#uk creatives

[s-f-stories]

Even if it feels like screaming into the void, please do follow the link. Go on record as someone with integrity.

The UK Government have launched a consultation on whether AI should be allowed to scrape content online with complete disregard for copyright.

The consultation is stuffed to the brim with technobabble buzzwords and jargon that frames AI as wonderful and that this is a foregone conclusion.

You can submit a response via the link above and tell them what you really think.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Bob Iger saying all this while also being on basically billionaires vacation really should say something, holy shit.

[crunchie-morris]

Do you think the side of tiktok that’s obsessed with butch greaseball knows that female Spot Conlon was in that same theater about a year and a half ago

[fraternum-momentum]

man im seeing all the ppl in the dol community have super cool ocs and im just here self inserting like 🧍‍♀️

[marisol-holme]

[Ad for myself because I back myself]

Might be shouting into the void, but if anyone is looking to hire a freelance experienced writer for their business, and happen to be on Tumblr, then lucky you!

Reach out to me on here, or follow my instagram (linked below) and we can do a quick zoom and a haggle over service charges.

Serious enquiries only please, I am a busy human.

I am UK based.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marisolholme?igsh=MTBib2ZnYTNzYjAxaA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

[nr1-logo-design-inspiration]

Creative fox illustration 🧡

[white-cat-of-doom]

It seems like they have announced another leg of the International Tour, this one scheduled to start in April 2025 and tour Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

We will see what else is next!

[thesoftclubstoic]

Kelli Ali by Stephane Sednaoui for iD Magazine, January 1997

[jack-kellys]

painting over mirrors

read here.

David has noticed a pattern, and he can't tell if art is the solution.. or the cause.

a short javid fic about art not being a coping mechanism, and instead a half-cursed way of being.

The roof of the lodge is lined with ghosts, is the first thing David notices.

Young boys and girls made ghastly by charcoal and the night sky are stuck to the railing, to the brick, and all around the hollow, iron rod that juts out oddly as a makeshift chimney for the heater a floor below. Each paper is a tiny bit crumpled, too, as if Jack has torn them down and put them up numerous times. David asks about them carefully, but only receives a shrug in return.

“They’re past kids that’ve come through here an’ left,” Jack says. “It’s my way of, just. Remembering them.”

David catches him watching a particular drawing, older, dirtier than the rest, a little longer. The boy in it has a button-like nose, similar to how Les’s used to look when he was younger, with Jack’s dark springy hair and large black eyes. He isn’t smiling, and neither is Jack when he finds David’s gaze.

“It’s nothing,” Jack retorts, as if David had said something. “Really, Dee. I just wanted to show you around up here is all.”

“And you are,” David agrees, allowing his gaze to become quizzical now that Jack’s gone defensive.

And Jack’s sensed it, his expression already working to undo what David’s spotted. The heat recedes from his eyes, his shoulder releases its tension. He even smiles, a forced shoving of his lips and cheeks.

“That's your nosey look,” Jack accuses David- accurately, but that's besides the bigger picture. “All in good time, m’kay?”

David’s not so sure.

Because Jack spends hours and hours alone at Medda’s, and when David comes by he finds the boy surrounded by scrap pieces of canvas, half finished and ripped, his paint-splattered body bent uncomfortably forward with a brush to the new one he’s stretched out, mumbling. And when he sees David he goes rigid, reddened eyes widened as if David’s caught him drinking too much or something when it at least only looks like painting.

And Jack spends hours and hours alone on the roof with his scrap paper that he folds away with an easy grin when David comes up to check on him, even though David can see that full, rendered sketches are completely scribbled over with dark, pressured marks.

And usually, anything struck through, brashly painted over, or smudged beyond recognition is free of mountains, sun, cacti and clay homes. Santa Fe remains safe, and so do Jack’s ghosts.

“No,” David finds himself saying. “It's been enough time, it's been- too much time of you hiding yourself away and not… being happy, about it.”

