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
So on Tuesday my wife and I dropped off the paperwork to register as legally married and as part of that I want to finally legally change my name. I haven’t used my deadname in decades and I’m so ready.
But the very nice lady at the Recorders office said we’d need to go through Social Security for name changes. Since we were already in the city we walked to the SS office.
The ground floor was like a TSA, with scanners and guards. They asked, “Do you have any weapons?”
We both did. My wife held out their cute Swiss Army knife which got an immediate pass. Mine caused more issue, though. It’s a cute little knife, it folds up to look like a leaf and unfolds into a blade. I showed the man and he looked gravely concerned.
When he asked to see it closer I obliged, folding it closed so I could take it off my key ring to hand over. And this man. This buff security man. Could not open my cutesy little knife to save his life. He futilely pawed at it from all different angles while I tried to say, “Look, you can see the hinge, just pull at the top…”
Finally he had to hand it back so I could open it for him. Then two other men came over and all three Very Serious Security Men in a Federal Building pored over my tiny cute knife with great intensity and concern. A ruler was produced and they conferred in hushed whispers.
I was honestly trying not to laugh when he finally passed it back and said I could keep it, but cautioned me not to pull it out. I solemnly agreed, returning my tiny weapon to my key ring.
1K notes
·
View notes
day ?????? of doing things nobody fucking asked for
this thing made me nearly start sobbing last night because every time i thought i'd found them all another one popped up. twitter followers watched me go insane in real time
so here. every bakura eye color change i could find. if theres another im going to be really upset about it but i will add it to the chart nonetheless.
edit: extended bakura eye color chart
second edit: bakura chart 3.0
third edit: bakura chart 5.0
1K notes
·
View notes
Just saw someone on Twitter complain about the lack of Japanese people in Oppenheimer, and what did you expect??? Did you want the final act to be the bomb dropping and see people burning alive???
The reason why we don't see a Japanese perspective is because one, including a Japanese perspective, just to see how bad the suffering was would be exploitation. Two, to see an accurate and sensitive take on how the japanese felt about Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan (as incredible as he is) isn't the right person to do this. And three, it's based on Oppenheimer's biography
Oppenheimer, the movie, literally shows you people (mostly the superiors, because by the middle/end of it you see Oppenheimer regretting his creation) doing something dubious and inhumane because they removed themselves away, both emotionally and physically, from the people they are hurting.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima only exist in those men's distant thoughts and imaginations. One guy literally asks to take a city off the bombing because that's where he had his honeymoon. It's disturbing and unsettling, as if those people were not real human beings. The lack of Japanese people drives the entire point home.
Also, Japanese cinema is right there. Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, or Hiroshima (responsible for showing to many Americans the effects of the bombs for the first time) are just a few of the many, many decades of post-war Japanese movies we have
3K notes
·
View notes
and it's the chaggie ladyhawke AU with the steel chair!!!!!
A knight by day and beast by knight, a hawk who's lady only in moonlight: two lovers cursed to be always parted even when when they're never apart-
-and the quest to undo this curse before it, and their separation, becomes permanent >:)
Extra twists I'd add to the original film canon:
Ironic Curses
- Charlie, who never wanted to hurt anyone and used her noble title to speak up for the downtrodden, turns into a monstrous wolf creature filled with bloodlust that goes on the rampage every night (except for the hour directly after sunset and before sunrise, when she is tame around Vaggie)
- Vaggie, ex-guard who was more loyal to Charlie than to the corrupt officials who paid her enforce their cruel laws, each day turns into a wild hawk desperate to escape (except for the hour right after sunrise and before sunset, when she is fiercely protective of Charlie and refuses to fly out of sight from her)
Extra Suffering
- Hawk!Vaggie won't take food from people, or leave long enough to hunt when she's more herself at dawn and dusk, so Charlie has to repeatedly risk losing her forever by taking off her hood and setting her loose- then desperately chasing after her- trying keep track of her long enough for the sun to start setting again
---- Sometimes Charlie can't find her before nightfall and Vaggie wakes up alone in the woods to the sound of a distant inhuman howl of despair (not fun, but, it makes it easier to get back to Beast! Charlie)
- Beast!Charlie spends most of the night trying to kill everyone and everything around her- so if she wasn't able to lock herself away before sundown, Vaggie has to grab her spear and do her best to keep Charlie from doing murder- by fighting her, leading her on long chases until sunrise, or trapping her
---- Sometimes Charlie wakes up at dawn to find Hawk!Vaggie crumpled next to her in a nest of bloody rag bandages, and the first thing she does before anything else is try her best to at least rebandage the wounds she gave her
They Go Around Rescuing People (against the law)
- Vaggie mainly does this by not letting Beast!Charlie eat people as midnight snacks
- During the day, a guilt wracked Charlie goes out of her way to free imprisoned people, save them from punishments, and fight Vaggie's former fellow guards every chance she gets
---- she gets this chance A Lot, since the reason they have to keep traveling is there's a warrant out for her head and the dead body of her hawk
The Other Roles Go To
- Evil Bishop Guy: split between Adam and Lute, with Adam pissed that one of HIS guards got with the daughter of the woman who turned him down, and Lute wanting Vaggie to suffer and die for leaving the exorcist guards
- Nice Monk: Emily is the one who accidently let slip about chaggie to Sera, who told Adam, who did the curse thing on them. After that all happened, Emily left her comfy position and locked herself up with all the old texts she could find, searching for a cure to the curse. She finds one, yay!
- Loveable Rouge Who Helps: All the hotel crew. Charlie rescues / helps them each in turn, and they tag along with her for protection (meaning Vaggie then has to protect THEM from HER)
after the gang is assemble, the film plot plays out as expected
blah blah blah, holy shit the bird just got hit by an arrow, what the fuck the knight lady is REALLY freaking out about that, oh no it's almost sunset- uhhh lady knight says leave her here take her horse and the hawk and ride to the nearby abandoned tower where someone named Emily should be, because Emily can help the hawk.
AHHH the bird turned into a woman!!! A woman with the same injury as the hawk?
AAAAH that monster thing from before is outside howling and screaming, kill it-! Nope, never mind, the injured lady says she'll stab us if we hurt the big scary monster thing, and Emily says to leave it alone it'll be gone by sunrise.
blah blah blah, during the next eclipse, if chaggie can make Adam and Lute look at them standing together as themselves during the few moments they'll both be human at the same time, the curse will be broken! If this fails, they both stay in their cursed forms forever! Great!
.... how are we getting inside the castle for that? Oh right. Chaggie has been adopted by a rag tag band of criminals. This should be fun.
952 notes
·
View notes