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sexy-velociraptors · 1 year

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WELCOME TO THE NEW KINK-BLOG-IN-PROGRESS

What’s up? I’m Leo. 25, submissive, transmasc. I use he/him pronouns IRL but u can call me “it” here.

I was super active on tumblr before the Purge, my url was velociraptors-jerkin-it. I’m looking to get back into the game, but it seems the game has changed, so please LMK if I’ve got any faux-pas or red flags going on.

THE BORING STUFF:

A DNI list has always struck me as kinda silly (have they ever stopped anyone, ever?), but they seem to be standard, so I’ll get the basics out of the way.

Minors, get your jailbait asses out of here.

Right wingers GTFO, centrists are on Thin Fucking Ice.

ED/Self-Harm/Suicide/etc blogs. If you’re personally struggling, please seek help, but I’ve been there and I’m not talking about you. I mean the proana/thinspo/whatever-the-fuck-y’all’re-calling-yourselves-these-days types, and those who glorify harm to themselves and others.

People who are into hard limits of mine can still interact, but please don’t send messages/leave captions pertaining to them.

Likewise, straight men and lesbians can follow, but I’d really not hear from y’all.

On the tumblr #disc-horse front, asexuals are fantastic, so are people of any and every gender, pronouns, and presentation. Liking weird porn doesn’t inherently make a person immoral or harmful, IRL immoral and harmful actions do.

MY HARD LIMITS INCLUDE (BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO):

Dick pics

Incest (including daddy kink and stepfamily)

Vomit/scat/watersports

Blood (as well as knives, needles, etc)

Misgendering/detrans/sissification

Breeding kink

Ageplay

Guns

Bestiality (as defined by the Harkness Test)

Necrophilia

Anything that violates IRL people’s consent (fictional people are fair game)

I’m in charge of curating my own online experience, if I follow someone on my own DNI list that’s my fault. If one of those things applies to you and you’d like to let me know, that’d be awesome, but is not mandatory.

That being said, I can and will block with impunity. If you send me anything to do with my hard limits you will get an instablock. If you send me dick pics you will get an instablock. Age stuff is iffy, but if I deem you too old or young for me I may politely ask u to lay off (unless you’re under 18, in which case, instablock)

THE FUN STUFF

My kinks are too numerous to list, and I discover new ones all the time. I’m a masochistic service sub into bondage, degradation, objectification, and god-knows-what-else. I also have what I like to call a “möbius kink”: indulging other people’s people’s fetishes gets me off, even/especially when they’re not my own. For example, I have zero interest in feet, but I’ve had a great time sucking the toes of someone who did.

I have a toybox I’m rather proud of, if I do say so myself. I’ve got plenty of restraints, vibes, hurty-things, the list goes on. I’ll probably post more info about it soon.

Captions on my photos are welcome and encouraged!

REMEMBER THE OLD BLOG?

The old blog was largely kinky reblogs, but I had a system for my original content. Anyone could send in a request for any photo (within my limits), and I’d post it. I want to bring that back! With a few caveats:

A. My living situation limits my ability to take creative photos. I may be simply unable to get every photo from every angle like I used to.

B. This is probably not going to be sustainable. At some point the photo request rules will change to make the workload manageable, and you all have to promise to be cool about it, ok?

C: I worked way too hard on the old blog for zero money. I’ll likely work out an honor-based tip system. This is also under the banner of “I warned you in advance so you have to promise to be cool about it”

If you have any old pics/posts from the old blog, I’d love to see them! Most of those nudes are lost to time AFAIK

ABOUT MY BODY/GENDER:

I’m a trans man. Transmasculine. FTM. If you don’t know what that is, Google is free. If you don’t think that exists, the unfollow and block buttons are right there.

If you have “men DNI” “cis men DNI” or similar in your bio, I won’t be interacting. You have the right to draw boundaries, but cis men and I are the same gender.

I got top surgery in Jan 2022. I don’t have nipples anymore. I think this is extremely sexy of me and I’m correct.

I’ve been on and off testosterone since Feb 2016. I’ve been off it long enough (due to circumstance changes, not gender ones) that I’m not as hairy as I used to be. This is relevant bc the old blog got popular among body hair fetishists (my möbius kink at work)

I have a clitoris, T made it much larger than a cis woman’s. You can call it a clit, or a cock, or a shrimpdick, or just about anything else. I also have a vagina, which I tend to call my front hole or my cunt. You can call it a pussy, but please don’t call it anything feminine or things like “pretty”.

I’d like to think that’s all, but I’m sure there will be more I’ll have to add at some point. Consider all of the above subject to change.

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manychocolatefactories · 3 years

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CatCF Dark Chocolate: Part 2, the tour

Willy Wonka and his factory:

For the Factory in this version, I wanted to give a feeling of the factories of the 19th century. Something between a place where a mad scientist would work and a steampunk fantasy. Willy Wonka himself is based on Jules Vernes.

Willy Wonka himself is a man with an "impressive beard", a solemn but kind air on his face, and an overall feeling of knowledge and wisdom. Wearing a thick and tight jacket, a black top hat and a dark green coat, his appearance actually gives mixed signals: his short hair is fluffy and shaggy, like a man of free spirit, of amusement and not much care, but his beard and mustache are neatly trimmed and cut, like any serious and respectable man. His hair is brown, chocolate-colored, but with touches of white and gray here and there. His eyes are kind and twinkling, but his mouth is a harsh thin line. He is the kind of man that will say the most extravagant things perfectly seriously, but treat serious and common business as a joke. Don't think however that is an extravagant or funny man. Again, he rather gives the feeling of a kind mad scientist.

As for the Factory itself, actually the locals, the people of the town over which the Factory looms, dislike it. Sure, the Factory is admired by people wordlwide - tourists come to see it, painters come to paint it, it is a landmark admired in foreign countries. But the locals do not like it at all. It is a tall, dark, cold and stern building, with no color of beauty, only locked doors, metallic fences, thick walls and high chimneys. The Factory does not employ anyone of the town, in fact no one ever saw the Factory workers arrive or leave. Wonka himself has never left his factory for decades now. Couple that with strange white silhouettes seen at the windows, and the ramblings of the local homeless man who apparently hates the Factory and keeps insulting it, and quickly a bad reputation was built for it. Adults believe Wonka is trying to hide a shameful secret, the kids tell tales of "the haunted chocolate factory"...

In fact, I wanted an air of creepiness for the Factory. I took back the original idea of Dahl that all the workers are regular humans dressed in white, and I pushed it a little further: they are basically so covered in white you can hardly see them anymore. They have white blouses and jackets, white gloves, white masks, white caps, white helmets... After each kid's demise, a mysterious poem is recitated (like in Dahl's original drafts), mysterious voices that could be eithe the worker's or something else... In fact, with each kid demise there is an element of sppokiness which may be the kid hallucinating out of fear, or not (Augustus in the river thinks something is tying to catch him or drag him down ; Wilbur and Rice in the dark hear and feel creepy things...). And Wonka himself keeps making ominous references to "selling your soul to the devil"...

But in truth the Factory isn't a death trap at all. Behind the scenes, the workers are just normal people with their own life and their usual office routines, and who happent to leave very discreetly the Factory. The Factory is also based a lot on the Menier chocolate factory, which is the "real-life" Wonka factory. I may speak more about it one day.

Anyway... now let's go on with the tour!

# The Labyrinth. Behind each entrance, before each exit of the Factory, is a labyrinth, a maze Wonka designed after the works of Penrose and Möbius. Only he and his workers know the way out of them. This is merely a security measure.

# The Edible Garden. For this garden, I wanted to insist on the idea of it being fake and artificial - Wonka didn't try to create a perfect replica of a landscape. This room doesn't even have any real sense in the Factory, it is merely a piece of art he created so that he could come in here to relax and mediate. There are no windows, all the lights come from spots on the far-away ceiling and the ground is grey stone (because Wonka is revolted at the idea of making grass out of candy, it would be too dirty). There are trees of hard caramel and mint candies, orchards where the fruits are made of gummy, lollipops shaped like flowers and numerous sculptures of sugar - none of this is to be eaten however. At the back of the garden, there is the Chocolate River. The River serves a double use: on one side, it is merely an aesthetic addition to the Edible Garden. On the other, it is a source of energy for the Factory - it used to be a water mill, and Wonka kept the ancient structures but replaced water with chocolate. As such, the production of chocolate actually helps create energy back - and the river ends with a series of different pipes, each one leading to a different room where the chocolate will be used.

This is where Augustus Pottle meets his demise. The competitive glutton tried to empty the river of its content, and fell into it. Sucked up by one of the glass pipes, he did a long travel through the tubes and pipes of the factory, which crushed and reshaped his fat into a cylindric body - before he fell into one of the boiling vats. There, the heat was enough to have all his fat melt, like in a super-intense sauna. Hopefully, he was rescued before being boiled alive - but Augustus left the factory as a mass of sagging, extra-skin, his wrinkled folds dragging on the ground, like a skeleton wearing a bride's dress made of human flesh.

# At the back of the Edible Garden, there is a long hallway that passes by a balcony. Said balcony allows one to see the "Mosaic room", a place where Wonka makes mosaics out of pralines - and since the room is really vast, he can make giant mosaics.

# The Vanilla Fudge Mountain. While it looks like a miniature mountain kept inside a giant room, this titanic hunk of vanilla fudge is actually a fragment taken out of the Honeylaya mountain range (located somewhere between the great Black Thunder chocolate mines, and the sugar marshes of the Sea of Marmelade). [References to the Himalaya, the Black Thunder coal mines, the Black Thunder chocolate bars, the Sea of Marmara and salt marshes ]. This room is basically a copy-cut of Dahl's deleted chapter of the same name, with workers breaking down the mountain, piling the fudge in wagons and then sending it to the Cutting and Pounding Room.

