its raining really hard outside rn and I heard a group of boys (it is midnight btw) suddenly start up a jumbled chorus of singing before one of them went, "WAIT WAIT WAIT ok ONE, TWO, THREE" and then they sang feel the rain on your skin all off beat for like 2 secs before dissolving into mumbles again
Aunt Flow must be on the way. I've become super emotional writing this ficlet. On top of this, a couple of my previous soldiers reached out to me to let me know they got promoted and thanked me for being a hard ass on them. I am literally in tears. 😭😭😭
I need some comfort with Train Zone and I’m going to share it.
The brothers practically view all of the Knights as their mother/father figures.
When Warrior was grappled by Evoker Fangs, Garmadon and Wu tied their bandannas around her wrists to stop the bleeding. Afterwards, Warrior washed them and tried to return them with no luck, so she wore them around her arms.
Wu follows Caillin around all the time. He loves learning potions, magic spells, and all other things sorcerers do.
Garmadon learned archery from Kellie and he would became a menace with a bow and arrows.
Molly takes pictures of the boys all the time. She has a little picture book that just them. Jake and her will look through it sometimes.
Garmadon and Wu are the sons Molly and Jack wish they could have.
They’re all a family of misfits and I love them with my heart.
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.
ahhh i can't tell anyone I know irl because I'm keeping it a surprise but my prom dress came today and I LOOK LIKE JESSICA FUCKING RABBIT you know that red dress that she wears MY DRESS HAS THE SAME VIBE it's so PERFECT I'm so excited
when I leave my new home for work in the morning, it’s almost scary - but mostly it’s thrilling.
For the first time since like idk high school, my brain is actively engaged in learning. I have to learn new streets and traffic cultures. I’m still figuring out radio stations.
There’s this one part of the trip my gps has been telling me to take that’s really difficult, and it’s the very last bit before I get to my new job
I have to get on a new highway, then in less than half a mile, I need to be in the lane opposite of where I am to get on to a different highway.
And then after I get on this highway, I have to get on to a different highway, and THATS on the opposite side of where I am.
Thankfully, this was the last highway I needed to get on, but oh wait
I have to exit in less than a half mile, and. My exit is on the opposite side of the highway
that’s like, 12 lane changes in like 5 minutes
and today, being my 3rd day, I thought, there HAS to be a better way.
So the first time I switched highways, I couldn’t get over, like at all. And so I thought to myself, I know I am close to work, if I just stay in this exit lane, I should just be able to take surface streets…
And so I take the risk and get off
and as I get off, I see the Mcdonald’s I now frequent, due to its proximity to work.
And then I know where I am. I had only taken the way twice before, but I knew I could easily get to work from where I landed.
and just like that, I figured out the better way to get to work
some (extremely) quick doodles to celebrate the glorious return of glorious masquerade! I haven't had a chance to do much personal drawing lately, but I didn't want to let it go by without doing something!