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love to purchase items but at what cost

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September Prompts

1. everything matters 2. house key 3. bread 4. college football season (again) 5. school bag 6. willow street 7. disappointed father 8. seaward 9. relapse 10. ruination 11. trilogy 12. asters & goldenrod 13. lamprey 14. final rites 15. trespassing 16. below 17. not a lover 18. study group 19. vantage 20. rosary 21. questions to ask your mother 22. observer 23. cool nights 24. ultimatum 25. lonely boy 26. burning field 27. glancing blow 28. harvest moon 29. the empty homes 30. warm colors

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❋ * 𝐒𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 * ❋ where afterglow meets the first chill

1. where summer ended, I began again 2. kissed by the fire of late summer storms 3. wine-stained lips and the ache of belonging 4. I still dream of your shadow on the sunburnt grass 5. your ghost tastes of whiskey and windfall apples 6. when i’m burning, I am brighter 7. let the leaves fall—I’ve lost prettier things 8. red sky, red wine, red hands 9. the ache, the ache, the ache of it all 10. the harvest made a martyr of me 11. I fell in love with the firelight in my own damn eyes 12. apple butter and undone buttons 13. soft flannel, softer truths 14. your warmth lingered in me like orchard sunlight 15. I fell with the leaves, slowly, toward you 16. when the record skipped, so did my heart 17. I could love you in flannel or flames 18. if I had been the storm, would you have stayed? 19. bruised knuckles and blackberries: we were sweet and violent 20. the cider was hot, but your gaze was hotter 21. a touch so fleeting it became eternal 22. denim knees and cigarette sparks 23. the cardigan still smells like your cologne 24. I still see you in every almost 25. you came back, but I’d already grown 26. haunted by your laughter in September air 27. I knew you would linger like smoke, and you did 28. porch lights left on for ghosts that never return 29. you ran like water; I stayed like wine 30. endings bloom louder in autumn

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｡ﾟﾟ･｡･ﾟﾟ。

ﾟ。　 september prompts

　ﾟ･｡･ﾟ

¹⁾ cartoon-patterned plasters 

²⁾ a switchblade shining under streetlamps

³⁾ hands stained with pen ink

⁴⁾ red-painted nails

⁵⁾ waves lapping a boat’s hull

⁶⁾ scraped knees

⁷⁾ a stack of battered paperbacks

⁸⁾ a coat draped gently over a sleeping form

⁹⁾ weathered brown boots

¹⁰⁾ a six pack of beer and an apology

¹¹⁾ daisies growing from between pavement slabs

¹²⁾ bracelet-laden wrists

¹³⁾ frozen peas pressed against a fresh bruise

¹⁴⁾ laddered tights

¹⁵⁾ sweet pomegranate arils

¹⁶⁾ a palm reader’s warning

¹⁷⁾ a flea market wedding dress

¹⁸⁾ broken rollerskates

¹⁹⁾ the light that filters in through stained-glass windows

²⁰⁾ rich vanilla perfume 

²¹⁾ steaming cups of sake 

²²⁾ an airport terminal at midnight 

²³⁾ a wall covered with yellowed newspaper clippings

²⁴⁾ acrid smoke pouring in through open windows

²⁵⁾ a cold cement floor against skin

²⁶⁾ a horseshoe half-buried in the ground

²⁷⁾ sirens at midnight 

²⁸⁾ dark lipstick smeared on a cheek

²⁹⁾ the last night before the circus leaves town

³⁰⁾ trembling hands

³¹⁾ three people sat on a two-seater sofa

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There has never been an "anti-piracy" movement that has actually ended up being "pro-artist". "Anti-piracy" laws are how we end up with art black-holed because distributors stopped supporting it. "Anti-piracy" helps keep art out of areas where it's banned. "Anti-piracy" laws criminalizes fan art, sampling, etc.

We absolutely need to address artist compensation and labor issues within art, but "anti-piracy" has never been able to do that. Anti-piracy law just means that access to art and the ability to create art have to clear a legal hurdle, which seems like an obvious problem to me, at least.

