#im thinking about the fuckin

[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.

[thatpunnyperson]

According to NBC here in the US, the missing titanic sub has been found. As debris. Off the bow of the Titanic wreckage.

And it looks like the sub suffered what we all suspected, and what was undoubtedly the more merciful of the two options: a catastrophic implosion from the pressure.

Also, more info has come to light about the fishing trawler with the hundreds of migrants that sank cataclysmically off the coast of Greece, indicating that the greek coast guard knew about the vessel AND how much trouble the vessel was in, and were towing it at a speed that made it capsize, at which point they unhooked the tow line and watched the trawler sink without helping the passengers to safety. Despite a bunch of other ships trying to help as well throughout the whole ordeal.

So a lot of people are dead, all because of regulations (and the lack thereof) regarding sea-faring vessels and rescue protocols. People shouldnt be allowed to make a business charging a ton of money for a ride on an uncertified, unsafe, un-seaworthy ship going deep into the ocean with no distress beacon or tether to the mothership. People also shouldnt be allowed to enact laws that criminalize the ferrying of refugees, which then force the refugees to hitch rides on fishing trawlers, and which also prevent people from helping those fishing trawlers full of refugees due to fear of legal consequences.

Hopefully BOTH of these events spark changes on an international scale in terms of what is legally allowed to be sailed, who is legally allowed to be the passengers, and what the rescue protocols are in the event of disaster for any seafaring vessel, illegal or not. It shouldnt be just the global 1% who get 24/7 search parties and remote-operated submersibles helping rescue them.

[barovianmist]

also: real fuckin funny to me the boundary between the cos enjoyers and then the Ravenloft Gang Gang

[kristiliqua]

CHUNSIK MY BELOVEDDDDDD

[tradingjack]

celestial bodies

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Does

Does Barnaby

Does Barnaby tell the others to get off his lawn when he's angry

psh, who do you think he is, an old man? he'd Bark, like any lively young dog

[foolbo]

i dont know how the insane amounts of sexual tension between uma and harry passed by disney higher ups but hey im not complaining

[sreppub]

saw many comments about no one ever believing dc superhero girls brucie could be batman :’) and clark is kind of a dick, so. made me think

dw, he’s still clark and im a superbat girlie; he’ll make it right afterwards :’’’’)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[OLD ART ALERT] A COLLECTION OF SCENES FROM THE GILLIONS CATSCRATCH ARC THAT BROUGHT ME GREAT JOY. i love fishy chips especially when its just gillion being delirious and violent and hostile

[orcelito]

showing off the commission i got from @ruporas for my fic, In the Next Life!

i'm still so incredibly excited about this. it's been some months since the story event that caused these scars, but i wanted SO BADLY to be able to see what they'd actually Look like... & Here They Are.

ruporas rendered the scars So Well, i just cant stop Looking at them... there's a Fresh & a Healed version, which ruporas was kind enough to give me without additional charge (Thank U Again😭😭) so i get to see what it looks like at different stages.

Lichtenberg Figures. in terms of actual scarring, lightning strikes that people survive don't tend to leave permanent scars, but the lichtenberg figures that they (usually temporarily) leave behind are just So Cool... Now, what happens when you get someone who can survive an amount of electricity/lightning that would be Frankly Lethal to any normal human person?

This :]

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[grimalkinmessor]

The parallels between Tsubomi and Reigen drive me so fucking insane you have no idea like—that shit had to be at least SOMEWHAT intentional even if not in a specifically romantic way.

For one, Tsubomi and Reigen are two of the only few people that call Shigeo "Mob" consistently. (Yes Tome also calls him Mob eventually but she starts out calling him Kageyama-kun and likely picks up "Mob-kun" from Inukawa or Reigen later on). We don't know how Reigen started calling Shigeo "Mob", though we can assume that Tsubomi was likely part of the group of kids that originally misread Shigeo's name as Mobbu to begin with so she's less of a mystery on that front. Maybe Reigen saw it written on his backpack or his shirt tag and started calling him that too, or maybe Mob even just told him that that's what everyone else called him and was what he prefered to be called at the time. Either way, it's a little odd that Reigen's one of the only people who use that nickname when we don't really get a reason why beyond "it can also be read like this", especially since Reigen is a grown man with (presumably) full literacy of kanji and would know how to read it.

Then there's the other obvious parallel that's made in the show; how Tsubomi and Reigen treat Mob. How they see his powers. They're not special, they're just a part of him. Nothing to be scared of—even though they kind of,,,,are lmao. The fact that Tsubomi continues to sit in the park even though a literal hurricane is approaching because she thought Mob sounded upset on the phone happens at the same time Reigen goes sprinting full-tilt into said hurricane because Mob is in trouble always stands out to me. It's less obvious than Mob's own words: "She never treated me any differently because of my powers" "Master never treated me any differently..."—but it's still a pretty blatant parallel to me.

Not to mention that both Reigen and Tsubomi's personalities are actually very similar as well! They're both described as people that hide behind a mask, a facade, while still being brutally stubborn. If Tsubomi doesn't want to do something, she's not gonna do it. While Reigen is more laid back because he's used to getting his hands dirty for work (money), he's still very stubborn himself when he doesn't wanna do something. He'll find a way to wriggle out of it and talk circles around you if you let him. Dimple even says that Tsubomi is the type of person who can't be swayed by words or peer pressure. She and Reigen were actually, again, two of the only people brainwashed through airborne Vibes™ instead of through food like everyone else. The biggest difference between them on this is that while Reigen lies fairly blatantly, Tsubomi seems to only lie through omission. Tsubomi is more of an introvert too, compared to Reigen's extrovert (though you could argue that both of them are good with people, with the only difference being that Reigen enjoys being the center of attention while Tsubomi presumably does not).

Plus they're both pretty goofy too once you think about it lmao. They're both prideful and hate to be humiliated, but they also care a lot about their public image and how people perceive them. Every time the scene with Tsubomi and her friends outside cleaning up leaves comes up, her expressions and panic always remind me of Reigen. And then there's Mob, calm and unjudgemental, willing to help her with no questions asked. Mitigating her humiliation, just like he does for Reigen :)

Another thing that always strikes me is how Mezato says, "If you can accept her for who she really is..." followed by Reigen's echo during his confession: "This is who I really am". Mezato essentially tells Mob that Tsubomi isn't who she seems on the outside and that if he wants to be accepted by her, he needs to also be ready to accept her as well. Which, we don't get to see much of Tsubomi's life outside of Mob—wow just like Reigen—so we don't ever really know who she is beyond that outer mask, but we see her slowly opening up to Mob later, as a friend. But the fact that Reigen's own confession mirrors Mezato's words to Mob about him accepting Tsubomi always makes me vibrate in place a little like,,,Confession Arc my beloved 🙏

I don't know man, there's just so much there, it makes my head spin. I could go on and on about it but I better cut myself off because if I don't I'll start crawling on the walls going feral about it because what, what was the point of this if not to make it clear that the relationship between Mob and Reigen is supposed to parallel his relationship with Tsubomi like what do you MEAN—

[valeffelees]

some quick snowbaz sketches for the soul :)

and also this lmfao

[tradingjack]

how bout them apples

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

no.1 question not to ask a bug-lover

[hayaku14]

I'M LOSING MY MIND OVER THIS CONAN x FRIEREN COVER OH MY GOD