#there’s probably. 5 of us total.

[mightyflower]

every time fathers day rolls around the ppl in my life start pulling out the ol’ “dads arent real parents” etc and i have to be like. well im sorry that’s your experience. but on mothers day when /i/ said “mothers do not exist” you told me that mothers are unconditionally wonderful so. killing you killing you killing you.

[xshinina]

*Married life playing in the background

This idea was probably funnier in my head

[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.

[drarw]

i know don’t post much but would anybody be interested in fullbody lineart commisions for 30$ per character? i cant do mechs or anything nsfw but you can dm me if you’re interested!

[journey-to-the-attic]

there's a moment in lesson 45 of nightbringer where mc falls off a thing (again?? is this foreshadowing?? i'm going to rule-of-three this and wait to see if it happens again) and satan tries and fails to grab their hand to catch them, but now i'm imagining the same thing happening with satan and ik except he does succeed, but it's her right hand and the prosthetic just POP comes straight off

[lemongogo]

what's your process for coloring like? the look of that elendira is so textured and interesting, i can't figure out how you do it

AA THANK YOUU ^__^ !! textures & brushwork are my favorite things abt my art, so im happy you find it interesting hehe . its SOO cool to look at & so much fun to draw imo

i prefer to color by building in layers , if that makes sense 🤔!! hundreds of them !! such that i'm always drawing on Top of previous layers, working from big & messy blocks of color to, eventually, small and refined blocks of color until it feels processed enough. as a result, i rarely ever erase (!!) and i rarely ever draw lineart aside from the initial sketch

a rough, patchy textured brush is key here, as it'll give you dimension and variability w/ your colors. i recommend "Brush and various sets of fountain pen style (万年筆風ブラシと色々セット)" on Clip Studio (ID: 1679706) !! :3

im terrible with explanations though, so i'm going to show a step by step of that elendira drawing if you dont mind :3

sketch layer !! because i mostly render through color alone, i try to make this as close to the finished thing as possible . ^__^ i hateee drawing the same thing over and over and like the expressivity and movement of my sketches anyways , so the more i can preserve at this step, the better. if u were to look at a side by side of my sketches and finished pieces, youd notice a lot of those og lines are present in the final drawing :3

2. flats !! pretty self explanatory, but the solid background gives me an idea of where the figure begins & ends while the colors themselves help distinguish whats what . i stick to ambient lighting @ this point because im usually not sure what i want to do with the overall palette or lighting yet . having two tones (ex, dark and light in her hair or dark and light on her skin) can also help in identifying key features early on that u wanna preserve. as you build layer by layer, sometimes these areas will remain untouched and i think it makes for a rly lovely feel at the end

3. start blocking !!! to be totally honest with you, i dont really know what i do here HAHAHA. like i just scribble the shit out of it, usually focusing on what i might want to do with lighting (ex: grey areas to accentuate folds in her costume). i think i like to start "erasing" the sketch where possible by coloring on top of it .. like if you look at her hat or her arm , you can tell i'm starting to get a sense of the shapes i like vs the ones i dont. it's at this point that the final image starts to emerge in my mind , like im gradually pulling her from a tarpit of scribbles until shes recognizable lol. chipping away at the marble until i can free her. tbh.

4. keep blockingg...when u think u are done , block some more . as you can probably see, the brushwork becomes more intentional as i add more shape, with specific focus on line weight. this is also where the patchiness of that textured brush comes in - notice how none of the colors seem totally uniform (ex: the red cross or the original sketchlines for her waist). you can see bits and pieces of the layers underneath pushing through and i really like that !! ^__^ its very fun and sketchy to me, so i try to keep them around. those areas are also great to colorpick from, because it'll give you "new" colors to work w/ that are already part of your palette.

5. GRADIENTS & GRADIENT MAPS !! TONE CURVE !! COLOR PICKER !! this is the best stage tbh. flatten your image so its all on one layer and just go crazy with all the color settings in ur program. add gradient layers and set them to darken, or overlay, or subtract, orrr. lighten or dodge glow or divide or soft/hard light.! OR!! edit the hue, saturation, luminosity and contrast.and then color pick from these edits, block even more on top of ur image, flatten, color edit again, etc. etc. until u feel satisfied.

