#I genuinely didn't think it would be

[the-tenth-arcanum]

I signed up for a mentorship scheme back when I still had some hope in my heart, and today I had a call with my mentor and needed to share my screen and I completely forgot I had a tab open on LinkedIn job postings

[composeregg]

edit (10/23/2024) now that the poll is over: Original version, with 10 questions, from April 2023 here

And, given that the original is from April 2023, that means I can very easily say:

No, this was not an ISAT reference!

Just because I use parentheses and 2nd person pov and love the same concepts of what a time loop can do to a person doesn't mean it's ISAT

(Yes, I like ISAT, the original poll is why I was recommended the game! But if you look at the original, you can see all the origins of the options to choose from, including what spurred me on with the moss option from the replies)

If I were going to make something for ISAT, I would never be so vague, you can simply look at my ao3 for proof of that

[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.

[ministarfruit]

day 15: haunting ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

[egophiliac]

Hello ! I positively adore the running joke of Idia unknowingly finding Lilia to be the coolest guy ever whenever he doesn't know it's him, like when Silver described his father, or obviously with muscle red. I can't say what'd be funnier, Idia finding out his online best friend is actually Lilia, resident spooky hyper fairy; or them both never finding out, and it'd become even more ridiculous as time goes on. How do you think it'll play out ? You're always so on point

(Also, though it makes sense, I'm still devastated bat boy didn't get a ticket for the Halloween skeleton train : ( does anyone mentions him at some point ? Like how he'd have fit right in with all those Halloween town little freaks, and how he'd have impressed them with his spooks and scared techniques; after all he's been every Briar Valley's children worst fear on Halloween for centuries. I'm on the eng server and I didn't wanna spoil myself by watching the whole thing on youtube)

Have a nice day !

you and me both, Idia and Lilia being oblivious online BFFs (+ Idia being incredibly intimidated any time Silver brings up his jock gamer dad) is my favorite running joke/subplot. 🤝 it's SO good, to the point where I also am unsure if I actually want it to ever be resolved or not...maybe, like, as a post-canon stinger or something? everyone's standing around covered in overblot ink, and Idia and Lilia's phones go off at the same time...

(legit I do think this is part of why Idia couldn't be present for Lilia's dream, because for some reason Lilia decided he was going to just. embody his past self online. he probably quotes his own battle strategies or whatever in the middle of boss fights. Idia didn't pick up on the whole "oh how weird that we both live on a super remote island" thing, but he would spend thirty seconds listening to General Lilia describing siege warfare and be like "w-wait")

all that aside, however it does end up happening, I do see Lilia being very blasé and all "oh! cool!" about it. y'know, taking it very much in stride! and Idia...very much not.

(can't tell if tumblr is going to chew this into illegibility or not, this will be a fun surprise ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ)

as for Lilia sadly missing out on Halloweentown shenanigans...he does get one little mention as part of an offhand reference to the light music club, but so far no one has brought up how this basically is just Lost In the Book of Liliatown (Sebek's been too busy yelling about not getting to be in the same group as Malleus). 😔 honestly though, it's probably for the best that he got left out, because he would just settle right in and refuse to ever leave. canon would shatter. we would miss out on all the delightful angst of episode 7 because Lilia is too busy eating poisonous shrubbery inbetween practicing his very best screams, and no one can pull him away from it.

(I can hope for a sequel next year though...)

[meagancandraw]

You ever think about how neither of them got to say goodbye?

[welcometogrouchland]

Disgustingly messy and crusty sketch dump but I couldn't get my own terrible theory out of my head and ended up making a bunch of sketches about it. Also at the end a bonus dickbats and Damian doodle bc I was reading an issue of their Batman and Robin run (IDs in Alt)

[terrorgirls]

Armand + "Bad Faith"

Sartre explained: From bad faith to authenticity, David Detmer // Interview with the Vampire // Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre

[part one]

[deoidesign]

For my birthday... read my webcomic! It's literally free! (Unless you want books. Those are not free)

It's beautiful, it's gentle, it's funny, they're canonically t4t and gay... And it's about time traveling vampires solving supernatural mysteries!

