#how am i dead

[hinamie]

unconditionally

[technically-human]

It's not complicated, it's just weird

[ikiprian]

Ghost Kitchen (brought to you by criminal entrepreneur, Red Hood)

Danny’s got the easiest job in Gotham.

He works as a fry cook at a shoddily-run, independent burger joint. Hardly anyone comes in, despite prices being criminally low, and portions insanely large, and while the manager looks like the average tough-as-nails ex-con, he lets Danny mess around in the kitchen whenever the place is empty. (Which is often. This place has to be the city’s hidden gem or something!)

Mr. Manager’s the only one ever there with Danny, except for sometimes when his buddies come over to smoke and play cards. Danny would find it shady, except part of his job is not to ask questions. Literally, he was told during the interview.

(It was a weird interview. Why would they need to hire someone who’s been in a gunfight before? Like, he has, but Gotham’s idea of “hirable qualities” is so bizarre.)

So instead he whips up some killer burgers with the frozen ingredients, and basks in the praise as the guys tell him he shouldn’t have, he does too much for this joint, ain’t that friendly!

Now, Danny’s a chef on the newer side. As a teen he’d preferred the look of Nasty Burger over anything with Michelin stars, and he only really took up cooking after Jazz moved out for college. But just like ecto-exposure used to turn the groceries sentient, Danny’s low-level ecto signature imbues all his food with something historically haunted Gothamites just love! And Danny’s never been one to half-ass a job when it makes people happy.

With fresher produce, real meat, Danny’s sure he can take his dishes to the next level. It takes a couple months of badgering, but his manager finally agrees to contact the mysterious store owner, who keeps the place going, despite profits Danny knows have to be in the red.

Danny spends the morning prepping. He pours his heart into his food, eager to impress. The big boss will be here soon, and he wants to prove that despite the dangerous location, this place has real potential!

It isn’t until the Red Hood shows up that Danny realizes he’s been working for a money laundering scheme.

[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.

[tarvalian]

XII - The Hanged Man, Upright: surrender, sacrifice, faith, perspective

[idliketobeatree]

we need to talk about the Blue Light.

how it represents a safe passage forward from Death, and more broadly it symbolises the idea of a personal, individual to each person Heaven;

how the person usually isn't as directly lit as Edwin here, but from a side?

and how, when Charles looks at Edwin with the slightest smile and utter conviction in his eyes, Edwin is completely bathed in blue?

and. how Edwin, dead on a technical error, never got to see where his soul really belonged when it comes to his afterlife— and yet it's doubtless, from this shot alone, what his original destination would be.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are back (from the grave)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[cosmosnout]

The real reason Oda had to get rid of her was not for plot convenience, but bc she would have kicked everyone’s ass. (Source: trust me bro)

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

why do you keep trying to promote dead boy detectives? also im using my aunts laptop and i can actually type on this thing?

*crawls up your chair to hiss in your ear* listen. come here.

closer.

listen.

DEAD BOY DETECTIVES IS FUCKING AMAZING AND I JUST FINISHED IT AND MY MIND IS BLOWN AND I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN AND I AM GOING TO DIE RIGHT HERE I JUST SPENT MY ENTIRE DAY WATCHING IT BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP AND OH MY GOD WE NEED A SECOND SEASON AND FOR THAT PEOPLE NEED TO WATCH IT AND EVERYONE WHO'S WATCHED IT LOVES IT AND NOW I CAN SEE WHY

ahem.

yes. i mean. it's a. good show. that i am normal about.

*crawls into your spinal cord for a nap* remember to drink water.

[attyrocious]

survivor's guilt

[uhhh-ghouls007]

HELLO???

[chiscribbs]

My brain literally would not let me rest until I got this out of my system, so here we are.

Okay, so - Future Donnie's canon design sure is a thing. I actually love the concept, mechanic aesthetic is great for Don, but I'm not crazy about the all-black waders/overalls they're just...they're a choice. Definitely a choice. So I figured it was time to update those old Future Donnie designs I made awhile back (which, surprisingly, weren't too far-off? I got the pants pockets right at least, lol)

Here are some of my own takes on the new look. I challenged myself to try and stay as close to the canon design's over-all (haha) vibe as I could, so they don't differ too drastically. Just a few alternative ways to do basically the same concept. For funsies.

***Zero disrespect intended towards Andy, for the record. He's giving us the content we've all been craving and he's the realest one for that! (Also, the overalls aren't that bad, tbh? I think it's just the all-black inking that makes them look kinda off in the preview image.) Still super excited for the full comic to finally be released AAAAAAAA!!

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[lorastyrels]

Looks like you’re stuck with me

[inthe-echo]

Let’s dance, David Bowie (1983)

[pepijopa]

I try to pretend redemptions in reach | prints