#like they will be acting fairly canon-adjacent and then they start making out and its like uhhhhhh what. who is this

[confessionseddie]

i find it so interesting how sometimes fic characterizations really work for me literally right up until the point where they have sex. is that a me problem or what. does anyone else experience this frequently

[oddp1ant]

A handful of loose reflections I wanna put down before time moves on, things change etc

One, Viktor. The biggest thing I'm feeling right now is grief. We knew he was doomed from the start, to lose parts or all of himself, but seeing it happen still hurts. I was unsettled during act 1, feeling so much of him was already lost with little fanfare - would the narrative just move on? I'm actually mollified by this second death, seeing it delivered with narrative and emotional weight, even if we haven't gotten the (Jayce's) reasoning for it yet. Plus, I'm fairly confident we've yet to see his final evolution. So again, he was already (mostly) gone, but now it's like the narrative has acknowledged it, too. Even less will be left off him in his final form, but by god, I hope it's his wrath. If he's truly left an empty shell for the arcane I think I'll cry.

Second, Jayce. What the hell man. Explain yourself. Ngl I love him so much, seeing him get cut up with a chainsaw and apparently run through the arcane autoclave was oddly satisfying. Both him and Mel felt a bit, idk, like they'd gotten a PR treatment in arc 1? Like I love the "my place is here in the lab with you" and "Viktor will return to us" as much as the next guy but both of these characters have been very shitty to Viktor very recently and erasing that feels too cheap. I'm glad to see Jayce return to making Big Swings in the worst possible direction. I only wish he'd said something to Viktor before. Well. Y'know.

Speaking of Mel, I absolutely love the arc she's getting. Even just the fact that she's getting an independent arc, tbh. Most beautiful woman in the world is also magic? Gays stay winning.

And it feels almost redundant to mention but. The sister arc. Suffice to say I'm chewing drywall. The scene in the glow mushroom tunnel. Vander. Possible Vi Jinx Cait teamup in act 3. Love me some natural character/relationship development!!!!!!

Side note: love the ambiguity whether Vander is actually at least Vi's bio dad. Get it, you dog.

I'm not ready to talk about Isha.

Finally, I'm feeling a peculiar kind of melancholy for the diverse but largely congruent Divorce Era fanon that sprung up in between seasons - the visions of Machine Herald and Defender of Tomorrow built from an amalgamation of League and Arcane, making a shared space for creators to play in that has birthed some of my very favorite stories. It's been so, so much fun and I'm floored by how much of it was really founded in shared fandom interpretation and imagination. Now that Arcane canon has set out its own, unique direction, I wonder if this nebulous genre and its characters - a Machine Herald that is neither of League nor Arcane but all our own, the meeting and friction points between Jayces Giopara and Talis - will fade into the past, a weird limbo between the solid pillars of canon, or if its grounding in league lore will keep it alive.

- Honorable mention to the fics where arcane-adjacent and league-ish versions of jayvik meet and fuck absolutely nasty about it. You're the real ones. I could (and have, thank you to my very patient, non-fic reading friend) talk for hours about the complexity and depth of character explored in robotfucking timetravel porn. And none of it, not just the stories but the shared framework and subtext they're based upon, would exist without the beautiful minds of fans! Thank you ily.

[oceanselevenism]

I've seen that most of the stories on ao3 about them are mostly canon-compliant (and I don't have anything against that tbh) but I was wondering if you have any aus that you think could fit them or that you'd like to see?

omg i have SO MANY aus!! (it got Very Long so its under a cut)

- college au! danny gets kicked out (hes on full scholarship and does Thiefly Things to cover his expenses so hes not endangered just fairly fucked up abt it) (does it count as kicked out if u only live w ur dad three months a year) in freshman year, he befriends rusty (1 year below him) in sophomore year, debbie also befriends rusty (she and danny dont talk much but shes 2 yrs below him at the same college), and when reuben comes calling for a job he thinks debbie has a boyfriend (thanks to debbie telling her dad that she does) so she fake dates rusty. who ends up joining the job. and danny is Very Jealous