This is where Wilbur and Rice meet their demise. Unruly, and tired of having all their pranks and "fun" sabotaged by Wonka and Bertie Upside, they decide to ride the wagons. Of course, they are sent down the Cutting and Pounding Room - hopefully for them, Wonka has installed an intelligent wire strainer/net that can catch all impurities detected, to clean the fudge. So the kids are saved, right? Well the thing is that, while waiting on the wire strainer for someone to save them, the kids, bored and gluttonous, ended up eating all the fudge that fell down around them. They ate so much of it, that the machine ended up identifying them as "fudge" instead of "impurity" (since they were basically 80 percent fudge after their gorging Xp). So they where sent down in the Room, thrown on a conveyor belt... ready to be pound and cut into slices. The workers realized this of course and stopped the conveyor belt before the knifes - but the kids still got pounded. Wilbur, who was lying on his side when he got pounded, became tall and thin ; while Tommy, who was standing up, got pounded on the head and became small and large. In fact, when they got out of the Factory, their angry parents ended up mistaking one for another and going home with the wrong boy.

# After the Vanilla Fudge Mountain, the tour goes by another hallway, this one with numerous tall and colorful windows - stained glass made of sugar. Each window illustrates a famous chocolatier or candy-maker, but in the style of saints in churches. You have Philippe Suchard (the grandfather of Milka), Henry Isaac Rowntree (the maker of the Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums), the Menier family (the biggest chocolatiers of 19th century and first half of 20th century Europe, and distant relatives of Wonka) ; the Murrie family (creators of Hersheys) and the Mars famly (bheind the Mars bars, the M&Ms, the Snickers and the Milky Ways). "All families" Wonla notes with an air of sadness. Indeed, Wonka always wanted a family - or rather at this point in his life he regrets to not have a family and an heir, isolated that he is in his factory.

# Inventing Room number 3. There are numerous "Inventing Rooms" in the Factory, dedicated to developping, inventing, testing, studying products or just do crash tests. The number 3 is clustered with huge, squat and heavy dark machines, with vats, cauldrons and ovens, and all sorts of other structures dragon-like due to the steam and fire they spill out. It quite a grim and sinister place, but it is also where Wonka tests his most fantastic inventions, like the Rainbow Drops, the Luminous Lollies or the Three-Course Meal Gum.

As you guess, this is where Violet Beauregard will meet her demise. I set myself a rule to avoid all blueberry transformations when dealing with the demises of the Violets, so here I rather use the tomato soup: after chewing (not only did Violet took the gum due to her "talent" but also because she misheard Wonka and thought it was a "tasting" room), her face becomes red and chubby, her skin smooth and glossy, her cheeks puff out, her nose bulges, her forehead bloats, her throat becomes big, her lips thick and her ears thin, pointy, green. Result? Her face looks like a mass of tomatoes. Tomatoes for cheeks, a tomato for a forehead, tomatoes instead of eyelids, a tomato for a nose and two for the lips... Think of the Arcimboldo paintings, how he made faces out of flowers and vegetables. It is the same thing here. And while her parent is furious at first, they end up actually realizing it might be for the better - because now she is truly unique and attention-attracting, and that's what her parents always wanted...

# Follows a long hallway with a series of different rooms: two are taken from the original book, the Fizzy Lifting Drinks and the Squares that Look Round. One I changed slightly: the Chocolate Milk Room, where Wonka keeps special cows that have a chocolate-flavored milk.

# The Heating Room. A room taken from Dahl's deleted chapter "The Warming Candy Room".

This Heating Room looks like the negine room of a submarine or a freighter, filled with turbines, pistons, pipes, wheels and pressure gauges. This is where Wonka creates all of his heat-related products: hot ice-creams to fight chilling days, hot ice-cubes to give back warmth to a cold drink, and finally the warming candies (see the original deleted chapter). Marvin Prune, absolutely outraged by what he perceives as Wonka breaking all laws of science and physics, tries to prove that he is a quack by stuffing himself with handfuls of warming candies. Which results in him over-heating: he becomes red, sweaty, thirsty, removes all of his clothes (save for his underwears) and screams to death.

Wonka will have him put in the freezer, and also covered regularly in water, to avoid him drying up to death or combust. But even as he is leaving the factory, he is still red, sweaty, steamy and in underwears - the falling snow melting as it touches him.

# The Nut Room. Another classic piece of the original factory that I wanted to reinvent. Basically, here the kids do not visit the Nut Room proper, but the Under-Nut Room, or Sub-Nut Room. You've got the Nut Room where the white-clad workers separate good nuts from bad nuts Then the "bad" batch is then in this under-room, where trained squirrels will sniff out any potential "good nut" the workers may have missed. All the nuts are on a conveyor belt, that is getting then thrown down a chute.

Of course, Elvira Salt meets her demise here by trying to take one of the squirrels by force, resulting in a squirrel attack. However, the squirrels do not push her down the chute. Rather, she climbs on the conveyor belt to avoid them and has her fur stuck in the belt. She could have escaped if she had let go of it, but she refused to let it go, so she fell down the chute... and Wonka cannot remember if this particular chute leads to the compost vat he uses to grow his fruits, vegetales and berries - or to the furnace...

But don't worry, she actually falls down in the compost. Elvira will leave the factory extremely dirty, unbearably stinky, so much not even an entire week of baths and showers can remove it, and probably with one or two diseases, but alive.

# The Television Room. I did not had time to clearly prepare this one, but it will be where Michael (Mike) T-V meets his demise. Discovering he can go inside television, he is more happy to oblige, and is absolutely thrilled to be in his favorite shows. But as soon as he leaves the television, he realizes that he is now as small as a television character! No bigger than the screen! He will be sent back to his home, now only able to play with his toys and figurines, the only things at his doll-like size.

# The Molding Room

This room is also taken back from Dahl's original draft. Basically, it is where Wonka creates many of his chocolate sculptures - he has an entire zoo of chocolate animals, and very recently created a machine able to form men, women and children out of chocolate. And this is also where Bertie Upside will meet his demise.

You may be wondering: Bertie? What has he done wrong? He is kind, gentle, generous, perfect. He helped Charlie on numerous occasions, he stopped the mischief of the brats... Isn't he a good kid?

HE IS NOT. Grandpa Georges was right all along: if he appears better than the others, it means that he twice as worse.

Bertie Upside truly has a heart of gold. Which means a heart of cold and hard metal, not of flesh.

Bertie Upside is a psychopath, a sociopath, an evil little boy. Sure he knows how to put on a nice and gentle facade, but it is just manipulation. If he is orphaned, it is because he killed his own parents, and now that he is left alone with Charlie (Wonka being busy elsewhere), Bertie will try to kill him, just for fun, by putting him in the "Chocolate Boy" mould so that he would be smothered in a chocolate statue.

However (I have to admit this part is a bit blurry), Charlie will resist and Bertie will end up thrown inside another moulding machine... A piñata-creating machine. When Bertie will get out of the machine, he will still be a living boy... but now with a flesh as fragile as papier-mâché, and insides filled with candies. Now he is really a sweet kid inside as he is outside. And he will have to be really gentle... if he doesn't want to break.

And of course after that Charlie gets the factory, as it turns out that Wonka was looking for an heir with this tour. Happy end!

Now, as I mentionned a poem forms itself through the story, rhymes being added after each kid's demise (an idea originally taken from Dahl's first drafts of the story). It goes like this:

"Nine little children, in the garden they went,

But one fell, and then they were eight."

"Eight little children, an unruly mix,

Two rode to Chicago, and then they were six."

"Six little children went into a room as busy as a hive,

But one did not listen carefully, and then they were five."

"Five little children, less and less at every door,

One had a fever and then they were four."

"Four little children saw squirrels down the tree,

One fell down the squirrel hole, and then they were three."

"Three little children, and none are new,

One went to play and then they were two."

"Two little children, we are soon to be done,

One got his trickandtreat, and then there was one."

"One little children, everything he won,

He lived ever happily, and now we are done."

#charlie and the chocolate factory #catcf #willy wonka #wonka factory #tour #dark chocolate #demise #veruca salt #augustus gloop #violet beauregarde #mike teavee #charlie bucket #bertie upside #marvin prune #tommy troutbeck #wilbur rice

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plsdontgivemerdmusernames · 3 years

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Multi-Meme Drifting

So you might have seen meme posts drifting around involving Tom the Cat and Daffy the Duck in funny outfits being called 『Stand Masters 』, with Tom the Cat having the stand 『One More Time』, and Daffy Duck having the stand 『Literally Me』. I’ve just had some ideas for their Stand powers and I must share them with you now. Beware, this is a long post.

『Stand Name』

『One More Time』『Stand Master』

『Tom the Cat』

Power: A, Speed: B, Range: E, Durability: E, Precision: B, Potential: D.

The villainous Tom the Cat (Originally Jasper the Cat), who dresses in in a garishly striped acid green and neon orange zoot suit with a wide-brimmed banana-yellow pork-pie hat, always chewing a lit cigar, takes a page from many JoJo boss stand masters with having powers over time. Having discovered his abilities when caught by the police after mugging a rich, middle-aged lady named Mama Two-Shoes, Jasper the Cat, petty criminal and gangster, used One More Time to frame his boss Butch the Cat, escaping conviction with the contents of her purse and using the money to get the new identity of Tom.

Tom’s Stand, One More Time, manifests as a plastic Möbius strip that resembles a tape measure, with Imperial hatch marks running down one edge. One More Time is a non-humanoid, short-range Stand, the length of which Tom the Cat manipulates in order to use his power, which must be close to Tom’s target. By stretching One More Time, Tom can prolong moments to the point of stopping them altogether, and by cutting One More Time apart and swapping sections Tom can alter the flow of events and location of objects within its range. Furthermore, Tom can use One More Time like a garrote, stretching out time and preventing the enemy’s allies from being able to stop Tom.

The precision of this stand is limited to Tom’s foresight, as altering events in time may result in other events following their causes. (For example, using One More Time to trap an enemy in a waiting room may result in re-arranging Tom’s day, such as waking up at midnight and having a continental breakfast, buffet lunch, and three-course meal before going back to bed and not eating anything until Tom uses his power.) As Tom does so, One More Time produces squealing like a viola, the sound of time being warped.

Tom the Cat has abused One More Time, using it to gain power, wealth, and privilege through a combination of assassination, blackmail, sabotage, and theft, perverting the serendipity of others around Tom the Cat and stealing opportunities by ensuring that Tom gets them first, and avoiding injury by replacing Tom’s place in time with other victims or by relocating the effects of blows. Tom’s sadism, vindictiveness, energy, and determination has made him the first mob boss of Albuquerque, New Mexico to win a mayoral position, as well as the hand of Toodles Galore, the former girlfriend of his boss, friend, and later enemy Butch.

