#do u WANT ppl to get hurt

[isthistheendforus]

i’m gonna be so fr every reason that the haters have to hate on taylor is so easily debunked they literally have nothing

[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.

[scarlet-herring]

as someone who’s never liked timsteph i find it so funny that i just accidentally talked myself into a revrob au of them. revrob au where war games happens, steph (~15) gets captured & tortured, except this time tim (~16) comes in to try & help but due to [unforeseen circumstances] no one comes as backup, and they’re both tortured, leading to steph’s red hood era via being resurrected somehow by arthur brown and tim’s oracle era brought on via complications due to torture.

tim’s the one person steph won’t target, and steph’s the one person tim can’t really get angry with about killing, because they get it.

[irrealisms]

having disabilities that are very sharply stress-triggered is....weird. i am hella privileged and so i can live my life basically entirely supported by others (cf #housecat arc) and when im doing this i can basically pass as normal and not have any serious mental breakdowns* . i hang out with friends and i watch videos and i read books both fiction and nonfiction and i play minecraft and i write stories and i go to church on sundays and it's a boring life and i don't always feel like i'm living it very much but i'm not really in crisis. i feel like, basically normal. like i am basically a regular person. i am no longer freaking out about being watched by a mysterious Them who are tormenting me; i can basically live my life as though it is real; my hallucinations are uncommon and not particularly distressing when they happen; i am not suicidal; outside of occasional episodes of speech loss, i am coherent--articulate, even!--in my speech and writing; it's been many years since my last violent meltdown; i eat three meals a day; i am able to get out of bed every day. and then i try to do productive things for like 3 hours and i start banging my head against the wall and crying because i Can't i just Can't. it's incredibly stark. it's a pretty good justification for being a housecat honestly because if i weren't then i would not only be "losing money to groceries rent etc" i would also be "losing money much more quickly to intensive treatments and/or bad decisions" and i think "losing money more quickly" is the opposite of the goal of "trying to have a job" but definitely uh if i were less privileged wrt Ability to housecat indefinitely i would be Fucked. i deteriorate Terrifyingly Fast under Literally Any Stress.

this isn't a new observation or anything--chat message from august of last year--

It’s kind of eternally astounding to me how much my issues are ~stress-mediated? I can basically be fine and normal-passing if I’m not expected to do anything ever; the amount of breakdown i have correlates pretty directly w how much is expected of me. This feels incredibly fake when I’ve been doing nothing for long enough and think i have gotten better but then i am expected to have pretty basic conversations with people irl for like two weekends in a row and i spend 20 minutes pacing my room and hyperventilating and self harming and i would not be surprised if i end up having a [I stop moving] episode before the weekend is up. and this is not very bad or anything on the scale of things but notably also i am not being expected to do very much!!! Idk it’s weird how like. When I am being a house cat I can be�� not maximally fulfilled or anything but basically okay and normal. And then I do things for more than one day and it’s like Oh this is why I housecat. not even in a bad way fully just. huh yeah

and it doesn't even surprise me or feel fake to me at this point but it's weird and i don't like it. i don't like how fast i can go from "i am basically doing fine" to near-crisis when i am expected to do very basic everyday life things. it scares me. i'm getting better but it's hard to tell how much of that is just....redefining my goals and expectations, rather than actually having more abilities. even writing my "i'm basically a normal person when not expected to do things" i kept running up against. like. oh yeah. i don't actually shower/clean myself with any sort of regularly. i don't cook for myself. i spend long stretches of time only changing clothes or leaving the house for church on sundays. i could probably make life changes to do better at some of these things but it's all tradeoffs and idk if it'd be. worth it. i keep coming back to this post bc it really is how i feel. i run into my limits drastically less often than i used to and i am doing much much better. this is mostly because i am living my life so very very carefully within those limits. i am like a delicate orchid who does okay in Ideal Conditions but threatens to die at the slightest hint of overwatering. and i am very lucky to be carefully managed by people who love me immensely and have a lot of resources and many people do not have this and i really do not want to understate this!!! but being a very lucky orchid is still ... very different than being a mint plant

