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.
I think that if we lived as we were meant to, in larger intimate ("extended family") groups and with more shared labor and time to do it (UBI NOW) people like me would not feel so useless and burdensome because there would be people around to help and to do what neurodivergent people can't while making valuable space for the neurodivergent to do what they ARE good at.
The way we live right now, all right, the way we live right now forces units of two adults to be able to do EVERYTHING or PAY to have someone come do it for them. I have to do the housework. I have to do it! But I am having to do a million different things and most of them I am not good at. I suck at them.
I wouldn't feel like shit, okay, if I had more than one other person around who was not a child and who could do the things I can't, like do the yard and cook and do repairs and basic maintenance; and someone else to split everything else that I like but is too much for me. It would free me to do what I am good at and enjoy. Cleaning, as in the sink and toilet, the windows, the blinds. Taking out trash. Folding, hanging, and sorting laundry.
But because all the shit I can do often relies on other shit being done first, and I can't do or have trouble doing those things, the shit I can do often can't be done. And even the shit I can do, I can't do ALL of it. So I can't keep up, and things get very bad.
We aren't meant to live like this. We are not meant to live like this.
That thought hurts so much because being able to flee the birth family is integral to survival for so many people. I'm so afraid that living in larger family groups would create more opportunities for, say, queer kids to be isolated, rejected, bullied, and abused. But if we gave people enough money to survive, and stopped considering children the property of their parents with no system in place to help them escape bad situations except a system that is often just as bad, just different.
I'm aware that communes and collectives aren't all that successful and are kind of a joke. I don't mean that. I mean a fundamental shift to multigenerational families where taking in "strays" (which my family did) is also normalized so people escaping abuse into existing households was accepted, with these families centered in maybe a couple of different larger residences so not everyone has to buy and maintain their own fucking washing machine and vacuum cleaner, and so people can benefit from large group meals that yield leftovers, and so child and elder care can also be centralized.
Then disabled people and the neurodivergent and sick and injured people, and pregnant people, and grieving people, would not have to either labor through all those stressors or consign themselves to living off an unlivable pittance or being put under legal guardianship.
I'm not saying anything new. People live like this in other parts of the world and maybe it sucks and I am wrong. But I'm just really mad right now because I can either do laundry or clean the sink but not both, and I really think we could improve society somewhat by making it so I did not have to choose one without sacrificing the other.
THEY DIDNT CANCEL MHA but i feel like thats the type of anime Jon would watch and i wanted him to be upset abt smth (so i picked mha) while Damian was like who cares???? yona of the dawn still doesn't have season two. also Damian gets to do gymnastics cuz Dick adopted Damian (wdym hes still living with Bruce??? not in this house)
one thing i love about charles is that he's always ready to throw down. no problem is so complex it can't be solved with violence. he looked at this fucked up, illogical world of supernatural horrors beyond comprehension with its myriad complicated rules, where every entity has it's own unique vulnerability and decided that you know what? there actually is a universal solution to every problem called Bash That Thing's Fucking Head In - and it works a solid 99% of the time!
Much like he doesn't care about every lock having a unique key, he doesn't care about the specifics of defeating monsters and nightmares. Yeah he knows all about casting spells, this next one is something called MOLOTOV COCKTAIL
That SD!Simon who took a one night stand would have me accepting a babysitting job across the city. The that requires Reader to stay with the kids for a week cause the parents need the vacation. Maybe, possibly meeting someone from that side and 👀
i hear that LOUD AND CLEAR. LIKE GLASS.
listen i ooooooh i would be reaching out to my toxic but great lay ex like pull up neoooowww
gotta have him being a big gross grump who takes care of his own kid now. stop knocking on our door asking how much formula she takes read the can brother
naw i'd be hella moving on. catch me firmly setting lines he cannot and will not cross. no i don't give a damn how tired you are, get your baby and go back to your own flat. no i cannot watch your child mr. riley im gonna have a guy over and you will not interrupt my date with him.
girllll (gn) i'd be howling like a cat in heat during sex too js.
early deathduo makes me so sad bc q!phil, despite the mocking title of "greedy crow", refused to allow himself to miss or be upset at q!missa.
to him, it was selfish to expect or even want qmissa to be there. the last thing qphil wanted was to limit qmissas freedom
they were so so unhealthy for each other dude. complete devotion to one another, they refuse to acknowledge any flaws the other may have. the only way we knew qphil missed qmissa is because of how cagey he'd get at seing other happy families. it made him bitter
this isn't even covering qmissas side of things, being paired with qphil only makes him more self conscious of his own parenting skills to the point that he saw himself as a burden who would only get in the way. and q!phil hardly got the chance to tell him otherwise
and as a final note, just the sheer amount of time qphil spends staring at qmissa. almost as if the man will disappear without a warning if he were to look away. it's like anytime spent with qmissa could easily be yet another of his delusions, just another dream to wake up from.
so homestuck is a big deal for a lot of people but if really feels like it was a "you just had to be there" sort of thing. (I was not there and barely know about it beyond what you get by just existing on tumblr)
I'm curious if any of you know people that have dived in and "read" it all in recent years. How did they do it? How was their experience? Is this something that is even possible? How so?
little guy big city! 7 inch plushie magolor had a fun time on our errand yesterday. he even finally got to do the classic "oh nooo the statue of a Creature is eating me"!
There was this one part in wemmbu's orbital cannon video where he went afk and squiddo was talking to 4C about disliking working with wemmbu and for the longest time i thought he heard this conversation because you know he included it in the video but my friend told me today that he didnt and it was kinda for foreshadowing or something like that which i understand that it makes the story really interesting, knowing the downfall would come. But I thought wemmbu knew he just didnt say anything and i felt so bad for him. He was just waiting for the inevitable betrayal but he cant do anything cause there would be no one to go to, no one else to rely on. And when squiddo did betray him he just seemed so calm like he knew it was coming. But my friend told me he actually didnt hear it? And he is just calm like that which i guess is kinda true but i dont know. I viewed it as such a sad period for him which honestly without the conversation it's still sad but doesnt hit as hard. If he did overhear it, he knew his teammate was betraying yet didnt do anything, had so many problems and setbacks when building the cannon, and in the end didnt even get to do it, gets betrayed and banned but still doesnt succeed the second time, gets found and killed then i think he also got playerbanned(???? i could be wrong but i remember spoke said something about that once). 4C brought this up on stream once and i keep thinking about it. None of the other members knew his story other than 4C (and squiddo but she doesnt view it the way 4c does). Everyone hated him, only 4C felt bad and revived him, twice but he just killed himself again.
ls!wemmbu in during abyss arc was like so sad man. I'd still like to think he did hear that convo. Makes his story sadder hihi😈
i've been listening to Can't Catch Me Now for days now.
it is my entire personality. it has consumed me. i-
the beauty, the rage, the sadness. i am BANGIng my head against the wall, do you understand me? 2023 is for the dystopic girlie reinassance and i feel so ALIVE.