the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.
three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.
two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.
their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.
one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.
i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.
i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.
and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?
you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.
a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.
someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.
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I don't know if I'll ever actually write this, but I have a vague idea for a fic that's like, Sam, Jan, and Jamie vs the AFC Richmond Charity Gala that's set in early season 2 and basically explains what happened to the charity gala in 1x04 that's implied to be an annual tradition but that we never see again. The premise is as follows:
After the Dubai Air protest, Sam feels bad that he didn't look into the company he agreed to promote beforehand and decides to be more proactive in his activism. Which is why, when Ted announces the gala is coming up and Jan Maas (who obviously wasn't there for the last one) is like, "isn't it exploitative and dehumanizing to auction off players?" Sam decides he's going to Do Something About It and tries to rally the team to petition Rebecca to change the event, with mixed results.
Jamie, meanwhile, is having a... weird time. He's still nervous about his place on the team, especially now that Roy is back and at the height of his refusing-to-coach-Jamie era, and while there's not as much outright animosity from the other players, they're also not really friends. He's trying to be on his best behaviour, but the upcoming gala is making him nervous and Sam and Jan going around talking about like. consent and bodily autonomy and all that is dredging up some feelings that he's been repressing — mostly about Amsterdam but also about Lust Conquers All (I don't know a ton about reality TV production but it sounds pretty brutal on the contestants, and Jamie would not have been in a great frame of mind going in).
So when Sam and Jan go to talk to him, he doesn't want to turn them down because he's trying to make up for how he treated Sam last year, but he also doesn't want to get on the bad side of the rest of the team if they like the gala, and also also if auctioning off players is wrong then what happened to him in Amsterdam was definitely wrong, and he's not ready to confront that. But of course Sam is a sweetheart and realizes pretty quickly that Something Bad happened here and is like. okay now we really can't have the gala.
Anyway they make a 50-slide Powerpoint that they rehearse a bunch of times and go to present it to Rebecca in full Isaac-approved suits and everything, and then only get like. one slide in before Rebecca's like, "you're right, that is creepy. We'll come up with something new for this year." Also Roy apologizes for joking about Jamie having to sleep with that woman. The end 😊
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Hesina Willshaper AU
Step one canon divergence: Amaram's army doesn't do the kind thing. Kaladin's listed next of kin are sent a letter stiffly informing them that their son is a deserter and, thanks to the highmarshall's mercy, has been sold into slavery.
Step two canon divergence: a light spren has started following Hesina around.
The letter reaches hearthstone.
Hesina cries the bones of the first ideal through labor pangs. Their wretched diamond lamp grows slightly dimmer during childbirth.
Hesina and Lirin discuss if there's anyway they could possibly find their son and pay his slave debt. They're not optimistic.
Hesina talks with her lightspren.
Lirin and Hesina talk again about trying to find their son, now that Oroden is starting to be weaned.
Hesina appears to have grown taller. No one but the two of them seem to be aware but they're worried other future changes might be more noticeable.
Hesina and Lirin realize that she can mold rock as if it was clay with stormlight. A spark of hope for freeing their son emerges.
The two leave town.
They find a slave market in the nearest city. They see other parent's sons, but not their own.
Hesina swears to free those in bondage. Stormlight starts coming easier.
They make a tunnel. Rebellion follows. Lirin is horrified by the violence (the violence is not actually that bad all things considered. a couple guards dead. some bystanders frightened. Fair amount of property damage as they rob the military barracks food supply, steal every sphere that's not nailed down. and also steal the spheres that are nailed down. (Lirin won't admit it but the stealing from lamps part is kindof fun.)).
Many of those they freed flee. Some return to slavery willingly, scared of retribution. Many decide to follow the Radiant woman who has vowed to see others like them freed.
The group proceed to the next town. They find another slave market. They make a tunnel. There is more resistance than last time, clearly they were warned something might happened. Hesina kills a man.
Lirin is terrified by what his wife is becoming.
Hesina swears to shelter those without homes. The lightspren forms an unbreakable hammer, perfect for knocking crem free from buildings. And for knocking down men.
