#they're going to love you

[markcampbells]

me finding this book at an independent bookstore: holy shit this is exactly the kind of thing I like how did I not know this existed

this book digging its fingernails into childhood trauma and making me cry: HOW ABOUT NOW, BITCH

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[momoiro-hime]

putting my ocs in every AU i want part. 34791

| Do NOT repost or use without permission.

[beebfreeb]

Louisiana Meshi!!!! Thistle will be at the crawfish boil.

[egophiliac]

everyone out of the way, this is the only thing I'm going to be thinking about from now on.

(okay, there is one more thing)

[stump-not-found]

A Lifetime Served in a Little Cup

pt.1 / pt.2 / pt.3 / pt.4

---

bill, babygirl, the red flags get outta there

[hansoeii]

stuck in the rain.

[shesnake]

the problem with mainstream fictional media today is it is predominantly made for people who don't like fictional media all that much

[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.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[markcampbells]

I take responsibility after responsibility. I promise not to be a bother, a burden, a source of guilt. I'm good at assuring people I won't need anything from them, and for a while doing so makes me feel pretty great about myself.

They're Going to Love You, by Meg Howrey.

[lotus-pear]

free will is drawing ur two favorite characters together and making them gay

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ghouls night out

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[hercarisntyours]

transformers go go is reviving me after transformers one tore my heart to shreds, taped it back together, put it in a kiln and threw it off a cliff where those pieces then get destroyed by corrosion and smashed into by a blind shark, WHY ARE THESE SO SOUL SUCKINGLY CUTE

[birbs-in-space]

curious about what's in store for you for 2024? :D

Let AO3 decide!

(Updated from 2023: Up-to-date tag bank, opt-in tag categories, optional dark mode! As always: proceed with informed consent.)

[purrvaire]

they're so in love im gonna throw up real quick