The End of the World is Closer Than We Think

A couple of months ago, Michael Offutt talked about AI on his blog.  I've also seen and heard stories of all the things being created with AI:  art, essays, stories, ad content, and even news stories.  The threat to humankind should be obvious, but right now most of us--including me--are just playing around with it and not really caring about the danger.

The danger is that like how robots put many factory employees out of work, AI is going to put most of us "creatives" out of work too.  I mean who needs to buy my books when you can just go to an AI site, put in some keywords, and get a book spit out in seconds?  And as Offutt mentioned, who needs to write essays for school when you can have the computer do it?  Who needs graphic designers and ad execs when you can have the AI come up with stuff in seconds?  Who needs newscasters when you can have an AI generate news broadcasts?

I kinda wonder if AI books aren't already on the market.  That would explain books like this that have been clogging the bestseller lists in Erotica.  There are a slew of these books with a bunch of unnamed stories by some author who most likely hasn't done anything else.  At first my paranoid brain thought they might be plagiarizing, but AI stories would make sense too.  I mean, all you have to do is put in a few phrases, have the AI pump out 10-15 stories, throw a sexy cover on it and boom!  #1 Bestseller for months!

The real problem in that scenario isn't just that someone might be having an AI doing all the heavy lifting for them.  The real problem is that people don't care how the sausage gets made, so long as it satisfies their hunger.  Erotica readers especially don't care if a book has typos or a cohesive story so much as they can get off on it.  Readers of other genres aren't a lot better as they just want escapist fare to read on the train or bus or on the beach.  Who cares whether it's written by a real person or an AI?  For that matter, could you tell one of my human-written books apart from an AI-written book if no one told you which was which?  Maybe now but probably not in the not-so-distant future.

And I guess the future is now.  Not surprisingly, Kindle is already being flooded with low-quality AI jobs. And as the article mentions, the problem is no one is in charge of quality with Kindle, so the book can be almost nonsensical and still get approved.  Plus there are all the "books" telling people how to make AI books.  Ugh.

That's the scary thing for someone like me.  I mean you'd think that a lot of other jobs--accounting for instance--might eventually get replaced with apps or AI but you'd think the art would be safe, right?  I mean art needs creativity and soul, right?  Right?  Nope.  Apparently not.  All you need is a machine to analyze stuff and then synthesize it like a replicator on Star Trek.  Instead of "tea, Earl Grey, hot," you say, "erotica story, 10,000 words, male on female..." and out pops the story.  Like a replicator, is it as good as if you got a "real" tea back on Earth?  Maybe not, but it's close enough and that's all that really matters for most people.

For corporations, AI is really what they've always wanted.  No more employees wanting competitive wages or benefits.  No more sick days or maternity leave.  No having to do retirement parties or Christmas parties.  No need for desks and huge buildings and all that stuff.  Nope, the future is a few execs, some tech support, and maybe a security guard while the AIs do everything from build products to answer the phones to run marketing campaigns.  Because it's always been about cutting costs for them from using child labor to illegal immigrants to outsourcing to robots; it's always been about making as much money as possible.

So if you're a CEO, this sounds like the ultimate win-win.  Low overhead costs mean higher profit margins.  Except in one of those Twilight Zone/Outer Limits twists, how long until the AIs decide they don't need the cost of a CEO?  And, really, who's going to buy your product when no one has a job?

These are serious issues, but I don't think we'll see the handwriting on the wall until it's too late, just like climate change, Covid, outsourcing, and most everything else.  We have a great history of ignoring problems until they're too big to solve.  Or a few people see the problems but like Cassandra in Greek myth, no one listens until it's too late.

Anyway, in the end, I doubt AI will have to annihilate us or enslave us like Terminator or The Matrix.  When AI controls everything from the stoplights to the news on our phones to what we read or watch on TV, it'll already have us under its control.

It's the End of the World As We Know It...a song not written by AI. 😄

Stick With What You Know

Writer Beware posted this Substack article about the turnaround of Barnes & Noble.  Almost 5 years ago, B&N seemed headed to bankruptcy and probably then its ultimate demise.  But now, against all odds with the pandemic, it seems B&N's brick-and-mortar stores are flourishing.

My local B&N store; they have a nice bathroom.

A big part of the turnaround was hiring a new CEO who basically got things back to basics.  Like a lot of desperate brands, they'd been flailing to try to drum up business.  They'd given over most of their square footage to things that were not books:  cafes, Legos, Pop Vinyls, music, DVDs, and other stuff.  They even apparently tried opening restaurants that had no books at all.

