#because they “replaced” someone

[multifandomangel]

fine. i’ll say it.

the only reason people hate jordan and seaver but love emily is because the characters jordan and seaver “replaced” eventually came back; emily technically replaced elle, but everyone eventually got over it when they realized she wasn’t coming back.

[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.

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

[prlssprfctn]

In his new room - in his new house - Jason searches up for a circus performances and stares at them for hours. First, he watches at them mindlessly, unconsciously curious, and then, he starts to take notes.

He is a street kid, and everything about him screams of that. So, he is nowhere near the grace of these performers on the screen. His arms are not that strong, too, but he is agile, and his legs are much stronger - he can think of something.

He can be just as good as the boy he is replacing.

It is not like someone tells him to match Richard Grayson, and it is not like someone admits that Jason is here to replace the first Wonder Boy, but Jason heard Bruce's conversation with Dick earlier. It was meant not for his ears, but it doesn't matter now.

"So, now what, you exile me, and bring a boy to replace me?!"

Jason is not mad. All of it ‐ adoption papers, the manor, the school - is much more than he ever thought he would get in his life. Being replacement doesn't sound as bad anyway; especially, if his brother is so cool.

So, he makes notes on circus performances and slightly chopes his hair. They are much curlier than Dick's - he has more of a wavy ones, and the only ever look that way, when they get long; his childhood photos with short hair looks too straight - but the cut does its magic.

The next day, Bruce compliments his hair absentmindedly and is positively surprised by his new moves on the patrol, asking where he learnt it from. Jason lies about not remembering, but his cheeks are flashed, and his smile is all about teeth. He can't wait to show it to Dick once they finally get on a mission together.

Expect, when they do, Dick just nods and mutters a light-hearted "good job" before leaving to talk with his team. And Jason knows Dick doesn't want to be mean - he gets it; no one feels good about having a replacement, especially the one that seems so cheap in comparison - but he still cries that night in his pillow, feeling himself a little kid, even if he isn't one. Even if he never was.

Jason wonders if his own replacement would make him understand Dick.

But Jason never gets replaced.

No matter the taunting voice of the Lazarus Pit in the back of his head - that sometimes sounds suspiciously like Talia's; you remain unavenged and replaced - and his own intrusive thoughts that spiral in uneven lines, Jason doesn't think Tim was ever meant to be his replacement. Being replaced means to match the person that was meant to be left behind. And no one asked Tim to be like Jason.

If anything, memory of Jason was thrown under the rag, hidden and locked securely in heads of those who survived. And if they brought Jason up, then it was always an example of what Robin shouldn't do: run away, disobey, and allow emotions to consume you. So, not much of an exemplary original. More like an opposite.

Jason feels an urge to explain that to Tim once; when they sit together on the rooftop, almost like a proper family, instead of broken pieces of someone's idea of a one.

'You could never replace me,' he says, and the instant it leaves his mouth, he knows it came out wrong.

Tim rolls his eyes.

'Yeah, dude. Whatever.'

'No, I mean—' He grits his teeth, scrapping slightly the back of his hand. 'I mean... You could never replace me, because... Because you were always better.'

Tim freezes. His big blue eyes shift in something more confused, and it is almost as if he is not sure how he needs to react — to protest? To agree? To thank him?

Jason doesn't know what to do, too.

He wants to say: it is easy as that, babybird. They wanted to have someone who would have nothing in common with me — someone who could help them to forget about my existence, about the existence of the failed Robin.

But he can't make himself speak again. And he is not sure he wants to stay any longer to hear Tin manging to put his thoughts in the words; he is better than him at this, too, and he almost always sounds convincing.

So, he leaves.

In his room - in the building he owns now - he ruffles his outgrown hair, fluffs up the white streak, and passes by his only remaining photo with Bruce in the frame, on the shelf under the stolen tire.

He still does this semi-circus move in his fights - almost frozen in the air, with his back arched - but he doesn't expect anyone to compliment him anymore.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

I just want to keep my job even though I don't know how to make memes. Buy our coffee. We've got holiday gifts for the coffee lover in your life.

Awesome Coffee is different because 1. we source our beans directly from small farmers collectives, 2. it's better and fresher than grocery store coffee, and 3. ALL of our profit goes to fight maternal and child mortality in impoverished communities, whereas almost all other coffee makes rich people richer, which is the dumbest thing that can be done with coffee (or other forms of wealth).

[arrimorr]

My ocs, Sir and Ser, aka the eldritch malevolent policemen 😔

[glorious-spoon]

my buddie hot take is that buck isn't jealous or possessive so much as he is cripplingly insecure about his place in the lives of the people he loves. which is i guess less sexy but also (imo) way more interesting

[thecoolsquirrel]

[loganhowlettshousewife]

imagine logan falling for you, the one person who doesn't want him to be anything else than who he is, who has no expectations. you're the only person he feels comfortable showing vulnerability to, because he knows you'll never judge him, will never mock the fierce wolverine for having emotions just like everyone else. you give him peace. and for decades he knows what it's like to live, fully and completely, not just fight and kill like he has for so long. he gets the domestic moments, going to the farmers market with you and picking you up when you get drunk with your friends and letting you paint his nails and giggling over homecooked meals. but you're mortal, and you age. he does too, but so painfully slow. he can't follow you when you leave him. and he goes back to living like he did before, fighting and killing and surviving, but not living. you gave him life, taught him what it meant to be happy, and without you he doesn't think he'll ever be whole again.

[sylenth-l]

Colovance being my whole mood as I farm the damn season pass last moment....... 🫠

[happyk44]

actually lol the story playing out as it does but after Annabeth reunites with Percy, he looks behind her and is very quickly, "where's grover"

cue depression that some other satyr is joining them on this quest instead of Grover, who obviously decided not to come get Percy himself because he hates him

("percy, he doesn't hate you, he's just busy preparing trying to keep Gaea down with all the other nature spirits")

("HE HATES ME")

[cangrellesteponme]

i don't think wonderland is ready for those alices

[waitineedaname]

I so desperately wanna know what lee sookyung and persephone's relationship is like. they share a son, I have GOT to know how lsk feels about that. is there grief that her son allowed himself to be adopted by another set of parents, when he struggles to connect with her? is she relieved that he has someone at all? does she try to tell persephone stories about his childhood, only to find there's only a small pool of stories she can tell, the rest of them colored by suffering and her absence? did they mourn him together?

[plumadot]

i don't think i ever shared the full arts of my dnd character on this blog for some reason??? this is roselle she's a little bard who made a pact with a fey creature for the power to make her drawings come to life!!! :D and now she's lost in barovia :'))))))) all of this art is almost two years old but i still like it!!!

[specific-dreamer]

“blah blah blah ace replaced steve”

THEY HAVE THE SAME EXACT AMOUNT OF SCENES ! STEVE HASN’T BEEN REPLACED YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST HATERS STEVE IS IN EVERY SCENE THAT ACE IS IN

“oh well he got shoved to the background/they don’t care about him/ace at least has more lore”

my brother in christ they both have lore. yall just wanna hate on ace. you don’t really gaf about steve because he has lore. he came down to tulsa with dally and he has ties/worked with the black panther party!

“ace will never be a canon character in my eyes” keep that same fucking energy for the new socs actually

[toskarin]

miss Toskarin you’re not convincing me that Skyrim was the ruin of all western rpgs. In fact you’re convincing me that the issues began with oblivion.

I'd better be careful or else I might convince you of my less loudly-held beliefs