#so i could still write it

[rockitmans]

Send me a Ship and a Number and I will Write a Kiss

…on a scar.

Love the list and tempted to send ore than one number in one go . . but I won't be greedy . . 😊

from the kiss list / see the rest

Notes: Mentions of the fact that Blaine has scars caused by his Sadie Hawkins experience but no details about it.

~~~~~

"So I can't help but notice," Kurt says. "That no one else is home." 

He smiles mischievously and pulls Blaine down next to him on the bed. Blaine feels the affection unfold in his stomach. He loves Kurt like this. Cheeks flushed and eyes bright and so obviously interested that it soothes some of Blaine's constant insecurities. 

"Hmm," Blaine hums like this fact had completely escaped him and the thought hadn't been thrumming under his skin for the whole car ride here. "Yeah. I guess my parents are both out tonight."

Kurt doesn't bother to act coy. His arms slide over Blaine's shoulders and then their mouths meet, soft and warm. 

It still feels so new. Kissing Kurt. Even though it's been a few months now. Months of sweet, shy kisses that have melted into heated making out. They've learned how to turn their heads to perfectly fit together. Blaine knows that Kurt's nose fits in the groove of his cheek. He knows that Kurt makes a gorgeous, needy little noise if Blaine's teeth catch on his bottom lip. He knows that his hand always finds Kurt's cheek or jaw, eager to keep him close. 

It's unusual for them to get any real privacy and Blaine doesn't fully know what he expected from suddenly getting some, but he loves how it’s turned out. Just the opportunity to kiss slowly and lazily, a constant catch and release of mouths and shared breaths until his ears are flushed and his lips feel swollen and Kurt's eyes are dark and heavy. 

Blaine can't believe how good kissing feels. He could happily never stop kissing Kurt. 

"Can I…?" Kurt breaths, trailing off. He toys with the buttons on Blaine's shirt. 

"Hmm?" Blaine can't stop staring at Kurt's mouth. Slightly red and damp. Completely kissable. 

"Can we take our shirts off?"

Blaine freezes, breath catching nervously. He wants to see Kurt so badly and trail his fingers across Kurt's perfect skin. Map out the shape of him without clothes in the way. But. That would also mean exposing himself. And he doesn’t know whether to warn Kurt about the scars. The ones that spider from his hips and up across his ribs. But the warning will just invite more questions. He doesn’t want to talk about Sadie Hawkins right now. Not because he doesn’t trust Kurt. But because he just wants to be with him in the moment and not invite his past into this bubble they’ve created.

Of course, not telling him means that Blaine might have to watch his face turn to shock or disgust. Blaine is not ashamed of the scars. And he doesn’t think that Kurt is the sort of person to care about them either. But there’s always that small level of doubt. 

"Blaine?" Kurt prompts gently. "Sorry. It's too soon. Forget I-"

“No,” Blaine interrupts. He cups Kurt’s face. “It’s not that. I want to. Just… do mine first.”  He doesn’t want to talk about the scars. But he does want to get the reveal over with.

Kurt catches Blaine’s eye as he reaches for Blaine’s buttons again. He makes quick work of them, hand sliding warmly over Blaine’s collarbone as the sliver of skin is exposed. Blaine shrugs out of the shirt before he can change his mind, letting Kurt pull it away eagerly like a kid tearing wrapping off a gift. 

He hears the way Kurt’s breath catches. “Wow,” Kurt murmurs. He sounds reverent rather than appalled so Blaine chances a glance at his face. His eyes are soft with open adoration. It makes Blaine’s own breath stutter. He thinks Kurt must not have noticed the scars somehow, as impossible as that would be. But Kurt places his hands directly over the worst of them in a gentle caress. 

“Does this hurt?” he asks. 

“No. They’re old scars.”

Kurt gives him a knowing look. Like he knows as well as Blaine that some scars never truly heal. “Can we lie down?” 

Blaine wants to protest that Kurt still has his shirt on but if Kurt looked at him the way he is now whilst half naked, he might just combust on the spot. So he just nods. He lets Kurt push him down. Kurt doesn’t quite straddle him but he does hover over him, pressing another lush kiss to his waiting lips before turning his attention to Blaine’s chest again. 

It’s startling when he puts his lips directly on Blaine’s bare hip. Blaine’s breath punches out of him. For all the kissing they’ve done, it couldn’t prepare him for Kurt’s lips on the more untouched parts of his body. It feels so intimate, the way Kurt’s lips softly press the path of the most obvious scar. Blaine shivers, hand fisting uselessly in the sheets. 

“Is this OK?” Kurt checks, voice low. “You’re trembling.”

“It’s OK. Better than OK. Good even,” Blaine babbles and Kurt grins down at him, head slightly cocked. 

“God, you’re gorgeous. I’m kind of feeling insane that I get to see you like this.”  

Blaine would agree but Kurt’s mouth is back on his body and all he manages is a groan. He throws a hand over his face. Heat spreads from every point of Kurt’s lips on him. His hips shift helplessly against nothing. The simmering arousal from making out, slightly quelled by his anxiety, roars back into life. Blaine reaches for Kurt, finds his hair, wraps his fingers through it. 

“So gorgeous,” Kurt repeats half like an assurance and  half like he just can't help himself. 

By the time he's finished mapping Blaine's scar and is making his way up Blaine's throat instead, Blaine barely knows what to do with himself. He's hard and aching. He's breathless and flushed and incoherent. He wants Kurt's body on him, wants to get at his bare skin, wants to devour him. 

Kurt's face meets him back at eye level and looks down at him. He looks flushed too, bright eyed with arousal and looking at Blaine's lips. He nuzzles their noses together and Blaine melts. He hooks an arm over Kurt's shoulders and pulls him close so Kurt is half on top of him and their foreheads are pressed together. 

"You're perfect," Kurt says, quiet into the space between them and Blaine didn't know how much he needed to hear it. 

"So are you." Blaine slides a hand under Kurt's shirt, trailing over warm skin. He wants to make Kurt feel the same as he does. Adored and content and stupidly horny. "Let me show you."

[stealingpotatoes]

this is a real canon scene that happened they just forgot to put it in the movie (real) (my toaster told me)

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[egophiliac]

Your first initial impressions of any Twst character vs your current feelings about them?

honestly, my perception of pretty much every character went through some metamorphosis of "this guy looks like a jerk" to "oh, he's a stupid jerk? now hold on." it's all about that balancing act between a dark brooding asshole and a dark brooding asshole who is also totally ridiculous, and it really does make ALL the difference.

perhaps most ironically, I've mentioned before that I was absolutely not into the Diasomnias at first, because the impression the website gave pre-release was somehow even less favorable than for everyone else and I was mad at Lilia for getting my hopes up for a token girl). and then we got their stories and, well, I kind of just haven't stopped thinking about them since. 🤷

also, I went in thinking that Crowley was going to be. y'know. competent at his job. a helpful guide. a mysterious yet caring mentor figure, a fitting leader for this band of delicate young magic waifs with their fancy little magic outfits and their perfect, perfect hair. I've never been so glad to be wrong.

[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.

[choccy-milky]

how seb and clora get together in my fic 💕bc what better time and place to confess and share your first kiss than around a bunch of inferi + the dead body of a man you just killed?? 🥰💖

[somnimagus]

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

[mustfindcreativeusername]

Sometimes I remember he died, he was dead for real, but SO MANY people loved him SO MUCH that he was brought back to life and got to have so many more adventures and get old and eventually retire and yes it's a fictional character but sometimes I think about that and I have to lie down and have a cry about it. We love you Sherlock Holmes

[moonlightcycle571]

Wouldn’t it be funny if Billy could only give powers to one person at a time, so the Vasquez kids take turns being Captain Marvel Junior (as they still look like kids) and they make everyone thinks it’s one shape shifting child.

Reporter: Captain Marvel, who is this new protoge worth you?

Marvel: you’ve met Junior though?

Mary, who wanted to take over: yeah we talked last week.

Reporter: ah what

At first it’s just Mary and Freddy (mostly Freddy cause he’s really into being a superhero) so everyone thinks Captain Marvel Junior is a shape shifting gender fluid kid and Marvel is a supportive dad.

But then the other Vasquez’s join in the fun

Reporter: Captain, new protoge?

Eugene, in it for shots and giggles: Claire, it’s me, Junior

Reporter: … you’re Asian now?

Eugene: woooooowww

Marvel: that’s low even for you

Reportee: but I-

Eugene: Both Captain and I have lived lives of many genders, colours and have been in many cultures. And yet you shame me for feeling nostalgic and reverting to an ancient form of mine.

Reporter: I- w h a t

It’s sparks a lot of debate of cultural appropriation for shapeshifters in general, with a lot of people invoking Martian Manhunter, fae and other shapeshifters. So naturally Pedro steps up

Captain Marvel and Junior both volunteering at a homeless shelter.

Reporter: … junior?

Pedro: yes?

Reporter: what are you doing

Pedro, making an ancient Mexican recipe he got from the Library in the Rock: making a dish I learned a couple of centuries ago from my then family.

Reporter, really doesn’t want to get cancelled: ok

Naturally this takes a lot of coordination, and a lot of people test them by giving info to one kid, and different info to the other. Solomon sees right through them cause the divine group chat is connected to Billy and the chosen Junior. Things were starting to chill for a bit. Then Darla joined in.

Darla, visibly younger than the other forms: Hi :D

Reporter: why do you keep getting younger and younger???

Darla: :3

At this point the reporter is so done. Are you a child with a lightning emblem on you? You are Captain Marvel Junior. And it seems to work most of the time.

Billy: *gets deaged as Cap*

Reporter: oh junior! New form? This one looks closer to Cap!

Billy: I’m not Junior???

Reporter: *bluescreens*

Bonus:

In a Justice League Meeting

Flash: So is Junior like a mantle? If so why is it only one kid at a time?

Hal: yeah, what do the others do when you take one at a time?

Billy, an absolute troll at heart: what do you mean, it’s the one kid?

Superman: what???

Billy: yeah so Junior hasn’t settled into which form they like the best and switch it up. I think they like it better that way.

Martian Manhunter, troll n2: *nods along* finding ones main form is an important part of self discovery. On Mars, many like to alternate between forms as they could not be tied down to one.

JL: ah

Bonus 2:

Batman: *slowly puts away the ‘Not An Adoption Problem’ Support Group invite*

Bonus 3:

Dudley: please please please please

Billy, fed up: WHY

Dudley: it’ll be so funny.

Billy: you know what, fine!

Later Dudley is given some powers but decides to only let the Reporter see him.

Reporter: … Junior????

Dudley: no one will ever believe you *flies off*

[anastoundingmango]

hello thunderbee nation. don't worry guys they are totally enemies... totally....

[revvetha]

[shows up at your door at 2AM] hey can we go through that last D&D session scene by scene and discuss the symbolism and the narrative themes and their implications, and how each character has grown and evolved? But in a normal way?

[bluerosefox]

Little Danny's Big Adventure

New idea.

Okay now hear me out.

-Pulls out AU idea cauldron and tosses stuff into it-

Let's put in some Ghost King/Prince Danny.... But also some deaged to toddlerhood Danny that gets yeeted into the DCverse!

Like imagine, tiny baby Danny with his tiny crown of ice floating above his head and his galaxy cape wrapped around him and uses it like a baby blanket. He didn't mean to fall into a different universe, a natural portal opened up and he was being a curious little thing! He didn't mean to trip and fall in during his nap time.

Nor was he expecting to fall into this realm during a rogue attack and knock out said rogue cause they were being a meanie and harming people and now Danny just wants his nap time cause he spent a lot of his tiny engery and he wants to find a nice spot.

Danny finds a place to crash, snuggling himself into his cape and the astronaut bear Danielle got him during her last visit that he takes everywhere since.

He's out like a light as the door to this safe house that belongs to one of the Bats opens up.

Meanwhile. In the Infinite Realms, Queen Regent Jazz is going into Mama Bear Jazz Mode trying to find her deaged brother, keeping the Realms in check, and is resisting the urge to put CW in time out Soup Time because he's being cyptided again about Danny whereabouts!!! UGH!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[gingerswagfreckles]

It's become extremely obvious over the past 15 months that the only reason much of the Western world ever basically agreed that the Holocaust was bad and was willing to teach about it is because for a brief period of time, Jews and gentiles in most of Europe + America had a common enemy in the Nazis. But this acknowledgement of Nazi antisemitism was only ever the same kind of acknowledgement of antisemitism that we get right now, where people are only willing to acknowledge the antisemitism of the people they already had a completely separate reason to dislike or fear. Antisemitism in this worldview is just a tool, a secondary accusation one can lodge at someone who is already for different reasons an enemy. It is never acknowledged as a form of bigotry in and of itself, that exists on its own and not as a follow up to another "more serious" form of oppression or bigotry against gentiles.

Obviously any Holocaust education we do get in Europe and the US has very much been the result efforts by Jews and our allies in a practical sense, but it is undeniable that there was a brief 70 or so year period where the white Western consciousness found it valuable (or at least politically convenient) to recognize antisemitism as wrong and the Holocaust as horrific. As true, original-brand Nazism fades, though, we see opposition to antisemitism and the Holocaust becoming less and less valuable to the white Western identity, as actual threat of Nazi occupation fades to historical memory. Newer, rebranded neo-Nazis and leftist Hamas supporters pose little to no threat to white Western gentiles. And thus, we see now not only a growing acceptance of antisemitism, but also a growing hostility towards the idea that we should study or condemn the Holocaust as anything particularly terrible. The Holocaust no longer represents a way for gentiles to additionally condemn an ideology that also threatened them, that also killed their families, that also resulted in their own countries and communities being occupied or destroyed by foreign fascist governments. It no longer represents to them an ideology that is in any way a threat to their own safety or way of life.

This is why we see such a massive rise in Holocaust denial among Gen Z, and, even more broadly than overt Holocaust denial, the rejection of the idea that the Holocaust should be particularly studied or condemned. More and more, we see people "questioning" the "propaganda" of The Jews Crying Victim All The Time, we see young people wondering why they are so cruelly forced to acknowledge on very rare occasion the suffering that the Jewish people went through in their own homes and towns. Often this is framed not only as intellectual bravery but moral bravery, as if this new generation rejecting Holocaust education is somehow fighting back against the unfair valuing of Jewish tragedy above gentile tragedy. What they don't understand, of course, and what many Jews up until now didn't understand either, is that no one ever valued the Holocaust because it WAS a uniquely horrific event in history, because it WAS the first and only industrialized genocide that gassed millions to death on a scale we can only pray the world will never see again, because it WAS only 70 years ago and is still a living part of the history of many Western countries. No. The Holocaust was only ever given the acknowledgement it was because it represented, at one time, an ideological threat that also included gentiles, though less overtly than it targeted Jews.

That ideological threat against Jews has not gone anywhere, and is in fact is seeing a new glory day dawning with the rise of fascism worldwide and the normalization/glorification of antisemitism on the left. But this new form of antisemitic hatred, be it neo-Nazism or support for Hamas, does not represent a threat to white Western gentiles, their way of life, or the integrity of their governments. And so we as we see the decoupling of the Holocaust from something that also incidentally threatens gentiles, we see standing against the Holocaust and antisemitism as a symbol of white Western identity disappearing as fast as it came.

[markscherz]

Bad Newts: Amphibians are in Serious Trouble

My colleagues and I have just had a paper published in Nature, based on our efforts to assess almost all amphibian species for the IUCN Red Lists. The major takeaway messages:

It is a bad time to be an amphibian

Two fifths of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.

Salamanders are the most threatened group; three fifths of all salamanders are threatened with extinction!

Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally

Habitat loss, especially due to agriculture, is a problem for the vast majority of amphibians

Chytrid pandemics have caused and continue to cause catastrophic declines of both salamanders and frogs

Protected areas and careful management are working as strategies! They are actively improving the outlook of some species

As many as 222 amphibian species may have gone extinct in recent times; of those, 185 are suspected extinct but not yet confirmed.

Our paper is Open Access, you can read it here!

Photo of Atelopus hoogmoedi by Jaime Culebras, used with permission

[choccy-milky]

sometimes you gotta lure your overly-studious ravenclaw gf into spending time with you 🥰 📚 ( from 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall' by Kat_12739 on ao3, GO READ IT!!! the first story is about seb falling sick and still pushing himself/not admitting he's sick until he ends up in the hospital, the second story is about the birth of seb and clora's daughter and seb's reaction to clora almost dying in childbirth, and the third is about dealing with a fussy newborn lewis😭🥹THEY'RE SO GOOD AND SWEET AND SOMEWHAT SAD (not to mention beautifully written) so go check it out!!💖💖 )