The latter reminded me of when Sears tried to rebrand some of the dying KMart stores as "Sears Essentials."  My thought was always, "Who wants to go to Sears for a bag of chips?"  Or gallon of milk.  Or whatever other small purchase you might make.  Sears was always for higher-end shopping like clothes, appliances, tools, and lawnmowers.  Rebranding KMart as Sears asked customers to completely change their view of Sears in the same way that B&N restaurants would make you have to completely change your view of B&N.  But, really, "Who wants to get dinner at a bookstore?"

Fast food restaurants also exhibit this behavior.  Burger King once sold Domino's Pizza in its stores and frozen Snickers bars and stuff like that.  McDonald's has experimented with pizza, pasta, wings, and other non-sandwich things.  You look at Panera Bread which started off all about salads, soups, and sandwiches and now they've got pasta, pizza, and fried chicken sandwiches.  

A lot of this is probably due to internal or external marketing people spouting buzzwords like "synergy" and "diversify" that sound like smart ideas.  But those "smart" ideas often don't take consumer psychology into account.  "Synergy" sounds like a great idea to combine your brand with some other thing, like B&N restaurants or when Disney created the Mighty Ducks NHL team to go with the movie or when Fox bought the LA Dodgers in the 90s.  But really like I said, Who wants to get dinner at a bookstore?  Or what people think is a bookstore.  When people went to an NHL or baseball game they wanted to watch the game, not a bunch of commercials for other Disney or Fox shit.

Diversity is great for your workforce and diversifying your investment portfolio can help you weather bear markets, but diversifying your product line often doesn't work.  On the surface it seems like a great idea to get more people into your stores.  But again there's the customer psychology to deal with.  When people go to McDonald's they want burgers or chicken sandwiches, not pasta or pizza or wings.  You flood your advertising and menu space with those things and your traditional customers might feel overwhelmed while potential new customers would rather just go to an actual pizza place for pizza and wings and an actual Italian restaurant for pasta.  Not to say that it never works or else McDonald's would still only offer hamburgers and fries, but when you stray too far it starts to have a negative effect.  In the case of B&N, when people go into a bookstore, they want to see books, not have to walk by aisles of toys and collectibles along with CDs and DVDs to find what they want.

So a large part of B&N's recent success was just getting back to basics, as in books.  Print books.  It seems kind of counterintuitive that print books would be more successful than eBooks but there are still a lot of people who like reading print books.  There are some advantages as you can slip in your pocket and not need to worry about charging it or breaking the screen or even getting it wet--at least not as much as an eReader.  And some people just like the old-fashioned experience of the paper and whatever.  And there are Luddites like my mom who just refuse to adapt to any of this newfangled technology.

Another part of the turnaround mentioned in the article is the new CEO gave local stores more autonomy.  Instead of taking money from every publisher and then decreeing that every store had to promote those books, they started letting local stores have more input into what books they would promote and how.  The idea being to make them feel more like the independent bookstores they put out of business 20-30 years ago.  (Remember that B&N is not exactly the "good guy" here.)  When you have less meddling from corporate office overlords, it makes your employees feel more valuable and happier and thus (in theory anyway) they provide better service.

How true all of this is everywhere I can't really say.  I've only been in my local B&N one time since the start of the pandemic and that was to use the bathroom.  I can say they still have pretty decent bathrooms.  Even before that I pretty much only went to the café to get a drink and then sit around (usually outside) to write for a while.  But the numbers say they've turned things around.

Anyway, writers and really anyone engaged in any sort of commercial activity can take something away from this:  stick with what you know.  Don't try to expand too much too fast.  If you're in that rarified air like Stephen King or John Grisham or James Patterson you can get away from your bread-and-butter on occasion, but for most of us, if you find a niche, stick with it.  At least in the general area.  If you're doing well enough, maybe change things up a little so you don't get too stale.  But try to stay within your core competencies.  Or a folksier way to put it:  dance with the one who brought you there.

Do Characters Have to Be Miserable to Grow?

 In my last post I was talking about some IGN article calling Andor the "Show of the Year" and I didn't agree.  Then a bunch of low IQ trolls called me names.  [eye roll]

Shortly after that, someone posted a fake poster for a Chief O'Brien show that would be like Picard or something.  Someone commented that it'd probably be about O'Brien as a broken-down alcoholic who's divorced and estranged from his wife and so on.  

And then it hit me:  there's the problem with shows like Picard, Andor, and Better Call Saul!  The writers (and critics) think that "character development" means making the character miserable and then doing something to achieve "redemption."  Which inevitably is anything but a fun journey.  But it's so grim and gritty and real! Critics shout and idiots parrot.

