#Heh maybe ^_^

[freebooter4ever]

What do you miss most about Pittsburgh?

Oh gosh, that's a question! I mean aside from the obvious answer of my old dance buddy lettia or naeem.

I miss pittsburgh's community, specifically the very music and art oriented one i was in. There's community here in LA but its all about fame, and money, and celebrity, and how you can use other people to get ahead. Just the other day i saw an influencer i actually kinda admired brag about meeting someone who out of respect for them + their privacy i have never never mentioned because i met them as a friend first. And it felt so weird seeing this person i know be used as click bait for the influencer's hits/likes/subscriptions. It kind of jolted some reality into me about how this city operates even in the smaller circles i run in. Its like the vibes in LA are all about 'being someone' and self importance. If someone is only going to respect me for my money (or disrespect me for my lack of money), or who i know, or credits to my name, i dont think i want their respect anyway.

Pittsburgh though - nobody was anybody in pittsburgh so we didnt fucking care, lol. It was a lot easier to go to things, to feel connected. There was an emphasis on diy, where it didnt matter who you were or who you knew if you had a good idea there was a chance it could happen. There were things like Art All Night and the various music festivals in the different neighborhoods. I was most connected to the music scene so i miss the casual afternoon concerts in someone's tiny apartment with everyone crowded around the band. The basement parties, the dancing. Ted's rowhouse was on fisk street so when i lived there with friends i really enjoyed how much of a community space it was - people were always coming and going off of butler street, movie nights, human chess parties. It definitely could feel too small sometimes - literally everybody knew everyone and everybody dated everyone. The year i left two of my ex boyfriends were living in the same house and i cant tell you the number of 'male harem' jokes i got about that one. Or the number of times a dude wanted to date me and when i said 'no' i immediately got excluded from an entire friend group. But no matter how frustrating the smallness got, i still was also aware of how special it was. Its also mostly over - a lot of my friends from that time have since dispersed to other cities. I think moments like that are fleeting, but thats what makes them unique.

But even with all that said, you know what my favorite thing to do in pittsburgh was?

Driving

and ok ok that probably sounds stupid. And it probably does not help that im in LA where driving is now the second level of hell. But even compared to seattle or nyc or other places i lived, driving in pittsburgh was just so much fun and you cant recreate that anywhere else. I once saw a data visualization of the main cities of the US and places like LA and even NYC were nicely laid out squares but pittsburgh was just this insane clusterfuck pencil scribble, and thats truly it. Cause not only do you have over 100 bridges and lots of one way roads that will funnel you onto a bridge you absolutely dont want to go over but whoops guess you're going anyway, but this city was also built on a cluster of hills. Thats what makes up the various neighborhoods - and the roads that connect these hills through hollows and over forests - are the most confusing rat maze you can imagine. For every one way to go there's also probably a dozen other options and mentally calculating which route will be fastest taking into account traffic and distance and 'speed limit' is a skill only acquired after years of living in the city. And if you have a tiny car and nasc*ar level driving skills thanks to the multiple generations of engineers in your family....driving up and down those hills is just a joy. It also, uh, helped that I made my own hours so worked from 11am - 3am most days and avoided all traffic. And in the city proper the pigs arent allowed to r*adar so as long as you knew where the speed traps were you could...uhhh... Be lenient. I only ever got pulled over once and that was because one time in the spring of 2016 i went home from work early one night and these asshole hockey fans were taking up the entire street around the rink that would get me onto bigelow and connect me to lawrenceville. And since i couldnt go down that one street, becaues its pittsburgh, i had to go in the complete opposite direction to find another route home which took like an extra fifteen minutes. And yeah i got pulled over, started crying and explaining i was just trying to get home from work, and they let me go. But damn those hockey fans. :P (but also had i realized you could go hangout outside and watch the hockey game on giant screens with a huge crowd of fellow broke but dedicated weirdos, i totally would have loved that. Thats what pittsburgh is all about lmao)

Anyway one of my old friends moved from pitt to LA, and then he moved from LA to shanghai. And i once asked him would he move back to LA and his response was that he couldn't imagine living in LA again after living in a Proper City like shanghai. And he made it clear that he saw being able to 'make it' in larger and larger cities as like...a mark of his personal progress. But me? Im a small town girl unfortunately. I still dream about the day i can fuck off to live in a cabin in the woods somewhere.

[huidol]

Blue screen of death

[painted-bees]

Not sure why, but this morning, a ton of honey bees found their way into our house and seemed to be just passing through, as they all collected against the screen door at the back of our house. So I've kept it open for them and 50 or so bees have since come and gone, and there are no more coming through.

This exhausted girl was the last straggler. she was alone and unmoving when I saw her, so I offered her some nam daeng [fruit-sugar water--honey bees are often seen taking sips from the open bottles that are left as offerings to shrines here], as I had nothing else to offer [no sugar in the house]. Unsuprisingly, it turned her into a little ruby, but it perked her up! The door is still open, so she can leave after she's done grooming herself.

Living up to my blog's namesake.

[Obligatory: honey bees are native to where I live (S.E. Asia)]

[vos0q]

You should draw Casper w/ glasses!!! he'd be so cute!

