#find our people

[queenvlion]

[stemmmm]

more people gotta try this shit where bill has not improved and will not change but he's just chilling so its fine probably. its great

[asteracaea]

Hey did u get to meet Betina the giraffe?

i did not 😭😭😭 so many regrets!

[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.

[lazylittledragon]

does anyone want 700 pages of cyra lore or are you normal

[ratbastarddotfuck]

if you're a white person taking pleasure in the idea that Trump voters of colour are experiencing racist violence from white trumpers because "they got what's coming to them" I don't think you're anti-racist at all, I think you were just waiting for an acceptable target, and you're also fucking weird.

Bad Person Deserves Punishment For Their Sins give me a fucking break and get yourself out of the fucking catholic church. you're all prison abolitionists until you see someone you don't like.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ooh, you want to know what happens at the gay bar run by ex-pirates, ooh...You'll just have to read Tiger Tiger to find out...

(Inspired by this Disco Elysium comic)

[ash-short-for-trash]

The fact that both Obi-Wan and Ahsoka think that the other died during order 66 and spend years mourning the other when they both survived is so heartbreaking

[pseudophan]

nobody knows their audience better than dan and phil

[zillychu]

Consider this: ghosts are actually exactly what the Fentons think they are.

They're snapshots of a longing so strong, unfinished business so deep it reaches out beyond life. Lingers just a bit longer. And if it happens to meet a dense cloud of ectoplasm (invisible to the naked eye, but omnipresent even in the mortal realm), it coalesces. The ectoplasm fits into the shape of it. Which, when the desire is strong enough, it's got a rough idea of its self-image. This tends to mean a more humanoid figure, though it's more often warped in some way–a self-reflection, skewed by said desire. The warping varies on the dead soul’s perception of themselves, the intensity of their desire, how much time passed after death, and how much ectoplasm was present.

In short… no matter how “normal" a ghost looks or acts, it really, truly isn't human. It's animated ectoplasm with a single goal: an obsession. Nothing else. They're more akin to plants than animals, following a single drive with no emotion. They react to stimuli, recognize threats (including other ghosts), and can even imitate human speech and mannerisms to obtain fulfillment of their obsession.

Not “evil" by any stretch, but they're entirely driven by instinct. A tree doesn't pause to consider the rocks it breaks with its roots. A cordyceps doesn't torture its host for fun, or kill with malice. It just does. It follows code in its DNA to survive and multiply–And ghosts just follow the code in its ectoplasm to fulfill its obsession. The more powerful a ghost, the better it's able to overcome obstacles preventing this–whether through brute force, or manipulation. This power is always directly proportional to the amount of ectoplasm present at the time of formation, and how much time passed since death.

What then, does this mean for Danny? Danny, who's previously come to the conclusion that he's only half-ghost, which surely explains how he retained his mind? His independent thoughts and emotions?

What does this mean for Phantom, who experienced an entire world’s worth of ectoplasm condensed as a singularity, at the exact time of his death? Whose strength only grows and begins to exceed every limit they previously thought possible?

If a ghost was as strong as him… could it mimic a human perfectly? Down to a molecular level?

Could it, in its desire to fill an obsession… trick its own fake mind into thinking it was still human? Or half-ghost?

[queenvlion]

[bluerosefox]

Tim in Infinite Realms (Feeling like Alice tbh)

'Note to self' Tim thought as he stared up at the different shades of greens and black shifting sky above him as he ignored the aching his body was in from the rough landing he had to take 'Make sure to give Bart and Kon the slowest and mind-numbing missions for like a week once I get back.'

Tim often forgot his parents used to be accomplished archeologists before they died. (He really didnt, he just really didn't like acknowledging the fact they'd rather dig up buried things from ages ago over being in the same country as him for most of his life)

It wasn't until, as he and his old team ("Yeah! Young Just US together again. Time for a new insane adventure! Hey remember that one time with-" "Shh!!" "Ooohhh right... Forgot. What happens in YJ stays in YJ...") were assigned a new mission that he was reminded of this fact.

The mission was to locate a forgotten relic that apparently could open 'doorways' into different Realms, and one of them was a Realm of powerful undead that if controlled would be unstoppable. They were meant to find it before "insert 'creative name' cult of the week here please" Who planned on subjecting the world to its power.

Now knowing about the relic and finding it was two wholly different things. Tim and the others managed to uncover just enough about the artifact that Tim had manged to narrow down the last city it had been last recorded to be seen in.

And the city's old name was something that Tim thought sounded familiar.

It wasn't until they were digging into the countries archeologist permission records, meaning the people who were given the okay to dig in the historical site, that he found out why it sounded familiar, his parents names were some of the last to have been granted permission before their deaths, and it was then Bart had jokelying said

"Hey what are are the odds Robs parents stored the relic away ages ago! Would be a tiny bit funny if this all powerful item is just collecting dust in some warehouse."

And although it was meant to be a joke. Tim stared at the description of the relic and couldn't help but question perhaps there was some merit to it. Tim, for the first time in years, opened up his parents archeologist records and went to looking.

And low and behold they found out. Still sitting in a warehouse outside of Gotham, as if his parents were going to trust Gotham with important and priceless relics unless it was in their house to study later.

So in short, retrieving the relic should had been easy enough, get in and remove it from storage. Lock it away so the cult looking for the damn thing couldn't use it. Simple.

But trust Bart goofing around with Kon and accidently bumping into Tim when he was inspecting the relic and turning it on.

It apparently opened a glowing green portal... a portal that opened under Tim and dropped him into an entirely new dimension of the Undead... Great, just great.

"Ooo a visitor, we don't get breathing guests here all too often." A voice spoke out behind him, it held an echoing in its tone. He turned around and was meet with glowing eyes and snow white hair. "Although you should probably find a way home or else Walker will find you, knowing him he'll toss you in prison for just breathing, and I'm not joking."

[opens-up-4-nobody]

Suspirium - Thom York

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[amid-fandoms]

dan and phil being so vocal about how much they love and are proud of their audience in this day and age is the true ‘healing your inner child’ moment for me

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Breaking Bread, and Spilling Soup.

[Bonus art]

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