#which good that's the point

[crinkle-eyed-boo]

Thursday Snippet

I was last tagged by @disgruntledkittenface to share a snippet of my WIP. I’ve been meaning to post a snippet all week but then Louis wore shorts and tank tops and I lost my mind, and it’s now Thursday and I’m just getting around to sharing. 

ANYWAY. 

I FINALLY got Harry and Louis to FOR REAL kiss last weekend which feels like such a relief. I’m not gonna give away the farm and share the kiss but I WILL share some of the build-up to it. I hope you enjoy!!

“Thanks for tonight,” Harry says. “I haven’t had that much fun dancing since…I don’t know when.” 

“I’m glad,” Louis smiles over at him. “Dancing should always be fun. If it’s not fun, why are you doing it?” 

“Easy for you to say, superstar.” 

“What do you mean?” Louis asks, no heat or defensiveness in his voice, only curiosity. 

“Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be a drag or anything,” Harry explains, carding his fingers through his hair, trying to organize his thoughts. “I know how hard you work, Louis, no one does the kind of skills you do without hard work and lots of practice. I know that, believe me. And I know you’ve faced your own challenges. I can’t imagine what it was like for you being catapulted into the stratosphere basically right out of our apprentice year. But from my perspective you’ve always like…not that you’ve had it easy, but you made it look easy. You have this…sparkle when you dance that can’t be taught. So of course you would think dancing should always be fun. Because it’s never not been fun for you. And look, you know you’ve always been everyone’s favorite. Even when we were little kids all the teachers doted on you.” 

Louis doesn’t say anything, he just looks back at him, his brow slightly furrowed and a thoughtful expression on his handsome face. Harry can’t help but panic a little, not wanting to end the evening on a sour note.

“Or maybe the teachers doted on you because you were having fun and you were easy to love, not to mention ridiculously talented, so it was clear you were destined for greatness, even back then,” Harry babbles. “And maybe I’m full of shit and have always been jealous of the way people just gravitate to you like you’re the fucking sun or something and I wish I could be more like that, I don’t know. I just know that I don’t know the last time I thought dancing was fun and not work and I hate that because you’re right, it should be fun, it’s dancing, for fuck’s sake. Sorry, it’s late and I’m word vomiting and I’m not making any sense, am I?” 

Harry takes a deep breath to settle himself and then looks over at Louis, relieved to find no judgment on his face, just understanding and a soft smile. 

“It’s funny because I thought you were the teacher’s pet,” Louis says. “You’ve always had such perfect technique, Harry. You were the one teachers would call attention to in class, remember? ‘Look at Harry’s extension,’ or ‘Watch Harry’s arms.’ They would talk about your height and your long legs and how they made you an ideal dancer which made me nuts cause like, those were things about myself I could never change. The teachers may have doted on me, sure, but you had their respect. You always did. And look at you now. You have the whole company’s respect, you know that, right? How many principal dancers are there? Twenty? And who has the first position at the barre and sets the tone for company class every day?” 

“I do,” Harry says with pride, standing a little taller. 

“You do,” Louis affirms, nudging him gently. “You’re like the glue that keeps everyone together. No, you’re more than just glue. You’re the foundation. You’re the one that pushes us all to be better. Don’t underestimate how important that is. How important you are.” 

Warmth fills Harry’s chest as they turn on to Thompson Street. 

“Peter should have promoted you sooner,” Louis continues, kicking an empty beer can towards the curb. “He should have promoted you when I went to San Francisco. He always seemed to value flashiness over consistency which really sucks, especially for someone like you who is nothing but consistent. I’m sorry those years in the background somehow convinced you that you were just a workhorse and not an extraordinary dancer who deserves the spotlight. You’ve always sparkled, Harry, most of all to me.” 

Tagging @indiaalphawhiskey @myfineline @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @kingsofeverything @louandhazaf @absoloutenonsense @greenfeelings @nouies @allwaswell16 (even though I know you JUST posted a full fic) and @lululawrence to share anything they are working on, if they wish!

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[hinamie]

spiraling

[alex-just-vibing]

Are you a student who is unable to donate to Palestine, but still want ways to show your support?

Me too! Unfortunately, searching up ways for students who can't drive, spend money, or drop school for a week to show solidarity for Palestine just comes up with "centrist" (if not blatantly pro-israel) articles for teachers telling them how to stay neutral during discussions with students. So! Here are some ways that I've thought of to bring pro palestine sentiment into your school and community! You are more than encouraged to add on any ideas of your own!

Wear shirts, pins, or anything outwardly pro palestine. If you can't find something, make it.

Email your representatives. Email Congress. Email the White House, or whatever your country's equivalent would be. Let the people in charge know you want a ceasefire

Talk to your local library about holding an educational night about the genocide, and/or about Palestinian culture.

Talk to your peers. Find people who share your views. Create a fuss together.

Talk to your teachers about it. Having an authority figure on your side could make things so much easier for you.

Make stickers, posters, pamphlets, etc to put up around your school, town/city, anywhere you can.

Educate yourself on anti-palestine talking points and how to refute them in a calm and logical manner. (Palestinian Toolkit is a great website for that)

Speak up! It's fucking scary, but if you can, don't let people's bigotry go unchecked. (You can use knowledge from the last point to make it easier to talk)

But also, know when to give up. It sucks, but not everyone is worth wasting your time debating. Some people won't change their mind no matter what.