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Times That Copyright Expansion Has Historically Fucked Over Artists On An Institutional Level:

Sampling rights becoming prohibitively expensive to use by small artists

Musicians being forced to sign over sampling rights to their record company, making any benefits they would hypothetically gain moot.

The Digital Milennium Copyright Act leading to the vidmaker-stomping nightmare that is ContentID

The DMCA leading to making it harder than ever to preserve media due to the way it prohibits tinkering with any locks the megacorps put on it, meaning it's way easier for artists' hard work to end up vaulted and lost.

The way basic chord progressions and musical styles have become copyrightable thanks to various lawsuits by the Marvin Gaye estate

The fact that the artists of the past used to be able to remix; adapt and iterate on art made within 56 years of them, likely created in their lifetimes, and now artists can only do those things with art produced nearly a century ago by people long dead.

New and independent artists being crowded out of the market by megacorp-owned IPs that would be public domain (and thusly convey less of an overwhelming advantage-via-marquee-value to megacorps) if the US had its pre-1976 copyright laws.

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Actually Materially Helped Artists On An Institutional Level:

????????

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people on bluesky have a weird vendetta against digital art that I literally never get in any other website..........I'm still getting hate comments under one of my digital paintings because the caption was "I made it with my real human hands" to ward off AI accusations and instead got hit with "this is shit because it's not traditional art with REAL paint you shallow prick"

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my favorite part of the week is when we watch a guy turn chocolate into a fucking bike and we have to just accept that it happened.

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So a while back i stumbled on a quote from an interview with Tolkien where i thought he said 'Gollum grew on me' or something like that in the intervew in response to a question about who was his favorite, but I didn't get an exact quote and I thought it might not be real. well I finally found it again and I am happy to report, fellow purveyors of minutiae on the Internet, that I had the quote completely wrong. Behold:

The correct quote is:

I liked him better than all the other characters

There is a Tolkien character tier list and it goes:

S tier: Gollum.

Under that: everyone else, whateverr I feel like I bet on a horse with four broken legs and won.

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one of my favorite tumblr endemic phenomena is when you make a post, post leaves your sphere, someone replies inflammatorily on your post, and when you’re like “hey what” they freak out and act targeted like they didn’t just walk up and say something to you digital style

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favourite genre of image is nuwho promo shoots that look like the doctor is trying to calm a frightened horse

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https://www.tumblr.com/azure-arsonist/789196495306080256/youre-confusing-wrathful-compassion-with

hello, I've always found your atla metas very insightful particularly the ones on how buddhist philosophy pertains to the arcs of the characters and the narrative in general. i was wondering if you had any thoughts on op's hot take, thanks for reading

Sorry for sitting on this for so long. And hopefully someone has already answered this with more knowledge and wisdom than I have to offer (@irresistible-revolution is much more well-versed here than I am).

Starting off giving everyone involved in that convo the benefit of the doubt. A hot take is meant to excite and stimulate discussion, and the initial vagueness is a part of that. And it's a cool discussion to have. It does seem that the tone became a part of the issue for at least one person in the convo there, but I won't be touching on that--people talk how they want to talk, it's hard to read tone in text, and we're on one of the most autistic social media platforms, so issues abound lol.

There's a few different threads to untangle in the content of the discussion. For those who aren't clicking on the link, the thesis is "katara and zuko are both more Buddhist functionally than Aang." The original poster lays out a pretty thorough argument. I appreciate them referencing two different strands of Buddhism (Theravada and Mahayana), one recent historical movement within the religion (Engaged Buddhism), and specific tenets and Buddhist concepts in English and Sanskrit (like illusion/maya and dukkha/suffering, among many others)! I've mentioned before my thoughts about ATLA engaging in a discourse amongst different Buddhisms (like my post about the glacier and crystal encasements specifically being referenced in The Three Pillars of Zen!), so I'm glad to see someone else sees it, too, even if we don't agree on every point. I really adore their explanation of how Katara and Zuko's journeys reflect Buddhist principles. It's a cool framework for viewing them.

