In A World

Christmas Coven

To my followers who maybe followed me for my fanfic and to anybody else who wants to vote:

When it comes to the way Dazai and Chuuya defeat Rimbaud, should I follow the anime or the novel? I am torn between using the cloth versus them holding hands. I have both parts written but I am still torn between which one I should do. The cloth has red string of fate symbolism but holding hands is intimate and means they touch. Pick for me?

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

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BSD Interviews Masterlist

A new masterlist by yours truly. There's so many interviews out there that I wouldn't dare to aspire to include them all; but since I've been stumbling across a lot of Asagiri interviews after they attended Anime Expo this year, I wanted to at least have one place where I can keep track of the ones I see. If you know any interview I failed to include, please let me know!!

The dates reported here refer to the date the interview was published, and not when it was taken; even then, please take them with a grain of salt. Some rows feature multiple links to dislocated translations of the same interview, so be sure to hover over all the text so you don't miss any piece. Finally, sorry if the list results a little bulky at times, I couldn't seem to come up with a better way to format it.

Manga interviews

Asagiri, Harukawa (April 2013) /// original text

Asagiri, Harukawa (January 2017)

Asagiri, Harukawa (October 2019)

Asagiri (July 2023)

Asagiri (August 2023)

Asagiri (October 2023)

Anime interviews

Kensho Ono (Akutagawa's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Yasuomi Umetsu (season 1 ending director) on the season 1 ending (June 2016) /// alternative translation

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (July 2016) /// alternative translation

Suwabe Junichi (Oda's va), Miyano Mamoru (Dazai's va), Fukuyama Jun (Ango's va), Miki Shinnichiro (Gide's va) on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi (director); Mamoru Miyano (Dazai's va); Jun Fukuyama (Ango's va); Yuto Uemura (Atsushi's va); on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi (director), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter) on season 2 (January 2017)

Bones producer on Dead Apple (January 2018)

Asagiri, Takuya Igarashi (director), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter) on Dead Apple (December 2018)

Asagiri, Hiroshi Kamiya (Ranpo's va), Yuto Uemura (Atsushi's va), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter), Nobuhiro Arai (character designer), Mari Suzuki (character designer), Nobuhito Takemoto (character designer) on season 4 (February 2023)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va); Asagiri, Yoji Enokido (screenwriter), Chiaki Kurakane (Kadokawa producer); Asagiri; Kensho Ono (Akutagawa's va); Asagiri; on season 5 (August 2023)

Kensho Ono (Akutagawa's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (June 2016)

Yasuomi Umetsu (season 1 ending director) on the season 1 ending (June 2016) /// alternative translation

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va) on season 1 (July 2016) /// alternative translation

Suwabe Junichi (Oda's va), Miyano Mamoru (Dazai's va), Fukuyama Jun (Ango's va), Miki Shinnichiro (Gide's va) on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi (director); Mamoru Miyano (Dazai's va); Jun Fukuyama (Ango's va); Yuto Uemura (Atsushi's va); on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi (director), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter) on season 2 (January 2017)

Bones producer on Dead Apple (January 2018)

Asagiri, Takuya Igarashi (director), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter) on Dead Apple (December 2018)

Asagiri, Hiroshi Kamiya (Ranpo's va), Yuto Uemura (Atsushi's va), Yoji Enokido (screenwriter), Nobuhiro Arai (character designer), Mari Suzuki (character designer), Nobuhito Takemoto (character designer) on season 4 (February 2023)

Asagiri, Masahiko Minami (Studio Bones President), Chiaki Kurakane (Kadokawa producer) on season 5 during Anime Expo 2023: coverage 1; coverage 2; coverage 3; coverage 4; coverage 5 (July 2023)

Kishou Taniyama (Chuuya's va); Asagiri, Yoji Enokido (screenwriter), Chiaki Kurakane (Kadokawa producer); Asagiri; Kensho Ono (Akutagawa's va); Asagiri; on season 5 (August 2023)

Stage plays interviews

Masashi Taniguchi (Oda's actor), Hideya Tawada (Dazai's actor); Hirofumi Araki (Ango's actor), Hideya Tawada (Dazai's actor); Hideya Tawada (Dazai's actor); on the Dark Era stage play (2018 ?)

Masashi Taniguchi (Oda's actor), Rui Tabuchi (Dazai's actor) on the Beast movie (January 2022 ?)

Masashi Taniguchi (Oda's actor), Rui Tabuchi (Dazai's actor) on the Beast movie (February 2022)

Headcanon Chuuya almost always wants to fight the people he respects.

Just one little match, that's all he wants. A no ability sparring match. Just one.

Okay, that wasn't enough, with abilities this time.

Actually, if they were truly testing their capabilities, neither of them would hold back at all.

Okay, now with stakes.

If this person says yes once, you can bet Chuuya will find an excuse to initiate another match. He knows it's not appropriate to ask certain people to a fight, so he literally sits there buzzing like an excited Chihuahua, trying to contain himself.

The Sheep would play wrestle all the time and that's really where it all started. It was a way to teach the younger members how to defend themselves, but also to blow off steam and settle disputes. Grappling each other, shouting silly wrestling moves and pretending to box each other was just a way of showing affection.

Then he became King of Sheep and the other members didn't want to engage in play matches with him anymore. The enemies he fought were boring most days. Once he learned how to deal with bullets there was no challenge to it.

Then came the mafia and with it people like Kouyou, Iceman and Hirotsu. People who could stand up to him and had things they could teach him. People he admired and sparred with regularly. Verlaine eventually was included in this too.

Fights against people like Rimbaud that made him feel alive because they pushed him so close death.

Chuuya found the joy in fighting again and in standing opposite a person you respect on a mat, anticipating their moves, counteracting with you own, an improvised dance of strength and balance.

Begrudgingly, even Dazai was included in that, on the very rare occasion their arguments got physical. Dazai never beat him in a physical fight, but the fact that he knew him so well meant he could stand his ground when he really wanted to.

When he became an Executive and started training his own subordinates, he found yet another new joy in being the one doing the teaching. The pride in seeing his students grow. Unlike with The Sheep, his underlings here knew how strong he was and still stepped up to spar with him, because they trusted him.

Fighting isn't just a battle to Chuuya. It's communication.

what'd you do last night?

i was all in my mind.

corruption aftercare

i love soft skk

Con artist who sells obvious fake "Legendary" items. Hm...

I always wanted to be the whacky charming one of the group no one trusts but is the fandom favorite!

Surprise! Tumblr just got turned into an epic fantasy RPG, just like [your favorite appropriate media franchise]. And the Tumblr RPG's plot needs to have all of its characters covered, in roles both large and small.

That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.

I wrote a 1,800-word one-off based on a post I made a while back questioning what would happen if Fyodor took over Chuuya. So, if you’re interested, check it out.