『Stand Name』

『Literally Me』『Stand Master』

『Daffy Duck』

Power: E, Speed: E, Range: C, Durability: A, Precision: D, Potential: B.

Daffy Horatio Armando Dumas Tiberius Sheldon Duck is a combative, emotional, and completely unrestrained protagonist, proud of his painstakingly-cultivated appearance, which is that of a black duck who wears a bright pink, mauve-buttoned and -piped tuxedo with an unusually large, acid-green bow tie, a vivid crimson chrysanthemum boutonnière, and banana-yellow gloves and dress shoes. Daffy Duck has done up the feathers on the top of his head, dying them as yellow as his gloves, curling them, and combing them into a quiff.

Having served in the 600th Bombardment Squadron in World War II after conscription, Daffy Duck returned to Albuquerque to become a jazz singer, actor, and dancer, roles in which he had real talent and in which he put great effort into each performance, though he was always passed over by both managers and fans for the utterly effortless, unpracticed, and sarcastic appearances of Bugs Bunny. He always tried to get a leading act by impressing the managers, and always failed.

One night, Daffy Duck tried to show up Bugs’ act by swallowing a nitroglycerin pill, a gunpowder tablet, and a lit match, with the subsequent injury activating Literally Me for the first time, transporting him into the body of a nurse working in a trauma ward. By correctly alerting doctors to treat a misdiagnosed patient, Daffy was transported into a hospital bed after the performance, with a 7-shaped incision stitched shut across his chest and abdomen, career-ending injuries, and a sympathetic visitor in future Stand Master and friend Bugs Bunny.

Daffy’s Stand, Literally Me, is a humanoid (Or in his case, anatine), mid-range Stand, resembling Daffy wearing a lime-green body suit with a teal equipment belt, gauntlets, and boots. Both gauntlets and boots flare out at the ends, appearing loose on the Stand’s body. A large, triangular teal collar juts from the neck and shoulders, and the head has a teal bill and half-helmet with an odd little illicium sprouting from the top, tipped with a yellow light-bulb. In place of eyes, Literally Me has a smooth, reflective, black visor. In combat, Daffy Duck uses Literally Me to trip up and hurt enemies and their Stands with their own power or wrestle them to the ground until they exhaust themselves, using the Stand’s unparalleled durability to take hits that would cripple and kill lesser users, during which Literally Me cries a loud “Hoo-Hoo” frequently.

Daffy’s Stand Ability is very similar to the plot of Quantum Leap; if Daffy Duck faces an impediment, Daffy can use Literally Me to randomly take control of a person or creature in a situation tangentially similar to his own. By solving their problem, Daffy Duck re-materializes, having simultaneously solved his own problem. In this altered state, Daffy Duck’s vocalizations can be identified by the retention of his speech impediment (a lateral lisp) even if the creature Daffy Duck has taken control of has no natural ability for speech. For example, if Daffy Duck is imprisoned and wants to get out, he may use Literally Me to take the form of an indoor cat that wants to go outside and sit in the grass, leaving imprisonment when the cat gets to sit in the grass, though most problems Daffy must solve involve similar stakes to the one Daffy is in.

This power has some drawbacks, however; if Daffy Duck completes the task in a manner that is somehow “illegal”, such as getting the cat outside by slipping through a door held ajar without the owner’s permission, Daffy’s problem is also solved in an illegal manner, such as breaking out, but if Daffy solves the problem “legally”, such as convincing the cat’s owners to take the cat outside for a walk on a leash, Daffy’s own problem is solved legally, such as being released without charge due to the discovery of a different suspect.

#Tom the Cat #Daffy Duck #Stand Users #Looney Tunes #Tom and Jerry #Warner Bros.#Merrie Melodies #Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer #Hanna-Barbera #JoJo's Bizzare Adventure #David Production #Memes #[tumblr]

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raccoon-anarchy · 4 years

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I’ve realised that over the past year- and decade- that the greatest talent I’ve accrued is being able to drink a lot of booze. Maybe that’s just the comedown talking but it’s probably true. I want to do good things and have motivation but self motivation is actually so hard for me. Even the existential thing of knowing I’m going to die one day doesn’t motivate me. I think at that point it won’t matter what I did or didn’t do. I won’t know I ever existed. A wasted life would mean nothing in the end. But I’m living now and I gotta live with me now and I guess I need to be the person I want to be or hope to be, desire to be. I don’t know exactly what that means or will mean. I don’t know if I’m good enough of a student to actually be a psychologist, a good enough person to have long term friends, good hearted enough to love or be loved or deserve love, a good enough talker to be a charmer, a good enough writer to do that - which was one constant of my childhood. I just don’t know. I want to do something about all that though, right now while I lay on my friends couch trying to sleep for the twentieth time this month. I wonder if and for how long this pang of existential panic will last, and how long it might motivate me. Maybe it’ll be gone by morning. I also want to take acid, drink and smoke cigarettes. I wonder if I’ll allow myself to enjoy, really enjoy, the end of the decade, without the underlying anxiety about my uncertain personhood and future that I’m pretty sure has been haunting me for the last ten or so years and probably keeps me from doing the things I love, loving the things I’m doing or loving in general. I would like to enjoy the end of the decade. Relaxed. Drink, be happy or, rather, content. Maybe I’ll be blessed with a couple hours of contentment. Frankly those moments have happened, maybe more often than last year or the year before in fact. I want to stretch them out like a child playing with a rubber band going longer and longer until I can stretch it out between each outstretched arm by my finger tips, and slowly bring my hands together to touch gently, rather than snapping shut or appart completely. But I also don’t want to be a hedonistic gremlin. That would be counter intuitive, and I would worry about doing nothing with my life instead of enjoying it. Balance is part of what I need. Dedication and focus, joy and peace. Maybe I can have both. Both interwoven aspects of that rubber band, like a Möbius strip. Wouldn’t that be nice. I’ve been thinking about resolutions for new year, the new decade, not telling anyone just considering them quietly. Nothing has stuck out as relevant, none of those concrete goals that I have pondered have seemed possible or worth it. But balance, that Möbius strip rubber band, getting the balance right and stretching it out, and not hating myself when I fuck it up, not just giving it up, that might just be a good concept. And then everything else will fall into place. This will hopefully still be a possibility when I wake up. And I think a week from now I’ll reflect on it and see if it still fits. And the week after that. And the week after that. Let’s see...

I also think I’m dealing with a little bit of heartbreak. I’m thinking about Nancy less and less these days and I’ve settled on the fact that she never really liked me all that much and that’s okay. She’s sweet and smart and I hope we keep talking when we both can. But more pertinently, I didn’t really realise how much I liked Haley until I realised she had to go. Until she told me she wouldn’t dance unless I held her hand, until we sat and drank coffee on the car ride back, when she made me promise to keep her updated on the DND game, and to take care of myself. It was probably obvious, even earlier. It probably should have been obvious to me. When we stood on stage at work and just looked each other in the eye smiling, while we finished whatever we had to do before going back to work. Stuff like that. But it always felt like I was seeing myself from a distance just a little bit, like I wasn’t really real, or there. Like it wasn’t me falling- well falling in love is a bit bold- but growing feelings- but like I was watching it happen to someone else. She once said that whenever she thought she had me pinned as a person I’d do something new and she smiled and shook her head. She said the things I did in my spare time were super cool and when I said I couldn’t flirt because I only had three topics worth of interesting conversation she raised an eyebrow said that sounds good. I don’t think she liked me in any way like how I think I liked her. She’s just sweet like that, a lot of people said that, and I know of one person who definitely did have a crush on her. Maybe it was all just the pill I took that’s re colouring everything that happened but frankly I don’t think so. I think I should give myself a little more credit here. I just didn’t really realise, expect or want to. And not in a bitter way either. In the same vein of her not liking me like that, she was three years my senior, my freaking manager for most of the time I knew her and a little runaway- travelling all the time, been to almost every continent and I don’t think will ever be able to stop the wanderlust. She’s going to South America for two months then Canada for two years. She thought it was amazing that I had long term goals to teach round out my career at 60 something years old teaching psychology and that she wasn’t that well planned. I told her I thought it was amazing that she was doing what she loves, travelling all over the world to beautiful places and living. She also doesn’t know that the foundations of all my plans stand in went concrete, along with my whole character. Neither does anyone else. Maybe everyone feels like this sometime, or all the time, and this collection of feelings is nothing new. This is probably very true.

A little heartbreak is fair enough. It’s honest. A small, honest tragedy just for me. It’s good. I hope I see Haley again. Hopefully soon. I’m not holding my breath though. Go and wander, and I’ll be self indulgent and hope every now and then you’ll put on one of the playlists I made, the ones you liked, and spare a brief thought for me. I hope if I see you again you’ll be as happy as I remember you being and I hope we hug and maybe dance but only badly. I hope you wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m allowed this little feeling of self indulgence. It’ll be mine to keep and smile about. I don’t mind if you don’t share any of the other feelings I think I have, and I don’t mind if I don’t have them either if and when we meet again.

Is this what life is? People you care about coming and going? Like a passing breeze carries them away. And holding on to small indulgences. I wonder who holds small indulgences of me.

My phones almost dead.

This time next decade I’ll be thirty one and I wonder what kind of person I’ll be. That’s scary. I hope he’s a good one, I want him to be. We’ll build our Möbius strip together.

It’s three thirty eight am., New Year’s Eve 2019. want to go and have a smoke. I wonder if I’ll be the same person when I come back from it.

#personal

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norcumii · 5 years

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Reblogged from the prior tumbl, originally posted 02/04/2016. Question submitted by @makiruz. Slightly reformatted to avoid a readmore cut and whatnot.

In Full of Sith, they always ask new guests how they got into Star Wars. And you know? That's a good question, how did you got into Star Wars?

HEH. Oooh, that’s a bit of a loaded question. So I’ll give you the short answer, which I suspect would fit the thing you mentioned what I haven’t heard of; and then because I’m a wordy bastard what overshares, the long answer which is more accurate and has content warnings for self harm and suicide.

SHORT ANSWER

It was the 80’s. I was young, in single digits, though I couldn’t tell you exactly what age. I was already dealing with an irregular sleep cycle, though all I knew was I had a flashlight, a pile of books near/on my bed, and a thick pound puppies duvet to read under.

