I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.
Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.
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.
Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.
"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."
translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"
It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!
The way this women is probably so touch starved yet emotionally constipated. She just wants to touch you, but I think she’d rather get into another fight with an army than admit that.
You feel your braid shifting on your collarbone and you startle, your face jerking down as you instinctively take a half step back. You see familiar, slim fingers rubbing the end tail between fingers. Your eyes trail up the arm to see Mizu’s gaze on where she’s holding your hair. Blue eyes meet yours over the rim of her glasses. Her expression is unreadable, face blank. She turns and continues down the path, unaware of how your heart is beating faster at how she just… helped herself to touching you more intimately.
Mizu will grab your wrist to lead you through crowded streets filled with merchants and locals so you don’t get lost. Over time and instances her grip ends up lower and lower until she’s leading you around with your hand in hers. You ask why she doesn’t do this to Ringo, he’s the one more likely to run off. She tells you she’ll just listen for the bell, and dryly asks if you’re trying to get one too.
She walks so close her shoulder constantly brushes up against yours. You try to sidestep to widen the gap to prevent accidentally stepping on her foot. She always sways closer immediately, fast enough you start to realize it’s on purpose.
Brushing of shoulders turns into brushing of hands, and hers twitch each time like they do when they’re ready to rip her sword out and cut down her enemies. But they twitch closer to your fingers than to the sheath.
Brushing also turns into leaning. In the inns, next to the campfire, when she’s stitching herself up. Her weight leans into you and you in turn lean back to keep her upright. Her eyes flick toward you, glancing out of the corner, before going back to her needle.
When guards come through the inns looking for the onryo rumored to have swept into town, her head tilts down, using her kasa to conceal her face. She definitely did not need to also tilt it to the side to the point that you can feel her warm breath tickle your neck. Goosebumps rise on your skin, hand spasming at the sensation. Your opposite hand comes up to rub at the raised skin, and you hear a huff of amusement. Cool fingertips press against your neck, the lightest touch, before her hand is back at her side. Only Ringo catches her fist clenching, and then forcibly unclench before you can see.
July 22 is the date I chose as a birthday for Bisig, my beloved little sailor cat, and to celebrate the occasion here is a mini-comic about her and how she met her crab fam :D It's kind of a continuation of something I've drawn back in 2020 as a way to explore her backstory a little and it's very dear to me.
(Please watch it in full view, I worked really hard on it! ^v^)
so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
a little thought to ruin your day: After Piper broke up with Jason, he had to deal with his heartache all by himself, isolated in a mortal boarding school with nobody to comfort him. No family. No friends.
this truly is the hardest question. :( but after much consideration, I think Endless Halloween Night wins out for me, because it's nonstop Characters Being Silly the whole way through. the whole thing is just lots of these little dorks having the most ridiculous interactions, which is always my favorite! and of course the big twist is SO delightfully stupid and doubles down SO hard that it becomes AMAZING and I 100% unironically adore it. AND it's Halloween! everyone is in their cute little costumes and having a spooky adventure! it's great!
however, I am ALSO a big fan of the Harveston event! how can I not be! everyone is wearing comfy winter outfits and getting along really weirdly well with Epel's grandma and he's getting a little worried about that! my terrible loud son sews a plush squirrel and then gives it a silly little nickname and refuses to leave it behind when it breaks! the ending shot with the sled! I LOVE IT.
thinking about simon being like a cat. a mean ol' one all teeth and claws, scratching and hissing when you stretch a hand out to him. biting you because that's all he knows how to do - it's all he's ever done - and it's kept him alive.
that's what his whole life's been about - staying alive. surviving. maiming anything he sees before it can get to him first. so he doesn't know how to react when you don't bare your teeth at him but just smile and make him tea. he reacts like a stray cat does when it's offered warmth - he's confused. and his confusion gives way to anger and again he spits fire because what else is he supposed to do? accept your kindness? bah! it's a hoax, he knows that. you'll tire of him and claw at his neck sooner or later so he'd rather not let you close enough to do so.
and when you don't give up, and you keep smiling that gorgeous, dazzling smile at him, he doesn't know what to do. no one's ever done this before - been all soft and sweet and only wanting to be allowed to scratch at his ears in reward. why were you doing this? why didn't you run away when you saw how he scratched at you? why do you look at him with those big, beautiful eyes like he's the only person in the world?
at a complete loss, he lets you pet him and oh that smile he'd let you tear his heart out if you would just keep smiling at him. "hey, simon!" god, he wants to drown in the sound of your lips wrapping around his name. you come close to him and his brain stops working, eyes wide and lost when you wrap your arms around him and pull him to you. warmth. is this what it feels like? he wants to live forever in the crux of your arms, creating a life for himself between them.
he couldn't stop smiling if he tried, if he were a cat he'd spend the rest of his time on this earth, the earth that tried to bury and kill him and is now making amends by sending him you, running between your legs and swishing his tail around you. simon riley who's always had his head on a swivel, who's not gotten a full night's sleep in a decade lest he miss the chance to look his reaper in the eyes, now sleeps with his head on your lap, belly up and purring.
masterlist
please comment/reblog!! i have so many thoughts about this man that need to be talked about
Rex would like a refund on his ARCs. Or a nap. Either is fine.
Just imagine for the second one that Rex is on an official holo call or something XD
Help me get back into sketching through some of these polyam/platonic pose prompts :3 (I'm still slowly doing these, they help powering through this little artistic crisis I'm suffering rn)