#have been about work

[curiosity-killed]

My family does this thing where they hover and nitpick and think they know better than me for everything…and then simultaneously have no interest in me as a person. Which is nothing new but always just exhausting when we’re together again

[dovesick]

endless night

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[artkaninchenbau]

A h-heartfelt reunion..?

Bonus

[kushexi]

A mermaid au that has been on my mind for some time now 🥺✨

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[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

[fox-mulder-gets-pegged]

I just wanna say bc I KNOW you're somewhere on tumblr, to the teenage girl who attended Take Your Kid To Work Day at an office building in Ontario, Canada circa 2013 and had a conversation with a middle aged woman in which you showed her your Black Veil Brides fanart and fanfics and ship content and told her about different fanfic tropes including a/b/o verse bc she happened to know who Panic! at The Disco and Fallout Boy were and thus you felt the need to show her your bandblr ship art, that was my fucking mother and I had to clarify all that to her including looking my mother in the eye and trying to explain a/b/o verse without sounding like a lunatic.

It's been 10 years and I still regularly sent evil energies in your direction. Since you'd be probably two years younger than me and thus legally an adult now, please know if this post reaches you it's on sight.

[trans-androgyne]

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

[royaltea000]

“A thousand generations serve to praise…”

[dumbgoonpup]

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Boys whose voices get higher and whinier while ur fucking them I love you. Boys who speak in a lower register when they're around their friends but lose control when they're begging and whimpering for me I love youuuu

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

[batsyheere]

"So, handling your archnemesis," Danny starts. The room falls quiet, heads slowly turning to look at the man as he writes the words on the chalkboard. When finished, the characters somehow both messy and neat at once, Danny places the chalk back down and claps his hands.

"I typically call them fruitloops. Often they're in a better position than you are- older, richer, more powerful. They may have some sort of status that protects them when facing the public."

Tim wondered where Dick was right now, and if he was laughing. His brain was lagging like a computer as he tried to process what Danny was saying, and how seriously a few of his fellow teen vigilantes were taking this.

"Some of their more common tactics are-" the chalk was picked back up, and Danny writes as he speaks.

"Manipulation, isolation, conditioning, and empathy."

MICE.

Tim stares at the board, and quietly slips put his phone.

-What have I done to deserve this.

Enjoy your lessons Tim-

His head thumps against the desk. Conner leans over, gives him a pat on the shoulder but returns to taking notes as Danny goes on to explain the conditioning tactic.

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

I’m sure Dumat being defeated the same year andraste was born means nothing

I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that andrastes mother was part of a tribe who helped the grey wardens fight and defeat dumat the same year she was born, meaning that she could have been a fetus affected by the taint in the proximity of a dying arch demon

And the fact that nobody knows which grey warden killed dumat, as seven wardens died from injuries from his death throes, and therefore we cannot actually identify a warden who absorbed his soul, means nothing

And I’m sure it is a complete coincidence that andraste had dreams and visions of the being later referred to as the maker her whole life, and behaved strangely, talking about hearing lost voices and seeing strange auras. That absolutely doesn’t sound like anyone else we know

[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.

[ghosted-jazz]

I like to think breaking the canary curse via dying in the void had some effects on Lizzie

[beguilingcorpse]

it drives me crazyyyy that like. palamedes is out at canaan house with tenderness in excelsius for dulcinea. the perfect regency era gentleman. every moment is the pride and prejudice hand flex scene. if the pov character was attracted to men even a little bit the narration would be filled with swooning. he’s lowering her gently into chairs and handing her tea so that their hands brush and looking at her with those big grey eyes of his. and all of it is WASTED because it’s NOT dulcinea it’s CYTHEREA. FUCK