the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again
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.
Dragon giving Luffy to Garp with the assumption that he's going to take care of him until he's ready to meet his son (because it's dangerous to have a child while he starts a fucking revolution, thank you very much) and then Garp just- Leaving Luffy on a village where he spends 24/7 alone waiting for the pirate he now considers his role model (because he doesn't have anybody else and Shanks is the only father figure around and he's just that nice) to come back from his adventures, and only being taken care of by Makino who has no responsibility over Luffy but still takes care of him because otherwise the kid would probably die from starvation, and lucky for him she's a sweetheart. And then he loses Uta, his only friend (with no explanation at all), to then carry the guilt of Shanks losing an arm for him and suddenly his legacy as a pirate. And then he's sent to another place with other people he doesn't know, because Garp thought "oh, yes, wonderful idea to leave my grandson with this depressed kid and some bandits" and Luffy luckily befriends Ace and Sabo because they're good people. Luckily. And luckily, Dadan is a good mom and loves them. But then Sabo fucking dies because nobody with authority was protecting these kids (I wonder who could've done that). And now Luffy has to carry both guilt, a legacy, and the biggest abandonment issues I've ever seen after losing his best friend and his brother when they were just children.
And I'm not saying Garp has made horrible decisions but he has made horrible decisions and Dragon should hit his own dad with Sabo's metal pipe.
Compilation of EVERY single time they changed Hobie's filter in the digital version:
Left: Theatrical release Right: Digital release
You might have to click on some of them to get a better look at Hobie, sadly I don't have a video editor that allows me to make better edits than these :')
Four gave a ton of unnoticed help when Twilight was injured
The fight with Wild was difficult, and I know we're all concerned about his negative view of the shadow crystal
But Four did something that no one else really thought of to help- He took care of Twi's stuff
From the beginning he told Twilight to not worry about them
So Four took care of pretty much everything but the others (that Sky and Wars handled)
He took care of Epona
Which is so very important- he took care of Twilight's horse. After her arrival at the stable Four followed up on her
And for Epona, a horse so attached to her human, having some company can help so much for reassurance
He took care of Twilight's stuff
He got Twi's shield- his bags and equipment, and organized it into one place
And he was worried. He obviously found the shadow crystal while handling Twi's stuff, but his negative reactions to it were out of concern.
Also- because of his placement in this scene
I'm fairly convinced Four was ready to start cooking before Wild showed up (since he's beside the counter with food supplies). At the very least he had the basket of fruit out for everyone -but he was literally standing with food behind him- he thought of everything
And he did housekeeping!
Wars payed for the inn, so Four took care of the inn
Realistically these boys were probably not too concerned with tidyness. Four got all of Twi's things on one table, and took care of the room they stayed in
Organizing tables and Twi's things, having food supplies ready, and opening the curtains- overall he was the one tidying up the inn
Four helped in a huge way! He took care of Twi's horse (Epona is so important), his equipment and shield and bag, as well as the other rooms in the inn
Four filled in all the little tasks that others didn't think of. He helped in ways that were needed, but not obvious
There's a lot of problems with the shadow crystal and with Wild, and I don't know what's gonna happen in the future
But don't forget this- don't forget that Four was one who stepped up in an almost unnoticeable way
Don't forget that when everyone was barely holding it together, Four visited Twilight's horse and took care of his things
No matter what develops in the future- this amount of care shown is important ya know?
Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
I tried but not very hard to see what the anniversary date was, and i decided to just prepare myself for the 16th or the 18th... it was the former. so, as always, but this time truly by accident... happy belated 17th birthday Black Butler!! I truly hope this year is amazing for us.
this year, I decided to use an idea I had wanted to try for a while but I never thought I would be able to pull off. and I still probably couldn't in the best way.... but regardless, here is a made up last chapter scenario.
you can also see this comic on webtoon here. whatever your fancy, if you please :>