#do you think that could work??

[black--sun]

He’s not expecting that. He didn’t think Shiro would hand out private details, but he really didn’t expect him to ever date a cop either. Or sleep with. Ichigo only recalls Shiro scorning any kind of authority, especially the few times they’ve interacted with law enforcement. Ichigo’s never had any real animosity toward the police until they put his dad away. And it doesn’t matter that he knows Shiro dating a cop isn’t related to his situation at all, it still feels like a stab in the back. “You’re right. Why would he try to kill you? You probably pay him well.” 

Ichigo crosses his arms, tempted to roll over. That might’ve been a little low. But also a little deserved. 

Back to flirting. Ichigo ignores it the same way he used to back when they first met. Only, now he knows it’s not just suggestive banter to throw him off balance. Shiro is probably serious. “I’d like it if you got back in the car, yeah. But I’d settle for you wearing protection and not standing out in front.” It’s not like he’s being paid to be agreeable. Not like Shiro’s boyfriend. 

He huffs an almost laugh. “Not a chance.” Shiro already has enough money and power to wreak havoc, as if Ichigo would introduce him to a small, private army. 

He isn’t quite grinding his teeth yet, but he also doesn’t have to keep Shiro happy anymore. “Like you need to remind me. That’s just about your life motto, isn’t it?” Now he does roll onto his opposite side.

His eyes coast to the side to find Ichigo, but he doesn't actually turn his head. He can't tell if Ichigo is genuinely asking, or if he's implying he thinks Shiro's wrong. Or maybe he's just trying to figure out who Shiro's screwing around with... Except that implies jealousy and Ichigo wants nothing to do with him.

He shrugs. "He's a cop." Not that he'd succeed if he tried to arrest Shiro. Shiro's pockets run deep and so do his connections. He sells to half the force. "I didn't know that when we first met, but I figured it out quick." And he chose to see him again anyway.

There's enough alcohol buzzing in his system that he catches that ire, but in a lazy, mostly unbothered sort of way. He's usually a pretty happy drunk, as long as he's not too drunk, and right now he's hovered right on that perfect plane. "I'm already a target. I'm gonna be a target the moment we roll up. Unless you thought you'd hide me in your car the whole time. Only way that's happening is if you're in my lap to keep me there."

Ichigo sounds so exasperated already and it hasn't even happened. He snorts. "Good, it sounds fun. I love a good mess. You'll have to introduce me to 'em when we're done." He highly doubts Ichigo has any intention of damage control, let alone damage control that stays out of the way. Ichigo has always enjoyed a good fight and being right in the middle of everything. "I'll jump in where I see fit, if I see fit." It's his nice way of saying no one can tell him what to do.

[bbbbbbbbatman]

Jason: I’m dating Roy

Bruce: Hmm (derogatory)

Jason: He has a daughter which makes you a grandad

Bruce: Hmm (delighted)

[oars]

[xxplastic-cubexx]

obligatory beach divorce doodling

bonus rough cover redraw of x-men #41 (1995) But Beach Divorce below cut

[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.

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[futuristichedge]

Someone I am not

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ghouls night out

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[adaki]

GIRLS NITE OUT >_< ((clockwork could not make it)) (wip)

[chalkrub]

saw some mangy dog on the outskirts of town

[pangur-and-grim]

Belphie is such an interesting kitten, compared to the other two.

baby Grim presented some challenges, because she loved to destroy property (mostly climbing various shelves and mantles and knocking everything she could to the floor), she was mildly aggressive toward Marmaduke the family cat (she felt that at the ripe age of 4 months, she deserved to be king), and she was fairly aloof for a kitten, more into running about than cuddling. in most ways, she was like a tiny mafia boss.

Pangur I instantly soul-bonded with, because she was so sickly and pathetic. and neurotic, too - everything was scary to her, people, places and animals. she’d explore the house and play, but there was always an ‘expecting an eagle to swoop down and grab her’ energy.

now Belphie! he’s a healthy active boy with zero fear, and zero aggression, but (fortunately or unfortunately) someone cranked his Play button to maximum and then broke off the handle. he is either fast asleep, and the cutest kitten on earth, or racing about and flailing and climbing and pouncing. which means that he can’t be let outside the kitten room unsupervised yet, because his baby willpower is only so strong, and he will eventually break and start jumping on Pangur and Grim. so in a way, he’s the healthiest happiest cat I’ve ever had, but he’s also the most complicated, because he still has to spend most of his time jailed in the kitten room.

[aliosne]

Saw a post about working class butches in physical labour jobs and wanted to make my own, so: I love you butches who do childcare or early education. I love you butch nurses. I love you butch house cleaners and janitorial staff. I love you service industry butches. I love you butches who do sex work. I love you working class butches who do “feminine” jobs you are cool as hell

[jel-jel-jel]

hey do you guys like dedf1sh

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

Hey hey hey may 31th anon! How's 2024 going? ☆ヾ(*´▽｀)ﾉ This year I have for you a leaked Sherlock season 5 image. Thinking of you!! And everyone!!

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!