#always about money

[inkskinned]

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.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[bluerosefox]

Gray and Graysons

One of the Bats has a secret. Something they never told to the others.

They were so very young but they have memories of a sibling, so small and tiny. They remember the burst of warmth they had in their heart when they held the tiny baby for just a moment.

But they weren’t allowed to keep them, their family couldn’t raise them. Money was tight, just enough for three but not for four, despite their shows always bringing in a crowd it was getting harder and harder for the world to be wowed by them in the new age and their sibling was too small and tiny and needed to be cared in a single place than for them to be on the road. Their lifestyle was not good for his tiny sibling apparently.

They had to watch as their parents gave his sibling away to people in suits, them promising to give his baby brother to a loving family when they find a ‘home’ for him. He watched his parents try to be strong only for his mother to break down once the car left down the road, his father holding her and apologizing, the rest of the circus troupe all silently coming over to give the heartbroken family condolences.

Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson had tears running down his face when he last saw his baby brother.

A brother he got to name before he had to be given away.

Daniel ‘Danny’ Grayson.

-x-x-

Dick never told the others. If anyone dug deep into his past they might find his brother’s birth records maybe, if someone got around to digitizing the paperwork for him but given the fact he was placed in the US childcare systems just a few days after his birth and the fact that Dick was still pretty young they most likely believed he didn’t remember his baby brother now. Not after so many years.

But they were wrong, Dick remembers. And he kept the secret close to his heart and memories.

And the only physical evidence he had was a single picture of him holding his brother, a smile on his tiny face towards their father who had taken the photo of them together. When he had lost his parents, lost most of the things that connected him to them, to his past in the circus that had been his whole life, had been taken from him in Gotham’s ruthless childcare system, he held on tight to the picture in secret. Hid it away from anyone trying to rip it from him, hid it from Bruce when the man took him in days later, hid it from Alfred despite how gentle the butler was towards him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t risk losing his photo at the time, he hadn’t trusted anyone and by the time he did he didn’t have the heart to reveal it.

So yes, the existence of his baby brother Danny was his most guarded and best kept secret.

So that’s why Dick, as Nightwing, nearly died from a heart attack when leaving a Justice League meeting he spotted a familiar face among one of the new engineers working in the Watchtower.

It was like seeing a young version of himself. Only, Dick could see that the young man was more than a copy of him, so much more than a clone. He held many traces of John Grayson but also had a bit more of Mary Grayson than Dick did. Small details that Dick foggely remembers taking note when he had held his baby brother.

“Hey, hurry up with that report Gray!” Shouted the head engineer from down the hall, his hand beckoning the young adult to come over.

“Coming! And boss, I told you Danny is fine!” Danny shouted back before hurriedly leaving a stunned Nightwing.

[skunkes]

[lilyimmsim]

the crows would have absolutely loved monopoly

[asynca]

[source]

guess who's sucking Big Oil's dick hard enough to actively allow a genocide

[shiraishi--kanade]

"It's so embarrassing to admit I only create art for validation" did paleolithic humans not paint for other humans to see. Does a child making their first drawing to show their parents makes it any less valuable. Do gardens arranged for the visitors' eyes make the roses any less beautiful. Do love poems written for one person alone to hear make your heart ache less. You're fine

[anonymouspuzzler]

i keep gol dang forgetting to make updates about Things

whoopsie!! hello!! you may remember me, from Internet! I've been very busy lately, with things that Aren't Internet! it's probably gonna be another 2-ish weeks or more (depending on how good or bad my finals prep type stuff goes) before I'm back on here streaming and drawing in full force! this is a little bit sad for me because I both miss my friends and streaming with 'em, and because Haha Uh Oh That's One Income Source Down!! but, I will return...

more specific details if you're interested!

if you currently have an in-progress commission with me, I'm working on them whenever time allows! I hope to finish them soon! If you submitted an interest form (which you can do here!) or otherwise talked to me about a commission, I'll be getting back to you as soon as my schedule opens up!

Jay, the hero of my life, has been uploading things on my VODs channel! (everybody say thank you Jay RIGHT NOW.) You can go watch a lot of my cool old streams there, including a bunch of the Luigi's Mansion and PMD vods, some cool one-offs like Smile for Me and Making Guys In Spore, and perhaps most importantly of all, Putt Putt Stream

If you like what I do and have the means to help to support me Not Going Into Even More Debt while I'm not streaming, you can drop me a couple bucks on ko-fi (if you pay $9 or more and leave a request in the comment I'll do a rough ink drawing for you as thanks!) or contribute to various home goods & niceries on my throne! Never required, never mandatory, always appreciated!!

a few Big Things I've been working on to come in the next couple months. please stay tuned :)

[utterdrip]

i have so many feelings about this conversation. the grief and guilt for the lives he took. how he’s able to sympathize with the gur and acknowledge what he’s done to them as well as what they did to him.

[moeblob]

A lil guy !

[owlf45]

youtube stealers are getting a little ballsy

[sunlit-mess]

noticing in your vents—

is your sister okay too?

We laugh, sure, but we both know we're not ok.

[shotmrmiller]

That SD!Simon who took a one night stand would have me accepting a babysitting job across the city. The that requires Reader to stay with the kids for a week cause the parents need the vacation. Maybe, possibly meeting someone from that side and 👀

i hear that LOUD AND CLEAR. LIKE GLASS.

listen i ooooooh i would be reaching out to my toxic but great lay ex like pull up neoooowww

gotta have him being a big gross grump who takes care of his own kid now. stop knocking on our door asking how much formula she takes read the can brother

naw i'd be hella moving on. catch me firmly setting lines he cannot and will not cross. no i don't give a damn how tired you are, get your baby and go back to your own flat. no i cannot watch your child mr. riley im gonna have a guy over and you will not interrupt my date with him.

girllll (gn) i'd be howling like a cat in heat during sex too js.

[chimaerakid]

post Sierra Madre

[flowerakatsuka]

clingy ass

[thesoftboiledegg]