Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Fanfic Writers’ Craft is a podcast that discusses all things fanfiction with a focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. Every three weeks, Jo and Blayne (otherwise known in fandom as @pebblysand and @nargles15) sit down for a fun, multi-fandom, fanfic-related chat and delve into particular topics such as: the particularities of writing and reading fanfiction, monetisation, how to build a fanfiction plot, etc. Hope you enjoy!
You can find us and contact us at: https://thefanficwriterscraft.tumblr.com/
Hello, and welcome to the fanfic writer's craft, a podcast that discusses all things fan fiction with focus on the art and science of writing for the enjoyment of fan communities. My name is Jo, aka Prebley Sand, and I'll be your host for the next hour or so. My cohost, Blayne, writes online under the name Nargles fifteen. You'll meet her shortly. We hope you enjoy, but for now buckle up.
Jo:Get yourself a nice cup of tea, and welcome to the fanfic writer's craft. Hi, everyone. This is Jo, and welcome back to the podcast. Before we jump into today's episode, I just wanted to say a quick word of introduction. I wanted to acknowledge that I know our schedule has been a little bit all over the place these past few months.
Jo:As you may remember, I was very hopeful going into 2025 that my IRL life would get a little bit easier and allow me more time to edit the podcast. But alas, that has not yet materialised. As some of you might have seen online, I've been really busy with writing lately and for those who follow me, you will know that there's a new WIP on AO3 that is up there now and also with general life admin and IROL things. This episode is a little bit on the longer side though so I'm hoping this makes up for the wait. The good news is that things should settle soon.
Jo:If you saw my announcement on Tumblr, you'll know that I am leaving my day job in June, at the June. I am starting a new chapter in September and enrolling in a Masters in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. I am a little bit terrified, but also very excited about is to come and the goal of this is obviously to give me more time to focus on writing and do more original writing, but I think I will still keep writing fan fiction on the side. And hopefully that will mean more time as well for the podcast and for us to discuss all the writing things. So thank you so much for your patience while I've been making this transition between, you know, switching from hosting Whitmanny to hosting Whitblane and this big life change.
Jo:It's been a lot to manage, so I really appreciate your patience and your support. We've got some exciting episodes coming soon including an interview in our next episode so stay tuned and I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you. Hello and welcome to the fanfic writer's craft. This is Jo.
Jo:I hope you're all doing well. We are recording at the March. So hello, I was just in France for a few days and it was really sunny and now I'm back in Dublin and it's like shit and I'm like, I I thought I thought it was summer already but it's not. But anyway, how are you, Blaine? How are things?
Blayne:Oh, you know, it was it was Oscar's night last night which means that we don't have to talk about Emilia Perez ever again. And it did not win best picture, so I don't have to kill myself. So doing great. What? What was that more
Jo:thing about? What was that whole thing about? Or do I do I even wanna ask?
Blayne:You okay. I can give you the short and dirty, which is just movie about a trans Mexican woman is offensive to both trans people and Mexican. And somehow gets nominated for 13 Oscars. For anyone listening, if you've seen the memes going around online, again, I'm terminally online, about the how very nice to meet you. I'd like to know about sex change, operation.
Blayne:That song, that's from Emilia Perez that got nominated for 13 Oscars. So impostor syndrome, don't worry about her. You can
Jo:do anything. I think I've missed the whole thing, but also I'm like so out of tune with what films are coming out and stuff. Like, I I never go to the cinema. So I'm just like, I have no idea what's out there. So I don't get that those TikToks at all.
Blayne:Oh, I have a monthly movie theater pass. And so I see a lot of movies. See?
Jo:Like, okay. This is this is maybe going to be a bit niche and like, I'm sorry if there's any Irish people who listen to this and take offense to what I'm gonna say. Cinema etiquette in Ireland is abysmal. Like, oh Every time I go in, I'm like, people are fucking shoving like popcorn down their throats noisily. People getting up and down from the seats all the time.
Jo:People fucking talking in the middle of the film like I don't know. It is like I don't know if it's a Dublin thing if it's an Ireland thing I have been to like every cinema that exists in Dublin that is like within the walkable distance from me and all of them have just been absolutely awful. Like, I went to see small things like these with Cillian Murphy like, think that was what, in December or something. And it's a pretty tragic film, like it's about, you know, it's about Magdalene Laundries which is, you know, massive state scandal and it's very dark and it's about like abuses in the Catholic church and stuff. People were like chatting throughout the thing I was like every time I go to the semi here, I'm like so annoyed and I don't know if it's because I tend to go in the evenings because I prefer that that like that's a very specific audience.
Jo:I don't know what the issue is but it drives me absolutely insane and I'm like, I'd rather wait six months and watch this in the comfort of my own home rather than go to cinema at this point.
Blayne:I don't think that's just a double ding. I think you see that a lot, like, in America too. Like, I just one, I think everyone's etiquette post pandemic is, like, in the fucking toilet. Like, everyone's horrible anymore. Everyone's a Nazi now.
Blayne:Everything's horrible. But I the reason why I have this monthly pass is there's, like, a a smaller movie chain in The States, the Alamo Drafthouse. If you're in The US and you know them, I love them. They switched they do, like you can, like, order food, like, to your seat. The chicken tenders spank every fucking time.
Blayne:But they have a, like like, the strictest noise policy, like, in the game. Like, they will kick you out, like Right. After your first warning. And so, generally, the the showings tend to be pretty quiet because people don't wanna get thrown out. But, like, they are harpies about it, which, honest to God, like, I'm fine with because if that's what people need in order to, like, behave like they're in civilized society, then that's fine with me because, yeah, I don't wanna hear you I'm not paying to come listen to your thoughts on the movie or your thoughts about your job with your friends as you're sitting next to them.
Blayne:Go to a bar. Right. Like, go to
Jo:a bar. Like, oh my god. Yeah. So anyway anyway
Blayne:I thought that movie.
Jo:I love that. Like, so to break the news, we're gonna do an episode that's gonna be a little bit more casual and which is gonna ramble about stuff so I think this is a great introduction to this episode.
Blayne:Good for introing, I'm rambling, I'm rambling. Oh my god.
Jo:So yeah, as I said we're gonna be doing a bit more of a casual episode today and we're gonna talk about like a bunch of topics that just wouldn't necessarily fit within a whole episode and so we're gonna do a bunch of fan fiction tangents and fan fiction catch up and we're also going to be answering a couple of questions that we received on Tumblr recently which I think are very interesting and which are gonna get us started.
Blayne:We love questions, continue to send your questions.
Jo:Please, please send us questions so we can keep doing these Rumbly episodes. So anyway, the first question that we got on Tumblr and I'm not gonna read the whole thing but if you want to check it out I will include the post where I responded in the show notes. But basically we got an anonymous question on Tumblr asking us about crossover fix and how to write that. They asked if we had like any advice on how to do that or you know any kind of pointers that we could give. So I don't know if you have any takes Blaine.
Blayne:I saw this and went oh wow what a person I am to answer this because whenever I search fix I scroll down to the filters and I hit exclude crossovers. I think crossovers to me are really interesting. And looking at the, like, specifics, they mention that they're writing a fanfic about a crossover of two movies. One movie, I don't know, but the other being Groundhog Day. And I think if you think about how many pieces of just general media have done kind of their own play on Groundhog Day and, like, don't really necessarily, like, cite it as Yeah.