- snl ripoff au! danny and rusty are the weekend-update-adjacent anchors and they get gay. i Would have this take place in la (reuben is taking A Risk producing a late night sketch comedy show on the west coast but the 11/12/however fuckin many are fantastic cast members so even though they lose revenue from the other timezones not watching as much as they watch snl or whatever, they still make BANK... but danny and rusty getting gay throws the equilibrium out of whack) BUT la sucks DICK so its happening in new york. also this way u get Ocean Sibling Banter (debbie and lou are the anchors for The Actual Weekend Update and when debbie/lou get together and also when danny/rusty get together there are so many ‘just switch out the blondes/brunettes nobody will be able to tell and we won’t have hr down our necks’ jokes)

- au where the caldwells, abt to go deep undercover on a Huge Fucking Case, have to give up custody of 6 year old linus to tess and danny. the case stretches on for twelve years and linus grows up w tess and danny (who get divorced like right after they adopt him bc tess finds out abt dannys Thiefly Activities-- he confesses to her bc he doesnt rly want to predispose the kid to said thiefly activities) and also isabel (she and rusty break up like Right Before tess and dannys wedding and its very funny; she then goes on to marry tess) parenting him (rusty isnt as much in the picture bc he doesnt feel bad at all abt stealing and tess doesnt want linus to pick up that mentality also rusty Feels Things abt danny)! then when linus is like 18 or 19 danny disappears (tess and isabel think its Thiefly Activities again and arent concerned, just disappointed, but linus is very concerned for his dad-slash-stepdad-slash-sort-of-uncle) and he tracks down rusty so they can find danny. they roadtrip across america and eventually catch up to danny, who is helping the caldwells, and the five of them take down whatever gang the caldwells were chasing. linus now has 6 parents

- au based on this post where some archaeologist finds a bunch of dannys [french person voice] Love Lettairs 2 rusty and so obviously the logical course of action is to rob the museum (which happens to be the museum that tess is curating. funny how things work out) without telling his team What Theyre Stealing. they successfully pull off the heist but turns out the letters were not among the items they stole!! danny is getting desperate. as a last-ditch attempt he calls tess and asks her to let them rob the museum. shes like Why The Fuck Would I Do That. he explains and she begrudgingly agrees. danny and livingston go break into the museum Again but rusty tails them bc dannys been acting Weird and he finds out abt the letters bc livingston sweats more whenever he tells a lie. they live happily ever after (literally, theyre immortal) the end. also even though dannys a werewolf the 11 all call him the new jersey devil (its not his fault that legend came to be ok!! he was very drunk!!)

- childhood friends au!! danny and rusty were best buds as very young kids and then the oceans had to move. flash forward 2 present day where danny and debbie r robbing a museum (theyre building a flower shop over the vault and tunneling in, the dudes in brazil who came up w it are very very clever) and guess which two people are the assistant curators (is that even a title?). guess. ill tell u its tess and rusty! danny recognizes rusty, rusty ‘does not recognize’ danny (which is valid. look at photos of child george clooney and tell me you would recognize him). the 11 demand that they use this to their advantage and so danny and rusty Sort Of Date while the rest set up for the robbery, and danny feels really bad abt it so on the day of (after everyone has gotten away, ofc, he might be a lovesick bitch but hes not a snitch) he confesses and rustys like lmao i was onto u from the start. what kind of a name is [insert alias here] anyway. then they go live a life of crime and its great

- @sanduschism came up w a fantastic au where danny pickpockets rusty and feels bad so he sends the wallet back and they strike up a Correspondence

