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myname-isnia · 9 months

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I need to vent. So badly. I need to do it out loud because I’ve had enough of being stuck in my own thoughts

I need to talk to someone who’d actually listen, who wouldn’t chastise me or try to turn everything into a moral lesson or pretend like they know me better than I know myself

It’s why I can’t talk to my mom. Why do I have to live in a world where I can’t talk about my problems to my mom?

She doesn’t get me, not in a “I’m a moody teenager nobody understands me” kind of way, but in a “you know nothing about what I’m going through or crying about, why are you acting like just because you listen to instagram psychologists in your free time means you’re the most enlightened person on god’s green earth??”

I don’t have anyone I could go to. My mom’s out, who’s left? Not my little sister, definitely not my shitty dad. Who else? My grandma’s the reason my mom’s the way she is, so not her. My dad’s SIL is one of my most favourite people in the world but I don’t feel like I can come crying to her, she’s too blunt, too brutally honest. She’s helped me greatly before, but I’d go to her for any problem except emotional.

I don’t want to go to my friends. I already was the cause of a fight that ended a fourteen year friendship. I’ve already showed them that I’m extremely unstable and prone to hysterics. If I start openly crying to them about such seemingly minor things, they’ll get sick of me and I’ll lose them. I don’t know how to make friends. I don’t have anyone else.

And my problems are just so, so stupid. So inconsequential to anyone but me. Even for myself, all they bring are tears and headaches, and yet here I am, sobbing over them again and again, intentionally throwing myself down self hatred spirals that I know every curve of like the back of my hand, going throw the same thought processes that I know will make me upset.

Why do I keep doing it? Do I just like to make myself suffer? Have I no real problems?

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m once again being a whiny bitch about my art

We’ve been here a million times. My skills are nowhere as good as I’d like them to be, I’m complaining about it on tumblr dot com instead of taking steps to improve, when I try to talk about it and people give me actually good advice I get mad and hysterical because I’m not being validated in my useless, self-imposed suffering that will lead me nowhere. Yeah yeah, what else is new?

To get good at art you need to study. You need to look at what other people do, how they create art that you like, and try to learn from it. But whenever I look at people who are more skilled than I am, I turn into a fucking toddler. Why them?? Why are they better than me??? I get so irrationally angry that I literally only follow one artist, a… I suppose ‘friend’ is a nice term, though I don’t know how accurate it is. If it isn’t, then a mutual. And I get insanely jealous of her too, but I’m better at containing it. We don’t talk much, but I still don’t wanna ruin what little relationship we have because of my inability to process my emotions.

Honestly? I’m just tired. Completely fucking exhausted from all these tantrums I throw. It seems I say it so often lately, but I truly am sick of myself. The fits, the crying into my pillow until I get a pounding headache, the pushing everyone away because I can’t stand the embarrassing ordeal of being cared for… I don’t know how much more of it all I can take. I wish I didn’t exist.

My mom sat me down today when she noticed how I angrily shut off my tablet. I spent a year desperate for a shoulder to cry on, so I told her that I’m frustrated by my art, or rather, by the lack of it. I’ve told her before over the phone and she always started lecturing me about not giving up and trying and practicing and how the greats weren’t born great and all that stuff. I thought she’d be different in real life. She wasn’t.

She says I’m lazy. Says I don’t want to learn. That I don’t try. But I do. I try and I try and I try. I create canvases and start sketching and get frustrated and delete them and want to throw my tablet at the wall and snap my stylus in half… but I don’t stop trying. And sometimes, very rarely, I manage to draw something I’m happy with in the moment. Often I’ll think it should be killed with fire in a few days time, but it’s the moment that counts.

Mom tries to teach me theory she doesn’t know. She doesn’t have an artistic bone in her body, yet acts like she’s been drawing all her life. She tells me to trace over art books, to look at cartoons and movies and learn how expressions and poses work. No matter how much I yell, how much I tearfully explain that that’s not the main problem, that if I need to draw something I’ll figure out a way, she won’t listen. She can say she understands all she wants, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t get that I can’t physically visualise what I want to draw

I wanted to make some Green Opal art for a few days now. I’ve only drawn them four times before – walking side by side, sleeping cuddled up, Opal kissing Midori on the cheek and Midori holding Opal as she flips Suyin off. I tried thinking what I’d want to draw them like this time. Sitting together, one’s head on another’s shoulder? Actually kissing on the lips? Bending? Reading a book?

I tried to picture it in my head. I couldn’t come up with anything. I looked at dozens of references. Nothing seemed right. I read through lists of romantic interaction prompts. None of them inspired me. My mind’s eye was completely empty, and I don’t have aphantasia or whatever it’s called, I can normally visualise pretty much anything. But when it comes to art, it’s like someone slips a blindfold over it.

And say I did come up with what to draw – then what? Draw it? With my anatomy so wonky it could classify as body horror? My thick and lifeless lineart that suffers most from my heavyhandedness? My colours which I can never memorise the theory of? My shading which is basic at best and completely nonsensical at worst? And say I did manage to make something decent even with all of that added into the equation – then what? Post it and get a grand total of three notes?

