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.
“When toxic behavior is portrayed as romantic, it’s problematic. When problematic behavior is portrayed as a character flaw for a character to work through, it’s good storytelling.”
Katsuki Bakugou, my friends.
His behavior was problematic but never once portrayed as romantic at the same time. Katsuki said and did awful abusive things, and he also chose to be better when he was given the chance. If you’re still hung up on chapter 1 Katsuki now then I don’t think you’ve been reading the same story I have.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m not shipping Izuku with an irredeemable abuser. I’m shipping him with his most important person. His narrative foil. His childhood friend who made awful mistakes and then made it right when he saw he was wrong. The person Izuku looks up to and strives to emulate, despite their past struggles.
Bakudeku is so good because of how flawed these boys are, and how hard they’ve worked to get over it, and how much they matter to each other after it all
so many griddlehark doomers on this website. smh my head…….theyre doomed by fate AND the narrative to be intrinsically intertwined no matter what. i cannot conceive of a finished locked tomb series where theyre not lying dead in each other’s arms or existing together in some fugue state of unbeing. not even death can separate the lesbians that scratch each other bloody and then cry in each other’s arms. they have been fated to orbit one another literally since their conception. one flesh one end, bitch.
I really, really wish people who don't have the capacity to properly take care of animals would simply accept and acknowledge that about themselves. This isn't even a post of me trying to be mean or judge anyone, I'm sure most people go into getting an animal with good intentions, but intentions and actions are different. If you don't have the time and the space and the care an animal needs, the animal will suffer. The fleeting joy of having a kitten or puppy or anything else doesn't last forever and they aren't toys to be put down and forgotten once you've moved past the inital excitement. If you don't have the ability to properly care for an animal, just accept that and simply admire them from a distance.
"It takes guts to grow up like you did-- thousands of years simmering beneath every kind of oppression man could think of."
"With the sky kissing the crown of my head, knighting me with space to roam and the bravery to explore it [...] Big, open fields of barley and rivers like slivers of silver, marbling my veins."
"And yet you prefer...?"
"After all that life?" a breath, a laugh, caught between teeth. "Something cultivated by your own will-- the work, the dread, the sought resolution-- it is far grander than the possibility, the dream of it."
art by @fooltofancy (just. fantastic. look at them. !!!!)
I genuinely believe Naksu haunts the narrative. Her actions and existence as Naksu heavily impact the entire story. Her past, the life she lived and the shadow of it in Mudeok. But we don't actually know any of it because Naksu is not in the story.
Like. What she lost as Cho Yeong is something that we are never allowed to forget, the loss of her body, her powers, her freedom, and her impending death as a soul shifter hangs over Mudeok's head like guillotine.
All the while we don't actually know the Shadow Assassin Naksu, she died in the first episode, as soon as the story began. Other than training and killing (soul shifters) what kind of person was she when she didn't have to rely on another person else or hide or live as someone else? We don't know and we don't ever learn any of that.
Still, her absence is the plot, yet her former existence as Naksu influences everything; Yul's actions and what she was to him, Jang Uk's goal of returning her powers, the revelation of soul shifters to Park Jin, Jang Gang's departure, Jin Mu's accomplishments, the King's Star even.
Everything is about her existence but she doesn't actually exist at all anymore.
I don't think Willow and Hunter start dating immediately after the events of W&D. They know they're something and they're both open to exploring that when they're ready. But they also agree that it would be in their best interest to adjust to their new normal and do some soul searching before they make themselves an official item. They don't consider themselves dating but they don't consider themselves single either. And the way the two of them approach their feelings for each other in this murky limbo state is vastly different for both of them.
Like if somebody asks Willow if she's in love with Hunter, it's like
Willow: Am I in-...? Well, it's...complicated. It's a very complicated situation we're in and I don't want to make any bold decisions right away. Do I love him as a friend? Of course I do. Am I physically attracted to him? Yes, but hormones don't mean love. Am I also emotionally attracted to him? Yes, but a crush isn't love. Do all of these things at once equate to being in love? Well, that seems like the kind of question that would keep a very nervous very scared person lying awake all night. Good thing that's not me, haha. It's not like I'm scared to be in love and I'm subconsciously avoiding confronting the fact that I am. I just believe in staying rational and analyzing your emotions so you don't get too reckless and dive into things without thinking. You'll hurt yourself. I've heard that's it's really easy to hurt yourself when you're in love. You see it's...we...Hunter and I met at a really crazy time, when I was just starting to become the witch I want to be. And then everything got so much crazier and we were confused and scared and it was hard to think about who you wanted to be when you weren't where you wanted to be. So now we're home. And finally, we have the chance to figure ourselves out. And that's exactly what we're gonna do. I want to be with him...eventually. When we're ready. I like him and I want to kiss him but I'm not in love with him. I'm totally not.
So many posts on aita are just like "aita for inviting my vegan friend to a meat and cheese party and not providing any vegan options for them even though a month ago they had a party where there was only vegan food there and they didn't have any meat or cheese for ME which basically means they wanted me to STARVE"
Where it's like yeah your vegan friend probably should have seen it was a meat and cheese party and brought their own food but also it seems like you feel personally victimized by a vegan daring to be vegan around you which I feel like we should unpack just a bit idk