- HOSPITAL AU!!! danny and rusty r er techs while theyre doing med school and nobody knows how they juggle their shifts w school but also rusty can do a tracheotomy in like 5 seconds and danny can tell when a person needs an mri before they even list their symptoms so nobody questions it and nobody splits them up Ever. when they eventually become surgeons, danny does cardio and rusty does neuro, and whenever they have to work together not only do they never have to say what theyre doing, they don't even have What Do U Want To Cook For Dinner convos fully out loud. tess is head nurse... she makes so many excel spreadsheets... they are ALL color coded. isabel is head er doc and nobody dares to halfass things on her watch. reuben is head hospital admin, saul is chief surgeon, basher is head of the burn unit, the malloys r the HUNKIEST nurses in town, frank does plastic surgery/ent (every patient loves him bc he is just So Calm), livingston is The IT Guy, yen does like orthopedics or physical therapy, and linus is their fav resident who they all lovingly tease 24/7. the ocean sibs r both Cardio Gods and each dominate their respective coasts. debbie is an nyc doctor and if she sees a mass gen doctor its on SIGHT. the few surgeries that she and danny collab on go so fast that the med students in the gallery Cannot tell whats happening. lou is also a plastic surgeon and she and frank r best buds. linus requests time off like 6 months in advance Every Time and everyone hates it bc then They have to be on call but he doesnt realize his Extreme Overachieverness is causing so much strife. whenever tess and danny get in an argument she colorcodes his rounds spreadsheet to be the most neon shit youve ever seen. can you tell i never fully progressed past my greys anatomy phase this one is like 93489302 lines long

- superpower au where rusty has midas touch and danny has corrosive touch and when theyre too young to have control over their powers (abilities develop throughout adolescence and the user gains control at the end of adolescence) they accidentally brush hands and are terrified they just killed each other but turns out their powers like. cancel out. so until they reach like 21 or 22 and can touch things without fucking them UP they just. hold hands all the time. bc otherwise they have to wear gloves to prevent Accidents and both of them “hate gloves” (and also love holding hands. gayasses)

- uhhh hallmark au where danny is a crime fiction writer out on some beach north of ocean city nj and rusty is his fancy nyc editor. everyone else is a thief including debbie who is just Very weirded out that her brother, who robbed boston’s institute of contemporary art at age 22 and got away with it, has decided to spend the rest of his life churning out books. he is very critically acclaimed and about half of the 11 are buds with him and use his published books as heist inspo. the other ~half of the 11 are buds with rusty, and they tell him if danny’s heists are feasible or not (they always are. scarily so.) anyway rusty and isabel break up 12 days before xmas and danny and tess break up 8 days before hanukkah so dannys heading to debbie’s place in upstate new york to mope for the holidays when A BLIZZARD HITS and he gets stranded in midtown. and he and rusty are buds but like. Email Buds. they dont hang out irl and therefore they dont let their Totally Bud-Like Feelings mess up their professional relationship. but danny is stranded and its hanukkah and he ends up crashing at rustys place for the duration of the blizzard. and then rusty ends up coming to debbies place for the rest of the holidays. and then they kiss on new years eve and debbie kicks them out bc theyre being gross

- And More! thanks for the ask, anon! sorry it got so long lol i just have Many Thoughts

[samosoapsoup]

The Most Relevant Art Today Is Taking Place Outside the Art World

By Isaac Kaplan

Dec 20, 2015 

There’s a scene in The Simpsons where a middle-aged Abe Simpson—lecturing a teenage Homer about losing touch as one grows old—says, “I used to be with it. Then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.” Replace ‘it’ with ‘art’ and you have something fairly close to Michael J. Lewis’s essay on the the demise of art-as-culture, published this July in Commentary magazine (not something that’s usually on my digital bookshelf, but I digress).

Titled “How Art Became Irrelevant: A chronological survey of the demise of art,” the essay’s central claim is that “while the fine arts can survive a hostile or ignorant public, or even a fanatically prudish one, they cannot long survive an indifferent one. And that is the nature of the present Western response to art, visual and otherwise: indifference.” There are lots of flaws with this argument, as well as its supporting evidence. But besides greatly overstating art’s demise, the conclusion rests heavily on artists who are primarily white men. While Lewis does get some fair shots in about vapid works of spectacle, no matter how you feel about contemporary art, to call an entire swath of culture irrelevant based primarily on those who have been privileged enough to occupy galleries and other institutions (and thus the canon of art history) ignores both the artists who have been historically marginalized from such spaces and the artists who are taking their practices outside of them.

