>apologies for the non-monster pics
Turns out I do have some free tries with NovelAI. 30 to be exact. First I experimented with some gyaru loli that was recommended as an "inspiration". I found it hilarious how the free trial was censored, but also tried to obey the lewd prompts as well, resulting in... well, you see what.
Then I tried generating my rabbit character... Then I looked at my art... And it left a pit in my stomach. A simple mediocre drawing takes me like 90 minutes, the computer can do so much better in mere seconds. Sure, it needs polishing, but after polishing you have a reliable, insanely fast way to create any drawing. Whereas by hand every single simple drawing takes literal hours. Sure, you can talk about "soul" or whatever, and I do think my drawings have it, but so do the gens, so what? What can justify over 1000x increase in speed, all the while ALSO increasing the quality? I never even made a single cent with drawing, yet I still feel replaceable now. I thought I got over AI, and accepted "no rules just tools", but seeing it firsthand be better than me at drawing my character still had an effect. Damn...