#but most there’s nothing I can do

[durn3h]

I fucking hate hoist gym equipment so much. It’s only slightly better than not going to the gym at all

[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.

[starry-bi-sky]

danyal al ghul memes because i don't think i've done those yet for this au.

(the jason one is in reference to the fanon headcanon/au that Jason and Damian potentially knew each other and interacted while jason was in the league. I've thought about it before in context of this au, but haven't thought about it enough to feel inspired or motivated to make a post exploring the idea)

(diablito means, as you can guess, 'little devil'. while i'm neutral to latino jason, i think the nickname is cute as fuck and was danny's main nickname from Jason. i don't wanna touch that timeline so im not gonna decide how old they were when Jason was there.)

Skulker: i am the ghost zone's greatest hunter! i capture and hunt creatures both rare and dangerous. Danyal: a poacher?? you're a poacher?? you poach animals??Skulker:...i sense i've made a mistake of some kind.

anyways that was the day that Skulker cemented himself as Danny's no.1 opp, and still remains there to this day even if he and Vlad are both viciously fighting for second. Out of everyone in the the AP rogues gallery, Skulker will be the first to be thrown under the bus in terms of 'o shit here comes phantom fucking RUN'.

[sacchiri]

volume 1 sketches part 2

[jazforthesoul]

every time someone reduces CAPTAIN !!! elizabeth "lizzie" lafayette down to "a sad lesbian" a fairy dies bc i shoot it with my gun. like you're telling me you were spoon-fed a character that has one of the most realistic and RAW representations of grief and perseverance in the series and all you got from that was "she's sad" ????

is she a constantly happy character? Fuck no! that's acknowledged!! but to take EVERYTHING that she is, which has positive and negative aspects THAT ARE BOTH SHOWN, to take the fact that she is THE DRIVING FORCE OF THE MAIN BACKGROUND PLOT, and reduce her down to NOTHING but her relationships?? ?what the hell!!!

[hezekiahwakely]

Truly one of those most heinous phenomena that fatphobia has wreaked upon the world is making kids believe at a very young age that smiling makes their faces look fatter (and therefore uglier). Can you imagine anything more existentially soul-sucking than the act of discouraging a child from fucking smiling.

[lazycranberrydoodles]

i think the barbie movie would have a profound psychological impact on hua cheng

prev comic / next comic / follow for still more hualian barbie movie content because i am not done

bonus angsty version 🎉 i hate love expressions just a couple tiny lines on the mouth and eyebrows and it goes from silly to sad

:(

[skittlesking]

Have Cross in a dress because I can-

[corsairspade]

every time i interact with the silmarillion i get weirdly excited about the fact that the authorial intent is that it's a translation of historical accounts. it's a tertiary source! none of it is first hand. it makes it so much more interesting. was the legendarium a mannish tradition? what parts of these were written by pengolodh? by rumil? what loremaster has recorded this? would there be bias in the accounting? can i trust what i'm reading, from this viewpoint, this many years after it would have been written?

what has been mythologised, what has been sanitised, what is third-hand written on rumour? it's such an interesting thing to consider.

[thefatfemme]

Shout out to fat people with chronic pain. Use that mobility aid, get yourself a tasty treat, and don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Your body deserves love and care no matter what!

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[ivibells]

maybe i'm swinging a bat at a hornet's nest here but as an aroace person, i think it's kind of messed up to say that levi is canonically aroace now

yes, he said that he doesn't care about people and that concepts like empathy, compassion, and love are unfamiliar to him. but attraction is not the same as any of those words. i get that people may want to headcanon him as aroace (especially since we don't get a whole lot of representation in the first place), but to insist that it's canon feeds into stereotypes about people with low empathy and aroace people alike

[bruciemilf]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the justice league being labelled as " The Avengers of DC" and its like. No? The avengers are law enforcement. The Justice League are volunteers

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[saturnniidae]

I think Astrid Hofferson has a bad case of the 'my childhood was wasted, I grew up too fast for something ultimately proven pointless.' Syndrome and that she deserves to get to do silly things she missed out on and take up new hobbies, even if she's not particularly good at them–it's purely for the experience yknow, and learn to finally breathe no longer needing to be on constant high alert and get to be truly happy

[hysteriafossil]

guess who finished tlok tonight and immediately had this come to him in a vision!!!!