She/her - 26yo ★ Artist & Writer & Anarchist Queer Hope Punk Idiot ★ Art blog @zorume-art ★ Follow me on Social Medias with "Zorume" ★ https://linktr.ee/zorume ★ PP by @ummmmandy
Ok I have decided that I don’t have the stamina for an october drawing challenge I am going to start #REPOSTOBER where I just repost old art that I like every day 💁♀️ JOIN ME IF YOUR DARE 🎃
i commissioned @pauvre-lola for this truly gorgeous piece of amity and i couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out, i am In Love and so so grateful 💖💖💖
consider: teenagers aren’t apathetic about everything they’re just used to you shitting all over whatever they show excitement about
Teen: *gets a job*
“I GOT THE JOB!”
Parents: Well, when I was your age, I already had 5 jobs and was supporting my family
Teen: *gets all A’s*
“I worked really hard!”
Parents: Well, of course you did, this is the expectation, not a celebration.
probably why so many teens take to social media where they can enthusiastically share their interests and achievements and get positive feedback that their parents never gave
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
This hit hard
I remember once, when I was in my early 20s, I was an afternoon supervisor at my job, and I worked with mostly teenagers, and the one day this one kid, who was like 15, was bored so I suggested he could clean out the fridge. He did and when he was done I said he did a good job.
After that, this kid was cleaning out the fridge at least once a week, and I was like, “why are you always cleaning the fridge?” Like, I didn’t mind, but it seemed odd. And he said, “one time I cleaned the fridge and you said I did a good job. I wanted to make you proud of me again.”
Literally, I changed the entire way I interacted with teenagers after that. I actually got a package of glitter stars and I would stick them on their nametags when they did a good job, and they loved it.
My manager had commented on how hard these kids work and I said, “they’re starved for positive feedback. They go to school all day then come to work all evening and no one appreciates it because it’s expected of them, but they’re still kids. They need positive feedback from adults in their lives.”
Like, everyone likes feeling appreciated. Everyone likes being complimented and having their efforts be noticed. Another coworker (who was a mother of teenage children), hated that I did this, and said they were too old to be rewarded with stickers, but like… it wasn’t about the stickers. The stickers were just a symbol that their effort was noticed and appreciated. I was just lucky that I learned this at a time when I was still young enough to remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was only 2 years out of highschool at that point and highschool is fucking hard. People forget this as they get older, but ask anyone and almost no one would ever want to go back and do it again, but they expect kids to suck it up because they’re young so they should be able to do school full time, plus homework, and work, and maintain a healthy social life, and sleep, and spend time with family, and do chores and help out at home, and worry about college and relationships and everything else, and then just get shit on all the time and treated like they’re lazy and entitled. And then they wonder why teenagers are apathetic.
For a german exam I had to argue against an article that was essentially „kids these days, they don’t care about anything and are constantly on their phones“ and really it was the easiest essay I‘ve ever written.
Teens don’t talk to adults bc adults only ask „so, how‘s school“ to then interrupt them two sentences in. And because they can’t engage in a conversation about buying houses and working in a bank. I would’ve loved to talk about philosophy and politics and history with family the way I did with friends and in class but because I was young no one took what I had to say seriously.
And no, teens aren’t always on their phone. They’re on their phone when they’re bored. You think I‘m on social media when I‘m with my friends? When I‘m talking about something I‘m interested in?
Maybe the reason kids are so distant and always on their phone during family parties and the like is because you‘re failing to engage and include them.
Whoop there it is
When you respect kids, they really respond and learn from you. But if you treat kids like “theyre just a kid, what do they know??” then you’ll never find out.
As a Disneyland Cast Member, I’ll add my own experience onto this –
Very frequently, when I first speak to a child while I’m at work, they’ll kind of withdraw and act uncomfortable and shy. Their parents will then rather frequently tell them to not be shy and try to coax them to talk to me – whenever that happens, I always, without fail, politely dissuade the parents from pressuring them.
“I’m a stranger,” I’ll tell the kid’s parents. “I don’t blame them for not talking to me – if they were anywhere else, they’d have the right idea, to not immediately trust me.”
