#my mom is. so fucking white

[thepinkseashell]

-_-

[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.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.

[mcnuggetclub]

i need him in a way that's concerning to feminism

[golyadkin]

Finished reading A Certain Song at the Edge of the Universe by @television-for-dinner and pretty much immediately started rereading it and i can't stop thinking of the chaos that is 3 Pete Whites in a room together

[submissivekillers]

Hi, I'm Barbie!

[grinchwrapsupreme]

i think i need to go outside more because this is actually getting to me

[cryminiz]

hot take or w/e: 99% of the main events of apology tour, tbh, would be better if the positions were switched.

because when you say "stoliz breakup arc where person A calls the other out for always making the relationship about sex and has an entire breakdown about how they feel the other person has never fully appreciated them in the relationship and never felt respected while the other person gets a reality check over their actions and has to realize how badly theyve been treating them" then its blitz on stage and stolas in the crowd. its the only way the plot makes sense

regardless of the whole "guys they were secretly childhood friends and um blitz was the one who actually made the first move to sex even if stolas literally leads with 'so you wanna fuck me????' so its all blitz's fault their relationship is just sex" Thing in s2 ep1.... it was stolas' idea to make their transaction of the book sexual.

he was literally the one going "hey btw i need my book back but you can keep borrowing it...... IF you fuck me into the bed until i cant see straight you sexy little fucking imp" so atp whoever first started the sexual aspect of their relationship is moot. stolas is the one who escalated it into a toxic benefits deal.

stolas is the one who consistently goes "my widdle sexy imp" and "blitzy witzy come fucky wucky with me" to ""playfully"" demean blitz without realizing how the imp doesnt actually like it. he has the power in the situation who just assumes blitz is cool with their relationship and the way he treats him.

stolas is the one who doesnt think about the societal implications of their relationship, because he puts himself in romantic daydreams and uses blitz as a coping mechanism to distract himself from how much he hates his life. he wont even consider blitz's complicated feelings on their dynamics from his perspective as an imp without stolas shutting it down like "hm, you sound TOO much like striker, so byeeee!" hes the one who needs a wake up call!

and while blitz is obviously not innocent in this relationship (avoiding intimacy, taking any chance he can get to escape dealing with his problems, blowing up and projecting his insecurity onto others instead of discussing his problems, keeping secrets, twisting it where it hurts to 'gain' one in an argument even if he doesnt mean it, etc)....

hes SOOOOO getting fucked over in this relationship. and currently, being in such a sex centered relationship with a power imbalance only serves to justify his own self-mantra that he has to be useful in order to be loved! he deserves to have a moment where he actually shakes off all of his insecurities and screams out I DESERVE BETTER! for once in his life. and not just turning to drinking or drugs or sex or living vicariously through millie and moxxie; really just screaming in front of a whole crowd like FUCK YOU FOR MAKING ME FEEL SO SHITTY!!! FUCK YOUUUUU

tldr; tops deserve rights actually and sometimes you gotta put a bottom in their place

[outtox1cated]

i should be working on those 10 unfinished drawings but i decided to draw this instead because i felt like it. for reasons

[e-farmer]

While i was bored, i doodled a lil baby version of the bugified Gammoth design I'm reworking a bit, so here, have a big baby bug.

As you could probably tell, the design is going to that alot of influence from mothra larvae. Also, i would've drawn some fur and stuff on the big baby, but uhh... I don't really know how to do that honestly, still an amateur imo. 😅

[solar-halos]

okay fuck it. mutuals are you white*

*clarification: do you have two white parents? this is not me asking if youre white passing. this is not me asking what box you check off when you have to fill something out. this is straight up just me asking if both your parents are white. clarification over

[todayisafridaynight]

sometimes i get nishiki i really do

[lanabenikosdoormat]

back at the gym

[totopopopo]

so i’m getting top surgery some time between the months of february and august of this year (would rather february obv but seems like summer might make more sense logistically). the thing is my extended family does not necessarily know that i have any kind of gender thing going on, not because they don’t have access to this information, but simply bc they don’t care enough about me to think about any aspect of my identity (because the world revolves around my cousin and i have always been peripheral). which means there is a very real possible future this year when i roll up to a week long extended family beach vacation like….. sans tits and with two new massive scars……… i don’t plan on explaining anything in advance bc i’m sure my cousin will be emailing everyone her own personal accommodations beforehand and i wouldn’t want to get in the way, but like…. surely at least one of them will notice? even if i don’t go shirtless and i wear a bikini despite not needing one, they will notice, surely? and from there, what happens? it’s a mystery, but also has the potential to be very fucking funny in my opinion

[drowning-in-deadlines]

Haven't been following the James Somerton drama closely but it's become so ridiculous that it's funny

Is no one going to talk about the fact that he said that he thought it was okay for him to mention Vito Russo in the opening credits and then never mention him again because his book was out of print and Russo was dead....

And then in the same breath say that he was 'extending Russo's legacy' like my brother in Christ do you even hear yourself-

[agirlinthegalaxy]

It's been rolling around in my brain the last few days for some reason, but I still hate the family backstory reveals for Sophie and Eliot. I've seen some of the meta for it, but quite frankly, it still makes no sense. If it had been something actually thought of and intentional in the original, I think it could have been so fascinating. I mean, Sophie's willing abandonment of Astrid to contrast with Nate's loss of Sam or Eliot's adoption in contrast with Hardison's and Parker's? Could have been excellent! But they came out of nowhere in Redemption and don't work with these characters.

Sophie was still actively using the fucking alias that she met Astrid under! She met with someone from her past on the show! Like. Quite frankly, that one is unequivocally bullshit that they made up and threw in and pretended could fit with the established canon. (And I'm sorry, but the idea of Sophie abandoning Astrid and never telling Nate about her just... So much of Nate's trauma was rooted in the loss of Sam, and I think that introducing this element after he's gone and unable to respond to it taints Sophie and Nate's relationship in a way bc I'm not exactly sure how Nate would've responded to learning about this but I think that it's something he'd have needed to know. I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on that but yeah.)

As for Eliot, I don't like the adoption aspect literally at all. The way that he would interact with his family and the memory of his family would be different, and I think that it's flat out ridiculous to think that he'd have never mentioned it to the team in the original show, especially when dealing with the kid cases. (I also dislike the biracial adoption as its own element because if Eliot was actually raised by Black parents in the... idk what 80s/90s? That just. doesn't feel congruent with how they write Eliot interacting with PoC, not necessarily in a bad way, but babe, he's written like a white southern man raised in a specific kind of culture that does not jell with that. It also makes Eliot look... really bad that he was apparently raised with the knowledge of how fucked up the military was and his parents' history and made the choices that he did.) Like the show may not have explicitly stated it but the implication of that relationship was vastly fucking different throughout the original show.

Just. These were not backstories that were congruent with their depiction and characters in the original show, and they're also just moves that I don't particularly like or find interesting directions for those characters. There's also something to be said about how it was apparently unacceptable for a woman to not have kids or someone not reconciling with their biological family when that was something that the original show handled a lot better. Out of all the directions to take Sophie and Eliot's stories, that's just not really one that I think was a good idea.