Jack looks at him, confused, so David forces more words from himself.

“Usually when you're drawing, or painting, when I'm there at least- you look… passionate. Like it's a simple sort of.. natural love.”

Jack frowns. “Yeah, Dave, ‘cause I- ‘cause it’s what I do.”

“Then why do you…” David bites the inside of his cheek, but continues. “Why do you- also passionately.. destroy it?”

“Passionately destroy it,” Jack echoes with a hum after a moment. He leans back against the railing, crossing his arms. “It’s not- it’s just. It’s how I work. If I don’t like somethin’, I try again.”

“Most people rip out a page or set a canvas aside, or- hell, go with it,” David counters. “Jack, you… wreck it, to where you can’t even tell what it is anymore. Doing something you love.”

Jack looks up at him then, eyes narrowed curiously.

“You keep saying I love it,” he says. “Don’t think I ever said that though, Dee.”

David blinks.

Jack spends so much time practicing and perfecting this craft, he sketches friends and places he knows and places he wishes he knew, he sketches young newsies he still misses. He creates art out of the things he loves, David knows it.

“Don’t you?” he asks slowly, setting himself next to the other. Jack scoffs.

“I don’t love cigarettes, but I still smoke, don’t I?” he says, shrugging. Jack’s gaze flicks forward. “I don’t.. really know howta describe it. I see something, you know, in my head, and I just have to get it down. I have to, and if I don’t, I just get this fear that I’ll lose it, somehow.”

David nods, after a few seconds of processing. He tilts his head, hoping Jack will keep going. He doesn’t.

“Lose it, you mean- get angry?” David asks. Jack shakes his head, eyebrows scrunched, trying to figure it out himself.

“Nah, nah, like- lose it. Forget it. Like it’ll disappear,” he clarifies. “Like you’ll- you’ll just disappear. If I don’t do something about it.”

David doesn’t have anything to say to that yet, and thankfully Jack continues.

“I know y’won’t. I know that ain’t really true,” Jack murmurs, arms unfurling and hands setting themselves on the rail behind him. “I dunno why I keep drawing if it ain’t something I really love, like that, like how Kath loves writin’. I just know I have to, I gotta make somethin’ or it won’t be real, you know? With my own hands, makin’ those memories. Makin’ sure things I like can’t be blocked out, since I used- uh, I used to… it used to happen.”

And Santa Fe isn’t a memory, so it always remains. It’s always perfect, this… western desire, the cowboy idealization, it’s Jack’s one true creation. Nothing Jack can create it as can be marred when he doesn’t have anything to line it up against in his mind.

“And the destruction, then,” David inquires softly. “Is it about accuracy to what you remember? Does what you draw have to be exactly what you see..?”

Saying it out loud, David knows it’s not true- Jack’s sketches are often loose and relative, he’s just not sure what else the explanation can be. He doesn’t think like Jack, like an artist. And so Jack shakes his head.

“Ain’t easy to explain,” he says to David. Jack’s nose scrunches slightly, thinking. “Less about exactness and more… what it was to me . Interrup- interpretation. Something in my head just needs to express what the memory is to me, and when my hands ain’t do it right, it’s like misremembering, and I can’t risk that, so I have to get rid of it. There’s memory in your body, right, and there’s memory in my hands. I ain’t wanna accidentally draw or paint somethin’ wrong the same way twice, so I gotta rip it, or write over it, to just- remove it. Cancel it out.”

David bites his lip at that. Jack catches it, though, and his eyebrows raise.

“I mean I guess- I ain’t have to. I don’t need to,” Jack tries. “I think I just- well, I feel.. better when I do. I gotta do what my brain’s saying, that’s all. I can see what it’s gotta be, and I just get this itch, you know?” He scoffs, laughing bitterly. “God, it really is just like smokin’. Shit.”

David smiles with him, though a little bittersweetly. He can’t quite tell if Jack’s… suffering, exactly. There are times when his art looks like it’s killing him, and David knows how much time Jack can take with it and how much it isolates him. Is it really like smoking? Like some kind of addiction to the other, or some compulsion?