ANYWAYSS . i hope that makes sense @__@ sry i wrote this out and deleted it like 23 times trying to make it make More sense but thats what ive got HAHA i hope its useful though :3 !

[chipthekeeper]

Ranking Velcinta moments by how insane they make me feel, a(n overly) comprehensive list

As promised, here's my way too detailed ranking of all 18-ish of their moments. This (predictably) got obnoxiously long toward the end, so venture under the cut if you actually care and/or don't mind a lot of scrolling.

18. Valley One (Ep. 6)

I'm relatively sane about this. Except when I think about how they probably slept in that little hut the night before. Also when I think about how this is one of the very few shots in which they're both visible and (relatively) in focus.

17. "No farewells tonight." (Ep. 5)

Mostly was insane about this when the episode first came out and I was SO. FUCKING. WORRIED. that they were gonna die in the next one.

16. "What are they doing?" (Ep. 5)

Girlfriends who scowl together stay together (please Tony Gilroy I'm begging you).

15. Feeding the dray (Ep. 5)

The fact that Cinta is smiling here is what makes me most crazy. Also I just adore this flash of simple domesticity with them. Ahh, what could have been....

14. "Have you heard from Cinta?" (Ep. 7)

Vel not being able to look Kleya in the eye when she asks about Cinta makes me crazy mostly for the whole "Vel/Kleya exes" plot but of course this whole part had me jumping out of my seat on first watch.

13. "The rebellion comes first. We take what's left." (Ep. 9)

VEL FINDING STRENGTH IN CINTA'S WORDS AND USING THEM TO HELP MON WITH HER DOUBTS TOO I'M !!!!!

(went all-caps way before I thought I would, maybe this one should be higher....)

12. Into the smoke (Ep. 12)

She looks so worried when Cinta isn't where she's supposed to be and then she sprints INTO the melee while everyone else is running AWAY. I'M NOT FINE!!!!

11. At the campfire (Ep. 4)

I swear to y'all that the first time I watched this episode and saw them sitting so close I was like "oh. hey" fully intending to ship them even if that was literally all we got. And then holy fucking shit we got everything I was too afraid to ask for. So this moment always has a special place in my heart.

10. "What's she doing?" (Ep. 4)

It. Makes. Me. CRAZY. That the first time they share a scene together, they're literally always in the same frame.

CRAZY.

Like....they've been connected from the VERY beginning, even if the show revealed them being together rather slowly. Also it's everything to me that the first time we see Cinta it's Taramyn asking her what Vel is up to bringing a new guy in. Because if anyone would know, it would be her.

9. "Stay focused, Clem." (Ep. 5)

All of the territorial Vel stuff is great to me but I especially love this moment. First of all Cinta's little smirk. And also it's just so....idk it's a quiet moment of contemplation and probably anxiety but we can't not take a second to tell Clem to back off.

I'm combining this with the "you can dress yourself" bit too because that moment just makes me laugh with how Vel's always in the background watching and then immediately jumps up to give Clem the business and use his scuffle with Skeen as an excuse to mark her territory.

8. "Closet?" "Empty." (Ep. 12)

That bit of dialogue made my gay little self so happy and then they went and did the whole "that's blood" "it's not mine" thing and I'll never recover. Vel being so concerned that she won't even let Cinta keep packing, but then at the very end she's a little impressed/turned on??? 10/10 no notes. (okay I have one note and that's "you're really just going to leave me hanging like that for two years?????" but that's a different post)

7. "Get down!" (Ep. 6)

Truly one of my favorite scenes in the whole show is when Vel almost loses her shit at the top of the dam. The tension is insane, her fear is PALPABLE, and I absolutely love that it's Cinta just calling her out for stalling and then yelling at her that breaks her out of it.

But the thing that makes me feel most crazy about this scene is this:

Someone please explain to me WHY Cinta makes the jump while looking directly at Vel. EXPLAIN IT TO ME. Or else I will just continue to believe it's because part of her is scared up there too and looking at Vel is what helps her take the leap. That is a crazy thought -- I'm pretty sure she's fine -- but if it's not that then I don't get why she's even facing that way??

6. This (Ep. 8)

THE MUSIC. THE FADE. THE SORROW. I like literally can't even talk about this one. But it does make me feel a lot how obvious it is that Vel's thoughts are soooooooooo far from the fight here:

While at the same time there's not a thought in Cinta's head about her:

Breaks my fucking heart.

