Fig's line "I don't think I'm an artist, I think I'm just a good friend" has not left my head at all. Just...
You're Fig Faeth and your horns came in over the summer and you pick up the bard class as a form of adolescent rock 'n' roll rebellion, and it works! It's exactly the outlet you need! You give a guy you just met drumsticks and you start a band and it's good enough that within a year and a half you're touring. You are, in every sense, good at being a bard.
And then, finally, your junior year, you start to take it seriously. Your art goes from an outlet and a form of rebellion to a practice. A discipline. (Can rebellion exist within a discipline?) Your classmates know what they want to do with their work. They all have a thesis statement. And yeah, there's cohesion in the music you make, but you've never had to think about why you make it. You've never sat down and dissected what it is about bass that speaks to you. You've never poured over your lyrics to pick at any deeper meaning. Why should you? You don't play music for a grand design, you do it to... huh, why do you do it?
(Your art is the one form of self-expression that feels as safe as Disguise Self does, because even if you're pouring your heart onto the page and then screaming it in front of thousands of people, it's not like you're really making yourself known. You can sing I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm furious, and your fans will sing it right back, and there will still be the distance between performer and audience to keep your heart safe.)
Now you're being asked to look inward to explain the artistic choices you're making, and you can't help but recoil at that, because you'd rather do anything than look inward. Meanwhile, your classmates have no problem with it, so you start to wonder if you're a real artist at all. Can your art be authentic if it only exists to bolster a thesis statement? Has your art been unauthentic this whole time because you've never really thought about a thesis statement before? Is that what makes it art, and not just the next track on somebody's teen angst playlist?
You can't think about yourself— acknowledging your own existence makes you want to puke. So if your music is an extension of yourself, (and it is, even if it's just because the spotlight reveals only what you want it to,) you can't think about your music. You can't. You have to. Your grade depends on it.
You're Fig Faeth, and you keep multiclassing because you'd rather be a good friend than a great artist. If introspection is what great art demands, then fuck it. You must not be a bard at all.
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when i was in elementary school in the early aughts the boys in my class decided that they had to protect themselves against the girls so they made a "boys' team" and a "girls' team" and the girls' team was all the girls with names like kaylee and cassie who loved lip gloss and sparkly nail polish and playing house. however i was friends with these boys and so i got to be on the boys' team and wrassle with them at recess and go to sleepovers with them where we'd all sleep in big cuddle puddles and also practice kissing bc as the only girl i was the only one they were allowed to practice kissing with (it being the early aughts and us going to conservative christian school). in fifth grade all of a sudden things changed and the boys i'd been best friends with since age six turned weird and mean and hostile and i nearly got actually for real expelled from christian private school because i tackled and beat the absolute fucking piss out of one of them because he kept pinching/hurting me when i told him to stop and the teachers thought it was cute. until i was trying my hardest to bash his teeth in. then it was no longer cute or fun for them. then my friends in middle school were a group of weird outcast girls who are all now either she/they dykes or tradwives with no inbetween. unsure how to conclude this post except to say that probably all of this is unsurprising if you've followed me for a bit AND that if a kid is constantly trying to beat the absolute fucking piss out of their friends then it's PROBABLY BECAUSE THE ADULTS DIDN'T INTERVENE IN AN OBVIOUSLY BAD SITUATION BEFORE THAT POINT.
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Tagged by @anotherevencoolerdad and tagging: @mushroomjar @mouth-dreaming @flamebearrel @flowersbyphone
[ID: Three versions of a 4x4 grid asking "What music do you have in common with" followed by a blank space for the person doing the meme to put their name, and instructions underneath to leave a blank. The first is Jeff's selection of artists with the ones I listen to circled; the second is mine; and the last is a blank. Full transciption under cut:
Jeff's selection: Flight of the Conchords; Dorian Electra; Hozier; Miley Cyrus; Regina Spektor; Doja Cat; Taylor Swift; Lorde; Fleetwood Mac; Dolly Parton; Beyonce; Talking Heads; RuPaul; Billy Joel; Ethel Cain; Kim Petras.
Of these, I've cirlced FotC, Hozier, Regina Spektor, Fleetwood Mac, Dolly Parton, Beyonce, Talking Heads, and Billy Joel.
My selection: Lemon Demon; PinocchioP; Mothy; Jonathan Coulton; Fleet Foxes; The Scary Jokes; The Megas; Mitski; DECO*27; The Kinks; ELO; They Might Be Giants; Yes; Simon and Garfunkel; Neil Diamond; The Beach Boys. End ID]
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i wish more people understood that mental illnesses aren't categorically defined in a way that's based in science or biology and that the lines we draw between them are ultimately arbitrary. we assign labels to collections of symptoms and behaviors based on their occurrence with one another, and like anything that tries to sort the infinitely diverse tapestry of human experience into neat and rigid categories it often falls short of capturing the full extent of what it attempts to represent. this isn't to say that these labels are useless (they're absolutely not) but to treat them as definite and concrete facts of reality can be both harmful and counterintuitive to actually helping people who experience these symptoms
not to mention that many mental illnesses and conditions are defined heavily by societal expectations and perceptions of the individual, and that what we consider to be someone who is mentally well or typical vs who is mentally unwell or atypical is biased by hegemonic cultural ideals in ways that can sometimes be regressive, bigoted, or otherwise harmful or close-minded. if neurodivergency and mental illness are viewed from a biologically essentialist lens and the dsm is treated like a an infallible scientific text, it completely removes the ability to notice or contest labels and definitions that are flawed, outdated, or those that should be disregarded altogether.
a well known example of this is how homosexuality was once classified as a mental disorder, but there are stealthier examples that are still officially recognized to this day (such as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, which is disproportionately diagnosed in Black children and other children of color, as opposed to many white children with the same symptoms who are instead diagnosed as autistic)
anyway my point is that while modern psychology and psychiatry can be useful tools for understanding ourselves and each other, it's important to understand that at the end of the day it's still a pseudoscience and is not exempt from human error or social bias. at the end of the day we're all both more alike and more diverse than what those tools can show, and to fully understand ourselves and each other, we can't be entirely bound by them
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