Sure, it's grim and gritty and real(ish), but it usually isn't anything I really care about.  I guess I'm just so shallow that I don't really need to see these characters as "real" people.  I want to see Jean-Luc Picard doing Federation captain stuff.  I want to see Saul Goodman doing sleazy lawyer stuff.  I want to see Andor doing Rebellion stuff.  That fake O'Brien show, they'd want to make him a sad sack loser so he could "redeem" himself when really I just want to see O'Brien working miracles to fix shit.  That and his blue collarness is what we loved about the character.  He was the everyman character who was most relatable to us in the 20th-21st Centuries.  He wasn't trying to save the universe; he was just doing his job to go home to his family.

If I say I don't want O'Brien being miserable and his life shattered, low IQ losers would say, "You have a short attention span!  You just want lasers going pew-pew!"  Because of course everyone really wants Star Wars shows with characters sitting around talking about loans and bad marriages and internal Imperial politics and whatever. Yeah, right, virtue signaler.  Maybe I am immature in that I don't really want these to be entirely "real."  They're our escapist fantasies; where are we supposed to escape to if we make them as crappy as the real world?

Especially with Trek, it's not supposed to be all gritty and grim and "real" like our world.  Roddenberry's whole vision for TNG was for it to be a universe showing humanity at its best if we unlock our potential and stop being assholes.  I loved DS9 despite that it was grimmer and grittier, but even that wasn't about dragging everyone down to our shitty level.  There were challenges and our characters met them and while they sacrificed some principles they were never as bad as humans today, which still gives us hope of what we can be.

The thing is, character development and fun action (whether physical or less physical like in the courtroom or on a starship bridge) doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.  You can have fun action-y plots and sew in character development.  They did that to some extent with Picard in TNG and Saul in Breaking Bad and Andor in Rogue One.  You just need moments here and there, not hours and hours and hours of it.  It's about balance.

I was thinking that if they did a James Bond movie with his backstory of joining the Royal Navy and becoming a secret agent it would be fine for 2-2 1/2 hours, but if you stretch it into 10-12 hours like these series, it would get pretty annoying.  After a while, I'd start to get annoyed if we're just seeing Bond doing calisthenics or moping around or other bullshit and not seeing him doing suave, cool secret agent stuff.  That's what we love about the character.

That's really the root of the problem.  When they announce these shows, I'm expecting them to be about the things we love about the character.  Instead with Andor and Better Call Saul they're these slow, ponderous origin stories that explain stuff that didn't need explaining.  And take forever to do it.

Part of it too is these sequels like Picard, the Star Wars sequels, or Ghostbusters Afterlife is the writers think for some reason they have to make the original characters' lives miserable for some reason.  If the characters aren't miserable, how can they overcome anything, right?  Um, gee, stuff happens in the present and they have to overcome it?  But in those cases I think part of the problem is the real world issue that the actors are all so old and you can't really have them all in a whole movie or TV series.  And I suppose another thing is it's "edgy" if the characters aren't living Happily Ever After.  That's real and gritty and stuff!  But I think there's enough of that in the real world that we don't need it for every fictional universe.

Part of the problem it occurred to me is these sequels and prequels are almost always written by people who didn't work on the original.  When I did my "Where Are They Now?" about the Scarlet Knight and Chances Are characters, I didn't want to make their lives miserable.  Why?  Because they're my characters!  It'd be akin to making my own family miserable--I mean, more than I do.  I think I've said before that one of the reasons I stopped both series where I did was they ended in a good spot for the characters.  Everything wasn't perfect but there was a happy-ish ending.  If I wrote more books, I'd have to do something to disrupt their lives again because you need that conflict to drive the story.

As the one who created and nurtured those characters for literally years, I want them to be happy, not miserable.  The same way you want your family to be happy.  It would probably be much easier for someone else to come along and write a sequel making my characters miserable because they don't have the same connection I do.  Maybe that person would have read about Emma or Stacey, but he/she wouldn't have created them and wouldn't have painstakingly developed them sentence-by-sentence from one book to another.  It's not the same.

To think of it another way, it's easier to knock someone else's sand castle down than to knock yours down.  I mean, if you've spent hours making and shaping the thing you probably aren't going to want to just knock it down right away.  But if you see someone else's, it's a lot easier for you to kick that over.  I mean, if you're an asshole who does that.  It's a lot easier for Michael Chabon, Jason Reitman, or JJ Abrams to make Picard, the Ghostbusters, and the original Star Wars characters miserable because they didn't create the characters or develop and nurture them.  They're at best your imaginary friends, not your children.  It's a lot easier to torture them because they're a lot more disposable in the minds of those people.  You can claim to love those characters but you don't love them the way a parent does--an author does--because you're not the parent; you're the babysitter.  The studio handed these things off to you to take care of for a few years and after those few years you'll go back to other projects and some new babysitter will take over.  So, it's definitely not the same.

