#and yet he hides it bc he's aware it's not just superpowers what he has

[luckyfailure]

matilda and mob psycho 100 are the only works of art ever about gifted children. i'm not interested about the rest.

[mks-grin]

The Quarry AU Headcanon: The counselors each gained superpowers. What power would each of them have?

(( EDITED bc I forgot to include Max’s other power.))

You’ve absolutely MADE my day with this question let me tell you!

So I’ll give you two for each person - “The Power they would most naturally have” (like if they were born with it) OR “the power they would have later in life because it would torment them” (like it happens in order to force them to grow.)

Jacob - “Super Strength” OR “Time Travel”

Super Strength makes sense at first glance for Jacob because he probably is already a strong guy. He would fall into typical Superman rules. Minus the flying and laser? Vision.

However, Jacob is the type to deeply regret his actions, he also seems like the type to not be able to accept reality. He might use a time loop ability to go back in time in order to change his relationship with Emma. Yet overtime he would realize that there are some things time travel can’t change. Others will always have free will, desires, and will die. Nothing can change that.

(He ALSO has the most possible deaths / therefore you’re most likely to use your Death Rewind on him vs. any other character! Get it? Rewind? Ok.)

Ryan - “Invisibility” OR “The Touch of Death”

Ryan would prefer to be invisible, I’m sure, most of the time in canon. Invisibility would allow him to eavesdrop without consequences and hide when he wants to avoid others. It would come so naturally to him. He might only be visible when giving his lessons or when talking to Chris.

However, being given a “touch of death” ability would doom him to always be alone in some capacity. He would feel othered and have to constantly be aware of how close he got to others. While he doesn’t want closeness - knowing he can’t ever have it would make him a little bitter. Or really bitter! I think he would actually opt to try and remove this power vs. adapt to it.

Abigail - “Manipulate Nature” OR “Lie Detector”.

Abi would naturally connect to nature, because she can appreciate the world in an artistic sense she would also have the connectedness needed to manipulate said nature. Being able to better care for plants and ecosystems, she would thrive doing this wonderful and peaceful work.

However, if she were to be able to detect lies, without others knowing, she might lose faith in them faster. She may not trust people or will simply be disheartened with most people. It may cause her to have a gloomier look on life. Until of course she realizes people also lie to hide good things like crushes and surprises - realizing that people are more complex than their actions. Their intentions are just as important!

Emma - “Charm” OR “Mimic”

Initially Emma is our summer season heartthrob so it makes sense that she might have the ability to charm others! She would use this power usually for good, but the occasional boost in an interview never hurt anybody? People might question whether or not they’re under her spell on a day to day basis. She would insist however that she doesn’t use it on a daily basis for constant life hacking.

However, because Emma lacks a true sense of self she might be given the power to look and sound like other people. She is able to use this ability to have conversations with someone without them knowing it’s actually her. This leads her to realize her peers know a lot more about themselves than she knows about herself. This may bother her until she knows more about who she is.

Dylan - “Calculation” OR “Clean Slate”

Dylan, being a little genius, might be able to solve problems with more confidence than another. He may have a better sense of geometry, physics, surface area, and bodily capabilities that he can quickly solve those sorts of issues. In a tight situation he might be able to work out a solution! Can you fall from this height without breaking a leg? How fast can you swerve to not hit a deer and not flip your Minicoop? Sometimes it feels like guesswork to others - but it’s almost like having a completely accurate scientific instinct.

Clean Slate meaning he can clear someone’s mind of a specific thought. He can wipe information into the subconscious. Sadly, he would find this power to be a burden and find himself feeling guilty whenever he would wipe away a memory. Dylan eventually feels that mistakes, failures and loss are all important aspects of life. Wiping those experiences away from friends stunts them a little and robs them of development. They are capable of remembering what they forget - and when they do they also remember that he wiped away that memory. This has ended in a fight before.

