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.
The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:
Depictions of female rage never resonated with me. And no it's not because I'm not white or conventionally attractive blah blah.
It's because depictions of male rage focus on portraying the RESULT of the rage vs female rage portraying the woman herself.
Like think about it, every revenge movie with a man has extensive shots of him in action and you see the "evil people" (men and women) beaten up or shown justice.
But female rage often depicted as pretty women with blood all over them and even if they're beating up villains, the camera just stays focused on their visuals. I'd rather see the men they beat up and take revenge on than a shot that's meant to look pretty.
What about yuu with a paradox pokemon becuase of the whole thing about being from different worlds
ooh, I hadn't thought about that, but I like it! like, I think Grim fills the role of Yuu's pokemon (or vice-versa) (somehow) but I kind of love the idea that he's some kind of far-removed Paradox or alternate-timeline version of another pokemon or something. honestly, there would probably be a lot of theories about what exactly he is! mostly it involves throwing a lot of pokeballs at him and seeing what happens.
also just for fun I want to make him slightly more pokemon-proportioned:
(he would still have to be the one who actually battles though)
god okay disco elysium fans try and understand the consequences of actions challenge. jean is a dick but also he's like that... for a reason. kim has literally only just met harry he has no frame of reference for the past and NEITHER DOES THE PLAYER. Jean's been with harry since he was sober. he's seen the downfall. harry's gone clean before and all that happens is he fell in again. none of yall have had to be friends with an addict and it shows. it's constant. its painful. eventually compassion fatigue. you just can't care like you used to because every single time you offered a hand it got bit. sunk cost fallacy forces you to stay but its like poison. toxic, eating away at you, an albatross. you can't leave him but you can't live with him. you know hes hurting so so bad but the hurt spills from his overflowing heart into anger and its directed at you.
anyway td;lr jean's got good reason for giving up on harry, martinase was just his final straw. its not just "ough you shouted at me while being mentally ill once and now im mad :(" its "i have watched you systematically destroy yourself from the inside out. you are burning alive and every time i try to help you i get burnt. you have embraced the flames at this point and i don't know how else to help anymore. you arent who i used to know."
EXCEPT HE DOESN'T EVEN DO THAT BECAUSE HE CAME BACK. he came back literally as soon as the waterlock got fixed. he still fucking cares.
I bought a cushion for my fireside chair with a mouse from Beatrix Potter's Tailor of Gloucester and it's the best financial investment I've made in a while, I smile every time I see it