“Jackie, if it’s a habit you want to break,” he says, placing his hand over the other’s, “I’m here to help, you know? Anything you need for this, I’m here.”

Jack’s gaze falls to where David’s touching, letting their fingers properly intertwine.

“I probably should be better about it, hm,” Jack smiles softly, sadly. “But it’s- Davey, I dunno. It’s just how I think. It’s how I work and how I see things.”

“Then…” David hums. “Then I’d like to see how you see things, then. I’d like to see how you think. Tell me when you’re going to the theater. Tell me when you’re gonna go sketch something. You don’t have to create these memories by yourself all the time, yeah?”

Jack purses his lips, letting his head fall against David’s shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

David does his best to not let his body reveal his relief. The memorializing Jack does in his head, for those still around him… It’s a little haunting. He doesn’t know why Jack feels that need outside of his artistic inclination, but something tells David it has to do with that boy on the page that looks too much like Jack, set right by where Jack sleeps. Something… happened , something that used to–or still does, for all David knows–cause Jack to lose time, to block out things from his past. David doesn’t want to be one of Jack’s ghosts, not while he’s still around. Not if he can do anything about it.

“You need someone to remind you when to grab supper anyway,” David says, instead of any of the loose puzzle pieces drifting through his brain. Jack merely whines, and presses himself closer against David, decidedly present.

[nightmaretour]

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as they turn you away once again. No appointments left today.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the doctor brushes you off. It's all in your head, stop being selfish and wasting their precious time.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the call operator tells you to take some ibuprofen, and make an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. There's nothing they can do.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as you count your fourth hour in agony in a crowded room, waiting to be seen. The woman next to you is bleeding, a blood soaked rag clasped to her arm. She hasn't been seen yet either.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the paramedics wheel you into a crowded bay and line you up in a corridor alongside ten others. They tell you that the wait will be long, you can see the sorrow in their eyes. Pain and fear echoes around you but the man in front of you lays eerily still, makes no sound. A nurse lounges at her station nearby.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the nurse tells you there's nothing wrong with you, and sends you home. It's all in your head, and the doctors are too busy to see you. You've wasted their precious time.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as your mother clasps you against her chest, crying. You've been bedridden for days but tonight she found you like this, and she called an ambulance immediately. You've only been getting worse in the two hours since.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the doctor tells you it's just an infection. They'll give you some antibiotics and send you home when you start feeling better. They don't do any tests, they don't need to.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as the nurse tells you to stop being lazy and get out of bed. You're overreacting, the pain and swelling are because you've been laying in bed for too long. She yells at your mother for coddling you, she's imagining the lump on your head. No need to call for a doctor.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as your mother arrives to find you seizing and soiled in your hospital bed. They didn't notice. They didn't check. They're busy, after all.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as your mother calls for help again. Nobody answers. The nurse who lounges at her station simply didn't hear. She's too busy.

"We're the pride of the country," they say, as they tell your family to hurry and say their goodbyes. It couldn't have been prevented, it was just one of those things. Nobody is at fault here.

Especially not the pride of our country.

.

[jackmkelly]

i like going through my camera roll. April 2024. ill always be on their ass about this.

[11oh1]

slawn

[dandibuni]

[studying-space-of-annie]

My teacher reading my hundredth English creative writing piece about love as horror/horror as love

[lovenliterature]

On the government refusing to reevaluate the Cass Review

Take my blood and guts

Since you seem so eager for them to be spilled

It won’t be by my hand

I have worked too fucking hard to love myself

You can pry my organs from me with your bare hands

Get familiar with the blood and gore you’re forcing on me

Hear my screams, see my tears

I will not die by my hand

Will you make me die by yours?

[icewindandboringhorror]

a quite simple outfit, trying to use the little blue and white apron thing (which is actually a dress I think, that I just leave un-buttoned in the back and added an apron-like tie to lol)