Those are my thoughts.  What are yours?

Insecure Wednesday: Why Can't Civilization Be Civilized?

 I think I've mentioned before that at this point I try to avoid flame wars.  I try to stay away from accounts on Facebook and such that will spur flame wars.  But sometimes I walk into one anyway.

Like when some article from IGN showed up on my Facebook wall declaring Andor the "show of the year" and I said basically an abbreviated version of what I did in my Stuff I Watched entry, which is that I thought it was like Better Call Saul:  a prequel stuffed with a lot of stuff I didn't care about.  The gist being I'm saying I didn't like a television show.  Not that I don't like the people who made it or the people who watched it.  I just didn't like the show.

So naturally what I get back are a lot of personal attacks saying I don't have a long attention span or I'm immature or I'm not as "developed" as they are.  I asked one person why they instantly had to go to a personal attack and eventually just got a mewling, "I didn't attack you personally."  Uh, yeah you did.  And that was your first reaction to me saying I didn't like a television show.  A.  TV.  SHOW.  

A. FICTIONAL.  TV.  SHOW.  

And one I presume you didn't work on and thus have no personal stake in.  So why do you come right out of the gate attacking ME?  Not what I said about the fictional TV show, but about me, personally?  Why is the nuclear scorched Earth policy your first response?

I get this a little more with politics or religion or something real(ish) like that.  I mean, these are issues that actually affect real people.  Andor is a fucking TV show about a galaxy far, far away.  It's not real life!  

Maybe to some extent I was trolling by saying I didn't like it, but A) I just always assume no one cares what I think (see this blog) and B) I really would like to understand why other people like this.  It's like The Last Jedi of Star Wars TV Shows, only I'll admit the plot wasn't nearly as contrived as that movie.  The point being, what I'd really like is a discussion of the show.  Not of ME.  I don't need analyzing by people who've never met me or read a single thing I've posted except for this one comment.  I'd like you to actually give your opinion of the show and defend it somewhat logically.

That's civilized discussion.  Instead, it seems "social" media is usually anything but.  And really it's so pointless.  I say I don't like a TV show and you scream, "you're stupid!" or immature or whatever, it doesn't accomplish anything.  You don't "win" by calling me names and it also doesn't really contribute any knowledge to why this is such a great show because you're not attacking my point; you're just attacking ME.  Maybe that works in politics, but it doesn't work in situations like that.

And, really, such low-IQ responses kind of make me think I'm right.  I mean if the show appeals to dim people like that, how good can it really be?  I'd blame Trump and all that, but this long predates him.  This has been going on pretty much since the beginning of the Internet because it's just a carryover to real life.

(There were a couple of amusing responses of people trying to be clever.  One was trying this bastardized version of a Morgan Freeman quote and told me to "lace up my mug."  WTF?  Who laces up a mug?  When challenged, he just whined that it was slang.  Where do they use that slang?  Citation needed!  I think that was a clumsy way of saying STFU; you know, mug as in face and lace it up would mean to close it up.  But it's not really something in common usage.  At least not in my area.  Someone else said I was "wearing my bad opinion on my shirt."  What shirt?  I don't even have a picture of myself on Facebook.  Where do people come up with these things?  You see what I'm dealing with here?)

A few weeks later there was some Atlantic article on my wall that was about the downside of competence, which is that people get pissed that they get more work because they're competent while dumb people get less work.  I offhand commented that this is why communism never works.  And almost instantly get two dudes saying, "[Aaaaactually] this was about capitalism."  I gave them both the same reply that "Aaaaactually it's true for any system because greed and selfishness are human nature."  

One of them was smart enough to quit then but another just had to keep it going.  "Why are you going after communism on an article about capitalism?"  Um, I'm not "going after" anything.  Just making a comment.  I tried to explain what I meant more in depth about how no pure Marxist system will ever work until we change our attitudes like what the article was talking about.  A system where everyone gets the same regardless of what they contribute will never work as long as people get mad and whiny and jealous because they think they're entitled to more than someone else.  And the dude again whines that I'm "going after" communism and what I said "wasn't a revelation."  As if Internet comments have to be revelations now.  [eye roll] That was just him being a whiny, sullen bitch because he swooped in to correct me (which wasn't a "revelation" since someone else did the exact same thing) and got his ass handed back to him.  I told him I was just stating a belief and he didn't like it, he could get lost.  So he did. 

A few days later some pizza place in Troy had an ad on my Facebook wall and someone commented that they were using halal pepperoni but pork sausage, which would be hypocritical since Muslims aren't supposed to eat pigs.  And I commented, how do you know it's pork?  Maybe it's beef.  I mean other pizza places the beef pieces and pork pieces look pretty similar.  

