#am I losing you

[djevilninja]

Your arms don't go around me, when I reach out for you, And your eyes don't hold the fire, that they once used to do. Little signs of distance, Little signs of distance, Tell me... we are through....

Manhattans - Am I Losing You

[canonkiller]

I just think everyone should take a moment to consider the question "what is your visual shorthand for cruelty?" and then follow it up with a critical "and who taught you that?"

specific examples include but are not limited to

why is an evil timeline character design disabled? (why do the heroes go through equally punishing battles and never lose an arm, a leg, an eye?)

why are the futuristic scifi terrorists uniformly darker skinned? (why are the heroes so much lighter?)

why is the greedy boss fat? (why are the heroes skinny?)

why is the criminal mastermind heavily scarred? (why is the brooding, traumatized hero unscathed?)

why is the predatory creep a bearded person in a dress and makeup? (why are none of the heroes trans women?)

who taught you that this is how things are?

how long do you plan on repeating it?

[nachtkissen]

the subreddit is using that pic as their header

[bookwormchocaholic]

The new questions for fic writers - 1, 8 and 16

Hello again!!! Thank you sending in these asks. :)

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

Whenever someone in real life asks me to share something that I've written/published, I usually suggest My Brother's Keeper. It's free to read, it's a short story, there's nothing scary or graphic in it, and I have a soft spot for it. It's the most true to life story I've ever written.

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

I feel like there's a story behind the song "Am I Losing You?" by Anika Paris. One that I'd love to read.

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

I'm a sucker for any Rumbelle AU, particularly historical or contemporary. What OUAT did to canon Rumbelle just crushed my soul, the only way I could cope was turn to fanfic and fanart. Season 7 was better, but still heartbreaking since they killed my ship off. Yeah, give me Rumbelle fanon over canon any day.

[jupiterslibrary]

one of the differences between good omens the show vs good omens the book that will always fuck me up is the post-bookshop fire scene. crowley goes from picking himself up, dusting himself off, accepting the loss of aziraphale and Just Driving Anyway to completely falling apart. i do get why people have gripes with it being changed so fundamentally, and i've thought about it a lot myself, but i've never been able to bring myself to get mad about it. i always circle back to how the book was written by two best friends. that drunken, wrecked, grief stricken scene was written in a post-pratchett world. he lost his best friend.

[lunarwednesday]

Kindly Miquella... I see you've thrown away... Something you should not have... Under any circumstances.

[glassrunner]

"That which inspires us to our greatest good... is also the cause of our greatest evil."

VIKTOR, THE MACHINE HERALD | ARCANE S02E06

[lilyflxwers]

i. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath / ii. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980, Susan Sontag / iii. Suddenly, It's December, Margaux Paul / iv. Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another, Jan Heller Levi / v. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde / vi. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857, Gustave Flaubert / vii. unknown / viii. @inanotherunivrse / ix. @violentcherries / x. Heaven, Mieko Kawakami (thank u @aworsening for attaching the sources)

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I spent all day on this, now I'm gonna go spend the rest of my Halloween with my family, I LOVE YOU GUYS, HAVE A GOOD HALLOWEEN!!!!!

I lost the ask this was supposed to be attached to :'(

Woah, actual communication??? Between these bozos?? More likely than you'd think 🙏

Previous!!

First!!

[blueskittlesart]

i hope everyone in nintendo’s management department dies and goes to hell no matter what and i’m not kidding

[sophies-junkyard]

I’m in the South. I’ve got ears to the ground. Republicans are SWEATING at the prospect of Kamala being nominated. They’re not sure Trump can beat her.

Let’s prove them right.

[egophiliac]

(looks at upcoming card releases)

I'm in danger :)

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[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.

[the-crooked-library]

hey. what if our souls were so intertwined that time itself twisted - and the fabric of reality ripped itself apart - just to allow us to walk into the next life together hand in hand. what then

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Trapped in a vicious cycle of pining? Try gay sex! (More things to learn over at Tiger Tiger!)