A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Gosh dang it.

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So I drew Korra in my own made up air bender attire.  This started out as a big wide piece with a background and everything, but I was not liking where the background was going and I’m still pretty new to trying to add backgrounds.  Lost of work to go in learning about that.  So, I cropped it.  :/  Not sure if I’ll go back and finish the big wide version or not.  >.<”

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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Get all these fucking dwarf cassowaries out of my house

"Here we are, don’t turn away now. We are the warriors that built this town.”

I herd Tumblr likes burds.

#YesAllWomen

ICYMI: This hashtag is in response to the common statement that “Not All Men ________ (fill-in-the-blank) when conversations about misogyny happen.

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(Part 2) TRIGGER WARNING …

So, by now you have all heard of 22 year old Elliot Rodger who went on a killing spree in Isla Vista, a community in Santa Barbara, California. One Friday night, Elliot shot and killed 7 people, including himself, close to the University of California Santa Barbara campus.

Prior to his violent shooting rampage, Elliot recorded a video titled, Day of Retribution in which he states, “college is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. In those years I’ve had to rot in in loneliness, it’s not fair.” and “you girls have never been attracted to me, I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it”.

About a month ago, after seeing some of Elliot’s YouTube videos, his family contacted authorities. Law Enforcement interviewed Elliot and said they found him to be a ‘perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human’ and took no further action.

Now we have media outlets labeling Elliot as a “mad man”, “spoiled brat”, “misunderstood”, “good human” etc and continuing to file this mass murder under mental health.

Understand that no one is saying that he did not suffer from mental illness, I’m sure he does. But we CANNOT ignore the fact that this mass killing was rooted in his hate of women (misogyny) and inability to properly deal with rejection. There is much to unpack about this incident, how it was handled and how it will be portrayed in the media, but for now I’ll post some tweets from those of us responding to the shooting on twitter.

For more info about the shooting: http://bit.ly/1mjerdo

Elliot Rodgers, Day of Retribution video: http://youtu.be/FWWGtee14pA

Elliot was also racist: http://bit.ly/1h0BniC

Three more bodies found at Elliot’s apartment: http://bit.ly/RnzYWP

Elliot Rodgers 140 page manifesto, My Twisted World: http://bit.ly/1nGaWwX

#YesAllWomen and also this.

hyamei

Something for my feminist theory class.

I’d love to see the reactions to this from a crowd. I can kind of imagine a quiet, solemn understanding from the ladies and a lot of confused questions from the guys… If my memory of art school serves me.

Cut through the heart, cold and clear. Strike for her love and strike for her fear. See the beauty, sharp and sheer. Split the ice apart and break the frozen heart.

i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.

and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum. 

and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god. 

i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.

like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.

in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster. 

john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all. 

ATV, you blessed underdog.

I like to think they all found each other again.

Here’s my 2nd year Calarts film!