#well then whats even the point.

[sadagios]

double victory, was it? (it doesn't feel like one)

i saw a post about 3L!Grian meeting SL!Scar, but since SL!scar never died i figured he can't see any of the winners nor join them before the next session, and they appear before him as shadows. also, i thought 3L!Grian would be really happy to see a scenario where scar didnt die by his hand and actually won.

❀ bonus sketch ☘

[catmask]

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

[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.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[tagerrkix]

rage.

[vaguely-concerned]

So much of Garak as a person starts to make sense once you know his childhood was a fucking gothic novel. His main playground was a graveyard and he'd play pretend by perfoming improv eulogies to an imagined audience. For a long time his main touchstone for most important figures from recent history is 'oh yeah I know about that guy my dad buried him. great flower arrangements for that one'. He finds out later his 'parents' are actually a brother and sister who had to get married to avoid the utter shame and social devastation of having a child born out of wedlock, and they live in the basement of his biological father's house. (the madwoman in the attic vs. the tiny elim in the basement.) His biological father calls himself his uncle and locks him in a closet whenever he fails to live up to his insane and unpredictable expectations and everyone just has to act like that's normal and expected, and his will hangs over everything at all times, unseen but always felt keener than anything else. The father who actually raised him grows the world's most beautiful (and as it turns out, most poisonous) orchids and keeps the mask of a god hidden in a box in his work shed. Everyone in the house is choking down secrets like it's the only air they know how to breathe anymore.

What I'm saying is that right from the get-go this guy never had the faintest shot at turning out normal, so I'm glad that by middle age he's found a way to get a bit silly with it as he continues to be deeply deeply not normal about anything ever <3

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

When in doubt, Soup it out.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[slfcare]

the most difficult thing about growing as a person socially, as in getting out of your shell and noticing that you are, is that there will still be times when it doesn’t feel like you’ve grown at all! times when you can’t really connect with anyone around you, times when you fail to enter into an existing conversation, times when you say the wrong thing (or nothing at all when in hindsight you probably should’ve). but that’s also kind of the best thing, because that’s the thing that helps you realize that sometimes, it’s not you or your lack of skills or any shortcoming. sometimes certain environments just aren’t for you and certain people aren’t your people, and that’s okay. that’s human. it’s okay to not feel the progress you have made all the time.

[edwinisms]

george rexstrew deserves awards for many things but i have to say. edwin’s bloodcurdling scream as niko gets killed deserves a whole award unto itself. like. that scream did not feel at all like a tv show scream. to a somewhat jarring degree. and i can’t express how much I respect that

[almondpiglet]

needed to draw something this year for tomes bday...really wanted to draw her highschool friends

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

i've discovered a quite large category of people who never got into The Good Place and the only way they could articulate their disinterest was, "there's no stakes cause they're already dead." i'm obsessed with the idea the only reason they could enjoy seinfeld is they imagined kramer could beef it any fucking second

[fascinationstreetmp3]

I have what you're looking for. High quality. Befitting a man of my tastes. I have a room over on Divisadero, not too far a walk.

[snowyfrostshadows]

So.

We went from this for Starclan Cats:

To.

This:

Biggest downgrade of my life.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

IIIIII LOVE THEM I CARW ABOUT THEM SO INSANELY MUCH WHAT THE FUUUUUCK. YEAH.BYEAH. YEAH. YEAH. THEYRE SO EVERYTHING TO ME. literally everything ur saying here. you understand. you UNDERSTAND. wibby loving dakota and virion with his whole heart and mind and body and soul but also vaguely feeling isolated even from them because they don't understand! they don't understand. they cant! and that's not their fault but that doesn't make it any easier on his mind. and then he meets ashe who has his dad and suddenly someone else GETS IT. someone else understands the isolation and the loneliness and suddenly the world doesn't feel so big and scary anymore. I mean it's still big and scary and they're probably gonna die young but at least they know theyre not gonna do it alone. just. thinkin abt them sitting on the roof at like 3am drunk (bc theyre like 18 and lightweights) just. ranting about shit like "yknow what, yeah, FUCK your dad. he SUCKS. he's TERRIBLE." "and fuck your brother too!!! eat shit and die!!" just like. fully enabling each other and screaming at the sky and it's just the exact kind of catharsis they both desperately need.

