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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Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???
Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:
Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.
"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.
None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.
An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:
I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it
I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.
Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”
TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.
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this is so comfortable it hurts (oh, but I guess it could be worse)
another piglin trait, it seems, is to be fiercely protective of who they consider to be in their pack. apparently, joel is part of jimmy’s pack, and it’s honestly embarrassing how happy this makes him. shut up.
the issue is.. well, jimmy is a fairly touchy person. even before the whole- hybrid overhaul thing, it was fairly normal for jimmy to be nudging joel’s shoulder with his own, or pulling him into one-armed hugs. but now, jimmy seems to always be holding his hand, or resting his chin on joel’s head (no, he’s not short, jimmy is just stupidly tall), or leaning against him.
and joel-
it’s gonna sound stupid. in fact, it’s going to sound extremely stupid, because it is extremely stupid and joel cannot believe he even has this problem. you’re not allowed to laugh though, even though it is so dumb.
joel.. really likes it.
it has been like a month?? two months?? since I started this and I can very happily say it is complete!
this is an au created by the cracker podcast, aka @angeart @loveroped and @stiffyck ! if you haven’t already go follow them they’re awesome
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So the good news is, I have finally managed to finish the next chapter of TW3.
The ? news is, it contains unexpected smut. 🤔 I never saw it coming on this chapter, one of those things that just jump at you out of nowhere and I was like sure, why not. I'm actually kinda scared of going back to read it again, though. Unclear whether it will still be there by the time I'm done editing.
The bad news is, it's 25k words long. 🫠 And I already deleted a huge chunk of what I had originally written. I don't know where all these words came from and tbh I'm scared to find out. Looking forward to shrinking it down to a solid 15k (I can certainly do that if I remove all of Kol's stupid scenes, we shall see).
Just thinking about editing this gives me the horrors. So I don't know, send thoughts and prayers, I guess.
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100 Days of Deathduo
Day 4- Sacrifice au
TW for human sacrifice, as well as main character death because of said sacrifice. Please take care of yourself! <3
Gods don’t need sleep, and yet Icee feels so incredibly tired. The hours are ticking down, down, down, for the ritual that they can watch, but not touch. Sometimes, they think, it would be so much easier if they were human, if they were able to interact with the mortal world outside of the weather they were given control of.
They would give up their immortality and powers if it meant no one else had to die in their name, for a pointless reason.
Icee knows the stories, of course. A companion, given to them to ease the loneliness of the winds and prevent the blizzards from lasting forever. They know the corruption underlying the tales, they can see the leaders using the people’s beliefs and fear to twist the situation at the cost of so many lives.
When Icee looks down upon the mortal plane, they can see the unlucky chosen one this time. There is a girl there, her eyes downcast, and she has so much life to live. And yet, Icee can see her counting down her last few minutes. If they pay enough attention, they can hear the pleads the girl is thinking, asking them to stop this, to save her. Icee’s heart aches, hearing her jumbled thoughts. If they could help, they would.
They know the girl, of course. They know all of their people in their village, and they watch as the people grow up and find their own way. They mourn for who the corrupted could have been. They cry for the Chosen who are given. They rejoice when the innocent find ways to smile. Icee wants, and wishes for their people to have long, happy lives. They grieve when they are unable to stop the early deaths from happening.
They have tried before. They have tried to show their displeasure with the ritual, have caused long snowstorms and freezing cold. It didn’t work. More souls came into their possession through unnatural means, because of a sick, twisted corruption, and the freezing temperatures of their rage had caused the people to grow sick and the crops to grow stunted, taking more of the innocent lives they had tried to protect.
And so Icee watches. Unable to touch. To interact. And when this poor soul came into their care, they would allow her to pass through, and make the afterlife as pleasant as possible, just as they have with all of the other people that had passed through, people chosen to die a pointless death.
The girl is being led by the leaders to the familiar altar. Icee wants to turn away. They always wish to, but it feels like a disservice to the chosen to ignore them. Their lives are unwillingly taken from them, and it’s because of Icee. And so, they watch, and vow to remember the girl as she is, alive, living. They remember her as a baby, smiling at the flowers blooming outside. They remember her as a child, creating a snowman and staring in wonder at the snowflakes that Icee had gifted. They remember her as a teenager, praying that the storms would stop scaring a kitten that she had found. They will remember her now, as she walks with her hands clenched tightly to her sides up the stairs leading to her death.
The memories join those of the other chosen, and Icee will not let them be forgotten. They will not allow their people to disappear, forgotten as a tragedy that never should have happened.
The girl is standing in front of a small crowd, and Icee can see her parents in the front row. The crowd is somber out of respect, with sad eyes and hearts too full of fear to speak out against the injustice. Icee tunes out the speech of the corrupted. They are no longer worth their attention, and Icee does not wish to hear the lies in every word spoken.
The hours have become minutes so quickly, and the minutes have become seconds, and one of the corrupted brings a knife out embedded with sapphires and quartz, its decorative nature attempting to overshadow the deaths it had caused. Icee watches as it’s brought up to the girl’s neck, and vows that this time they will honor the girl by watching the entire thing.
They do not. They close their eyes when the knife starts to move, just as they always have. Perhaps next time, they will not be a coward, and as they turn away from the scene, disconnect from the mortal realm, they can feel snowflakes drifting down on the altar, on the village.
Icee focuses on guiding the soul to them, taking care to make sure she does not get lost along the way. The soul is theirs now, even more than she was before, and it is Icee’s duty to make sure she is taken care of, just like all that had come before her. Icee brings her to their temple, with its icy floors and empty hallways, and places her in a bed, in a room filled with all the comforts they can think of. They wait for the girl to arrive, to wake up, in a sense, wake up as much as a dead person can.
The girl yawns when she sits up, a painfully human trait, and Icee watches as she looks around, her eyes widening when she catches sight of Icee. She tilts her head. She is curious. She has not yet realized what has happened.
Icee gives her a shaky smile. “Hello Clover.” They say, and proceed to explain, just like they have so many times before.
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