I just think everyone should take a moment to consider the question "what is your visual shorthand for cruelty?" and then follow it up with a critical "and who taught you that?"
specific examples include but are not limited to
why is an evil timeline character design disabled? (why do the heroes go through equally punishing battles and never lose an arm, a leg, an eye?)
why are the futuristic scifi terrorists uniformly darker skinned? (why are the heroes so much lighter?)
why is the greedy boss fat? (why are the heroes skinny?)
why is the criminal mastermind heavily scarred? (why is the brooding, traumatized hero unscathed?)
why is the predatory creep a bearded person in a dress and makeup? (why are none of the heroes trans women?)
who taught you that this is how things are?
how long do you plan on repeating it?
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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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cursed construction core hi vis bra that came to me in a dream
In the dream I saw it in the window display of a hardware/DIY/trade shop, implying it was meant to be a practical garment designed for actual female constructions workers in a Female Armour level missed-the-brief attempt at gender inclusion
The practical support from the visible underwire combined with the hi vis implying it’s not meant to be worn as an undergarment, I just-
I blame my binge-reading ND Stevenson’s gender comics talking abt masculinity and femininity incl the one abt Victoria’s Secret lingerie yesterday for this monstrosity x’D
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Hate (affectionate) how it's made so clear from the very beginning of part 1 just how loved Paul is by his family and household. Both his parents, Duncan, Gurney, Thufir, even Dr Yueh all clearly care so deeply for this kid, and we're shown that time and time again.
Cut to the end of part two, and almost every one of those people is gone. The only ones who remain are a weird, came-back-wrong version of Jessica, and Gurney who has gone from mentor to worshipper. Paul goes from someone deeply loved and valued for who he is by a small but caring group of people - to someone followed and worshipped and feared by thousands. They're obsessed with him in a way, as a leader and "messiah", but nobody loves him.
The only one remaining who loves him for who he is is Chani, who leaves him because in the end that love isn't enough to bring who he is back.
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steam still hasnt approved my fucming build but at least its finally warm enough for me to put on the classic bunlith fit so its not all bad ig,,
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israel should just give up at this point hamas is literally receiving letters of gratitude from the israeli hostages they’ve released
(via RNN telegram)
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His eyes are up there, farmer..
((Also that’s a doorknob he’s holding I now realize that’s visually unclear, this started as a silly sketch))
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