they ★ 2-spirit ★ est. in 1997 ★ student
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Ariel, Tiana, and Snowey
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Gracefully we journey and
together we will grow old, I would
not want it any other way. Loving
you always even till the day I have to go.
There's a stereotype that USAmericans tolerate very long car rides.
WIP Tag game :,D! (Thanks to the babes @alkalinefrog n @vindikaetion for the tags!)
Listen college is kicking my ass rn so I have a plethora of wips on the menu have some
Hijack, a spiderverse illustration with all the spiderkids, OC’s yeah :)
Um I tag anyone who is currently under spiderverse/sona brain rot go and feed us with wips if u want
Hi, welcome to my blog, we have fun here
as a born-n-raised southern Californian (specifically the area around LA + Hollywood, which is relevant), Chappell Roan's California messes me up in a subtly in the lyrics i dont think non-Californians will get (or at least people who DON'T live in a climate that is similar to what we got going on in that vague LA, Hollywood, valley-area)
like everybody who loves this song knows the whole 🎶"No leave are brown"🎶 lyric is a reference to California Dreamin' by The Mamas & The Papas' lyric 🎶"The leaves are brown and the sky is gray"🎶 and that is true
and, this will seem like a tangent but i have point: im Indigenous American, and i will seldom stand up for the USA against other countries' criticisms (tho i do have "glass houses, my guy. have you checked if you live in one?" thoughts about it, but that'd be SUPER tangential to get into); but i DO feel my hands turn to fists when anyone, an American from another territory or a foreigner from any other country, pokes judgementally at California. like i either have or almost have unsubbed from youtubers or tiktokers who have voiced bitter opinions about California. and i mention this bc those people would probably joke "lol 🎶'no leaves are brown'🎶 bc, in California, they are plastic, their trees' leaves cannot turn brown" liKE?? FUCK YOU, NO. THAT'S ACTUALLY KINDA THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY HERE. BITE ME. YOU DONT GET IT
bc that line, 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 has a different impact as someone who has grown up in the relative area she is singing about
but if either you yourself or else your parents/guardians/older family members were in California in even the 80s, much less the 70s or earlier... you know fire-season is a brand new thing we have to deal with it. you know drought-season is the same. it's a weird political thing where they try to normalize for us these global-warming things, make us less scared of them if we see them as cyclical
which might be a surprise for non-Californians, as many have this odd image of California as "both a city and a desert × beach" when it's not. it's got cities, yes, it's got a coast, obviously, and it has deserts, yeah, AND it has a shit ton of mountains and hills EVERYWHERE, it has valleys, farms, rural mountain towns, "hicks" and "hillbillies" ontop of our 🤟surfer-dudes🏄♂️ and influencer/actor-culture stereotypes, ski lodges, boonies, reservations, national parks, and northern California is part of the Pacific North-West, you drive literally in any direction and within 2 to 4 hours, youll be in a whole different climate. this state is so huge that i remember my family trying to do roadtrips to Canada (bc we were too broke to fly, woah, who said that) and itd take over a week to get from my soCal hometown to Washington state alone. and im not that deep south in soCal; LA and whatnot is part of the northern-most area of soCal. it'd still be over a week of driving for 8+ hours. and we'd face sleet, hail, snow, rain, and insane winds on the way. which sounds like im exaggerating, but the reason why we stopped doing those roadtrips was because my mom (who is from MICHIGAN) couldn't stand driving through snow and rain anymore, again, before we even hit Washington state ("if you guys do get rain and snow then why does California still have that on/off drought then?" bc water from norCal doesn't trickle down for a 1+ week through all of central-Cali over in the same buckets to soCal naturally, makes sense)
so we, in this pocket of California Chappell Roan is singing about, arent SUPPOSED to have brown leaves is what im saying. but we are. we have TOO MANY brown leaves, actually. that's what happens to plants in a drought, they brown and die; and then we get at-risk for the false-normalcy that is fire-season. those brown leaves in overabundance is those wildfires' kindling. even in rural mountain-towns where there are evergreen trees, bc LA and Hollywood's area does have mountains that get some HEAVY snow and rain, to the point where houses often get snowed in ("wait, but the drought—?" fam, it just won't come down the mountains. idk why the weather is like that except ✨️general global-warming reasons✨️. and the water doesnt trickle down bc, down the mountains, is so hot normally that a lot of that shit evaporates. sometimes, we get "lucky" and the "global warming happens in extremes both ways" thing means those mountains will get SUCH BAD snow that the hot af valleys can get enough water for the drought to temporarily be "off". but that shit doesnt stick, and thank fuck for that bc these mountain towns cant stand THAT bad snow ALL the time, so the drought comes back), there will still be dead pine-needles and other evergreens in overabundance across these woods' floor, and more and more and more will fall bc the nature of a drought and how HOT it gets and that shit can catch on fire EASY
