@tabfruit - Tumblr Blog

- A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers // kagonekoshiro

[ID: four images of cats with text overlaid in some areas. The text, altogether, says: you keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and Marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.

The first image is a side view of an orange cat sitting down and facing to the left, outdoors.

The second image Is the same cat on a branch, looking somewhere past the camera.

The third image is up close near the cat’s face near a tree trunk with mushrooms growing out of it. The cat’s eyes are closed and it’s face is turned towards the tree.

The fourth image is a close-up of the face of the cat against a blue sky background, the cat’s eyes are closed and the sun shines on its orange face. End ID.]

#new pinned post

ariesrin

The worst part about writing is that sometimes you actually have to write.

The best part about writing is also that sometimes you have to write.

I will not elaborate further.

anxeious

knightotoc

"I miss Odysseus; my heart is melting. / The suitors want to push me into marriage, but I spin schemes... By day I wove the web, / and in the night by torchlight, I unwove it."

I made this feverish, unwinding loom for @youremysunshine8 's bday, since she is reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey.

It's made from an old painting frame with the canvas removed. I painted the wood a darker color and hammered in a couple hundred tacks, which I strung with white yarn.

The weaving itself took a long time, since I've never done that before and wasn't using a real loom, though I did make a make-shift heddle from a ruler. The meander is woven in soumak, which means you wrap the weft around each warp instead of just going over-under; this takes a long time but gives it a really cool dimension.

I carved Penelope's hands from chipboard, and painted them the same color as the loom. I wanted to convey the "muscular, firm hand" from Wilson's translation.

despazito

His little pony...

hydrattan

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

sforzzz

copper ii sulfate has no reason to be this blue. this shade of blue looks like it should only be a digital invention

chongoblog

salamanding

this comic was originally meant to be a metaphor about my current depressive slump, but o was ironically too depressed to do more than 7 pages. i also didn't realize that it's kind of just Kafka's Metamorphosis but ✨for girls✨

indigofoxpaws

(source)

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.