When You Have The Motivation To Do Art But Don’t Know What Draw, So You’re Just There Like

Had an entire day to draw

Wants to draw at 3 am

First thing I want to say is that it is not necessary for fiction to be good for people’s mental health.  Art for art’s sake has value, so does individual autonomy, and people can create and consume fiction based on what they want and what they value without having to make it medicinal so they can justify it as a social good.

Second thing I want to say is that it is not possible to create fiction that is universally good for people’s mental health.  Tumblr fandom tends to treat certain mental health needs as implicitly the most legitimate, and inherent universal needs, but it’s way more complicated than that.  Many people will absolutely thrive on stories of loving, supportive families, while some people will need to avoid them due to their specific family history.  Some people are helped by reading about characters they enjoy practicing healthy communication and getting positive results, while other people might come away hearing, “Everyone can do healthy communication and get helpful responses if they try hard enough, so therefore the problem must be you screwing it up!”   Some people might find “Destroy the evil abuser” revenge fantasies a helpful way to process anger, while other people might find they do more harm than good.    A lot of people find stories of a character being gently nurtured by someone else, while some people have negative associations with other people trying to take care of them and have bad psychological reactions to these stories.  (And let me tell you, if you have a bad associations with soft pastel nurturing that mean it can put you in a bad headspace, Tumblr can be pure hell.)

Mental health needs differ.  They’re not always soft.  They’re not always predictable based on a diagnosis, or a few details of someone’s history.  They’re diverse, individual, and sometimes mesh poorly with stuff that most people would consider healthy and wholesome.   Your story might be helpful for a specific person, or for a number of people, but there’s no such thing as the universally healthy story or the universally unhealthy story.  It is literally not possible to write something for the general public and ensure it’s healthy for everyone who reads it.

moody boy

gay

Actually I'm feelin kinda sad today, but the sentiment is appreciated!

These people went from lifting chips to pulling off some action movie shit

It really freaks me out that people think body hair is unsanitary. Like y'all are just so brainwashed if you believe that body hair is perfectly normal and fine on men, but on women its suddenly dirty? Use your critical thinking skills for a few damn seconds, I’m begging you.

I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hiyao Miyazaki

My “draw the squad” memes so far