I AGREE, he IS cute with glasses. Two versions cuz i like both of them. 😄

Main Shop

[blahlahblash]

Happy Valentines, guys have Sonic and Shadow being uncharacteristically in love

[edlucavalden]

Oh my god.. this post was cooking i had to..

[ahopefulbromantic]

What do you find patriotic about the themes of In Stars and Time?

Yayayay thank you for this question anon! I have SO MANY THOUGHTS!!!

I hope this won't get too long sorry in advance for the whole huge essay heh

I think first we need to get into what patriotism actually is. Because what some seem to propose is that it is only “supporting the political interests of a country you're a citizen of” which is not actually true or “glorifying it to the point of warping into nationalism and chauvinism”, which is extrremely untrue and frankly bonkers??? No, patriotism is love for your country, for your nation, for your people. And by extension, for your culture, your language, your history (loving means admitting to the dark sides of it btw), your home, all of it. It doesn't mean your national food, music, etc. have to be your favorite in the world, but it does mean you find value in them, you want to preserve and remember them, you want what’s best for them. (I love my brother. He gets on my nerves so much i wanna strangle him sometimes. You get the idea) so sorry if it's all obvious to you but i thought it needed to be clarified just in case

ISAT as a whole but especially Odile, Siffrin, and the King’s character arcs pose a question: how much of yourself is influenced by your origins? This topic is explored in many various forms, woven into the flesh of the narrative, ever-present (the differences and customs between countries a recurring topic in the party’s conversations, for example). The cultural exploration is often what drives the plot forward.

(Also the use of national religions is so great, it adds a yet another perspective to the problem, but it’s a whole nother can of worms for a whole nother day!)

While the Country is used mainly as the vehicle for themes of loss and loneliness, the so-called "Homesickness" (“Mal du Pays”),

its national aspect is never undermined. This is, among other themes, a story about being denied the connection to your roots, after all. If you think about it, the whole plot happened because of it, is undivorceable from it, and arguably serves to show how horrible such a thing might be.

This is also a brilliant way to explore what being a “country” means - it's not just about some territorial politics or conservative history classes. It's the whole environment you grow in as a human being.

The King and Siffrin are juxtaposed here as narrative foils, the King acting as a fallen Siffrin: now this is especially interesting, because in every other story like this i'd expect the King to be a chauvinist. But… surprisingly, he’s not. He is a patriot, in a sense. He does love his country and he does love Vaugarde, his actions are not motivated by a political self-righteousness, they are motivated by a love warped into obsession by fear. Don’t get me wrong, he is an irredeemable villain, but he’s as much a victim here. He isn’t condemned by the narrative. He gets his wish granted in the end (wishcraft and the Universe? add it to the aforementioned can of worms, not today but boy do i have things to say), he gets to remember his homeland. He gets justice, both in the form of punishment and compensation.

Siffrin nearly ends up like him, but doesn’t - not because he decides to abandon and forget his country forever! but because in being loved by his family he finds strength to conquer the fear of losing everything again. It’s a fine line, but i think insertdisc5 navigated it masterfully. Check out how Sif's internal monologue changes in regards to the Island. He has a history of running away from the painful things and thus not working on his massive trauma (one could make a case that the rewinds when he remembered his past weren't actually caused by the Universe but by him but again, worms. in a can.). But now in act 6 he finally stops looking away:

and you might even imagine a fondness in his eyes.

By the way, here's a tiny personal digression: i 100% believe that there are some nationalities that will inevitably be hit harder by this narrative than others - one of those being Polish. Which i happen to be! Now lemme tell you, at some point in act 3 i thought: "huh. i, too, am from a country that disappeared once". But it didn't really disappear now, did it. So then i thought, what if it had, and i were the only one left and i, too, couldn't remember anything? And then my heart weeped, and i grieved inside a little, and made a fanart, and didn't feel better afterwards. Yay!

But you know what? There's a cool quote from Shang-Chi saying: "you are a product of all who came before you" - and your own unique characteristics, one should add after Odile. Your past, and i mean the generations upon generations before you as well, is a part of who you are, whether you like it or not. We see it in Siffrin. No matter how the wishcraft tries to erase it, it can't. Because one way or another, he will remember. He will love the stars and know basic astronomy, he will be able to use wishcraft, he will dress in his ethnic clothes, he will love malanga and cheese samosas, he will instinctively swear in his language. It's a part of him:

And maybe that's what's actually the most patriotic aspect of ISAT's narrative - that you can't erase it. As much as you try, you will never be able to fully succeed. Because there are people who love it, still. Even if they will never remember it. After all:

[newgroundstier]

wakes up thinks about them until i get lightheaded and pass out repeat 1000000x

[felworthless]

whatever. go my outsiders

[limboni]

"Children in the woods" 5/5

<- Previous

[mienar]

stillness in these waking hours

instagram | shop | commission info

[annamationsart]

i depend on you

[dapper-lil-arts]

There are those that considered the night to be cold and uncaring. The goddess of magic, the stars, the moon, dawn, and union itself dissuaded them of this notion long ago, spreading bonds of friendship wherever she went.✨🌙

[zoieru]

i was thinkin~ expand in tags !!

[heeheeposting]

HOLY CRAP. ARCHANGEL GABRIEL?

[perth2548]

Meet Rock 🤘💀🔥