#killing time 5

[earths-roots-grow-up]

He’s so gorgeous it’s offending me.

[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.

[senblades]

Distortions, and ways to see the world

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 261

“So is no one going to talk about the eldritch space child or…” 

“I mean, do you want to get between a child and Batman? I think the only one who could even get close right now is Superman…” 

“No you’re right, I think- oh my god the eldritch space child is playing with batman’s bat-ears and he’s not doing anything about it what the fuck I thought only Robins could get away with that-” 

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[wyvernity]

been thinking about the sinnohtrio lately......plus misc other stuff

also, casual ko-fi drop!! get something in this sketchy style starting at $10 woop woop

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[nelkcats]

The Wish

Danny wasn't Desiree, he didn't have the power to fulfill wishes or gain power from it, but he did have subjects. And each of his subjects wanted something different, and since becoming Ghost King he had done his best to fulfill them. Or at least, fulfill the ones that were reasonable.

But there were so many ghosts, many ghosts he didn't know, from all corners of the Infinite Realms, and some had requests that while he could fulfill, maybe it wasn't the best thing for him to do.

The wish he had heard the most was "kill the Joker," Danny didn't know who the Joker was. Maybe a mass murderer taking into account all the angry souls who wanted the same thing. And he would be willing to kill him, but that would be a headache regarding universal balance.

Danny debated how to solve the problem without destroying the delicate balance of the Realms; then he was visited by a soul, a teenager who felt like a ghost but at the same time not (a broken soul? That was rare). The soul had a peculiar request, "let me come back, I will kill the Joker."

Danny frowned, he didn't think creating a halfa with a vengeful obsession was a good idea. But before he could give his verdict, the soul was ripped from his hands.

Danny wanted to deny his request, he wouldn't wish an existence like him on anyone, but if he didn't help that soul might disappear. Such "Lazarus pits" were not infallible, they were rotten, full of contaminated ectoplasm, and Danny knew it (he would have to deal with that later), but he also knew that with a little of his help Jason would survive.

Reluctantly he complied with the teenager's request and Jason returned to the realm of the living. Unbeknownst to Jason he had tied his soul to the King's request (to kill the Joker, not that Jason knew that, or would complain if he ever found out).

Danny, of course, was worried about the boy (halfa?), and decided that if Jason hadn't accomplished his "mission" in about 5 years he would bring him back to the Realms, maybe teach him about everything. He needed to get the kid another obsession anyway.

Bruce never let Jason kill the Joker, and the 5 years went by pretty fast. Danny decided it was time to visit Jason, and maybe take him back.

[mobius-m-mobius]

of course it did 😭💖 (x)

[beamattack]

return of my legend of zelda au…. haha. i've been wanting to draw more for so long but i've been so busy studying! here's link and zelda discovering a strange temple together (this dungeon is point 8 on the map, but i decided to switch the places of point 7 and 8 so this would actually be the 7th dungeon)

(loz idea masterpost)

[arrowmaker15]

(All 5 of the original Robins meeting thanks to the Flash family fucking with the timeless/multiverse again)

Jason (As Robin 2): Wait a fuckin' minute, I *die*!?

Tim (As Robin 3): Yes, that is correct.

Dick (As Robin 1): I'm still stuck on the fact that not only do I get fired, but four more Robins come after me. And that this eleven-year-old stalked both me and you for years!

Tim (R3): I'm 13, almost 14.

Steph (As Robin 4): I'm only around for a few months? Why?

Damian (As Robin 5): You initiated a protocol that Batman was meant to be around for without telling him. You then caused a gang war, Black Mask discovered your identity, he kidnapped you, tortured you, then assumedly killed you. Dr. Thompkins in actuality faked your death and after a while you returned. Then you started dating Drake.

Tim (R3): Is that part really important to mention?

Jason (R2): Yes, now, how the hell do I die, Replacement?

Tim (R3): Joker beats you with a crowbar then blows you up in a warehouse in Ethiopia.

Jason (R2): And... And B doesn't kill him?

Damian (R5): No. But Grayson does.

Dick (R1): I what now!?

Steph (R4): Don't worry, the B-Man brings him back to life shortly after.

Jason (R2): He does fuckin' WHAT!!??

[agirlwithoutmagic]

I love Once Upon a Time because in season 4 they meet Anna and Elsa from Frozen and have to fight Ursula and Cruella De Vil and in season 5 they bring a guy back from hell and kill a god and these two plotlines are treated with an equal amount of dramatic tension and narrative weight

[albaharu]

got his dad kidnapped, his friend kidnapped, mizora is waiting for him at camp and his favorite clown got killed. terrible day for the blade.

also he was made to be the perfect trickster hero lying to the baddies with that high charisma so i got him to do the talk

[fablegaze]

so. canto 5, huh

[st-hedge]

It wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card that I’d draw V again. Anyway I’ll go ahead ramble in the tags

[aeymii]

Sometimes, you just gotta sit back and draw this a-hole✨