#I'm talking to myself at this point

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 (soon))

[inlovewithfictionalbeings]

Why my life is so depressing after boards?

Boards ke baad ye uske baad woh karenge?!! Wth man?? Where's the board's ke baad wli khushi??

[zarla-s]

i read the tags and yet

[essektheylyss]

did someone actually hate on your fave? or did they neutrally attribute a trait to them that you've unnecessarily negatively moralized and you hurt own feelings about it? or, perhaps, did you project too hard and now interpret even mild critique or simple acknowledgement of interesting character flaws as an ad hominem attack on yourself?

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[douwatahima]

thinking about episode one of our flag means death ending with "high on a rocky ledge"; a song about taking a leap of faith, dying and being reborn, in order to make a new life with the person you love

thinking about ed, crying in a blanket fort, clinging to a life that's been ripped away from him, thinking he'll die if he doesn't, being asked by a friend, "what if it's not a death? what if life just begins again?"

thinking about stede, spending all of season one stuck between the life society told him he should want and the new life he's created for himself, devising a plan to kill his old self completely so he can go find the man he now knows that he loves

thinking about ed drowning in the gravy basket, fighting against the rock he himself tied around his own waist, getting saved by the sound of stede's voice and the vision of stede that comes to meet him where he is, that stays with him until he's ready to open his eyes

thinking about anne and mary, stuck in a cycle of sadistic games, not communicating how they really feel, finally showing real love to each other when anne burns down the life that's suffocating them and sets them free

thinking about buttons, telling ed "to love the sea as she should be loved requires change", performing seemingly impossible acts of magic to achieve his goal and turning into a seagull before flying off towards the sea

thinking about lucius, stuck in a cycle of reliving his suffering, being told he never talks about how he lived, being told "not moving on is worse", choosing to change and marking that change by asking pete to spend the rest of his life with him

thinking about ed trying to constantly reject parts of himself, to cut out the pieces that keep him up at night, hearing the echoes of stede's screams in his own mind and choosing to embrace his darkness for love this time, rising from the depths of the sea (edward teach reborn on a beach) and immediately coming across a letter from stede echoing back that he is loved he is loved he is loved

thinking about ed and stede waving goodbye to a ship as it sails away and choosing again to change, to try for a life of their own making but this time together as one, starting from the bottom, unsure where to begin, but smiling anyway; "it's got good bones"

thinking about that constant cycle (death and rebirth, death and rebirth), about how it's never too late to become who you are, about how change can seem scary, near impossible at times, but knowing on the other side there is the potential for freedom, for happiness, for love

"dying to be with her wasn't any sacrifice" indeed

[moghedien]

honestly I encourage everyone to get comfortable opening up their electronics. game consoles. computers. phones. keyboards. headphones. whatever. like obviously don't start with the most difficult thing to open up and don't just mindlessly pop open something and lose all the screws and don't do it while its on. but get comfortable looking inside your stuff yourself

its not hard to open up most electronics that don't have an apple logo on them (and even a lot of those are easier than you'd think) and it DOES NOT VOID YOUR WARRANTY.

Companies will try to scare you from learning how to care for your own stuff because they get money that way. Warranty stickers are technically illegal in the US but just isn't enforced, and a company can't actually void your warranty if you repair something yourself, so long as you don't break something else in the process.

like I look at threads all the time where people express fear about just opening up a console and looking at the internals to see which version they have but don't be! its easy, its safe, its free! get comfortable with your electronics and learn how to clean and repair stuff yourself, it isn't scary, companies just want you to think it is!

[insertsomthinawesome]

@priellan COME GET THE BOY!!! ✨

Some different ideas for how that could go down >:D And me picking something personally self indulgent again asdlfjsdLJSDGLDSJG I wanna see him with a Tangled rapunzel length hair braid... it would be so pretty...

[canisalbus]

i just wanted to let you know that Machete being queer means so much to me. I‘m following your art for many many years now and you and your characters have been a big inspiration baaack in my teens. I was struggling with the possibility of a queer identity alot back then and I remember looking for a trace of queerness in every character I adored. I‘ve always loved Machete and today, as I‘m seeing your art again regulary on my timeline, it brings me so much joy that you’re telling this bittersweet queer story through your characters. Thank you!