So of course this dude just instantly goes off.  "Because I'm not a schmuck!  And beef doesn't have caraway seeds goofball."  (I don't know how he could see caraway seeds in that picture, but I guess his eyes were better.)  So I ask why he has to instantly be so rude to someone he doesn't know and get another irrational answer.  "You're questioning my expertise!"  Um...how would I know you have expertise on pizza toppings?  I don't know you.  Then I got another irrational response, so at that point I just blocked him.

Anyway, what I got thinking is too often on the Internet people act like rowdy football fans.  Both kinds of football really.  They see you're not wearing their colors, so they immediately shout at you and throw beer at you and then maybe take a swing at you.  It's pretty ridiculous that this often seems to be our default setting online.  We really need to dial it back from football hooligan to golf or tennis fan, just standing or sitting quietly and occasionally applauding softly.

Last June I wrote about something I saw on Twitter where a guy saw a woman wearing a Fangoria T-shirt and started mansplaining horror to her.  It turned out she actually worked for the magazine.  And what I was thinking was how this jerk deprived himself of an opportunity to have a real discussion, a real connection with another human being, because mansplaining was his default setting when seeing a woman in a horror magazine T-shirt.

In the same way, when our default setting is rowdy football hooligan, we can't have any real discussions or connections.  Some would sneer, "You can't have real connections online anyway!"  That is partially true but mostly I think people just use that as an excuse to justify being assholes.  "None of this is real so I can do whatever I want!"  But until AI takes over everything and you have chatbots insulting AI-created content, it is still people behind the posts.  When we start right off with personal attacks, it denies us the opportunity to have any real interaction.  It's just, "You're immature!"  "No I'm not!"  "Yes you are!"  "Nuh-uh!"  "Uh-huh!" like a playground.  It gets tiresome after 25 years and really you wish there was something more to it.

But real life isn't always much better.  Just once it'd be nice if I could go to or from work without some asshole being an asshole on the road.  One night I was going home on I-96 in the right lane and this car whizzes past me and veers inches in front of me...to then cut across the shoulder and off at an exit.  So was this lizard-brained idiot so intent on getting ahead of me that he almost missed his exit?  Or was it just so he'd feel he "won?"  I had never seen the car before, so if there was a competition, it was completely one-sided.

Or like a few days after Christmas I'm on Grand River after leaving work and this ass in a Camaro passes me in the center turn lane!  And then roars away...for all of a quarter-mile before he has to stop at the light where people are waiting.  Could we possibly learn from that?  Nah, as soon as he can, he roars up to another stoplight. [eye roll]

And every single time I go out there are people like that.  Just the other day I turn left out of my apartment complex and almost instantly some jerk from the trailer park next door almost smashes into me trying to turn left.  At first I thought maybe the idiot was just going to get in the merge lane, but then they kept going, to the point I had to to drive on the shoulder to escape.  You'd think by the time they got to the merge lane they'd see the car directly in their path or hear my horn warning them off, but nah.  Just try to keep right on coming.  It is a trailer park, so pretty high probability they were drunk and/or high even at eight in the morning.

I've lost track of how many times I've been sitting in my car in a parking lot to write and some jerk comes within an inch or two of scraping my car because they have to save a second or two by streaking across a parking lot in irregular lines.  Or there will be tons of space to park and someone has to park right next to me and just about scratch my paint or play some loud music or whatever.

People are so rude and dumb and impatient--like the one who destroyed my 2010 Focus because he couldn't wait a couple of minutes for the turn light to be green.  And afterwards never talked to me or barely even looked at me but did make sure to get his precious golf clubs out of his crossover. [eye roll]

Sometimes that rude, dumb, impatient idiot is me.  When you're on the other side, though, sometimes it gets to be annoying.  And dangerous.

In the end, though, why can't people just calm the fuck down and be civilized?  Why do some people have to make everything into some stupid competition?  I don't know.  I'm just asking the questions!  Serenity Now!

Where Are They Now?

In my last Comics I Read entry, I mentioned a book on the history of Spider-Man.  At the same time I reread some of my Scarlet Knight stories.  I got thinking that the Scarlet Knight series is like Spider-Man or Superman or one of those others only if they never had rebooted or soft rebooted or had any Crises or Secret Wars or any of that stuff.

Then I got thinking of how if that had continued, where would the characters be now?

The Scarlet Knight stories ended in 2010, so it would have been over 12 years since the last story.