I don’t know if I was in my room or on my way to/from the bathroom, but I could hear my parents watching something downstairs. Swooshy noises, a shrill screee, and some thwoom bzzts.

Of course I went downstairs.

I don’t know if it was episode 5 or 6. I’ve a fondness for 6, but carbonite left a HUGE fucking impression on me, and my parents have always approved of muppets, so Yoda.

I knew I loved it. I didn’t have any toys, though I think somewhere there was a print edition of A New Hope running around. I do recall multiple sleepovers at my grandmother’s place – a tiny house on acres and acres of woods – and she’d sometimes pull out Return of the Jedi and we’d watch it together on her tiny TV. Later on I’d be in bed, staring out at woods and trees that I knew, but seemed huge to a little kid, and I’d dream of Ewoks.

RotJ was Gram’s favorite, and for many years mine, too.

I like Ewoks.

VERY LONG ANSWER

TW: mental illness, depression, self harm, suicide, abuse

In late elementary, early middle school, my brother and I were basically reading ANYTHING we could get our hands on. He sometimes dove into books that didn’t interest me, so I’d read the first of something and then be bored and he’d keep going.

Star Wars EU was one of those. It was too grim for me. I think I didn’t run into any of the really good writers. It was all Han and Luke and Leia on the covers, so take that for what you will. There also was no Wookiepeia, so I was depending heavily on the writers’ abilities to convey things to someone very visual, yet pretty impatient with descriptions, so it never took.

I was in high school when The Phantom Menace came out. Mine honorable brother was off at college, so it was with great excitement on my part, and bemused tolerance on my parents’, that they and I went off to the theater.

On the one hand, I was dazzled.

On the other, there was Jar Jar. There was the fact that I hadn’t been impressed with the re-release of the OT – Han shot first. FITE ME. There was the fact that TPM didn’t feel like Star Wars, which was darker and grittier and…simpler to me.

So I wrote it off. Packed Star Wars away as “one of those things” that I’d been into, but felt like I was moving past. I was obsessed with Gargoyles, I was looking at going to college, and I would keep m’damn ewoks without needing to try to extend that vision with gungans.

College sucked. I went in, not sure if I wanted to go into English, for writing, or Psych, because I had always been what I’d now call The Mom Friend. I met a nice guy who tried, but things never really clicked between us, and there was an interesting bit that he was mad about Star Wars and insisted that I read the Rogue Squadron books.

That was a Good Decision. Dating him, not so much.

I had a huge assortment of Life Issues. Got into an abusive relationship that would end up lasting 14 years. Transferred schools. Got the fucking Psych degree, though literally only by the grace of a professor who didn’t want to see the kid not graduate just ‘cause she couldn’t numbers and I did go in and try. Talked to him and still couldn’t with the maths but the effort was there to bump me a few points above failing.

I was burnt out. I was depressed. I tried killing myself a few times – not very good at it, as you can see. Took up self-harm as a coping mechanism. Failed in the still never successful search for a decent therapist in Pittsburgh. Got a job slinging food, because needed some kind of income, and people without pressure was nice. The keeping on a schedule thing failed, leading to an average of 4 hours sleep a night. Losing contact with family and friends because I couldn’t stand the pressure of “how are you?” and “what’s going on in your life?” Clinging to Warcraft because repetitively farming was better than clawing open my back or neck again, and the people there were ok with some rando dropping out of sight on a dime, and only a persistent few had the grace and spirit to make it past some serious defensive issues of mine.

I stopped writing. Stopped caring about Gargoyles, stopped being able to see into that AU I’d made for myself of a crazy clan and the weird human who survived cancer with them.

Stopped going on IM, for the same reasons I stopped talking to people.

I still kept track of some folks via LiveJournal. A handful of the Gargoyles folks who were determined, gods know why and thank you, since I know several are here on the tumbles and I genuinely love you to bits.

I quit my job after five years, because enough was enough between the fact that it had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship and I was fucking tired of being a manager without any actual authority, and the endless hamster wheel of hiring and people quitting because it was a nice, but highly dysfunctional place.

I missed the customers, though. Several of them are here too, and it’s kinda funny ‘cause I know in at least one case I talked to them about Star Wars. I still hope they’re not too shellshocked that I kinda went down the rabbit hole pretty deep.

Started getting more sleep. Not less anxiety, not less depressed. Tried out a few depression medications, with very mixed results.

Then one day @dogmatix came into the LJ area I still hung out in. Enthusiastically recommending to all and sundry that if there is even a shred of interest in Star Wars, THERE IS THIS THING YOU SHOULD READ.

She drew a Wookiee. That was a character?

I’d always liked Wookiees.

And I needed something to read.

Star Wars was one of those things, from back in the day before things went to shit. Low investment, since if I didn’t like it or didn’t care, then eh. Whatevs. Dogmatix was one of the Gargs holdouts still in my circle (or whatever it is that I was hovering at the edges of), and in the past I’d liked her recommendations more often than I disliked them.

I’m also endlessly weak to her art.

Wookiee.

So I did that thing. That so many of us here have done. It took me about 2 weeks to get through Re-Entry. It had trouble taking root in the depression, but Obi-Wan going crackers was something I could empathize with and appreciate.

There was the hope that had been missing from the EU novels I’d tried reading back in the day.

There was Wookieepedia, which meant I could stop and see what a Nautolan was. I had tabs open for DAYS so when someone named Adi or Gallia who were apparently the same person? I could see who that was. I got stupidly distressed that Abella didn’t have an entry, until I twigged and checked for a Chitanook, and holy shit I could never tell what character was going to crop up as canon, obscure EU character, or home brewed.

I honestly expected to set it aside, get updates as they happened, and gradually step away because that’s how things were going at the time.

But I still needed something to read, to stave off empty hours when my brain was too full of screaming.

On Ebon Wings. I’d loved The Crow when I’d seen it back in high school, and that story tapped into the powerful visuals and the lovely message I’d adored and in ways I still don’t quite understand it somehow validated that I could be mad and still be ok. Maybe. Maybe not now, but someday.

Maybe.

So I gave in and got a Tumbl. I’d been a stubborn holdout, regularly checking the same half dozen feeds daily because dammit, I don’t wanna go through the trouble and I was close to giving up on LJ and another journaly thing? That was stupid. But I wanted to follow Flamethrower and Dogmatix, and it made it infinitely easier to follow several blogs (and oh GODS one of those is a mutual and holy fuck I swear I screamed the day that happened and it’s still a high to realize).

Dogmatix wrote Möbius and Accidental Timeshare, wherein Venge goes universe hopping. That’s also a weakness of mine.

I’d been kvetching IRL about the treadmill and wanting something to watch, and someone mentioned in Dogmatix’s feed The Clone Wars – which conveniently was on Netflix. So I figured what the hell. I was disinclined to like clones – ‘cause yeesh, they’re the reason the Jedi all died, and yeah, ok, the Order was SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP, but.

I still had never seen Episodes 2 or 3.

I turned on the Clone Wars movie, and within ten minutes I nearly fell off the back of the treadmill due to crying.

THIS was the Star Wars of my youth. THIS was what I remembered. A little grim. Lots of quips.

That sound. Lightsabers igniting. A-wings rumbling overhead. Blasterfire, and that music.

I had to stop and calm down and for the first time in ages WRITE [, because I just had to ramble about how it all hit me in the feels]. I had no idea I’d missed this.

By the end of the movie I’d decided ok, I wanted more. Wasn’t sold on these clone fellas, and damned if I could tell one set of armor from another (this is ALSO due to the treadmill screen being calibrated to be a compromise of a very short person – me – and a very tall person, which means neither person gets a decent view but that’s not what the treadmill tv is for).

I’d been told there was an order to the episodes, but I didn’t care. Continuity is for those who think about the future, and I was still regularly suicidal.

So the first episode I watched was Yoda romping around a planet, playing with droids while three clone troopers tried to babysit his mad little ass.

They had me, all in one episode. I loved these guys. They had individuality, I could tell them apart by the voices (which is sometimes just as important to me as visuals) even if I couldn’t name them, and the personalities –

They were loyal. Their primary concern was old batty Yoda which I had adored as a child because MUPPETS. They were willing to die to keep him safe and there was this lovely reciprocity in taking care of each other and all of them, clones and Jedi alike were doomed to extinction and I don’t think I knew yet HOW the clones were except they weren’t in the OT so there was shit going down.

Tragic figures, loyal found family, incredible voice acting, Batty Old Yoda who OH YEAH FUCKING KICKED SO MUCH ASS I COULD NEVER GET ENOUGH.

I wanted to keep those three clones. I was willing to keep them all.

Final blow, that knocked me into the fandom so hard I’ll be surprised if I ever leave?

THIS.

The origins of Balance. This is the post that started a simple notion, to try to write something when I’d gone….anywhere from 7 to 10 years of not writing A SINGLE. DAMNED. THING of substance – and that was after thinking I might try to get a degree related to it.

Darth Wraith was a tentative idea. I was scared @deadcatwithaflamethrower would be irked I wanted to play in her sandbox (oh my gods I was inserting myself into a conversation with her this amazing person who wrote blindingly well and so damn much and how the FUCK was I daring to speak up about a silly half DREAM I’d had because once again I couldn’t sleep).

Then, because I was trying to break out of the depression, the cycles of mental ill health, and if I was on this tumbls thing, fuck it, I’d try the IM thing again.

I’d been gone long enough that pretty much no one on my contact list was still there. That…was ok. There wasn’t the pressure.

And Dogmatix popped on, asking if I wanted to share details about this Sith Qui-Gon thing.

I had A SCENE. ONE. SCENE. And she was spinning it off into this EPIC, which at first I was gleeful because she had neat ideas and I couldn’t wait to see what she would do with it and then wait, she’s not talking about writing it herself, this is more about something WE could work on.

Thank gods it was IM, because I had a little panic about commitment to a project when I regularly was sure I wasn’t going to see tomorrow and if I didn’t wake up one morning that’d be MORE than ok.

Still. There was that itch. The visuals in my brain. The characters I’d started to like in Flamethrower’s universe, which had formed my mental voices for them.

The only sound in my head for so long was just screaming.

Writing down that scene in Knock On Effect, where Venge meets Wraith – that felt good. It never changed much from the first draft to what was posted. The rest grew, and quickly. It was clear if we were doing this, then there were multiple stories, spanning in universe years.

