just found out my cousin (who lives in England) is in the art department of a bunch of shows??? And she worked oN DOCTOR WHO? AND HAD LUNCH WITH DAVID TENNANT???? and she just told me so casually because she's interested in the art, not the show? I mean, excuse me? She worked on SHERLOCK???? FOR A WHOLE SEASON?? She worked on Peaky Blinders and Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones??? And probably other things because she has a shitty memory and according to her everything is a blur?? AND AT ONE POINT SHE WAS LIKE: "oh and have you ever heard of Neil Gaiman?" And I was trying not to scream, because yes, of course I've heard of Neil, he's only my favorite author, I've only read like all of his books multiple times, and if you say you worked on Good Omens or the Sandman I'm going to lose it completely. So I said "yeah I've read a couple of his books," -you know, like a liar- "what about him?" and she goes "well I worked on one of his shows and he's brilliant i just can't remember which one" and i go "w-what do you mean he's brilliant? You're.. you're talking about his writing... his writing is brilliant, right?" And she cheerfully says "oh no I don't read books, I ment he was really nice and brilliant when I talked to him" and i go "WHAT DID YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT DID YOU TALK ABOUT" and she thinks for a moment and goes "oh! BRICKS" WHAT IN THE WORLD YES NO THAT MAKES SENSE YOU GET TO WORK AND TALK WITH NEIL FUCKING GAIMAN AND YOU TALK ABOUT BRICKS? NO THAT'S TOTALLY NORMAL I'M NOT MAD ".... it was what I was designing at the time, I needed to know what vibe the bricks should have. Anyway want to see the spinning fireplace I made for doctor who" WHAT THE FUCK.
@neil-gaiman do you remember any brick conversations by any chance
throwback to last month when i fell asleep on the couch and when i woke up my first instinct was to take a pic of my cat sleeping across me but ended up flashbanging her instead
The Barbie movie really said. Yes you will grow up and childhood wonder will vanish. Yes you will grow up and learn to hate yourself, your body, your awkwardness. Yes you will grow up and lose your confidence and certainty and sense of purpose. Yes you will grow up and the world will seem a bleaker, lonelier place every day, and society will seem bleaker and lonelier every day, and you won’t understand what went wrong in the span of just a few years, what took you from a happy and secure young girl to a sad, uncertain, scared grown woman.
And yet. You will learn to find beauty again. You will find joy in not having a purpose, in building a purpose for yourself. You will find beauty in connection, with the people and the world around you. You will learn to love signs of ageing as proof of a life well lived, of experience and happiness. You will take that little girl by the hand and tell her “I know, this isn’t what you thought it would be, but it’s real. Let me show you how beautiful it can be.”
the companion will go oh god doctor who is that?? and the doctor will get all serious and somber and say listen. he's the most evil creature in the universe. he's the worst enemy i've ever faced. he's horrible and unpredictable and you can never ever let your guard down. and then the villain will walk into the room like this
Every remake of a game should come with a copy of the game it is remaking that is compatible with modern hardware but otherwise untouched and I'm not even exaggerating this should be mandated by law. If you're going to attempt to recreate a piece of art you have to give people access to its original context otherwise it becomes the only context and makes the previous version simply a superceded product
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.