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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A drawing of CV!Edward with the request to have him casually lean against the front of his trusty Buick, commissioned by none other than the insanely skilled @voiceboss!
To say I'm honored would be the understatement of the century, of course. I was beaming with excitement throughout the whole process and frankly, I still am! ;///;🖤🤍
Riddler © DC comics
CV!Riddler © Codot
Art © FinzPhoenix
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big news!!! i'm opening a print shop!
>>>✨link to my new inprnt shop✨<<<
right now it's mostly just my locked tomb-inspired work, but i plan on adding some other things there soon. if you're one of the folks who was hoping for prints of one or any of these, please go check it out! share it with your friends! etc!
also, if you have other pieces of mine you'd like to see in print format, let me know. :D
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Luffy not knowing about Zoro promising Sanji to kill him if he ever ends up losing himself makes me go feral because that's something they can only know about. Because Zoro's respect for life and death goes beyond anything, and Sanji knows he understands. Sanji knows that if somebody has to kill him, it's him.
And I don't even think it's because Sanji assumes Zoro's opinion of him is hatred and it would hurt less for him to do this, but because Sanji knows only Zoro would be able to treat the promise as it is. Because he would put Sanji's wishes before any feelings he has for him. It's not that Zoro doesn't care, but I think he respects people's ideals and decisions to the extent of being able to kill Sanji if he so desires.
That being said, he'd do it if there's no other way to fix it. If it's either dying or living as an emotionless machine, which is the same as dying for Sanji, Zoro would fulfill his promise. And there is just... Something about Luffy not knowing. Their captain. The man they're devoted to the most as if he were their God. Luffy doesn't know. It's something only the captain's wings are aware of and the thought of these two keeping this from Luffy until the end is just insane. Not even trying to make it romantic here, but the bond and respect these two have for each other is crazy.
Maybe it's the poetry of it all, too. Somebody like Zoro, who has looked at Death in her face multiple times and said "no", ending Sanji's life, who wants to give in to death to not experience a fate worse than death for him.
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