A now larger motley group seeks shelter in a mountain town razed in one of Alethkar's many skirmishes over the last decades. Hesina builds homes. Lirin begs her to stay here, to stop fighting before she goes to far down this path, not to go to war. The slaves they've freed are split, many wanting to stay, hide, some wanting to fight and free more, with a radiant at their head, there's a real chance to change things. Hesina lingers, practicing, spends some time falling in and out of shadesmar.
Lirin and Hesina separate.
Lirin stays with Oroden and the noncombatants. Hesina leads those who want to fight to another city, still trying to find their son, still trying to free everyone's children.
The town settles into a routine. Hesina and Lirin miss one another. This is the first time they've gone longer than two days without seeing each other in the last 25 years, and the two days was only when Lirin had to travel to where someone had overturned a cart on the road nearby and Hesina had to stay and watch the children, too young to travel. besides that, it had been every day. they keep turning to talk to each other.
While the army is gone, the free town is attacked by those trying to reclaim her property.
Hesina swims deliberately through shadesmar for the first time. reaches lirin just in time.
Lirin accepts that not fighting won't stop the violence. (It breaks him just a little bit)
Hesina shouts that one person's freedom ends where another's begins. She vows to fight against powers which would rather see their people in cages then homes. A thousand light spren rise up to grant her strength.
(yes I know she's moving fast through the oaths. but she's always been a thoughtful woman and she raised two children who asked difficult questions and now shes mother to another several hundred. honestly she had already worked through some of these concepts before they became actionable on such a grand scale.)
Lirin vows to support his wife through whatever trials the Almighty seems inclined to put her through.
The lightspren, who has started to get some memories back, remembers Oathgate Spren not terribly far from here by physical realm measurements, guarding a hidden human city
the stone remembers the way the radiants once traveled.
The path to a kingdom in the sky is slow — there are many cages to break on the way.
Kaladin doesn't know it right away, because people weren't exactly telling slaves about the freedom riots, but slave wagons start having harder and harder times reaching the shattered planes after him.
Someone mocks Lirin for having a wife so determined to pursue the masculine art of war. Lirin gets pissy and decides to show them by learning to read and write to help support the administrative side of his wife's kingdom wide asskicking.
The highprinces lead a fairly successful misinformation campaign about the slave riots, lots of accusations of rampant violence, the dregs of society lashing out, you can probably imagine
The ongoing rebellion is large enough that word trickles to the bridge crews, encouraging bridge four's hope for escaping, while also making it substantially more daunting, as the crews are even better guarded than canon.
Rumors of a female radiant swirl around. Most people assume it's a woman in shardplate with some sort of tunneling fabrial, which is still pretty crazy, but several major players Take Note
A very large and tired huddled mass of people reach Urithiru. there's just enough squires, and two new willshapers with their own oaths, to make tunnels through the shattered planes and reach the oathgate without being seen by the alethi armies
the parshendi army is another story, but some are willing to take a chance listening to the neshua kadal, and come with them.
The political implications of Dalinar freeing 1000 slaves is slightly more complex, especially considering the rebellions have been impacting Sadeas the hardest
About a week after being freed, Kaladin hires a spanreed intermediary to write home and find out if his hometown is alright (again, a lot of misinformation and rumors about the violence of the riots)
Is informed by Laral that his family left town looking for him shortly before the riots started, were presumed dead
Kaladin is under the impression that 1) his parents are dead because of him 2) the Rebellion is not the righteous fallback plan that he and the men were hoping it was.
Hesina has many reasons to go to the shattered planes. Nearest part of the trade network for food and necessary goods. Many slaves to be freed from there, and a part of her still hopes to find her son, even thought its been so long. Home of Alethkar's political leaders, the source of Alethkar's slavery.
I have spent. A LOT of time imagining many possible reunions between kaladin and his mom in my highly specific high oath hesenia au. She has a couple faces she could wear when visiting the planes. Brightlady. Radiant. Cagebreaker. Queen of Urithiru (not her real title, they're tentatively trying the Listener council model, but they know what the Alethi will understand). Even darkeyed mother, if she and Lirin approach slowly from a different direction. Honestly, pleased as I am with all of the above, a lot is flexible, the key here is kaladin going "MOM??" In some fashion
Thank you @sorchasolas for conversation and the urithiru ideas and for leading me to actually write all this down <3
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