This Really Fits Their Dynamic Imo, Both Emotionally And In Terms Of Their Abilities. Or Maybe I'm Just

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when the meeting is so boring you start rotating your guy inside your brain

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My family is still staying in half of the church that wasn’t affected by the bombing because there is nowhere else to stay other than tents. They are limited to one small meal a day and one shower a week. They are sleeping on the floors, but no one can sleep since there is bombing everywhere around them. Even when there is no bombing, they can still hear the loud buzzing sound of the military planes above them, which would keep anyone who hears it awake. Along with everything, My grandma has diabetes and osteoporosis, so she can’t walk. She has to take her insulin medication along with many others; however, she has run out of many of her medications.” Am on my knees requesting for donation. Target $450

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Do other people in the world really believe the genocide is over or that conditions have improved? They began starving the North in March last year and then continued to starve the whole Strip for a year and now they are starving the whole Gaza Strip again this March, in Ramadan.

Genocide is an act of collective punishment and neglect of the most essential life sources.

In reality they began committing genocide against the people of Gaza the day that the siege on Gaza was imposed. What we continue to witness since Oct 7th is only the same genocide accelerated which I will never stop repeating.

Not only that, the murder by aircraft has not stopped. israel's fascist death machines are still hovering and threatening and firing and killing people in their tents, in their damaged homes, in cars, at people trying to rebuild...their thirst for Palestinian blood is literally infinite.

Even if the fire stopped, it would still be genocide. There is no such thing as an israeli ceasefire because they practice murder by freezing and starving and medically neglecting and physically and psychologically torturing Palestinians too.

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?

Akutagawa 🥺

The only reason I don’t draw or write about aku that much is because I know damn well if I dive into him I’m gonna love him and get sucked into a rabbit hole that will emotionally destroy me. But this was fun to draw.

chuuya concept i had 🎶

we got another good news roundup!

the fight is still on! don’t give up!

I have an account on smule if you would like to follow me. It's @LionaSourn.

...anyone?

...yeah. I thought so.

Where do you think skk currently stand with each other now? Reading the lns and then rereading the manga, I was honestly surprised with how openly Chuuya showed concern for Dazai whenever he got hurt during the Lovecraft fight. It feels like their dynamic has shifted from when they were kids, but it's hard to pinpoint what exactly.

Ohhh boy thanks for the ask, anon!

I think right now they stand in a place where their dynamic from when Dazai left the mafia shines through, despite Dazai's "betrayal". That being said, we don't really know what that dynamic was. Dark Era has 0 Chuuya in it, and I don't think that's unintentional on Asagiri's part. I think he wants us to wonder a little bit more before he tells that part of their story. He literally said as much in the Stormbringer afterword, after all. My guess is that they've gotten to the point where they both understood they didn't actually hate each other, quite the opposite, in fact. Still too young and stubborn to actually talk about it, but I do think they consciously considered each other friends and partners in more than just the teamup Mori thrust them into. We see Dazai hides less and less of his affection toward Chuuya when no one who's opinion he cares about is looking. And in the Dead Apple manga adaptation we get to see a little more of Dazai and Chuuya. Dazai only gets off his ass when Chuuya calls him out on it. And Dazai trusts Chuuya to figure out his plan and come rescue him. Hell he lets Chuuya pass out on his lap afterward, a clear parallel to the ending of Dead Apple. That particular moment shows us that this kind of thing happened quite often, a natural progression to them using Corruption as a tactic and the ending we saw in Stormbringer, when Dazai caught Chuuya and let his true affection shine through in the moment when Chuuya couldn't hear him. Again, we know nothing of 17 and 18 year old soukoku, but if we follow that progression to its conclusion, then Dazai and Chuuya started to trust each other more, become closer as partners and friends, be less afraid of showing it to one another.

And then Dazai left, and Chuuya was fucking devastated.

Here's the boy who not only dragged Chuuya into the mafia, but who became the first person to treat him as a human being, not a tool that could be used and discarded when need be. The Sheep didn't do that. Rimbaud never did that. Mori was frank when he said he saw all his subordinates, including himself, as tools. But Dazai was the one who said that Chuuya could do what he wanted with his power. It was Dazai who made sure to never force Chuuya to use Corruption when he could, to give him a choice, from the very beginning. That's why Chuuya trusted him. And then Dazai, who joined the mafia alongside him partly because he wanted to live long enough to have Chuuya by his side, left him and the entirety of the Mafia. It's only inevitable that Chuuya saw it as a betrayal.