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen that same kid – simply after hearing their initial reaction being validated, instead of reproached – immediately open up to me after that. I also cannot tell you how many times that child and I would go on to start a friggin’ marathon conversation, and I got to hear all about how great their day was or what their favorite Disney movies were or what rides they liked and didn’t like or how much they like a certain Disney character or song…all from me validating that initial feeling and showing genuine interest in what they had to say.
This isn’t just young children, either. I will always remember being positioned outside the Animation Academy one day and starting up a conversation with a young lady, perhaps 12 or 13, who joined the line with her father a full 25 minutes before the class was supposed to start. Now keep in mind, we do a drawing class every 30 minutes: there was no one else in line at that point, and no one else joined the girl and her father in line for a full fifteen minutes. So I could tell pretty quickly that this girl was very emotionally invested in getting a good spot for the drawing class: a conclusion all the more bolstered by the fact that she had a notebook under her arm. I asked her if she was an artist – she said yes, but seemed uncomfortable at the question, so I skipped even asking her if I could see her work, instead admitting that I myself wasn’t very good at art, but that I’m trying to get better and that I love the history of Disney animation. On the screens around us was video footage of different Disney concept art and animation reels, so I pointed one of them out (for Snow White) and asked if she knew the story behind the making of the movie. Upon confirming that she didn’t, I proceeded to get down on the floor so I could sit next to her and her father and dramatically tell the whole story of how “Uncle Walt” created the first full-length animated motion picture, even though everyone and their mother thought he was an idiot for even trying, and how the film ended up becoming the first Hollywood blockbuster. After the story was over, the girl’s father said that his daughter really wanted to be an animator when she grew up, and she finally felt comfortable enough to open her notebook and show me some of her artwork. It was wonderful! Every sketch had such character and you could tell how much work she put into it! And I could tell how much telling her that – and sharing that moment with her, where we got to connect over something we both really enjoyed – had meant. And after the class was over, she sought me out to show me what she and her father had drawn – and sure enough, hers was great! (Her father’s was too, really. XD)
People, kids and teens included, love sharing what they love and how they feel with others. You just have to give them the chance to show it.
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
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I feel like I am obliged to add one more thing: don’t ever think that the kids won’t feel your unspokenjudgements cause they do!
I felt always like a ‘problem’ in my family, until I was about sixteen, I got this teacher who was litterally the first to tell I was worthy. He changed my life up till this day.
Also how do grown ups imagine how ‘we’ will ever learn to engage in conversations with adults properly if you don’t teach us?
This post is
Everything
I told one of my new coworkers (who is 26) that he was doing really well and that I was proud of him and his progress. I thought he was going to start crying for how quietly he said “really?”.
Positive feedback makes the biggest difference to everything.
I used to have a coworker who only spoke Burmese. She knew a few words in English, but literally it was like “hey Susu, can you clean the cooler for me?” “Yes yes, I clean, I clean.” She’d moved to the US in her late 30s and never really got the hang of English. (I don’t say this to make fun of her. She was a refugee fleeing a brutal and bloody war in Myanmar and her broken English was a sign of deep determination and tragedy. I say it because the language barrier, and the extent of it, is important to what happened next.)
She was shy, and kind of withdrawn, and extremely slow—it took this woman an hour to do a sink of dishes that took me 30 minutes and I was considered not particularly fast—but she was absolutely dogged. She would do her job and get it done.
So this one day I realized we had all kinds of “hey, great job!” cards on our little recognition board thing for almost the whole crew, but none for Susu, because “she won’t understand anyway.” So I threw a couple of simple sentences into a translation app and spent like half an hour very painstakingly drawing these sentences in Burmese characters (and drawing is really what it was—I felt like I was four years old and holding a pencil for the first time again) and gave her the card. She kind of glanced and it and went “oh thank you” and then did this massive double-take and raised it in front of her face and read it, and read it again, and then just about hollered “OH THANK YOU THANK YOU” and I showed her where she could pin it on the recognition board if she wanted. She chose to take it home instead, which, totally fair.
All it said was “thank you for your hard work, you’re very reliable.”
Everything changed after that. She started using her limited English more, picking up new words here and there (rather amusingly, ours was a multilingual kitchen but she didn’t know which words belonged to which language, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a tiny Burmese woman slap a fryer and say “Oy vay this thing, yeah! Pendejo!” I mean yes, completely valid emotion about that fucking fryer, but when this is how you’re discovering she’s picked up both Spanish and Yiddish and thinks both of them are English, lemme tell you, that sure is an Emotion), enthusiastically participating in things.
