Writing – S.N.Arly

Generative AI is an Ethical Can of Snakes, Not a Tool for Making Art

I’ve seen posts online arguing that text generative AI¹ is just a tool, the way a paintbrush or a keyboard is a tool, and that writers² can and should use it as needed. I’ve seen arguments justifying the use of generative AI to make art accessible to disabled creators. I’ve heard people claim that we should normalize the use of generative AI and stop shaming people who use it.

I counter with a solid fuck no on all these fronts.

There are a lot of problems with the “it’s just a tool” argument. With keyboards and voice recognition, you’re still selecting your words, putting them in order, and moving things around. You know, the act of writing. You’re making stylistic decisions about the use of language (not to mention setting, description, character, and plot). You are calling all the shots. If you aren’t choosing your own words and making your own sentences, you aren’t writing.

The suggestion that generative AI makes art accessible is inherently ableist and hideously offensive. This suggests that disabled people don’t deserve to truly create their own art, and the best they are capable of is the distilled mundanity of generative AI. True adaptability tools allow you to make all those decisions about sentence structure and language use. They allow you to create, but often with an alternate method of inputting or recording it. Voice recognition software is such a tool, while generative AI is an insult to artists. Disabled artists deserve tools that help them create what’s in their minds, not what the large language model limits them to.

Generative AI is built on the stolen intellectual property of writers (authors, journalists, and bloggers) in all stages of their careers. Their works have been used to train or program gen AI to sound realistic and contemporary. But those authors didn’t consent to this use. It is an obvious copyright violation. If you’re using gen AI you’re participating in theft of your fellow authors’ work and claiming that work as your own. Normalizing the theft of intellectual property is insane, and you should be ashamed of yourself if you use generative AI.

Writing, as any art, requires devotion and time to build the skills you need. If you don’t really want to invest the effort, you aren’t a writer, and that’s okay. Not everyone wants to be or should try to be writers. Using generative AI isn’t a shortcut to becoming a writer; it’s a twisted and unethical cosplay of being a writer.

Generative AI and analytical AI are not the same thing. ↩︎
All the things noted about writing have parallels for visual art (pictures and movies) as well as music – using generative AI for any of these doesn’t make you an artist. ↩︎

For more information (and links to supporting documentation) on the ethical issues related to the use of generative AI, please check out There is Currently No Ethical Use of Generative AI by The Write Mann (aka me in freelance writer and editor mode).

Avoiding Tokenism in Comics & SciFi Cultures

I just discovered that a Marscon panel from 2018 on writing with diverse characters while avoiding tokenism is available in podcast form. It turns out that one of my fellow panelists recorded it and turned it into a podcast.

Check out Justin On Panels Season 2, Episode 1 to find the best place for you to stream it.

I am the lone female-presenting voice.

The Taste of Blood – A Writing Peeve

Apparently a large number of writers have no idea what blood tastes like and it shows. At some point in the last ten years or so there appears to have been a mass decision that the metallic taste in blood is copper. A character gets punched or bites their lip, then notes that the taste of copper to signal to the reader that they are bleeding.

Cool. Except this information is wrong.

What blood tastes like (and smells like to super sniffers like me) is iron. My life experience confirms this. I grew up in Minnesota in the 1970s, when it was apparently a childhood rite to lick railings and flagpoles (especially in the winter). This was not a bloodless activity. In addition, I was a tiny waif (which is hilarious to people who have seen me in person), so doctors diagnosed me with failure to thrive; I had to take liquid iron supplements (which tasted much like liquefied railings). I assure you, that the metallic taste in blood is iron. You might notice a similar taste if you leave something mild flavored (like potatoes) to sit in a cast iron pan long after it’s cooled (the food will absorb noticeable iron).

My grandma had fancy copper cups and copper plated silverware. These had a particular metallic flavor, less bold and biting than iron. It’s not the same taste as pennies, which often smell and taste like oxidizing copper rather than truly copper.

