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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Bruce Wayne is canonically a very handsome man (he is called a "pretty boy" and he is in his 40s, for fuck's sake), and he is pretty famous as a rich philanthropist who doesn't want to leave his awful cursed crime infested city. So, there must be a ton of people thirsting over him on the internet. Fancams, edits, fanfics and imagines ("kidnapped with Bruce Wayne 😍 by a Gotham rogue"), the whole charade!
And anytime one of the batkids stumbles on a thirst post, they have the most dramatic disgusted reaction, loudly gagging, before sending the link to the batkids chat, because if they must suffer, then they should all suffer. Clicking on a link in this groupchat is like playing russian roulette, and getting rickrolled is a good ending.
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In Princess Aster's world, bunnybirds live in contented isolation, keeping themselves detached from the world in order to practice magic. Nothing is ever wrong, and no one is ever angry...even as Aster's people seem to be slowly disappearing.
When her father is next to vanish, Aster resolves to find and rescue the missing bunnybirds—even if it means journeying over the rim of the world itself!
My middle grade graphic novel is officially available for preorder! Bunnybirds is a story about trauma, friendship, and my experience with autistic masking. It was drawn entirely with Prismacolor colored pencils and Pandafly markers, with Photoshop applied for color enhancement and text.
Check it out maybe! :D
That last panel with Carlin (the brown bunnybird) facing the corner was directly inspired by this wonderful TMA comic by @nubs-mbee!
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I think what I want to get into with the "Anyone can do harm." thing that I keep beating yall over the head with is that literally anyone, anyone at all can do harm it's not "in your DNA" to be an abuser or written in the stars that you'll be a predator.
Whatever image you have of an abuser in your head, drop it and replace it with your favorite person in the world and you'll probably be closer to the truth than you realize.
It's easy to address harm when it's coming from someone you already hate.
I see it happen all the time. Someone you couldn't stand for no real reason does something heinous then all of a sudden here comes the avalanche of "I always knew they were a fucked up individual."
No, you didn't.
There is no possible way you could have known, you just already didn't fuck with them before they started doing something you could use to justify your hatred of them. I'm guilty of it too! I'm petty, mean, vindictive, and yes! I'm way quicker to believe something bad about someone I hate versus someone I love because I'm human. Still, y all gotta learn to move past that initial "Well, they were always nice to me!" gut feeling and understand that nobody truly knows anyone and anyone can be capable of anything. Even victims. Even you.
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DP x DC Prompt: The Watchlist
Batman has a watchlist. A list that contains every individual who could become a rouge and a contingency plan for if they did.
And while they, his children, often make fun of his paranoia and him for having it, they totally understand why he did. They lived in Gotham, for Christ's sake. Where everyone’s just a pin drop away from being the city’s next big villain, forcing the bats to scratch their heads while playing cat and mouse with a sicko for a good few weeks. And while they won’t admit it, the list has helped them a few times.
But that won’t stop them from making fun of any of the list’s new developments. Because you see, there was a new list. And it wasn’t just a watchlist. No, no, no. It was The Watchlist.
It was a new development after he and Robin went on an out-of-state mission to investigate some town in bum fuck nowhere Illinois. And it was under some pretty tight security as well, so they were expecting something good, like mad scientists or evil mayors. Not profiles of the kids who lived in the town. And while there were a few metas and vigilantes that made the list interesting, by the end of it all they just seemed to be teenagers.
Until they saw Damian. They hadn’t seen him since he came back from the mission with B. He looked tired. Like ‘Tim hasn’t slept in a week and is surviving on just coffee beans’ tired.
“Ah, I see you all have found it. Good. A few of them will be arriving next week as they’re a part of Gotham Academy’s student exchange program. At least three of them will be staying in the manor with us. Father will need you all to be on standby and to be ready for any possible scenario. Please, for the love of all that is good, do not encourage them in any way, shape, or form. And please do not dismiss them either. The outcome of doing that will be much worse. Is there more that I should add? Yes. Will I? No, because you won’t understand. Not until you've seen what I have.”
The demon child sighed, then looked them dead in the eyes. “Godspeed to us all.” Then walked away.
Okay, they were scared now.
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