Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

Bird Watching

Construction Worker!Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x single mom!reader

‘Birds of a feather,

We should stick together, I know,

I said I’d never,

Think I wasn’t better alone’

Part one

Part two

Part three (coming soon)

Main Masterlist

1K notes View Post

d-gteeths

8 months ago

to the anon who just asked me if i ever shut up

no bitch i do not lmfao

30 notes View Post

d-gteeths

6 months ago

Don't know if anyone here needs or wants to hear it, but really, from someone who's been born into Putin's reign and is still living it. Life doesn't end there. Dystopia doesn't knock on your door the next day after inauguration.

No, it's not gonna be all sunshine and rainbows, and they most likely will try to make it worse, but shit like this isn't done in mere seconds. I might not understand it fully, because for me elections never have been "the time to decide", but please, try not to let the panicking consume you. Take care of yourself. Form communities and networks. This is the shit we lacked and now it's borderline impossible to organize on lower levels here (people still do it. people still fight for other people.)

This is not the end of the world, and if you keep going, it won't be the end of the world tomorrow, in a month and in a year too.

Also please remember that they all are old as fuck and you have big chances to outlive them. Don't lessen your chances by neglecting yourself and your community.

Sincerely, your fucking Russian that is very much living the "dark future" some of you are panicking about. Key word is living. And others are too. Helping people avoid being sent to war, helping people avoid being deported, helping women escape all kinds of abuse. Distributing food and protecting animals they are trying to kill. Fighting against ruining environment. Keeping extincting languages of some minorities alive.

We are living. You'll live too. You have it in you to stand together. I absolutely believe in you.

177 notes View Post

d-gteeths

1 year ago

“Did You See The Way That Little Girl Looked At Me? Kids. Little Kids. They Grow Up Believing That

“Did you see the way that little girl looked at me? Kids. Little kids. They grow up believing that they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different. And I’m the monster? I don’t know what’s scarier. The fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart or that sometimes I just wanna let ‘em.” “We have to get you out of here. Over the wall. We won’t stop until we find some place safe, okay? We’ll go. Together. No matter what we do, we can’t change the way people see us.” “You changed the way you see me... Didn’t you?

NIMONA (2023), based on the comic by ND Stevenson, who came out as transgender in 2022

pas de deux

to the anon that requested this, i know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but inspiration struck. i hope you like it.

cw: wally certified yearner and loverboy, me not knowing how to describe dancing, allusions to reader being murdered in a very traumatic way by her dance partner but no specifics, sfw

wc: 3k

Wally knows that what he’s attempting to do is misguided at best, and probably disastrous at worst.

The idea came to him a few weeks ago. He’d been sitting with Charley and Rhonda, shooting the shit in the gymnasium before their meeting with Mr. Martin, when he’d asked, “Is it possible to break a ghost out of their loop?”

To Charley’s credit, he’d attempted to take the question seriously. Rhonda had just rolled her eyes, removing the ever present lollipop from her mouth before interrupting.

“Again with this? Come on, loverboy. Not gonna happen.”

Charley sighed, tutting at Rhonda before turning back to Wally, a sympathetic look on his face, “There’s always a chance it could work, but if you’re talking about who we think you’re talking about, I’d say they’re pretty slim.”

“More than slim, I’d say,” Rhonda butts in again, “I’m surprised she hasn’t worn a hole through the floor, with the way she dances. Like a ballerina in a music box.” She spins her lollipop through the air, follows it with her eyes before shoving it back into her mouth.

“Have I ever told you your attitude is annoying?” Wally asked, sinking back into his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, ignoring the scoff from Rhonda’s direction, “I’m just saying. We’ve never even tried. What if she’s like, aware in there, like in her mind.” He reaches up to run a hand through his hair - a nervous tick he hadn’t lost, even in death.

“Does it matter? She’s still stuck here like the rest of us. Better to spend eternity dancing than dealing with the banalities of high school.”

Mr. Martin walked in then, effectively ending the conversation. Through the whole meeting, Wally couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’d seen you in the auditorium before, looping over and over, stuck in an endless dance for two but lacking a partner. It’s a rare thing for a ghost to act the way you do - there haven’t really been any other deaths at the school that were traumatic enough to warrant a loop like yours, and he’d been determined to break you out of it. Screw Rhonda, he’d thought. He could do it, he just needed to figure out how.

