#and you want her to LOSE THAT?

[partywithponies]

No offence but I feel like Ghosts fans forget that Alison is the main character.

[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.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 (soon))

[bet-on-me-13]

Steph's Year of Recovery

So! Danny noticed that a new face had made it's way into town. Two new faces actually, an older lady known as Dr Leslie, and a girl about his age called Steph.

He first met them when he was at the hospital for one of his parents. They had stood too close to an explosion again, and he met them while he was in the waiting Area.

Dr Leslie was a strict but obviously caring older woman, who seemed to be the one taking care of Steph as a kind of maternal figure, or maybe more like an Aunt. She greeted him simply and then walked away to talk with the Secretary, leaving him to talk to Steph.

Steph was a blond girl in a Wheelchair, and he could see bandages piking out of her clothes as he talked to her. She explained that she had been in an Accident a few weeks ago that left her wheelchair bound for a while, and that she had come to Amity for their surprisingly good Medical Centers.

He and Steph got along really well, and by the end of it he asked her for her Number so they could continue talking later. They stayed in touch, and when she was finally permitted to leave the Hospital, he introduced her to his friends. They all got along like a House on Fire, both figuratively and in one memorable case very literally (Vlad had pissed them off okay!)

Eventually Steph recovered enough that she moved from a Wheelchair to Crutches, and their shenanigans got even more chaotic (Vlad hadn't even pissed them off, this time was just for fun)

The only thing Danny could complain about was the fact that Steph was hiding something from them.

She said that she had been in an Accident a while ago, which was why they had come to Amity in the first place. But Danny knew it was more than that.

He could sense lingering traces of Death coming from her after all.

...

Steph honestly loved her current life.

Sure she had lost everything, her home, her health, her friends, her life, but she had gained new things too! Like Danny and the Gang! They were honestly some of the best friends she had ever had, and for some reason they just clicked with her instantly.

Danny was interesting and funny, Sam was vegan and a badass, Tucker was smart and witty, they all fit with her personality perfectly! It almost felt like she bad been friends with them for years. (She ignored the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw them)

But she still couldn't shake the sense that they were hiding something from her.

She knew it had something to do with the Ghost Problem in the town. And wasn't that a kicker, there was a whole Supernatural Ghost Outbreak in this Town and nobody knew about it. Dr Leslie had said that Amity was off the map enough to hide from Bruce, but she hadn't mentioned it was hidden from the Justice League itself!

Danny, Sam, and Tucker definitely knew more about it than they let on however. Whenever a Ghost Attack would happen, at least one of them would rush off with some practiced excuse and return after the Ghost Attack was over all dirty. She could guess what was going on, and she really didn't like it.

(This had killed her, she had died doing what they were doing, she didn't want to lose them)

Eventually she had to confront them, coincidentally on the same day they decided to confront her.

"Are you Vigilantes?" / "Did you die?"

"..."

"What?" / "What?"

[babydarkstar]

i just. i just…FUCK. i just really want harrowhark to go sicko mode when she realizes john has the power to resurrect whoever he wants he just chooses not to and even after learning about his own blood daughter he still doesn’t resurrect her he just makes her a construct. i would be alecto-levels of grief-stricken-enraged if my childhood nemesis/guard dog/whipping girl/codependent lesbian situationship that i lobotomized over/suicide-pact soulmate/only friend was suddenly here but not here haunting her own dead body and the only reason she’s present is because she was made into a fascist killing machine for a man with a power kink, and she’s not even happy about it but she’s going through the motions because all she knows of love is to be useful. (forever your sword.) and if i was harrow and i died and then came back to myself after switching bodies with the human cage holding the earth’s soul and realized all of this, i think i too would be accompanying the earth’s soul on her shoulder to go kill a man with eclipse-eyes and criminal levels of nonchalance. y’know. the one who guarded g1deon but not me, lord. the one who was so sure i had never seen that which lies insensate and with stilled mind, lord, who did not realize i was a lock and there was a key in the shape of a girl, lord. the one who looked me dead in the eye and told me i could never have my cavalier back, lord. the cavalier who came back haunted and empty and incomplete by your hand, lord.

i’m so team ‘harrowhark saves gideon for real this time not because she wants her cav but because she wants her other half’ i might lose my mind about it

[chalkrub]

mockley time it's mockley time will you have some mockleys of mine

[spookberry]

totally normal amity park civilians, nothing freaky fierce to see here

[carrotkicks]

y'know when the guys are like girls yknow?

[skywalker-swift]

btw cause I think some people still need to hear this, but the rose colored glasses coming off and the ‘revision’ to the meanings of her songs about joe was always gonna happen. with travis around or not. so saying she should focus on her new relationship is not the dunk you were thinking it is. like I keep saying it but she wrote him into her world, she included him in the world she wrote music in, and when she needed to, she wrote him out. why would he get to stay when he hasn’t earned that anymore? she would have kept him in, she even would have left the bad stuff in a box, but he didn’t seem like he wanted that part of her life. please can we all just realize that this is just such a normal reaction and end to a relationship and Taylor doesn’t need to ‘take the high road’ or whatever just because she’s in a new relationship. the reckoning of what happened was always going to be closing the chapter of the story she wrote for them. she’s releasing it whether you’re ready to reckon with her or not.

