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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Not as comprehensive design-wise as Silver was, but here's my take on a merhog Shadow ✨ Still some sort of half-alien experiment, but now his Chaos energy is just plain old nuclear radiation.
An aggressive merhog who haunts the remains of a deep sea research facility after an explosion wiped it out. He's the only one who can survive being in the exclusion zone, so it's been difficult for him to find new friends. (and food, but he's surviving off the radiation well enough)
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thinking about how adam was the first human soul in Heaven bc what the fuck happened to Abel. did he go to hell (for some reason?)
like what happened there. he was the first human to ever die so like would the theories saying Eve is the first person to enter hell be therefore incorrect? Because Adam and Eve had another son to replace Abel, Seth. Eve did not die first.
idk i have gripes and confusion about that stuff.
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Bit of a (late) long-ass personal post, but this past year has been insanely monumental for me and a lot of it, if not almost all of it, was centered around this silly comedy show.
Starting the year adopting the most perfect cat in the world purely because he looked like Agent Jack Bauer, I've ended up meeting amazing people and making great friendships, both online and in person, I met Glenn and Charlie and MEE and Meg (and Humphrey) and Danny?? got my first tattoo, bought way too much whiskey, and I've just really, genuinely enjoyed my time posting on Tumblr, making shit, and writing fic more than I have in half a decade. It's stupid, and sappy, and probably pretty parasocial, but I owe so many of my best experiences this past year not only to the show, but to joining this community. Because I wouldn't have experienced much of any of this if I hadn't jumped the casual fan on r/IASIP ship and washed up ashore here. And being here has improved my life and my mental health in ways I can't even begin to properly express.
So here's a photo dump of what I have to dub "A Very Sunny 2023":
To everyone here, thank you for being a part of my 2023. I'm not sure what 2024 has in store, but I'm happy I'll be here, creating and experiencing whatever it is, through and beyond.
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i think a lot of people don’t always realize the difference between “this is how i interpret canon” and “this is how i want to write it because that’s what’s fun to me”. a lot of times the latter is all headcanons or AUs are, not an indication of what the writer thinks “is” or “should be” canon
more power to those who are super tuned into actual canon and know these details like the back of their hand, but sometimes people just wanna use a series as a sandbox, not a ruleset. genuinely nothing but respect for people who ARE that knowledgeable, but i and a lot of other people are just here to have fun with characters we enjoy—and want to put them in more accessible settings
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