This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/pillowcase-of-eels on 2024-05-05 13:23:54.

[Note to mods: I am SO SORRY to break the rules, but my comments are too formatting-heavy - Reddit keeps giving me error messages when I try to post them, splitting the length changes nothing, and the formatting (embedded links, etc) DOES NOT carry over when I copy-paste and try again. I've been at it for an hour. I decided to just make a separate post before I lose my mind - hope that's alright.]

“MIXED MEDIA AND ACRYLIC PAINT ON CANVAS”

You're so easy to read

But the book is boring me (“Misery Loves Company”, 2006 🎵)

It is June 2023. An alert pings on your Instagram. Butter my muffins – your problematic teenage fave just posted! What has she been up to?

It's been almost a full year since EA's last communiqué. She was going to do an AMA on her new blog, Stark Raving Sane. Fans would submit their burning questions, and she would select twenty of them to answer in her next post. You could fill out a form with your name and email and question. Clearly, she didn't like some of the questions.

(Since then, the one interesting that's happened in the Asylum was when EA was listed as the opening act for one single Maroon 5 show in the Netherlands 📝, but that turned out to be – most likely – a Spotify glitch.)

You tap the notification to check out EA's comeback post. The caption reads:

Introducing 'My Heart Is A Weapon Of War,' and I painted her and I love her. Medium: Mixed media - digital (Procreate, Maya 3D Sculpting) and acrylic paint on canvas.” 🪞📝

The art style is yassified-oil-portrait-realistic, unlike anything EA has ever drawn or painted before.🪞 It's a pastel-colored portrait of a button-nosed, elven-faced woman shaped like a Rococo centerpiece. She's got an ethereal smile, a sheer pink heart on her cheek, flowers in her towering hair, and rockin' anime titties. The gold lamé of her skin-tight top blends with her actual skin at the neck, and her arms are non-existent.

You rub your eyes. This surely isn't... no. She can't possibly be serious.People in the comments are trying to be diplomatic:

EA, I've always loved and defended you, but this is clearly AI.

EA does not respond to the diplomatic people in the comments. Instead, she posts another portrait of a diaphanous woman with a cheek-heart and a weirdly levitating necklace. In another post:

Oh, if anyone is curious about my general process, I'm happy to share, as I'd love to see other artists try it. It is thus: I start in Procreate with an Apple pencil, move over to Maya/Zbrush and do some 3D sculpting and lighting to flesh things out and create otherworldly elements in incredible detail, go back to Procreate and... 📝

Commenters are now having mostly civilized back-and-forths over the ethical implications of AI. Many hope EA is reading, wondering if she is aware of those issues. Many say everything would probably be fine if EA would just admit to using AI.

EA admits to nothing and apologizes to no one. No: EA posts more art, in a slightly different, less generic style, that still looks nothing like her own. “Digital painting”, she maintains. Many are imploring EA to please end this charade and stop insulting her fans' intelligence. But then again, some fans are defending her (“She literally just explained that it was digital painting!”), so maybe she's right to do it...?

EA posts a picture of a “buried treasure” that she just randomly chanced upon – a pencil drawing from her teens, once posted on her website in the early 2000s. (It's the one I linked to earlier – the one with the “EAF” signature, and the false age, and the fire reference. Yes, this is the context in which she was posting that.) She's posting it, à propos nothing, because she literally just noticed that she still draws eyebrows the exact same way to this day! In fact, you can clearly, definitely, unmistakably see a very similar eyebrow shape in her most recent art! See?

People are gobsmacked, and dragging her to filth. Desperate loyalists are gently pressing EA to please just post a Procreate timelapse of one of her new “digital paintings”, so that people will stop calling her a fraud.

EA is happy to oblige, and posts a mini-timelapse 📺📝 of what looks like color splotches and blurs being removed from the top layer of a finished piece with the eraser tool.

I'm shriveling with second-hand embarrassment on her behalf. How is she not mortified...? 🐀

EA keeps posting. More generic AI girlies with pale skin and sad eyes, more abstract sploshes that she calls her “morning pages”, but also more Asylum member-berries (“...the original Unlaced violin part... someone please learn this!” 📝) – and more of the massive, medical-themed mixed-media sculptures that she started making the year before, even presenting a few pieces at Art Basel 2022. The difference in style is obvious to everyone but her.

She ignores the peasants screeching about AI, won't even deign address the existence of such a thing; it's all EA, OK? OK. She makes it look easy, because it is to her:

4 hours start to finish in Procreate only with Apple pencil. Did you know that [the art for a card deck she released in 2019] was the first thing I drew on an iPad, because I was recovering from a disastrous TMJ jaw surgery and my face was bandaged and I couldn't get out of bed? I didn't either until just now. 📝

...Because... because you just made it up...??

People are going full tinfoil hat now – she has to be doing this on purpose, right? She just has to.

I can’t help but find it extremely suspicious that she came back after a year of inactivity just to drop the very obviously AI-generated art pieces, refuse to forwardly acknowledge the controversy, and then immediately move on to posting a bunch of artwork that is very clearly hers. A part of me is genuinely convinced that this is some sort of publicity stunt... 🐀

What other explanation could there be to this madness?

Not everyone loves the modern art sculptures, but those are definitely her work. Some of them really have The Vibe. About a piece entitled “Manic Phase” 📺📝:

This is (...) a blueprint of brain activity during a very... interesting period. Just one of many over several years, until a very particular combination of chemicals conspired to bury them just below the surface (...) Every single day, right now, I am afraid of going back there.

Hoop, there it is. Girl... you just spent days covering every inch of a canvas the size of a patio table with spirals of text from your decade-old journals written in minuscule all-caps, after a disastrous three-week bender of trying to pass off obvious AI art as your own. Is it perhaps possible that you may be “there” already...?

The more art EA posts, the angrier people get, and the harder she doubles down. Some AI pieces are accompanied by lengthy blog posts where she elaborates on their meanings. Mostly old Asylum talking points and metaphysical ramblings (that, in some cases, only seem loosely related to the art), but also some concerning news... and another spoonful of denial for the road:

Biscuits has no tits and neither do I at present. I’ve lost them, along with my arse, and most of my muscle mass, because that’s what happens when you’ve got an auto-immune issue and it hurts to eat because your body is attacking itself. (I never say auto-immune “disease” because it’s an ugly brown and I don’t like the way the “s” that is really a “z” feels in my mouth, and it also sounds unnecessarily dramatic and that embarrasses me). I prefer not to talk about this. With anyone. I will fix it. I am fixing it. And I will be able to sing and dance. And that is all.” (“Biscuits” - Blog entry 📝)

...Well shit.

Despite her track record and the context of this disclosure, not many fans accuse EA of malingering (well, okay, some are really pissed and they do 🐀). An auto-immune disease does line up with things she has mentioned in passing for years (bad blood-works, diet restrictions, hospital visits...) – and she did look so thin in those Art Basel pictures that some people accused her covertly creating thinspo.

In light of this, some fans choose to cut EA some slack, or at least temper their disappointment with [earnest sympathy...

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