#Mom’s sacrifice

[srapsodia]

I'm here now

[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.

[rawrsatthetree]

I’ve seen people compare Julian Devorak to Astarion, and honestly I think you’re all embarrassing wrong.

Gale Dekarios is Julian Devorak.

Astarion is Count Lucio

[phantomrose96]

I read your new fic while brain tired and the last line has me wondering (if I’m supposed to be wondering?) how did Vlad build his portal?

I’m too brain tired to really follow all the fake and real math but it feels like a big important thing was portal needs to make a death to open, so is vlad just chill w killing or?

(Sham Sacrifice)

Hello good news you did not miss anything. You've in fact picked up on the fridge horror that's been left as an exercise to the reader!

Personally I feel there are many fun conclusions one can draw about that last line, none of them good!

[sepia-stained-sunset]

Shoutout to Tim Drake for teaming up with the only other teenagers with messier family dynamics than the Bats

[bonefall]

Stormclan is pretty cool, I’m glad they are a direct result of the clans and not Rouge Group 255674385 that pops up like Minecraft mobs at night

Didn’t ivypool kill beetlewhisker? Will they remember it

The mental image of playing minecraft and Darktail spawns on your roof like a spider, refusing to leave in the daylight and making annoying chittering noises, is magical thank you.

Anyway nah, that was Brokenstar. Ivypool killed Antpelt, not Beetlewhisker. I have doubts they're going to remember that though, and if they do, it'll be one of those "don't worry guys we TOTALLY remember the events in our series!" throwaway lines we've been getting recently. The type that's thought in her head or thrown out in passing, but doesn't significantly contribute to Ivypool's emotional struggle.

I think Ivypool's actually the part of this SE that I'm most apprehensive about, funny enough. StormClan's got me pretty excited, but my hopes kinda started falling when I found out Dovewing was going on the road trip. I do not like the story that the Erins tell between the sisters, and I feel like they keep getting forced together to "reconcile their differences" when it would make a MUCH more effective story for the two of them to not do that.

See, what I like about Ivypool is that she's grudge-holding and spiteful. I LIKE that she tried to leverage her sisterhood with Dovewing in ASC to try and make her manipulate her husband. I find the fact she tried to sabotage SkyClan's chances at the lake back in AVoS to halt Dovewing and Tigerheart's relationship, slighting her apprentice in the process, to be COMPELLING.

I ENJOY reading about Ivypool being nasty. Both a victim of the Dark Forest who was targeted because she felt alienated, and yet, someone who has found a way to use Clan culture's most unfair aspects to her advantage. She'll NEVER see herself as the bully she actually is, because in her eyes, she's permanently the underdog.

so... I just have absolutely no desire to see Dovewing and Ivypool be "close."

Every time it happens on the page, it feels like it's Dovewing desperately wanting her sister to not treat her poorly, or believe in her, or just stop actively sabotaging her life. Then, Ivypool realizes this after a while and displays emotional intelligence that feels unfitting for her character, and apologizes.

It feels forced.

Like it's just happening because the authors know the fans want it, and not actually what these two characters would do. You get me?

I don't want to see them reconnect. I want more bittersweet examples in WC where family members have irreconcilable differences, but now and then, there's that little twinge of love, that old spark that you pray, THIS time, could become a fire... but it doesn't. There's just nothing left to burn.

TL;DR I'm feeling overall meh about Ivypool's Heart but looking forward to seeing what StormClan's all about.

[buccellato]

Going a little insane thinking about how from Knives' perspective, his olive branch for Rem was rejected by his childhood perception of her loyalty to humanity, but Rem was assessing the situation as both a ship official and a parent and definitely making the choice she thought would maximize his and Vash's survival chances...like, if she was following duty as a crew member first and foremost, she'd head immediately to the bridge and tell the boys to head to the escape pods via comms or something. But instead she spent valuable minutes ensuring that Vash and Knives were safely strapped in and ready to escape, and then turned around to minimize the ship damage. Plus she had no actual way of knowing whether the plant ships were on a crash course, either—and while tristamp Nai can survive completely without food and water, no version of Vash has been shown to be able to do so completely (plus all other versions of Knives are shown at least drinking lol). So from her perspective she didn't just need to save both her kids and the humans on board, she also would've needed to save as many dependents as possible just so the boys had a way to stay alive.

