"New face, new problems"
So... yeah. Just crappy one-shot, because I wanna write something with Dobson.
"Will you stop telling me how to run my business? I'm your boss, and it's not for you to question my business methods!"
"Oh-ho-ho, methods, you say? If your goal is to bankrupt your shop, then your methods are just fine!"
Julian and Lewis both sighed tiredly at the same time. It had been six months since Morris and Pierre had been fighting almost every morning. In Pelican Town their constant swearing has become so commonplace that the other residents who pass Pierre's shop are no longer surprised by the noise.
Exactly six months ago the Community Centre was rebuilt, and the supermarket, hated by many residents, was closed and replaced, more recently, by the Cinema. As much as Lewis had tried to understand how the young farmer had been able to contribute to the building of the cinema venue so quickly, Julian still kept it a secret. The mayor of the town did not resent him for this: after all, he realised that the grandson of his late friend was a kindly fellow, and had always tried for the good of the town from the day he arrived in Stardew Valley.
Julian had even been kind enough to shelter Morris, who was left without a job (and as it turned out, without money and a home). Although the former manager complained that the farmer himself was partly to blame for his dismissal, in the end Morris swallowed his pride and agreed to live in a cosy cottage.
He still considered Stardew Valley his home, he really did want what was best for everyone. And he would like another chance to correct his mistakes and become a full member of this small community.
The most interesting thing is that when Morris was looking for a job in the town, Pierre was the first to take it. Surprisingly - his main competitor, with whom he had crossed paths more than once on the warpath for the monopoly of Jojamart - and Pierre was the first to give him a vacancy as a junior assistant in his local shop. Though each other's relationship was strained, to say the least, from the beginning, but later everyone noticed that when discussing future seed purchasing plans or improved marketing, the two could be called buddies.
Which didn't cancel out, however, the constant bickering over the best way to run the business.
When Pierre and Morris had already broken down into shouting, Julian and Lewis wanted to calm the two men down so that the matter would not escalate to a fight. The mayor and the young farmer were overtaken by Caroline, who, standing on the second-floor balcony of her husband's shop, poured a bucket of cold water over the heads of the two instigators of the daily scandal.
It had an immediate effect - they both fell silent and looked up.
"Caroline?! What are you doing?", Pierre's voice was no longer so loud from shock.
"I'm sick of listening to you swearing," The green-haired woman said calmly, but rather sternly. "Either you two stop shouting at each other, or you can forget about dinner."
Caroline went back into the room, slamming the balcony door loudly. Pierre and Morris immediately fell silent, as Morris didn't have enough money to eat properly yet, and Caroline was always calling him for family dinner, and Pierre just didn't want to be without his favourite fried squid. Walking quickly into the shop, they could no longer hear the ringing laughter of Julian and Lewis from the whole situation, and how the unwitting eyewitnesses to this morning's quarrel joined them, chuckling slightly.
While the residents were recovering from their laughter, transport arrived at the bus stop.
A blue coloured luxury foreign car with Joja's emblem visible on it. A young man, who wouldn't stop talking on the phone, got out of the car and put it on the alarm.
"Yes, boss, I've arrived. Yes, yes, the same Stardew Valley where our good-for-nothing manager blew the assignment. Good thing it's our ex-manager now. What? Oh, yeah. You betcha, boss. I'll make sure that even this dump has a shop with our logo. And I'll restore our reputation, don't worry. I'll call you back later for the reports."
Dobson ended his phone conversation and tucked the device into his pocket. Looking at the Pelican Town signpost, he crossed his arms over his chest and smiled a little predatorily.
"Yeah, there's a lot of work to be done here. But I'll make those hard-boiled fools realize the benefits and power of Joja."
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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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When you encounter a person who does not do something that you consider normative, you need to understand that they could be either stating a barrier or expressing a boundary. A barrier is "I would like to partake of the normative activity, but I can't due to other factors." A boundary is "I have made a decision not to participate in the normative activity."
Many people do not believe that boundaries actually exist! This is why it's so common to give a clear "No" on an issue and get inundated with people saying "But have you tried-" They can't conceptualize that anyone might actually want to avoid X thing, so they assume that you totally want to do X and you would love X so much if only they could figure out a way around whatever pesky obstacle is getting in your way. But humanity contains multitudes, and for any given experience you consider vital for happiness I promise there are people who are Just Not Interested.
If someone is stating a boundary, do NOT talk about how sad their life must be, and do NOT try to push them! Just accept that their life experience is very different from your own, and isn't that a beautiful thing?
Barriers are different. Barriers suck. With boundaries, the only problem is other people being dicks. With barriers, the problem is the barrier itself . . . and probably, additionally, people being dicks. There's really not a way to win in the people being dicks department when you don't do something that other people have decided is Necessary For Humaning.
If someone is talking about a barrier they face, still don't talk about how sad their life must be, although it's fine to commiserate with a friend if they're complaining. It's hard! Some barriers are pretty insurmountable; the person might not ever get to do X even though they want to. And a lot of people don't believe that this kind of barrier exists either; we're very much taught that you can do anything if you try hard enough, when that is simply not true. If someone tells you that they can't do something, listen to them and respect that.
The only reason for not doing X that people really acknowledge as real are the surmountable barriers. And these are real, but even in these cases you should always assume that the person knows themself best and not give advice unless they've specifically asked for it. But if they have asked, it's chill to try to brainstorm solutions with them.
As someone who has both things going on, it really sucks that people tend to assume that everything is a) a barrier issue and b) that they personally have the solution to it. Don't do this.
The only way you can tell if something is a boundary or a barrier is to listen to people and believe them.
Example:
If you offer someone a drink and they say, "No thanks . . . I haven't really found anything that I like yet," (barrier, potentially surmountable) it is probably cool to ask them if they're open to trying something new, and if they say yes ask about their tastes to try to find a drink they would enjoy! They might like it or they might not.
If you offer someone a drink and they say, "I can't, it interacts with my meds," (barrier, insurmountable) you can say, "Aw, that sucks!" and offer them something nonalcoholic.
If you offer someone a drink and they say, "I don't drink," (BOUNDARY) you should give them a mocktail and shut the fuck up.
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