5. "No. She didn't tell me." (Ep. 5)

Whew. This moment. For a while I was mostly happy about this moment because it was just one more piece of evidence that they were together before that was fully confirmed.

But then my headcanon brain took over while I was writing my multichapter fic and it has been fucking me up ever since. Because I'm always going to wonder if all their drama was always going to happen the way it did or if Vel betraying Cinta's trust as a partner was some kind of breaking point.

Is that probably just me? Yes. Does it matter? Not to this ranking.

4. "She's already sharin' a blanket if that's what you're wonderin'." (Ep. 5)

I was!!! I was wonderin'!!!!! And I will forever use this phrase as a euphemism for being a lesbian.

What I would not give........to experience this line and this shot for the first time again. Or at least know what I sounded like giving a joyous shout.

3. "Tell me you'll be alright." (Ep. 6)

This is the one that I would probably sound the most insane trying to talk about out loud. It would be a lot of me like verbally keysmashing and somehow going "!!!!!!" out loud.

The hand-hold that saved my life? The EMOTION in their eyes when they look at each other??? Vel starting to go in for the goodbye kiss right in front of the hostages' salad but then just not????????

Fuck.

FUCK!!!!!!!

2. "Come away from the window." (Ep. 12)

I have to start by talking about Vel's cute little sad grin in this scene when she's like "nice to see you too" and Cinta like glares back at her. That made me feel crazy enough but then this whole scene that I want to say I can't even put into words even though I have in fact already done it.

The desperation on Vel's part is what kills me. Not that she's desperate for attention or love or whatever people always try to pin on her here (and of course it is that to some degree) but that she's desperate to keep Cinta from losing herself. She's so desperate but all she can do is ask. All she can do is hope Cinta will turn around and take a break. And she does.

BUT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENS AFTER THAT TONY GILROY?!

I have never screamed so loud about a scene just ending.

Whatever, it gave me something to write and I enjoyed doing that.

1. "You love me because I show you what you need to see." (Ep. 8)

And here we are. The scene that has taken up space in my brain more than any other single thing since I saw it. I've been over it so many times. Watching and taking notes, staring at the gifs, studying the screencaps, trying to wrap my head around every little line and gesture and movement and emotion. I've spent hours on it, and I still find myself coming back to think about it and wondering if I've truly understood it all.

Just getting them reunited after Aldhani was such a relief (even though it was jarring at first to just see Cinta and be like "how the fuck did you get here?"). But then the conversation just knocked me on my ass.

"Haven't we been apart long enough?" YES YOU HAVE!!

"We take what's left." NOOOO TAKE IT ALL

"That's cold...even for you." Stabbing me in the face would be less painful.

And then...hearing the words "you love me" from one woman to another woman in a Star Wars show....not a book, not a comic...a show. Truly meant everything to me. I was so fucking happy to hear those words that I couldn't even process how goddamn sad the rest of it was until later. Once I did I had a stomachache for an entire week. I have one again right now.

And then it ends with the most fucking beautiful hand-hold and yet another tiny look that makes me feel crazy in and of itself (which I've done a whole post on by itself), and despite my broken heart I have hope.

If I am ever able to watch this scene and not feel seventeen emotions at once, it's over for me.

Easy number one.

[loregoddess]

*slaps the roof of Unicorn Overlord* This game can fit so many self-loathing characters, tragic siblings, siblings with complicated relationships, children with complicated feelings towards their parents and/or parental figures, parents mourning their dead children, and characters who are generally a little bit fucked up but doing their best in it.

[st-rick]

My "Math" teacher be whooping my entire class for today 😭

[black-and-yellow]

Louie is un-scam-able (he has No money)

[keeps-ache]

accidentally drank a whole cup of water before bed, night o7

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

I must say, it's pretty poetic that I've gotten to season 6 of Vampire Diaries right before another solar eclipse happens in America. I certainly didn't plan it, but it does feel like my timing is very appropriate with this one. I do have questions about the accuracy of the eclipse portrayal in the show, though. I mean, a solar eclipse did in fact happen on May 10, 1994, and it was visible across much of the country, so that much is accurate. But I don't think Mystic Falls would've had quite as good of a view as they show it having. For reference, here's a map of the May 1994 eclipse path (credit: timeanddate.com):

