#paying for school activities

[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.

[sergle]

yall are about to piss me off by not having any PASSING basic knowledge of the way the u.s. military manipulates its recruits into joining by typing up one of your uninformed, unresearched, unempathetic, individualistic, unbelievably annoying posts about how 100% of the people in the military ended up there because they just Love America So Damn Much! they're extremely mature and informed at time of recruitment, they can totally leave anytime they want, they totally had tons of other avenues in life they could've taken, there was no rush at all to get income as fast as possible, and everyone in the military also totally is part of the combat divisions and personally enjoys being IN the military very much, big believers of violence. everyone in the military is shooting guns all day, that's how that works. they LOVE BLOODSHED. also I love the "amewicans haha" twang to this type of shit because you're actually TOTALLY stealing our Thing, which is turning systemic issues into Individual Issues. Instead of talking about the powers that be, it's so Personal Choice up in here. It's, "well you shouldn't have done it then. I totally wouldn't because I know better." you don't wanna talk about the military industrial complex as a whole, and you don't want to talk about recruiters, you just want to pin the blame on Specific Individual People one-by-one, as if they're responsible for the system that they're being ground up in. someone was in the military? bad person, no matter what. it's easier to believe that, I guess, than to acknowledge that Normal People (with high school educations) are manipulated and incentivized into joining a system that is Bad. at like age 18. but yeah no that 18 year old should have just been smarter lol haha anyway here are some screenshots for no particular reason

side note this reply of someone going "umm just get loans and go into a high paying field it's easy XD" as a direct response to someone trying to explain how most americans joining the military are being funneled in that direction out of a need for money.

and another person who Decided that americans join the military just CLENCHING their teeth thinking of other people, and not thinking completely selfishly about their own selves and their own income/housing/healthcare.

[marshmcore]

BOOM old art and OC art upon ye.

Have this WIP of fashion hcs (i got more of this shite for the other mercs and npcs stay tuned i guess)

And have this OC shite, the reason for their existence is the thought of Medic potentially using dirty equipment gives me the ICK. Before they existed, I HC Medic had to do EVERYTHING in the med bay, including cleaning the instruments, who got time for that??

[mueritos]

for folks who aren't aware, i have an adult twitter where i post some more ns/f/w art but everything is always posted first on my patreon ^-^ pls don't be weird and if you're an adult feel free to give my page a follow.

[comradebestie]

fuck byu all my homies hate byu

[lightyaoigami]

americans only others look away this doesn't apply to you: i shouldn't be surprised that the most braindead political takes really catch flight on the website where white american suburban ex-evangelical shut-ins who use their queerness as a cudgel against other marginalized identities hang out lmao

[saturngalore]

just seen the most infuriating post ever in a long time oh my fucking god

[bunnihearted]

🍷

[arnold-layne]

im such a loser it hurts. i’ve gained a lot of weight over the last year and it makes me hate my body. my job sucks and pays so little i feel ashamed just thinking about it. my grades are bad and my writing is mediocre and devoid of meaning. why do i even exist

[riseupriseupandcomealong]

okay actually what am i going to do when i lose institutional access and can’t go on jstor and look up “cú chulainn” “franklin expedition” or “helen hartness flanders” anymore

[brittlebutch]

bill and ted and their efforts in education is something thats So Important to me - they really do want to learn and find new things soo interesting, its just that traditional teaching methods fail them. even stuff they love (music) took them so long to learn !!!! which is something i feel like ppl miss a lot. choosing to learn smthn that is difficult and has a steep learning curve is actually So Hard and frustrating and bill and ted actually put in so much effort to learn!! and ofc it works out (they win battle of the bands, become famous, save the world etc) but i feel like they wouldve worked at it even if they never met rufus and all that bc they approach life with such genuine earnestness. which is a trait i admire so much and they make me so happy :)

yes dude you absolutely hit the nail on the head!!! i love love love that Bill and Ted don't make it through any of the movies thanks to any kind of special skill or innate talent, they manage to make it through just because they're so affable and enthusiastic that people around them (even some who would have reason to actually dislike them) just can't seem to help but be taken with them and decide to help them out - no perpetuating the myth of independence anywhere!!