I've spent thousands of hours writing and drawing it, and it's really good! I'm not biased!

It's on hiatus right now and coming back in 2 months, so it's the perfect time to get caught up

[flying-cat]

people who undermine the importance of izuku and katsuki's relationship throughout bnha because of "annoying shippers" or because they just don't like katsuki are insane because their relationship is literally so? important??? to the entire story???? katsuki is the deuteragonist of bnha. he was one of the first characters to show up. he was the first other person to know about OFA. so much of the manga is spent showing his development. if you deny his character development and relationship development ("relationship" does not always mean romantic relationship) with izuku, you are quite literally denying a massive part of the series. the manga starts with them and ends with them. you're allowed to dislike him but if you dislike him so much that you, in turn, start hating how izuku is a "punching bag" or a "doormat" for the entire series because he doesn't stay angry and vengeful at people even though a massive part of his character is that he's compassionate and kind even to people who aren't to him or used to not be, and you seriously think that that makes him weak, and you just start to dislike the main two characters of the series, i think you should. idk. stop reading, probably. read the revenge fantasy shit that you obviously want to read. there are like seven million manhwa available to you where the character gets the revenge you so desperately want to see.

[guqin-and-flute]

Something about the fact that these shots are all grouped together, one after another, visually giving them equal weight just gets me. The narrative knows what's going to happen between JGY and Huaisang at this point, knows how it's going to treat JGY at the end of everything. And it still takes time to show Meng Yao instinctively and immediately going in front of Huaisang and Huaisang instinctively and immediately hiding behind him. It takes the time--literally, showed it in the background and focused on it with the same general amount of time as the other shots--to show that this act of protection and trust are just as real and true as Jiang Cheng defending his sister, as Wen Qing defending her younger brother.

Like, I dunno! There are other Nie juniors there! They have swords and shit! Huaisang could have gone and hid behind the wall, but he hid behind Meng Yao! And Meng Yao could have moved back with Huaisang, but he steps directly in front of him!

There's a lot CQL did to JGY's character and narrative that I don't like and that flatten or just straight up erase his full complexity. But I really appreciate the lengths that it went to in Episode 4 to explicitly tell us that he does not hesitate to protect Huaisang, even though at this point he does not have a sword and definitely does not have anywhere near the same cultivation power (if any) as any of the rest of the people in the room.

Right now, after being publicly humiliated, unarmed and definitely outclassed, he is brave. Along with the rest of the characters, he's allowed to be uncomplicatedly young and loyal and just as innocent as any of the other students there.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

My jewish community, friends, rabbi, and educators: We are very invested in helping you be jewish. Do you want to help read the haftarah? Here's a chanukiah! You can have it!! Borrow these books! Here's some books! You need more books... Come to pesach! Come to the chanukah party! When are your classes done? We need a minyan for once!

Me and my 50000 IQ: What if I am Secretly Appropriating judaism? What if I am doing a Cultural Appropriation........

[svnflowermoon]

hey btw before you start being angry at the 10 year old sephora kids and the ipad kids, remember that we should feel bad for them. because the world has failed them. it is not these kids faults that the world is so focused on materialistic things and that their parents don't know how to talk to them. that is the fault of social media and bad parenting. i said what i said.

[trappedinafantasy37]

Since Minthara presents an exterior shell made of steel, and she's sometimes mean, and is an absolute badass in battle, she is often treated and perceived as someone who feels no emotions. And this often occurs to individuals who do put on such a tough exterior. It also does not help that many people perceive evil characters as incapable of doing or feeling anything other than evil. That love and evil are innately incompatible.

But Minthara is not emotionless, she does feel things. Sadness, grief, fear, loneliness, anger, anxiety, paranoia, vengeance, love. She can laugh, she can tell jokes, she can cry, she can smile, and she does get upset at things. If anything, she is emotionally repressed and emotionally guarded and the times where she does really express her more negative and vulnerable emotions is when it becomes too much to hold back and it comes out a little over the top. We have to remember she comes from a society in which such outward emotional expression would be rewarded with social punishment, religious scorn, or even death. So she really doesn't have the healthiest mechanisms to express her emotions.