I know art is first and foremost supposed to be for yourself, you’re supposed to enjoy making it and looking at it. But if I don’t, if I hate the process of drawing and the end result so much that sometimes I feel like killing myself over, what else is there for me to do but seek feedback? A spare like. A causal reblog with no added tags. There are days when those serve as my lifeline. Days when the hundreds of screenshots I’ve made over two and a half years of people saying nice things to me are the only things that keep me going. Even if 80% of those are things said by my friends, who are basically obligated to say nice things to me.

But if I hate art so much, why do I keep at it?

I don’t know

To prove something, maybe? To whom? My parents? Myself? Society? Probably not. I don’t have anything to prove

To leave my mark on the internet? To make myself feel like I’m doing something instead of just lazing about all day?

Am I just doing it by inertia because once upon a time a lonely middle schooler convinced herself she was gonna be an artist?

I really don’t know. If it doesn’t make me happy, what’s the point? If the number of people who interact with my art could be counted on one hand, what’s the point? If it drives me to going insane with screaming and crying at least once a week, what’s the fucking point?

I should just quit. It won’t be a big loss. Maybe then my mental health will actually improve, once I stop dragging it down into the gutter with every non finished piece that can barely count as being started

Quit writing while I’m ahead too. It’s not like I’ve written anything in a month anyway. And before that, it took me almost a year and a half to post something. It’s clearly not for me.

#to anyone I owe a reply message to – I apologise. I’ll need five to ten business days to recover from this #if I ever do #knowing me I’ll recover and then get into this all over again by the end of the week #my mom made me promise to spend time with her tomorrow morning #I really don’t want to but she won’t listen #I just want to be alone #I thought crying to someone would make me feel better #somehow it’s even lonelier than crying by myself in an empty apartment clutching a dirty stuffed animal #my head is killing me. it feels like it’ll split open any second #maybe I should just go to bed

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hatboyproject · 3 years

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This is very long, but it might be of interest to someone, somewhere. I was asked recently about the direction I'm taking this romance in and whether or not I'll be addressing certain disability specific subjects within it. The answer, of course, is yes - I have always planned to do this in one form or another. Whilst no single piece of media can address everything I'd like to say on the subject, and I am working within the bounds of a larger story with its own pacing and focus to consider, there's still room to touch on some of these things.

I'm aware that my interpretations won't always be the same as others'. They are my interpretations, coloured by my experiences and feelings, and ultimately, this is my mod - I'm writing it for everybody who 'wears the ballcap,' so to speak! But, it's my interpretation of this character that I'm trying to share with everyone. Different people "took the helm" (laugh, I'm hilarious!) on writing Jeff across the trilogy, and as time has gone on I've been trying to convince myself that it's okay to have my turn at doing that, too - albeit in a non-professional capacity. So... Let's get into my interpretation of Jeff, where his stuff comes from on my view, and how things went to get him to where we are at the beginning of ME3, where the romance can occur.

A lot of how I interpret him comes from experiences in my own life with my own issues, and with those of my loved ones, some of whom are physically disabled in similar (but not identical) ways to Jeff. Some of this carries an element of catharsis for me.

Mechanically and narratively speaking, what draws me to writing this romance is the contrast between how these two characters are strong. It's this core idea that strength doesn't have only one manifestation in a person. That loving somebody doesn't have to be done only one way, that it can be beautiful and passionate and fulfilling - even if, when it gets physical, the headboard can't exactly be made to shatter with the force of it all. For me, it's also an exercise in insecurity and dealing with feelings of frustrated inadequacy - something that has plagued me my whole life.

Yes, yes, he's fictional - but the only way for me to really get into a character is to think about them as if they're a real being. When I look at Jeff as a person, I see many things... Some very positive, some pretty negative... I try to see him as a complete person with strengths and flaws.

On the surface he is often defensive, dismissive, sarcastic, and emotionally avoidant. But why is that? He is highly skilled, dedicated and capable, and knows it, but at the same time is a person who is constantly overlooked, underestimated, and asked to work thrice as hard to get the same considerations. Even then, his validity is questioned often by almost everyone around him. Over time, combined with the realities of living with his physical condition, this has given him some deep-seated insecurities. He feels the need to brag about his skills because they are, ultimately, the one thing about himself that he is absolutely certain has real worth. He overcompensates for this by abusing rules and technicalities wherever he can, because I think he knows that if he played life by the rules, he'd never have gotten anywhere. It's a stacked deck, so why not hide some aces up his sleeve? When you don't fit in the box provided, you question the value of every box you see.

When a person lives with this long enough, it can get hard to swim against the tide of society's expectations and still remain chipper about it, let alone not internalise some of it. It can cause a person to create a shell constructed out of distrust and untruth.

Living with a disability can really suck sometimes, and the suck is compounded when having to deal with your own frustrations plus those of others. In my personal experience, that happens a lot.

There is a certain sense of alienation that it can create, and it can become a kind of Sword of Damocles. It can be easier to anticipate rejection and others' assumptions, inabilities to understand or relate than to keep reaching out, only to have the same tired conversations about being different. I see a lot of this in him. I understand the chip he has on his shoulder.

