the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.
people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.
"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."
the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.
the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.
at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.
"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.
this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.
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Kaeya had always been an efficient and hard-working individual (he had to be to support Diluc in the background as his brother rose thru the ranks after all).
He has so much free time because he completes all his work way ahead of schedule. And if he still has enough time, he adds more to the workload in secret.
And once all of that was done and over with, he makes time for everyone. He has to. He feels as if every moment has to be given to someone else.
No one knows how he does it. No one has to know.
Every mission has a dozen strategies in line, and every battle plan is made with efficiency in mind. His perfect record will not be tarnished. He can't risk it (even if it baffles others that he would willingly activate a ruin guard just to prevent a failed mission. Jean disagrees with his methods, but Kaeya can say that the results say otherwise)
He needs to be quick.
Efficient.
Perfect.
And so he comes and goes like the wind.
Kaeya values time because he knew every second counted. He can't just stand there as if he were frozen. Time could run out in an instant.
Kaeya had only been late once his entire life.
He'd rather he never be late ever again.
It took one day of being of being imperfect for everything to fall apart. On that tragic day...had he gotten there on time... then maybe...
.
.
.
" Come on, let's get moving, traveler. We're not frozen in place after all. " Kaeya teasingly says. He stiffles a giggle at the traveler's exhasperated sigh.
"Yeah yeah, we've heard enough of you calling us a slacker. Can't you be a bit more patient?" Paimon whines at him.
Kaeya snorts, but acquiesces, hiding the shaking of his hands at the thought of being idle.
He imagines hearing a clock ticking.
Kaeya knows that that is his own problem. He tries his hardest to relax as he waits for the traveler to finish whatever they're making on the alchemy table because, seriously, it is supposed to be a relaxing day. There's nothing major going on, and his schedule is once again empty as intended. What's the hurry?
Kaeya taps his foot on the ground as he waits. He wishes he could take his own damn advice when he tells others to relax.
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What if Without A Cure were a different type of poison, like a cursed potion that will consume a person's body & mind, slowly and painfully while they transform into a creature with little to nothing left of their human consciousness, ending up like a beast. Like a dragon.
A victim of this version of Without A Cure would suffer a series of gradual changes on their body: developing scales all over their skin, claws growing in their hands and feet, painful reament of bones, teeths being replaced by fangs, several migraines for growing horns out of their skull, and a tail.
What if the sessions of qi transfers with Liu Qingge and the herbs can only do so much to keep the transformation at bay, forcing the changes on Shen Qingqiu's body to step back for a bit. But as the days go by, these changes come again slowly, each time a little bit harder to fight. And the flares of Without A Cure make these changes happen at a violent speed.
He can hide the worst of it with a veil, gloves and a hat while being in CQ mountain. Having LQG and MQF helping him almost daily. But the peaklords (Specially YQY) do their best to keep eveything as private as possible. No one truly knew what this Without A Cure was capable of, since the few records of it's victims mark them as dead within a few days of being posioned, having "strange deformities in their bodies" as the only clue.
Maybe Binghe never really knew the true effects of the so called poison with no cure. He only knew his master sacrificed his cultivation and now needs qi transfers to help him endure the pain.
SQQ never really tolds him, he saw how guilty Binghe felt about the whole deal, telling him that he was slowly becoming a feral creature will only make the poor boy feel worse!! Unthinkable. It wasn't so bad anyways (it was) for now his draconic features are minimal, almost non existent after the qi transfers, everything is going to be fine. Maybe becoming a dragon can help him avoid death? Uh that's a problem for the SQQ of the future.
After the conference, SQQ's grief made things a little bit worse. Just a little. The pace of the cursed posion is becoming more bothersome as days passed by, now he can't go anywhere without a veil covering his face, and the little poking horns on this head can't be hiden by his hair anymore. Maybe he just should die and come back in his plant body to put a stop to this prickly curse. A lot of people, in or outside of the mountain think he covers his face out of vanity or bc of an ugly scar. Some weirdos are even trying to take a peek under his veil. Is this what Liu Mingyan has to endure everyday?! The urge to bite out those curious fingers is becoming stronger.
Then, what if when Huan Hua Palace takes him as a prisoner, a flare up happens and with no one to help him w a qi transfer, his horns grow severly inches long, his hands and feet are completly covered in grey scales, big black claws ripping his robes because his skin is itching like hell thanks to the new scales. His pupils become slit, his tail pokes out of the rags that his clothes became, everything is a mess and no one can see him like these.
What if when Sqq self detonates, instead of dying he sacrificed what was left of his humanity to stabilize Binghe, and he completly transformates into a huge white dragon, flying away into the sky, disappearing in the distance. Leaving a very confused half demon and a devastated war god behind, memories of his human life becoming blurry and far away.
What if some despicable palace master and a particular greedy demon royalty of the nothern region put a price on the head of the misterious white dragon that has been seen floating around the skies?
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Idk this is an idea for a bingliushen story. With without a cure having the effects of the first drafts that airplane had thought in this AU, when PIDW was not so popular yet. And no, the heavenly pillar can't cure this. In my brain this version of without a cure is older than the concept of dual cultivation with a heavenly demon being a cure to almost everything, so no magic dick can solve it, they would have to find another way.
In my mind Sqq's dragon form is like this from Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Pretty big lizzard.
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The Fourteen Hidden or "Bug" Audios In Order, With Reasoning
(i think! I'm fairly confident in this! I'm willing to Debate!)
12-14 / Howdy & Barnaby
[we know that Barnaby and Wally go to Howdy's every morning]
8-14 / Eddie & Frank
[the post office is right across from Howdy's]
6-14 / Julie & Frank
[Wally isn't scared of bugs, so he could be recruited to help with Frank's gardening problem]
1-14 / Howdy & Poppy
[Howdy mentions that he has a shipment waiting for his signature]
3-14 / Howdy & Sally
[it's possible that Wally went to Howdy's to get something for the beetles]
13-14 / Howdy & Eddie
[it looks like Wally just bought a box of apples, or something similar. Howdy signs for the shipment]
4-14 / Barnaby & Frank
[behind the pins, it looks like there's an apple or two on the ground. the shape and color is wrong for it to be tomatoes. an offering for the beetles?]
9-14 / Frank & Poppy
[the table is clear of yarn, and Frank references the damage done to his garden]
2-14 / Sally & Poppy
[there are cookies - Poppy mentioned to Frank that she might have a non-seed recipe for his butterflies]
10-14 / Julie & Sally
[Wally could have gone with Sally to help with the script reading]
5-14 / Barnaby & Eddie
[Eddie mentions that it's late in the day, and he already delivered the bowling balls]
7-14 / Eddie & Julie
[Barnaby calls, asking after Wally]
11-14 / Julie & Barnaby
[the lighting through the trees looks like afternoon/evening]
14-14 / Barnaby & Home
[the end deterioration is very final, and Barnaby references things that happened throughout his other audios]
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