Nothing good ever comes from this sentence, but here goes: I watched the Homestuck pilot.

The original, a massively long multimedia webcomic, is something of a spectre haunting the web. I admit I only got through it in middle school because the girl I had a crush on was a huge fan; believe me when I say the only way to read Homestuck is to be in love.

For whatever reason, the powers that be have chosen this decade-old property to adapt into an animated pilot episode that will inevitably go nowhere. Is it any good? Well… maybe? It’s a bastard adaptation, obviously, a story forced into a medium it’s congenitally unsuited for — but there’s a reminiscent energy, and I was impressed by the transition from chatlogs to pseudodialogue. That doesn’t mean it’s worth watching (it’s not), but the world is not worse-off for it existing, either.

Here is where I admit something that I’ve been keeping secret from you all this time. This post is actually about artifical intelligence. Yes yes yes, let’s autocomplete this together: people’s generations are only of interest to themselves, but they still thirst for the social function of art, so they gravitate towards shared cultural markers and characters, thus we observe the domination of “hulk meets darth vader” type slop, compare this to endless sequels and reboots, mention stuck culture, name-check mark fisher, spin out into hauntology, and so on and so forth. You don’t actually need me to write that out, do you?

But have a concrete prediction: within the next five years, there will come a time when the AI pipelines are sophisticated enough to spin up pretty coherent longform artifacts like comics and movies wholesale, but not creative enough to invent interesting things themselves. As a result, they will mostly be fed existing human works and made to medium-swap them. What is Five Easy Pieces as a manga? Infinite Jest a mini-series? These will mostly be bad, but not noticeably worse than the present state of affairs, and a stripe of hobbyist obsessives eager for re-experience will naturally gorge themselves.

Also, here is where I admit something that I’ve been keeping secret from you all this time. This post is actually two different posts stapled together: two posts which only happen to share the same title. So please think to yourself “what a pleasantly brief post on the conq.blog today,” and clear your mind before scrolling further down for the bonus material…

Total Fanfiction Victory

You know what they say about judges, books, and covers — but when I was perusing the Orell Füssli in Zürich center (I had a list of seven titles but they didn’t have any of them… agonies of the non-English nations), one in particular caught my eye.

I love a sexy cover, so I was just about sold right there — but then I recalled that one summer day I picked up Moby-Dick from the thrift shop and just about fainted with horror upon discovering that it was mutilated beyond all recognition… it was an abridged copy — and so I judiciously googled the title. Imagine my surprise when old doctor Wiki P. let me know that this young bird I had my eye on was actually dramione (editor’s note: draco / hermione romance) fanfiction with the names changed! A close call, that.

It’s not a new story; Fifty Shades of Grey and The Mortal Instruments were very successful. Unfortunately, this is not the world where the popularity of fanfiction indicates that people are excited about its creative potential as a new form… this is the world where it indicates that people are excited about reading total slop. I briefly read A Court of Thorns and Roses with a girl I was dating and let me tell you: publishers are straight dumpster-diving ao3 these days. Total fanfiction victory.

But here is where I admit something that I’ve been keeping secret from you all this time… this post is actually three different posts stapled together (three posts which only happen to share the same title)… so please think to yourself “what a pleasantly brief post on the conq.blog today” and clear your mind before scrolling further down for the bonus material… enjoy the show…

Total fanfiction victory

Seriously what’s up with this rationalist thing? I read hpmor when I was 13 (an eminently respectable age for it)… now it’s a “philosophical movement” with “political power” and “everyone who posted on lesswrong” is “super rich”… i think the lesson to take from this is clear… if you want to be five years ahead of everyone and get rich by investing billions of dollars in compute infrastructure… just read more fanfiction…

but here is where i admit to something that i’ve been keeping secret from you all this time… this post is actually four different posts stapled together (four posts which only happen to share the same title)… so pls think to yourself “what a pleasantly brief post on the conq.blog today” (and clear your mind) before scrolling further down for the bonus material… it’s gonna blow your socks off…

total fanfiction victory

in another quantum parallel universe alternate version of this post (i forget the lore of my framing device… sorry…) i mentioned going to the book store with seven titles. here is my list: the invention of morel… to rule all under heaven… blindness (the saramago one)… investiture of the gods… the shadow of the sun… wittgenstein’s mistress… and 1587 a year of no significance… it’s a bleak world out there… we live in a dystopian society where they stock the bookshop shelves with dramione fanfiction and reeses puffs…

btw here is where i admit to something i’ve been keeping secret from you all this time… this post is actually a fanfiction itself… of bananaslug… or suboptimalism… or his many other monikers… isn’t that meta… it might even be … dare i say it… a