Misplaced Lens Cap
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Xuebing Du
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Jules of Nature
⁂
DEAR READER
almost home
if i look back, i am lost
izzy's playlists!
JBB: An Artblog!
Stranger Things
Three Goblin Art
cherry valley forever
Show & Tell
Origami Around
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AnasAbdin
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@keioschaos
Sometimes it's not "your fault" but it's still "your problem" because nobody else can fix it.
If your history of trauma causes you to respond to totally normal interactions as if you're under threat of violence, you are likely to be a source of trauma for other people, and you should work on that.
It's not your fault that you were traumatized, but you're literally the only person who can fix you.
Is prev knight-coded or liege-coded?
Knight
Liege
Jester/Nuance/Prev is Bald
unavoidable that you will be the villain in someone else's story. You will be painted in an unfavorable light. You will be the irredeemable one. and all of this will happen despite how nice you might usually be or how kind or how respectful or how warm. and you will just have to move on.
2025 retrospective: I was so fucking wrong about art
I fell for it. You probably fell for it.
Fell for what?
Okay, this will be pretty disorganized, but I just want to say this: seeing yourself as, or wanting to be seen by others as, a reader or as a "smart" or well-read person, comes with some super value-laden frameworks for viewing the world which are based on insecurity.
I was talking to my best friend about fanfiction. He hates intellectual property laws and a bunch of our conversations seem to converge on that point from unrelated starting points.
I used to argue with people online about fiction. A lot of people who are "readers" have a category of writing that they look down on as meaningless slop. BookTok. Romance. YA fiction. Fanfiction. Everybody needs to feel like they're better than other people and that the world of literature is going downhill like a snowball headed for hell.
So I interacted with some people who claimed things, like, fanfiction is inherently an extension of consumerism and just using stock tropes to fulfill shallow entertainment. And I argued with them, I acknowledged that fanfiction was mostly frivolous and not addressing themes and ideas with the same depth as works in the established canon of literature, but it could still have merit as art.
But I was embarrassingly wrong. I now believe that fanfiction is literally just a subcategory of literature and it can be just as good and have equal artistic merit to any other category.
Why did I assume fanfiction was lesser when I had never really read any back then? That's the embarrassing part. I cared about how I was perceived by judgmental and insecure people. I wanted to hang onto my identity as someone who was smart and read books, REAL books, classic books with deep themes and ideas in them. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people that everybody mocked.
Throughout 2025, I have been exploring new kinds of art and realizing, one by one, that artforms that are considered less worthy or intellectual, or even not considered art forms at all, are actually some of the most powerful.
I watched letsplays of video games.
I looked at Backrooms videos and galleries of "dreamcore" edits on Pinterest.
I learned about pro wrestling.
I read books that were merely "entertaining."
I read a LOT of Bucky Barnes fanfiction.
You cringed at some of the things I just listed, didn't you? Or maybe you didn't. I don't know anything about you. But that's how we're taught to think: that some art forms are worthy and intellectual, and some art forms could NEVER be deep or meaningful or "real art" on the same level.
But it's not true. I'm not going to pretend it's true. And I'm not going to mention classic literature or "literary" writing I happen to like to make sure you still think I'm smart and intellectual, because I have nothing to prove to anyone.
I had a very ugly realization about how much of reading is driven by the identity we want to have rather than what we actually like. I burned out really hard on reading because I was reading books i didn't even like. I realized that there were many categories of books I hadn't been open to reading, because...why? Because they didn't seem like real books. So I got over myself and read some psychological thrillers and some other books with the purpose of fun and entertainment. And loved them. And I kept going. I went on an adventure of experiencing art.
The chains that had been weighing me down drifted away like dust: I am not better than other people. I am not better than BookTok girlies or werewolf smut readers or cringe fandoms. Art is everywhere and abundant, and no institution or endorsement by educated experts or industry standard is necessary to categorize the good art away from the bad art or to tell us which art is good or to prevent the bad art from being made or to prevent people from liking it. Why did I ever think that?
One other thing. I have a lot of posts on here from a few years ago talking about my severe despair and burnout over literary poetry. It seemed like the respected, intellectual contemporary poetry was rhythmless, rambling crap. Also, the world of literary poetry writ large was obsessed with the trauma of people from minority groups, to the point that people besides straight white men could barely get anything published that wasn't about some horrible trauma.
I felt kind of anti-intellectual for saying it, but genuinely good contemporary poetry seemed exceedingly, vanishingly rare, and i hated the stuff the more I read of it. But surely good poetry had to be somewhere?
Ive been puzzling over "where did the good poetry go" for a few years and just within the last month probably i figured it out: it went into rap music.
I finally started actually getting into rap as a genre in the past couple of months. (not because of the superbowl thing--it actually started because of my youtube recommendations after i was listening to sir mix a lot's "baby got back" while absolutely delirious with covid. Don't ask cause I don't know.) And yeah yeah a lot of it talks about "deep" topics but I'm not actually talking about the subject material itself, I'm talking about how technically complex it is.
