

first post ever & it's a book review of martyr! by kaveh akbar. i read this as part of a book club i'm in and hadn't heard of it before, so i went in blind and finished in about a day. i think as a whole that the book did certain things well but that other portions weren't geared towards the kind of reader i am. i think my rating is a solid 3.5/5, maybe a 4 if i'd read it on a better day

things i liked:
i think the kind of person the main character was is really applicable to people in the modern day, especially with the lines discussing how cyrus wanted to be on the right side of history perhaps just to be there, just to say that he had that oftentimes out of the ordinary stance on a matter. there are lots of bits and pieces of cyrus's character that show this certain aspect of his. the book's interactions with race with regards to cyrus's not speaking up in the past against his treatment & kind of laughing awkwardly and just taking it felt not just applicable to me but also fits well with the kind of person he's portrayed to be. i found myself really enjoying the book's takes on i guess shallowness with the stances people have nowadays, with portions of your ideas being analyzed by yourself through the lenses of what the best-looking take will be to others. on the topic of interaction with race, the portions about the newspapers and the role of cyrus's uncle in the war were super interesting portions to me. i didn't care for the ending much & thought the beginning was so much stronger, and i guess that's since the most memorable line of the book really came from around there with it being orkideh's line about cyrus being like every other iranian boy, yearning to be some martyr. i think if i were more eloquent that i'd be able to express what i feel better, but i guess that can come with time. i just really liked those bits is all.

things i didn't like:
honestly, this is likely thanks to my being not a huge poetry fan, but all the segments before the chapters with the poems left me without much of an impression at all. again, they don't go against cyrus's character. to me, they weren't wonderful poems, but maybe i'm not the best judge of poetry (or books in general if we're being truly real). those kinds of average poems i think do work well with who cyrus is; martyr does a really great job at characterizing cyrus & almost letting you know what to expect from him. i didn't like the poems, and also i found myself not really enjoying the romance between cyrus either. all of this is personal taste, like all reviews are, but there were lines that had me really grossed out that i honestly think the book could've done without. seriously? sucking zee's thumb? i don't know about that one. this is really nitpicky, too, but i think the prose wasn't exactly stellar. there were segments with cyrus's uncle and his mother where it was in their perspective and i found myself thinking that they all sounded about the same, and this is coming from a person who usually doesn't pick up on things like pacing issues or the voice of the character or things like that unless it's especially egregious.

all in all, it wasn't a terrible book. i don't regret reading it, but i never really regret reading books given the constant mental atrophy of having ai do everyone's work. would i recommend it? maybe. i think it's a worthwhile book but that perhaps i just don't appreciate poetry enough and that i too easily get disgusted.