#but I don't know what to do lol

[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.

[aeide-thea]

on principle opposed to describing art i dislike as 'masturbatory' because even though it's an alluringly contemptuous word to sneer it's impossible to reconcile with my pro-masturbation stance

[overlymetaromantic]

*slaps Loid like I’m a salesperson showing off a new car*: you can pack so much anxiety into this one man

[misc-obeyme]

MC: Hey, Barbatos. Can you stop time?

Barbatos: Why do you ask?

MC: I’m exhausted and I really need to take a nap for a few hours, but I have too much going on.

Barbatos: I fear it would be quite irresponsible of me to stop the flow of time so that you may nap, MC.

MC: What if you took a nap with me?

Barbatos: I am not Belphegor. I’m afraid that tactic will not work on me.

MC: *sighing in disappointment* Okay. I'll ask Solomon. He might know a spell or something. And he'll definitely agree to nap with me.

Barbatos: …

Moments later, Barbatos found himself in his bed with MC cuddled up against him, snoozing peacefully. He mentally scolded himself for giving in so easily while his arms and tail tightened around MC protectively.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

[lilybug-02]

Bribed with Chocolate. The way it should be.

Part 22 || First || Previous || Next

--Full Series--

More to come as this is a two-parter. But you know how I am with schedules.

Bonus:

I think this was an equally possible reaction from Chara.

[mikibagels]

Cross-Dimensional Siblings - Snippet 1 'Dino' is just Dio with an extra letter in the middle... If I ever have a son in the future I'm going to call him my little dino nuggie.

I have such strong family fever right now. Between this comic and the new spy x family season, i am so.... i want kids so bad.

[beatriceportinari]

Brook trout - Origami, one sheet of paper

[rocketbirdie]

i feel like i failed you.

[taxinealkaloids]

horrible children who are. so so mean to each other

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[macksartblock]

fellas is it-

[aq2003]

i have officially found my least favorite 10th doctor take in the entire world. this post was specifically crafted in a lab to make me fuming fucking mad

[aeymii]

Sometimes, you just gotta sit back and draw this a-hole✨

[ladsofsorrow24]

there is love, i hear his tongue

[sysig]

Chewtoy (Patreon)

[vaguely-concerned]

patented 'not that I care that much or anything so there's no need to dwell on it too too much ahaha *sweats nervously* but tain would you pls consider not murdering my mom (and the mother of your child) for absolutely no reason whatsoever? no pressure tho of course you know best! :)' smile

(it's so dark but also so funny that when tain keeps on Hinting Ominously, garak's reaction seems... slightly exasperated? more than anything, under all the tension fsdjafsl. this exact conversation has definitely happened multiple times over the last thirty years, lending horror an edge of 'oh this again huh' ennui and hilarity. 'I should have killed your mother before you were born'/'so you've told me, many times'. I think it's the turnaround time from 'I've missed you, Elim' to this that drives it from straightforward psychological horror sneaking dread to still that but also kind of hilarious. it really took tain less than five minutes to go there didn't it. wow. well, actually. I think maybe the real horror part is that garak still loves him and doesn't know how to stop. somewhere in there is a five year old whose heart is a desperate stupid little moth and his father is a ruinous forest fire in the night, brighter and closer than any star. of course it burns you to touch it that's just what love is, right. *spots a smiling julian bashir in the loading bay holding a box of chocolates out of the corner of his mind and experiences something harrowing and existential he simply cannot unpack right in this moment thank you* right???)