And then there were spinoffs. Wonderful ideas and plots spiraling away from this one notion, and gods I wanted to write about those glorious clones.

How’d I get into Star Wars?

Chance. One strange little step at a time, and a bunch of miracles and horrors that kept me bleeding but not dying. Damn good fic. The kindness of friends. The generosity of strangers.

The tragedy of a once great order of space monks, and their allies-forced-to-be-betrayers clones.

One little picture, of Qui-Gon Jinn with Sith eyes.

#tumblageddon #reviving from the purge #star wars #tw #self harm #suicide #depression #mental illness #abuse #emotional #Norcumi has Opinions again #deadcatwithaflamethrower #dogmatix #i did not expect to cry when writing this #star wars saved my life #literally

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langxue · 5 years

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Avengers Endgame Initial Thoughts

Okay. I have some Thoughts about Endgame, most of them fairly critical. Also highly subjective. So here goes. Spoilers abound, for Endgame and other MCU content.

1. OMFG they completely wasted Captain Marvel.* In her own movie, Carol is a fairly laid back, adaptable, competent, and Silly person. She has a wonderfully casual charm and sarcasm that’s really fun to watch. She’s also a powerhouse, and by the end she definitely knows it. (Like seriously, she destroyed multiple of Ronan’s ships in under a minute. In GotG, it took a whole fleet just to slow one of them down, plus a team on the inside to blow it up. And then Carol’s just like “nah, you’re done now.”) And then you hit Endgame. And we have a stoic, closed off Captain Marvel, who shows up, talks a lot about how awesome she is, and then spends fucking 80% of the movie on a shelf on the justification that she’s helping other worlds that are also in trouble. Which is a fine justification to keep her away for some of the setup. But the heroes’ main plan is time travel. Which means it’s not time sensitive, and they keep making a big deal about only having one shot. Why, in that case, wouldn’t you wait until you could get Carol on your team?? Thor is a psychological mess. Keep him on the bench and bring in Carol. OR have her on hand to use the gauntlet after all the stones are collected. But no, they just went with “eh, we’re not sure how to contact her, so we’ll just skip over that option entirely.” So they wasted her character as a character with minimal interactions with the others, and zero of those interactions actually being in character (except maaaybe with Peter at the end, but that very much felt like two actors trying very hard with very little to work with), and then also wasted her as far as plot impact, opting for a heroic re-entrance most of the way through the movie.

2. The time travel felt extremely poorly explained, which is really bad when your plot completely hinges on it, and is especially bad if you’re gonna rag on other movies with time travel. Back to the Future is paradoxical nonsense, but it’s self-consistent paradoxical nonsense. Endgame was some kind of multiverse with zero clear understanding of how different timelines/realities could and could not interact with each other. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of the possibilities and whether there actually is an internal logic, but at the very least, while watching the movie, it entirely felt like they were doing whatever they wanted to suit the plot. Which is a bad sign when dealing with time travel. (My general approach to time travel is that you either have to completely handwave it or completely explain it. And that explanation doesn’t have to be an info dump! It can just be apparent in the story itself, such as with Time-Turners. Though I personally don’t mind time travel info dump tbh.)

3. Relatedly, the secret to time travel is to model an inverted Möbius strip and get the eigenvector of that one particle there. I don’t think I’ve been that annoyed but technobabble in a long time. That’s math word salad, as far as I can tell (though I’m admittedly not a mathematician. If any mathematicians can clarify how this makes any sense, I’d appreciate it, but in the mean time, I’m going to assume it’s garbled nonsense.)

4. Still on time travel but I’m having one hell of a time figuring out Steve’s ending. Like, how can he do that within the confines of the time travel mechanics? Why wouldn’t he come back and spend that time with Bucky?? Since, you know, they’ve like barely spoken being reunited?? For Pete’s sake, don’t set up their bond like that, spend two full movies on the turmoil cause by Bucky’s return, and then just fucking drop the plot line on the floor because you wanted to stick Steve back with Peggy. What in the fuck.

5. IM. SO. MAD. ABOUT. GAMORA. (And also Natasha, though that’s a slightly different anger.) GAMORA’S DEATH WAS THE MOST BS THING IN INFINITY WAR AND WAS ALSO THE DEATH I WAS MOST CONCERNED THEY WOULDN’T CORRECT. AND GUESS WHAT. THEY DIDN’T. SHE’S STILL DEAD.** The soulstone mechanic can get Fucked, because Thanos should never have been able to get it like that (and relatedly, should Hawkeye have gotten it, since Natasha threw herself, rather than being sacrificed? I’m undecided, but mad either way).

6. Is Loki still dead? Was he ever dead? We just don’t know. If he is dead, that was an amazingly dumb end and I object. If he’s not dead, that is a dumb cliffhanger and I object.

7. I don’t love Thor + Guardians’ dynamic? It feels very off, and I can’t tell if that’s just because it’s Avengers and therefore all the characters have gotten slightly flattened or if it’s just an unappealing dynamic to me. But we already had Quill vs Rocket leadership tension. I don’t was more of that but with Thor. That’s dumb. I’m hoping that it gets more nuance/resolution going forward, but I’m not holding my breath.

8. Relatedly, why would you put Valkyrie in charge of Anything but a battle plan? Nothing I’ve seen of her makes me think she’s well suited to general leadership, and I think she’d chafe under it just as much as Thor does. She’s not the Responsible One to take things over so Thor can go have another finding himself adventure. Ffs.

9. Probably no one’s fault because actor contracts are complicated, but I’m still salty about Lady Sif being 100% absent and unacknowledged for this whole thing. Largely because I haven’t gotten to see her interact with Valkyrie OR Carol and I feel cheated.

10. Some quick minor things before I go on a big rant. It bothered me that Thor’s depression and poor coping was just a joke, basically just “Oh look he’s fat and scared now, isn’t that funny?” I’m so tired of Tony vs. Steve, and I hate that they waited until the last fucking movie to sort of kind of resolve it. You don’t get to pull on found family heartstrings and tropes when you’ve done such a bullshit job of actually showing us a family. You’ve had 20-odd movies to do so. Do better.

11. Okay. I like battle scenes. They’re fun! They’re dramatic! If done correctly, they can give a very tangible sense of odds and stakes. But. Not every movie with high stakes needs a big final battle.

Okay, to clarify a bit, I’m specifically referring to army vs. army battle scenes here. Big punch outs between titans, or scrambling to minimize damage from a disaster are different, and have their own applications and pitfalls. All clear? Great.

Battles, with two armies facing off against each other in fronts, look cool, but fundamentally make no sense in the context of Endgame. Battle lines exist so that you have not very many people actively fighting at once, and so that you can protect the people next to them. When the frontline gets tired, they rotate back and others take over. Battles are not the same thing as skirmishes and they are not mass melees. If a battle turns into a mass melee, something has gone very wrong and you should in all likelihood pull back immediately to regroup.

All of this breaks down when you have an opponent who can break up or ignore your battle lines. Historically, this was artillery and guns—things that forced battles into a cover-based issue. In superhero movies, it’s... pretty much every character of note.

Thor’s lightning —> broken battle line

Black Panther’s suit discharge —> broken battle line

Falcon attacking from above —> pointless battle line

Wanda or Carol doing... anything —> pointless battle line

All of Thanos’ many flying troops —> pointless battle line

Thanos’ warship overhead —> what are you doing pls stop this

All of which is to say that traditional battle tactics don’t apply to this conflict. But the battle we’re shown doesn’t reflect that, and it feels very... weird as a result. Where who’s winning is entirely arbitrary, rather than any kind of steady build.

This tends to lead to a very episodic battle, where you show off individual characters or small groups of characters fighting. Which is fine, though contributes to battle progress being unclear. But there’s a temptation then to give everyone equal levels of badassery in their vignettes, and I think that’s a mistake. The avengers et all are a complementary group. They have members suited to a battle field and members that aren’t. That isn’t to say that Hawkeye and Black Widow can’t hold their own, but their skill sets aren’t specialized for something like this, and so any attempt to make them seem equal in this way is going to either fall flat or cheapen the battle suited heroes’ specialty.

And this tendency to level the field of badassery can also lead to situations where Okoye is backing up Carol for a charge, and I just.... gah. I love Okoye. So much. Carol does not need her help to rush a group of enemies. Carol doesn’t need help from any of the women who showed up behind her except for maybe Scarlet Witch. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be a Girl PowerTM moment. It wasn’t. It was dumb. It was so very much the wrong time for that moment, because this was not a context where Carol needed help. She just flew through a spaceship. She can fly through some enemies no problem. And it’s probably easier if she’s not worried about her allies getting caught in the blast. And then they had to make the backup team useful, so they made Carol struggle in a moment where she just shouldn’t have. You don’t get points for Girl PowerTM if you have to de-power one of your women just to make it make sense. Give me more scenes with Gamora and Nebula helping each other through Thanos’ abuse. Give me scenes with Carol and Okoye bonding over putting up with impractical people. Don’t give me this battle scene bullshit, I don’t want it.

11. I remain pissed off that there are no actually articulated arguments against Thanos’ fucking stupid plan. What the actual fuck, this is not that hard.

Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, some things I actually really liked.

1. Steve wielding Mjolnir was fucking amazing and I’m so pleased.

2. Any time Scott was on screen.

3. Peter Parker is a precious child and he needs to be protected.

4. I actually really like the set up for the time travel nonsense, and I liked that they seemed to be doing something other than a mass melee battle. That the group was divided into manageable teams, and sent on different kinds of missions that required them to be clever and play to their different strengths and help each other through. And then they shoved in a giant battle anyway, because fuck you that’s why.

5. I can appreciate what they were trying to do in giving all of the non-returning Avengers decent send-offs, even if I didn’t like some of those conclusions.

6. There were some genuinely funny moments, but I’m struggling to recall them right now.

7. Oh wait! “It’s an earthquake in the middle of the ocean. We handle it by not handling it.” That one was great.

Okay, that’s all for now. I might have more later, once I’ve picked apart the time travel a bit more and dined some processing.

I think it’s also worth noting that like... ensemble movies with a cast this big are *hard.* character are going to end up feeling confined, and there’s less time to grow because there’s just less time per character. But I think we could’ve had better, and I think if they focused more on group growth in the group movies instead of just drama, then they would’ve been in a better place and had a better story.

