#“im just tryna do my job”

[jacenotjason]

"CandyBatz au where Streber is a vampire giggle giggle teehee" NO CandyBatz au where KEVIN is a vampire and Streber LOSES HIS SHIT

ill draw this later i promise

[inkskinned]

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.

[megumi-fm]

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[savetheghost]

wanna be put in a room with craft stuff for 10 years

[facesblind]

idk what is happening honestly so tired so eepy let boys run the errands with teddybeardog and i have some regrets ( tm )

[canonically-a-genloser]

also btw can i say i hate capitalism

[ccorinthian]

i just want to talk about concepts...........

[arcenergy]

every time i remember that im an adult that lives by myself and is financially independent my brain crashes like a lenovo laptop running windows 7

[idsb]

.

[toastsnaffler]

asked for my barber at the front desk and the receptionist they/themmed them..... another butch dyke joining the ranks I see 😏😏

[cryptidapprentice]

currently having an Awful Time (dropped phone in toilet) (needs to go to work tomorrow) (bus pass is on phone) (also cant check emails because of stupid 2FA connected to my phone) (really wants to cry rn)

[yellowjacketsource]

dont worry gang i have secured my preorder of the ben funko

[aria0fgold]

I'm awake... And let it be known that while I was in a manic state of getting that post bout Mel up, I was confused frozen by the "Wanted to work as a full-time fashion designer one day" cuz I didn't realize that (i was like possessed by his ghost i swear to god it was the realization of a lifetime) until I typed it out and I was like "wai why haven't he worked as one now? what... have i been doing..."

It was like a moment where I realized that I was like an absent mom to him where I know so much bout his past but nothing bout his present so now I gotta write bout him more else I'd explode.

[malxshrine-a]

.

[frozenhi-chews]

Okay so

I'm not entirely used to compliments being handed to me, especially people from higher ranks at my job noting that I do good work.

I mentioned this to my mom and she said, "you think people made of stardust is cool, yet you think your work isn't of anything noteworthy?"

That stunned me for a bit.

[carcinized]

also on the topic of the prev post anyone who says "yeah no i avoid this super fucking normal and healthy food because ive noticed it makes me break out" get out 😭😭😭😭 no it fucking doesnt bro stop letting stupid fucking instagram influencers dictate your diet based off your insecurities. like even if the fucking. wrong type of oil i guess(?) thats in fucking everything ???? WAS making you break out a) how the fuck would you notice that b) why the fuck would it matter acne is sooo fucking normal stop being a part of the problem <33333