The iron taste (and smell) makes a lot of sense because one third of each red blood cell is hemoglobin, the iron-containing oxygen-transport protein present in red blood cells. It also makes sense that dog blood, which contains 15-20% more hemoglobin by volume, has a stronger iron taste* and smell. I can often tell that a dog is bleeding by smell before I see the injury or blood on the floor (toenail injuries are very messy).

Blood info graphic from Compound Chem.

* I do not go around intentionally consuming dog blood. I have had dogs for years, and this means I have treated a number of toenail injuries and accidental clipping of the quick. I was taught to use styptic powder (or corn starch in a pinch) by dabbing my fingertip on my tongue to acquire powder to then dab on the nail. This is definitely not hygienic and is often gross, but it’s also less messy than trying to press a pinch of powder onto the foot of my squirming canine friends.

General Research – Part 1 – Skip Google for Research

Updated September 19, 2023

Information literacy is a huge topic in high schools and universities, and one of the things teachers and librarians are struggling to help students understand is the fact that their search engine is not free of bias and may prioritize ads (or what it thinks you want to see based on your shopping experience) rather than actual information. It’s made more difficult by the fact that the technology in use is constantly evolving.

Google’s search algorithm has not merely gotten worse. It has been redesigned to prioritize advertisers and popular pages, often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms. As a writer searching for specific information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, this is unforgivable.

I’ve been meaning to share some general research resources for a while, but my energy got eaten by a couple of instances of burnout.

Singles Will Be Paired

Kezia looked up at the red frame and rails of the compact Mad Mouse roller coaster. Letting out a huff, she went directly to the queue. The weather was perfect, just warm enough to feel like summer, but not overbearingly hot as it had been just a week before. She was not going to let her stupid friends ruin what could be one of the best days of the entirely too short season. To be fair, she probably never should have agreed to visit Valleyfair as part of a trio, something she’d honestly learned back in junior high. She should have worked to bring someone, it wasn’t like she lacked friends, though most of them weren’t available for a middle of the week trip to the theme park. She could have brought her brother, for crying out loud. At least he liked the same kinds of rides. And that was the other issue; they should have discussed their interests in advance. All three of them had failed on that detail.

Her phone buzzed in the little hip pouch she’d worn to keep her small things secure. She pulled it out and swiped to get to the text.

Emma: Let us know when you want to meet up for lunch!

It was followed by a selfie of her friends riding on the little train that drove through the park.

What Large Teeth

There was once a great wolf who lived in a lush green forest. He was much like other wolves, embracing the freedom of night runs and enjoying routine meals of hare and the occasional deer. As a youth, he had left his pack to find his fortune in the wide world. Many of the woodland villages boasted the position of a town wolf, but time and again he was turned down. He was told he lacked the necessary qualifications or skill set, his personality wouldn’t mesh with the other staff, or in the few honest cases, he was just too damn big. Disillusioned, he settled under the canopy of green where he didn’t have to interact with many humans.

His nearest neighbor was an old woman who insisted that everyone simply call her Grandma. She was a witch, rapidly approaching retirement, and feared nothing and no one. To her credit, she was able to see past the fur, canine teeth, and impressive stature to appreciate the wolf as another of the forest’s valuable inhabitants. She welcomed her wild neighbors, both near and far, for polite conversation, meals, and the exchange of favors. Wolf had made a habit of fetching supplies from greater distances to save her arthritic joints the long journey. In return, she provided routine medical treatment and advice.

Grandma’s granddaughter dwelt in a nearby town with her parents and three younger siblings, though she often traveled the forest path. The ability to learn and perform magic skipped every other generation, making the granddaughter the next witch in the family. Her training under Grandma had been progressing along the usual lines, though Grandma expressed concern over what she had perceived as a cruel nature housed within a charming and adorable countenance.

Speed Writing #16 – The Dragon at the Party

“Zoua!” I heard my name shouted over the din of music and too many voices talking. “Zoua, there’s a dragon at the door!”

I poked my head out of the kitchen and looked into the living room, crowded with friends and acquaintances. My sister was across the room at the door, encouraging someone to come in. Grabbing my beer bottle, I carefully moved around the group aggressively playing Boggle at the coffee table to the front door.