Blayne:Like, a crossover, The I think that that's fascinating and where does it kinda get into this is the ubiquitous story plot point that we all know from a specific work, but it's not necessarily treated like a full crossover. I think me, it's more of a, like, I'm just not in a lot of fandoms, and so I think it would be difficult to read. Like, when I read fan fiction, the thing I like to do is, like, it's it's a it's an exercise in being able to, like, turn my brain off to, like, getting to know new characters. Like, I like the fact that I can just jump immediately in if I've got, like, a little bit of downtime or if I'm, like, looking to, like, read and relax rather than, like, read as an intellectual exercise. And so I like being able to be like, alright.
Blayne:Well, what is kind of you know, each each author has their own flavor of characters or maybe it's in, like, a whole different AU, but, like, you know, Harry is Harry is Harry kind of a thing. People have different ways of writing him, but, like, I still, like, can immediately picture him and kinda general motivations. I mean, like, I'm like, I kinda know him enough to be able to just sort of jump into this versus, like, you know, reading anything where I'd be like, oh, I don't I don't know what this is being crossed over with. So now I gotta learn things. So maybe I'm just lazy.
Blayne:The crossover fix for me are, like, reading a pairing that I'm not into. Like, I'm not against it, but I'm like, oh, you would have to convince me. And if you can convince me through, like, you know, good writing or an interesting premise or something or, like, I like your other works. Like, I would go check it out, but it's not as evidenced by clicking exclude crossovers. It's not necessarily something that I'm like particularly seeking out.
Jo:Yeah. I'm wondering so from what you've just said two things. I think the first thing is if you were to see like to stumble upon a fic where it was like two fandoms that you knew of so like I don't know a film that you've seen and Harry Potter for instance would you still not want to read that or would you be okay reading that because you already know both universes?
Blayne:I think I'd be I'd be more okay with reading it because I knew both, but I do think there is a bit of an element of, like, why are we mashing these together? Like, I would need kind of proof of of concept, like, oh, this is a really intriguing like, from the summary, this is a really intriguing story or from the tags. Like, oh, there's some tags in here I really enjoy kind of a vibe. Mhmm. But, like, I think that's sort of the same criteria I use when picking thick in general.
Blayne:So, like, yeah, I'd be maybe maybe I stop hitting exclude crossover. Maybe this is a growing point point for me. But, yeah, I think I think I mean, I you're you were were gonna mention it, but you had recommended the Harry Potter Gossip Girl crossover. And big fan of Harry Potter, big fan of Gossip girl. And it's it is on my my TBR.
Blayne:But there is kind of an element of me where I'm like, oh, like, Harry and Blair Waldorf are talking. This is kind of often. Like, like, not in a bad way. It's just I think it's because I associate them as such vastly different universes. Like, okay.
Blayne:So in America, we have the Disney Channel, which I'm sure other people get other places. But, like, oh, she was big in her heyday when I was growing up. And it was a little after my time. I was a little old for it, but I have younger siblings. So, like, you know, you watch what they watch.
Blayne:And there was a, like, three way crossover episode that was, like, this big event that was a cross between, like, the Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Hannah Montana. I wanna say, like, That's So Raven or something. It was something else, but it was, like, the Suite Life on Deck of Raven or something. It was, like, the name of this episode. And I just remember, like, seeing the ads for it and being like, why are we putting these all together?
Blayne:Like, do you know why? I it's something there's something, but I just maybe this is something I discussed in therapy. Why would I say what is my, like, trickling again? Cross overs like what but again I think to the point of like, you know, I read Manacold and that's basically a Handmaid's Tale Harry Potter crossover.
Jo:That's exactly what I was gonna say is like because she did not and so caveat that I haven't read Manicold but I have heard about and like my understanding is that it is not tagged as a crossover but it is very clearly inspired by the handmaid still and so I'm kind of like at what point do we tag a crossover like at one point is it a crossover and at one point is it like just oh I got inspired by this other piece of media because like in fairness castles and especially the first not the whole of castles but like the first few chapters is very heavily inspired by Peaky Blinders. But you know, I didn't tag that as a crossover because it's not really a crossover, like none of the characters from Peaky Blinders ever make an appearance But yeah.
Blayne:That's what I think the key is. Yeah. Is it it's manacled. It's not like, oh, Hermione is talking with Offred. Mhmm.
Blayne:It's like, you know, we have the red cloaks. We have this idea of, you know, forced, you know, breeding program, basically. In the same way of, like, when people, like, quote, unquote, crossover with Groundhog's Day, you'll get someone is stuck in a time loop, and this is kind of a shorthand, but they're not, like, talking with any of the characters. I think that's where it starts to throw me is why are these characters now interacting in the same universe? Like, if it was like, you know, we're gonna throw the characters from Harry Potter into, like, the Hunger Games, I'd be like, how is this gonna work?
Blayne:Like, if like, if it's like we're putting characters from one thing into a concept from something else could be kind of interesting, where I think I start to get a little because I think you lose me on cons it's it's gotta be really well executed to get me to these two disparate worlds and these two completely different sets of characters are like colliding in the same universe.
Jo:Yeah. I agree. And I think like so I am a little bit more familiar with crossovers. I haven't written a ton. I only wrote so for anyone who's been on Tumblr for like the last decade in I think 2014, '20 '15 there was like a massive trend on Tumblr that was three sentence stories where like they weren't really travels but they're like stories within like in three sentences and I wrote a bunch of them at the time and I think I wrote a couple that were crossovers.
Jo:So they were crossovers between The Good Wife and Silk and a lot of people might be familiar with The Good Wife, a lot less people might be familiar with Silk but basically Silk is a legal show from The UK and that was a very easy concept to tie together because the characters are around the same age, they have the same profession, the only kind of thing that I had to figure out how to work it was how to get the Americans over to London but that was kind of easy, do you know what I mean? Like it's not, it's not, it was like oh they have a case in London or something, you know?
Blayne:Well for now air travel exists but we'll see, we'll True,
Jo:true. So that was kind of easy and then like building the story off of that was easy as well because it was a very short story, it was three sentences so I didn't have to have a whole lot of world building. But I do think what the difficulty is with crossovers at Misa Ao is exactly what you're saying which is finding your audience as well because a lot of the time your two audiences, both shows or both films or both books, it's unlikely that they will overlap especially if one of your media, one of your source materials is very niche. So you know you might have I mean the number of people who watched The Good Wife enough to be in fandom was already low but then you add silk to that and that's a very small crossover, you know, crossover of people who've watched both. You know what I mean?
Jo:Yeah. So I think that's the thing because I think most of the time with crossovers you do have to target an audience that has seen both. I think it's very unlikely, to be honest, that people will jump into a fic not knowing the other Souls material but still wanting to read. The only time that's ever happened to me is that Gossip Girl HB crossover which I will link in the show notes and that one I really love but that's because and I read even though I hadn't seen Gossip Girl but that was because I really love the author, like I already have read everything that this author has written in my chosen fandom and now I was like oh I wonder, you know, they've written this other thing but I really want to read it even though I haven't watched the source material and so I'll read it anyway. So I think that that is something that people might do but you have to already have built up an audience enough that they will follow you into this this crossover even though they haven't watched or seen or read the other source material which, you know, has to be the testament to a very good writer.
