Every Time You Mention Bionicle I Get Flashbacks To The 2006 Music Video Commercial That Used That All

THIS 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

This is gonna sound rather conceited but I feel like it highlights an issue we have in Art.

I'm good at art. I've never had a hard time making art. I started using crayons before I could walk. Painting, Beadwork, sculpture, sketching, stippling, whatever- once I have a feel for the material, it doesn't take long to start doing what I want with it. It's been a common theme my whole life.

(Y contrast I'm awful at things like dancing, performance, sports, etc- in all things there is balance, right?)

Now, I've taught myself to use so many artistic mediums now that I KNOW how to most efficiently integrate them into the brain database. Once you really *understand* a material, it's much like memorizing the layout of your house, or flexing a muscle, or something in-between- it becomes PART of your brain in a way I cant quite articulate. But to get there involves just fucking around for a bit doing nothing in particular.

And I've found, especially in group settings, that nobody seems to be able to see you make something badly and leave you alone. Even if you say you're fine, you don't want help, you're happy, you're having fun, it's fine, they gotta ride your ass and hover.

I was at a class the other day for something I hadn't done before. The medium was one I've never used, so once the instructor told us the basics I started experimenting with weight, gravity, texture, viscosity, saturation, temperature, etc. The instructor had given enough info to know what was dangerous and what was safe, and beyond that I just wanted to absorb what I could about it.

And no insult to the instructor, but they kept checking in. Which was fine the first few times.

But then, without asking me what I was trying to do, started giving tips. That I told them I was grateful for but didn't really need just yet. If I had a question, I'd ask.

But they kept coming over. And touching my shit. And manipulating my project. And touching my hands. And using my tools. Without fucking asking.

And this happens every time. EVERY TIME. And by now I know the best way to get them to fuck off is to make something way beyond their expectations so they know I'm capable, then go back to doing what I want.

So I did. I wanted to keep having fun and learning, but instead I made something beautiful that I really didn't want to make, and wasted my time, and really didn't learn what I wanted to learn at all. I knew the formula to create a beautiful thing, so I followed that formula the same way I have a hundred times before, and didn't get to try anything spontaneous or ugly or exciting, just so I could be left alone.

And I know when I was a kid, I was aware aware people saw me puttering alone on something ugly assumed I had a special issue and treated me like I was stupid because of that. (I was neurodivergent.) And at at time I knew that I could do a neat trick for them like a trained pony and they'd go, "Oh, surely they aren't defective if they can do something like that!" And piss off.

But what if I hadn't known how to do that?

What if I hadn't been talented, or "special"?

What if I'd been just any other average kid trying to learn, and I couldn't pop something pretty out of my ass to get them off my back?

My problem my whole life has been that I haven't been allowed to make anything ugly in peace. I'm capable of beauty, so I have to make beauty, or get stepped on. And once people see what I can do, they get loud about it. "Look at this! Look what they did! We all know who the best is, don't we?". And that used to feel good, but it's tiring.

And how many people like me just wanted to play? Just wanted to have fun and experiment? Who were having fun with no goal in mind, or just took longer to learn, who gave up because of all the obnoxious helpers breathing down their neck with no way to shake them off?

How many of us are made to feel defective because we aren't doing things beautifully?

I have a lovely piece of art I didn't want to make.

I think I'm gonna frame it.*

(*I think I'm gonna burn it in my yard.)

SPIRIT OF FLAME, HEAR ME

Staggered in under the black stone, sick from the teleport. He’d barely made it. Could feel how close it had been, as the power ebbed. He fell to his knees, succumbing to the shivering exhaustion that spread through his core and into his limbs. 

Once, he had been strong. He remembered how the villagers of Ta-Koro had first looked at him from behind their thin spears: fear and hope mixed. They were frail, weakened by the darkness, but still they had raised open hands toward him.

“Mata Nui has answered,” they’d said in hushed tones. Then, beseeching: “O Spirit of Flame, hear us!”

The Armor had abandoned him. Angonce had warned...“Contingency against contingency” or something equally as cryptic. Not only that: The Armor had taken its power with it, emptied him of all the strange abilities it had granted. Teleportation was all he’d been able to manage. One last escape, and no more.

All that was left now was his own elemental power, but even that.... The Hunter’s black ceramic lances throbbed where they protruded from his back, draining his energies. Dark and smooth and alien. He couldn’t get them out. He’d have to try again....

Jaw clenched, he crawled forward a pace, felt cool air on his brow, and remembered that he was maskless. That’d have to be first. He reached out with his mind. It was hard, much too hard...but then he felt his old Hau respond. It came to him from however far away and covered his face with its familiar shape, filled him with its familiar energy.

Better. He breathed and pushed back against the pain in his body. Now he raised a hand in front of his face. Focused again. It was still hard, but not like before. Come on!

Radiance. A small tongue of fire sprang to life above his palm. It grew. Yes, it was alive. He was alive. For now.

“Listen to me!” he’d yelled, trying to make himself heard as the Hunter smashed blunt arms against his shield. He’d used the Armor to exert telekinetic control then, arresting his foe’s upper limbs. The great eye fixed on him with an expression of...Amusement? Insult?

“Your creators don’t want this!” he’d gasped, breathless from his wounds. “And neither do mine. We must stop. They don’t want this destruction.”

The Hunter had no real mouth, but words came from somewhere, a metallic clamor issuing from the gaps in its carapace.

“THEY DO.”

He’d felt it then. An unlatching, a withdrawal. The air shimmered as his telekinesis failed. The Armor twisted him, wrenched itself from his body and limbs and face, and flung him away. Teleportation saved him from the impact, but not much else, and then...

The tiny flame danced before his eyes. Alive.

They have answered you. They have shown you what they want.

Pain swelled in his body, and his hand began to shake. His arm sagged, and his breath came in gasps. He was weak, weakened by the darkness, and there was no one here to help.

He struggled to raise his hand a little higher, felt the warmth on his mask.

“Spirit of Flame...hear me,” he whispered.

Then he collapsed forward, and was still.

The flame wavered in the air. Trembled.

But it did not go out.

POV: mister Devon Price, PhD, telling me that I am right about everything

Source: Unmasking Autism, discovering the new faces of neurodiversity

see the THING IS I don't feel like I ever worked hard enough to have "earned" the burnout, which is. probably how we got here.

Yeah I’m a white American I don’t really think there’s anything I can have for culture

You're so brave for saying this

feeling unsteady about the future of twitter, reposting this so it stays on the internet if anything happens

should i just delete that account already?

https://twitter.com/dezalk_kyakha/status/1570093474858278912?s=20&t=YbQ0sE_XGoi8yxM8zWdHvA

criminal profiling is just astrology for cops

new episode of "revisiting random offputting short films that youtube showed me when i was 11"

i certainly wasn't happy before my attempt. the pain was all i could really think about at the time. suicide is a desperate attempt to escape when you don't see other options. in the long run, those other options will eventually lead to happiness.

it got better very slowly for me, but a lot faster once i found people like me making really good art that i could have a cathartic cry to.

i hope you start feeling better soon. i can't really know you as we're just internet strangers but i think you're a pretty cool fox with a good sense of humor.

i hear that many people are happy before they kill themselves because they realize their pain is ending soon. so im trying to convince myself that maybe i should die in hopes that it'll create some kind of happiness burst and i can maybe ride that and feel better. but so far it just makes me want to die instead