There's a whole analysis of 18 to 22 year old Chuuya I could do, what he was like after Dazai's betrayal, how he became the person he is now, but that would take. So long. Maybe later.

Anyway then Dazai shows up in the Port Mafia's basement and is like "hey whatsup don't get me wrong I still don't like you also remember how we used to be partners?" And Chuuya is clearly hiding A Lot of Feelings but he plays along and lets Dazai go, along with the information Dazai needed.

I think Dazai and Chuuya see their relationship quite differently. Because Dazai never saw his leaving the Mafia as him leaving Chuuya. Hell, look how he talks to Akutagawa vs Chuuya. He literally tells Akutagawa that Atsushi is his replacement. He never does that with Chuuya, hell, he keeps reminding Chuuya of their partnership. Literally tells him that Dazai's second reason was that he wanted to see Chuuya again. That it was a "reunion long in the making". I have a feeling Dazai also got caught cause he wanted to see what Chuuya would do. And Chuuya lets him go! With information! They bicker and bully each other like old times, it's better than he could have hoped!

Anyway. To Dazai, Chuuya is still the same old Chuuya as the one he left behind when they were 18.

As we said before, Chuuya sees it differently. He's clearly still bitter about it, saying that Dazai "made a fool of everyone, be it friend or foe". Like, he's clearly talking about Dazai leaving here. Chuuya's clearly hurt because he trusted someone, and again, that trust was met with a betrayal. He doesn't know what to make of this "new Dazai", doesn't trust him, because he sees Dazai be merciful and kind and that's not what he remembered Dazai to be like. And if Dazai was secretly a good, kind person the whole time, why would he leave Chuuya like that? Did that mean Chuuya just wasn't worth that kindness? So their interactions so far have been about Dazai testing and building back up that trust and partnership they had beforehand. Showing up in that basement to tease him. Letting Chuuya choose to use Corruption. Getting himself "killed" by Shibusawa, putting his own trust forward that Chuuya would come for him.

Also, they're not teenagers anymore! They're adults! Which means they can process their feelings in a more mature way! So Dazai is way more overt with his fondness for Chuuya, he's got the guts to call him "buddy" to himself. He seems to understand his own feelings for Chuuya a little more. His little conversation with Akutagawa before Shin Soukoku's fight with Fukuchi? You can't tell me that's not Dazai understanding his loyalty to Chuuya and seeing that same partnership in Atsushi and Akutagawa.

"You'll save him. You know the reason yourself, don't you?" Like bitch kill me now just

AND THEN AKU FUCKING DIES JUST SO ATSUSHI CAN ESCAPE I CAN'T.

If Dazai is modeling Shin Soukoku off of his partnership with Chuuya, then you know exactly how he feels about it. It means a whole heck of a lot to him.

And now we have an arc where Dazai's one true enemy is using Chuuya like a glorified pet bodyguard. I keep thinking of that line he said to Aku and, like, I'm 99% sure Dazai would die for Chuuya if he had to? (wow Dazai please don't die).

Meanwhile Chuuya's feelings a little less clear but I'm getting a "I want to trust Dazai even though I know I shouldn't cause he left me behind before what makes me think he won't do it again?" Please, Asagiri, I need to see this boy's crisis when Dazai left. I need it.

Note that all of this is mostly just speculation I infodumped in this ask, but if we're talking canonically, their relationship seems to be heading into a moment when they both need to deside how important they are to each other, admit it to each other, epecially with Dazai finally admitting that he cares a heck of a lot for Chuuya. In terms of shipping, their maturity makes them understand their own feelings for each other more. Dazai is no longer so intimidated by his giant obsession crush, and Chuuya can understand why he needs Dazai in his life, even after all the betrayal and the hurt. This is just a fun little thing, but the current jailbreak arc kind of reminds me of that moment where Adora needed to fight Catra to bring her back home:

Okay okay I'll stop typing now.