and let's pretend for a second that there are no rural mountain towns in the LA and Hollywood region (there are) but let's pretend there arent. i grew up in a college-town full of trees, at least one per house, in the valley of that region. we still get seasons. flowers bloom, red and orange leaves, brown leaves, leaflessly bare trees, i just personally never experienced snow in my hometown. i grew up associating winter with rain, and i genuinely frowned in upset if i didnt get rain on Christmas (still do. even when i wasnt in my hometown. rainy Christmas beats "white Christmas" or "green Christmas" every time for me). so we do get seasons, we still get all the trees' seasonal forms. we just are also heavy on "throw your leaves away, rake it all up, fire-season is around the corner!" types of stuff
but even if you went with stereotypical "oh, but the palm trees tho?" type of trees, in a fantasy where that's somehow the only tree in California: that shit is ever-green, but that doesn't mean it is plastic. the leaves still brown and fall. we just p immediately get rid of them since they're SO BIG that they can cause issues with foot-traffic and are annoying as hell to drive over. so you dont see them too often, not like other ever-greens, where youll easily see a shitton of pine-needles or whatever around. and thank fuck for it, bc rats nest in palm-trees and i always freak about the mostly-irrational fear of one falling by me with a rat; and seeing either a rat die from the fall or the spooked and confused rat possibly attack me. like. to the point that unless i can see a dead palm-tree leaf is fully flat, i give that shit a WIDE berth bc im scared of a spooked or dead rat being under it OR of another leaf falling. and palm-trees being evergreen means those leaves fall all-year-round, randomly, there's no season. so, again, not like that shit is plastic or like it is impossible to see a dead palm-tree leaf around. so that's not the "no leaves here are turning brown, wtf" happening either
and, as a quick aside, before someone from Missouri says it: i am aware y'all ALSO have fire-season/s, burn bans, and your trees sometimes are also unintentionally creating kindling. it's just not AS infamous as California's, because we don't have a "yearly drought" but instead have this 365-day-long drought that has brief "off-periods" of being over before returning in less than 4, 6 months. it's not a competition, bc fire-season is fucked up either way. it's just "we have more dead leaves than y'all nc of that on/off drought" is all im saying. not about how bad/worse whose fire-season is, that shit's fucked. bUT I'LL BRING UP HOW MISSOURI ALSO HAS A FIRE-SEASON, JUST WAIT
so why does this line fuck me up??? if leaves ARE brown in California?
exactly that. (ill explain) (..obviously lol)
i think that's the point of the line 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶. not that "tee-hee 🤪 california is plastic and never gets seasons 😝 so 'no leaves' CAN 'turn brown' there 😜 heh" kind of "there are NO leaves here turning brown, there's no snow, there's no seasons, everything is 'young' forever" kind of reading. toss that shit out of here, that's not relevant to my personal reading of the song. to me, it's not "none of these leaves are brown"
it's instead "too many of these leaves are brown. leaves are not supposed to be brown all the time" kind of 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 (if you need an example of the emphasis shift: we have moved from "No unicorns are here, only horses (unicorns don't exist here)" to more of an "No unicorns are without a horn, there shouldn't just be horses (unicorns do exist here)" type of sentence? bc we have moved from "No leaves are brown, leaves should be turning brown (browning leaves don't exist here)" to instead "No leaves are brown, leaves shouldnt always be brown, leaves should be green in spring and red in autumn (brown leaves exist in overabundance). i hope, if everything else hasn't made the emphasis shift click yet, that breakdown example helps???), like Chappell Roan would— instead of yearning for leaves turning brown and seeing winter— be yearning for leaves turning green, of spring, of rain, of rebirth and youth instead of this "kindling for a fire" (possible phoneix reborn from the ashes) where 🎶"My dying town"🎶 then has a double-meaning of both "my hometown (definition 1: place of your early years) in Missouri is dying (with people like the singer leaving and population dwindling assumedly)" AND "my hometown (definition 2: place of current residence) in California is dying (with brown leaves and fires)". which can then turn the lines about 🎶"Thought I'd be cool in California/I'd make you proud/To think I almost had it going/But I let you down"🎶 and 🎶"Come get me out of California"🎶 to easily twist from "I failed, I messed up" walk-of-shame kind of reasons for why "Thought I'd make you proud by being cool → I let you down" into instead being external reasons of the "This Is Fine" House-On-Fire Dog Meme becoming the "How Could I Ever Think Was Fine?!" House-On-Fire Dog Meme variety. it instead reads as an evacuation, as "i almost got it but all this other stuff happened (like, idk, a wildfire lmao) and i need to leave, help me live, i cant brave this anymore, im sorry for asking for help and letting you down"... with the irony being Missouri ALSO has fire-season. but they just have a fire-season with other forms of weather more consistently everywhere, with less brown leaves. so there is this kind of "Chappell Roan, Missouri isn't where you should run from a fire, there's fires over there too", which just twists the knife about 🎶"My dying town"🎶 for sure since both are capable of burning. but it kind of makes it also more apparent that, hey, both of these places (to live in pursuit of fame OR to live with fame abandoned) will burn away a part of you, and you will panic about the "new devil" and yearn for "the devil you know" twist of "the grass is always greener on the other side". also, the place you grew up will always be special to you and scream