“No,” I heard her whine a little. “You have to come in. She’s going to love it.”

A young man in an amazing dragon costume stood in the doorway, clearly conflicted about something. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

Deputy Death

A tingle started in the middle of Liz’s head, spreading down into her teeth. It was an odd sensation, but not unpleasant. She thought of it as her death sense, because when it kicked in, she was sure to find the body of some dead animal. The bizarre ability had yet to prove remotely useful, though it put her social life in critical condition. She looked up from her six-page, AP English paper, due tomorrow. Her eyes went to the window just as the sunshine-yellow Pontiac Aztek slowed, then stopped across the street. It was a weird looking car, not the sort of thing that belonged in this neighborhood with its green carpet lawns, evenly manicured hedges, and sport utility vehicles in the fashionable colors of hunter and maple. Each house was painted one of three approved shades of beige. Fortunately spring was far enough along that the landscape wasn’t completely bland, despite the developers’ best efforts.

It was sheer luck that she’d felt something dead in time to see this outsider, though she’d have to find whatever had died nearby before continuing to work on her paper. She could only ignore the tingling for so long before it became too distracting.

The driver’s side door swung open, and a tall thin man stepped out. He was pale, with light brown hair, and there wasn’t so much as a hint of khaki about him. He wore a shiny metallic blue, long sleeved shirt, tucked into snug black jeans. Liz briefly wondered if he might be gay, what with all the color, but decided he was probably just from the city. She’d heard urban people were flamboyant, and only the usual percentage of them were gay. He looked sort of like the people in her German textbook, foreign, so maybe that was his deal.

Tulgey Wood

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsey were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe…”

“Is that all she says?”

“Yes. Over and over. Same thing.”

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!”

“What sort of rubbish is that? It doesn’t even sound like English.”

“Well it is, and it isn’t. It’s Jabberwocky. You know. The poem by Lewis Carroll?”

“That the guy who wrote about the magical wardrobe?”

“Not even close. What the hell kind of childhood did you have anyway? Didn’t you ever read Through the Looking Glass?”

“Irrelevant. Does she say anything else? Anything at all.”

“Well… not really.”

“You hesitated there. What is it?”

“Sometimes it’s as if she’s gotten stuck. She’ll repeat the same word over and over like she can’t remember the next line.”

“And then?”

“After a while she just kicks back in as if she’d never hit a glitch.”

“And what is this Jabberwocky…”

They think I can’t hear them, they think I don’t see what’s two feet away. Catatonic, they say. But I’m just ignoring them. They don’t know anything, and they’ll leave the room eventually. They always do.

The Beach

The west end of the beach was a picture of chaos framed by the orange of the sinking sun.

Donna watched, curiously detached, ignoring the sand that was creeping into her shorts.

The wind blew her hair into her face, and she reached for the purse she’d never wanted. Mothers’ purses were full of scraps of paper, crayons and trash. She dug through the folds of the imitation leather bag, pushing aside the comb. Her hair would only re-tangle in this wind. She was too much like her own mother, she thought, as she shoved the empty wrapper from a stick of gum into a corner. There it was. A tattered green ribbon lay twisted around a McDonald’s straw in the bottom of her purse. One never knew when they might need a straw. The ribbon was short, but it would hold her hair back for now.

She scooped up a handful of sand, plucking out the quartzite pebbles and precariously piling them on her knees. Once her collection was complete she wiggled her leg, dropping the carefully gathered stones to the sand. She felt stronger for destroying something she’d made.

The rescuers were still hard at work, their chains clanking together like so many little bells. With the sun as a backdrop, they were featureless profiles. The cry of triumph was quickly followed by one of dismay. Someone in the rescue boat held aloft a dripping empty baby stroller with seaweed dangling from the wheels.

This dark flash fiction (exactly 250 words) was written as a challenge to include one or more of the following: pebbles, ribbon, gum wrapper, baby stroller, seaweed, straw, comb. As a smartass, I used all seven.