"But The Art Is Gross!"

"But the art is gross!"

Come'ere and let me tell you a story.

When I was in my senior year, a painting of mine got into an art show at a university museum. I was wild crazy excited and wrote out my artists statement in one night about the piece. I painted it based off a photo I took of a local reservoir during a particularly bad time and my statement spoke about being queer in my city and finding peace at places like the reservoir. I painted it with pallet knives and acrylics.

I was forced to remove any mention of my queerness from my statement due to the "sexual nature" of it by people at my school. There was nothing sexual about it.

Obviously, I did it, with some pressure from others. but when I drove up to see it there, I could not feel proud of it there. Compliments felt hollow. I was told they placed it at the front because they loved it. But it was censored in a way that made it lesser to me. Often I wish I would have refused.

Censorship doesn't stop at "icky" things. It crawls and devours like ivy until everything is dead. Nothing remains.

Humans knew what the fuck they were talking about

Cookies fr

Being born in USSR, raised in its aftermath and then choosing to learn English and exist on the English-language Internet means I am forced to see the logo of one of the worst genocidal colonial regimes in history everywhere. As a symbol of young hip people's resistance, no less.

I'm so tired.

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some of these were conzepts i drew for @ranilla-bean fic the iconoclast. others are just me doodeling zuko in SEA inspired clothing (khemer or siam style/ so cambodia or thailand)

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.