Like poetry classes did teach me to identify a lot of poetic techniques and forms of wordplay and rappers use basically every poetic technique and wordplay in the English language extravagantly, including many that "actual" poets hardly use anymore. I think I would argue that rappers are the people that are carrying poetry as an artform forward at this point in history.
But there is still this very negative connotation that rap music is just a bunch of meaningless crap about sex and drugs.
I actually feel like less recognition as "highbrow" art might create an environment for BETTER art to grow. In other words, the less a medium or form of art is considered be "real art," the more likely it is to actually be GOOD art.
I've also started to appreciate graffiti a lot more. Underneath a bridge I saw someone had drawn a laughing ghost. I love the laughing ghost. It compels me.
i'd like to clarify the 'meaningless crap about sex and drugs' part cause I think it sounds like i was implying that art dealing with sex and drugs is meaningless crap, and thats not the case at all
those are really common topics of nearly all music genres, and all of those music genres have good songs that are about sex and drugs
For healing that stems from being unsafe, out of control and/or powerless: yeah, this definitely checks out, feeling safe, in control and capable is an essential part of healing.
Unfortunately, that experience isn't always available. If you're in a country at war, or an undocumented migrant in the current US, for example, feeling genuinely safe is not going to be on the table and the cause of that unsafety is beyond your control.
In such situations, you can trick your nervous system a bit to give it some of those experiences anyway.
For experiences of safety: try to cover your basic physical needs if possible (food, drink, warmth, rest, caring for physical injuries) and try to build routine, rhythm and familiarity into your life if possible. That could be making tea every morning, or praying at set times, or playing your favorite song every evening before bed. Whatever fits your situation: routines are gonna help your nervous system feel stable and less constantly unsafe.
For experiences of control and capableness: try to regularly do little things that affirm your sense of accomplishment. Fixing your bike, doing a crossword puzzle, learning to play a new song on your guitar, putting on make-up in a way that makes you feel stunning, finish a level of a video game. Again: whatever is available to you. Little moments of 'fuck yeah i did this' help your nervous system feel like you are capable of things and less constantly powerless.
This isn't going to totally save you from the constant stress of your situation, but it can reduce the worst of the stress and make life a little more manageable in the situation that you find yourself in.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite newspaper quotes from the expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022:
Being anti-death penalty is literally the easiest stance ever. People just say "but should the state kill THIS type of person?" and you just say "no". Not killing people is so fucking easy actually
Failing at critical thinking by dint of being ignorant of the magical Kill Only The Bad People Who Deserve It And Nobody Else button that we have. Apparently
trope i really like is self-loathing characters desperate for the catharsis of punishment for frankly rather selfish reasons who r also obsessed with repeatedly pressing others into hating them and hurting them as essentially a method of self harm. yes baby continue making it worse for urself and everybody around u instead of doing an actually productive and effective journey of improvement and redemption
what was your almost name? mine was sofia
the mr beast extension has created a thumbnail that made me laugh so hard my body started hurting
The what extension
Timelapse fungus gifs
IMPOSTOR! That last one is a Rafflesia flower!
DNI lists on this website are fucking insane
can we explain to early-twenties autistic lgbt people that they . cant be saying these things. you cant be calling people 'degens' in your dni you cant do that. you cant do that man. can we do a history lesson. you cant do that
YOU CANT DO THAT MAN
"in defense of using the term degen, it's generally applied to pedophiles" - conservative man who might actually shoot a trans woman if he saw one within 50 meters of his child, and also LGBT tumblr users who do not know things they should know
"Degeneracy" is a fascist concept. There is no defending that word, just stop using it
to be extra clear. the reason it is fascist is because it implies a) an ideal past that society has fallen from, and b) people who are responsible for society's fall from that ideal past.
a "degenerate" is someone who caused/causes society to fall from that ideal past.
even applying the term "degenerate" to people who have actually sexually abused children, specifically, is still implying that there was once a world in which CSA did not exist, which society must return to, and which Certain Types Of People have caused society to stray from in the first place.
these problems are systemic. that's like the whole idea behind all progressive and leftist ideology. come on.
Stop using Nazi rhetoric in regards to fandom discourse. It just makes you sound... like a Nazi.
i think im getting better! :) [another event occurs]
Art i did recently for @keios-chaos !!! Rrraaaaaahhh
bring back shame
peer reviewed tags
When the character analysis is getting really good but then they drop “narcissistic” as an insult or character descriptor
Tinikling
I am both in awe of their rhythm and if fear dor their ankles. *chef's kiss*
I learned how to dance something similar to this in the third grade. in Cambodia it's called the Pestle Dance, and it is WAY slower than this, and it is still REALLY hard to do the turny bits without getting your ankles banged up. it was my least favorite dance to learn because it hurts like a bitch when your foot gets caught. that is god-tier levels of talent.
I‘m so happy to see traditional Filipino dances being hyped up here! I grew up watching these dances everywhere and have even seen diaspora kids dance hip hop ON TOP of doing the tinikling dance 🌟🇵🇭🔥
Tinikling irog ko ❤️ this is one of those things that's simple in theory but actually really really hard to do and these kids are amazing 🇵🇭
