#that was a.. dark time

[fragilecapric0rnn]

it’s MY sleepover and I get to force the asks on you!! what are some fandoms you were in before st?

FINE! I will have fun and participate in the sleepover weekend festivities 😳

just for some context: my experience with fandoms pre-st were... fine? i never really made strong connections with anyone in them or interacted with mutuals as much. i was always kinda lurking in the shadows and reading fic and rbing fandom posts but never really participating like i am now. this is definitely the most fun and most comfortable i have ever felt in a fandom space <3

One Direction (2013 - 2017 (some may argue it never leaves you)) - oh. my boys. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. i lied, i totally still have a friend/mutual that i still keep in touch with from these days that my sister met on twitter in 2013. ANYWAY not much to say other than the brainrot was semi-cured by the breakup but i will be a louis girl till the day i die.

The 100 (late 2014 - late 2017) - LOVED the fics. GREAT fics that came from this fandom. left/fell off when the show just became unwatchable TO ME. no hate to anyone who stayed longer, it just crossed my Bullshit Threshold (which is pretty low considerign i am a st fan LOL). Also Minty was MY ship for the longest time and will ALWAYS be bitter that they made Miller gay and Minty NOT canon *throwing tomatoes throwing tomatoes*.

Star Wars (little kid sen - old lady sen) - THIS ONE. This is my ride or die. I will love star wars until i am in the ground. BUT i was sent death threats on twitter in 2017 for defending tlj and after that pulled back from participating in fandom as much. still read fics and cheered ppl on from the sidelines on here. *blows a kiss to the sky for poe dameron*

Honorable mentions:

Timeless (2016-2018) - the NBC show that lasted 2 seasons but had the most UNNECESSARILY good fics and the BEST fandom bloggers holy shit. i am still shook by a fic i read back in those days. it was sadly cancelled before it's time, no matter how many petitions i signed or letters i wrote to execs that summer of 2018 :/

Revolution (2012 - 2014) - ANOTHER 2 season NBC show that was cancelled before it should have been!!! i was a freshman in high school when i found this fandom, the show was airing on tv at the time, and it was the fandom that i think introduced me to the Basics of Fan Spaces which is really special to me. i also remember reading fic on ff.net for this show which is awesome lolol.

[secondlina]

Happy Crowy Yule! It's a reall whose who of Yuletide.

[anna-scribbles]

so this summer i am nannying a 5 year old who loves miraculous ladybug (my dream) & every day she asks if we can play ladybug and chat noir at the park. these are some comics based on our various games<3

[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

[penny-anna]

hear me out. Dark & Back to the Future represent exactly opposite ends of the Time Travel Media Spectrum.

[kiiwipops]

when you're the only one in the party who has a functional moral compass

[floweroflaurelin]

I’mma sing you a sacred psalm

On your knees, pray along…

—

We did a Hatchetfield marathon recently and my decade-long on-again off-again Starkid obsession came ROARING back!! Grace Chasity was designed to appeal to everything I love to paint, so naturally here I am ✨

[bi-writes]

ghost doesn't think he hears you correctly, not at first. there's a ringing that's still in his ears from the bullet he nearly ate earlier. (cw: dubcon, 18+)

"wot?"

"can you please please please--pretend to be my boyfriend--just for one minute--!"

"heyyy, sunshine," a nasty little voice sings. you spin around, cowering by the bar, just as someone a little too drunk and a little too big comes into your space. you scoot away from him, but he's coming closer, leaning over you, and ghost tilts his head to the side as he watches the way you flinch at the stink of his breath.

ghost fits into the space at your back quite easily. your back arches a little as his big hand finds the bend of your waist, and you squeak a little when he forces you back, pressing your ass against his pelvis as he tucks you into his shadow.

"who's this fuckin' nitwit?" ghost mutters, clicking his tongue under his mask. you swallow, blinking up at the man, shrugging as you try and press yourself a little closer against his heat.

"i-i dunno," you whisper, and it's shaky, afraid. "h-he won't stop...following me."

"tha' right?" ghost hums, and you're so afraid of the man in front of you that you don't really register the way ghost's big hand is slipping lower, over the curve of your denim jeans and squeezing the fat of your ass that fills the palm of his hand all too nicely. "ya botherin' 'er?"

the man swallows a little, hiccuping. he stands up straighter, a little more sober, and he just shrugs as he takes another swig of his beer.

"just...she's so pretty, ya know--agh!"

ghost reaches over and grips him by the fat of his neck. he squeezes hard, drawing him closer, would be spitting in his face if he wasn't wearing the balaclava over his head.

"'f i see ya around 'er again, i'll paint the fuckin' walls with y'r teeth, mate, yeah? now get outta my fuckin' sight before i do it just for fun."

when ghost lets him go, he struggles to breathe, holding onto the bar and coughing as he scrambles to put distance between you. you shake a little, turning towards the bar, picking up what you assume is his drink and sipping it slowly to try and calm the nerves. you close your eyes gently, shaking your head.

"thank you," you say softly. "i-i couldn't shake him off, he was following me everywhere, i..." you turn your head and meet his eyes, smiling up at him. "that was really nice of you. i'm...sorry if i caused you any trouble."

ghost tilts his head to the side, fitting himself back behind you. he reaches over, putting both arms on either side of you and leaning over one shoulder, breathing hot against your neck.

"wot you mean?" he murmurs, and you blink, not understanding.

"for pretending to..." you laugh a little, looking into his eyes. "just...it was nice of you to do that. to pretend like that, i--"

"dunno wot y'r talkin' about," ghost chuckles, and you seize when he reaches down between you, cupping you between the legs as he palms at your pussy over your jeans. you keen a little, leaning into his touch, nasty brute pressing two fingers against where you're most sensitive and forcing your ass back against him, where he's hard, chubbed up since he first saw you, leaking into his cargos.

"i-i--" your eyes are wide, but you don't pull away, don't push him back--why am i not running? why can't i leave? what's happening to me--

"i wasn't pretending. were you?"

[sunshinesere]

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone / This is How You Lose the Time War

[deathkatastrophe]

[oautincorrectquotes]

Rumple: Don't worry, I have a few knives up my sleeve.

Belle: I think you mean cards.

Rumple, pulling knives out of his sleeves: No, I do not.

[lunamonchtuna]

— Audrey Niffenegger, from ‘The Time Traveller's Wife’ (via lunamonchtuna)

[ivytea]

soothsayer at salt-pillar house

[ther0sesared3ad]

The urge to learn every language and play every instrument and travel the world and live through every historical time period and be a writer and a poet and an actor and

[wszczebrzyszynie]

i geniuely love recognizing people from my notes its like seeing a regular at a store but fun and without the misery of working in customer service. scrolling through my notifications and saying hi out loud...little joys of life

[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.