In September of 2014, artist and student Emma Sulkowicz began her senior thesis, Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014-15), a startling piece and ambitious work of endurance that famously involved Sulkowicz carrying a standard Columbia University mattress around campus with her at all times. The burden would quite literally be lifted only after one of two things happened: when the student who Sulkowicz (and subsequently others) accused of raping or sexually assaulting them left or was expelled from the school, or with her own graduation. And so it was that during Columbia University’s graduation ceremony in May, President Lee C. Bollinger turned away as Sulkowicz and four friends carried the mattress across the stage after more than eight long months.

The reaction to the work was far from indifferent. Most visibly, it was heralded by art critics and vitriolically maligned by self-described “men’s rights activists” (this is an actual thing, somehow). Yet one crucial aspect of the piece occurred quietly and without fanfare: the repeated instances when someone on the street grabbed hold of the 50-pound mattress and lent Emma a hand. Her endurance piece compelled many to act in a transformative way—one that spoke both to and beyond her specific case.

This participation, Sulkowicz reminded me in a recent conversation, was not explicitly invited by the artist or the work. “I never envisioned people helping me carry it,” she said. She certainly never envisioned that an entire group, “Carrying the Weight Together,” would be set up to coordinate support. In fact, one of the performance’s intrinsic rules—to accept but never ask for help—was partly born out of the expectation of some level of apathy and confusion from the public. “I really thought no one would care,” she said, adding, “but it turned out not to work that way. That rule turned into a call to action.”

Is a call to action displayed in a museum the same as one hauled through the streets? The ability of Carry That Weight to turn viewers into participants is the result of a raw act. The work, as Jerry Saltz put it, is “pure radical vulnerability,” one that would lose something if given the distance of museum’s explanatory wall text. Indeed, Sulkowicz’s work is relevant not only as a thoughtfully conceived piece of performance art, but also as a very public intervention against sexual assault. Though she shies away from being called an activist (“it depletes my agency”), affecting change is an integral part of her practice.

“Rape isn’t going to stop until rapists just stop raping. It’s about really changing the culture,” she told me. “I think that art changes culture. So, in some ways, I think the most direct way to fix the problem is to make art.” And if we ask art to engage the public, especially when it comes to an issue as prevalent as sexual assault, it’s crucial to think about art that’s accessible enough to reach not only those who would choose to walk into a gallery, but a broader public. Still, besides some angry and frankly misogynistic men’s rights activists, many consider Carry That Weight a work of art, albeit one that engaged with activism. It may well appear in a museum show one day.

There are, of course, other acts of creativity that do not meet traditional definitions of “fine art” but are no less valuable. If you walk east from Columbia’s Butler Library, down the rocky hills of Morningside Park, and cross a few avenues, you will find a relatively nondescript laundromat, one of some 3,000 in New York. It’s not a gallery, nor a pop-up space, nor the work of an artist who turned an abandoned building into a functioning laundromat. No, it’s a laundromat, but nonetheless one bursting with creativity.

To wit: During the summer months, it hosts workshops by The Laundromat Project, a nonprofit officially started in 2005 that seeks to “amplify the creativity that already exists within communities” through residencies, development programs, and a host of other events, as its executive director Kemi Ilesanmi explained to me. The benefit of hosting public events in laundromats is engaging a diverse group of people. In New York, at least, they are “multi-generational, multi-race, and multi-class spaces,” says Ilesanmi. The type of community engagement fostered by the project isn’t about painting a mural and walking away, but rather commissioning artists who think long and hard about how to engage the communities where the project operates: Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Hunts Point / Longwood, three neighborhoods primarily made up of people of color with modest incomes and rich histories. Elvira Clayton’s “Dioko,” a “sculptural oral history project,” for example, took place in the much-trafficked hub of African Square on 125th Street and explored Senegalese and African-American communities in West Harlem.