It’s probably also worth noting that I really liked Thor: Ragnarok, really like Captain Marvel and really didn’t like Infinity War. So I sort of went into Endgame feeling like it had to make up for Infinity War and live up to the higher at from the recent solo movies. And I really wanted to like it. I really wanted them to pull it off. But those are high and fairly specific standards, and so they fell quite short.

*This should be taken with a grain of salt, because I’d been dreading Endgame as an obligation to watch, and the Captain Marvel movie was the only thing that sparked my interest again. And then Endgame massively dropped the ball as far as I’m concerned.

** there was some stuff at the very end that makes me wonder if there’re plans to still bring her back in a later movie. But it doesn’t change me call bullshit on everything that Infinity War/Endgame has done to her.

#spoilers #Endgame Spoilers #Captain Marvel spoilers #just #general MCU spoilers #ye have been warned

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aspiestvmusings · 5 years

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ENDGAME: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

SPOILERS BELOW: for both “AVENGERS ENDGAME” & “SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME”

SUPER LONG POST, BEWARE!

This is the main post of the masterpost... which contains links to other posts that all make up this one posts content

LINKS TO CONNECTING POSTS WILL BE ADDED...SOON

The time travel in this film mostly makes sense if you follow the logic of the rules they establish. (This is why so many of the fan questions/comments I've seen online about how it should’ve gone, can’t apply...) They created the rules for this plot to make sense, and fit. And while it in most cases made sense to me, then some things still didn’t make sense... about the “movie storytelling magic” they used...

So... a few questions still remain that are linked to the “time travelling”, mostly:

QUESTION #1: OLD! STEVE IN 2023

QUESTION #2: OLD! CAP’S SHIELD IN 2023

QUESTION #3: THANOS TIME TRAVEL

QUESTION #4: CAPTAIN MARVEL SAVES TONY & NEBULA

QUESTION #5: TONY SOLVES TIME TRAVEL + OTHER THINGS

QUESTION #6: NO MISTAKES IN THE PAST + PARALLEL TIMELINES

QUESTION #7: RETURNING THE STONES - TECHNICAL ASPECT

QUESTION #8: RETURNING THE STONES - CONDITION OF STONES

QUESTION #9: POWERFUL STONES IN PEOPLES HANDS

QUESTION #10: 2014! GAMORA AS 2023! GAMORA

QUESTION #11: TIME TRAVEL RULES & INCONSISTENCY

QUESTION #12: QUESTION 12: CONNECTED NEBULAS

QUESTION #13: THE UNIMPORTANT BECOMES IMPORTANT?

QUESTION #14: LITTLE (OTHER) THINGS NOT INCLUDED BECAUSE OF 3 HOUR TIME LIMIT

So... they just left the door wide open for themselves...to go as crazy with the story as they want to in MCU Phase 4. Everything is possible now that they’ve introduced time travel under their rules.

ETA on May 6th: Now that the new full trailer for “Spiderman: Far From Home” is out we know that THEY DID IT. They used the thing they set up... and are gonna play with it in future film(s)

TIME TRAVEL RULES ACCORDING TO ENDGAME

The one & only Endgame time travel rule is/was: You cannot change your own past. Nothing you do in the future (next 5 minutes), in the present (this very moment) or in the past (5 minutes ago) or by going back further in time...will change anything that has happened.

No changes they make either intentionally (borrowing the infinity stones from the AU! pasts or unintentionally (messing up the 2012 heist of one of the stones...etc) will affect anything that happens next/happened in their main timeline.

This is explained many times in the film... visually, and vocally (in images & in words)

“THE RULES OF THE GAME”

EITHER IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE OR NONE OF IT DOES

This film might do some things well, and I like some of the things they do, but I also have some issues with how they do things.

I appreciate that they went with brains instead/over brawns for the films plot.Using the smarts and tricks to defeat the enemy...and to pull off the heist..instead of using force/their muscles.

I appreciate that they didn’t do the typical time travel stuff. And I appreciate they setup their own rules for the time travel. Though they kinda also didn’t do all that that well...at times... Though I do appreciate that they tried to highlight science and smarts, and that they kinda honoured the scientific method. But... it didn’t feel great despite all this.

I appreciate that they didn’t give all the answers, and didn’t explain everything in detail. The time travel, and other concepts were explained well enough with the few words and visuals. But they did...IMO...leave more doors open than I'd preferred. So while I appreciate them letting everyone create their own REALITY of what everything actually meant... choosing what to believe (about what happened where;, how things/time travel and everything related to it works...) and hence creating their own “timeline” of events.

If we assume 14 000 605 people watch it (let’s assume that’s possible), then there are this many possible interpretations (timelines, realities) of this film....

LINK TBA

MCU PARALLEL UNIVERSES...ACCORDING TO ENDGAME

LINK TBA

THE END:

Thanos thinks (his win) he’s inevitable, but the truth is that (Avengers win) Tony is inevitable. Just like the möbius/moebius strip that helps Tony solve the time travel problem, and which is essentially an INFINITY symbol (going on & on...in a loop...) everything that happened in the MCU...from Tony’s captivity til the lake scene is...inevitable. It’s in the past, so it’s already happened, and they can’t change it.

And now that Tony, the greatest mind in the Universe (I'm sorry Shuri, Bruce, and all the wizards of the 9 realms... but the man made a suit from box a scraps in a cave, figured out time travel in max 5 years, made a gauntlet that can take the power of 6 infinity stones in his home lab... etc etc) is gone... the world has lost not just the heart of the universe, but also the brainpower,,, a big part of it. The universe lost its strongest, smartest, and kindest person, and I honestly don’t know how they can exist without him - their leader and their heart. The MCU main timeline is now missing it’s most important “element” - its “center” (heart) & it’s protector and it’s guide (and builder of the future) - because Tony was all that...all in one.

No one can replace him. Tony was and is Iron Man. And though there will be other geniuses, other superheroes, other protectors, other... people, who take over his roles... none of them will be like him.

Nothing’s been the same since....

#SPOILER #endgamespoiler #endgamespoilers #endgame spoiler #endgame spoilers #Tony Stark #Pepper Potts #Pepperony #Iron Man #Ironman #MCU #Avengers 4 #Avengers: Endgame #Avengers Endgame #my thoughts #Avengers #endgame review

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hotwaterandmilk · 6 years

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Quick General Post

Thank you to everyone who likes and reblogs my posts, it’s appreciated.

Double thanks to all new followers, I hope you will enjoy the content here!

Just quickly I’d like to recap the following for anyone new to my blog~

I do not take credit for any art posted here and try to source all images accurately (including artists and publications).

Every scan I post comes from an item in my physical collection.

You are welcome to use scans for graphics but I ask that you do not load them into ad-supported galleries and I’d prefer it if you didn’t repost them elsewhere without a link back here (mainly so others can find the artist source and context).

I try my best not to double up on images already out there or to tread on any other scanners’ toes, and will only post an already available scan if I can offer a better quality image or similar.

If you’d like to know more about me, I have an about page (including links to my fave scan tumblrs~) and if you’re trying to find exact images on my tumblr I also have a tags page.

Feel free to askbox me about most content here except pleaaaaase don’t ask me about the BLOOD# novel because it ruined that franchise for me and I have absolutely nothing I want to say about it.

I have extremely strong feelings about Silent Möbius, Wedding Peach, Cutey Honey F(lash), Corrector Yui, KURAU Phantom Memory, Red Garden, and several other series that I post content from semi-regularly. Every other title I scan images from I like to some extent. I don’t post any content I strongly dislike because life is far too short for that.

My favourite anime/manga era is the 90′s but I also like late 80′s and early 00′s titles as well~. I don’t watch or read a lot of series from the present because few appeal to me. If you’d like to know what I’m watching I have a MAL account you can check out.

I try to schedule around one post a day, depending on how busy I am.

That’s about it, thanks for visiting.

#personal #general update #not trying to single anyone out about the blood don novel #i've had at least half a dozen asks about it in the past fortnight #and i can't even reply to them because my brain just melts every time i try to think about that infuriating book #most other things though i'm happy to talk about :)#i'm not scary #honest

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nothliu-blog · 5 years

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Interactive Arts Studio W1

Inspirations:

1.Interactive sculpture projects your face to a larger scale using LED screens (in an airport):https://vimeo.com/245703261

2.Shadow interaction project that adapt people’s shadows into a different material and can be played with:https://vimeo.com/73443719

3.Interactive video installation, you can interact with your former self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmGev3TAa18

The media I may try:

1.Atificial intelligence by use 3D modeling in the way of mixed reality:

Procedural Animation:https://www.weaverdev.io/tutorials/procedural-animation/

2.Interesting material - screen windows: https://vimeo.com/202668371

Theme: Capture and adaptation

This theme is interesting because we can use digital ways to change something unchangeable in physical world.

How is the theme important to our time and culture?

It’s digital era, we rely a lot to digital media to do recordings in our daily life.Unlike traditional media like paper or canvas, we can adapt the recordings live into other forms by our own means.This make it possible for people to experience unknown/unfamiliar with something they are familiar.

In what ways does interactive art make sense as a medium to convey your concept and your piece?

Interaction is a powerful behavior. It triggers participants to expect something, but the feedback of the art work is always unpredictable.In my art practice, I want to surprise participants in order to break their common sense. So, I take advantage of the “unpredictable” feature of interactive art to convey my concept.

__________________________________________________

W2: Concept and development

Concept:

Peep into another dimension.

Media, Size & dimension:

Interactive projected moving images & sensors.Micro camera.Frames. 3*3*2m rectangular space.

Content & interaction:

Constant interaction with oneself & walking in virtual environments I create. People can walk into my “green screen”zone, facing towards the projected images on the wall, watching themselves walking in virtual environments(such as different landscapes of planets and contradictory spaces).

Input: live video of participants. Output: Projected images of participant walking in another world.

Specific Techniques: 1.3D modeling skill. 2.special effects deal with live video with green screens.

Reference:

Walking mapping being: https://vimeo.com/4478623

Sketches:

3D models: What the physical aspect may look like.

__________________________________________________

W5: Project Development:

I try to create an interactive scenario in unity. Using the first person view to simulate an interactive experience.It works well.But there are still two aspects I would like to approve:

1.How to make the Contradiction Space happen in unity? Or how to make player teleportation happen?