*ok in 2024 i did have a few months where i was actively suicidal and regularly self-harming and not really eating much and having nightmares all the time. um. i don't have a defense here that isn't "you should've seen me before i dropped out" or maybe "okay but it wasn't that long". i didn't have to go to IOP and....i would say "i didn't drop out/get fired from anything major" but that's because i already didn't have any responsibilities cf the rest of the post........ummmmmmmmmmmmmm anyway. i didn't do anything drastic (not exclusively a suicide euphemism) despite considering it. does that count for anything

[night-triumphantt]

Someday I’ll stop reblogging arcane critical posts I’m sure but fjskdjsksjs my cousin finally finished and I was sent back into the hole that is ‘wtf was that I am actually so thoroughly dissatisfied with nearly every narrative choice they made now that I’m not being blinded by emotions’ and i fear I’m no fun to talk to ab it for her 😂

The tags for this got Crazy but I stand by them 😂 (tho none of it is polished so, yk, don’t come at me if some stuff is a lil underbaked ok, I only got 30 sentences)

[angy-grrr]

I try to not be hater, but then I see the stupid takes and get madddddd

This is just what I feel every single time I see those shitty opinions

[tianshiisdead]

im happy my post is garnering discussion but honestly i wasnt around for 2018-2021 fandom on tumblr and i was mainly talking about how its kind of silly to get mad at people for portraying colonizer countries as mean, or calling it demonization and stuff. like its okay not to like personally portraying ur fav characters as mean or part of the state, but getting irritated at the fact that it exists or is popular imo kind of misses the fact that this… is the state and nation personification fandom. and its hard to say its not canon when canon did once portray the characters in uniform and at times involved in their state activities… like the early strips discussing western imperialism in china is literally ‘china being bullied by the allies’ ‘france wanting to grope china’ ‘china being treated like a maid’ etc etc like they were very much. the state LOL also china and japan’s canon relationship, as much as I have my issues with it, has an entire thing about china being stabbed by japan… i do feel like hetalia started out as a history nerd’s history exploration that blended humour with ‘what i find cute’ with satire etc etc, which inevitably involves illustrating the personifications as vessels of state and culture, and although the modern strips have deviated quite a bit… well, different people will approach this series for different reasons, right? Whether its serious or comedic content showing the characters as mean or imperialist or unpleasant, it’s not something that deviates too far from canon (if we take all canon eras into consideration) nor is it surprising given how history laden the topic is.

[melancholyfleurs]

hey cuties in my phone. i just want you to know i love you very much and life is so fucking hard but so worth living and if it’s dark for you rn just know i am rooting for you and i hope things get easier <3.

[stinkrascal]

i hate everyone in the world for making me think that im gonna be an old hag by the age of 30 bc im turning 25 this yr only 5 yrs away and i look exactly the same as i did when i was 16 and im still into cringe anime and fandom chicanery etc like basically nothing changed so why does everyone act like you gotta get a walking cane and invest all ur time into knitting the moment you hit the big 30

[yanankim]

idk if this makes sense but i really wish ppl would stop bring up yuyan when the rest of ptg do anything. like yeah I miss them too and I wish we had straight answers about everything, but the rest of the group are still here and are still reassuring us that they will continue. regardless of what yuyan are doing or what they do in the future, unis have to stop pressuring everyone else to make a statement. I know we're worried and curious and just want to see them happy, but causing undue stress isn't going to accomplish anything. you can still wish yuyan happy anniversary and include them in posts, but stop trying to pry information out of the others. also, we have no clue what's happening behind closed doors. they could be fighting, they could be talking every single day-- we don't know. they'll tell us when they're ready and if that never happens, so be it

[mars-ipan]

experiencing any level of joint pain for longer than a day or two has only reinforced my belief that ppl with chronic pain are actually the strongest motherfuckers on the goddamn planet

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

i need to think abt light yagami being tortured about this

[cryolyst]

~

[thornsent]

putting off watching wicked even tho I reaaaaally want to because I know I will ugly cry and my entire personality will shift out of sheer love for and vibing with elphie 3:

[super-done-dead]

so much

[pup-pee]

my father telling me how scared he was when i ran away from the house but i cant express how scared i was 2 b in the house

hey, whats up w/that?