ALSO I DIDNT EVEN THINK ABT THEM BOTH BEING BREAKER/SHAKER THATS RLLY GOOD. SAME TRAUMA SOLIDARITY. ashe winters is the first person to get william "chronically avoidant of all of his issues" wisp to like. fully sit down and talk about his trigger event. dakota and virion know what happened but I think it just hits a little bit different when someone's got the same kinda. powers as you. they have the one night that's just the total emo kid fantasy of "telling someone literally everything that happened to you in detail and instead of having them run away or look at you with pity they just nod and go 'you wanna hear about the time i fell off a cliff and laid there at the bottom for hours until someone found me' 'yeah, you wanna hear about how I killed my mom'" like they're so so so so so incredibly fucked up but in a similar enough way that they don't scare each other with it. every time i think abt them interacting it always comes back to william and ashe being weird about death in unique and terrible ways !!!!!!!!!!

i lied actually that krouse/luke interaction i posted earlier isn't wibby and virion it's actually wibby and ashe <3 what is more important than two kids trauma bonding over feeling like freaks because of their powers!!!!!! Dakota has his martyr complex, virion has his identity issues, but when it comes down to it both of them see their powers as something good, something that can be used like a tool, etc. they don't get it. ashe, actively discouraged by his father to use any of his powers AT ALL, literally locked in his house while his dad (hypocritical piece of shit) goes out and. uses powers. william, who got his powers from feeling like a freak and continued to feel like EVEN MORE of a freak after he got his powers. well. I think they just understand each other on such a core base level. emo kids unionizing you are so important to me. I think they like to sit on the roof at night and just talk about shit and look at the sky. william smokes and ashe doesn't give him shit for it even lightheartedly like virion or dakota would.

also not exactly related but also kind of related. very important to me that early on in their friendship ashe sneaks out of his house when mark isn't there. teenage rebellion is the catalyst for everything (also the irony of mark doing everything in his power and more to stop things from happening to ashe only for it to turn out that his actions are what directly led to ashe rebelling and meeting the wards and joining them and everything that comes after) . he finds out when ashe sneaks back into his room one night not realizing mark was home and his clothes smell like smoke . cue the "where the FUCK were you, what the FUCK were you doing" argument.

ohhhhh emo kids union....... emo kids union u are everything to me!!!!!!!!!!! god!!!!!! esp. in this context.... u are so right. they understand each other on a core level...... the loneliness the alienation the shared experiences. william loves dakota & virion so much & they love him & they'll always b trying 2 be their for each other in their own fucked up ways but like-- they'll never understand william thinking "i wish i could call my parents and cry and tell them everything but i could never do that." or "yeah i hate my brother and he scares me sometimes and i wish i didn't want to trust him like i do"!! what does that mean to the orphan n the guy who grew up with loving (dead) parents? ashe gets it though! he knows what it's like to be so angry and frustrated and lonely.... they click so immediately. ashe goes yeah i'm fucking terrified that one day i'll lose control and hurt everyone around me. i mean, i wish i was like Good, hahaha, but that's just not for me so i'm just trying make as much good as i can come out of something that straight up sucks, right? & wibby goes ohh. Ohhhhh. shit. like. it's exactly what ur saying man. locking eyes awkward cautious smile with the one other kid wearing a black tshirt n skinny jeans at camp & just Knowing Exactly who you're gonna be friends with. the relief of it.!!!!!

side note 2 me they r both breaker/shakers hehehe (wibby's ghost shaping kiiind of blurs the line? & after his second trigger when he gets Way better at mimicking humans & shit he's frequently miscategorized as a master. he kind of is? well. you know. blurred lines. but i don't think he's working with anything Living.) which i like a lot. same trauma solidarity!! you KNOW they r sitting on that roof w smokes & booze (neither of them even like the booze but it's part of The Thing) (dakota substance abuse baggage virion would rather die than be in an altered or unfiltered state in front of people) feeling kind of scared and gleeful that they actually get to have this Cool Person experience they always figured they'd miss out on forever... u know they're talkin bout all the normal shit they Did always want to do and did miss out on. actually yeah now that i'm thinking about it them genuinely barely even filtered through levels of irony larping all the shit they missed out on due to being Fucked Up is so important 2 me.... i need them to light fireworks in the street and accidentally stay too close & run away from them giggling & go to the grocery store at 2am & go to concerts... they get to be kids for a bit in a way that only the two of them understand. yk?

FUCKING ILL OVER THAT. BTW. YEAH. god if i think abt ashe & mark too long i'll die but that's so good... yeah.... perfect... i bet ashe kind of likes that his clothes smell like smoke btw. like real proof he Does have friends that he hangs out with now. god i bet they give each other shitty stick n pokes and are really normal about it.

[homefryboy]

if u didn’t read this in jlongbone’s voice, u did it wrong