Jo:I mean Ace of Diamonds is one of my favorite writers out there and so that's why I read their crossover, I wouldn't have done it quote unquote for anyone else, you know.
Blayne:You just gotta watch Gossip Girl. I'm so much, I'm obsessed.
Jo:But yeah, I think it gets a little bit easier if like, you're writing something where one of the things is niche and one of the source materials is very well known. I'm thinking for instance there's a crossover that I really like that is called Intangible which is written by O'Danath who is another one of my favorite writers and but it's a crossover between Spooks and Harry Potter so the Spooks audience is quite small but then you can kind of assume that everyone is familiar with Harry Potter like most people are so you're not limiting you're just going to limit yourself to like the audience that would have read your spooks fic anyway, you know? You're not really limiting yourself but like having two things that are not that people aren't really familiar with. But yeah, and I think the I think what's really interesting with that one is kind of what you've mentioned which is that, so Spooks, for anyone who hasn't watched it, is a British TV series that was basically Britain's answer to 20 So for anyone who's familiar with 24, the February show with post nineeleven terrorism show. Oh yeah.
Jo:Get them terrorists. Spooks was kind of like the yeah, the British answer to that and it's a very different show but it has the same kind of big post nineeleven themes and so you're kind of like she's kind of crossing that with HP and you're kind of like that's a bit weird because these people are not wizards but I think the author has done it very intelligently that they picked one of the characters in Spooks to be a witch but they picked Roz who is very mysterious in the original, don't really know what's going on with her, like she keeps a lot of things to herself and so it kind of works that she would be a witch because you're kind of like, oh, that's why she's being secretive. You know what I mean? Which I think
Blayne:Yeah, and it works in universe with the rules of Harry Potter.
Jo:Exactly. And so I think that was very clever to hit that character in order to do like to be the links between the two worlds because then you're kind of like oh yeah I can see Roz being a witch because in the show she's so, you know, kind of secretive and you don't really know what's going on with her and she's very cold and you're kind of like okay then you know that makes sense and also having her be in Slytherin was a very kind of interesting thing to do. So I just I think that's a very interesting way to look at it and maybe a way to look at it if you're trying to tie universes that are very different. Try and pick a character for whom it works, know, because that kind of ties in with their personality. And also I thought the so that Thic paired Roz with Lupin and I thought that was also very clever because spoiler alert, the both of them die.
Jo:And so I thought it was very interesting to kind of have that tragic aspect of inherent to both characters into a pairing, like that was kind of a good link between them because you had that, like, element of tragedy, which I thought was very interesting.
Blayne:Yeah. I think if you you, like, intelligently and, like, kind of in an interesting way blend the characters. But I think then it it gets to this, like, oh, if you can sell me on it, like, I'm there. I'm, like, hearing you describe that. I'm like, oh, you know, not seeing spooks, but have read a, you know, Harry Potter deals with, you know, post nine eleven terrorism story castles.
Blayne:So clearly, I'm interested. But, like, yeah, I mean, I do think that there is that kind of it's almost like, okay, you've got, like, a favorite author or, like, you're listening to music in, like, a favorite band, and they're doing, like, an album that's a little bit more experimental, and it's outside of a genre that you tend to listen to, but you're like, oh my god. I absolutely love them. I'm just gonna listen to it anyway. Whereas you might have some, you know, readers or listeners who are like, oh, not for me.
Blayne:I'm really just here for this particular sound. Like, I think it it's a if you've got kind of that audience buy in and they trust you, like, there's a chance to have more readership. But, like, I do think, like, were saying that it's it's there's a little bit more of a barrier to entry. Yeah. And, like, I say that not to say don't write crossover, but I think in a like, don't don't, like, be hard on yourself if you don't even if you've already been writing fic and you see, like, more uptick with your other fics and maybe not necessarily with the crossover one.
Blayne:Like, there are godless heathens like me who hit exclude crossover when they when they search for things. So, like, it you're just you're you're narrowing your not to sound like a total capitalist. You're narrowing your market, and you're like, it it's probably not gonna be, like, the best read thing. But, like, if you wanna write it, write it. Like, you'll you'll you'll find your audience.
Jo:Oh yeah, a % and like I think you know it's it's important as well like of course we've had this whole conversation on the podcast before of like do you write for yourself or do you write for an audience? Yeah. And obviously I think we write for both, think all of us write for both but I think there's times where you want to, you know, write something that's maybe a little bit more niche and that's maybe a little bit more for you. Like right now I'm writing a fic about an OC that I created, You know what I mean? It's
Blayne:not going I'm not going to
Jo:the most successful fic I've ever written because obviously you kind of have to have well you do have to have Reg, the Fulton Fulton manufacturing first and you have to be interested in this OC which you might not be even if you've read the Fulton Fulton manufacturing. So I am very much narrowing my audience but it is a story that I really want to tell, it's a character that I really love and so I'm doing it anyway. So I think you know just weigh your risk and what you're willing to do but if you really feel like you want to write this by all means do.
Blayne:Go for it kids. Yes.
Jo:So the next one that we got, and I'm not going to attempt to read this person's suit because I am not going to be able to pronounce it because it's a lot of words smushed together. Oh, there you go. So basically the question was any advice on making fan made rewrites or rewrite AU fix? And I chase this person for more information and they basically meant like, you know, rewriting an AU of canon. So like, what if Sirius didn't die or what if Ginny was in Slytherin kind of thing that you would see in Harry Potter.
Jo:So what are your thoughts on that?
Blayne:Well, if you're looking for what if Ginny was in Slytherin, please go read Ennard's incredible Yeah. The Changeling and then the follow-up trilogy. I think that that is, like, this fan you know, canon rewrite done to, like, the highest degree. But I think the reason why it works is there you can tell that there's, like, actual thinking behind that what if. It's because, like, I do think you see in and it tends to be a bit more, like, in, like, fluff spaces, which is not necessarily what I read nor write.
Blayne:But sometimes we have bad days. And we need some high fun things where it's like, if Sirius didn't die? And it's not done for the the the point of, okay. How would that affect Harry? How would that affect the war?
Blayne:What is what is this really gonna do for the character arcs, for the plot? It's more of a, I was sad this character died, and I don't want him to, which would be fucking per valid. Yeah. But I think if you're looking at it from craft exercise, why what if Ginny was in Slytherin? It's it's such a high concept, which I think canon rewrites tend to be, is you really need that big kind of flashy, like, one sentence.
Blayne:This is what this story is. But she takes it so much further than just being, like, an interesting thought exercise because by having Harry and Ginny still, like, be a couple and and move, you know, towards each other and be in this kind of complex, like, will they, won't they? Whereas, like, in the in the, you know, canon six book era where it's like, okay, they're together at this point in Mhmm. In canon, but they're not in in this work. Is that it really by having Ginny be in Slytherin and Harry still romantically interested in her, it blasts apart Harry's incredibly black and white thinking around morale.
Blayne:Yeah. And it and she goes so many interesting places with that. Oh. Because I think you can tend to see a bit of a, like, what if Harry didn't shake Malfoy's hand? And I'm like, one, he never would have.
Blayne:You need to, like, flash that way back to madame Malkin's and have that go better in order to really land what if Harry actually shook Malfoy's hand. But I think it's it's if you're doing it beyond the, like, yeah, I'm just sad that, like, Fred died, and so Fred is Fred is now alive, which, again, very valid. Like, I would I would say, what are the ramifications for this change? Because, like, there is a reason that, you know, the original writer or author chose what they did, especially if it's a big, you know, plot point. So it would have large scale ramifications throughout the rest of the work.
