the unthinkable

and you may say to yourself, "my god, what have I done?" 20 ✸ he/him

[babblingbalatron]

side blog ; primarily a personal museum

@absurdlabyrinth (main: fan artwork)

🔐 table of contents

[sanctus-ingenium]

Victorious

[witchrealms]

(x)

[hillhomed]

morning errand

[segmentedleg]

File:Algal mats on hot pool, Orakei Korako 1.jpg

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[autodiscipline]

Spreepark, Berlin, Germany

[helenvaughans]

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

–Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

[rootlessly]

newport, oregon — 2020 jan

[amuseoffyre]

One of my favourite photos from my trip to Warsaw in 2006

[giveherswords]

Jenny Holzer, Black Book Posters, 1979

[videoclubs]

Vogue Taiwan January 2026 photographed by Manbo Key

[world-beauty]

The Tulip in the Swan

Credits: Martin Pugh

[snototter]

A painted leopard gecko (Eublepharis pictus) in Odisha, India

by avrajjal

[snototter]

An Ilam province Iranian fat tailed gecko (Eublepharis angramainyu)

by GeckoBoa

[wormvermin]

ASTRAL FORM

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[ #transmascartists | #trans ]

[sellos]