#I mention poetry

[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.

[wizardsimper]

Honestly there was a real missed opportunity for a scene involving Gale reading the player some of his poetry

[br3adtoasty]

Le Chasseur et la Colombe

On the relationship between Juno Tauber and Rook Hunt…

➽────────────────────❥

If there’s one thing Juno is best known for, it’s provoking people. And provoke he did. Not the hunter himself, no, but rather his queen.

It started in their freshman year. The first few times were just small comments that could commonly pass as faux pas;

“Your hair is sticking out a bit to the side, y’know~”

“A little heavy on the makeup today aren’t we, Schoenheit?”

It brought immense joy to Juno whenever he saw a crack of annoyance on the oh-so pretty mask of the housewarden.

Slowly, light jabs turned to insults and personal digs. It was only a matter of time that Rook had to step in before anyone got hurt. Rook, of course, readily defended his queen, and the hostility between the two would only grow from there.

Juno could never grasp Rook Hunt. Ever elusive, shrouding and hiding himself in shadows, there’s just never enough information on him. Not enough to comment on, nothing he can use to attack with, no weaknesses. And that damn smile that never seems to falter... It frustrates him.

Rook, le Chasseur d'amour, admirer of beauty, who sees grace in all things and who could sing unending praises for even the tiniest of being, finds himself at loss for words in the face of Juno, for there was none to be seen. Sure, Juno may be fair-faced, but what good is admiring an apple whose core is so inexplicably rotten?

While they do not outright attack each other when interacting, there’s always an uncomfortable tension in the air whenever they occupy the same room. Their passive aggressiveness thinly veiled in exchanged pleasantries and polite words.

If Juno ever decides to step out of line again however, the hunter wouldn’t hesitate to put the dove in his place.

➽────────────────────❥

Bonus:

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[visiblespiketrap]

My heart almost broke. I mean, of course I and others can/could ship whatever anyway, but I can't help but be relieved that Sidon and Yona's marriage was arranged by his father canonically.

[charbroiledchicken]

this was regulus black's diary growing up. fight me.

[small-but-mightyy]

[fixing-bad-posts]

about the Lore.Fm situation. If you haven't heard, pod fic is a GAMECHANGER

(ao3 podfics | audiofic archive)

[antikr1sta]

(tw sh/blood/vent art, the text is just kinda angsty?) ...this isn't a place, where anyone should go. breathing hindered by pillowcases filled with mold. even the bugs on the walls are filled with ill will , as they burrow through skin, with no intent to kill. slowly...as though a freezing wind through rickety old windowpanes, it seeps, although a winter coat can't even warm up this frostbitten soul. so one remains shellshocked, unable to move, still, drowning in icy water. what comes to mind? a thought and a statement: being is a bother "i hate it here, i hate the smell and fluorescent lights, but most of all I hate you", he utters, gazing at his own face in the reflection of a dirty mirror; as both are only hanging on by a thread.

blood/injury tw ↓

..yeah.. i really really hate it here

[beaft]

finding out that most other people have an internal monologue fucked me up so bad i swear. what do you MEAN you have a little voice talking inside your head the whole time? does that not drive you nuts???

[fairydrowning]

ما هو الحب في رأيك؟

أن تبتسم حين يبدأ احدهُم بالحديث معك، دون أن يخبرك شيءً مميزاً، فقط 'مرحباً.'

What do you think is love?

To smile when someone starts talking to you, without telling you anything special, just 'hello.'

– Mahmoud Darwish

[kerryweaverlesbian]

GROWN-UP-TALK

Sam and Mary poem Sam and Mary poem Sam and Mary poem.

[geryone]

Song of Songs, Sylvie Baumgartel

[chronically-ghosted]

day before a 5 day holiday weekend. office empty. got me thinking thoughts.

[frothingatthemaw]

god hopes you burn with it.

[everybodyshusband]

uhhh in My Feels™️ so woe, ansgt be upon ye !!!

disabled rain, angst, hurt/not much comfort, it's just sad and a bit weird and bad i'm sorry ksdfjnsfkdf divider by the icon that is @/wrathofrats

Rain is a jealous ghoul. He’s always known it.