They argue that Aang is symbolically and aesthetically more Buddhist than those two, and his arc includes Buddhist themes, but his Buddhist development is less "coherent, compassionate, grounded and messy." Based off that, any disagreement I have with the original post is wandering through some weeds of theory and subjective opinions, since they're showing appreciation for everyone and the anticolonial Eastern philosophies the show is grounded in, which is the main view I hope everyone can take away from ATLA.

My main disagreements are with the statements that the Buddhism(s) depicted through Aang are "surface-level" or neoliberal. They seem to derive from a pretty Western concept of body/mind dualism--can one be acting out a religion without embodying that religion and vice versa?--and some missing or devaluing of certain Buddhist tenets, which is a practice that is done for lay people and in Western Buddhisms to make striving more Buddhist practice realistic. However, a Buddhist monk would aim to practice all those precepts to the utmost and additional monastic rules (vinaya). When I personally view Aang with this perspective, it makes his struggle, shame, and grief so much more poignant and certainly no less coherent, compassionate, grounded, or messy than his peers. Although his journey might be that of a monk and not a lay person, he is no less human, which is exactly what his journey conveys.

In my view of neoliberalism, which at it's most basic is the advocacy of free-market capitalism above all else, it's the PRACTICES of cultures--including their religious PRACTICES--that are degraded and diminished in order to promote an ever-increasing globalized capitalist economy. Believe what you want if it helps you be a good person, but don't dress or eat weird or do non-occupational things in the middle of your work day! In practice, neoliberalism is much less direct than imperialism--don't you want this cool, easy life that will make you happier!?--and the OP rightly identifies its focus on individualism and perceived peacefulness that conceals the gruesome neglect that free-market capitalism wreaks (less violent than some other systems but still...not great!).

In a favorite scene from the series SKAM, the whole cast has come together at a karaoke party in the final season. They sing along to John Lennon's "Imagine," but the protagonist, Sana, only smiles for most of it. It's a jovial atmosphere, but there's a mental dissonance that rings out if you're paying attention. In chorus on a song that proclaims "Imagine there's no religion," a sea of white Norwegians surround Sana who has spent four seasons defending her choice to wear her hijab. They're not ill-intentioned but the implied vision of 'Imagine' is secular and neoliberal.

'We should all be the same'--read: individual data points without distinct cultural belonging that might make one loyal to groups other than a state to govern them or a market to draw them into participation. That viewpoint, the one suggested by Lennon's song lyrics, might be angry about the wars fought in the name of 'God' (and SKAM to its credit knows this, too), but it equally renders a strong argument for laws like France's ban on face covering or indigenous ceremonial gatherings. I'm not saying Islam or Buddhism are the perfect answer to resist capitalism, but we ought to note how their tenets tie practice, belief, and communal belonging in a manner that resists strict neoliberal individuation, at least in a manner that appeals to Western aesthetic practices.

So can we think of Aang's practices of nonviolence, vegetarianism, robe-wearing, and meditation as simply aesthetic stereotypes? Well, only in the fact that Buddhism doesn't separate aesthetics from practice lol. What you do is what you are, and what you are is what you do (I grew up excessively Calvinist--salvation by faith alone, and all that-- and still fuck with it in some humanist capacities so this is SO hard to wrap my head around, but!). Saying Aang's just an aesthetically Buddhist doesn't quite congeal with that notion. Yes, he looks like a Buddhist monk and espouses some core precepts like nonviolence, and I think that's what the poster means by 'stereotype.' A Buddhist monk is to them a stereotype of Buddhism to western audiences, which might be true in the sense that many Americans might flatten that idea, but, in a classic nondualist move, it's also not true since Buddhist monks are also very much real and dedicated to their precepts.

In much of the world, the behaviors and look of Aang are familiar everyday practices, not 'stereotypes.' I've been watching a lot of gay Thai series lately, and the mundanity with which characters provide offerings to robed monks in the morning is a daily intimacy with practiced religion that's alien to behold for an American, even to someone like me who grew up in a HEAVILY Christian area of the US South. Thai actors discuss or joke about dharma on their variety shows. I've also been moved and impressed watching social media posts in which actors fully ordain, shaved head and all, after the loss of a parent, committing to the precepts monasteries require, even just for a short period. These Buddhist beliefs are put into practice in real life, and not as some tourist attraction.

Aang looks like a monk, he acts like a monk, he's ordained as a monk. He meditates. He doesn't eat meat. And, to many folks chagrin, he refuses to kill. And all this he does despite and in therefore in honor of the apocalyptic loss of his sangha. These aren't simply 'stereotypes' of Buddhism, they're also grounded facts, especially for monks. We're invited to his moral conflicts, loneliness, and emergent understanding around these practices he learned at the monastery and relearned in the world on his own. The true ugly sacredness of life. This is Buddhism, surface and depth.

But is his arc actually conveying compelling growth in this realm? Some argue his passiveness is a hindrance, and I won't exactly disagree. But Aang's behavior, as passive as it seems, is signaled throughout the series to confound the imperial/perfectionist impetus to strike and ultimately win. My favorite instance is season 1 Zuko looking absolutely baffled at the map of the places to which he's followed the Avatar. Perfect lightness, humor, and reclusiveness, however, do not an enlightened status make. His journey teaches him how to accept the worldly need of a well-placed active strike instead of existing in such a retreated or transcendent stance, but he's also never meant to entirely let go of neutrality or his sacred connections achieved through retreating into himself. I love metas about the parallels between Azula and Aang for this reason: two gifted exalted prodigies who must either ground themselves and/or be grounded by outside circumstances to connect to the world.

Perfection is the messiness for Aang. Katara and Zuko start their journeys with a sense of their own imperfection. (It's why they both make such great foils for him!) Aang is lauded above others before the series begins. The weight of the world is literally on his shoulders, and when he wakes the shame of his survivor's guilt and the extremity of the global circumstances only intensify the feelings. It results in erratic behavior: lying, running away, blind rages (in the avatar state), and at his absolute lowest in The Desert, intentional and unnecessary killing of a living being. Not just immoral behaviors, these moments are betrayals to his precepts and his lost sangha. He's all too human, too.

Aang's Buddhism doesn't matter much if what both parties in the posts agree upon is true. They both come from a perspective that ATLA offers a neoliberal message by its end. I hope some of what I've discussed might help others question that conclusion. I'm always curious about the claim 'capitalism is inescapable in our society.' It's pervasive with tentacles reaching into bank accounts and devices at all hours, and it certainly structures or at least influences every institution we interact with and much of how we think and behave. I'm not so hopeless as to believe the market has a hold on every facet of our being, though. Aang and ATLA are one of the reasons for that. You can go back like Aang and Zuko do to discover how many of our behaviors precede capitalism, or seek corners of the world as the gaang do in indirect zigzags to find a diversity of cultures and practices, deprived in some ways by the empire's influence but rich in others, which at best suggest some failures of neoliberalism to assimilate or organize all people into a coherent system. And, if you feel up to it, you can find means of connection and seclusion, small though they may be, which don't align so squarely with that system--like Zuko, Katara, and Aang all do.

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Also very frustrating as a show producer in certain cultural arts when you are trying to advertise tge show and people feel like they're not allowed to come because theyre not from the culture.

Please come to the drag show even if youre cishet.

Please come to the bellydance showcase even if youre not Middle Eastern.

Please come to the Asian Festival if youre not Asian.

Please dance at the drum circle if youre not African.

If the event is being publicly advertised, you're invited. We want you to come if you intend to come respectfully. If you are asking 'am I allowed,' youre probably bot gonna be disrespectful. Please fill the seats. Cultural events have trouble with attendance sometimes because people who would be curious to go get shy about it. Please go to things that are curious to you. Your presence is not a burden.

I have yet to be kicked out of anything (unless you count the bathroom at a gas station that one time.)

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Over 10 years ago I drew this mother naga with her kid and a bowl of gulab jamun, and I was blown away to see people still reblogging it and saying kind things here. I decided to draw a sequel, the PTA (People That are Anacondas) meeting is over, and she finally gets to have some gulab jamun. c: I really hope this cheers you up some.

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hey guys, i didn't want to have to do this, but i really need some help.

all of the links can be found in the document