#u are our friend

[fvaleraye]

Hi Faye! We r friends & I enjoy y'alls' art! Just got home from DnD -- you got any swag DnD characters/stories?

cries, ty ;w;

oh shit uuuuuuuh well we have LOTS of dnd characters, more than we can keep track of bc we had this phase for a while where we would just make a character sheet for every character concept that crossed into our head asdflkjansdf

as far as specifics go, tho, can't go wrong with Iamus- our beloved old man bird monk. as far as stories go- our first campaign was called dogpile bc we found big wolves(like, direwolf size) and tried to be nice to them, one of our teammates fucked up, tripped, fell on the dog, and then like at least 2 or 3 more people(including our character) tried to help them up and rolled badly and all fell on the giant pubby and got stuck in its fur. it was the first session

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[ronanxing]

harana

[thecmaly]

A-grade simp

-

more windbreaker comics

[pinkfey]

i saw a video where a woman’s husband said hello to her best friend (they touched cheeks with a short mwah) and so many people felt that this would be a personal boundary violation for them, so i’m curious what the consensus is!!

keeping it simple, no nuance + if u think ur ethnicity or culture has to do w your answer i would love to know!! 🫂😚💕💕

[ruporas]

birthday party (id in alt)

[frankiebirds]

literally why does he know this

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

A thousand little kisses.

Only Friends

Our Skyy 2

Be My Favorite

Tokyo In April Is...

Jun & Jun

Dangerous Romance

House Of Stars

Why R U Korea

Hidden Agenda

Only Friends

1000 little kisses (2/?) as part of my favorite bl-tropes collection, in no particular order.

[aberfaeth]

[lee-minhoe]

hanjitonin for @strayklds 💖🎁

[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.

[toxiccaves]

I think what a lot of tumblr-only people are missing about twitter failing, is that it was always a better website when it came to small businesses, instant world event news, fact checking, having users from all over the world, being a source for disaster relief information or warnings, and anything else to keep people up to date with going ons.

Sure, tumblr has many users from all over, but the website is still largely english biased and not nearly as widespread as twitter. I know a lot of news and knowledge comes in on here too. I've learned a lot and see a lot of donation posts in regards to world events, but its nothing like twitter unless you know who to follow. Not to mention, half the news I got here, was days later and from twitter to begin with.

Seeing that being taken away in favor of hate speech and enabling abusers (with the recent potential of getting rid of the block feature over there) and pushing blue user comments to the top (aka elon's weird fans), drowning out anyone else on popular posts, sucks! It sucks for the world and small businesses. because there's really no alternative to it right now.

The site's running rampant with spam and scammers and its becoming more and more unusable by the day. And some people think it's silly to be upset over it or "you shouldn't have all your eggs in one basket" well there only is one basket! This is literally people's livelihoods people seem to be making fun of anytime a change happens that breaks the site and people post all their socials.

And everyone from every country is talking about different websites they're considering, and its splitting up our connection to the world. And surely he knew who this was hurting with every decision.

[padfootastic]

james would’ve adored the heck out of hermione for brewing the polyjuice in 2nd year (illega animagi anyone?) and also, for keeping rita locked up in a jar. oh and punching an asshole classmate in the face.

[mamawasatesttube]

nobody even gets koncassie like they exist in my rich inner world. theyre gay/lesbian solidarity. when they dated they just didn't know that. it was never romantic. but they still felt like a kind of haven to each other - they were safe for each other. kon, with all the trauma of being groomed twice over, felt safe with cassie, his friend, his peer, his equal. cassie, under all the pressure of public scrutiny and constantly feeling like she failed to measure up to the wonder girl legacy, was safe with someone who saw her trying to force herself to present super feminine and conform and told her no, you don't need to do that. not for me. i've always thought you're beautiful. like. in a world where they were both in the public eye and crumbling under the pressure, they were each other's sanctuary. like, even if they didn't understand that they weren't actually into each other, the love was so real. do you guys even get it????

[catatombi]

gotta tape his face back together