Blayne:I mean, like, let's think about, like, what if Dumbledore hadn't died at the end of the second book. Like, those implications are huge. Yeah. And so, like, what that would have done and you could you could blast something like that wide open. So I think Ruby, again, thinking through, like, what it would do for character arcs and what it would do for plot.
Jo:Yeah. I tend to agree. I so it's funny you mentioned you kind of filter out crossovers because that's the kind because this the au rewrites are the ones that I filter out I'm very sorry to say that but the reason why I filter them out is I find it's a very, very difficult exercise that a lot of people fail at. And to me, the counter example to that is obviously the Changling but it took me ages of seeing the changeling be recommended and recommended and recommended again for me to actually read it and the reason for that was that I
Blayne:did the same, yeah.
Jo:Because I am very very cautious about these fics and I think the main flaw that I see in them is that people tend to do what I call rewriting canon which is that they one of the core principles of fan fiction and of writing fan fiction which I need everybody to like listen to and integrate in their brain is that assume your reader has read the book
Blayne:and I know and I know and I
Jo:know this is and I know this is like sound this sounds obvious but the amount of people who will write pages and pages and pages and pages to remind you what happened in the book is insane. And I think the problem with these fics is that they tend to fall into this trap so quickly of like rewriting stuff just for the sake of it, rewriting stuff that's already happened in the book without any really merit or sizable difference to their plot point just because they have to go through the motions of like rewriting this fic with this like change element of like this what if element but they're not actually following through the consequences of their actions and are just basically rewriting canon in this slightly different way. And I just, I think that's what really pulls me out of these because if you're doing this, your reader will be bored. Reader has read the book, your reader does not need to be retold the book in a different way most of the time. You only can really do this if you're bringing an absolutely, essentially different element to it the way that, you know, Anarb does in The Changeling.
Jo:But I think these are very few and far between and every time I go into these I'm like, okay, you're just rewriting the book now, like I don't need to reread all this, I have read the book.
Blayne:I think you see a lot of it, which is why it took me so long to read the changeling. I actually, I read the Armistice series and then went back and read the changeling. Which I find is why.
Jo:Because I tried to do that and I could not understand what was going on and I was like, okay, I really need to read the changeling.
Blayne:I was just like, I'm gonna be confused on these things. Because I like because I like your estimates so much, but I was just like, well, we're just gonna be confused. It just kept going. So, again, if I really like what you're doing, I'm down for the ride regardless of the circumstances. But I think you see a lot of, like, I'm just gonna rewrite the book with, like, what if Harry was in Slytherin and it's like his best friend is Draco instead of Ron.
Blayne:Yeah. Lindsey instead of Hermione. And then Ron and Hermione become the new Drake, and it's just the same book. Whereas I'm like, if you were to do a what if Harry wasn't Slytherin, what does that do for Harry's, like, whole kind of, you know, sell like, passively suicidal self sacrificing streak. Like, what is what is that?
Blayne:Would he would a slither and Harry go and, you know, down and, like, put himself in danger to go after Quarrel? I don't know if he would. I Yeah. Think those are interesting thought exercises. So you if you wanna take it to this what if, like, you really have to break down, like, what that actually means when the thing changes.
Blayne:I think that's in the in the you know, we're all working on our craft as writers. Like, if you are choosing a large plot point and you're diverging from it, there generally is a reason why and you can debate the merits of it, but there generally is a reason why the original author made the choice that they did. And, usually, it is the strongest one. So you are kind of fighting an uphill battle
Jo:Yeah.
Blayne:To get over the hump of why I'm choosing Door B instead of Door A when door a felt like the stronger choice. And But so again, if you can convince me, I'm so in. And what a what a really fascinating exercise. But I think it requires a lot more care and thought than a lot of people come to it with.
Jo:Yeah. And I will caveat this by saying that there is a very big niche for this. A lot of people just like rereading the same thing over
Blayne:and over. My God. 100%.
Jo:So, and they like these like what if scenarios and what if explorations even if you're just rewriting the book, the book like some people will just eat that shit off. And in that case, like if that's what you're appealing to, that's the instinct that you're appealing to and you already have an audience doing this, then great. I'm just, I guess-
Blayne:More fucking power to you.
Jo:Yeah, I guess I'm just not your reader, which is fine. Like again, you know, there's stuff for everyone and, but I just, I think I'm not really the reader, like the target reader for this.
Blayne:Do you
Jo:know what I mean?
Blayne:Oh yeah. I think it's a like, if that's what you wanna do and you set out to do it, more hard to you. Like, trust to God. Like, I there are certain things where I'm like, I just wanna read the same scene 8,200 times. Like, I just wanna watch the Bloribos fall in love in 6,000 different ways and then kiss and then dirtily fuck.
Blayne:Like, that's that's what I hear. But, like, I if you are wanting to do something I don't wanna say beyond that because that implies that that that want is inferior, which it's not. It's just a very different want. But if you're wanting to do something outside of that kind of expectation or sort of unspoken expectation around canon rewrites, I really, really think long and hard about what the implications and the ripple effect of changing something within canon really would be and how that would like explode outwards.
Jo:Yeah. Yeah. No. I agree. So this is not actually a question that was sent to us.
Jo:It is a video so it's a video that I saw on TikTok and there's been a lot of discussion about about like basically AI and writing and fan fiction and publishing in general but also fan fic in particular. Lots of discussions, lots of people with very strong opinions and so I thought we could just, I don't know, kind of chuff about it. So what's your what are your thoughts? Because I know I already know from the notes we're gonna disagree on this.
Blayne:So We are. So what's the Heidi Klum where they're debating the winner of project runway? And she's like, somebody get me my boxing drums. I mean, I say this knowing the robots are always listening. If AI has no haters, I am dead.
Blayne:I fucking hate AI. And I I come at this from a perspective of I have used it. I used it in order to, if you are my employer, don't listen to this. I used it to write cover letters for mind you, I, like, then, you know, edited those cover letters, but I used it to do resume work Yeah. And cover letter work because of the bullshit HR software that everyone's resumes and cover letters get fed through anymore.
Blayne:I'm like, okay. The robots are gonna talk to the robot. Why can the robots not do the grunt work? Do the robots have to do art? Like, I don't wanna I don't wanna read art written by a robot.
Blayne:And I know we're gonna get more into, like, nuance around specific utilizations of AI throughout the writing process. But, like, I would be so remiss if I didn't just stay stay, like, a blanket. Like, if you are using ChatGPT to write for, like, creative fulfillment in, like, a am gonna, like, plug in, you know, Harry goes to the Weasleys. Write me a scene, and, like, you just are copying and pasting that scene. Like, from the depths of my heart, like, please get fucked.
Blayne:Like, I like, I just I I I think there's so many ethical issues around AI. There's so many environmental issues around AI. There like, it's it's just such a maelstrom that if you are taking, like, the beauty and creative joy out of, like, the craft of writing because I think and and I and I I wrote this in the notes. Maybe I just know really shitty people. But, like, I do I do feel like there is this sense, and I think it goes hand in hand with this rise of anti intellectualism and with this rise of devaluing the humanities and devaluing the arts and devaluing the written word and literature is this sense of, like, the creative like, I just need an idea.
