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’m surprised at the amount of billy asks you get. Does it mean that they’re popular? All i know for sure is that they certainly seem to interest a lot of people. And i agree that they really do have the bones for a fascinating character, but the developers couldn’t be bothered to build something from those bones because 1) sim shenanigans, you can’t have your self insert react strongly if you’re meant to project 100% onto them, but billy does have traits that keep getting mentioned by more than one person plus the few actions they do choose and a backstory, which doesn’t seem like cardboard to me imho, but also 2) earl gray, and what invader added is the most damning detail of them all. Or rather, not a detail, but the anchor that sank billy. I know we’re meant to keep flamey and edelgard separate in our minds because edelgard is marketed as a poor sad waifu you must feel compelled to rescue, but it doesn’t erase her actions or flamey. When we have evidence saying that silver snow is meant to be the primary marketed canon route and so much of the conflicts across two games come down to the actions of one person plus a poorly thought out loptous stand in, all it tells me is that the main character was doomed to fail because the developers could not decide how to write a school mystery + romance of the three kingdoms sympathetic to cao cao so they tried to “fix” that or make it “gray” by turning it into a dating sim to artificially raise the emotional stakes. At least to me it says they didn’t have confidence in billy as a main character at all because so much of it hinges on centering edelgard and the players picking faves out of the rest of the cast, and to make it more insulting the compensation is being able to kill billy in the spin off? I myself don’t really have any big faves in the games because i only play them casually and read your blog, but what i do know is that it makes me hate edelgard for essentially being the gravitational center of the games like a narrative black hole and the developers being too cowardly to really cement her as a villain, and it doesn’t make me like warriors either because it doubles down on trying to explain her position instead of telling a story and because shez fans are extremely annoying and rude online, no surprise that many are also edelgard fans.
I'd say it's a cumulation of everything!
I think the fandom (myself included!) might have been a bit harsh on Billy because of their avatar status, even if I still think Rhea's S-support "aloneb4u" is shit and Seteth not giving any fucks about her and centering his support and convos on "we must find her so she will reveal da truth 2 u" is bonkers and both of those instances can't be only attributed to Hresvelg Grey but to "only the player is important", like the theory i came up with the self-insert scissors.
But yeah, I feel like at one point, Supreme Leader hijacked the "main character" or "character at the center of the plot we want to tell" spot, all gravitas went to "can u kill the student who loves u and bear with the sad uwus for the rest of your run ??" instead of, you know, the greater plot Nopes teased us with a Larva vs Sothis that never happened?
I compared FE16's story to many things earlier on, but the general thing is "why are we talking and following the least interesting parts of Fodlan", Supreme Leader's war of unification is meh, bias or no bias, I would have loved to see a War of Heroes game, or even a game set during the Sothis vs Agartha era (or the two why not) - but here we just have Ashnard lite with an uwu glazing, without even tackling a traditional or underlaying issue from the FE series about coexistence between people and acceptance and whatnot.
(the reason why AM is still, imo, a letdown because it ignores the dragon in the room)
What was Billy supposed to be? Supreme Leader's luf interest? A character that can conceptually fall (if they pick Tru Piss) thus can ascend in other routes? A self insert? The character you're supposed to navigate the world with?
I think Billy being a silent protag was a disservice to them - despite all of its faults, Nopes at least gives more light to Billy and it's refreshing, even if the game will never add 1+1 because Hresvelg Grey.
TBH I think Fodlan has its own share of fans being annoying regardless of the character they support - and while Barney is pretty chatty, ultimately Barney is the deviant art OC with two swords because why not, a sekrit past that is never explained and somehow stronger than everyone who is actually as empty as an oyster shell. We don't know what Barney wants, to be a merc? Yeah, but why? Is it because Barney is searching for somewhere to belong - just like Billy in a way - ?
As for the cardboard mention, it's most likely again in relation to Hresvelg Grey and Fe Fodlan's writing - the games don't spend enough time to build a sense of friendship and camaraderie between the cast to make the "betrayal" hurt or even the "y must we kill people we knew :'( " meaningful, so we only have the "wah sensei why didn't you pick me :(" or the general "i'm sad to fight against you" but like, mate, who are you? Why are you lamenting having to fight against Billy - someone who is opposing/invading your country and everything you stand for - like Billy and 12 months in Rhea's rocky mansion meant so much to you, much more than the 17 years of life (with acquaintances, friends, family, etc) you had?
