#my people will never be free

[tiptoethewordsgo]

as someone who has despised lestat since episode 1 watching interview with the vampire is actual torture . like obviously i love the show but every-time he’s on screen saying some bullshit (every episode) i have to resist the urge to shoot myself . can this freak just die already

[fruitbasketball]

Um what's going on..?

oh! war

[cangrellesteponme]

every time white people recommend purple blush to black women who just want to weak pink an angel loses its wings i swear

[6lackbeautie]

Just saw a tik tok that listed pro black as a black woman ✨aesthetic✨………….

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[girlfictions]

palestine is in a complete and utter blackout with israel launching hundreds of its heaviest airstrikes so far across gaza. this is a mass slaughter and we won't even know the extent of the casualties until it's over; israel have cut off telecommunications so they can commit their atrocities in the dark. there is a genocide happening right in front of our eyes and every person who has ever defended israel's "right to defend itself" has the blood of palestinians on their hands. we cannot ignore what is one of the most devastating massacres in human history.

[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.

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[chalkrub]

thank you for a great art fight! here's some of my final attacks. had a blast, already missing it - see you next year!

[stil-lindigo]

a non-comprehensive guide to my favourite characters in claymore, the best manga you've never read (more under the cut)

don't know what I'm talking about? here's a crashcourse.

[cangrellesteponme]

that moment when you really like a thing and they hit you with the "very sexual dark-skinned character smells like spices" trope

[apollos-olives]

i've been thinking about this for months but honestly i think no one knows how to interact properly with palestinians. we've already gone over the whole "parasocial relationships with palestinians are bad" thing but then there's the other issue of just using palestinians as news outlets. so many people followed me because i was talking about palestine and educating people on tumblr about palestinian culture and that's literally all they use me for. they don't care about me as a person, as an actual human being, who has a life outside of just talking about palestine online.

i notice when no one interacts with me outside of that. i notice when no one treats me like a person with likes and dislikes and hobbies and interests. no one really interacts with my personal posts that talk about my day-to-day life. no one really cares about it when i share about my work, my school, my family. no one cares about seeing palestinians as people with real lives. they only see palestinians as history books, or news channels. they only share our posts and our stories when it relates to the occupation. i've posted hundreds of small posts about my life and my struggles and my celebrations and my activities and no one cares. and i'm not demanding anyone to care, but it does tell me that people only follow me for the information i can give them, and that they don't follow me because they actually really care about me as a person. people see me as a news outlet. as an object. just an information machine. and i've seen this happen to other palestinians on here as well, not just me.

palestinians have lives. we have personalities. we're just normal people who are undergoing genocide. the best way to comfort those in need is to befriend them and let them know that you care about them. yes, please donate, please advocate, please keep boosting palestinian voices and sharing palestinian news. but also please talk to us!! treat us as people!! we have likes and dislikes and hobbies and personalities and we're human beings just like you!! please treat us more kindly and interact with us outside of just the genocide. we want to be treated as humans. only following palestinians for news and education and nothing else plays a part into the dehumanization aspect of the genocide. we just want to be treated like normal human beings.

i've seen this happen to other palestinians on this site and other places as well. i've had several discussions about how people don't interact with us unless it's about the genocide. it's really isolating and makes us feel as though no one cares about us as individuals with different beliefs and personalities. we just want people to actually care about who we are as people outside of our oppression.

[citrusai]

taash said "they were doing it" and people ran with the interpretation of an npc that doesn't know solas or the history of the elvhenan even when bellara interjected and said, no, that's not right. that's not how it was for the elvhenan. they formed bonds before they had physical bodies. and people ran to doompost or create weird anti-solavellan shit even though mythal & solas refer to each other as old friends and when she releases him there is no tenderness or love in it. it is the act of unchaining a dog from his post, the stepping down of a general. but to each their own ig.

[burquillos]

Had the most cathartic drawing session earlier

[pokeberry5]

thug beatdown round 2: electric boogaloo

(extras, cw flashing gif:)

alt:

the fit:

[deoidesign]

One of my first digital pieces (2010) versus one of my recent ones (2024)

We all start somewhere!