Absolute Mayhem

I’m an author, my sister draws and paints, but we both dabble in the other’s wheelhouse.

And, one day, I had just hastily thrown together my cartoonish attempt at a fairy (Not terrible, but I’ve just accepted that my art style is on the cartoon side of things), and my sister starts telling me all the tricks and stuff that improves proportions and style … and I just look at her and go, “I don’t have the patience for that.”

And she just pulls back, blinking. “But you sit there, hours upon hours, stringing words together for your books. Don’t tell me you don’t have patience.”

“I do have patience for writing. Every word I write is visible progress, and I’ve moved forward in the story. But art is static. And I don’t have the patience that allows me to pour hours and hours into something static. You, however, focus on that one image and chip away at until you have it.”

My other main craft is knit and crochet. My sister sews. And I realize that this holds true. My patience is linear. I’ll spend weeks and years on a project, just so long as each word or stich is a visible step forward. My sister’s patience is more abstract. She will polish the details on a image until it’s perfect, constructing elements until it fits her vision - but she won’t give it the time I will. She wants to get things done and have them be over.

And neither one is wrong. Neither is unreasonable. But if you have an art you want to pursue, you have to give it patience. The patience to do the craft, and the patience to learn how to do it well.

Thank you (x)

Whenever a veterinarian, animal behaviorist, etc. says that domestic cats should never be allowed to roam freely outdoors, complete with statistics and studies to support the point, always there are people (usually English) saying "actually keeping a cat indoors is literally animal abuse, and I know this because my cat looks sad when I don't let him wander the neighborhood all night long"

and…that’s just it. because that’s how capitalism works! it stacks the odds against you so you’re forced to pit yourself against those you should ally with, and then it brainwashes you into thinking this is how the world should work so you don’t question it. because of course the privileged upper classes don’t want the people they screwed over to mobilize and become a threat! 

and it’s so telling that while every participant enters just to get enough money to pay off their debts, eventually their need to win it all drives them to betray and actively murder each other. even though winning as a team would still have let them walk away with enough money to both settle their debts and still live a comfortable life, at this point they’ve internalized the “me first” rhetoric to the extent that this is just not an option they can consider anymore. and it’s only at the very end, bleeding and injured, that gi-hun and sang-woo realize it at all.