And, if you'll remember, Mystic Falls is like two hours from my old hometown just a stone's throw north of Lynchburg, Virginia, as seen on the locator spell map (this one's all over tumblr, forgive me for not remembering what blog I grabbed it from):

So if you zoom in on the timeanddate map and pick somewhere closeish to there:

It looks like Mystic Falls would be getting a little over 77% coverage or so. It's also worth noting that the '94 eclipse was an annular eclipse, not a total eclipse like tomorrow's eclipse. That still means that the moon went directly in front of the sun, but it does mean that it was small enough/far enough from earth that you didn't quite get full coverage of the sun (thanks to weather.gov for the nifty graphic):

So, I'm not positive whether it would've looked quite as dark as was shown in the show:

Although, I must admit, in this video I found on youtube of the '94 eclipse, (part of me is shocked to find footage from then but I know I shouldn't be like yes they had cameras in the 90s) it actually looks more similar than I expected it to look, but I imagine it was most likely filmed within the path of totality:

But also, when Kai takes Bonnie to Portland, don't they see the eclipse again there? I couldn't find that clip on youtube just now, but Portland barely had any eclipse--only 42-43% coverage, so it would've been way milder of a visual effect, barely any dimming in the sky noticeable without eclipse glasses.

The funny thing is, the area where I live is going to be sitting right around 80% coverage tomorrow. I was lucky enough to get to travel to Missouri for the 2017 eclipse to get into the path of totality, but I'm afraid that it hasn't worked out for me to do so this year, which is immensely disappointing to me as an astronomy enjoyer, but I do still plan to go to an eclipse party and I'm going to start saving to try and get to Spain for the next total eclipse in 2026, which is going to be right around my 30th birthday (screaming). Anyways, it isn't great, but here's my best picture from the '17 eclipse:

I didn't even have a smartphone yet then, because despite it being 2017, I was somewhat of a luddite, so I had the purple flip phone I so stubbornly clung to and a point-and-click Nikon, but I still think this picture is pretty cool for what it is. Here's the zoom in so you can really see that ring of fire (and my shaking hands doubling the image):

Obviously you can find thousands of better eclipse pictures online, but that one's still special to me because it's mine. Anyways, I'll report back with smart phone pictures from whatever I see of the 80% total eclipse tomorrow to compare and contrast with Mystic Falls's 70% annular eclipse of the 90s, because from what I've heard it's going to be much less impressive than full totality was, but I've yet to watch a partial solar eclipse, so I'll just have to find out. Also, if you happen to have any vampiric loved ones trapped in a magical prison dimension who you need help freeing during the eclipse tomorrow, let me know and I'll see what I can do! ;) Hahaha. Anyways, happy eclipse everyone, and may we all possess sufficient self restraint to avoid eye damage (says the woman who has looked at the sun unprotected so many times and is probably going to go blind because of it some day. I know what I've done lol. Don't be me.)

[threnodians]

it’s official; i’ll be working 5:30-9:30pm instead of 6:30-9:30pm thursday-monday due to the fact that we have 6 momma dogs and 37 puppies between them all in addition to the 4 dogs i have to walk (6 right now because we have two dogs boarding with us unfortunately) which means that i should have time to clean everything thoroughly and it also means that i will be making about $680 instead of $578 each biweekly paycheck which isn’t a lot but it is significantly more than $0 per week and this job suits my schedule so so so much better than literally every single other job i have had and also i get paid for getting some puppy therapy

[icewindandboringhorror]

Misc. photos from the past year or so ~

[johndonneswife]

someone really should be talking about how difficult it is to plan a wedding - a gay wedding - when both of your families fucking suck

[croiw]

Ineedtogotobedbecauseschoolbut...Bungouandalchemist

I neglect my favorite fandoms on this blog especially bungou and alchemist

Sorry bout that...

Uh

Watch the anime

It's amazing and the characters are so cool

Personally some of my favorites are Chuuya Nakahara and The talking cat the literally only select a few take seriously and I totally know it's name 😅

Plot is amazing made me tear up, laugh, panic and oh boy the mood swings I had mostly because of a certain character with red hair

It's definitely an anime I would recommend to literally everyone