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.
NO MORE ASSOCIATING THINGS WITH FEMMES ONLY BECAUSE THEY ARE PINK!HYPERFEM FEMMES ARE GREAT AND I LOVE YOU CAMPY FEMMES WHO EMBODY PINK BUT ALSO JESUS CHRIST CAN YOU GUYS NOT GO MORE THAN ONE DAY W/O TRYING TO SHOEHORN FEMMES INTO BEING ONLY PINK UWU BABIES. I AM FEMME AS IN GRASS AS IN DIRT AS IN TREE BARK AS IN WEEDS SPROUTING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK CEMENT. FEMME AS IN GENDER NONCONFORMITY AS IN FUCK YOU MY FEMININITY IS WHAT *I* SAY IT IS. FEMME AS IN DEPTH AND DARKNESS AND WARMTH AND TERROR. FEMME AS IN CAVES. FEMME AS IN LIGHTNING. FEMME AS IN AN AMALGAMATION OF TRAITS THAT I HAVE DECIDED ARE FEMININE REGARDLESS OF WHAT SOCIETY SAYS. FUCK IS IT THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!???
gnc and butch women (cis AND trans) and transmascs are punished for performing masculinity past certain thresholds of arbitrary attractiveness because people that cishet society categorizes or clocks as 'women' are not supposed to perform masculinity. hope this helps 👍
[<==PREV PAGES] [NEXT PAGE==>(not out yet.wait a year.or maybe more.imagine.]
saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.
sorry to get on my father figure soap box again but the clearest way we know that even DJenks himself doesn’t believe Izzy is Ed’s father figure is that Ed never for a single moment behaved towards Izzy like he did towards Pop Pop
jesus fucking christ. perhaps if you're one out of five admins on a facebook page for an event that is still in the midst of planning and you have not been involved in most of that planning because you haven't been around, you shouldn't go rouge and make a fucking post about it publicly from our event page?
hey everyone, i won’t be as active for a while. got home last night super late after being on the road for 20 some odd hours. dealing with some family things and as an older sister, my priority of taking care of my siblings comes first before anything else. being on here is amazing for me but i don’t think i’ll have much time for it. reminder to please treat those in your life who are battling addiction with patience and care. i lost my older brother (sweetest person i’ve ever known and he remained that way up until his last night) to suicide and alcoholism, trauma and ptsd, depression and his feelings of hopelessness. talk with the people you care about. another of my siblings is dealing with the same and i refuse to let it escalate to such a terrifying end twice in less than a fucking year. remind the people you care about that there are beautiful things to live for. show them kindness and love. there is all kinds of misinformation out there but know this, you can make a difference for someone. don’t let them suffer in silence.
Thinking thoughts about those from Cuivienen and how they later treated the Valar, especially after Cuivienen was destroyed.
I imagine a foundation of sorrow and a layer of betrayal and pettiness. They had promised safety. And how did it turn out? Kin of Tata and Tatie their first leaders, slain in Valinor by the Dark Hunter from which the Valar promised protection in Valinor.
And then, the War of Wrath comes and with it the destruction of Cuivienen.
If any of those were re-embodied in Aman, I wonder if they make it a point to always turn their back to Valar and Maiar. I wonder if they only speak in the tongue they had first devised all those millennia ago and spoke in Cuivienen before time and different kindreds changed the tongue, not Sindarin or Quenya from the Great Journey's time or later. I wonder if they sing songs in their ancient tongue, songs about the beauty and unsullied health of Cuivienen every time any of the Ainur are near.
I wonder if the Valar feel any shame when those who they once looked upon in wonder and love gaze back at them with indifference or disgust.
i just wanna know. what does anyone want artists to do. im really just curious. Like if u steal all of our work and chase us out of all of the jobs and crush every single one of us until we either die or quit. Whats the end goal.
artists provided their work for free for 2 decades and built their lives in digital spaces. And in a few years the landscape is changing drastically away from that :/.
I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of artists being disrespected. And yet its not going to Stop. Our spaces are still snuck into and scraped, our work is still stolen, and we still have people that are just outright fucking nasty to us just bc u draw a furry animal or are queer. what is anyone supposed to do. our communities were destroyed. our spaces were destroyed. so many artists are Gone and scattered to the winds. What is anyone Doing.
Batman fic is fun because it's one of the handful of fandoms where it's gone through so many reboots while retaining the same characters that basically any interpretation is canon-compliant. Even if you go totally off the rails to complete a totally new universe, there is no practical difference between that and what the actual comics do with reboots.
