the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again
I just skimmed through the art part of your blog and holy bajeebus your LMK art is so beautiful and the headcanon ideas you come up with are so good I wanna steal em-
Kinda wanna see like a part 2 of the little angst you did between MK and Macaque a while ago. It's so interesting and I wanna see Macaque's reaction in your art style. (You don't have to of course, it's just a suggestion [idk if i spelled that right])
Thanks for reading and hope you have a good day/night!
hey love of my life, you've read dune right? can u explain the kwistaz haderach scheme like im 10 years old
I willll <3 people aren’t wrong when they say that the ‘kwisatz haderach’ is just a very, very special boy that a white guy was writing about in his silly sci-fi book before he decided to write more seriously about the dangers of imperialism and colonialism in the subsequent sequels. but really, the kwisatz haderach’s most narratively important role in the story is as the messiah-ruler figure of a despotic, genocidal empire; and he’s still a victim of the story he creates, a helpless product of his bloodline’s imperial ambitions and generations of political scheming.
where the definition of kwisatz haderach gets more complicated is when you start to pay more attention to the worldbuilding side of things apart from just looking at the role he plays in the larger story.
in the books, the bene gesserit essentially begin a breeding program to develop a biological product who’s supposed to have superhuman capabilities - capable of training in the bene gesserit way & developing the ability to peer into ‘male avenues’ which are beyond a bene gesserit’s ability - as well as ‘female avenues’ (which the bene gesserit are restricted to). the ‘female avenues’ referred to here are probably mostly in reference to the inherited biological memory of the past, and the reverend mothers (who inherit the memories of previous reverend mothers) probably possess the most heightened state of a bene gesserit’s powers. I suspect the male avenues refer to the ability to peer into the future although it’s never clarified - but to summarise, a kwisatz haderach is supposed to have mental powers that enable him to explore time, access the past and sort through different possible futures which can enable him to shape/choose what form it takes (dune messiah deals with the tragic consequences of losing your free will and expands more on the concept). spice and its various forms are the drugs which enable bene gesserit to train and develop these powers. the significance of the kwisatz haderach to the fremen is more complicated, although you probably already understood what was happening there - the bene gesserit plant ‘prophecies’ and superstitions through its branch of the missionaria protectiva to develop a mythology and faith that a trained bene gesserit - ideally the mother of the kwisatz haderach - can exploit to her advantage to protect the product of several centuries of breeding in case the necessity arises. and jessica and paul do actually exploit the fremen to their advantage in the books and the movies, if more explicitly in the latter.
the movie obviously simplifies this concept more to its benefit. the bene gesserit, with their own political agendas, vaguely describe the kwisatz haderach as someone capable of leading the universe into a better future, which sounds too good to be true for a reason. jessica tells paul that the bene gesserit tried to develop a mind capable of bridging space and time and those are words also used in the book - the movie just does away with most of the weird, inane gender stuff.
the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.
people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.
"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."
the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.
the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.
at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.
"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.
this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.
arthur (prince of camelot) still has to study under a tutor bc yknow uther wants him to be very intelligent before becoming king or something bc its super important idk idc anyways merlin is doing chores in his chambers while arthur is squinting at a book and merlin eventually caves and asks him what he’s reading and arthur gruffly explains that its a collection of stories from greece that make absolutely no sense so merlin asks him to read them outloud to him. arthur of course teases him and calls him an idiot and asks how he could possibly help but does as he’s asked and reads the stories to merlin as he does his chores. merlin (being crushed under the weight of destiny and tormented by the prophecies that kilgharrah spews) understands the stories almost immediately and gets all excited and starts rambling about them with arthur. arthur is glad to have someone who understands so he can give something that reflects a hint of understanding to his tutor who accepts it and moves onto the next unit of education.
the thing is, arthur finds more stories in camelot’s library and brings them up to his room to read them aloud to merlin under the guise of completing his studies but really he just wants to watch as merlin’s eyes gleam when he understands whats happening and listen to him ramble on and on about them bc he’s gay. the stories stick with merlin though and he realizes that they’re cautionary tales, that the heroes who were told too much of their future doomed themself to fulfill them - that them fighting the prophecies led to their completion. merlin takes it to heart and gives a big “fuck you” to kilgharrah before forging his own fate and helping morgana with her magic and handing out an olive branch to mordred and now everyone can live happily and peacefully in an albion teeming with magic.
I love how that person who was like "oh ew a Zionist" also has reblogged posts about not being antisemitic and buying into antisemitic conspiracies while ALSO like.
Reblogging posts about how Israel is a uniquely evil "colonial scar" and how Israel is "murdering children" and like. Literally straight up antisemtic shit.
Leveling criticism at Israel that positions it as a unique evil among all other countries and doing literal blood libel (IE, Israel murders Palestiaian babies in a way no other nation kills children) is FUCKING ANTISEMITIC. Israel is JUST A COUNTRY. It is JUST another nation, doing the shitty stuff that other nations do. And if you find yourself railing against Israel EXTRA hard right now, or ever, in ways that you do NOT rail against other shitty countries that do shitty things (and, I can't believe I have to say this, if you find yourself saying that the kidnap, rape, torture, and murder of any civilian ever is justified because "uwu this radical extremist group is freedom fighters"!) then you're a fucking antisemitic, racist bigot.
Like. It blows me away how so many people don't seem to see that Israel, the Jewish state (whether you agree with how it is run or not, whether you agree with how it came to be or not) gets SO MUCH MORE SHIT than other comparable shitty countries... Come on.
Because the alternative is that you DO see it. That you DO agree with all of those things that are STEEPED in age-old antisemitic conspiracy. And you agree.