It’s fun, sometimes. Fun to let his packmates play with his jealousies until he just can’t help but snap. Until he’s got one of them over his lap, turned on beyond belief, skin red hot, as they beg for his mercy. As they apologise for daring to belong to anyone but him.

So yes, his jealousy is fun, but he never expected for it to manifest like this.

The first time, he thought he was just overtired. Anger boiling inside of him caused by lack of sleep the previous night rather than jealousy of one of his packmates. After all, this is a stupid thing to be jealous about, and the night before, well… He’d been rather too busy being taken apart inch by painstaking inch by Zephyr to really have had any modicum of decent sleep at all. So again, why was he jealous? Why is he still jealous? What motive did he have to be jealous of the ghoul that was in his bed only the night before?

It wasn’t until Aeon was summoned that he figured it out. Until the sensation of his blood boiling could be tied to more than just an abstract feeling of annoyance bubbling under his skin. With Aeon, he’s never felt his usual jealousy—the quintessence ghoul is in his bed more often than not, so why would he? What he has felt however, has been that awful, sick feeling of hatred every time that new ghoul stumbles. Complains of his ailments. Asks to borrow one of Zephyr’s old canes or pairs of forearm crutches for stability on a particularly bad day.

That’s when it had all clicked together. Aeon. Zephyr. Sometimes even Mountain or Cumulus.

But never Rain.

His jealousy stems from the fact that they get help. They are allowed to be in pain, to be uncomfortable. They have a reason. They have been seen by Omega, by Aether, by the team in the infirmary, and they all have something different about them.

Rain doesn’t.

Rain, with the hyperextended legs that apparently cause him no medical difficulties and yet still stumbles during practice or onstage. Rain, with the perfect iron count whose vision still turns to static when he stands up. Rain, with joints that ache, bones that pop, a head that never quite seems to be able to pay attention as well as the others, but he’s fine. No matter how hard he presses that something is wrong, he’s fine. Nevermind that he’s been Up Top for years, nevermind that he’s done all that he can to treat this on his own. Nevermind that he’s getting worse. He’s fine, at least that’s what Aether had told him the last time he took a trip to the infirmary.

So yes, he’s jealous. He’s jealous of Zephyr’s chair on their bad days and the fact that Aeon feels no shame in asking to borrow mobility aids from ghouls that aren’t using them. He’s jealous that Cumulus only needs to ask Aether for a wrist splint before one is in her lap, being meticulously fastened by the quintessence ghoul himself. He’s tried to reign it in, the intensity of his emotions about this, but no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t. He knows it’s not anyone’s fault, least of all Aeth’s or Meg’s—they’re just doing their jobs, there’s protocol they have to follow—but that knowledge doesn’t stop the jealousy, the aggravation, the hatred of his beloved packmates for simply existing in a way that he’s not allowed to. For getting help in a way that he’s too scared to ask for.

He often thinks that perhaps this is why he’s so angry, so jealous. It’s his own fault he can’t—won’t—ask for help from any of them. He knows he’s allowed to. He knows that Aether and Omega would be more than happy to bend the rules a little to help him out, or that Zephyr wouldn’t mind lending him a (literal) something to lean on when Rain needs it. But he’s scared. Scared that if they can help, he won’t be in pain anymore and he’s been lying this whole time. And scared that if they can’t, that he’s unfixable, untreatable. That this vessel is just another one of God’s mistakes that Satan never bothered to fix. Maybe it is. Maybe there’s no fixing him. No helping him.

He hopes that’s not the case. As much as getting whatever this is fixed scares him, he knows he can’t go on like this forever. His pack knows it too. Zephyr had noticed it first. They’d sat him down one day in their room and had simply waited until it had all come pouring out in a mess of tears and snot and helplessness. Since then, the pack have known what’s been happening and as a collective, they’ve been doing their best to help him. It’s nice, he thinks. For them to be so kind to a being as broken as himself. One day he’ll try his best to repay them all. For now though, he just needs to work up the energy to swing his legs over the edge of his mattress, to muster up the courage to call Aeon and ask for his help, and maybe a cane.

Or maybe he’ll just stay in bed a while longer...