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.
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I truly, TRULY do not know how to say this, because the fact that I have to say it makes me feel like I am losing my grip on reality. But no, in the post-capitalistic anarchist utopia, I will not be relying on “autistic minecraft girlies” to be building inspectors because - and this may shock you - one of those occupations takes years of education in how to read and interpret hundreds of thousands of lines of regulations based on complicated math and physics that were the result of decades of tragedy and death, and the other one involves playing a children’s video game.
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But I still think of you
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schools deleting your school email account with 7 years of documents attached to it after you graduate should be illegal and i’m not kidding
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When you said that the unluckiest person is most hopeful, it reminded me of Nagito Komaeda. If the universe were combined, do you think he would fair well having Anti Cosmo as his anti fairy?
Funnily enough, I feel like it would be Hajime who would have an anti-fairy companion. I mean, he’s surrounded by extremely skilled people! That would attract bad luck in some way for him. Nagito wouldn’t be good food for anti-fairies. Or Fairies. Or Pixies.
...Honestly, Fairies aren’t quite sure what food he produces. It’s like a weird amalgamation of luck, desire, greed, and all sorts of emotions they can’t disentangle. Like a crockpot gone horribly horribly wrong. Eating any bit of that would make any fairy sick.
Eugh. The hell is wrong with that one.
Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]
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tbh i do get a little bothered by the notion that tim took the first shot he had to drop out of school because he hated school and didnt wanna do it and all of that bc i feel like it ignores the probably very important context that he dropped out after his dad (as well as steph-or at least, he was led to believe, in the same week) died, also he was in a school shooting. He did attempt to go to a school in bludhaven but the kids there were so wildly insensitive about the shooting that tim dropped out under the pretense of his "uncle" homeschooling him. In his oyl era, he /did/ go back to school, and it provided him some form of normalcy. Tim was a normal kid, he wasnt crazy about school but he still went to school and it helped him feel like a normal kid, something he desperately clung to. He only dropped out again to do his Brucequest, in an era where he was notably Not Doing Well (which. Yeah. he wasnt doing well bc he was like 17 and almost everyone in his support system was dead, he recently had hits put out on him, got blown up, and backstabbed by his not-dead-ex, he couldnt support his theory that bruce was alive and was extremely stressed about that, and he didnt know wtf he was doing. I love him btw.) Basically tim dropping out of school was a signifier that he wasnt doing well and he was giving up on the normality that he tried to cling to and im a bit of a nitpicky person who gets irked by minor things
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DAAAAAAAAAMMMMNN!! FEAR LOOKS SOOO PISSED HERE!!!
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T4T detrans kink not from transphobic trauma but from the longing of feeling desirable when you used to be a girl, when cis guys would want you. when you had long hair and hardly any body hair and straight boys flirted with you.
but you were trans. you felt awkward in that mold of girl and boy. you were probably gay too, and you liked these boys. but not in the same way they liked you, not the same way other girls around you liked boys. and you missed out on a lot of fun experiences growing up because of this
and now you’re on T. and that’s amazing. and maybe cis gay guys are even into you, and that’s cool. but they just… don’t really get you. and you don’t really get them. sometimes you kinda wish you could be that young girl again, and have the guys you’re interested in wanting your attention and putting in the work to have you as their girlfriend. you used to have that, but you missed out on those opportunities
and let’s say you try to hook up with straight guys. the problem is. not that many are gonna be into you, you’re too hairy, too many, voice too deep, and even if they are okay with that they just wanna fetishize your trans body. they’re not seeing you how you want to be seen. you want to be GIRL. you want to be feminine again and wanted
but with a trans guy? happily seeing you as a girl? seeing right through you, loving those curves and your soft skin and recognizing the girl underneath your transition? he understands and he gets it. and you see HIM how he needs to be seen. as the young man going after girls like he never got to when he was young before his transition. because cis girls just don’t get it. but you get it.
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Jason knows Bruce loved him that's why he's so pissed that Jokers still alive, he wants Bruce to PROVE that he still loves Jason by letting him kill his murderer, by choosing him.
The point of Red Hood is doing what Batman can't and nothing Bruce or Dick can say would change that Joker is still alive and there's another Robin who's going to suffer.
"Jason come home we still love you despite the murders 🥺" Okay then prove it, watch me put a bullet through the head of the man who murdered me and then let me come home. No? You can't? Well then I guess I was right the entire time and you're all useless and will never love me as I am. I'm going to non-fatally but very painfully hurt you now btw.
^ how it would actually go if Dick or Bruce or whoever found out his identity early
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Have you ever played the video game Where the Water Tastes Like Wine? I just started replaying it and it reminds me a lot of A Cornstalk Fiddle!
You've guessed my tastes extremely well!
I'm really not a video games person (really not.) but Kentucky Route Zero and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine are two of my favorites---specifically because of their settings and the way it seeps through the narrative. I've been in and through so many verging-on-nowhere, USA, places that I'm weak for that vibe, the strange and marginal magic of it.
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i try not to let dumbass fandom disk horse take up any space in my mind but now on behalf of the percico side of the fandom that had to deal with that entitled negativity i wanna write a percico drabble
actually the smuttier and more offensive the better
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My brother died very suddenly yesterday.
He was the kind of person who always had dozens and dozens of friends everywhere he went because he was easy to talk to and funny and treated people with respect, and his friends ranged in class, race, age, social ability, introversion and extroversion--no matter who you were, he could and would befriend you.
He would scold me for not asking him for help when I needed it, and he would mean it. He taught me to tip well. He loved helping people. He played practical jokes on the new kids at work, including getting one guy to "chop flour" because the flour they had in the kitchen was "too coarse."
He introduced me to some of the best food I've ever eaten in my life. He would always help with a recipe that wasn't working. He would tell me what to buy my foodie friends for their birthdays, and he never got it wrong. He loved meat and whiskey but also wine and fruit and he got me to eat beets even because he knew how to make anything good.
Mostly, he thought that people were all deserving of respect and decency. He was outspoken on this. For all that his friends ranged across demographics, he didn't tolerate anyone being hateful around him. But even then, he was nice about it. He would try to get people to come around to his side. He saw the good in people.
And he was happy. He had finally quit chewing tobacco and managed to stay off it for three years. He had a girlfriend he really liked. The pandemic had put him out of work for over a year, but he was back at his job and doing well and he liked it. He was good at it. And it's complete bullshit that he's gone.
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Guys help I’ve searched everywhere- y’all know that one webtoon, School Bus Graveyard? They did a little promo, and I can’t find the song that was in it. The song scratched an autistic little part of my brain, I tried googling it, but with no luck. 😭😔🫡
The lyrics are:
Darkness all around,
shadows creep and crawl,
silent screams they sound,
whispers down the hall,
creaking door ajar,
footsteps in the night,
drowning in the dark,
something something,
fear with every breath,
terror in the air,
face to face with death- but nothing's really there.
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do you ever think about how all you used to draw when you were 10 was ponies and that you should still know how to do that, then get an idea and proceed to draw something like these in nearly one sitting and it turns out better than any drawing you've done in the entire past month
sooo anyway does anyone have cutie mark or pony name ideas for them?? lol
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