But it's also in relation to Hresvelg Grey and the silent protag - why no one can give a reason - save for Supreme Leader "lizards BaD + MAGA" - to join this route, heck, not even Billy can say why they joined this route...
In French we have a saying that goes "comparaison n'est pas raison" more or less meaning you can't always compare things bcs context and all, but after TS's protag Serenor - who also has Gary Stu moments! - Billy not saying a thing about Supreme Leader's nonsense, frowning at Dimitri and being silent during Claude's monologues is... annoying.
But when Billy isn't in Fodlan games, they can talk and there's still the forbidden rule of not adding numbers - never ! - but they shine more.
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Holy shit. Thank you guys for all of the asks. I got exactly 50!
I meant to respond to them when I got home from work last night, but I didn’t have enough energy by the time I was done reading these. I’m still incredibly exhausted today, it’s like all of the energy is completely sapped out of me since I was in the emergency room the other day.
The heavy ache in my chest definitely lessened while I was focused on reading what you guys wrote last night. The reminders that my TF F/Os still love me is something I really need to hear, something I probably have to tell myself multiple times... I spent so long being conditioned to believe otherwise.
A few of you also reminded me that Starscream had gone through heavy abuse, and he wouldn’t support someone who treated me the way Megatron treats him. It helped me feel better... I think that’s what got through to me the most. I’ve seen so many commissions/fics my ex-friend showed me where she was being manipulative, and that she would be loved for it. Seeing all of that visual representation of her being so tenderly loved by these characters while she was hurting me at the same time, for so many months, it really did some damage and made me internalize the belief that all transformers characters would want to hurt me the same way and love her for it. Especially when the characters she commissioned and talked about the most often were forming into PTSD triggers. For almost a year now, I have just assumed that all of those characters she wrote and commissioned, including Starscream, would encourage her to hurt me and that they would love to see me getting hurt. I don’t choose to feel this way, it’s just... trauma.
But a few of you wrote about how... canonically, Starscream was so fucking pissed when he was abused, especially in RiD2015!! He was so broken up and angry just like I am!! His entire 3 episodes focused on him repeating how unfairly he was treated, how much he wanted to hurt Megatron for all the times he was put through emotional/physical pain, how years had passed since he escaped being tied to his abuser and yet he was so, so angry and still worried that he wasn’t strong enough bc that is what he was conditioned to believe for millions of years. I want to think that same bot would look at me and see himself in me, and hold my hand through this and tell me it’s gonna be okay and it’s gonna get better and he’d never want to treat me the way my abuser treated me. How could he bear it if his little starflower looked at him the way that he looks at Megatron? I don’t want to think he would support my abuser’s actions, no matter how many fics or commissions she has stating otherwise. When I escaped a toxic situation with someone else 3 years ago, I turned to Starscream for this exact same reason, I looked to him for support. He helped me get through it. Now, I need him again after facing treatment that was absolutely horrific, except I’ve been conditioned to believe he would hurt me too; I just feel so sad when I look at him and I wish I could feel loved by him again. It’s been really, really, really hard. Hearing other people tell me that he loves me and would never want to hurt me really helps, I need to be reminded of that, because I absolutely can’t believe it when I try to tell myself.
I’m sorry I’m not able to respond to your asks at the moment, I’m extremely exhausted from. everything. Today has been difficult as well so I will be offline for the rest of the night. I don’t know if I’ll be online tomorrow.
I’m not 100% sure when the commissions will open up, I was really hoping it would happen this week but I didn’t expect to have that panic attack Tuesday, it really drained me. I am hoping that I’ll have comms open by next week, it all depends on how I’m feeling. I might spend more time offline to limit seeing any potential triggers bc I’ve been very fragile since I went to the emergency room, things that normally wouldn’t make me spiral before are probably things that I will have more trouble handling right now, at least until I can calm down again. Normally it takes me about 3 to 5 days to calm down from a severe panic attack like that. But I gotta spend another $400 on new glasses tomorrow morning so... I really do need to open comms soon :’) They will absolutely be open within the next 2 weeks, I just don’t know exactly when. Anyway, thank you guys again for the nice messages, I really needed them and you helped me feel less alone last night ❤
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