The Laundromat Project attracts people of all ages, many of whom haven’t produced art in years and who might not opt in for a museum experience. “One of the things that makes us stand out is that we meet people where they are,” said Ilesanmi. “It’s not that museums can’t or have never done that. But we actually do it all the time. It’s not a special project.” Ilesanmi notes that the rules governing museums, long conceptualized as something akin to temples, is an alienating experience for many people. “In our opinion everyone is creative, and we remind them of that even when they don’t think that about themselves,” said Ilesanmi, adding, “creative expression is just a part of being human beings.” As we spoke, she talked through the imagined voice of any given person: “I dance, I love music, I love fill in the blank, as a human being in the world. However, I don’t need that validated by, nor do I feel like I have to go into, a formal setting.” Likely because of this inclusive approach, the Laundromat Project has been met with success. The organization was featured at the Creative Time summit and successfully raised $35,000 in 10 days this year. It’s now thinking about how it will adapt and change its program in the future.

From that Harlem laundromat, if you head southwest about 20 blocks, you’ll arrive at the Frederick Douglass Houses, a 17-building complex home to over 4,500 people. In June of 2012, it was was there that the nonprofit Project EATS helped create a community garden and farm (one of many fostered by the group) out of an unused tennis court just adjacent to a high school, where one can still find it. Broadly, Project EATS works in “partnership with community residents, public schools, and service providers to develop neighborhood resources, skills, and capacity needed for people to have good health and achieve individual and collective goals.” One aspect of that is reclaiming vacant lots, then providing students with the skills necessary to maintain those gardens. As with The Laundromat Project, there’s an emphasis on listening and communicating.

But, Isaac, you may be thinking to yourself if you’ve read this far (thank you!), why are you talking about a sustainable food project? How is that art? Isn’t that social activism? Well: “I don’t distinguish between art and activism in the work I do,” says founder and artist Linda Goode Bryant. “In its essence, I believe art—for the maker and the observer/participant—helps humans grapple with the things we grapple with. Project EATS helps me grapple with creating forms of art that have the capacity to tangibly change the norms and conditions that exist where it occurs.”

This expansive understanding of art is one that is fundamentally situated within the structures and relationships of the world at large. Indeed, it’s both analytical (thinking about the socioeconomic conditions of how food is made and distributed) and experiential (engaging communities in the ecosystem and inviting them to alter the conditions of the world). So while there is conventional art in Project EATS, as Bryant explains, “each component—from each farm to the exchange and acquisition of food at farm markets, to a video installed within a squirrel hole in a tree growing out of concrete on a subway platform—are part of the overall work of Project EATS’ art.”

Bryant draws on her history as the founder of Just Above Manhattan (JAM), a space she created in 1974. One of the first galleries in the the prestigious East Side gallery district to exhibit black artists—David Hammons, Fred Wilson, and Maren Hassinger among them—JAM was partly an attempt to establish much-needed market parity with white artists. Yet like with Project EATS, Bryant considered the entire enterprise a work of art, not just what occupied the space. “JAM had multiple parts going on at the same time that addressed different aspects of how making and experiencing art is heavily mediated by standards and conventions in how it is presented, who presents it, how it is sold or otherwise acquired,” she wrote me, which in turn impact how “roles—as artists and witnesses—get defined and performed.”

This is a crucial insight: The structures by which art is typically presented are not a predetermined, natural way to look at art. They are constructs (gasp), carrying all the baggage of our society and benefiting those who are usually benefited. So while institutional spaces can be welcome sites for meditation and aren’t antithetical to broader social engagement (Bryant herself will participate in a forthcoming exhibition at Brooklyn Museum to coincide with the Sackler Center’s 10th anniversary), just think: the Guggenheim’s Carrie Mae Weems retrospective was its first dedicated to an African-American woman in its 76-year history—and it happened last year. (Let that sink in—then go read Ashton Cooper’s excellent piece in Hyperallergic about the flawed language we use around such shows when they do occur). When artists operate outside the gallery space, whether because their work functions best there, or because they are forced to, they are both creating valuable art and making the limitations of traditional art institutions visible—physically, historically, and conceptually. Perhaps such work can even change those institutions, those structures of looking. Perhaps it can change society at large. And that’s unceasingly relevant.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-most-relevant-art-today-is-taking-place-outside-the-art-world?utm_medium=email&utm_source=11386320-newsletter-editorial-daily-11-27-17&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-V