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how it feels to submit an attack on artfight

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ARTFIGHT TOMORROWWWWW Follow my artfight Here <3

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I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

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ITS REAL OH MY GOD ITS REAL!!

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Older stuff but I’ve been hollybottom truthing since day one

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So like she’s just straight up confirmed gay for Holly ,,, they were the lgbtq post all along,,, the lesbians always win in crk im so emotional,,,,

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so yeah about the new update

also sugar literally calls her "my other half" is this something???

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THE TRAILER FOR THE NEXT CRK UPDATE… ETERNAL SUGAR LITERALLY CALLING HOLLYBERRY “MY LOVE”…:

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Pay attention, 2014 Mad Men: This little girl is holding a LEGO set. The LEGOs are not pink or “made for girls.” She isn’t even wearing pink. The copy is about “younger children” who “build for fun.” Not just “girls” who build. ALL KIDS.

In an age when little girls and boys are treated as though they are two entirely different species by toy marketers, this 1981 ad for LEGO — one of our favorite images ever — issues an important reminder.

Read More

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Mother’s Return

To be mended you must be condemned.

After many weeks of tinkering and drawing and editing, I did it! It’s finished!!! I’m so thrilled to finally see the finished outcome :)

The story and explanation will be under the cut

Way back then in Pineclan, Moththorn had a young kit, Snakekit, who she loved deeply. But around this time, horrible thoughts and visions festered in her head that put her down, so she’d often isolate herself from the clan. Snakekit spent the rest of her kithood with her mother absent and wondering why she no longer smiles at her or plays with her. Even in Vespidclan she wonders why her mom ‘left’ her family so abruptly… It is why Snakevalley decided to become the mother she wished for. She fostered an abandoned kit, Fallenkit. (now grown and named Fallenfox) And has now taken two more under her care, Vinekit and Stonekit.

Something terrible would happen to her sister, Heartflicker, the only Vespidclan healer, which left her injured and unable to work. In need of a cat to quickly take over her duties, Heartflicker picks Stonekit as her apprentice to take her role. This was fine, Stonekit had been taught about some herbs and remedies prior… but Stonekit was only 4 moons old. It made Snakevalley furious, and much more on the next moon, she’d have to see her young daughter become so stressed with her new duties. She tried to reason with Heartflicker. And she’d argue with the leader, Iciclestar, her other sister, to put a stop to it. But neither of them agreed to follow through. Snakevalley ran off in a fit of anger.

She was still crossed, but she realized that she can’t do anything to stop it. The only thing she can do was to be there for Stonepaw through and through. After all, she can’t abandon Stonepaw on this. Not like Moththorn did. Before she returned to camp, she heard a loud crash, coming from the thunderpath. A cat had been crushed by a monster, and he was still breathing! She rushed over to rescue him- and was stopped by some force. Suddenly, the world changed around her. Like she was in a completely different area.

And then she saw it. A strange, flat version of… herself. It didn’t move. It wasn’t alive. But it was definitely her. It felt like she shouldn’t have seen this, and she really shouldn’t have. But she made sure that she did. And she made sure that Snakevalley will not recover from the things she learned and saw from that experience.

Snakevalley awoke back in her clan… Broken. After everything she’s worked for, everything she’s put her faith in, doing what she can to have the best life she always wanted… It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real. She wasn’t real. She was just a flat object. All these thoughts made her go into isolation, and no one understood why. Even though they wanted to, it felt too awkward and tense for her family to check on her. They thought leaving her alone would give her some peace.

It gave her the exact opposite.

404 wanted her mentality to dwindle to no return, just like hers did. It wasn’t just because Snakevalley was an obstacle- Snakevalley had everything she wanted. She was blessed with kits. She was blessed with a clan who respected her. Blessed with love. It was everything she wanted to have. And seeing a cat so close to her have all of these things, seeing her dazzle and shine, it was a disgrace to everything she went through. It was indignation. She hated Snakevalley. It was hatred. And she was plagued by these malicious voices of hate, she gave into them. 404 made her decision and she was keen on fulfilling it.

And fulfilled it she did. 404 was relentless to her. She made sure the negative thoughts never ceased. And once the time arrived, when she saw that Snakevalley was at her most vulnerability… she gave Snakevalley death berries. She wanted her to eat them. But watching Snakevalley gaze upon her dark predicament made 404 feel… remorseful. A ‘human’ feeling, finally, after all this agony of anger. But not a good one. She saw herself in Snakevalley, yes. How she hated seeing that memory. But behind that reflection, from the cracked mirror, there was the daughter she left behind. The one who believed she hated her in kithood. The one who was put into the same anguish she experienced. In the same situation, as the two both held the same plant in their paw… But 404 made her decision and Snakevalley made hers.

Neither can undo what’s been done.

Snakevalley believed that her family hated her. She thought that she didn’t deserve to live alongside them, knowing what their true existence is. Snakevalley… believed that she was better off dying with this knowledge. She didn’t want to die. And yet, 404’s influence had done enough.

Snakevalley ate the death berries. 404 hoped that perhaps a part of Snakevalley recognized her during her final moments… That was wishful thinking. Nonetheless, Snakevalley died. Her plan worked. And she would have to join her in Out Of Bounds just like the others.

…But this time, 404 has other intentions for her.

She needed to fix her.

And 404 remembered… why mercy was not worth pursuing.

The corruption festers.

I had such a blast working on this. I’m very happy to draw my beloved Snakevalley again. Maybe I could do something like this again in the future, but for now I’ll resume the comics! Once again I hope you all liked what the video offered and the thorough explanation I gave for the events :’)

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so yeah about the new update

also sugar literally calls her "my other half" is this something???

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Ohhhhh Eternalberry…. toxic yuri women u have my heart…

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Lost and Found

I've been really nostalgic for Steven Universe lately, and I have so much love and appreciation for the show I grew up with, so I thought I should make something nice to sort of give back, y'know? Anyways, I hope you enjoy. <3

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some fandom disagreements are like "I see your point but I think this other aspect of the narrative is more significant," and some are like "I don't think you can read."

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You know those anime meta posts along the lines of “I was born with pink hair. The doctors told my parents I was a Main Character and ever since my life has not known peace from demons/spirits/sports competitions/harems who find me”

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

He’s rising up, his every dream within his grasp. Until one day he gets a note under his door, taped to an old picture of his Normal Boring self from middle school, that says “You don’t belong”