She did the best she could do as a parent in that scenario, and Knives forever locked himself into a traumatized child's reasoning for her actions and blamed her to cope with it and then never reassessed from the perspective of an adult due to his, well, issues with everything. That's rough buddy.

[xia0ming56]

Hated that last episode so i drew this to convince myself i liked it

[significant-ace-nnoyance]

2024 in: annabeth chase stan era

2024 out: OVERLOOKING AND ERASING ANNABETH'S CHILDISHNESS, POOR SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES, LACK OF SELF WORTH, MASK OVER HER EMOTIONS, ETC.

SHE IS NOT AN ADULT SHE IS NOT A COLD ROBOT SHE DOES NOT HAVE FULL CONFIDENCE IN HERSELF ALL THE TIME THAT IS LITERALLY JUST WHAT SHES PROJECTING TO EVERYONE AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM IN REALITY IF YOU READ MARK OF ATHENA IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES IF YOU WATCH LEAHS ACTING SHES JUST A TINY SCARED CHILD THAT DOESNT KNOW IF SHES DOING HER BEST AND IS TERRIFIED OF FAILURE OR LETTING PEOPLE IN AND IT ONLY GETS WORSE AS SHE AGES AND LOSES MORE PEOPLE SHE TRUSTED AND LOVED

[angesaurus]

Sometimes a soccer mom (who is only a soccer mom because her husband has decided to coach both kids, which equals practice 3 nights a week, 2 games on Saturdays, attending 3+ hour board meetings, and run tournaments/be in charge of things plus coach for money for a whole company on Sundays) doesn’t really want soccer mom merch for her birthday…. What a concept right?!?!?

[strawmaguchi]

Percy discovering being the Narratives favorite is not a good thing

[koko2unite]

[thehotpilot]

currently in SHAMBLES over the parallel of sabine kneeling before her helmet and cutting her hair off before going on a mission to save ezra and kanan doing the same before saving hera

[slythmultishipper]

"Jiang Cheng never thought of Wei Wuxian as an equal or a brother because he never explicitly stated it."

Oh no, its almost as if there is someone who continuously scolds them for hanging out together much less refer to each other as equals....

its also as if them referring to each other as that could possibly add fuel to existing rumours which could potentially ruin their family life.

[noknowshame]

hello- on your jesus birthday post you said The Child Is The Price. What does that mean?

Okay THIS one I will answer. this is a reference to Roberte Icke's adaptation of Aeschylus' tragic play(s), The Oresteia. simplifying as much as possible, the story begins by following Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek army during the Trojan War. the winds he needs to sail his army to Troy have not been blowing, and Agamemnon receives a prophecy/instruction on what is needed in order to return the winds. the prophecy states "The Child is the Price". this phrase is repeated throughout the play, and what it is asking him to do is make a human sacrifice of his young daughter, Iphigenia. eventually, he goes through with it, and the winds do indeed return.

In the original plays by Aeschylus, the actual death of Iphigenia has already happened and is referenced as something the audience should already know all about. Icke chooses to add an act to the play that allows us to linger on that decision much longer. As a whole, the play deals heavily with themes of the nature of sacrifice, narrative inevitability, and cycles of guilt and violence.

When I was drafting my... infamous christmas post, I was trying to think of the story of the birth of jesus like a greek tragedy, involving very similar themes. factually, in a textual sense, jesus is the sacrifice. his death is the price paid for - according to christianity - absolution. and what I was attempting to point out is that we spend so much time celebrating jesus' birth as this wondrous arrival of the savior that we don't stop to meditate on exactly how bloodily that saving is going to play out. it's the exact same thing: The Child is the Price.

As a last note, many many many people have told me in the tags that me saying "Mary did you know? that your womb was also a grave?" is stupid because "all babies are born to die, Jesus isn't special" ...but there is a Very important difference I'd like to point. yes, all babies will die eventually. but NOT all babies are born to die. Jesus was. it was God's plan from the start for him to horrifically die on the cross, and it was inevitable as soon as Mary agreed to give birth to him. I feel that is an important part of the story. The Child is the Price.

(...anyway go read Robert Icke Oresteia and also watch Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) while you're at it)

[dang-dood]

i think the thing that gets me so bad with this last episode is that there was no consequences. everyone came back unharmed. like they fought a god of death and he was gone in like thirty minutes and everyone is vibing while eating pizza??