She was in her forties.
Nobody but her children had spoken a word to her in Burmese since she left home.
People just want to be known. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Characters co-owned w @_magic.stardust_ on IG 😌✨ (a couple more comics abt this on my account already)
I’m not a very positive person, i have a LOT of doomer tendencies. I feel everything like it’s cranked up to the max, and as you can imagine it doesn’t feel great. Every day throws more atrocious things in my face, and i can’t ignore it 🥲
I see other people feeling the same way. We dissociate and numb ourselves by watching, playing, buying stuff. Hateful movements are gaining traction and climate change has its foot in the door
And it’s all happening either way, to some degree. I feel like shit, and i’m sick of that. I might as well have a little bit of hope, otherwise i’ll go bonkers 😭 Do we continue doomering our way through life or ignoring things altogether, or do we choose to hope a little?
That’s why i’m looking into Solarpunk and am thinking of taking any readers (and myself) on a little journey through a better world, and how it might work, through a series of mini-comics I’m posting here. I don’t have all the answers (no one person ever does), and i don’t hold any pretenses that this kind of world is going to be our future. But i often hear “You love critiquing the status quo, but what do you propose instead?” I’d like to find out too. Here’s to something we can hope for, no matter how slim the chances are! Because as I said, i might just lose my mind otherwise ☠️
P.S for new peeps: this is an AU with me and my friend’s OCs, so all characters are genderless and go by they/them. It’s not identical to our world in that regard, but other than this fact we try to keep it more or less realistic 🤙
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I spent a thousand krillion hours on this and the other Solarpunk comics, consider throwing 2$ at me on Buy Me A Coffee to raise my spirits :] I’m not doing well mentally these days, but people’s appreciation helps a lot. Thank you very much!
Because someone might as well!? And look at this. Look. At. This.
Does this look right to you??
These are just the last three fics I wrote. I appreciate the likes, believe me I do, but you have to understand. Likes do nothing for content creators. It’s the reblogs. Because that’s how you find shit on your dashboard. Through reblogs. Not likes. This isn’t twitter or tiktok or instagram. This is a website that’s run by the reblog system.
Reblogging helps content creators put their stuff out there. Why do you think so many people stopped writing fanfic and creating beautiful fanart and edits? It’s because they put in hours of work and don’t get nearly enough notes for their masterpieces. Yes we do this because we enjoy it but like…some validation won’t hurt. A boost of confidence here and there might be all someone needs to finish whatever thing they started and left.
One thing I don’t think the Spoon metaphor has helped able-bodied people understand is that you can overdraw.
Generally, for most conditions, running out of spoons doesn’t mean you collapse, doesn’t produce an effect they can actually see. What it means is that you run on life support, quite possibly unsafely, until you get to a safe place and can stop. But you’ll owe those spoons back, with interest. You’ll have hurt yourself to do it.
Sometimes I hang out with a friend and they’ll be like, wow, I’m really glad you had a good day. And I have to decide whether to make them feel bad by explaining that in fact they did not catch me on a good day, and tomorrow will probably be bad. I just made choices.
“Hey, y'know that anime trope where a spellcaster runs out of mana, but like his friends and family are counting on him to win or keep the shield up or whatever, so he starts to draw from his own life force? And then the battle is won and everyone’s all "YAAAAAYYYY” but he just fucking… collapses and has to rest for a few days because he literally vampired himself to win? It’s kinda like that.“
"I borrowed spoons from tomorrow for today and my loan shark is gonna break my kneecaps as soon as I get home.”
And this one is morbidly hilarious. EU buys russian gas through Az//rbaijan thus continuing murdering ukranians and NOW armenians too, while staying warm and cozy ☺️ if you have the time I urge you to send them a complaint about president of European Commission dear Mrs. Von der Leyen circumventing sanctions and endangering both ukranian and armenian populations, making fascist petro-dictatorships only stronger with every single passing day which results in deterioration of human rights situation both in Rus/sia and Az//rbaijan. Go ham, friends!
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Asked by Anonymous