The problem was, Wally knew nothing about dancing. He's not the smartest guy. He knows that, but he’d been brainstorming different ways to break you out of your loop for a while now, with nothing to show for it. It’d been grating heavily on his nerves.

In a moment he’d regrettably look back on, he’d gone so far as to join you on stage to attempt a fake out. When he’d lunged at you, and you hadn’t even blinked in his direction, he started to think Rhonda was right. You couldn’t see him, you couldn’t hear him. You were stuck up there, doomed to spin around the stage for God knows how long and there was nothing he could do about it.

Then one day, something really fucking weird had happened.

—

He’d taken to sitting in the audience, to watch you dance. It was weird, more than a little morbid and slightly obsessive, but watching you move was captivating to him.

He found some similarities between dancing and playing football - the finesse needed to dodge and weave through people trying to tackle him was one thing - but he’d never seen anyone move the way you do. Every move you made had purpose. The lines created by your arms and legs, the softness with which you carried yourself from one end of the stage to the other.

Preoccupied with the pressures his mom applied to him, the weight of the world on his shoulders, he’d never taken an interest in dancing, other than the awkward slow side to side swaying he’d done with his Junior year girlfriend at the prom. Now, he wishes he could dance with you - wishes you could teach him to move like you do.

You’re stuck there, like a spinning top that refuses to fall - unable to fall. Except, as he was watching you, something unthinkable happened.

You were looking at him. Like, looking straight at him.

It took him more than a few seconds to realize what was happening, and even then he couldn’t believe it. Charley had talked to him about dancers having a spot to look at when they’re spinning - how it keeps them from falling over, keeps them from becoming dizzy and messing up. Was it possible Wally just happened to be in the seat you used as a spot?

He couldn’t tell if there was recognition in your eyes, if you were really looking at him or seeing right through him, the way a living person would. But your gaze was fixated on him either way. And your face, it… you just looked so sad. If he didn’t know better, Wally would’ve thought your expression was pleading, looking for help. It only lasted a few seconds, before you turned your head in a different direction and your body followed. It sent him reeling.

He found Charley and Rhonda in the library, and told them what happened. Charley sat up in his chair, struggling to understand what he meant.

“What do you mean she looked at you?”

Wally went to explain it to them again, hoping they’d believe this was out of the norm, “I mean she looked at me, dude. She was up there spinning like she always is, and I was just sitting there watching -”

“You were watching her? Voyeurism doesn’t suit you, loverboy.” Rhonda’s arms were crossed over her chest, legs folded over each other - closed off, like she always is.

“It’s not like that and you know it,” Wally sighed, exasperated, “It was weird. At first I thought she was using me to spot, while she was twirling, but the way her face looked? I don’t know, dude. It was just weird.”

“There’s a chance she was looking at you, don’t you think? We don’t really know how looping works, so,” Charley’s endless kindness is a relief to Wally - especially when he says things like, “I think it’s good, what you’re doing. I wish we could help more.” Charley looks over in Rhonda’s direction, nudging her to say something to Wally.

“Yeah. As much as I give you flack for it, your whole -” Rhonda waves a hand in Wally’s general direction, “boy savior thing, I do wish there was something we could do for her. It sucks. Not having a partner to dance with.” There was a glint of remorse in Rhonda’s eye, more than Wally ever thought he’d see from her.

A spark lights up in Wally’s head, a hidden spotlight finding its mark onstage - landing on you, your flawless form.

“Do you think if I dance with her, that it could break the loop?” Wally asks, looking back and forth between his two friends.

“It’s definitely worth a shot,” Charley shrugs, gaze turning to his left, “Rhonda? What do you think?”

The beatnik pauses for a second, long enough for them to see the cogs turning in her brain.

“Look, I’m not saying it’ll work. Probably won’t. But maybe,” Wally starts to smile, “Just maybe, if you try to connect with her on her terms, instead of trying to force some logic onto the situation, something might change.”

“I don’t know how to dance, though. I don’t even know where to start.” Wally drops his head in his hands, shoulders hunched over. Charley reaches over, splays a hand on Wally’s back and rubs back and forth.

“Think of it like football maybe? You’ve got your plays, right?” Wally nods, sitting up and urging Charley to continue, “Those are like the steps. Formations could be the positions you take, and in dancing, timing is everything. The same way it is in football, at least from what I’ve gathered of the rants you go on. Rhonda’s right. Maybe if you learn how she moves, you can try communicating with her that way.”