Fundamentally, Batman is already a universe made of a lot of people tackling the same characters from a multitude of different viewpoints, and from this position, fanfiction becomes less of a newer phenomenon and more of merely a continuation of the conversation between authors that was already occuring, an expansion from merely those being paid from their work to anyone with a passion for the franchise. In this TED Talk, we will-
examining a seemingly normal image only to slowly realize the clear signs of AI generated art.... i know what you are... you cannot hide your true nature from me... go back where you came from... out of my sight with haste, wretched and vile husk
I don't have any money cuz I had to pay my housemates rent and he hasn't paid all of it back yet so I texted him this morning like hey are you able to pay me back 180 so I can take pollux to the vet but he could only give me 100 so now she just gets to suffer I guess
thoughts on ian’s face in the “sorry im late” scene in 5x8 (i think it’s 5x8)
my thoughts are that i am going to start crying and never stop. my additional thoughts are:
so he's in bed, right? he's been trying mickey all day, meanwhile mickey has been going through his own process at home. but ian is thinking that he might have finally pushed mickey away for good - or scared him away. so he's in bed, eyes shut - probably not sleeping, but just laying there. shutting out the rest of the day. he hears someone behind him and his eyes kinda open. it's when he hears mickey though that his breathing picks up and we go from this:
to this:
like it's so slight, but like. the little flutters and the way his eyes start to move 😭 there's life left there. i feel like...... in moments like this, it sometimes feels like you might just lay there until you're dust. it's all over. the life you knew, the life you wanted. and yet - here he is again. and i think ian is genuinely surprised. this is where is starts being surprising to ian that he could be someone to come back for.
anyways. he turns around as fast as his medicated body will let him. we don't see his face when he first sees mickey, but we see it when he says "sorry i'm late." and it reminds me of the scene in 4x11 where mickey says "what you and i have makes me free." like it makes me insane. in both of these moments, his face just drops into something so young and so vulnerable.
like???? he's a little boy! and here is someone standing in front of him - someone he he has ALWAYS WANTED to stand in front of him - promising to be there. that he knows ian needed him. that he's here now for whatever might happen. reality is so warped these days but here he is.
and you see it land??? you see ian exhale and settle in a way he probably hasn't in a while. things are not okay. they're not okay!!! and they won't be for a while. but in this little moment together in this room where he grew up, he can breathe out the grief. he can share it.
mickey moves to get in bed and ian just makes room, like he always has. but he never blinks. doesn't dare take his eyes off of mickey. it's like he's scared mickey might change his mind, or dissolve right in front of him. is he even really there?
and there's another layer of disbelief here. another layer of grief. mickey milkovich is crawling back into his bed to hold him, and it's like this. it happened like this. everything he's done and suffered and been made to face comes down all at once. he's tired, he's scared. he's sorry. mickey has finally seen the worst of him.
he looks away, and mickey chases after him. i think it's important to mickey here that he lets ian feel him. something about that tactile, grounding comfort. and mickey won't look away either, it's too precious. ian's safe, even if nothing is the same.
and it's here, in these quivering lips and drawn eyebrows...... this is the release. his body and his mind have been through a lot in the last few days. it's as close to cathartic as ian really gets for a while. it's not long before the walls go back up and he's angry. but right now, he brings his hand to hold mickey's wrist, and he lets himself be held.
now.... this face:
this face fucking haunts me. i cannot name this face. what is he seeing here? i imagine it's so hard to see past this moment, into a future he can't name. it's like he's simultaneously feeling mickey there and also completely isolated. i can't explain this face. can anyone else explain this face???
either way, he closes his eyes against it. and you can assume that rest is coming.
with my phantom hourglass replay, there are two things i noticed;
a possible theme you could glean from the game is action vs inaction, and i think it's especially prevalent before you even leave mercay the first time, with oshus frequently urging link to not go after the ghost ship, then to just wait until the broken bridge is fixed, and seems reluctant at every turn while link and ciela are more than eager to go and do something about this problem, and the people of mercay in general talking about things and their problems but never seeming to act on their fears or desires, as well as the mention that due to the ghost ship, very very few people are still sailing around, while linebeck is one of the only people we see in the game actively going after the ghost ship and still sailing around. i might make a longer post just talking more about the action vs inaction in phantom hourglass but i just noticed it a bit and thought it was a bit of an interesting sort of theme you could find in the game.
linebeck moves so fucking much. i think he moves more than any npc in the rest of the game. not just in his intro cutscene where he is very animated, just in how much he moves when just standing in his little idle post, it's damn near distracting when the camera is focused on him, he moves a lot. i don't think i've really acknowledged how much he moves, and it really gives the impression that he's antsy or eager to get going, both of which fit him pretty well with how he acts.