#they make art and I'm thankful for it

[warden-anders]

sometimes I see posts that are like "I love the x fandom because [thing I hate about the fandom] :)" and I feel very much like the bitter old man in children's stories that has to learn how to see whimsy again

[aur0raaura]

Yknow what- you're so right...

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] drawn for fun, he doesn't know how to hold that thing wwwwww

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I am such a big Werewolf Stan advocate I had to jump on this particular train 🙏 (but I didn't really wanna commit to full line art, you guys understand)

Oh, and you guys aren't gonna believe this, but here's part two 🙌

[e-turn]

links to some translations under the cut

и заодно выложу пару любопытным образом перекликающихся переводов потрясающих фанфиков!

тьма нынче обретает жизнь великолепного автора @/goodlucktai

и еще одна покорившая меня зарисовка rem - а тени пусть уходят

[madootles]

"The Lonely's really got you, hasn't it?"

[lizzybeeee]

When you spend 20 years attempting to bring down the child slavery, murdering, human trafficking exploitation ring that stole your childhood, murdered your friends, and killed countless innocents only to have them rebrand as 'Noble Freedom Fighters™' off-screen.

[vaimetanyx]

There is no stopping a star from burning itself out of the night sky

Words taken from - you can love him, but you can’t keep him (Sylvie j.p.)

[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.

[commsroom]

hephaestus station handyman 🧰 (by @jamisonrivv)

[canisalbus]

I kidnapped ur long-nosed cat for a sec

.

[uncanny-tranny]

Learning to internalize the message above, but art is in all of our bones. If you feel afraid to create art because it won't be "good enough," it's worth it to explore why you feel that fear. Creating art is one of the basic impulses of people, and if you want to create art, then you absolutely must.

[zeldalizzy]

Happy Holidays from the Old Man and the Smithy! 🎄✨Just a simple little thing I threw together lol but I had to do something fun for Christmas!! The thought process behind this was basically that the rest of the boys decided that their oldest member would be a fitting Father Christmas, and the shortest hero would be a fitting Yuletide Elf. After a bit of begrudging, Time and Four finally caved and let Wild take a picture 😂

Anyways, I hope that everyone has a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!! Thank you all for your encouragement and support; I couldn't do this without you! All of you have been such a gift to me, and I am incredibly grateful for that!!

The Merriest of Christmases to you and yours!! 🩵

[paintedcrows]

Thief

[mroddmod]

villain and violent; infant and innocent

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try