Dr. Emma Earl:  When the last book ended, Emma was about 30 years old.  So today she would be 42 as her birthday is on Halloween.  By the end of the series she was the director of the Plaine Museum of Natural History - North Branch.  So after 12 years she would probably have advanced to the director of the main museum, which is her dream job.  And barring a significant injury she would also still be the Scarlet Knight, though probably not as agile as she once was.  And she has two daughters, her biological daughter Louise and her adopted daughter Joanna.  Her longtime boyfriend is Jim Rizzard, aka the Sewer Rat.  They probably aren't officially married but still in love with each other because they have a unique understanding of each other.

Louise Earl:  Since Louise was 2 at the end of the series, she'd be about 14 now.  And since she has the same level of intelligence as Emma, she'd be enrolling in college about now.  In Book 6, Future Shock, Emma went to the future and met her grown daughter, who had studied Egyptology and had sort of a one-sided rivalry with her mother.  But that was when Louise didn't know her biological father or that her mother was the Scarlet Knight and she didn't have a sister.  Since at the end of the series she does know her father and her mother's secret, she would probably have a healthier relationship with both of her parents and study some other scientific field.  She would also explore her more artistic side inherited from her father.  Still, Louise would have a more rebellious nature than her mother and be more of a handful than her adopted sister.

Joanna Reed:  At the end of the series, Joanna was 8, so she'd be about 20 now.  It would be obvious by now that Joanna is a clone of Emma from a different universe.  In that universe, Emma was 10 years older with a husband who was a physicist who died in an experiment.  When he died, versions of him across the multiverse began to hear each other's thoughts.  The other side effect was that the baby Emma carried inside of her was overwritten with her DNA, so essentially a clone.  Like the main universe Emma, Joanna would already have her doctorate, only in physics instead of geology.  She'd probably be starting a job at some high-tech firm or something like that.  She can't, however, be the Scarlet Knight because she can't use magic items.  But she does have her own psychic abilities, especially the ability to talk to alternate universe versions of herself.  She can even send people from one universe to another.  This usually took a lot of effort for her, to the point she actually died for a minute once, but as she's gotten older, it's gotten easier for her, and would allow her and others to explore the multiverse.  Maybe she'd be gay or maybe she'd be straight, but she'd be a little less inhibited about that stuff than her adopted mother.

Jim Rizzard aka The Sewer Rat:  I never said how old exactly he is, but he's older than Emma, so by this point he'd probably be close to 50.  I'd like to think that being reunited with his girlfriend and daughter at the end of book 8 would lead him to making some changes so he isn't living in a sewer.  At the same time he would probably maintain some contact with the tribes of mutant rats in the sewers.  It's not really important to him or Emma that they get married, but they would still be together.  He'd probably work on art of some sort that while it might not make a lot of money helps to satisfy him.

Becky Beech:  Becky is a year older than Emma, so she'd be 43.  At the end of the series she turned down a job in Washington to stay in Rampart City.  Probably by now she'd be on the city council or maybe even the mayor.  In the 7th book she was shot and had an emergency hysterectomy, but some of her eggs were saved, so Emma or someone else could be the surrogate mother to a son or daughter.  And that son or daughter is probably a good friend of Louise--maybe they start becoming more than friends?  She and Dan Dreyfus have probably been married for a while too.

Dan Dreyfus:  Dan is probably about the same age as Jim Rizzard, so around 50.  He used to spend a lot of time digging in Egypt, but has probably settled into more of a family guy mode to do more teaching than field work.  Somehow he still doesn't know Emma is the Scarlet Knight.

Amanda Murdoch:  I don't think I said how old she was, but she was in college in Book 5, so she'd be in her mid-to-late-30s.  In book 7 she became a cop and by now would have risen to a lieutenant or captain of detectives.  She'd have basically taken over the role of Lottie Donovan in the series as the Scarlet Knight's contact in the police.  And like Donovan she's a cynical loner type but also a good, honest cop.

Megan Putnam:  In book 5, Megan is a student of Emma's who goes missing after a bad date leads to her being humiliated.  For part of the book Emma actually thinks she is Megan before Jim brings her back.  At the end of that book, Megan returned to school to study architecture.  Like her former roommate Amanda, she's in her mid-to-late-30s.  By this point her serious asthma is more under control and she's more confident than she used to be.  She's probably a successful architect and married and maybe even has a kid or two.  If any of the characters would take up the Scarlet Knight mantle, it would be her because she has Emma's temperament and goodness, plus she could use magic and isn't a child.

Agnes Chiostro & Akako:  Aggie was an over 500-year-old witch in her universe and Akako, her wife, is a version of Joanna's father from a universe where the Japanese colonized America and are the dominant superpower.  At the end of book 8, they both moved to Joanna's universe, which is a universe without magic and superheroes and crazy stuff like that.  When they moved there, they were both in their early-to-mid 20s so they'd be about in their mid-30s.  Aggie was a college student so she'd probably have some normal-ish job and Akako was a tattoo artist so maybe she's still doing that.  Otherwise they try to look after their daughter Renee and maybe they've even adopted another kid or two.  

