#genuinely this made my LIFE

[mightymizora]

If you take requests... I'm obsessed with Manva and Gortash, what about if they held hands? When would it happen? How would it happen? Why would it happen? Love you!

Listen, I was absolutely VIBRATING with excitement waking up to this ask. Thank you for letting me write more about my horrid darlings. So here we have a little, kind of sweet (?) thing.

Hand in Unloveable Hand

Pairing: Manva Warhelm (The Dark Urge) x Enver Gortash

834 words. CW from the first sentences for violence. Stop reading now if you don't want that!

There is a bite mark between her thumb and forefinger, still raw even as the flesh is knitting back together. He remembers when she got it from the Miyar boy, Kriston, who bit down on her with all his might as she ripped his jaw from his face.

The first time they met, after months of coded messages, of offerings, of displays and promises and desires.

There are deep, deep callouses on her knuckles and cracks in the skin from her work. Her hands are instruments. She uses them with precision. 

There is a freckle larger than the others that he always leans in to kiss first, right beneath her ring finger.

He takes off the rings from his own; the vulgar diamond from Lady Jannath and the signet he had designed by the master metalsmiths of the gate. His crest, his seal, his power. As he lays them down on his bedside table a sweeping thought comes and goes; he will have to take a wife soon, one of the patriar’s daughters. Perhaps Jannath’s daughter with her hair of flame would be a fair substitute. If she has the fervour of her mother, at least he won’t want for some fun.

Manva is naked in his bed having washed away the viscera of their hellish escapade, her hair still wet and stuck to her skin. His servants prepared her a bath; he took the time to add lavender oil, the finest soaps, and he can smell it on her now he is close. She is laid out on his bed like a corpse in a coffin, and her skin is cold as he touches her, as she watches his hand run down the deep scar that sits from under her breast down to the softest part of her abdomen. A gift from her sister.

“You were perfect today,” he tells her, taking her hand to kiss. “Perfect.”

They tore through the defences of the vault of Mephistopheles, his knowledge and foresight, her talents unleashed against any foe that dared to stop them. She tore the heads from imps, broke through the ribcages of hellsboars with swift, strong kicks. 

She laughs at the memory of it and it is pure joy, pure glee, and he cannot help himself but to laugh with her. It is an after-glow, her desires sated, and he wants nothing more than to give her everything she needs so he can keep her here, keep her like this, in his bed like this. But she will want more. She will always want more, and so will he.

He looks at his hand, balanced carefully under hers as their laughter fades. She has scrubbed the blood from under her nails, but her hands are still a worker’s hands. He has fought to lose such trappings of poverty. He has soaked, filed, scraped away any sign of it. He picks the skin from around his nails until they bleed.

He turns her hand in his and, as if they were not connected to his body, his fingers start to lace with hers. Her hands are as big as his, strong weapons that envelop him.

“Enver,” she says, the dark rich sweep of her voice piercing the silence. “What are you doing?”

He should be scared 

he should be scared 

he should be terrified.

But he is mesmerised. 

“I do not know.”

“It is not like you, to have no plan.”

“Forgive me.”

She could tear his arm off, but she does not. Instead her fingers close around him, her thumb strokes his, and she leans in to kiss him close to his temple. 

“I can hear your heart, Enver. It is deafening. I want to tear you open. I want to touch my lips to your heart.”

He pushes her hair from her face where it sticks to her, and presses his lips to her throat. She does not move, but he is close enough to feel her swallow.

There is a knock at the door. 

He had forgotten they had sent for them, but it was the ritual, after all. Rumours had started to swarm through the common folk; do not go to Lord Gortash at night, they go in and they do not come back out. But it was a simple thing to remedy. Offer more gold. In the weight of mortality and riches, greed always won. He well remembered the weighting of it, the constant stream of souls into the hells, the simple act of transaction. 

He feels something stir in him at the dark look that passes over her. He will place the bag of money in sight, he will see the balance of fear and greed in the eyes of this poor young girl with the flame red hair. Manva will let them please him and she will rip them apart with her beautiful hands. It is a perfect sacrifice to their lords. An offering, an apology even, for their greatest sin. 

The sin of loving each other.

[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.

[nightwingsgirlfriend]

jay jay siwa

[cozylittleartblog]

50+ deaths at 5 am got me yelling absolute nonsense to the bosses kicking my whole entire ass

[sharkylad]

Thinking about the fact that Mabel and Dipper didn't know they had two great uncles.

Yeah they are 12 and at 12 I had a shotty understanding of my family tree- But really? Nobody brought up their great uncle? Stanley? Especially since they'll be staying with his twin brother, Stanford?

Shermie never went to Stan's fake funeral, which to me means the twos relationship was strained on some level. If Shermie is older that means his view of Stan was poisoned in some way, that even as kids they weren't close. If the Shermie is younger then he never even got to meet Stan and all he knew about him was how he failed his family. Hell, people probably barely mentioned Stanley TO Shermie.

The fact that Stan had become a black stain upon the Pines family name makes me so vividly upset. Stanley faked his death and the family just- seemingly decided to strike him from the record. To pretend he didn't existed to spare themselves the sadness and shame.

Stanford and Shermie Pines. The only children worth mentioning of Filbrick and Caryn Pines.

It was never Stanford that was lost to the world. It was Stanley, ever since he had to leave New Jersy- it was always him that had to be struck from the record. Change his name, change his state, change his affiliations, destroy the remains of ghost that was Stanley Pines. Kill him so the family doesn't bring him up, doesn't ask questions, stops asking "Stanford" about his twin.

I just keep thinking about the fact that since the day he made one single mistake all the way up until Ford walks out of that machine- Stanley Pines was killed and did not exist. And Stan himself had no one to blame, he had to play the part in his own demise- He is the only one who ever knew Stanley was alive and has been for decades.

He lives in the multitudes of every personality he's ever taken, all in the hope that he himself can stop being Stanley Pines.

[mimimar]

i've been completely charmed by witch hat atelier♡

(art prints)

[lotus-pear]

bsd rewatch w my friend means obligatory art of my fav found family ever

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Person with no whimsy: Why are you trying to trick g-d with loopholes? 🙄🙄🙄🙄

[swedenis-h]

Women supporting women! (X)

[juaneloriginal]

A dream and a nightmare

@blackkatdraws's silly!

i just want him to be happy bro

by himself not only with black, honestly i like their relationship but most of the time (i think early in their relationship) he always comes out injured or dead and the fact that he doesnt even care about his own safety most of the time just to (me thinks) make black happy makes me so sad/pos

i like the fact that they are being more cute now but im not sure how much that its going to last

[halflifebutawesome]

Alyx… alyx i love you ……..

[98chao]

d. devsis. DEVSIS. DEVSIIIIISSSSSSSSSSS

[badassindistress]

In an effort to be the change I want to see in the world, I am hosting a historical underwear teaparty next month. Yesterday I amused myself by putting together combinations from my collection that my friends might like to wear

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[starryemeralds]

ad astra per aspera 🌠

[Image description: it is dusk, and Mabel and Ford from Gravity Falls are wearing witch hats and hanging by Bill’s statue in the woods. While holding a puppet of Stanley, she does an impromptu eulogy for Bill, dramatically saying, “Goodbye Cipher, you are dead. Blown up in my Grunkle’s head. Too much power hurt your soul. Reincarnate as a vole. Amen.” Ford laughs in response. End ID.]

here is a textless version:

and the pages this is based on!