She hides what she feels all the time as a means of keeping herself safe from punishment. She keeps it to herself cause she does not want you to see her as weak, as she would have been in the past. And she certainly does not want you or anyone else to punish her for it either. She hides behind little pet names and even using words from languages she knows you don't understand as that is the only way she feels safe being vulnerable with you. In her past, her love was rewarded with new wounds and new scars. She is terrified to open up to you, fearing that you will hurt her because she loves you. That her love for you won't actually be enough to stop you from hurting her. And she will only ever admit she loves you in contexts that have a high risk of death because there's really not much for her to lose at that point so she may as well tell you.

She also has a habit of intellectualizing what she feels and experiences so that they appear as "rational" and "logical" rather than emotional and to distance herself from her emotions. She says it takes a sharp mind to have sympathy for someone who suffers unnecessarily. She is trying to make it appear that emotions like sympathy is a matter of the mind, not the heart. That it is a mark of intelligence, because otherwise it would be the mark of weakness.

She blames herself for her own torments, like she deserved the awful things that happened to her. She frames the situation like she is more at fault and more deserving of blame, than the people who hurt her. It is the only way she can find any reason in what happened to her and any reason in her tormentors actions. That she did something wrong and induced someone's wrath upon her, rather than acknowledging that the person who hurt her is just a bad person.

She deserved what Ketheric and Orin did to her because she was "weak, passive, proud". That her emotional state had blinded her from the trap that was set, giving Ketheric and Orin ample opportunity to attack her. That if she hadn't felt those exact emotions, then it wouldn't have happened. She could have seen the trap coming, or she could have fought back.

Or if you attempt to tell her that her childhood was rough and her mother abused her, she immediately deflects by saying, "it could have been worse" and therefore, what she did actually experience wasn't really that bad. And yeah, sure, maybe she needed certain lessons given that she lived in a cruel and dangerous society like Menzoberranzan where she had to be prepared for violence at all times. But trauma is not born of love, it is born of fear, of pain, of agony, and her mother still tried to kill her. Regardless of her mother's intent, it was the first broken bond of trust and it left a mark on Minthara. Where she began to believe that her mother would torment her for torments sake, and she had doubts on whether or not her mother actually loved her.

When you encounter the first Orin imposter, it's pretty damn obvious she is terrified. And you kinda gotta squeeze it out of her to admit that she's afraid. Where it's "I'm afraid of Orin because she is capable of this, this, and this, and you should be too" rather than "I am afraid of Orin because she hurt me." And she begs you, BEGS, to keep her safe because she knows her fear makes her vulnerable to Orin.

She doesn't even truly acknowledge that she wasn't at fault for what Orin did to her until Orin is dead. She doesn't start putting the blame on Orin until Orin is dead. She doesn't go through the emotional process of sympathizing with herself until Orin is dead. And she doesn't admit that she undoubtedly has trauma, until Orin is dead. She gets so wrapped up, and so lost in her own fear and paranoia that she never has the room to properly process the things that happen to her. That her primary concern right now is keeping you, the others, and herself safe and her emotions can wait because wallowing in them will only make her weak. Only does the distance of death give her the room to start healing. Only problem is that there have always been threats and they never end, they never stop. So it is rare for Minthara to ever have a moment of peace and safety to work through what she feels and they just get backed up. Ignoring your problems does not make them go away.

So you wanna know what will happen when an embrace Durge betrays her? She will fall to her death, a knife in her belly, blaming herself for your betrayal. All her worst fears have come to pass and you were indeed a lover who hurt her because she loved you, and that she was a fool to ever trust you at all. That if she didn't love you, maybe you wouldn't have hurt her. She doesn't understand your reasoning, she can't make sense of it, she doesn't know why you'd betray her, so it must have been her fault for thinking you'd be different. That if she hadn't been so loyal, so devoted, that she could have been spared. That her belief that you would rule together is what damned her. She will die blaming herself for her own murder before she ever gets a chance to start blaming you.

[royalarchivist]

After completing the Nether minigame, a short video plays showing some of the last things the Eggs did before they disappeared.

[Muted the irrelevant cross-talk because it was loud and distracting.]

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )