#still needs some work

[chimerawrites]

An Abandoned Soldier

Hollowed out and filled up with hate, to a point where the only thing that can relieve that itch, that pain, is death…

Or maybe destroying this city would help.

The city that did nothing but watch as a father beat a mother and his own child after a drunk night.

The city that watched while a mother injected that forbidden substance in her veins to forget. Forget till life leaves her eyes and she leaves her child behind.

The city that saw that same child starve and steal just to try and stay alive, watching him freeze in the streets with not much clothes to cover himself.

And then the same city threw him some hope.

A man filled with revenge and regret to his bones.

The city kept going as this man takes the child in. For a child with nothing this man gave him everything.

The city stayed the same as this man makes the child a fighter. A warrior. A trooper. A puppet.

A soldier in a meaningless war that has no end.

The city didn’t stop for a second as the clown destroys this child. As he breaks him and destroys who he is. Or what he was supposed to be.

The city watched as this child dies and becomes a man. A broken man.

And the city fears as this man, this broken man, comes back from the ashes of his past with nothing but revenge on his mind.

Ready to destroy it all. Destroy the man who cursed him with this burden.

The false image of protecting a flawed paradise.

To destroy this city filled with broken men and if he can't, if he fails again, then he prays the city will finally show him mercy and bless him with death.

[woodleeef]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

not "i ship these characters" or "i want them to bond platonically" but a secret 3rd thing (I want them to be forced to interact by the Narrative bc they would HATE that)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[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.

[rika-mortis]

Made a silly alternate version for the previous comic

[aalghul]

once again thinking about jason as duke’s robin. he’s ~4 years younger than jason, and that puts him at 8-12 during Jason’s time as robin. that’s prime time to get attached to your local kid vigilante before your own life goes downhill.

and if we try to keep duke’s meeting with bruce in zero year + duke’s age (so he can remember the meeting and hold that conversation with bruce), he has to be around 8. if he starts following batman through the news at that time because of the mess that just happened, the robin he sees is probably jason. I’ve literally connected the dots

[paintedcrows]

Some Fords! (and Martin K Blackwood is also there)

[mochi-han]

mountain 🌱

(accidentally posted this on the wrong account, head over to @lovetositinsilence for more art ✨️)

[vaguely-concerned]

the more I play the more I think lucanis basically knows it's illario who betrayed him right from the beginning (he's had a year in the ossuary to think. not that many people knew where he was going. when you ask him 'did Illario know you'd be on that ship' his only answer is the hardest flattest 'yes' you ever heard). so it's not so much about figuring out who the traitor is (because that's ludicrous. we all know. immediately. they didn't really bother to hide it lmao) as about methodically closing off every single avenue of denial lucanis has clung to that whole time with as much or little gentleness as you might prefer until he has no choice but to admit it. because the moment he has to admit it, he'll have to do something -- feel something -- about it. and that's such a catastrophic event in lucanis' inner landscape (he has had TWO people in this whole entire world up until now and will do anything to hold on to them with a heartbreaking child-like desperation, even at and especially through the detriment of his own self) that he'd rather just. not. what if we quite simply. didn't. what if we just stayed here in the emptiness where we can both pretend you didn't hurt me in a way I should never forgive. I have so much practice in that with caterina already it's always worked out great for everyone so far. (press x to fucking doubt but that's trauma logic for you lol)

after everything illario did, so much of the storm of lucanis' emotions around it is 'what the FUCK did you get yourself tangled up in this time and how do I get you out of this mess safely'. what's worse: the fact that your brother murdered you, or that he put himself in horrible danger doing so and thus exposed you to the risk of losing him forever. lucanis' heart certainly has an opinion here and it's fucking unhinged (affectionate)

the themes of dissociation in lucanis' character in general makes me feel nuts. allllll these contradictory messy things he needs to cut off from each other because they can't coexist or be easily reconciled inside him. but all remain stubbornly true separately anyway and will have their due one day. love and resentment. tenderness and fear and rage. terror and longing. love and freedom don't coexist. the burned out golden child anthem is playing in the background. he was always caterina's favourite and he has to keep striving to deserve that dubious honour with every breath he takes and then, presumably, mercifully, some day he will die and be excused and can rest. and until now he's suppressed all the -- natural, healthy, protective! -- negative feelings that threaten the few attachment relationships he actually has, at the cost of ever actually having his needs for connection and safety met and leaving his core self imprisoned and compromised. and spite goes 'what. no. that's dumb fuck that' (*spite voice* I do not understand that and even if I did I would not respect it) and does not allow him to fall back into that, which I think is what saves his life, ultimately. it took being possessed by a demon for lucanis to even contemplate telling anyone he loves 'no' in any way, but hey. whatever gets you there right lol

lucanis is dealing with the freeze response allll the way down baby. and he was even before the ossuary, that just turbo powered it and brought it to a breaking point way before it could happen naturally. but something was going to break eventually no matter what, and I'm just glad that in the end, through the power of friendship and also pure spite, it doesn't have to be him

[buttercupshands]

(Forgot to post again)

A birthday present for a friend :)

[y-itadori]

Don't blame yourself, Yuji. We'll figure it out, don't worry. They just have to talk it out. I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding.

At your place? Are you sure Choso won't find that strange? Hmm... Ok, but won't that make them angry at us? Yeah... we're gonna have to work on the mission name.

I’m sure things will work themselves out! Right?!

I’ll just tell him you don’t know where he lives so it’s easier to have movie night at my place. I’m sure he’ll be fine with that.

Operation: Rosie Bro Buddies

[wackarat]

anything is an excuse to draw robot hands

anyways sorry bout dyin for a week, lineart likes to make me suffer

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Unsolved Mysteries.

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[anthophobicowl]

Wow idk how I managed to stumble into it, but I finally have a falsetto

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Here is the finished version of my smaller & simplified Hierophant embroidery design! It measures 3.5 inches wide rather than 6.25 like my larger and more complex pattern, and I tried a different color palette for the background to bring it closer to the original card. It's still not perfect but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

This pattern takes a lot less time than the bigger one, so is more approachable. Both these patterns and my other designs will be available in my new etsy store as I finish writing out instructions and uploading them :)

This finished piece will also be for sale for anyone interested, and I am taking limited embroidery commissions for now.