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.
class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)
You haven't given up on others yet. And you don't need to give up. At the least I'm looking your way, Sakura. So why don't you look this way as well? If you do, I'm sure… you'll become what you want to be.
Some reunions, like Naruto and Lee, are filled with happy hugs and warm welcomes.
Others...not so much.
Ino and Sakura's reunion...yeah it doesn't go great.
Sakura had been invited back into her mother's estranged family after her accident, but on the way through Tea Country, the caravan had been attacked by bandits/dissidents and Sakura ended up jumping into a river to save herself.
Her body was never found, and she was considered dead. She has an empty grave right beside her mother's and father's in Konoha.
Ino, Naruto and Lee were devastated. Ino, in particular, was inconsolable. She'd just made up with her friend and they'd been struggling to find footing after Sakura's accident, so to get the news of her death crushed Ino.
She'd felt so guilty, fighting over stupid things like boys, all the dumb insults they'd leveled at each other, and her helplessness at Sakura's condition ate at her for a long time. Ino threw herself into the job and she left flowers at Sakura's grave every Sunday for a year (and her parents did it for her when she was on missions) before finally beginning to heal.
To learn that Sakura was alive the entire time, that she didn't care enough to send Ino a single letter...that she just let Ino go through all that heart-wrenching grief is a betrayal that Ino can't suffer. It's like having that wound, only just now scarring over, be torn open and salted.
She spent a year mired in grief, and the next three trying to mend the hole Sakura's death left in her life. And to have all of that history, friendship and grief disrespected... Ino doesn't talk to Sakura for almost 7 months.
As for Sakura, she was in such a depression after her accident, she managed to convince herself that she didn't matter to any of her old friends (especially because it was so awkward and difficult to find common footing with everyone after being honorably discharged). So she made the mistake of assuming no one cared, almost as a method of protecting herself from the consequences of her own decisions.
This bites her in the ass, ofc.
Eventually, they enter a 'cold but civil' relationship when Sakura makes a sincere, heartfelt (and groveling) apology. After that, the walls come down, but their friendship won't ever take the same form as it did before, but maybe that's for the better.
Their new friendship is much stronger.
Once again, thank you so much to everyone for all the amazing asks and the incredibly kind words about this AU!