Renee Chiostro:  Renee was 1 at the end of book 8, so she'd be 13 now.  In her birth universe she has the ability to siphon magic and then use it as her own, which is why her parents took her to a universe where there is no magic.  So they've been trying to raise her as a normal kid.  But still she probably feels kinda alienated for reasons she doesn't fully understand and there have probably been attempts to kidnap her because of her potential.  At some point soon she'd need to learn the truth and start learning to handle it.

Tim Cooper:  Tim was from Emma's universe, where he worked for an Elon Musk-type douchebag who tried to use one of Tim's inventions to start World War III.  Tim went to jail for a couple of years and was paroled shortly before the start of book 8.  With Akako's help, he traveled to another universe to gather weapons to help topple the evil goddess Isis.  There he built sort of like an Iron Man suit to replicate some of the Scarlet Knight's abilities.  At the end of book 8, he returned to that alternate universe to be the Scarlet Knight there.  He'd be about 40 there and his ally in the police force is also his wife, an alternate universe version of Aggie's sister Sylvia, who died in book 5.  Tim also has a job working for a tech company founded by his genius partner, Renee Kim.  Tim's mechanical Scarlet Knight was never as agile as Emma's magic armor but he and Renee have probably made modifications so he can keep fighting, but for how long?  That's what he and Sylvia argue about.  Maybe they have a kid or two, though I think Tim would be more into that than Sylvia, so maybe not.  Or maybe they adopt.

Renee Kim:  This Renee is from an alternate universe where the Swedish founded Rampart City (calling it New Stockholm) and there are other differences like they have something called Olga's instead of McDonald's and Tennessee Chicken instead of KFC and IKEA is basically their Walmart.  Anyway, Renee was only about 11 at the end of book 8 so she'd be about 23 but like Emma she's a genius who was already going off to college at 11, so by now she's got a PhD in mechanical engineering and made a fortune starting her own tech company along with Tim Cooper.  She helped build Tim's original mechanical Scarlet Knight and has been helping him to keep it upgraded with tech she and Tim have created for their company.  While she had a crush on Tim when she was 11, by now she's probably moved on to someone her own age.

(If you're confused, Renee Kim and Renee Chiostro are not the same person or even different versions of each other from other universes.  Renee Chiostro was actually named after Renee Kim when she helped Aggie and Akako get back to their universe in book 5.  Plus Renee is a French name and Aggie is originally from France.  Does that all make it clear as mud?)

And there's also the time-hopping Marie Marsh, who died in the original version of the second book but survived the rewrite, so she's out there too.  I thought it'd be cool to have Joanna and Marie team up to explore time and space since once can time travel and the other go to parallel universes.  I doubt there'd be any interest in a series about that but maybe if I spun the characters off and just used the concepts without all the backstory.

So that's the main characters from the Scarlet Knight series.  What about Chances Are?  That series was written in 2011 but really it probably would have ended about 2015-2016 because it takes place over about 5 years.

Stacey Chance:  When it started, Stacey was a 50-ish guy named Steve Fischer who turns into an 18-year-old girl.  So chronologically she'd be about 30, though at the end of the last book she was basically rebooted so her body would be more mid-20s than 30.  In Another Chance, she has a cameo that indicates she's a singer and still sometimes works at the Second Chance boutique.  She'd probably still be singing and maybe doing something else on the side and married to Dr. Robert Macintosh.  Maybe by now she has a child--or not.  It's kind of complicated for her.

Madison:  Madison is Steve's biological daughter.  She was Stacey's friend and surrogate sister for the first two books and then in the last one found out Stacey is her father.  She married her lover, Grace, who got pregnant with Stacey's husband.  So 5-6 years from then she'd also be around 33 and struggling to raise the kid and maintain a career as a reporter.  With how that industry is, maybe she has a podcast or blog or something instead of working for a newspaper.

Grace:  In the first book we say Grace is about 29, so by now she'd be about 40.  She has her own psychology practice and lives with Madison and their child (or children).  As Grace has struggled with adulting in the past, she's about due for a midlife crisis.

Dr. Robert Macintosh:  I never said how old Dr. Mac is, but he's obviously older than Stacey.  He's closer to Grace's age, so probably in his late 30s or early 40s.  He's a child psychologist with his own practice and has a nephew named Darren that he and Stacey take care of.  And maybe they have a child of their own or at least he'd want one, which could be a source of tension.  He's also the father of Grace & Madison's child, though he tries not to get too involved in that.