Kaitlyn - “Ice Breath” OR “Intuition”

Ice Breath, while ironic, would be a fun power for Kaitlyn. She would say her typical snide or cynical comments to friends and whenever it hurts their feelings she would remind them she is “ice cold”. She may even sing “Ice Ice Baby” as a sort of theme song. Having this sort of narrative following her and in her mind / she would be able to actually believe it. Therefore, hardening her heart and increasing her ability to thrive in a crisis. She would be a worse team player on a day to day basis but when you NEED her she’s there.

Intuition is a little more haunting for Kaitlyn. While she is smart, her ability to understand the intuition isn’t too sharp. Intuition is a sort of meeting of the mind and heart, in a way a lot of people can’t describe. Kaitlyn is a very logical thinking person. When gaining this ability she struggles to understand what the “feeling of dread” is. She gets little premonitions and cannot always figure out what will CAUSE that premonition to happen. Sometimes her actions, intended to avoid a specific future, are what lead her to that future. She wouldn’t share her premonitions with other, and instead feel guilty when she can’t motivate someone to do what she thinks they ‘need’ to do. This hurts her relationships because she starts to become pushy and has too alienated of a mindset to share her issues.

Nick - “Shield / Bubble” OR “Animal”

Nick seems like the type to obtain a sort of ‘boring’ power like this. He wouldn’t mind it in the slightest and would make it look cool because he has the sense to use it well! He certainly could manipulate the shields for practical use and for party trick use! It’s one of the few abilities that can be used to embarrass Jacob, which Nick can easily appreciate.

Because we see Nick go absolutely 😬 in canon, I think it makes sense to transfer that here. He’d just turn into a more werewolf-esq version of himself. I think this power would be triggered by Nick’s emotions. Not because he is new to the power, but simply because that’s a trait of the power. This would force Nick to have to come to terms with his emotions more directly than he does in canon. ( He can’t let emotions bubble up or take the back seat anymore.) Simultaneously he needs to keep a leveler head to remain human! If not he becomes a feral version of himself.

Max - “Healing” OR “Sense Deprevation”

C’mon obviously Max would be born with a healing power. He’s just mad sweet.

( Also did you see the lawsuit Max’s actor is going through right now?? Look that shit up. Yikes! Skylar, as many Judge Judy episodes have taught me, idt he has anything to sue over”.)

Anyways, Max would absolutely love to help people and has the right sort of temperament to help others. Medical school wouldn’t be his thing - but hey if he’s born with the ability that’s different!! Line up because this clinic is OPEN! (Also Skylar plays a character in another series as a kid where he is a fake church healer!)

In contrast, Max might have the ability to rob someone temporarily of one of their five senses. He might do this when people argue, by taking vision away for a few minutes, these people can’t keep hitting each other. He does this for Laura whenever she wants to eat something healthy that she doesn’t enjoy. He also could do it for kids (and Jacob) who need medicine. He never uses it on people without saying he’s going to use it though.

However he has faced instances where the sense didn’t come back when he thought they would and he does not know the rhyme or reason to when this happens. Once Laura lost vision in one of her eyes for like 12 hours. Whoops!

Laura - “Animal Communication” OR “Regeneration”

We see why this would be Laura’s calling right? Best vet ever. Or a constantly sobbing vet. She also would be able to tell more about animal abuse and rats people about to her and Max’s buddy, T-Money. Laura loves and hates this ability bc she now has the ability and responsibility to do more than just yearly pet checkups.

And regeneration! The ability to not die / or can’t die as easily as others do. It’s a blessing and a curse. In her everyday life it’s good to know she heals from paper cuts, burns, and hangnails faster than everyone else - but realizing that her mortality could come into question might sorta ruin her summer vibes ya know? Could she die? Would she age?

Despite this she decides she absolutely must use this power for vigilante justice.