Blayne:Like, I just need a high concept, capital h, capital c, idea, and then, oh, the chore is the writing. Like, if you don't like the work, do not do this work. And, like, I I had a professor put it best where he was like, you know, as writers, we we always wanna like, we wanna get published. Like, we were talking about this at the beginning of the episode. Like Mhmm.
Blayne:No one is just writing. Like, I mean, there are people out there, and God bless them because they're probably much better people than I am. But, like, there are people like, most of the time when people are writing, they're writing because they wanna be read. Like, we're not writing in vacuums. Whatever that readership looks like, whether it's, you know, fan fiction, they're publishing on a blog, they're writing for for just friends and family, or if they're pursuing, you know, typical mainstream publication and it's all varying avenues, we write because we wanna be read.
Blayne:And it's it's I just like if if you don't like the craft of sitting down day after day and the brunt work of it and you're just doing it to be able to say, like, I got this book published because, like, I don't know. You have some gaping vacuous need in yourself to be recognized, which, like, okay, per. We all fucking do. We're artists. But, like, it's it if you don't like the work, don't be a writer.
Blayne:Like, if you are using chat GPT to, like, to the point to, like and the the TikTok talks about it of, like, you know, come up with my plot for me. Why are you doing this? Like, go to writer's group. Get write the shittiest fucking plot in the world. Write the most stereotypical, cliche ridden, horrible fucking plot in the world, and then edit it.
Blayne:Or what? Get that out of your system and write the second worst cliche ridden, horrible fucking fucking plot in the world. If you do it enough, you're gonna get to something interesting. And, like, that is what craft is. Like, I think of the documentary.
Blayne:It was huge back in, like, what, 2014, '20 '15. I was on Netflix, Zero Dreams of Sushi, where the, like, you know, meticulous sushi chef is talking about his craft and, like, what he he was like, my he's like, he's really funny because his son works for him. He's like, my son is nowhere near as good as me. What's gonna happen when I die? Like like, this man has no chill.
Blayne:But to be one of his sushi chefs, like, you have to be one of the best in the world. Like, the paces he puts you through are fucking insane. Even being that good, the first six months, the only thing you're fucking making is the egg omelet sushi, and he will make you redo it over and over and over again until you get it right. And now do you mean to kill yourself to that extent? No.
Blayne:But that's what I mean when, like, to pursue an art is to pursue a craft, and it's and it's it's tedious, and it's boring, and it's it's messy, and it's maddening, but, like, you have to love it. So using AI to take that away, like, oh, just do something else. And
Jo:that is my AI rant. I understand what you're saying. I think the thing is I don't think that's like the majority of people using AI in writing. I don't think people just wake up one day and are like oh I'm gonna ask AI to write me fan fiction or I'm gonna ask AI to like write me write a book for me without any concept of something that they want to create you know like it's true that some people do wake up one day and are like I'm gonna write a book but a lot of the times they want to do they want to write a book because they already have an idea like something came to them there's like a there's something that they want to do with this and I think it's the same thing with fan fiction where like people might resort to using AI but it's you know they don't wake up one day and go like on chat gbt and are like write me a fanfic of like Harry and Ginny kissing because there's to be fair, there's like thousands and thousands and thousands of fanfic already published to that effect.
Jo:So so like you don't need another one written by Chai GPT, you just you can just breed the walls that are already out there. So I think I don't I don't think people do that. Like I think that's a fantasy that a lot of people have of like oh AI like people just go on on tragedy PG and use AI to like fork out content like I'm not saying no one does it like of course I'm sure it's happened but I kind of feel like that would be like a 12 year old who wants to be accepted in fandom and can't right and so they are like asking strategy BT in the You know, it's not the majority of people. So I know I'm like in the hyper minority in the creative industry in my opinions about AI but I think look the two things I want to get like I kind of want to acknowledge from the get go is that the first thing is yes AI was made operational is reminding a lot of data and a lot of fun including fan fiction but not just fan fiction without people's knowledge or consent and yes that is morally wrong.
Jo:It's not legally wrong because that is public content that you put online and as such, you know, it can be used, but it is morally wrong. Having said that, there are a lot of things in the world that are morally wrong.
Blayne:We And most of them are happening seven miles north of my house.
Jo:For anyone who's not aware, Gnarls lives in DC.
Blayne:Yes. Seven miles north of my house is the White House.
Jo:So yeah, I think like, I think that's kind of, that's the first thing that I do want to acknowledge. The second thing is like, I understand that people are concerned about AI beyond, you know, beyond just oh it's wrong that they're mining content or whatever. People are scared for their livelihoods, like I understand that and that is mostly at the moment people in the creative industry but I think for a lot of other professions AI poses a real threat. I'm not gonna lie, my profession is at risk. Lawyers, I think we're one of the first to go with AI because AI is going to be able to do research better than us, it's going to write better briefs than us.
Jo:It doesn't at the moment, like at the moment it's quite, you know, it kind of hallucinates precedent and stuff so you can't really use but it will in the future, like it will learn to check itself and it will become better and unless you're a lawyer that does advocacy which you know can't really be replaced because you're in a courtroom but like for all of us who are transactional lawyers and writing you know contracts or briefs or memos or things like that, we're on the way out. So I definitely understand that people are concerned and I understand why people are concerned. Having said that, yeah, I use AI all of the time. I use ChatuchPTC multiple times a day now and I've said it openly on Tundra before and on the podcast so I'm not gonna, you know, right now you kind of feel like you want to hide yourself because everyone's like, everyone's so out spoken about like oh AI is the worst thing that's ever happened to us I don't think it's the worst thing that's ever happened to us I think it can be used it's a tool and it's a tool that can be used as a tool and I do think it is important to consider the fact that yes you still need to learn how to write, you still need to learn how to come up with your own plots, no one's going to do that for you and you know you're still going to have to learn the craft and you're still going to have to learn the technique.
Jo:If you do that by like refining a first draft that ChadGBT gave you to the point that it's completely unrecognisable at the end then why not? I don't have an objection on that like if you go into ChadGBT and are like write me a fic about Harry and Jimmy kissing and then you take that idea and make it your own and rewrite it to the point that I can hardly recognise it from the first source material, I don't necessarily think that is not writing, I think you are writing if you're doing one. Like you're inspiring yourself from something but you're creating your own. I personally don't use chat gbt for that. I use it a lot of the times for research so if I'm looking for something that is highly specific so you know I was researching earlier yesterday kind of what it would have been especially like the kind of M and A legal landscape in Ireland in the early 2000s, which I swear is relevant to my fanfiction.
Jo:But I was I needed I needed that and I was kind of like I you know, I tried googling it couldn't find anything because it's in the early 2000s so you know a lot of sources will not be you know if you just do Google search like it's very hard to find stuff like that. I started looking for podcasts on that on on that topic and couldn't find anything and so I asked ChildGBT and it took minutes to come up with a full report that then I could go against and like go fact check because I think that's one of the best like that's one of the very important things about Charge GPT right now and other AI models is that you need to fact check what it says. So if it feeds you, if it feeds you something, but at least you have like a first draft of something that you can find online and fact check and read. I also use it to like come up with stuff that I don't care about so like a lot of times like when I was writing Harry Potter fan fiction it was kind of like oh what is a good name for like a spell that I can't be arsed to think of?
