at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
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I think a thing that people get wrong about Jason's anger is that it's not explosive.
It's cold. Jason isn't the type of person who storms off at every little thing or goes throwing tantrums and setting things on fire blindfully.
He's the type of person who's very practical. He keeps to himself, always. You rarely see issues where Jason's anger is reactive at the moment where the trigger happens to him. If you see his character up close, most of the time when he's triggered his reaction is calm. Even cold.
He gets triggered -> He keeps to himself → He makes a plan → And then he reacts.
Jason's anger being something explosive and out of character and out of place is actually how other people (characters) see it, because they have no idea on how it's playing out on Jason's head.
And that's a thing you can see operating since he was a child.
Where the only exceptions about this effect is either when someone he believes needs his help is involved.
See Nightwing Annual (2021)
But In Batman #411 when Jason learns the fact that Two-Face was responsible for his father's death and Bruce was keeping that from him as a secret his first reaction isn't to blow up on him.
Was to seethe.
Bruce goes up home after dealing with a Two-Face case (in my field we call that poetic irony) and asks Alfred where Jason is, Alfred's answer is that he's been sleeping all day (which is a conclusion that Alfred drew probably after going to check on Jason and seeing him in fact on his bed all day).
But when you see the next panel, even though he is on the bed, He's fully awake and both his expression and his body language shows that he's in fact angry.
This is the first time he appears again in the comics after learning that Two Face killed his dad.
Jason doesn't go towards Bruce immediately to demand an explanation or ask why he did this, or even to throw the truth on his face.
(Which could be debatable that that's something the Dick would usually do, but I'm not that literate on Dick's comics)
His reaction wasn't immediate.
His reaction was to go to his bed and stay quiet. Jason stayed calm and collected the whole trip until meeting Two Face again.
But the moment Jason as Robin has the opportunity to get his hands on Two-Face he does this
From Bruce, and maybe Alfred's perspective it could be interpreted as out of place or him storming off.
But it isn't. Jason was able to keep his cool (even though he shut off), until he was face a face to Two Face.
Does that mean he planned that to happen?
That's debatable, in any moment of this issue it is shown that Jason was actually planning to get to Two Face and do this. I my personal opinion, other and much more plausible explanation is: That he was in fact trying to keep to himself but couldn't hold back the moment that he saw his dad's murder.
You can see the same thing happening as Jason learns that Batman got another Robin in Red Hood: Lost Days.
Talia asks "You all right?" and Jason's first answer is "Sure Why Wouldn't I Be Alright?"
When he's alone he finally has the moment to break down.
(Actually both Red Hood: The lost days and Batman: Under the Red Hood are great case studies on how that usually play out on Jason's head.)
Jason is way more in control of his emotions than people ever give him credit for. The thing is that Jason holds it back until he either blows off or is capable to throw it back in someone's face.
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me, after clearing my schedule to write:
uhhhh it was raining... and dark (and also night) and um... cold i guess?? anyway, something dramatic~ happened
me, stuck in traffic on my way to work:
Rain tumbled through midnight leaves, casting the forest in liquid moonlight. A low growl shook the horizon. Death had come.
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Okay so who’s gonna write the fic where the bat bites slowly change Steve and Eddie?
It starts with clinginess. Eddie’s possessive of his things, always has been, especially his Sweetheart, his Precious, his guitar. But he gets possessive about smaller things—his dice, his rings, his vest, sure, that all makes sense; but t-shirts? Which he has plenty of? That doesn’t make much sense.
Steve’s always been more chill, but he’s been more possessive lately; curling an arm over Robin’s shoulders, not letting her go until she practically rips him off of herself.
When they’re together, though? It just feels natural to sit together, to be curled up so tight they can hardly tell which limb is whose.
It all comes to a head the day Dustin grabs at Steve’s arm, when he’s tangled with Eddie…
…and Eddie hisses at him.
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Eddie gets stuck in a time loop but has no idea why, his day is normal, there's not even a test that day that he can use this to pass. After a few time loops he says fuck it let's start doing fun things, starting with talking to his crush, the lovely Fallen King Steve. After a few loops Steve starts talking back, soon there's whole loops with just them hanging out.
Little does Eddie know, Steve is in a time loop too trying to stop the Upside Down once again, he's just having a hard time caring when there's this sweet metalhead chatting him up everyday. Maybe he deserves to waste a few loops.
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i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.
most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.
it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.
and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).
i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.
grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.
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