of safety in a way. like im saying all this stuff about California, but id write a song wailing about wanting to go back if i ever had to leave it. all of which in turn spins 🎶"'Cause I was never told that I wasn't going to get/The things I want the most/And people always say 'If it hasn't happened yet/Then maybe you should go'"🎶 to now be about wanting to go to Missouri (but can't, as you can hear from the pleas being unanswered and the lack of shift from "Come get me → You've come to get me/I've left/I'm leaving/I'm packing/etc") and people encouraging "maybe you should go to Missouri". but the singer doesnt. Chappell Roan instead writes about someone who wants to leave but isn't leaving. the closest the singer gets is 🎶"Too hard to find reasons to stay/Even true love could not persuade"🎶 but the act of leaving never ACTUALLY happens. the singer pleads but doesn't move. Chappell Roan already wrote about how the singer has 🎶"[T]rade[d] amber clay roads for the/Sea foam and endless sun rays"🎶 and the leaves that are only ever brown and, as a result, will have to remain "stretched across four states" with unanswered pleading
which you could read as "Missouri is mad" and feels "let down" that the singer ever left, not that the singer wasn't able to "be cool in California". i personally see it more as Noah Kahan's You're Going To Go Far 🎶"We ain't angry at you, love/You're the greatest thing we've lost"🎶 and 🎶"The boards will still creak, the leaves will still die/We ain't angry at you, love/We'll be waitin' for you, love/And we'll all be here forever/And we'll all be here forever/You're gonna go far"🎶 or even Chuckie's famous line in Good Will Hunting (1997) about Will's potential that went like "Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house, watchin' the Patriots games, workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill ya. That's not a threat, that's a fact, I'll fuckin' kill ya. [...] No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time" or Cinema Paradiso (1988) scene where Alfredo is saying goodbye to Toto and "Don't come back. Don't think about us. Don't look back. Don't write. Don't give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don't come see me. I won't let you in my house. Understand?"/"Thank you. For everything you've done for me."/"Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt". albeit i never liked the trope assumption of "small town lives never change", esp to the point that entire towns or states would be "waiting" or "a waste of time". i think the Thing is moreso about "sometimes you have to leave, even for just a while, you just have to leave and nobody is going to bring you back early". im more of a Nina, more of a Breathe, from In The Heights, state of mind than i ever would be "someone comes and gets the singer of Chappell Roan's California themselves". you come back when YOU come back. or else you never do. like i said, id be wailing for California, and i know my health will force me to leave it someday since i cant live well in this heat, so im definitely not of a "never come back" OR of a "small town/states are lesser" lens or whatever. but rather that kind of "everybody wants the best for you so badly, for you to at least leave for a while bc thats the best thing for you, that theyll ignore your pleading until you yourself make ACTUAL moves to come back. to follow your dreams, even if it is just for a while and then your dreams or means change, then you must follow that shit wholeheartedly". even though all the examples i gave are of people implied to have never came back, or practically never, if i remember right, in the case of Toto who does briefly return for Alfredo's funeral before returning to his new home elsewhere in Italy. still. my overall point is i dont think the singer's pleas being ignored is malicious. i believe the singer has the agency to leave, and is just momentarily scared of something external that isnt actually That New, but is scared of actually returning (and thereby doesnt use their own agency to evacuate) bc doing so/having left in the first place feels like letting Missouri down...
anyway.
i have a lot of thoughts about California is, i guess, the moral of the story(?). and this song wrecks me to pieces in a way that i dont think a lot of people outside of my homestate will get, yet everyone DOES get with You're Going To Go Far, Breathe from In The Heights, Good Will Hunting, and Cinema Paradiso... not to mention how many double-meanings the ambiguity of these lines have, and how it isn't as straight-forward a song as many assume, and that is BEAUTIFUL. but people keep interpreting what 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 means (aka: the plastic trees people) in ways that piss me off so now y'all get this essay
(anyway should i mention how ive wondered before if The Mamas & The Papas were prophetic in how 🎶"The leaves are brown and the sky is gray"🎶 so easily leads into the Californian brand of fire-season, all about the kindling and smoke?? no? okay lol)
I love seeing the way you draw Lawlight so happy together, they’re usually a really angst pair so seeing them smile and hug is so cute ty
Daww thank you! I think some angst is gonna inevitably make it onto this blog just for that reason, but for the most part I like seeing them happy together too
@light-kun I coloured it! Thank you for getting me back into death note, I started drawing them again because I went through a bunch of the great fanfics that you recommended on your blog.
Man, it really didn’t take long for me to derail this thing
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Age progression from ‘Change of Circumstances’—- an absolutely touching fanfic about if Light had grown up at the Wammy orphanage and he and L grow up and slowly fall in love.
If anyone has any similar fic recs I would love to hear.