Jo:Or you know what is a good name for like this Ministry of Magic department or something because those to me are not fun things like a lot of people have fun creating names and creating places and creating like lore around it. I get very bored I'm not interested in the magic so that is going to be the kind of thing that I expedite with AI and the another thing that I have used it for was when I was putting together the final version of Castles, the one that you have online now and that was going to be like, you know, the kind of version for history kind of thing. I went through all of the chapters and I wanted to include specific trigger warnings for each chapter and I like used to copy and paste the content of the chapter and for CHADGPT to tell me what trigger warnings I could include because for instance I got a comment once in one of the chapters where Jin gets pregnant and one person messaged me, I think it was a private message, kindly and was like look I'm trying to conceive, this is a bit triggering for me, I wish you'd trigger on this and like to me it just didn't occur to me like I'm gonna be honest It like in and I would have done it like 100% if you know it had occurred to me but it's not a triggering thing for me.
Jo:And so for the obvious ones like sexual assault and stuff you kind of can think of themselves but like for me pregnancy was not going to be triggering because I'm not in that situation but then when someone so I find I found chat GBT really handy to kind of point to me oh this could be a trigger for someone and then I used again I used my own brain to say yes I'm including this warning, no I'm not including this warning, this is stupid. But I did find it super helpful and the last thing I have used ChatGPT for was for editing and for reducing word count. I have a tremendously hard time reducing word count as anyone can see from a face and so I use ChatGPT to give me ideas on what I can cut. Now, like again, I use my brain and I use the like fifteen to twenty years of experience that I have writing in order to inform what ChajiPT tells me. Like ChadGPT can tell me oh you should delete this word and this word and this word but if I read it and my writing gut says no you should keep that then I keep it it's just for it to kind of suggest things to me.
Jo:And and the one thing I will say is like I get a little bit annoyed at the argument of like, oh well if you don't if you use Charjibouti for writing then you don't like the work because I do like writing and I do like the work. I mean, I have written like, what what is it, like 600,000 words into fan fiction. I like, obviously, Chad GPG didn't write castles. It couldn't have written castles. That's ridiculous.
Jo:But and I have not to brag or anything but I think I have one of the strongest work ethics of anyone. Oh yeah, no you You know of anyone I know who writes fan fiction like, you know, I have worked so hard to finish stuff sometimes to the risk of like my mental health and physical health sometimes. So it's like I don't accept this idea that like people who use chat GPT to help them write aren't you know, interested in the work or aren't working hard. That's not true. It's just that I use ChatGPT for things that I don't want to waste my time on.
Jo:In order for me to have more time to do the stuff that I actually enjoy.
Blayne:I have so many thoughts. First off, kids, please, even if you're just, like, blanket googling, which I know, you know, there's now, like, an AI overview that pops up at the top of Google. Even if you're not, like, looking at that and you're, like, looking through, like, just kind of Google Google, please always double check what you're looking at.
Jo:Oh, yeah.
Blayne:You're so, like, it's actually a source. But one of my favorite examples of this is the apparently really shitty author of the boy in the striped pajamas. It wasn't that book. It was another book he published after was trying to write, like, a a young female character, you know, in ye olden times. I can't remember when.
Blayne:Like, making her own red dye, and he, like, googled, like, how to create red dye. And the first thing that popped up was something from the breath of the wild video games. So it published the actual, like, in you can buy in the store. I think they have since changed it, but you can buy in the store reference, like, Legend of Zelda fake like, fake bugs and stuff. So always check your sources.
Blayne:I think I am I am so glad you took us through that, Joe, because I honestly, what I think you do and, you know, again, let's let's set aside the, like, environmental impact of chat GBG and using it. I'm an American with a washer and dryer. None of us are fucking perfect. You know what I mean? I really do think that we like, if AI is, like, here to stay, which I'm so ready for the bubble to burrow.
Blayne:But, like, if it is here to stay, then, like, I really want and I think the environment needs us to, like, find ways of making this more sustainable. Yeah. But, like, what you describe using it as art isn't to do the writing work. Like, I wouldn't consider that the writing work. Like, you're outsourcing, especially for fan fiction, and this is where I'm gonna caveat my opinions on this with fan fiction is a bit different than with, like, someone pursuing like, working on something for the pursuit of, like, published original fiction, like, going the traditional publishing route, like, seeking money from this.
Blayne:Yeah. For fan fiction, like, so Steven Sondheim, whenever he would be doing a musical that was set in, like, a time period he didn't know. He has a whole show, for example, called Pacific Overtures, which is set during, like, the westernization of Japan. Fucking phenomenal. Can't recommend it enough.
Blayne:It's never performed. And he had, you know, basically, like, a research team because he fucking hated doing research so much, do hours and hours and hours and hours of research for him and put together, like, an overview one page summary. And, like, you are not Steven Sondheim. None of us are. It's quite depressing.
Blayne:And so having having something that that levels that playing field, especially in, like, something you're doing for fun, like, this isn't this isn't something you're paid to do. This isn't like you're writing this for fun. And, like, if you were in a, you know, if you were working with a publishing house or something, like, they might be able to hook you up with researchers, like, and, you know, give it to, like, people instead of chat GPT. And that's where I think it gets a bit sticky. And so I think what you're doing is, like, outsourcing kind of the grunt work that, like, usually people do get paid to do this if you're if you're writing, you know, not just for a hobby to something.
Blayne:And so it it it equalizes the playing field. And so I think that's, like, you know, I think it of uses of AI. Like, I think that's not a, like, oh, you're you're outsourcing your creativity, and this this makes you, like, less creative of a person. I think what I find to be, like, of the big concern is when, like, AI is being used and then talking about the Oscars, like, professionally awarded in spaces where there are, like, entire industries running around it. Like, the fact that Adrian Brody just won an acting award when his vocal performance was run through AI to make his Hungarian accent sound more, like, hunger like, more Yeah.
Blayne:Self accurate. And I'm like, okay. Be better. Like like, this is something you now have an award for for something that technically is not your full performance. And I'm like, I'm sorry.
Blayne:If Meryl fucking Streeter, the goddess that she is, can learn Polish before she learns German for Sophie's choice when so that she will speak German with a Polish accent. Like, just you're not the right actor for it. Like, I don't think you should be awarded, especially after all the writers and actors strike trying to deal with this AI issue and what is an ethical use of AI. And it's it's and so I think when we're talking creative professionals in, like, working in industries, that's where I get really, like, mad. Like, for your own, like, personal use and and to make your life easier and and to do the the kind of grunt work that people, you know, pay people to do.
Blayne:Like, I think that that's, you know, it for uses of AI. I think that's totally totally fine.
Jo:But I think like, I think the issue, I mean, you know, there's examples like Adrian Brody when you're like, okay, well that's a very clear example but I think like for a lot of, you know, like most people especially, you know, if it's like a debut author or something, they're not going to like you're not going to have a team of researchers either, you know? Yeah. And so you know, and all these publishing houses are putting in their contracts like people to warrant, haven't used AI to write this book. I'm like, I'm sorry, maybe this is my lawyer brain but like this is completely unenforceable. Like how
Blayne:are you gonna- No, I think it's completely unenforceable.
