love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:

reading a fucking book. i beg of you.

in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.

read about americas occupations in the middle east.

read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.

read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.

and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.

dont look away from this.

you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.

if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.

you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.

wake the fuck up.

Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help

TEMPO DI ZUPPA

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.

Eadaz and her queen

What if I re-paint my own painting, but like, not pixel this time, it would be fun

kamala khan would have the most horrendous ao3 author's notes known to man

"hey guys sorry the update is late i switched places with an avenger (ajdgrhsh literally crying) and a really cool space scientist lady and then got into a fight and some alien dudes wrecked my house and then I met Nick fury and I was literal space it was crazy and I had to help save the universe and saw said scientist lady give up her life to save all of us... anyways hope you like the new fic, branching out with an arranged marriage au for this one!!!"

International Man Of Food

Steve tries to stay quiet while he gets ready for work, but Eddie hears him. He keeps his eyes closed and just listens- to Steve grumbling to himself when his hair doesn’t sit quite right, who starts to hum and whisper some catchy song. Eddie turns his sleepy gaze onto Steve as he shuffles around their room- watching quietly as he slips on his clothes, his shoes, a simple chain with Eddie’s ring around his neck. A warm, affectionate smile breaks across his face. Before he leaves, Steve glances at what he expects to be a sleeping Eddie, but instead, he’s met with a rasped, ‘Hey.’ Eddie sits himself up, stretches his arm across Steve’s side of the bed, and reaches, fingers wiggling. Steve crosses the room to cradle his face.

Their foreheads press, noses bump, and Steve brushes his fingers across scars and dimples.

He breathes a quiet,

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’

Eddie huffs a tired laugh,

‘You know I never mind.’

Because, yeah.

Every morning Steve tries to stay quiet while he gets ready for work, but Eddie always hears him.

( another one from the poll | WIP )

i dont know how else to put this but to approach books (or any media, really) solely for the sake of relatability is genuinely incredibly heartbreaking......to have such little (or such unwilling) imaginative scope that you cannot stretch yourself, even marginally, in a different direction to what you’ve known or are used to knowing when the very POINT of stories is to transport you somewhere else, into someone else, so you can do just that........when fran lebowiz said a book “is supposed to be a door!” and george saunders said good prose “is like empathy training wheels” they were right!!! they were so so so SO absolutely entirely right!!!!!

I swear to fucking God every Ao3 author lives in fucking Gotham or something

posting this with absolutely no context

and there was only one bed (oh my god there was only one bed)

extra:

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

some misc Barn & Wally doodles from the past week or so <3 i heart them