#dark work

[norxaki]

They'll come soon

I keep waiting, and I wait

Won't somebody save me?

And if you're feeling lucky

Come and take me home

[monstertidbits]

ryoko kui is hands down the queen of character design

[oasisr]

after hearing "simply having a wonderful christmas time" by paul mccartney 74 times while working in retail, I came to the conclusion that they shot the wrong beatle

[souperluminal]

Every day Road Work Wizard fills in potholes and every night Dark Road Work Wizard crafts new ones

[the-faultofdaedalus]

magic system where “dark magic” and “light magic” are literal terms - dark magic consumes photons, making an area around the spell visibly darker, sometimes to an Extreme extent, and light magic releases photons.

because of this most dark mages tend to work in very brightly-lit areas (either artificial light or outside in the daytime) to fuel their spells and wear and use lightly coloured clothes and tools so that they’re easier to see in the dimness their spells create, whereas light mages wear heavy, sometimes leaden robes (depending on the work being done) and the magical equivalent of welding masks to protect themselves from what can be an extreme amount of light, and sometimes other kinds of electromagnet radiation!

needless to say this is incredibly confusing for anyone unfamiliar with the culture

[bi-writes]

ghost doesn't think he hears you correctly, not at first. there's a ringing that's still in his ears from the bullet he nearly ate earlier. (cw: dubcon, 18+)

"wot?"

"can you please please please--pretend to be my boyfriend--just for one minute--!"

"heyyy, sunshine," a nasty little voice sings. you spin around, cowering by the bar, just as someone a little too drunk and a little too big comes into your space. you scoot away from him, but he's coming closer, leaning over you, and ghost tilts his head to the side as he watches the way you flinch at the stink of his breath.

ghost fits into the space at your back quite easily. your back arches a little as his big hand finds the bend of your waist, and you squeak a little when he forces you back, pressing your ass against his pelvis as he tucks you into his shadow.

"who's this fuckin' nitwit?" ghost mutters, clicking his tongue under his mask. you swallow, blinking up at the man, shrugging as you try and press yourself a little closer against his heat.

"i-i dunno," you whisper, and it's shaky, afraid. "h-he won't stop...following me."

"tha' right?" ghost hums, and you're so afraid of the man in front of you that you don't really register the way ghost's big hand is slipping lower, over the curve of your denim jeans and squeezing the fat of your ass that fills the palm of his hand all too nicely. "ya botherin' 'er?"

the man swallows a little, hiccuping. he stands up straighter, a little more sober, and he just shrugs as he takes another swig of his beer.

"just...she's so pretty, ya know--agh!"

ghost reaches over and grips him by the fat of his neck. he squeezes hard, drawing him closer, would be spitting in his face if he wasn't wearing the balaclava over his head.

"'f i see ya around 'er again, i'll paint the fuckin' walls with y'r teeth, mate, yeah? now get outta my fuckin' sight before i do it just for fun."

when ghost lets him go, he struggles to breathe, holding onto the bar and coughing as he scrambles to put distance between you. you shake a little, turning towards the bar, picking up what you assume is his drink and sipping it slowly to try and calm the nerves. you close your eyes gently, shaking your head.

"thank you," you say softly. "i-i couldn't shake him off, he was following me everywhere, i..." you turn your head and meet his eyes, smiling up at him. "that was really nice of you. i'm...sorry if i caused you any trouble."

ghost tilts his head to the side, fitting himself back behind you. he reaches over, putting both arms on either side of you and leaning over one shoulder, breathing hot against your neck.

"wot you mean?" he murmurs, and you blink, not understanding.

"for pretending to..." you laugh a little, looking into his eyes. "just...it was nice of you to do that. to pretend like that, i--"

"dunno wot y'r talkin' about," ghost chuckles, and you seize when he reaches down between you, cupping you between the legs as he palms at your pussy over your jeans. you keen a little, leaning into his touch, nasty brute pressing two fingers against where you're most sensitive and forcing your ass back against him, where he's hard, chubbed up since he first saw you, leaking into his cargos.

"i-i--" your eyes are wide, but you don't pull away, don't push him back--why am i not running? why can't i leave? what's happening to me--

"i wasn't pretending. were you?"

[covvboytears]

A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde

[jiiyawns]

that life was taken from me long ago

[camojacketfag]

Illustrations by Stephen Gammell for Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

[joytri]

[lazylittledragon]

starting a bg3 tarot set!! this will be a print in my shop next month :3

[ruushes]

still endlessly indecisive abt my datv worldstate bc ive played these games too many times and have too many ocs now but ive seen a lot of people drawing their worldstate characters and i wanted to too lol so here’s my tentative pick

fantastic templates are by marianchurchland ❤️❤️💕

[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.

[lunaotic]

It's okay to lose yourself - Lunaotic

Commissions open ♥️

[strategypillar]

Some more of my vampire baddies.

[catchymemes]