Jo:How are you gonna check? You're- I mean I can declare, you know, again if you're my future publisher don't listen to this podcast. But I can declare, you know like in France there's this habit of like you have to declare on your honor a number of things like you have to declare that you did fraud, have to declare like during the I think it was like the twenty twelve elections they did a primary, the socialist party did a primary and you had to you had to sign chart that said that like you declare that you are a socialist because it was like an open primary so anyone could vote and you had to declare that you believed in like socialism.
Blayne:I'm sobbing. And I I declare, I mean I do declare. No but like
Jo:the funny thing was I declared that when I voted for the socialist primaries and then I declared that I believed in the right wing values when I voted for the right wing primary. So I was like well I want to have a say in who they choose because I want the worst So anyway, so I can declare whatever, it's completely unenforceable, what are you gonna do, subpoena my child LGBT history? Like what are you talking about? So yeah, I think as you quickly mentioned, the one thing that does give me pause and does bother me a lot is the environmental impact. And I don't know, the way I cope with that is that, you know, I don't know, I work in big tech, like that's just bad.
Jo:I'm just as bad as they are. You know, I work in big tech, I, you know, we are polluting, like my company, I'm not going say who my company is, but my company is polluting the earth a lot with their servers the same way that ChatGPT is. Also, I fly.
Blayne:Yeah, all that terrible work you're doing at SpaceX. Gosh.
Jo:It should
Blayne:have not worked for SpaceX reader.
Jo:Also, I, you know, I fly, I don't think, you know, when I go back to France, I don't take the boat. I, you know, it's just, I don't know, I'm not saying like, I think we all have to make our own choices like to give an example, to give a very concrete example like, my company was flying people to San Francisco for literally less than forty eight hours and they were doing this big summit with like 5,000 people attending for like forty eight hours flying from all across the world to San Francisco and I chose to not attend because I was like this isn't like I can't support this from an environmental standpoint, from other standpoints as well but like from an environmental standpoint I was like this is so wasteful like we could all be on a Zoom call like this is not if you're if you want to fly me to San Francisco fly me for a number of days and actually make it worth my time and worth the environmental expense. So I think we all have to draw our red lines and we all have to do, you know, we all have to make the decisions that we make.
Jo:I do think unfortunately AI is here, it's here to stay. I have never seen a technology being created and then simply abandoned.
Blayne:Know what I mean? Like it's those Google, those meta glasses really didn't go anywhere.
Jo:It's like if it's a technology that is very valuable to people, know, AI is in a lot of ways. And so, know, I don't want. I'm sorry if you're like, if you're someone who hates AI and wishes it away, like I'm sorry to break it to you but I genuinely don't think this is going away and I think what the problem is like when we're saying to people don't use AI, don't do this, don't use AI to write, don't use it to research etc we're kind of, I think we're focusing on this like meaningless boycott that is just not going to stop this anyway instead of focusing and it's kind of, I say it's kind of the equivalent of school teachers in 2,000 telling you not to use the internet to research stuff like, I've always thought, I was like the internet is here, know, people are using it. Yeah. And I think what we should be focusing on is thinking about what the workforce is going to look like when AI does take over a lot of jobs in a way that the 80s and 90s when all these factories kind of closed and all those jobs got shipped out to lower income markets like China or India, we didn't foresee that and so we now have a whole class of individuals who are former factory workers, blue collar people who have no jobs and no prospects because this was not thought through and we did not think through what was going to happen to these people.
Jo:I think with AI we have the opportunity that we see it coming and that we should learn from our mistakes and actually think about what society is going to look like. Are we heading towards a model that will have universal basic income? Are we heading
Blayne:towards a Oh god, believe.
Jo:You know, there's a lot of questions that we need to think about and I think by just saying oh don't use AI, AI is bad, we're kind of ignoring the problem I fear that we're going to end up in the same situation that we were in, that we are currently in with blue collar jobs, with white collar jobs and creative jobs and I just don't want that to happen. Think we need to be thinking about regulation and we need to be thinking about what we're going to do in the next twenty-thirty years instead of acting like the school teachers in the 2000s telling you not to use Google?
Blayne:I think to use the school teacher in the two thousands metaphor, great metaphor, is like, I think of where it was, okay, you can use the Internet to find reputable sources, but this is what looking like, this is what a reputable source looks like. Like, let's have some media literacy around it. Like, you can't pull from the Wikipedia article, but if you go down into the sources that the article cites, maybe there's something from there. And so I think the same thing with AI and the future of it, if there really is hearsay, I think of, like, again, throwing it back to, like, the film industry, looking at you know, because you were talking about meaningless boycott, and, oh, meaningless boycott is so on my mind. I'm gonna shit on Americans for a bit because I'm really good at it.
Blayne:But there was this there was this whole on Friday, February 28, like, don't shop at big box stores, but local businesses are fine in this. And it's a strike for only one day or a boycott for only one day. And I'm like, putting an end to a boycott, like, doesn't. If this is an exercise in getting people, like the populace, used to not engaging in an action, then then I think it could potentially be successful. But that this is an exercise in trying to show our corporate overlords that we hold the power.
Blayne:One, thinking of yourself as a consumer and not as a laborer, I think is a really flawed way of looking at the labor rights in this country and what actually needs to be done around it when it comes to collective bargaining. And so I think turning to the, you know, the SAG actor and the, you know, the writer strike and the and the and the the the, you know, worker strike out in LA, the creative strike, very we do not want, you know, as actors, our per you know, our likeness to be able to be inserted into scenes. I do not, as a background actor, want to get one paycheck for one day's work and then just have myself, like, auto populated in. And so I think understanding really clear demands and, like, things where it is because I do think, like, the creativity of that work where there is an actual background work being done, like, like, by actors for the other actors in that scene. It it's it's a disservice to the work.
Blayne:If you wanna see one of the saddest fucking things in the world, I'm sir Ian Magellan talking about hobbit films. I mean, how, you know, working on the lord of the rings with Peter Jackson was all, like, practical sets, and it was really engaging. And for his work with all of the other hobbit in the new ones because that truly go down the rabbit hole, that entire production was a shit show from start to finish. Still love Peter Jackson, but a lot of things outside of his control. A lot of it had to be CGI, and so he ended up acting to just green screen.
Blayne:And he, like, excuse me, he, like, had a breakdown about it and was like, this isn't why I became an actor. And, like, I am, like, just stuck in a green box for hours and hours a day. Like, that's not what the crap like, that's not what the artists want. That's not really what viewers want. The movie tanked, and no one feels like it for good reason.
Blayne:And so I think let's be strategic. Like, should we be using AI to go through an actor's performance and make it better? No. However, looking at, like, the Dune movies, which I think are artistic triumphs, they used AI to, like, locate every shot where, like, an app an actor who's playing a Fremen, which are the characters with the really blue eyes, wear those are a lot more quickly and so that they could then go in and do the work. And reports are like, it saved them, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of On something that's like a bullshit grunt task, like, it didn't turn them blue for them.
Blayne:It just went, hey. Look here. And so that's where I think of if we can if we can work on the environmental portion, if we can use this technology to do, like, the kind of bullshit stuff that, like, humans don't need to do and that, like, we don't gain anything from it. It just takes time that then frees us up to have more time to be creative and play around. Then that to me would be, like, a successful product.
Jo:Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I think I think that's kind of what I'm getting at about, like Yeah. You know, not demonizing this technology to technology.