2.Need to give the player to make choices which lead to bigger result (not only sound)

Direction of my style: Don’t like Monument Valley - kind of Utopia.I need surrealist style to reflect how absurd the virtual world can be which is out of human’s control.

References:

Fake contradiction space animated in 3D: https://vimeo.com/107750288

Real contradiction space animated in 3D: https://vimeo.com/32967185

Shift of gravity: https://vimeo.com/77496702

Space not in a right scale - too big or too small.

Get over it game scene building:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88vUdUnRz9E

Reading Reflection:

__________________________________________________

W6: Project Feedback of W5 & Development:

I need to allow participants to do more actions: more results, and not just a simple easy game that walking through a sensoria.The game should be harder.

1.Maybe use Kinect to detect the poses of participants is a wise choice.

2.I need to design what the physical space will be like...

3.and how participants will interact with the moving image.

My development & sketch:

Now I’m going to use Kinect to take the place of the pressure sensors I talked about last week. It allow people to do complex poses and triggers more interesting interaction.I want to create a simulation of rowing on the surface of Möbius strip (which is a space of infinite loop), and plays can explore the objects around the strip.They will change in each cycle of loop, which is a representation of circle of life and universe.”Everything changes.”

Essentially, it’s still a game of “capture and adaptation”.

__________________________________________________

W6:

I’m so inspired by the podcasts I listened these days. And I seems finding out the reason I would like to deal with Möbius strip. I wrote down some of my thoughts about Möbius Strip(which I want to add on my 3D scene), and not only about Möbius Strip.

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thousandmaths · 7 years

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Midwest Combinatorics Conference (Redux)

I went to the Midwest Combinatorics Conference two years ago, and I went back this year. “Went” is a bit metaphorical here: the conference is held in the building that I work in every day. So there wasn’t any travel involved... which I have to say was a pretty big perk*.

It occurred to me, about halfway though the conference, that this was actually not the first time that I’d gone “back” to a conference: that honor goes to the Joint Meetings. But I do feel that there’s something qualitatively different about the Joint Meetings that arises from it being so big and diverse; it doesn’t really feel like the same conference every year. This may just have to do with how I run frantically back and forth between sections and so the content always looks pretty different year-to-year.

In any case, it was impossible for me to reflect on the MCC 2017 experience without remembering MCC 2015; how it was familiar on one hand, but from my perspective, so very, very different.

------

For one thing, I actually know “the departmental assistant” this time. Her name is Bonny, and she’s a wonderful woman, and this whole department would just fall to pieces without her, I swear.... Just like last time, she scrupulously documented every moment. Unlike last time, the collection is not yet available online— and the collection from last time seems to have disappeared?? :(

I still was not the youngest person at the conference, but I don’t think there were any undergrads this year. Having been in the conference scene even more nowadays, I think I have a better understanding of the “advice” comments that I got last time. It’s not that going to a conference itself is so unusual before grad school, but it’s unusual to go to the type of conference that MCC is; which is, moderately sized (80ish people?), regional, and fairly technical. As an undergrad, you might go to JMM or MathFest, but MCC is, as the name suggests, really meetup for local talent in a fairly narrow discipline.

I fell asleep in exactly one talk this time, and not for very long**. But this was a symptom of probably the most important change.

------

This time, I knew what a Schur function is :P

It sounds silly, but it gets at the bigger point that— apparently, and despite evidence from my day-to-day existence— two years in grad school has actually managed to teach me something.

Of course, I was still a respectably quick learner last time, so I did pick up the formal definition of a Schur function in the last go-around (even if I botched it a bit...). But I didn’t have the rich context that I do today: in particular I knew a lot more representation theory of the symmetric group, was attuned to issues regarding Coxeter groups and Schur-Weyl duality, the relationship between representations and modules, had more comfort with manipulating generating functions, didn’t have to stop and think about what is meant by “semistandard” vs. “standard” tableaux, knew the sorts of geometric buzzwords that should signal “details aren’t important”, and yet appreciated the geometric significance of the Bruhat order; and the list goes on...

And this is all still context for Schur functions, by the way. So my take-away from the conference last time, that lots of people care about Schur functions, seems to have been verified :)

For less Schur-related things, there was no individual thing that was useful very often, but at various points I was happy that over the last two years I’d given some thought to cyclic sieving, promotion, tropical geometry, Lie theory, cluster algebras, hypergeometric series, and Möbius inversion.

I’m not sure that I have such a clean take-away this time, at least from a mathematical perspective. Probably the biggest general message that I got here is one which will not be too surprising to anyone else: it turns out that if you do something for several hours a day almost every day for two years, you actually start to pick some things up, even if you’re not being very intentional about it. It’s motivating, really— like, this is what I could do just by being in the right environment (and, frankly, taking it a bit too much for granted). It’s not nearly enough to do what I want to do, so I’ve gotta keep going— but the mountain looks a lot more scalable now.

------

More direct comparisons on the conferences themselves:

When I was starting to write this post, one of my main feelings was that it wasn’t so diverse in its selection of topics. But after reviewing my notes, I realize this impression that I had was just completely wrong. I was more attuned to the general theme of representation theory, or at least the representation theoretic ideas underlying the talks, but the talks were far from homogeneous. Some of the talks from last time were really “out there” from the general theme, but we even had some of those (the directions were different, though...).

It seemed to me that there was a lot more banter this year. I don’t know if that was actually true, since this year I certainly knew a much larger fraction of the participants. But the collection of amusing quotes that I have scattered throughout my notes is probably long enough that I could fill another post with them...

Almost without exception, these talks were all good— including one, which you will certainly hear more about, which was is probably the best tech talk I’ve heard to date (It doesn’t dethrone “Mathematics for Human Flourishing” for best math talk, but...). They were probably mostly this good last year as well, even though I slept through more of them.

I was a little bit surprised that I didn’t see a lot more on cluster algebras (since, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s a sizable portion of combinatorics research at UMN). Conversely, there was a surprising amount about lozenge tilings (i.e. calisson tilings of hexagons) that included one excellent talk and several cameos elsewhere.

------

[ * My dad was a pilot for most of my life, so I’m very used to traveling and I find a lot of travel stories needlessly whiny. But it does take time, and it was nice to have a spare day-and-a-half this week compared to what I would ordinarily budget for a conference. ]

[ ** In the post from last time, I wrote about the sleeping story, and concluded that the moral probably should be to not judge people for falling asleep in your talk; looking back, that comment seems unexpectedly insightful. ]

#math #maths #mathematics #mathema #combinatorics #conferences #conference lyfe #grad school #motivation #mcc #mcc2017

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zipgrowth · 5 years

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How to Build an Online Learning Program Students Crave and Employers Want

One of the great challenges for any educator is how do you teach and test students on real world problems, not just on theoretical textbook examples?

. . . all students—not just digital natives—expect learning resources to be rich with animation or digital learning objects that make learning more realistic and relevant.

Real world problems are exciting to solve but devilishly hard to assess, especially when there are many students involved. Yet that’s just the approach that Mark Schneider is helping lead at NAIT, a 40,000-student polytechnic school that offers one of Canada’s biggest apprenticeship programs.

What’s made the work possible, Schneider says, is a special combination of online learning tools that is helping NAIT educate students so they are prepared for the complexities and responsibilities of real world situations from the day they graduate.

Schneider, an Educational Technology Specialist at NAIT, sat down with EdSurge to share the top lessons he’s learned as he’s built NAIT’s online learning offerings over the past five years—including why delivering the kind of education that students crave is helping NAIT produce the kinds of graduates that employers want.

EdSurge: Why is it increasingly important to offer students the opportunity to learn online?

Mark Schneider: There are so many reasons.

As education prices rise, a lot of today’s students have to work on the side. Our institutional research with graduates and postgraduates and applicants tells us students often can’t build a timetable around their personal schedules.

They can't attend class between 1 pm and 3 pm because they’re working, or classes start at 7 a.m. when daycare doesn't open until eight. So we have to find ways to make certain courses accessible online so students can actually complete their required credentials.

Add to that, all students—not just digital natives—expect learning resources to be rich with animation or digital learning objects that make learning more realistic and relevant.

And then there are the benefits for the institution. NAIT wants to increase enrollment to meet the demands of industry and grow its base funding through tuition. Over the past five years, program areas that have started offering online courses have successfully grown their full-time enrollments by at least 8 percent.

Download this white paper → Using Digital Tools to Make Learning Fun, by Mark Schneider.

We want to make sure our students are ready to tackle any complexities the work environment will throw at them.

Which online education tools are you using at NAIT? How are they supporting your efforts?

We've created our own curriculum and use Moodle to manage our course content. Often instructional staff and designers work together to enrich our courseware with digital learning objects, virtual simulations and other sources of multimedia.

We use the Möbius Assessment platform from DigitalEd to tie all the various assets of our courseware together for assessment purposes. This vastly increased the validity and authenticity of our assessments. And since we adopted Möbius we’ve noticed a large percentage of faculty are now turning toward computer-based assessment.

With this platform, we’ve been able to differentiate our instruction for students.

Students entering our engineering or math-based courses often come from dynamic backgrounds with very different learning abilities and very different prerequisites.

Some may have PhDs from other countries that are not recognized in Canada, and they're excelling at a rapid pace to the point where they probably could be teaching the course. Others are really struggling academically with the course.

Resources from DigitalEd

Detailed Case Study of NAIT - Alberta Trade School Uses Möbius Assessment to Improve Efficiency and Deliver Specialized Education

Podcast - Digital Assessment - conversation with Mark Schneider and Jim Cooper

Video Podcast - Education and Industry, Working Together

Möbius Assessment allows us to build some really dynamic mastery learning-type of assessments. We can build digital learning objects into our courseware that effectively lets some students get to a standardized level in seconds, even as other students might tinker with it for days on end to reach that standardized level.

It uses a logic engine that analyzes a student's level of understanding of a specific topic. If that student is struggling, it can open up the door to additional resources or courseware that can help the student unpack what's needed to achieve. That is really profound when it comes to assessment.

When it comes to online assessments, what kinds of measurable outcomes in student learning do you look for?

We're leading the students to industries and careers that have really high safety standards. If those students haven't deeply mastered those safety standards, then potentially things could very much fall apart for those workers or their employers.