[chariflare]

back from my mini-hiatus with pr*ncess bibliophile. haven’t been this annoyed at a manga for being Mediocre in a while (tl;dr sweet babyface bad writing internalised misogyny hell)

plot summary: quiet, zoned-out fiancee to the crown prince likes books a lot. seems like a cutesy comedy of errors about her misunderstanding her fiancee as being in love with someone else... but it’s actually a light court/political drama & people were trying to assassinate the protagonist. oops

characters:  

in general: not smart/uncommunicative in a frustrating way, the drama is forced; none of them are particularly likeable or interesting, or have room for char development that would mean something to me

protagonist: prone to depression/self-deprecation in a way that feels disconnected from a lived experience of that emotion (or from a real-enough facsimile of a person for a portrayal of it to be worth anything)

love interest: this is a personal sticking point, but the fact that he doesn't communicate (either that his wife is the target of an assassination plot, or that he was staging events to get her accepted by the nobility) i find gross... when this is framed as a character trait that he doesn’t have to grow out of. in particular, i don't think it works well with this tone or ~innocent childlike protagonist~. they have very little romantic chemistry

mean girl (TM): this character is a tired archetype written poorly & with no self-awareness of the internalised misogyny behind her (#notliketheothergirls)

plote:

it hides its premise but the premise is 1. not worth the wait 2. at odds with the presentation & og conceit in a not-fun way. you’d think that miscommunication, as a link b/w comedy & drama, would be an easy way to switch between the two, but.... it does not help. either the protagonist is out of place in this story, or the prince is an asshole. 

the actions of other characters preceding the #Reveal chapter have no weight bc the viewpoint character doesn't understand them. we don't even understand the gravity of what's... going on......... so there's no tension build-up.............. 

protagonist is revealed to have knowledge superpower at chapter 6 with no foreshadowing

protag & love interest have been engaged for 4 years, yet their engagement has gone nowhere, despite the prince being Mind Chess Superman. this is not commented on

"people were mean to me but it was bc someone was after my life!! and they didn't bother explaining it to me like i'm a normal person!! teehee oops! guess it was fine all along" NO IT WASNT???????????????????????????????????????????/ IM GONNA BUST A NUT  

who writes their sweet protag uwuing and sighing through a scene of people getting publicly roasted & sentenced to life imprisonment bc her hot bf is doing it???? who does that????????????

if they’d just started with the assassination plot, or the bet, you'd have a good, compelling story (maybe). but starting that way only proves that they’re out to frustrate the reader... and the characters do the story no favours either

here’s where i’d do a quick summary of other manga i’ve read but i’m tired, folks

[kidslovetoys]

What our children’s art can teach us

All children love to draw and paint, but why do they do it and what can their creations tell us about them? Dr Helen Jones explores the meaning behind the art and explains how to help your child’s creativity flourish:

Table of contents:

Art is personal

Realism vs expression

Modes of expression

The cross disciplinary nature of art: how it teaches us about other subjects

Final word

Art is personal

At the very earliest stages of evolution our forebears were making art. 

In 40,000 BC, creative symbolic artworks were being handcrafted from shell, stone, and primitive paint by homosapiens. But it begs the question: why?

Why has there been an enduring drive, spanning our entire existence, to leave marks, to make our trace in the world, to create?

It is one of the few things which distinguishes us from animals. We have this wonderful yet mysterious power to create distinctly personal and individual remnants of our existence and personality.

Art is a discipline that champions our individualism. It allows us to show and share our experiences of life, without hiding who we are.

‘As we have changed, our art has changed, and how we have defined our art has changed, but that fundamental instinct to play experiment, repurpose, test and reimagine has always been central. Just as play is a deliberate pushing of the boundaries, so art has refused to be solely defined by one idea or one set of people.’ (Michael Rosen.)

We’ve all heard ‘No one is you. That is your superpower.’ As an artist, and head of art, I’d argue that nowhere is this superpower more visible, than in our visual creations.

Art prizes the original. It prizes the unique.

It says if you don’t comply with a conventional norm, then good on you. I love telling children in my lessons, that in art there is no right answer or wrong answer.

