#just been thinking about this lately

[saltywatercrocodile]

shoutout to all my therians who are pests. crop eaters. livestock stealers. trashcan raiders. garden destroyers. attic dwellers. nuisance creatures. safety warnings on footpaths and road signs. threats to property and safety.

you are allowed to exist.

[asteria7fics]

What if I did a Princess Kenny cosplay but instead of making it accurate I lean into the fact that she's an actual Japanese princess and go full Mahou Shojo with it?

[heartbeatbookclub]

One of the most weirdly liberating things to me has been to realize "I'm writing for myself. The audience comes second." Which sounds obvious and a lot of other people talk about it, but seriously, this has completely reshaped how I look at things I write.

I can spend like 6 hours working on a draft that I later come back to and think "wow, I was in a very strange headspace when I wrote this, and it shows! I don't have to share this with anyone and I'm glad about that!" Or I can take like 2 hours to workshop a minific that consists of maybe 200 words, and think to myself "I don't need to extend these thoughts to post them anywhere. I have them up here. This is enough." and just leave it there!

And maybe, one day, I can come back to it, maybe work it to something postable, or just post it as is, with absolutely no pressure to do so because there are no eyes watching me but my own!

I have so, so many old drafts of different fics with different concepts and thought processes at different levels of completion and quality, and every so often I just take a long look over all of it and think, "holy shit, I did that! i've been writing that long, and that much!"

When you worry about the audience, you start to lose sight of what it really means to write, and what it should really feel like. You start to lose the joy of writing. Don't let that happen. Don't let that flame die out.

Don't kill the part of you that loves what you do. Kill the part of you that cringes.

[wtchgrrl]

yknow what’s a dynamic i think our media should utilize more often?

scientist x witch

like cmon. a lil witch lady gathering ingredients for her scientist boyfriend to use in his experiments!! witch guy making potions with his scientist girlfriend!! a little scientist lady researching about flower symbolism in order to give her girlfriend a bouquet she knows she’ll appreciate!! lil scientist guy staying up and reading textbooks about potions and herbs and spells to show his boyfriend that he cares about his interests!! a scientist and their witch s/o bonding over the environment and what they can do to make it healthier!! scientist guy having a greenhouse dedicated to his girlfriend’s garden!!

personally, i think it could be a really cute dynamic :>

[houseofache]

hey, i know i tend to be quite analytical on here, but i hope you know that you’re loved and needed in this world. yes, you. i’m glad you’re here.

[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.

[thatkoiboi]

Part 2

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This is a fan comic inspired by Cass' Apocalyptic Series and is just my own little fan art of how Donnie and Casey could have gotten closer!

The creator is @/somerandomdudelmao

hebehjeabaje I did a warm up doodle of Mikey on the canvas and liked it so much I wanted to incorporate Mikey somehow (literally made up an excuse just to drop a bunch of easter eggs for fun).

[taxinealkaloids]

behold hitherto unposted htn doodles! harrow+her terrible mentor, harrow+her terrible roommate

[saprophetic]

btw. to any kids for whom hearing your parents move around the house is terrifying. at some point hearing the door open because someone's home will make you smile. youll hear voices in the other room, or youll hear footsteps down the hallway, and it won't be scary, it'll be comforting. like i dont wanna be That Guy Who Says "It Gets Better" but im almost 27 and ive found the people im gonna spend my life with — hearing my roommates in the house is natural and normal in a good way. i know it feels like everything will always be awful but i promise you WILL make it out of your parents' house, and the life you can build for yourself will make you happier than you ever knew was possible. at some point someone standing in your doorway will be because you love them and want to talk to them. itll be worth it, i promise.

[flashbastardsramblings]

I've realised that the thing I love most about the new popular queer media (and for this I'll use as an example wwdits, good omens and ofmd), is the fact that the difficulties these characters are dealing with aren't connected to their sexuality. The problems don't stem from their queer sexuality. They are not being punished for being queer.

Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship isn't forbidden because they aren't a cishet couple. It's forbidden because they are both victims of an opressive and unjust system (heaven) who's afraid of their combined power which is a direct result of their love for one another.

Guillermo and Nandor's relationship is so nuanced and complicated. There's lots of things to unpack that have been piled up for more than a decade, but again their queer sexualities aren't the problem. Same goes for the rest of the vampires, who are also queer.

Sure, in Stede's case he has to deal with queer trauma, toxic masculinity and the realisation that he's gay, and therefore doesn't conform to the ideal archetype of the straight, masculine man with the heterosexual family. But after realising that and coming out to Mary, the show isn't really about ‘oh, look how difficult it is to be queer, poor guys'. Like Con O'Neil said in a panel, the obstacle here isn't that we have two men who are in love. The difficult thing is to let yourself be in love and become vulnerable.

Both Stede and Ed are dealing with their own trauma, which has affected how they see themselves and by extension their relationships with other people. They are dealing with self doubt, even self loathing, and the belief that they aren't good enough or that they don't deserve love. However, none of that is because they are queer. Being queer sure isn't easy (especially then) but it's not the source of their pain and I fucking love that.

I'm all about the exploration of sexuality, dealing with internalised homophobia and transphobia, coming out etc, and that's why we have series like Heartstopper. But it's still so fucking refreshing to see queerness not being depicted as a ‘big deal’, but rather one of the many aspects of one's self.