and you're so right about the time travel probably not being strictly Necessary in their development like, their audition at the beginning of Bogus Journey isn't very good but it's still technically way more musical than their garage jam sessions were in Excellent Adventure! (You could argue that's just the Princesses carrying the sound, which is probably true to an extent, BUT I don't think that's it entirely bc there's not any discordant distortion-noise like there was in EA and parts of the melody do seem to cut out when Bill and Ted pause playing to speak) So they were learning and improving between movies, it's just that they're naturally kind of slow at it AND they've also probably not been able to focus on learning all that well bc they're working full time and struggling financially - once they take like a year and a half outside of time to practice nothing but guitar they're able to show off some serious musical acumen, and THEN i love how Face the Music shows how even though they've both gotten pretty Technically skilled at a huge variety of instruments, they're still 'bad at it' bc they struggle to write music that other people enjoy/understand and they still aren't overly bothered by that at all!

Also love that the same applies to Billie and Thea - they seem to have a much easier time of things than their dads do wrt learning/innate skills BUT they're still 24 and haven't moved out or gone to college or gotten jobs or anything and no one (other than Chief Logan ofc) puts them down or admonishes them for this! They're both loved and supported wholeheartedly by their parents (who OFC understand it all completely) and they make it through the movie the same exact way Bill and Ted did! Even though Billie and Thea do rely on a more-than-solid grasp of musical history to navigate the circuits of time, their ability to sway the historical figures to their cause largely thanks to their enthusiasm for the topic and general affability and i love how that's always upheld by the movies as a Valued Trait i love it SO much

[hotmess-exe]

it's been soooo long since i was forced to endure some dude condescending to me about hip hop i don't care about in the passenger seat of his car omfgODDD

i accidentally called Lupe Fiasco "mainstream" before I immediately clarified and used the word "known" and this dude harped on it for so fuckin long jfCHRIST. that sort of "Not only do you not know what you're talking about, but now you're getting your ignorance on ME" kinda harping on it.

apparently Lupe Fiasco doesn't count as anything even approaching mainstream because he "doesn't sell" and when I looked at him, fucking incredulous, I asked idk how many times "Are you saying people don't know Lupe Fiasco? Hip-hop doesn't know Lupe Fiasco???" for him to finally STFU and at that point it wasn't even a conversation I wanted to be in anymore lmao

all this because he just had to talk about how Eminem is a more culturally appropriate rapper than Drake because he wrote the song White America (me summarizing but I don't really care for his opinion anymore lol), like it's some revelation that I would never have connected the dots on 😂 all this because he just needed to know I was paying attention to his music

....anyway, I need a new ride to and from rehearsals 😅

[butchlifeguard]

attention spans dont real lmao. nothing about the condition or support needs of yr adhd can be measured by measuring yr attention span because the nature of adhd is that attention span is incredibly variable. this is bc adhd is characterized by dopamine seeking behavior and not just a timer until we get bored and go on our phones

[mauls-fair-in-love-and-war]

My sister: “dude just quit school and do your costume stuff already”

Me, tearfully: “I don’t think you understand how hard that is”

[ivettel]

does the reception of the fest and the increased flow of creative output make you feel like you would want to stay? does it make you rethink what you call your imminent exit? just sad thinking that we will lose someone with your passion and drive and dedication 😞

ahh well unfortunately it’s not really by choice 😔 i start law school in a couple weeks and i’m kinda piloting blind, yknow? in a whole new city studying material in my second language and i don’t really know anyone or have many connections in the field… so i’m rlly gonna try and dedicate myself to Being A Good Student and Networking and Being Normal, which means my time for Being A Seb Stan will probably diminish to almost nothing ): already even just with the move i haven’t been able to sit and work on creative projects and i’m so emo over it, it’s probably unhealthy..

idk, i know people have been able to manage a school-work-social balance and i may be good enough to do that at some point? but ugh atm this is the biggest opportunity of my life and i really don’t want to fuck it up by prioritizing things that aren’t as important ahhh 😭

[avatardoggo]

I HAVE FEELINGS FOR A BOYMAN