Jo:What I and I don't think a technology has a moral value like I think I think that's kind of what I get annoyed at with a lot of like the rhetoric that is playing at the moment is this idea that a technology is inherently bad. I don't think it's inherently bad. AI will have incredible developments in the medical field as well and stuff. And it's not entirely bad. It's not morally bad.
Jo:It's just that we need to think about what use and how do we use that as a tool and I think that's kind of how I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it as a tool and I'm seeing it as a tool that I use or don't use and that I have learned to use as well because I think to your point it is very important to teach people how to use it and it's you know the way that I use AI as someone who already knows how to write and who already knows what I like and don't like and how to craft a sentence and how to craft a plot is a different way from someone who is maybe not as experienced and just copying and pasting what AI says. So I think that's what we should be teaching people and is how to use it, how to use it responsibly, how to build up the experience that they need to use it instead of just demonizing it and saying that, you know, anyone who uses AI is a bad person, a bad writer because that's not that's just not true. I mean, if you think if you think that and are you listening to this podcast and have Wright Castles then you think then like you know you probably now think Castles is a shitfic because yeah you know like it's just it's stupid right it's I yeah so anyway that is sort of my opinion about it.
Blayne:But yeah. I do think it's it's what I would hope is that there becomes, like, a realigning of, like, values with this. I was having this conversation on the way to brunch yesterday with a friend of mine. She is currently in master's program that's basically, like, one of those master's programs that, like, she just needs in order to be able to get a pay raise at her job. So it's a bit of a checkbox.
Blayne:And she's like, oh, girl. I use ChatGPT for my homework assignments all the fucking time because she's a full time she's full time employed, and she's like, I don't have fucking time to do all of this work. And her and I were chatting about it, and I was like, you know, you do sometimes I'm kept awake at night when I think about, like, how people's writing skills are being completely denigrated by AI, especially, like, in a, like, learning capacity of, like, writing essays because I do think for people who don't like writing essays, I think it's an incredible academic exercise and, like, is extremely undervalued because it forces you to look at, like, the narrative scope of something and, like, how ideas interconnect, which no one knows how to speak into anymore, which is why everyone's media literacy is in the toilet. And but I think that that and I I can speak for the, you know, American educational, like, higher educational system is the the impetus and the reward is not on learning. It is on completion.
Blayne:And if we are structuring a society on just complete the degree as a stepping stone to be able to make any sort of, like, theoretically livable wage, then people aren't going why would people spend the time to sit down and learn? Why would people spend the time to to sit down and learn how to write, to learn a craft, to learn this if it is being so socially and culturally and economically devalued? Yeah. And so I'm hoping that with this with this kind of big swing, I think something's some bubbles gonna gonna have to pop around this when when all of Jen Alpha's brains are just sludge, and none of them can read. But, like, I do hope that this can this can and maybe it's a it's a bit of a Pollyanna hope.
Blayne:This can kick a you know, chat GPT can do that, like, grunt research. Like, we don't have to memorize, like, the specific dates of anything. Like, I don't need to know the date of d day. I do because I came up at a time in school when I did. But, like, now I can just be like, oh, what was the day of d day again?
Blayne:Oh, yeah. 06/1944. But, like, I have my phone in my pocket, so I don't need to memorize specific dates or specific names of things. What I do need to do to be a well educated person and a media literate person in this day and age is to look at, like, broader trends and larger narrative implications and what okay. What was the d day's effect on the war?
Blayne:That's not something that I would want, you know, a a robot or or technology to give me. But, like, just giving me brass facts or just giving me a page of research, like, let's all be the higher cognitive beings here and, like, push to be more creative and and intelligent in this endeavor. Yeah. Okay. Well, I can literally scream about this for sixteen hours.
Blayne:Well,
Jo:we're already at eighty one minutes. So Good lord. Let's wrap this up. Do you have any recommendations for us this
Blayne:week? Recommendations this week. I'm trying to say I oh, I I started reading something, but it's not very good, so I don't wanna recommend it.
Jo:I know. Same. I finished a book when I when I flew to France, but I didn't really like it. So I'm like,
Blayne:I don't really wanna recommend recommend. I don't wanna recommend that. Okay. Actually, you know what I'll recommend? I I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday.
Blayne:As Joe said, I live in the DC area, so I'm friends with a lot of feds. So it's an incredibly scary time in DC for a lot of us. I know everyone around The US. If anyone is listening, lives in The US, I assume there's some of us here. One, condolences.
Blayne:Two, like, you know, everyone's getting affected in their own way, but, like, DC in particular is really, really feeling it hard with all these these layoffs and these firings. And, you know, and a friend of mine was saying how this kinda feels like those early days of COVID where, like, no one really knows what's going on. Everyone's feeling, like, financially uncertain. And my recommendation is, like, just fine. Like, what like, like, I I saw a TikTok that was like, are you freaked out about our president and, like, the news?
Blayne:Have you dilly dally ed today? Like, I I'm finding a really nice antidote to this is, like, go out and be with my friends and, like Yeah. Or just, like, go on, like, a walk. Don't listen to music. Don't have a podcast on well, listen to this podcast.
Blayne:But when you're done with it, turn it off and, like, just go kind of be out. Talk with your cashier. Talk with your bartender. Like, I think a lot of people are looking for for some sort of connection right now and aren't really quite sure where to put all that energy. So my recommendation is go dilly dally.
Blayne:Go do something stupid. It doesn't have to be spending money. It can be, but, like, you know, what what can self care look like outside of capitalism? But my my recommendation is to dilly dally.
Jo:Do you know what? I completely agree. I had a good evening with a friend with a few friends before I left. We went out and we chatted and that was really nice. So yeah, I think I think that's a really good recommendation actually in these troubled times.
Blayne:These troubled times. Good sweet lord. I I really there was a tweet I saw ages ago that was just like, yeah, you know, I was feeling really depressed and then I went out with a friend and I remembered why life is worth living. Like, I really do I do think and, you know, if if finances are a concern, do a little night in. You're gonna
Jo:eat
Blayne:dinner anyway. Eat it with a friend. Like, I mean, call up someone you haven't spoken to in a while and do, like, a little conversation. Dilly dally about town.
Jo:Yeah. I agree. I, as I said, I don't really have anything to recommend because I read, I finished a
Blayne:book but I didn't like it. Both of us are just reading shit right now.
Jo:Well no, but like it was like a three stars out of five, it just wasn't that good like for anyone who's Yeah, that was mine. The Woman in the Purple Skirt which was buzzing on TikTok a while back and I don't know, I read it, it was fine but I didn't really understand the point of the book. So anyway, but it was it had very good writing though, the writing was good, it's just I didn't really vibe with it. So anyway, Blayne, this was a pleasure, where can we find you online?
Blayne:You can continue to find me AO3 under Nargles15. I am on Tumblr under Be Telling and I am on Twitter lurking around tweeting about the Oscars. So come hang out.
Jo:Great. And I am Pebley Send on AO3 Tumblr. You can find the podcast if you have any feedback, suggestions for topics for next episode or want to send us questions that we will later answer. You can write to our Askbox. Our Askbox is open on Tumblr.
Jo:We are thefanfakeriderscraft.com and if you want to help finance the podcast you can head to coviewfanficwriterscraft it helps us pay for hosting fees.
Blayne:Yes give us money! Yeah!
Jo:Okay, bye everyone! Bye everyone!