[daenerysies]

i’m being so serious rn i’m going to need tg to stop glomping onto half of rhaenyra’s kids 🫨

jace would NEVER abandon his family to back aegon’s claim (‘wah wah wah he HATES his mother bc she *made* him a bastard-’ one, jace does not care enough about that to abandon his mother [to whom he is literally the miniature version of] and two, his entire personality is his love for his family. he literally dies trying to save aegon and viserys *after* his mom told him not to go fuck OFF).

rhaena would also *never* abandon her family to back aegon’s claim (apparently she’ll feel sorry about blood & cheese and want to make amends with them. i don’t think so, i think she’d be more upset that her betrothed was ruthlessly slaughtered despite his status as a peace envoy but whatever).

baela is one of rhaenyra’s staunchest supporters (‘the greens reach to usurp our queen’s throne and they must be answer with fire and blood.’ i DO NOT care that it didn’t make it into the show that is canon!baela) and does *not* want driftmark (which only corlys has a say in, and he chose bAsTaRdS over her and rhaena at every single turn don’t even mention it), so stop trying to conflate your hatred of rhaenyra onto her daughter.

aegon iii would never have been happy married to jaehaera and vice versa. these were two heavily traumatized children. jaehaera would have to deal with being married to the son of the man who had her brother executed (not to mention that she already had severe physical and mental health issues that were not being treated and the people around her [aegon ii before he died and alicent after] were actively making her life worse). aegon would have to deal with being married to the daughter of the man who had his dragon burn and eat his mother alive while he watched. which he never ended up letting go of (even with a wife who we know he obviously loved dearly) he wore black for the rest of his life and was stated to be the most solemn king due to what he experienced during the dance. there was no saving them.

leave. them. alone.

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: death mention / family death mention / ]

Mhmm I sure love thinking of the reality where we did get more time to really know Karai and her dynamics with the bros. Losing her hit hard in the finale, but it would’ve hit much, much harder had we known Karai longer and really saw her relationships develop with everyone.

I especially would have been interested in her dynamic with Leo, as past iterations often have the two of them clash in ideals and the like while still sharing many characteristics. Two sides of the same coin, and all that. Her specifically being the bros’ Gram-Gram also adds a whole new dynamic as well.

Imagine how interesting it would be, to have Karai start off on Leo’s side for once, showing wholly just how alike the two are at their cores and bonding as family without the worry of betrayal or animosity that other iterations suffer through, only to have Karai die anyway. Their parting hug and the desperate look of horror Leo wears later on would have hit that much harder, I feel.

[jahiera]

I know it’s just a games mechanic thing but I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of the potential learning curve astarion had to do being thrust out into the wilderness and actually fighting for his life every single day after 2 centuries of stalking shadows and mostly using charm to keep himself safe and alive. picking up a bow for the first time in centuries and it’s awkward, unwieldy at first, but the muscle memory slowly returns to him as he uses it more and more—and so does the question of, did he learn to use this while he was mortal? did he enjoy it? it feels familiar, like a long passed hobby he might’ve once had. or having to quickly adapt to using two daggers for actual combat rather than the one he might have kept on him just in case an alley interaction turned sour. astarion having to learn how to fight in a group, when he’s always been deeply, deeply alone in the shadows before. slowly adapting to watching karlach’s back, picking off enemies from the side as they group around her, or picking off an enemy that was creeping up on wyll with a trick shot from a distance. like there’s no way he did any of these things back in baldurs gate, and it’s a special kind of thrill to accumulate new skills, work skills he barely remembers even having, or finding new ways to utilize talents that once would’ve served cazador but now he uses them to save his own life, and occasionally protect his …. friends … with only mild complaining. something makes me crazy about astarion being forced to use his body for centuries to lure people back with his attractiveness and middling charm and NOW he can turn his body into something strong, a weapon that belongs only to him, reclaim autonomy through the ways he chooses to fight and develop skills and abilities cazador never would’ve wanted him to have

[not-so-mundane-after-all]

I am literally the last person to even entertain the idea of Hunter dying (denial is strong with this one) but if there comes a moment when they have to separate and Hunter gives Omega this look

knowing it could very well be the last time he sees her? When he pushes her into Crosshair's arms, telling her she needs to go but she refuses, telling him she wants to stay with him, like in this scene?

Best believe it will be my funeral.

[shitouttabuck]

i think one of the absolute rawest fucking lines in 911 is when karen says to eva “all of the people i love the most belonged to you first” like. can you imagine. carrying that knot of fear with you every day of your life. it telling you that how ever much the most important people in your life are yours, they started out being someone else’s. and that constant background worry that it’s not something you get to keep, actually, because the claim you have on them always runs the risk of being challenged. and all you can do is love them and choose them and fight for them anyway

[falloutcoys]

I want to meet you in every place I have loved // This Is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

I commissioned this gorgeous art of my favorite book from @samglyph, you can find their ko-fi here!

[alpanmix]

Hello Deathmark fandom, have a random au.