#abarat

Who is Christopher Carrion? He’s a villain from The Books of Abarat, Clive Barker’s young adult series. (Did you know Clive Barker had a YA series? This too, is tragically slept on.)

Points in his favor:

He is unattractive. Like. Straight up Not Hot by any conventional standard. This makes him perfect for us freaks.

He has a large translucent bowl around his neck, where his nightmares slither out of his brain and swim around like snakes made of smoke and lightening in the liquid it holds. When they brush his skin he relives his nightmares. Amazing. 10/10.

His lips are scarred from where his grandmother sewed them shut when he mentioned the word "love" once as a child. Fucked up family history? A necessity.

He was in love with/obsessed with a princess, and when she rejected him he sent a dragon to kill her and her love interest. And succeeded! Love us an unhinged romantic. (I know this come off as cliche, but this is Clive Barker: he makes cishet romance into true horror. So, the obsession is creepy in the best way.)

The protagonist of the books is a teen girl named Candy Quakenbush (seriously, read this series), who maybe reminds Christopher Carrion of his now-dead princess. He responds...normally. (This is a lie.) Star crossed lovers in the worst way possible. Makes me gleeful.

He's a powerful magician. He can summon a giant moth from bones and talk to the dead. Which is all I really want from a man.

He's manipulative. Of course.

I loved his character arc. I mean, your mileage will vary, but I thought it rocked.

His name is Christopher Carrion.

So I understand why the Ghibli plagiarism machine has been The talking point the last two days

That makes sense- their works often focusing on the act of creation

BUT

PERSONALLY

I am far more obsessed (insulted and baffled) by an image reddit has shared with me

You may be familiar with Clive Barker- writer, poet, painter, playwright

Painted pieces such as this one

Reddit user has been taking paintings from Clive's YA series Abarat 'all day' and putting them through the 'new chatgpt image gen'

Now

I don't believe Clive or his team has made any official stance on the use of his works being stolen for image generation

I would hazard a guess that like most artists, he does not appreciate this

And babes.

If someone took one of my pieces and asked a.i. to make it a 'realistic photo' that looked like this?