We want to make sure our students are ready to tackle any complexities the work environment will throw at them. If our assessments and outcomes are vague, our students could be blindsided by what they encounter in the world of work.

Measurable outcomes give us an opportunity to make sure that we're matching the specific needs of an industry.

Our platform allows us to build assessments and courseware that are crafted toward the degree of correctness as it pertains to a learning objective as well as the adopted "style" of the student.

Mark Schneider

For example, say we’re assessing an engineer who is choosing the size of rebar. We don't want to just judge the engineer based on the ideal choices. We want to assess his or her choices based on what materials are available, the style of the project and cost. That means we can develop a highly customized assessment of the choices that the engineer makes.

That is exceptionally unique. It's something that we don't normally see because it requires an incredible amount of open-endedness to student responses.

Why is it so important that course content be relevant and authentic?

Mark Schneider’s essential online learning tips:

Find opportunities to share your online courseware with partner institutions. “What we give now, we will receive later," says Schneider.

Universal design principles can help ensure your content is accessible to all students.

Don’t assume even a great in-person course can transition to an online setting. Subject matter experts, graphic designers and programmers can all help you make the leap

Number one, you want your students to be engaged. So you need to make your material as relevant and engaging as possible, especially in STEM-related courseware.

If you have students asking, "When am I going to use this?" you're probably not doing a good enough job making sure that material is relevant to their industry.

But also as a polytechnic school, our students enter a workforce where other people depend on them and on certain safety principles—and on how well our graduates can apply their knowledge.

Customized content helps us do that in a way that's safe and relevant. Even better: if students have trained using customized content, they are instantly more valuable in the workplace, potentially allowing them to progress through the corporate ladder at a higher pace.

How to Build an Online Learning Program Students Crave and Employers Want published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems about stefan going forward in time

sonic youth

it was 2:45 in the morning sunday morning it was two songs nestled in my ear, beat & struck with the chord of time that I keep curled inside my seventeenth rib cage, this year’s molecules. it’s east out here, but i see in every direction

eternal sin sky eyes again

falling or rising to this, the sun is broken on a mist beam… kindred, what a word, just like people who are made out of clay or something else you would use in elementary school muse

I’ll teach you to sleep

She said into concrete, baseball field lights singing at trees

It’s meditation, really Air for skin, feathers replacing hands to brush- you could be from this same bird

Who sang up that we should love each side equally, with sleepless bedroom eyes Buddhism aside, this is gentle suffering

body blue as toes, shriveled with moisture but glowing bursting out with skylines and horizons on your shoulders shuddering through daybreak, clutching to nothing jump the fence undress

using your eyes as lungs

breathe-blink, breathe-blink, breathe-blink skinned by the second

The Way We Get By

Another dappled late summer afternoon with papers in hand, golden sound waves beneath my fingertips, rising and falling with the leafy pressure of my palms- hoping you will taste like this air, nothing shining, whistles, cicadas, cigarette, honey bees braided through my clean hair, like the stillest, tallest branches of every tree in this circle of a day, tugging at my morning lily terraces like a gentle reminder of how I used to lean my arm out of the window and count each breath in french, un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix onze douze treize quatorze quinze seize dix-sept dix-huit dix-neuf

vingt Just waiting in the most being way possible, purple glow across parking lots, lettuce climbing out of garden beds, rustling light. End everything and begin again, remembering to stretch afterwards I can receive anything from here forward Tender sky, flailing grass, feather tucked behind one ear and pure lungs, melting ice, blue dictionaries, the way we get by firmly in hand, freckles and nothing and no one, but everything. Smooth skin fresh like soap, childhood whispering away and your eyes a song 5 minutes, 41 seconds long. Clouds beginning to realize to fly, airplanes made of twigs–

leave all your treasure behind, you need only oxygen in your lungs to float.

Your Debutante Just Knows What You Need, But I Know What You Want (a head full of pesticides)

and

old river way

silent amongst thunder, rustles in its creaking waves and breaks through every one

I can use my words my way. ambivalence no more

Red wine makes me suicidal/ Blood in glass/ My mind grows idle/

and I curl up beneath and I hold my breath and I hold yours in and I cup each hands, a Dickensian prayer

And I touch the Mona Lisa. and like a fool I mixed them and I have no sense of time. Bun nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh Well I see

Honey Please Don’t

Soaring through the keys, I sit on blankets and know what he really loves you for. But she breaks just like tiny girls, enter Saxophones

From now on I will call you Cellar Door. So touch my hand and my shirt and swallow down every liquid cure you can find.

Another 11:11 on Another Sunday Morning (a description of a surreal, visually intoxicating dream I had last night)

“When do you have to leave?”

“Oh, you know, after,” those widening eyes, the knowing giggle of rainstained grass I lead you by the hand through my mountain home, the sun ricocheting through yellow green rooms and sheds, moss beneath bare feet, like therapy.

Your fish-blue eyes darting, feeling everything, content in your five senses, your biology, softly giving the laws of nature your small redeeming glance. You know already that we will be sleeping in a Spirit Ditch. Small talk with my father, and we explore into a basement reminiscent of trashy middle school fantasy. Subtle hands, featherless, at my waist, my neck, brushing and gone, some salvation across a Western-set sun, and a kiss beneath my ear.

Has-been fireworks strewn on sidetables, tumultuous furniture; we immediately acknowledge an abandoned silence in this space, with the soft impact of hand on hand.

Becoming a force beyond a presence, your arm turns my body in place. We in your motion turn and you may move us. Three words released, convictionless, significant, searching, bare, unexpected.. Not out of the blue; some warmer color: “I love you.” Your words like a rumbling resonating electric guitar solo soaring over highways, cathartic, a blanket or sheet of static and pounding, threading nothing and I think of songs as you press in, a rolling pin without a coat of flour, pulling me in your motion, moving me, Gentle Brother “Will you still mean that in the morning?” Because that is the mark. Some movie-scene answer of always meaning it, and I know exactly where you are. You have adapted to the mountains, with so many places left to go. You have forgotten your restlessness in my little shoulder touches, my kingdom.

We will never show sleeve but for when we show arm, because we are good men and Luciana is lost.

I brought you to this house as a partner in crime, fellow renegade, to dip into lakes and leap down stone thousands of miles high. We sit in the bright, lampless basement of broken glass and blue mattresses, and then you are somewhere else, but this makes every sense. A girl walks in and suddenly she shows me television in the absence of your eyes of blue; I wait for the men who want to rule the world. She needs to record something, and I direct her towards the box of VHS. Her pixie hair and sullen face suggest she’s not alone; soon enough a party seeps in. I only wanted moss. You return looking for me, become spellbound by the lights and heroin, and watch with an arm melting into mine. We stand in real-time together as the party becomes color streaks around us Buzzes to us: Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthly-gross conceit Smother’d in errors, feeble, shallow, weak The folded meanings of your words’ deceit. Against my soul’s pure truth why labour you

To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me then, and to your power I’ll yield. We are princes in the galaxy that spans from where they are to where we are now. And then we return to light. In a simple country room. “Will you still mean it in the morning?” But I crawl in. It is thyself, mine own self’s better part, mine eye’s clear eye. Gently, with the minutes, we are air, too real, everything I knew was beneath and above.

as though, if you touch gently enough, you’ll believe you don’t have fingers tendrils of nothing seeping out of sea silence evaporating

like haiku is breath (marble binocular eyes) like you are exhale my palms melt to milk I feel your quiet shaking me awake; last touch.

“im not concerned with Love and law. im not saying these words to impress you. i will die alone but that in itself is destiny. i need you to Know.”

Honey & Gravel I laughed and I don’t care I love sin

the fact that you are married-

sleep

I burn to touch everything with a heart of darkness

but some things make me pure (the one I really need) Linger on because what the fuck are we here for anyway

but to feel that emptiness, but to convince Somebody that we are nothing. Don’t forget astronomy, honey, please don’t. As if we are here.

I don’t care about any destiny What is is is is and destiny doesn’t care about me, daytripper, nighttripper, mindsoul nothingness

WHAT are mirrors made to do, and why does my mouth crave everything So who would I be if I didn’t want you inside

I mean that with incredible writhing warmth

is is is pure pure pure Children of cathartic silence, soar across me

feel me into earth I will never Know anything but mountains so give me nothing that is not green and touch touch touch touch no, shhhhhhhh Jimmy the strings of everything, and destiny on a wheel of Jesusblood

my entire network of matter is there already the way you should be held Nobody Has Eyes so I do not care except for the muscles throughout my frame who remind me to crawl in Crawl in like something that once learned to fly

FLY

everything I knew was beneath and above crawl inside me

fly inside me if you have a voice (I am the sun, I am the air) You can break your molecules apart by sheer will.

Let Me Play It

When morning is like the sugary sensation of wing-bone ripping the delicate flesh of my shoulder bones, there is a readiness, a readiness to let me in, let me be here, and count the curvatures of my spine into the cigarette-strewn robin blue paneling beneath even water

My Sweet Lord, somewhere nowhere eyes, parting hands and lips, wounds, wing-membrane and tender ginger headaches sprinkling spices in my hair, sandalwood oil between my fingers, sex and absynthe and disfiguring, luminous heroin like levitation and you the patron saint of travellers, or the first Catholic martyr stoned to death, but who would not feel so alone if everybody must Palm to palm, you breathe nothing like I do, a separate anatomy and chemistry: I a bird You a feather, borne out on nothing, brahman nirvana heaven darkness making pure even sorrow, granulated and unadulterated, white opium of mutual understanding, two bird cages wired together, doors swinging wide open

hear me make a noise I have felt your ears and know they received sound once

choosing not to hear is just to break me, is just blue swirling forget

you felt everything in the pale whites of your eyes linger on, hear me

There’s the part that loves, and the part that still loves

There’s the line folded, twisted, the möbius strip, the breath

Color flowing with shape, sound, taste interchangeable guitar strings, warming air, pain unacknowledged, and being pulled by my center to all the things I would like to be a part of.

There’s whom we love, and whom we still love

One the heart, one the hand

My lost muse below the blanket of chemicals, I remember you The pure messiah, a field by the road, a man-made lake We jumped the fence and took off our clothes Songs of honeysuckle and time desperate hopes in rhyme It broke me in two my fickle prophet My salvation, the one

from days long gone

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