#bc i just read it and i am making connections

[luxaofhesperides]

You tell me where you've been. I tell you where I've been. And then we can figure out where we are now.

[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.

[lotus-pear]

bsd fic authors i understand yalls pain SO well right now why is it so fucking HARD to write dazai. like i have a whole fucking spreadsheet dedicated to tireless analysis i have done on my part so i can accurately characterize him but he is such an unpredictable and morally gray character that it's hard knowing his limits and boundaries and where he draws the line for himself.

[izzypaw]

after i made the undertale ones i knew i couldn't NOT make matching icons of these 2 aswell...

[seventh-fantasy]

"#their rs is only as equal as he decides it to be" hits the nail on the HEAD for me THANK you. llh and fdb are friends the way parents and children can be friends. fdb makes a very commendable effort at being equals with llh and llh can allow and enjoy it to an extent but there IS a gap. fdb not having access to llh's past puts him in a unique position to understand llh in a way that nobody else does and that IS good for llh, like fresh eyes on such a worn out painful story. but there's also an element of responsibility that llh has for fdb that he doesn't have for dfs. dfs is his equal and can make his own life choices. he only escaped dfs at the end because of dfs's own choice to trust him with the flower, not anything llh could have done. but he can still escape fdb on his own power just fine. ANYWAY EVERY RELATIONSHIP IN THIS SHOW IS KILLING ME IN UNIQUE AND SPECIFIC WAYS thank u for understanding

(for context)

NO THANK YOU for understanding!!!! I didn't even think anyone was going to read [inserts opinion that I think could get me into a situation surrounded by knives] as you can tell I hid it deep in the tags of reblogs of my own non-maintagged post hbhjbhjbhjbj - and even much less agree with something of it

hell yeah. to me their relationship is entirely premised on that gap between them, for better and for worse. that's how fdb can be unique to him but at the same time also puts him out of fdb's reach forever (that's why ep 30 hits hard). it's very likely llh wouldn't have continued with their relationship - at least with the degree of investment he did - if not for finding out his connection to sgd. so the familial element in it is virtually inseparable from the manner they ended up to be with each other. (like also, on top of how how lxy was literally a formative "adult" figure to bb fdb.)

while fdb thinks this is a friendship the whole time, llh actually treats fdb like a younger family member 小辈, with the front of being friends bc he was a Liar hiding his identity. and then post-identity reveal was bc he's just a Liar who doesn't feel the need to load his own problems on a younger member as an elder. (I do think this mismatched perceptions of their relationship is delicious)

also that's such a good add-on regarding dihua's relationship - particularly about the element of trust between them, which is a basis to why I can consider them friends in some dimension even back when they were more of rivals, unlike fdb with llh. like llh/fdb, they contain a paradox: being the ones who understand each other better than anyone else can but also bc they're so up close on each other that they fail to really see each other too. they're equals premised on the circumstance of them being from the same generation with a shared past (that is also part of their tragedy), but also, in a very curious space of it not being entirely mutual - simply due to llh being the person he is with the kind of conflict he's facing. (once again, all the relationships llh have are embedded with a degree of them being unrequited and it's <333 </333)

THEY REALLY ARE KILLING ME TOO IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE YEAH

[palms-upturned]

.

[aceofintuition]

Anyways, I'm 3k into groudon Maxie fic and nowhere near done, just in case yall thought "one shot" meant "short"

[ichigosoju]

💭💗

[warm-mangoes-with-chai]

Maybe I need to calm down bc why did I see a post comparing wangxian to joongdok but because 'wwx & kdj are both dumbasses but lwj & yjh fell in love anyways' and I just felt so irritated that some fans still ignore wwx's academic and emotional intelligence, don't even get me started on kdj-

[seventh-district]

.

[blk-xniverse]

This year's just... yearing.

[caeslxys]

I have so much swirling around in my brain about vox machina and bells hells and the mighty nein and I am going to make it all of ya'lls problem. anyway i think it's kind of funny that people think c2 is the forgotten child of critical role because of all the direct relation to c1 through player character back story and connections because, like, yeah.

but wasn't that part of the magic of the mighty nein's story?

vox machina ended with those characters as legends, as written-about historical figures in exandria, as rulers and leaders and councilors of cities and nations in their own right.

the mighty nein? no one knew about lucien, no one knew about aeor. the mighty nein was so deeply mistrustful and surrounded on all sides by people allied to them more by at-the-moment-common-goals and pure, often selfish intrigue than genuine trust that it wasn't until Allura made her appearance in episode 80 (out of 141. over half of the entire story) that not the characters but the cast breathed a sigh of relief.

and when that story ended, almost all of them found a way to settle down. cad went back to his grove. fjord and jes and kingsley took to the sea for a life of piracy. yasha settled down with beau for a peaceful life. veth went back to being with her family. only caleb and beau and essek (who, it's important to note, was on the run) remained explicitly intertwined with the politics of wildemount and exandria, and even that was mostly in secrecy.

What callbacks would there even be to c2 at this point in c3's story (because I do think we will get more, the deeper the hells dive into the assembly's involvement and the secrecy within these cults (?) associated with ruidus at all) outside of Ludinus, the Cerberus Assembly, and dunamancy?

I have hopes of seeing Astrid at some point, given that she's a part of the Cerberus Assembly, but if we're not getting name drops and cameos like Vex'ahlia and Keyleth and Percival for the nein, I don't think that comes from c2 being forgotten or pushed to the sideline. I think it's just a consequence of their particular story.

(and, who knows, maybe Astrid does show up and maybe she does mention an intelligent, fire-wielding wizard educated specifically on the magics within and around calamity-era ruins such as aeor as well as the limits and possibilities of dunamancy, and his partners: a deeply respected expositer of the cobalt soul who has been entrenched in weeding out corruption from the assembly alongside him and a mysterious drow with a mastery of dunamancy and deep knowledge of the calamity-era ruins themself. maybe that's exactly the kind of experience the hells will need)

[hillerskaroyals]

there's something about the fact that erik's watch doesn't make an appearance in the first 4 min at all. not even in the background on the bedside table

[hua-fei-hua]

when i was a kid i really resented the fact that my mom kept forcing us to check out nonfiction books alongside our fantasy novels in order to "broaden our minds" and basically ensure we were learning Real Factsies(tm), but now that i'm older, if i don't go off and learn some Real Factsies(tm) every so often, then i'll end up finding my fictions dull and uninspired

[ironmanstan]

Omg i am remembering why i fucking hate english classes ^__^

[dracharenae]

sb: game of thrones is lord of the rings but with sex.

me: game of thrones is dune but with snow.