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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charles and edwin are both malewives, just in a different direction.
edwin is masculine in a peacock way, charles is feminine in a punk girl way. charles is the embodiment of "my husband is a bitch and i like him so much". edwin's cunty wine aunt disguise can crotchet and probably judges the fashion section in vogue magazine on a -1 to 6 scale. charles' guyliner and his pins would get him a free pass to the lgbt club even at the stage of a self-proclaimed ally. it's a good thing ghosts don't have to open doors, because they would try to hold it for the other forever, being downright annoying about it. their petname game would be sickening to the outside world. charles would call edwin 'mate' on their literal wedding. and don't even get me started on anniversaries, they would race to the kitchen and fight over who's wearing the pink frilly apron and is making breakfast in bed (the breakfast is play pretend; the apron is not.) last but not least, they'd both kill at drag
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But … how the staff swear? We Need to know that too…(of you want of course … love your art and your Amazing humor!!!)
(thank you! :D)
Trein: said 'damn' once when he was sixteen, still lays awake at night in embarrassment about his deplorable lapse in manners.
Vargas: swears like an old-timey carnival strongman. lots of "poppycock" and "what the devil" and an occasional "deuces!" (this makes classes very confusing for poor Deuce)
Crowley: doesn't intentionally swear, but every once in a while he'll, like...put together a presentation on the new staff policies or something that builds up to an acronym which, by complete coincidence, spells out something shockingly depraved.
it happens often enough that you'd think he's doing it on purpose, except. it's Crowley.
Sam: swears in the text, gets away with it because the character reading is always something else
(this is very specific to the Japanese version and probably too meta but I made myself laugh with it, I...I'm sorry)
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i finished writing chapter 14 so no one needs to spray me with water to get me to focus (we just have to wait for my beta to wake up and double check that it's good)
so have some timkon sillies in the meantime!!!
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