Yesterday my dad told me something that I think maybe more people need to hear.
You’re allowed to just do things for fun.
He told me that in this modern society, especially the United States, we seem to have this attitude that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re aiming to be the best at it. If we can’t sing like Beyonce or Frank Sinatra or something there’s no point to singing. If we can’t make the next big breakthrough there’s no point in looking into mechanics and engineering.
But, he tells me, it took him a long time to figure out that life doesn’t have to be a race. If you want to take up the piano when you’re a teenager or later you’re not going to master it. You’re not going to be able to play to huge concert halls, but that also shouldn’t stop you. You can study a language out of curiosity and then drop the ball if you want. You can just get okay at something or even be terrible at it. You can drop it for days or years and then pick it up again and it doesn’t have to be a shameful thing.
I’m really glad he told me that because today I opened my sketchpad for the first time in months and just started drawing. And it looks terrible. But I don’t care. I don’t have the talent or patience or spacial awareness to get anywhere near good at drawing, but it’s fun. It helps me focus my mind and nobody has to see it.
And because of what he told me, I’m thinking maybe someday soon I will take up the bass guitar. And I won’t worry about how well I do, or how fast I learn, or that I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, or that I don’t have that much time to practice. I’m just gonna enjoy the experience. Maybe I’ll try swing dancing again and take a class because I’m not the best dancer but damn if it isn’t fun.
Yeah, you don’t have to be good at things. It’s not a requirement. Maybe that seems obvious but it had never occurred to me before. You’re allowed to just enjoy what you’re doing. For me, that feels like a life changing revelation. I don’t have to be good at something to like it. I don’t have to put 100% effort into everything I do. It’s kind of amazing.
some of the reasons homestuck meets the requirements of a traditional epic!
homestuck is a finely crafted piece of literature that deserves serious discussion and recognition, and it bothers me when people won’t acknowledge that.
Homestuck is the most important piece of literature of the 21st century so far.
I’ve compared Homestuck to Lost in the past, and I’ve oft seen Lost analyzed as a modern twist on the traditional epic. This just makes the comparison even more poignant!
Homestuck is such an incredible piece of literature. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s the most important piece in the 21st century so far. Absolutely.
I want to point out that the plot doesn’t just span civilizations, it spans both genre (space opera, urban fantasy, apocalyptic romp, let’s play, fable,) and medium (epistolary narrative, comic, webcomic, novel, video, videogame). It employs all the accumulated self-aware, self-critical traditions of the latter 20th century to launch into a uniquely self-aware 21st century narrative: it’s not a story that’s epic, it’s an epic about stories.
The narrator struggles for control over the telling with his own metaphorical selves, he’s his own protagonist, deuderagonist, and antagonist— all with the acknowledgement that they’re only controlling the telling, that the story has always been what it is, that they’ve always been part of it, that they’ve always been inside it— and this is also a story that’s written, in significant chunks, by reader suggestion. Are we outside the story? Yes. Maybe. No. The audience is part of the theater, the bard is part of the crowd.
What is Homestuck? By now, the question’s gone from joke to koan and it’s still a completely legitimate question. But if it isn’t an epic, it’s only because we haven’t invented the actual word for it yet.
There was always a specific spot where anything mechanical would shut down. Cars would stall and a four wheeler would cut off
A graveyard that didn’t belong to our family sat beside the home. We don’t know the names on the gravestones
There was a skeleton in the forest. We don’t know who passed there
A home at the beginning of the road burned down but the chimney remained. I swear we could see smoke coming from it sometimes
There were figures in the wheat fields sometimes but they were too far away to see. Grandpa said they were neighbors and we should never talk to them
My great grandmas house sits next to my grandpa’s, abandoned, and we were told to never go in there
Sometimes at night when I couldn’t sleep, I could hear the sound of clacking coming down the road
Grandpa’s Farm Gothic
This is just American Gothic
this is just growing up in the midwest, y’all. add a few sheep skulls and a wendigo or two and it’s minnesota life.
At least two wendigos. With just one, it’s hasn’t graduated to creepy, it’s just annoying.
Also, don’t forget the old clapboard outbuilding that is inexplicably filled with deer antlers. No one knows how they got there or what the building’s original purpose was. The Elders are firm that you keep out.
deer antlers and one rather threadbare stuffed wolverine that you tell yourself was NOT in a different pose last time you looked through the flyspecked window.
“queer” is such a useless term. if i tell someone im bisexual, they know i am attracted to men and women. if a man tells me he is gay, i know he is a man exclusively attracted to other men. if someone tells me they are queer, it tells me nothing about them. it doesnt tell me who they attracted to. it tells me nothing about that person.
It tells me they’re trying to be a extra lil bitch and that I shouldn’t be friends with them
No, you probably shouldn’t, for their sake.
yall realise thats exactly the point, right
queer covers everyone who is noncis or nonstraight
it covers the identities you want to erase or disallow from the community
it doesn’t immediately tell you private information about someone’s sexuality or gender that you aren’t entitled to
and the person in question may not even know themselves, but queer is what they know they can always use if they’re not sure except they know theyre definitely not cis/straight
you hate it because it’s too inclusive and too broad. It’s supposed to be inclusive and broad. If someone tells you they’re queer then all you need to know is that they are in some way not cis or straight and other than that it aint your business. If being told someone’s identity is none of your business pisses you off, thats a you problem
Imagine saying you wont be friends with someone unless they disclose all details of their gender and orientation immediately upon meeting you and still feeling that you’re morally superior
treating people’s identities primarily as ways to help you sort them by usefulness to you is kinda mercenary and shitty, honestly
“queer” claims kinship across a diverse yet shared body of experiences
it says “we can be alike without having to be same”
it says “we are connected without having to justify the connection”
it says “our differences can be celebrated, even the ones between each other”
it says “we accept and are accepted, as we are”
it is not about convenience of labeling or categorizing
it is not about providing useful information about whether we’re “available”
it’s about people
it’s about connection
it’s about acceptance
“your identity has to be useful to me to be valid” is ridiculous bullshit and ought to walk north until its hat freezes
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