Wally sits up, throwing his arms around his two friends, ignoring Rhonda attempting to push him away before jumping up from his spot on the couch. He nearly trips over himself to sprint out of the room and down the hall, towards the auditorium, shouting “Thank you!” behind him.

—

Wally stood in the echoing auditorium, the stage lights illuminating the otherwise dark room. Every day for the past week, he’d come to you - trying to decipher a language he did not speak. He watched you, trapped in your endless pas de deux. Gliding through the same steps, turns, your desperate yearning clear up close.

At first, he’d just tried to mimic you. Clumsy and tripping over his own feet, he’d stumbled through the basic positions, frustrated with himself. His movements were jerky and awkward, a stark contrast to your effortless grace. He felt silly - like a hulking figure trying to copy something delicate and precise, something that took years and years of training.

Slowly, things started to shift. He stopped just watching and copying, instead starting to feel the music that wasn’t there. He began to understand the reasoning behind your movements, the emotions they expressed. He started to see the gaps in your performance, the place where someone was supposed to fit, to complete the cycle you’d been stuck in.

He started to see the places where he could fit.

He wasn’t just mirroring anymore, he was learning the language. Each day he got a little closer, a little less clumsy, a little more in tune with the phantom rhythm that filled the empty auditorium. He was still a football player, and he always would be, but he was learning to use some of that training to become a dancer, too. For you.

Wally knew this might not even work. He’d been in his head about it for a week at this point, and not even Charley or Rhonda could break him out of the loop he’d pulled himself into. He stopped going to the life support meetings in the gymnasium, much to Mr. Martin’s dismay - instead going to spend all of his free time right there next to you onstage.

He put more effort into practicing for this than he ever did for one of his football games, a feeling of true purpose guiding his every movement.

When the day finally came, Wally felt calm. He felt ready.

He walked onto the stage, ready to put his rehearsing to the test. Ready to run the play, to score the winning point. You began your routine, perfect and meticulous and haunting as ever. This time, though, Wally didn’t just watch. He joined you.

He didn’t try to lead, didn’t try to impose himself or change your dance, he simply became your partner. He matched your movements as best as he could, trying to feel his way through the dance. Trying not to be too robotic, but instead trying to move with the same empathy and yearning that he’d watched you dance with over and over.

As you reached the point in your dance where your partner should have joined, Wally was there. He wasn’t a perfect dancer, not by any metric, but he was present. He was the missing piece.

As your movements intertwined, a visible shift occurred. You, you who had been trapped in this endless cycle of longing, suddenly seemed to notice him. Your eyes, usually fixated on some distant point, flickered - focusing on Wally for the first time. Genuinely seeing him. Your eyes filled with tears, and as one of them dropped onto your cheek, Wally went to wipe it away.

The music, which up until this point had only been an idea in Wally’s head, suddenly seemed to fill the auditorium, bouncing off of the walls and echoing around the two of you. Your dance became a true pas de deux, a conversation of movement and emotion.

As the music started to slow, Wally found himself on unsure footing. He hadn’t stopped to think before about how the dance was supposed to end, but it didn’t matter. Grasping his hands in your own, taking the lead and guiding him through the end, the two of you moved in perfect harmony. Spectral echoes of each other, gazes connected and satisfaction blooming.

The yearning in your movements softened, replaced by a sense of completion. The music faded, leaving the two of you in silence. For half a second, Wally thought you’d cross over, leaving him onstage by himself. Instead, you turned to him, a small smile gracing your lips. You didn’t fade. You were still there - as solid as he was.

“Thank you,” you whispered, “You helped me finish.”

Wally stood stock still, surprise still echoed on his features. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. You looked around the empty auditorium, eyes tracking over the seats before landing on him again, “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited to finish that dance.”

“I’m glad I could help you,” Wally stutters out, a pink flush on his face, “I know I’m not the best dancer.” You laugh, a sweet, girlish thing. In the five minutes that had passed since the dance finished, Wally swore he could see the weight being lifted from your chest.

“You were perfect.” A flicker of sadness crossed your face, quickly replaced by gentle acceptance, “I… I don’t think I’m going anywhere, I’m still here, but…” you emphasized, palms open and gesturing to the stage around you, “but, I think it’s different now. I’m not stuck anymore.”

“That’s good!” Wally’s face lit up, empathetic and gleeful.

Your own smile brightened, affected by his sheer amount of happiness for you. You took his hand, solid and steady in yours.

