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.
18K notes
·
View notes
only human
[ID: Two page comic in color of Vash and Wolfwood from Trigun Maximum. The first page has a black background and the upper half, behind the panels, is splattered with stylized red blood, scattered bullets, and lifeless hands. In the first panel, it focuses on Vash's boots, showing him stepping through the panel and into the bloody scene. The second panel shows his bloody footprints and the third panel shows his face, his down-turned eyes looking downwards. It's a neutral, vague expression with confliction. At the bottom of the page, the back of Wolfwood's head and shoulder is seen, blood dirtying the white color of his shirt and side of his face. Vash's hand reaches out to him from the right side of the page.
The second page shows the entire scene in full, half the page in light and the other in solid black. At the center, Vash leans down onto his knees as he wraps his arms around Wolfwood's shoulders into a hug. Wolfwood's back is turned away from the viewer, his left arm holds onto his bloodied punisher and his right hand sits on his lap. Light casts from the left side of the page, showing the bloodied surrounding, but the held up punisher casts a shadow on the both of them, shielding them from the light. END ID]
1K notes
·
View notes
Thinkin' of WOF Au for DC, but like, it's a Gothamite and Fawcett thing. (And Amity Park if crossover)
Like those are the most magical areas in the world, even if Gotham is cursed as fuck. An unspoken secret of sorts that while they present themselves as human to outsiders, they are all Very Much Not.
Which means hilariously in the league, when everyone expects Batman to be suspicious and short with the new guy- even made bets on it- they are then shooketh when both visibly relax and start talking.
And half the shared complaints don't make sense!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now Gotham technically has no Queen, nor does Fawcett, but Batman and Captain Marvel are the closest things. Not in the traditional sense of back when they were in separate tribes (& maybe from a different dimension but shh that was millennia ago) but in the sense of, they're the ones patrolling and protecting the cities along with calling the shots in disasters.
Which does sort of change the dynamic they both have in their city. If one of them calls to arms, the city would follow them. They could declare war, and their cities (begrudgingly in Gotham's underbelly's case of strongest is in charge) would follow.
And while Billy is oblivious, both Marvel-the-not-hivemind and Batman are. They know they have to be very careful.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm sure we all want Nightwing Bruce but no. Bruce, like both his mother and father and father's father and so on before him, is actually an Icewing.
The Waynes however, have a case of melanism running in their bloodline. Thomas Wayne? Only his quills and part of his back were darker, but Bruce? Practically pitch black scales that shadow his eyes.
Now Alfred on the other hand, is a Nightwing. No special powers there, though you would hear many a child protest with how he seems to know everything.
Commissioner Gordon is a Mudwing, big stocky and very tired, which translates to his human disguise as a large trenchcoat. He finds this very amusing.
Barbara similarly, is half Mudwing. Her mother was a Hivewing, making her a hybrid between both. Which does ironically mean that Batgirl does in fact have insectoid wings. Though that does ponder the question on if they'd all go by their original vigilante names.
Dick is a Silkwing. Wingless as he watches his parents fall and unable to do anything despite this place supposedly being safe for beings like them. He grows into his own, and his wings, when they come in, are dark Gotham colors through and through, with the deep blue of the sky he's come to crave.
Jason is a hybrid between a Mudwing and a Skywing. He's also an animus- not that he knew that. He doesn't find out until he's dying, telling himself to not die, to get back to Gotham, to his dad, his family-
And then he wakes up in his Coffin, alive.
Now Cass, raised to be the perfect killer, is also a hybrid, just one between a Nightwing and a Rainwing, egg set out under the moon. Which succeeds, partially. She can't straight up read minds, but combined with her talent in reading body language on both human and inhuman bodies, it's a near thing.
Tim is a Seawing, borderline abandoned by his parents who seek treasures and more wealth as he's trapped back in a city where the water is dark and poisoned. But he's Gothamite, through and through, and he adapts. Scales darker than the original blues he was born with, and glow shifting to that sickly white of the Gotham's Bats.
Now Steph, is a full-blooded Rainwing, and can in fact change her scales, but can mostly be found in purples and golds. Though for a short time she was in another set of colors, thought dead before she slithered out of the shadows older and wiser than before.
Damian is his father's son, but he's also an Al-Ghul. The not-quite dragonet is half Icewing, and half Sandwing. And struggled to adjust at first, to a place so different from his first home where the only other dragons were blood related. But like any Wayne before him, he adjusts, and he adapts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Billy wasn't a Beetlewing originally, and perhaps he would have hesitated if he'd known it would change him, would change his body and the last thing he had of his parents. But his friends, his Team and new family help.
And he can pass as a Silkwing like their sort-of foster mother. All six of them can do so now, even if the others look more like hybrids themselves thanks to not being the Champion. They might not be, but they're his family.
And that's enough.
95 notes
·
View notes
literally cannot stop thinking about the foxes growing up to be helpful adults especially the monsters because like with the upperclassmen and even with nicky its slightly more expected as compared to the twinyards, kevin and neil
not by my own definition but by the perception people have of them in canon - the selfish, hotheaded or largely indifferent to everyone except their own affairs type of people
but aaron chose to become a doctor and i think of him seeing mothers give up their kids at birth and of people constantly loving and losing and how possible it is for him to be known as a kind doctor - someone who would sit with a man who lost his wife or a mother who's lost her child, someone who would do coffee runs for his colleagues and give flowers to recovering patients (and maybe katelyn bought them the first time but he could repeat the gesture, yknow? he's got a good learning curve)
im thinking of kevin making sure that a portion of his hefty income goes to actual genuine charities and for work against human trafficking and child abuse because what's he going to do with this much money? particularly after amalia is born he would be so much more careful if he ever sees kids or teenagers in parking lots and senses some imminent danger
not just that but kevin keeping an eye out for his fans or any signing events he has where he sees something unfair happen and steps in or asks security to step in immediately i feel like for him its still difficult to put himself on the forefront of a threatening situation unlike andreil but he does his best to try and to listen to the kids that come and rant to him about exy to entertain them with his genuine smiles
idk just the idea of the monsters being so very human and recognizing humanity in others is something that can be so personal
93 notes
·
View notes