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a heartfelt message! You've made my day ;w;

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[ihateornithologists]

[ahxiang]

with the focus on the revolving door again in ep 16, i just want to say a little smth abt the door as an autistic person myself.

i know some ppl are frustrated with wyw's difficulty in using the door, saying it infantilizes her and that "she's a 27 year old lawyer, she's seen a revolving door before, she knows how they work." but the thing is, it's not abt her being familiar with revolving doors at all. at least not in the way you think. it's not "oh look at this lady, she doesn't understand this door bc she's autistic." it's a sensory issue.

autism affects our senses and the way we process them. what many allistics don’t understand about autism is that we’re not just overly sensitive to sounds and bright lights. we can be underly (is that a word??) sensitive to stimulus as well and have a hard time controlling our senses. this includes all seven senses. that right, seven. there’s the five you know, but also two you probably don’t: the vestibular sense and proprioception. these two have to do with body awareness, balance, and spatial orientation. that’s why many of us walk “weirdly” (if i ever catch you saying someone walks weirdly i am coming into your house and punching you in the face) or are clumsy. we have issues with our bodies in relation to the world around us and often have a hard time balancing. i walk into walls all the time and miscalculate and walk into doorways instead of through them. 

so it’s not that wyw doesn’t understand the social concept of a revolving door, but that they’re difficult to navigate through due to her vestibular and proprioceptive sensory issues. i myself have a hard time with revolving doors! so pls no more “this makes her look dumb” or “this is so unrealistic”. if wyw is bad representation and is stupid for having problems with a revolving door, then i’m an unrealistically stupid autistic that walks into walls.

[leslutdepointedulac]

Okay. I think enough time has passed. I'm ready to confront this.

I finished re-reading IWTV a few days ago now, and this paragraph fucked me up then, and continues to fuck me up now 🙃

Armand obviously knew what was going to happen. He knew that the theatre vampires were going to be coming for Claudia that very same night. He essentially warns Louis about what's to come.

"Louis, come with me tonight," he whispered suddenly, with an urgent inflection.

Armand is desperate to get Louis to go with him there and then, so that he doesn't get caught up in the theatre vampire's 'business', so to speak. It's got nothing to do with Louis, he doesn't need to be punished, as far as Armand's concerned.

When Louis rejects this, and says he can't go with him tonight, there's not really anything Armand can do, but to just accept that that's how it's going to be. He doesn't want Louis getting caught up in the situation, but he can't say anything more, unless he gives himself and his involvement away.

I watched him turn away and look at the dark night sky. He appeared to sigh, but I didn't hear it.

For only a moment I hesitated, mocked by the pounding of my heart.

It's as if, deep, deep down, Louis knows there's something wrong. He knows something's coming, and that whatever it is, it can't be any good. And I think he knows Armand has something to do with it.

But Louis' blinded by his love for Armand, and Armand's love for him. He's blinded by the possibilities Armand could give him, and any further knowledge he may have to share.

Louis doesn't want to face the truth. He's had one not so great experience in love before, and he's not willing to let that happen again, even if that just means being in denial about it. He so desperately wants to believe Armand has his best interests at heart, and that there's no possible chance that he could ever have any malicious intentions, let alone follow through with them.

He's clinging onto hope.

But ultimately, that delusional hope ends with Claudia dead, when Louis should've just listened to her warnings.

Of course, Louis isn't entirely responsible. Armand already had Louis, he didn't need to worry about Claudia anymore. Louis literally even says so himself. He tells Armand he already has him. And I know that's not the only reason for Claudia's death, there's so much more to it than that, but it was apart of it.

I think either way, Claudia was probably going to end up dead, but more could've been done to prevent it. But the blatently obvious warning signs were ignored, along with Armand's desperate need to have Louis.

[nell0-0]

A bit of a controversial take, but-

Every time I get a comment saying "you should change the badly done fan art bit to good" or something like that, I cackle. You see, that's the point. I draw what I like and it doesn't need to be good, just out there.

It serves as a reminder to just have fun messing around, that I'm drawing for myself, and if I think a drawing ain't good enough, then no problem. The blog has its name for a reason.

I think a lot of artists would benefit from that outlook. It sure helped me with burnout and feelings of inadequacy. If it's not fun, then why?

[lord-pain]

I think a lot of how Paul was more phisically willing to touch John in their early days (or that's just what it seems to me). I can't stop thinking of how he was extra flirty and didn't seem to care about coming across as gay, until he started to look completely afraid of touching men. I like to think young Paul knew that John found him atractive and he loved it