Yet very often we can act, even subconsciously, as if there is. Forcing our children into a straightjacket of neat and realistic depictions of reality. 

Parents will ask me why one child can draw so much better than theirs, when perhaps they should be asking why we assume that child’s style of drawing is better.

There is a deeply-entrenched tendency to measure children's drawing by its ‘lifelike’ standards. But as John Matthews suggests in Drawing and Painting: children and visual representation: ‘The idea that the representation of objects is at the heart of drawing is completely wrong.’

Art is a cacophony of ideas, expression and imagination. What would the world be like if it were all logical, realistic drawing? Salvador Dali, Picasso, Pollock, Hirst, not to mention thousands of other artists, would never have dazzled us with their unique ways of seeing.

Perhaps we need to consider representation as ‘re-presentation’. Because as Matthews asserts: ‘what is ‘realistic’ to the child changes with age and context.’ Perhaps it is important to your child to draw you as a humongous, overly tall figure, because to them, you seem much bigger. Thus our adult definition of art doesn’t always align with our child’s way of seeing the world.

What’s more, there are many more forms of drawing than we often realise. Drawing through stitch, drawing in sand, drawing with a sparkler, drawing with wire and so on. Contemporary artists make drawings in all sorts of ways, in non traditional media, with unconventional tools. This allows them to express things they couldn’t have in any other way. 

Realism vs. expression

Simply forcing children to draw from life doesn’t aid artistic expression. We need our children to communicate what they are thinking, imagining and feeling in many languages, verbal, spatial, gestural, musical and visual. We want them to embark on a ‘representational adventure in which meanings are given sounds, actions and images.’ John Matthews

I tell my art students ‘a camera is for capturing a realistic copy of the world around you. Art is for capturing your interpretation of the world and for expressing your unique individuality’. Often this falls on deaf ears, so prevalent are beliefs about the hierarchy of representational depiction. But what is realistic? How do things look really? Unfortunately our fixed assumptions to these questions can, at best, hinder learning possibilities, or at worst, damage our children’s self-efficacy[LINK]. So often children have fallen prey to adults working from a deficit theory - looking for what’s ‘wrong’ or ‘missing’ from their artworks. This can really corrode a child’s confidence, but more than that, it’s not necessarily right.

We unconsciously place realism at the top of the ladder, and all the other steps below it are often relegated as scribbles or ‘nearly corrects’. As children climb this ladder, (often in standardised educational settings), they get less and less opportunity to draw freely. Spontaneous drawing which serves the intentions and interests of children is becoming increasingly hard to find in schools.  According to Matthews,  this is detrimental to children’s emotional and intellectual development, ‘The child's own spontaneous visual representation and expression has been devalued in favour of a fixed, acceptable, cultural standard’

So how can we avoid this?

Perhaps we should spend more time listening to what their drawings tell us. Just as we as adults use hand gestures, facial expressions, tone range and movements as we talk, children use these features in their artwork.  For instance, mark making can represent experiences of hide and seek, people leaving us and coming back into our lives, movement, such as going through tunnels, hiding underneath something, the feel and motion of swimming, and, importantly, it can reconcile traumatic encounters.  Art is a processing of these happenings, through thoughtful gesture and mark making, which is quite different than mere representation. Thus the ‘re-presenting’ might not look like what the child is responding to, but what is occurring is a significant translation of that event.

Modes of expression

Children capture different types of information, often following different intentions or modes of thinking in their work, some of which I have simplified for ease of understanding. 

Intellectual realism.

Sometimes children draw unrecognisable shapes and claim they are a certain person or object. While this may not be realism in the sense we know it, it could be ‘intellectual realism’ in that for the child it represents their internalised view of that object or person.  It shows what the child knows, rather than what the child sees.

Symbolism and representation.