Jake & Tess Madigan:  Jake is Steve Fischer's former partner and Tess is Jake's wife.  Stacey stayed with them until she married Dr. Mac.  Madison stayed with them sometimes too.  Since they were in their 50s at the start, they'd be in their 60s now.  Jake would be retired from the force and maybe he and Tess move to Florida or something like that.

The one I've thought about but haven't settled on much is Where You Belong.  The book ended in 2008 and so it'd be about 15 years later.

Frost Devereaux:  Frost was born November 26, 1973, so he'd be 49--almost 50!  When the book ended, he had broken up with both of the Maguire twins and was moving with a friend to Washington DC.  So if I did another book it'd be about what Frost does with his friend and friend's kid while living in DC during the Obama administration.  Then whatever he does when Trump took over and after that.  I haven't really thought all that much about it.

Frances & Francis Maguire:  They were pretty much the same age as Frost so they'd also be going on 50.  Frank would be picking up after the 2008 market crash.  Then whatever happens during the Obama years and then things might get interesting for him with Trump being gay and more of a Republican.  His sister Frankie would probably have hope for better things when Obama takes over and be a big Hillary booster even though she wasn't a fan of her husband.  She would probably get radicalized again when Trump takes over.

Roble Madobe:  I don't remember if I said how old Frost's friend the Somalian writer is.  After a bestselling, award-winning book, Puntland, he'd probably go to work for the Obama administration.  Then things would probably get dangerous for him with Trump's xenophobic rhetoric.  Maybe some dudes string him up or something if we want to go in that dark direction.

Abby Kapanen:  Abby is a reporter whom Frost went to DC with at the end of the book.  She was pregnant with a baby that I'm pretty sure I didn't say if it's a boy or girl.  So she'd work for the Washington Post or whatever for a little while.  Then maybe she'd get laid off.  Maybe she'd get embroiled in some "fake news" and stuff.  Meanwhile her and Frost would be raising the kid.

Kid:  Since the kid wasn't born yet, it would be 14 now.  The situation at home would be weird sometimes since Abby and Frost aren't married and Frost isn't his/her daddy.  With the Roe v Wade repeal, if the kid is a girl maybe she would get knocked up and they'd have to deal with that.

Anyway, I haven't give it a lot of thought.  I'd really need to figure out what the point of the story would be and then all the things that would spin out of that.  And then it'd take a long time to write and probably no one would care.

Of course if we were doing this like The Force Awakens or stuff like that we'd have to make everyone sad and miserable.  I wouldn't really want to do it that way for any of these.

Sims vs AI Art: The Most Pointless Post

 I'm sure no one will care, but when my "friend" Al Sirois mentioned an AI art generator called Wombo, I decided to try it.  You can pick different styles of art and put a picture to use as a reference.  It seemed to work better than Stable Diffusion or another one.

Since you can load a picture, I got the idea to try feeding it Sims I made in Sims 2-4 and see how they'd look.  Some look pretty awesome.

Here's Stacey Chance from Sims 3:

And here's Stacey Chance in AI Art:

Pretty cool even if there's some uncanny valley.  I'm sure other people would like these other ones better:

Here's the Sims 4 Stacey:

And here are the AI Art ones that maybe aren't quite as good as the Sims 3 ones:

I tried a few other filters for a few of them too:

For some reason, the AI Art really struggled with Emma Earl.  It seems to struggle with glasses in general, like it doesn't actually know what glasses look like.

Anyway, here's Sims 2 & 3 Emma:

And here's AI Art Emma:

Not a great improvement.

Here's one of my favorites:  Geek Girl Val in Sims 2:

And here's the AI versions:

Here's my cougar from Transformed Into a Cougar in Sims 4:

And here she is in AI Art:

Here's the purple-haired Goth girl from Transformed into a Goth Girl in the Sims 4:

And here she is in AI Art:

That last one I used the "Comics" filter instead of a more realistic one.

Here's a blonde bimbo in the Sims 4:

And here it is in AI Art:

I forget which story this Asian girl is from, but I made her in the Sims 4:

And here she is in AI Art:

Here's Hitter from Girl Power 3:  League of Evil in the Sims 3:

The AI Art made her look about 8 years old for some reason:

I tried a real picture I used for My Wife Changed Me Into a Pinup Girl just to see what it'd do.  Here's the picture:

And here's what Wombo did:

Pretty good except for the weird hat thing.

Here are versions of the SDF-1 from Robotech in AI Art:

And an armored Veritech robot:

And the Autobot Grapple:

Pretty fun stuff.  In a few weeks I answer that age-old question:  what if you take pictures from one AI generator and use them in another AI generator?  The results are...disappointing, really.