[bonetrousledbones]

fuck it since my birthday is in like one day i'm gonna use my birthday wish to tell y'all to look at the shit going on in southern Appalachia right now after Hurricane Helene. look at it and talk about it and spread resources about it like wildfire because nobody else fucking is and it feels like we're on our own out here.

there are people who are stranded in hazardous areas that are still safer than trying to leave by driving on the increasingly hazardous roads. i'm personally going into my third day without electricity at this point, and haven't been able to get any gas for a generator to even keep our fridge working. there are very few places with power or running water, and cell service has just barely been restored in the last hour. ground crews are working hard to repair things, but there are many, many areas that are entirely inaccessible that may not receive these fixes for several more days if not weeks. i'm afraid my own neighborhood might become one of those areas if repairs don't get to us soon, and since we're much more rural i have a difficult time trying to be optimistic about it.

we're very far inland. i guarantee you damn near everybody here was expecting a little more rain and wind like we usually get during hurricane season, if they even heard about the hurricane beforehand in the first place since most people only got about a twelve hour notice before landfall- after several major areas had already been flooded. our terrain protects us from most major weather events- most locals have never encountered a single tornado or legitimate tornado warning in our entire lives. nobody i've talked to or heard from about it seems to have had any idea that it would be this bad. everybody's wishing that they took it more seriously, but we've never, ever had to before. i've seen people comparing it to Hurricane Katrina and honestly i'm not sure if that's all too inaccurate. today while looking for a single working gas station i drove by a military helicopter parked in front of the elementary school i went to when i was little.

please for the love of god, talk about us. talk about the good memories you had here or the beauty of our mountains, and talk about how devastated we are as we watch historic structures, buildings, and entire towns get wiped from the face of the earth like they were never even there. stop dismissing us as uneducated hicks and rednecks and hilllbillies and fucking help us.

r/Asheville resource/updates megathread (Asheville is the largest city in western North Carolina)

How to set up disaster roaming for cell service

WLOS Live updates

Duke Energy power outage map

WNC Landslide Map

Hotels accepting locals

Emergency shelter locations

I live in western North Carolina so all of my own resources are centered around that. If anybody from the other impacted areas has additional sources they'd like to add, please don't hesitate to do so.

[uncanny-tranny]

Learning to internalize the message above, but art is in all of our bones. If you feel afraid to create art because it won't be "good enough," it's worth it to explore why you feel that fear. Creating art is one of the basic impulses of people, and if you want to create art, then you absolutely must.

[fiftypiercings]

I can't believe I decided to read orv on a whim because I just wanted a good manhwa with no romance subplot and here I am knees deep into the novel questioning my whole life because whatever these mfs have got going on is much more nastier and visceral than any romance.

[egophiliac]

do skully have pokemon?

Pumpkaboo is the obvious one, but y'know, sometimes the obvious one is the right one! (we'll say SUPER SIZE Pumpkaboo, just for fun. big pumpkin for big skeleton boy.) and another person actually also suggested Greavard, which I somehow hadn't considered, but feels so perfect that I feel like I should have. dangit.

(they can also have little Nightmare Suit costumes :D)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

weird hearing "were you a Theatre Kid" "were you a Sports Kid" "were you a Choir Kid" "were you a Dance Kid" bc no? i mean i did all of that and more but resented ever minute of it? actively avoided sticking with anything? i was a "In This Family After School Activities Are Mandatory Kid"

[thatskindarough]

Detective Aziraphale

[brainrotcharacters]

the man trained by the shimotsuki since childhood, the mind behind the three sword style, the demon pirate hunter, vice captain of the Strawhat Pirates,

easily stopped with a hand on his shoulder by his captain (currently in a silly hungry vibe)

[quantumshade]

can anyone explain to me at what point rose tyler was "unbelievably stupid". was it when she was inventing transdimensional travel

[kimdokjas]

@animangacreators challenge ⟡ spring 2024

↳ WIND BREAKER

You haven't given up on others yet. And you don't need to give up. At the least I'm looking your way, Sakura. So why don't you look this way as well? If you do, I'm sure… you'll become what you want to be.

[hoofpeet]

I think the issue I have with all of the pointless "art advice" that gets passed around on instagram/tiktok/etc is that it always acts like there's a set "end goal" to art- which is usually to be as realistic as possible ( I could also go into this for hours)- but that fundamentally misunderstands the point of art by acting like there's a Right or Wrong way to do things. Everybody has to figure out what the want from art and what their "goal" is; which can make a lot of art advice completely redundant and lead you down the wrong path

[arillustrated]

thinking about mizu from blue eye samurai. thinking. thinking so much. thinking about how mizu operates outside of gender. like we joke about her gender being revenge but straight up? it literally is. like she grew up as a boy and is most comfortable being a man, but behind that is the feeling of betraying himself because he isn't being honest about who he is and he lives in fear of being discovered. and when he lived as a woman, she found joy there as well. she fell in love, and though she wasn't good at it, she liked being a wife and enjoying a simple life. but in that life too, she isn't being honest about who she is. and when she reveals her true self, it's not a woman, she's a demon, a weapon. she's to masculine to be a woman, and too feminine to be a man. ultimately, mizu is most comfortable when they are being a murder machine. that's when they feel they are being the most true to themself. like a sword, they are neither man nor woman, but a blend of both, which makes them stronger.