#getting around my house. like…

[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.

[lazycranberrydoodles]

english translation book 5 baby we are in the ‘people assuming kid form hua cheng is xie lian’s son’ era 🔥🔥🔥 / follow for more hualian silliness

[hellenhighwater]

Genuinely being a single woman in my thirties, living alone, is such a mixed blessing sometimes. I do love my house and when I'm here I literally never want to leave. But on the other hand, I do get tired of leaving to go hang out with people, even though I love seeing them. Especially because I have such a great group of friends but they live all over the place, geographically, and therefore most of them don't know each other. And I actually really love hosting? But I never have people in my house because logistically it's always more practical for me to go to them than vice versa.

But sometimes I buy new old dishes and wanna just have a little fancy wizard party, but all my guests are far away. Please may I have the teleport spell. Or a high-speed commuter rail system.

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Damian, who has just lost the last member of his family, goes off the deep end and, in a fit of violent rage, goes tumbling through a portal and back in time.

Jason doesn’t know how the scary guy with the gunshot wound became his problem but he’s not heartless enough to leave him to bleed out beside some dumpster in Crime Alley.

[bamsara]

being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now

[aroaceleovaldez]

It's honestly wild to me that ToA went through so much trouble to emphasize the fact that Will did not magically fix all of Nico's problems and was explicitly not Nico's only doctor.

Only for TSATS to have Will fix all of Nico's problems and have Nico be entirely reliant on him the entire book and literally helpless without him and LITERALLY have Nico's problems be magically removed.

[tomaturtles]

Got inspired by this and had to

[marimbles]

being bad at video games is fun because it makes your character a uniquely stupid yet resilient and plucky sort of hero. an underdog no one would ever expect to win. so if you finally do it feels like slightly different and potentially funner version of the story. It’s like look, this idiot FINALLY beat the big bad guy! it took them 900 tries but by Jove they did it! WOOOOOO! GO IDIOT!!! YOU DID IT, BUD 👏 ⁽ᵉᵛᵉⁿᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ⁾

[buglaur]

my favourite posts from 2023

[macksartblock]

Welcome to Mack Hurt His Wrist Earlier This Week and now that it’s feeling better he still refuses to do anything more than rough sketching lol

[qiu-yan]

gonna be real here boss when it comes to the ancestral hall scene i am 100% on jiang cheng's side

[shortnotsweet]

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

House's problem isn't that he lacks empathy. It's that he has too much. He cares to the point that it's self-destructive. That's why he avoids interacting with patients like the plague because he knows that he'll care. He knows that he'll get attached, and he can't cope with that kind of vulnerability. House can empathize with and understand people so well that if he didn't constantly fight against it, he'd lose himself. He insults people and hurts people, and pushes them away as a survival tactic. Nobody spends that much time trying to convince people they don't care when they actually don't care. He has experienced so much heartbreak and abuse that he's learned his only way to survive is to push people away. He's not just trying to convince others he doesn't care. He's trying to convince himself, too. And he fails every single time. Because Gregory House loves people. He relates to them, he cares about them, and he feels vast amounts of empathy for them. He never gives up on patients, and he'll try to convince you that it's just because he loves puzzles, and while he does, it also is because he cares. When you experience that much empathy for people, it saturates every single part of your life. Every interaction you have becomes painful and overstimulating. You start to lose yourself. House is desperately trying not to drown in the minds of others. His ability to understand and care about people is what makes him a great doctor, but it's a blessing and curse. So he bites and claws and avoids and fights because it's all he can do to stay afloat. He's trying to constantly battle experiencing the emotions of others, on top of his own emotions, all at the same time.

[homosubtext]

i fear i’m falling victim to the sakuatsu brainrot again.

[fisheito]

"I'm a healer but--" duo

[rileys-battlecats]

girl help I started writing down oc thoughts and have started contemplating the logistics of how a city carved into the walls of a ravine would have access to fresh water