#but am I wrong? No

[zouisalmightie]

am i over thinking or did buck look disappointed when eddie said nothing changed between them?

[fiveswashere]

john and jack have the same energy as a dad who was wild in his younger days and the mellow kid that he doesn’t understand

[miraculousbohemian]

ok so basically everything that happened before season 3.

Anything: WE NEED THE BLOOD, INNOCENT BLOOD.

Gabrielle: ...are you fucking kidding me.

[transannabeth]

if you opened discord’s april fools day loot boxes how long did it take you to get all the items? it took my friend 18 boxes but me 65 and i want to see how bad my luck is

[canisbeanz]

Silly doodle bc it was the first thing I thought of when I saw Pomni.

[officialspec]

can i say something. for years i thought the joke of the song short skirt/long jacket by cake was that he wanted a woman who was hung like a horse. like i thought when he says jacket it was a last-second fakeout because he very obviously meant to say cock. and the rest of the things in the song were just her personality and interests. which were secondary to her awesome penis

[ibtisams]

The global reaction to Aaron Bushnell’s self immolation has been very jarring. I understand how powerful and scary it is to witness such a young man set himself on fire while screaming for a free Palestine, but to now see comments like “his death will not be in vain” and “the video will haunt me forever” is very strange considering the depravity of the videos we have been seeing coming out of Gaza for 4 months. It seems like people are now using Aaron as the “perfect martyr” of Palestine that we can put all of our efforts into celebrating as if there has not been 30,000+ Palestinian martyrs that we have been begging you to acknowledge

[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.

[mobius-m-mobius]

#obsessed with their priorities

[almostshamelesspenguin]

Character: I think boys are pretty

Fandom: oh! They're gay! That's canon!

Different character: I have no interest in romance or sex. I don't understand it. Relationships confuse me. They seem pointless to me. I have no desire to be in a romantic or sexual relationship. I am an aromantic asexual.

Fandom: well, I guess you can interpret them as aroace...I don't see it though.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Picture this: Dragons using their caves to age cheese. Dragon Cheesemakers!!

The dragon coiled his enormous body, completely blocking the entrance of the tunnel that lead to the caves.

“No,” he snarled, smoke pluming from his nose.

The cheesemonger pinched the bridge of her own nose. “Look, I explained this to you at the start,” she tried once more. “I make cheese.”

“Yes,” the agreed, nodding his scaly head.

“Then I bring the cheese here.”

“Yes.”

“Then you store all the cheese in your cave, keeping it at the perfect temperature and humidity.”

“Yes.” He sounded particularly proud of this part.

“And then when the cheese has ripened,” she concluded. “I come to pick the cheese up again.”

A thunderous scowl clouded his maw. “No.”

“But that’s how it works!” she cried in exasperation. “I make the cheese, you store the cheese, I sell the cheese, I make more cheese!” She peered up at him. “You do realise I cannot bring you new cheese until I have sold this cheese.”

The dragon considered this for a moment. “Ah, but what if—” he began. “What if you go and make more cheese. And bring me the cheese. And I put it in my cave, with the rest of the hoard. And then I keep it there forever.”

“No,” she said flatly.

It was remarkable how much a dragon could look like it had just swallowed a lemon.

“You can’t keep cheese forever,” she insisted. “It will spoil and go bad!”

“You said it would get better and better!” the dragon roared indignantly. “And I take good care of them! With the air flow and the humidity and the temperature!”

“And that is great,” she said, trying to smile through her frustration. “But when a cheese is ripe, it’s ripe! Then you should not be kept anymore, it should be eaten.”

The dragon scraped it’s formidable claws against the stony ground and sulked.

“Look…” The cheese mongering business did not tend to require a lot of sweet-talking, but she was making an effort. “I’m sure the cheeses that aged in your cave are the best cheeses people have ever tasted. When they find out how delicious they are they will want us to make loads more. Maybe several caves’ worth!”

The reptilian eyes stared at her with disgruntled, reluctant interest. “Several caves?”

“If we’re lucky! And I could make so much cheese that I could bring you new cheese as soon as I pick up the aged cheese. Your cave would never even be empty!”

This seemed to strike a chord. The dragon lifted his head a little.

“And that would really be much better for the rest of your hoard,” she continued with fresh inspiration. “Because if you leave cheese too long, it might go bad and spoil the cheeses next to it too!”

A nervous ripple went through the beast’s scaly body, but he clearly was not convinced just yet. “But what sort of a hoard is it if I have to give it away,” he complained.

“Well! Cheese is not just any old hoard! It’s a developing creation! And you will have a hoard that is constantly developing too. Constantly changing, but, if we do this right, never shrinking.”

The dragon looked at her solemnly, wavering with uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn’t hold it against the poor thing, it must be a difficult concept to wrap his head around.

“And I will tell you what,” she said encouragingly. “If business is good, I can start investing in some really good crumbly cheeses. You can keep those in your cave for five whole years!”

“That is quite a long time for humans, is it not?” he said, sounding a little more cheerful.

“Very long. Especially when it comes to cheese. Cheeses that have been aged that long are very expensive.”

In retrospect, she should perhaps have led with that. Gourmand or not, a dragon was still a dragon after all. A glittering, toothy grin appeared on her recalcitrant business partner’s shout and he moved just enough for her to move past him into the mountain.

“Tell me more about this expensive cheese that crumbles.”

She hid a smirk. “If you help me carry some of the current ones out, it would be my pleasure.”

[tippenfunkaport]

You know, it would be amazing if Hollywood learned the right lesson from the success of Nimona. Something like "Hey, maybe don't throw out a nearly done movie as a tax write off" or "people want queer stories" or even "don't be afraid to take some storytelling risks and be original" but you just know they're going to come away with some absolutely batshit takeaway like, "next time delete all the evidence and burn it to the ground so the gays can't make us look bad!"

[andthebeanstalk]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[molabuddy]

horrors beyond my comprehension more like horrors beyond my articulation. i know exactly what it is but id never be able to explain it to anyone

[sabellart]

the best character development in the show

[aquisces-arts]

AU where Arlecchino is an immortal witch living in a mansion in the spooky woods and takes in 3 orphans who wandered in...