That being said, I love being queer and fucking love my insane little queer characters.

[lazylittledragon]

what do you mean youre technically a detransitioner cause of terf bullshit?

it's a v long story but i detransitioned for a couple of years when i was 16/17, for multiple reasons but mostly because i fell into the blaire white/kalvin garrah chamber of "you have to be This way to be trans otherwise you're not real".

i was already Deeply insecure about myself and my 'passing' and i was led to believe that i couldn't want to wear makeup or skirts, and i couldn't choose not to have bottom surgery, and i couldn't do anything but bind for 12+ hours a day to the point that my ribcage is still misshapen. basically i thought that if i wasn't suffering enough doing 'feminine' things, i couldn't really be trans, so i should just go back to being a girl and suck it up.

the terf bullshit is because i'd seen a lot of terfs/detransitioners talking about the 'dangers' of testosterone and how it would turn me into a horrible ugly evil monster and how there was nothing worse than wanting to be a man. which combined with 'you need to fully medically transition to be valid at all' creates some very dangerous and upsetting feelings to cope with.

it also came from trying really hard to put myself in a little box before i realised that my sexuality/gender are very fluid and it's FINE for me not to have a label and just do whatever i want. when i was 19 or so i went back to using they/them (and eventually he/him) and changed my name again because even though i like doing 'feminine' things, i don't want to be seen as a woman.

tldr: i was conditioned by transphobic/terf rhetorics to think that i was being trans the 'wrong' way so i couldn't be trans at all, so i believed i must actually be a girl if i still wanted to do 'feminine' things. nowadays i am a transmasc who does feminine things because i don't give two shits about what any transmed prick thinks of me anymore.

[atalana]

so the good place is widely lauded on this site for its takes on morality and capitalism, which i totally agree with

but i think it should get more recognition for the line "all humans are aware of death. so we're all a little bit sad all the time. that's just the deal. we don't get offered any better ones. and if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. i've been there, and everybody's been there. so don't fight it. in the words of a very wise bed bath and beyond employee i once knew - go ahead and cry all you want. but you're gonna have to pay for that toilet plunger."

[dog-teeth]

something to recognize that choosing recovery again and again is difficult work, and you are not weak for faltering

[napping-sapphic]

Need the kind of cuddling where we get our hands under each other’s shirts and splay out our fingers just to feel as much of each other as possible and make ourselves as close to each other as possible

[toytulini]

listen im ace and im pro kink at pride and whatever, but the way some of yall are wording your posts in response to the backlash against it is uh. really taking me back to the ace shitcourse era.

yall know theres nothing wrong with being a "virgin", right? that its not inherently shameful to have not had sex, to never have sex, even if youre not ace, even if you do want to have sex someday, like, its fine that you haven't had sex?

maybe if your problem is that theyre trying to police your behavior and shame you for expressing your sexuality, you can say that? instead of resorting to "haha stupid virgin gets no bitches" like my god. do you not hear how fucking regressive that attitude is? i know, i know, youre "joking".

get a better joke

[metaphorical-goblin]

I’ve been thinking about narumitsu coming up with excuses to hold hands lately

Babies holding hands as they cross the street because it’s dangerous, or grabbing onto each other so they don’t get separated on a field trip, or one of them (probably Phoenix, sorry baby) forgets his gloves inside and it’s freezing but they don’t want to lose a single second of recess going back inside to get them!

And then as they get older, Phoenix and Miles shaking hands after getting the verdict for DL-6, and maybe they’re both holding on for a little too long, staring a little too long, and breaking away with an awkward cough

or Phoenix pushing his way through the crowd after Matt Engarde’s verdict, carrying Pearl in one arm and holding Miles’ hand in the other because he can’t risk them getting separated and Miles is the one with a car and a tendency to speed so he’s the one—

or Miles clasping Phoenix’s hand between his own in the hospital because lord, he’s freezing, trembling uncontrollably and really, it’s only because Phoenix is trying to give him something so of course he has to take his hand—

and gently pulling Phoenix’s hand away from his spiky hair, on the verge of tearing it out, coaching him to regulate his breathing. Holding Miles’ hand through a particularly rough patch of turbulence. Taking Miles’ hand while they walk on the streets of whatever country he’s flown them out to, because he’s holding Trucy’s hand on the other side and they need to be balanced, can’t get separated,

quietly, quietly, joining pinkies in the front row of one of Trucy’s shows. quietly, quietly, tugging on sleeves just to ask to slip around a corner for close whispered words and warm cheeks that almost touch. quietly, quietly, letting their hands rest just beside each other as they both hold on to the grocery store cart, and it’s awkward because they weren’t made for two men of their stature to push it at once, but it really doesn’t matter all that much.

And (taking a page out of Rendevok’s book, love you) one of them (probably Phoenix, sorry baby) forgets his gloves again, and Miles carefully taking his hand, pulling him close, and warming his hands up as best as he can

and taking Phoenix’s hand, trying to steady it (which doesn’t help at all because they’re both shaking), glancing up at him and he’s got this wobbly excited smile on his face and Miles can’t help but snort, which doesn’t help the shaking hands but someone clears their throat and they both take a steadying breath, and Miles gently coaxes the ring onto Phoenix’s finger, and they smile