#I am in love with them thank you

[winterstaryu]

Update: I am caught up on Camlann Pod.

Y'all, if you haven't listened already you GOTTA. It's incredibly well made, the voice acting is stellar. I only really have a passing knowledge of folklore and especially Arthur/Camelot centric stories, but honestly it's not necessary to know a lot about them, and I've followed everything really well.

It's an incredibly interesting exploration of being doomed by the narrative, and there's a dog, a VERY good dog

[lotus-pear]

learning to love

[erabu-san]

I enjoyed every second of this quest

[This art has platonic intention. Thank you for not tag ship!]

[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.

[egophiliac]

What do you like about the Diasomnia boys if I may ask?

I always love hearing about the different reasons people enjoy characters.

I mean, c'mon. he has split custody over Sebek okay

also, Lilia in particular has maybe the best timeskip character development of all time

[zebratimw]

"All those empty rooms

We could have been anywhere, anywhere else

Instead, I made a bed with apathy

My heart knew the weight

Ten years worth of dust and neglect

We made our peace with weariness and let it be..."

(Song: The Moon will Sing by the Crane Wives)

[technically-human]

Welcome to the reverse verse! This is part 1 of 2 of a commission for @i-am-as-normal-as-you-are and I can't wait to tell you all about it, because I'm incapable of being normal and chill about these concepts, so I ran with it.

Charles Rowland was born in 1900, his mum was from India and moved to the UK after marrying Charles' dad, a soldier who was not... very loving. Charles' heritage gave him some problems, but none as bad as that one time in 1916 when he was sacrificed to a demon and spent the next 7 decades in Hell. He doesn't like to talk about it, except when it can get him what he wants. He was always an angry boy, or so he thought, but after his time spent in Hell, it became so much worse. He's explosive and unpredictable, and so he mostly avoids conflict. He doesn't need to fight anyone, as his charming personality and sweet smile (plus a few smart calculations) always seem to be enough to convince people to give him what he asks for. And when the fight is inevitable... well, he has Edwin for that!

Edwin Payne grew up very sheltered, in a deeply religious home, and he is proud of that. Don't try to argue with him, because he surely has a Bible verse that will help him win (and if not, he is not above using his croquet mallet now that he has someone to keep safe). Unfortunately for him, he realized at a quite young age that he felt attraction towards other boys. Even worse, somehow other people could tell as well, including those peers that ended up killing him for it (the rumour spread throughout school was that he had died due to AIDS, and most people just accepted it). He never acted on those unnatural urges of his, but when he met this ghost who had just escaped Hell... he decided not to risk eternal damnation, and to stay here with Charles, instead. Edwin has no interest in the supernatural or in magic, and sort of looks down on them, but luckily his friend's got that covered.

[astearisms]

but it ain’t called love without a little tragedy 🍁

[birbs-in-space]

curious about what's in store for you for 2024? :D

Let AO3 decide!

(Updated from 2023: Up-to-date tag bank, opt-in tag categories, optional dark mode! As always: proceed with informed consent.)

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[rileyclaw]

see you in 2023 🌠

[erabu-san]

I enjoyed every second of this quest This art has platonic intention, please don't tag ship

[arrgh-whatever]

decaying limbo

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In the world of heavy metals, love is denser than hate!

[lotus-pear]

NEW MAYOI CARDDDDS MADE ME SILLY THEY CANONICALLY HAVE GIRLS NIGHT SLEEPOVERS IM SOBBING UEUEUUEUEUE

[800db-cloud]

i’ve been wanting to do this since day one