“What do I do now?” you asked, eyebrows turned up and inward, “Do ghosts sleep? I feel like I need to sleep for a month.”

Wally giggled, leading you down the side stage steps and down the rows of seats, out of the auditorium, “We don’t need to sleep, but you can if you want to. You want me to show you my hiding space?” You nod, following him down the hallway.

When he passes the teacher’s lounge, and Charley and Rhonda see whose hand he has grasped in his, he winks at their shocked expressions before continuing down the stretch of linoleum and lockers.

—

Life - or, afterlife, you suppose - has been weird since Wally broke you out of your loop. The first couple of days were extremely rough, spent trying to understand just how long you’d been up on that stage. A new member of Mr. Martin’s life support group, everyone has been extremely welcoming to you.

Because ghosts don’t need to sleep, you haven't experienced any nightmares, something you’re exceedingly grateful for. Even so, you wake up from your naps feeling uneasy. Flashes of the end of your life playing in your mind, reminding you of the circumstances surrounding your death.

You’re not ready to talk to the group about it, but Wally hasn’t left your side since he’d woken you from your reverie. You tell him about it in bits and pieces - about your dance partner, a shy, kind boy, turned cold blooded killer. The specifics of it don’t matter anyways. He can’t hurt you anymore, and according to the computers in the library, he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore - following you into that good night soon after the police had taken him away.

You learn that your family moved out of Wisconsin a decade ago, in an attempt to escape the media following them around and shouting questions at them, about a court case that didn’t happen because there was nobody to put on trial. You hope wherever they were, that they found some semblance of peace.

Wally has been an incredible influence on you, and after settling into what the rest of your eternity might look like, you’ve had the same effect on him. He didn’t expect you to dance again any time soon, if ever, but he’d catch you by yourself sometimes - stretching your legs, sitting on the floor with your arms poised in that certain way.

Then, after a year spent together going to meetings and finding hidden corners in the school to make out like true teenagers, he’d found you in Split River High’s newly minted dance room - sock covered feet gliding over the lacquered floor, hope and joy baked into your movements instead of the grief and melancholy he’d become so accustomed to in your previous routine.

Out of the corner of your eye, when you’d seen him peeking through the window, you’d beckoned him in to join you. You started to truly teach him how to dance - guiding him through Pliés and Relevés and giggling at him when his lanky legs got in his own way.

“You’d be better at this if you were shorter, I think,” you’d said, a smile unable to hide taking over your face, “but you look pretty good.”

“Pretty good? These legs saved you, babe,” Wally scoffed, wiggling his toes to get you to laugh. He always succeeded in that.

“You’re right, you’re right,” you walked over to stand nearer to him, eyes angled upward to meet his honey brown ones, “the prince to my sleeping beauty, how could I forget?”

“Damn straight, I’m your prince,” Wally’s warm hands grasped your cheeks, his mouth lowering to meet yours for a few seconds before gently shoving you away, “now show me how to do that thing again? I think I’m finally getting it.”

—

Rhonda would never admit it, but she’d been especially proud of the effort Wally had put in to drag you from your loop. She knows everyone thinks she’s cold hearted, and she agrees to a certain extent, but she’d known the agony Wally felt when he thought he couldn’t help you. She’d never tell anyone this, either, but she’d snuck into the auditorium the night that he’d broken your loop - woken you up from your neverending nightmare. She’d stood alone, in the back and out of view, a smile etched on her features.

“You go, loverboy.”

a/n: tysm for this request! this was honestly the most fun i've ever had writing something. the inspiration was crazy and even though i know nothing about dancing i hope this is readable and easy to follow because i'm immensely proud of it. anon if you liked it pls lmk! I'm having such a fun time writing for wally so PLS send in any requests you have!!!

also, don't forget to like and reblog!

Training for Two

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

Summary: Simon's desperate to find Riley a pet sitter after she suffers an injury in the field and can no longer work alongside him. Despite being desperate, he's also picky. He wants someone professional, organized, and perfect for the position. You show up for an interview - and while you may not be his idea of the perfect candidate, you're the perfect fit for what Riley needs. Unfortunately for Simon, you flip his world upside-down and melt his icy walls of stubbornness and anger, making him crave you like the heat of the sun. The worst part? You don't even know it.

Warnings: cursing, anxiety, brief mentions of animal injury (not detailed), pining, angst, possessiveness, jealousy, slow burn (?), cheating, smut, p in v sex, unprotected sex