The vast majority of learning is based on signs and symbols, such as language and maths for instance, and even social interaction. Drawing is an idealised way to grasp this nature of symbolism. Discovering that marks on paper can stand for things turns a cornerstone in one's mind - a huge developmental shift.

Emotional.

Art and feelings go hand in hand. Matthews says: ‘Children’s drawing actions are sensitive to fluctuations in mood, both their own and those of people around them. The child imbues drawing with emotion and representational possibilities.’ Perhaps this is why art therapy is so successful - emotions are made tangible as they are inflected on the surface of the paper and the surface of their minds.

Grouping.

Children might group together different types of marks such as dots or dashes or marks at the beginning or end of these lines - separating out their shape vocabulary and becoming adept at matching their actions to shapes. By grouping marks according to type, he is beginning a process of classification. This is the start of maths.

Art as play.

Art can be nothing short of imaginative play. Sometimes there is no intention, other than sheer joy and exploration. I often see children use three-dimensional objects and toys in a similar way to how they use drawing - reconstructing comparable scenes and dealing with related issues. This shows that mark making is tethered to all of our experiences, especially play which has creative overlaps.

The cross disciplinary nature of art: How it teaches us about other subjects

If we listen to our body closely enough we know what it needs. I also believe if we listen to our mind closely enough we know what it needs. And children are no exception, in that they subconsciously know what they need to learn. 

‘The child is constantly, actively, purposely, seeking out those particular experiences which will promote growth.’ John Matthews

Children are always in pursuit of learning, whether they realise it or not. For me, nowhere is this more visible than in their art. It makes their learning observable, and holds the power to teach a range of subjects and disciplines, and to make them fun.

Music and sound.

Listen to your child as they are drawing - what sounds do they make? I’ve seen children blend sounds and drawings together time and time again. My daughter's experiences with music - the tempo, beat, and patterns within the song - form a backdrop to the patterns and pulsating lines she produces.

Body awareness.

‘Proprioceptive’ information about the position of our joints and limbs, balance, posture and stance are heightened in art making. When making with our hands we learn how things move, how our body moves, and how shapes can be coordinated and controlled in a dynamic, swiftly changing format. Although I would argue that not only does art make us more aware of our physical selves, it helps us reveal our inner souls.

Mathematical.

The American professor of maths John De Pillis writes: ‘‘When learners have the opportunity to use their artistic skills and draw scenarios, they can more easily visualize and figure out math problems.’ Angles, geometric shapes, measuring, proportions, ratios of paint to water, scale and perspective are some of the mathematical gifts of art.

Linguistic learning.

Art is a visual language. A universal language, that anyone can speak. We all recognise certain shapes and symbols and know what they represent. Learning the language or art support language learning in all other areas. Being able to speak visually goes hand in hand with general communication.

Science.

Children can grasp some quite unfathomable scientific concepts in their art. For example, by attempting to represent invisible events like wind, music, suction, or showing clouds moving, rain coming down, spilling from a cup, or documenting movement trajectories. They learn how to organise space, time, patterns and sequences of movement which share characteristics with what they see in the outside world. They can translate experiences of crawling through tunnels, pouring liquid through tubes, looking through cardboard rolls, into their art. Children explore and rationalise all this through drawing.

Perspective.

In more sense than one. Children can gain mental perspective on the bigger picture in life, on personal issues and dealing with trauma, as well as exploring physical perspective. As you draw ideas occur, whether that’s how to deal with or respond to a certain situation, or logical constraints such as how things get bigger towards you, and smaller further away. This shouldn’t make sense in the minds of our little young ones, but through art it does.

Final word

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves what we believe is the major endpoint in drawing or painting. And not just to consider the destination but the journey. Realistic drawing is one way of approaching art in a multitude of possibilities.  So let’s stop looking for it as a ‘what’s missing’ from our children's art and encourage some freedom of expression for all.

When I consider my daughter's mark making, I can see that each image is saturated with communication, thinking and emotion. And that, for me, is far more valuable than a ‘picture perfect’ outcome.

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