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.
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time travel fix it au's are done to death in this fandom but also they're my favourite thing in the world so au where the entire show happens as is and it's heartbreaking and inspiring etc but then. restart button. waking back up at the start of the end except only the people that lived remember
wanna think about what would happen when daryl and carol wake up at camp, remembering everything that happened; carol stronger, knowing in her gut that everything that she remembers is real, and daryl fucking terrified, because if everything in his head actually happened, then what the fuck is this
wanna think about a rick dragging a hostile merle and a wide-eyed glenn back to camp, memories completely intact, and running to reunite with his family. not letting daryl go and hugging carol so so so tight, collapsing to the ground with carl in his arms
wanna think about them dragging the atlanta group to the farm, maggie leaving the front porch light on for them, and everyone reuniting. rick seeing hershel again, daryl seeing beth, carol pulling sophia close, and maggie being unable to even breath, looking at glenn
wanna think about them tossing up whether to even go to the prison, but they met important people there, and alexandria's a long way, and if they're gonna survive this time–if they're gonna live–they're gonna do it right
so they go to the prison so they can figure out their next step, and michonne's there and waiting, andre on her hip, and they deal with the governor before the governor deals with them, and sasha and tyresse finally show up, they find the prisoners, and then one day they get a knock on the front gate, and it's negan
negan showing up, no baseball bat in hand but his leather jacket still in place, a sick but alive lucille by his side, laura and doctor franklin behind him, and all he's got to say is at the end of the world, i know which side i wanna be on
the fallout of that, of maggie being against it, of rick never having gotten to see negan at the end, not knowing the choices he made, the good and the bad. daryl and carol looking at glenn, seeing him alive and in love and having no memory of his last moments, and never wanting anything to ruin that, but negan saved judiths life, helped save all their lives. he chose, in the end, and now it's their turn
wanna think about a future where beth doesn't die, but they go on a rescue mission to get noah anyway. a future where tara turns up with her niece, led by eugene with abraham and rosita following right behind him
wanna think about how they'd handle terminus, how they'd handle the claimers. wanna think about them trying to find father gabriel, except gabe made it the first time around, and he wasn't wasting his second chance. he saved his flock, and he led them to alexandria, and he's waiting
wanna think of connie's group searching for hilltop. not finding maggie, or alden, but finding jesus. wanna think about lydia, being a fucking child, and watching her mother kill her dad, and remembering aaron telling her how loved she was
wanna think of the growing pains of them being able to save so many more family members this time, but god, a larger group is harder to keep alive
daryl trying to run interference with merle and everyone else, getting the jack of it one day and telling him he's already mourned him once, and he won't again. if merle wants to stay–to live–then it's up to him. daryl's not gonna babysit him anymore
rick trying to find his footing between lori and shane and judith, with carl, with michonne and andre. michonne looking at a weak but alive lori grimes holding a screaming and crying newborn in her arms, and knowing that she's never gonna be her daughter the way she was before, but knowing she'll always be something to her
carol struggling to be the mother sophia needs her to be, emotions too sharp and constantly fucking terrified. doesn't know how to hold onto someone like that anymore, either gripping too tight or not at all
maggie trying to exist in a world where she has everyone she's ever loved back, so close and so fucking dear, except it cost her her son. not knowing if she'll ever get him back at all. doesn't know how to live with the grief of losing someone she never technically had in this world
they make it to alexandria and it's aaron opening the gate for them, waiting to welcome them home
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