I also see an extremely sensitive, empathetic, devoted and boundlessly loving person under all that. In fact, it's because of these things that I think he actively tries to distance himself. At the core of his being, I see Jeff as somebody who loves quickly and completely. I think he sees that as a vulnerability, incompatible with what he's learned he has to do to survive... and also with the machismo thing that comes with being a pilot. I think on some level he's terrified of that about himself, but he also can't help it. Jeff is ride or die. So, he tells himself he doesn't care and never lets anyone in. Any time anyone showed interest, he'd shut them down, alienate them, distance himself, and get in the seat of something that flies.

I think up until now, (ME3) he's seen intimacy both as a thing he longs for, but is also afraid of because of his fundamental knowledge that he is different. He thinks he can't "measure up" to what he sees all around him. He sees romance as something that will lead to his inevitable rejection and being crushed, emotionally - and if he's not careful, physically, too. I think he's embarrassed about that as well. He's very interested where it comes to all that, but the things he likes to watch, he knows he can't do like that. His only experience is second-hand as a voyeur, so some of his perceptions about that are unhealthy for him. I think any kind of attempt by the medical professionals in his life to broach the topic and offer support on, he's angrily changed the subject, or stopped listening to, because of the entire mess above. I think Jeff is kind of a lonely person, and some of it is self-imposed, though the reasons for him thinking it's the right thing to do aren't all within his control.

All this is difficult for him to reconcile with, because he has been desperately in love with his commanding officer since almost the moment s/he met him, but entirely unprepared to face it.

I think at first it was easy for him to dismiss it as a stupid crush. Everyone gets them when cramped up in close quarters in stressful situations and the Commander's magnetism was hard to ignore. But then it became clear that Shepard really hadn't read his file and really hadn't made any assumptions at all about him. S/he just wanted to know him, and as time progressed and that actually bore out, it got hard not to really feel something powerful, even though s/he was the Commander and it wasn't strictly appropriate to think that way. But, then there was that thing about not fitting in the box provided...

I think he agonised over coming to Shepard with it, but ultimately decided it would be selfish with everything they were going through. I think there was a part of him that decided s/he'd never be interested anyway, not when there were other, healthier people to choose from... People who didn't have these hangups or need special accommodations made for them. I think he decided to keep it to himself, for what he felt was both their sakes.

If/When the Commander quietly hooked up with someone else, I think he had a lot of feelings all at once. On the one hand, the person he cared for most was finding some peace in all the craziness. On the other, he wished that particular brand of peace was shared with him. Most of the time there were more important things to worry about, but during downtime, I think it was on his mind a lot.

I think he feels very sheepish about it, but occasionally his jealousy got the better of him and he interrupted Shepard at moments that got too hard to watch on the security cams. He watched the cams around the ship lot, and listened in on all the others a fair bit. I think because he saw himself as being at a remove from most people in a lot of ways, it was easy to justify that to himself. I think he saw it kind of like listening to a podcast or a soap opera or... Nature documentary, almost, or something. He got to know all of them in this way... Parasocially at first, but gradually, socially too. He felt better about trying, because he had this secret edge. Not the greatest stuff he's ever done, but... Complete person. Strengths and flaws.

And then, the unthinkable happened. He couldn't accept that the ship was dying. He was sure he could save it... But when Shepard's hand touched his shoulder, when s/he'd come back for him, he knew it was over. And then, it really was over. Shepard paid the price for his arrogance. The person he wanted to protect the most spun off out into space. The communicator between his mask and that helmet was still in range for long enough that he could hear the choking. For a long time afterward, even hearing people cough made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The Alliance grounded him. I don't think he even had the capacity to be mad about it. I think that was a hard time for Jeff. I think between being burdened with the knowledge of the Reapers, the loss of Shepard, and the weight of his guilt, he was pretty close to the very, very edge when Cerberus knocked on his door and made him a bunch of promises. Pretty sure those promises had nothing to do with leather seats and everything to do with Project Lazarus. I'm very sure that the promise of Shepard coming back is the reason he even let Cerberus pay for the surgeries he agreed to undergo, because I don't think he valued himself much at all at that point. I'm pretty sure it was being ready to help Shepard that he was thinking about when he was learning to walk on his painful legs without crutches for the very first time. When Cerberus offered him a big shiny reset button I think he took it without hesitation because there wasn't anything else to hope for. I think seeing Shepard in the docking bay galvanised him and without ever telling them so, he pledged his life to them even harder than before. I think he told himself that he would support Shepard in every way he could. He would go wherever, do whatever, and when dealing with him, try to give them what he knew they needed; a goddamn break.

So, fast forward again, and now we are here. With all of this in mind... Shepard might have had a dalliance with someone else, or might've been too damaged by their previous love interest on Horizon, or whatever. Either way, I think Jeff saw it as not his business to even dream about that. I think the guilt tore him up every time he looked at Shepard. I think he felt like on some level, he deserved the pain of unrequited feelings which only ever got more intense. If he didn't think himself worthy of it back then, doubly so now. I think during the six months of house arrest, he tried to visit, but the Alliance denied his every attempt. Then the attack on Earth happened.

And so now we have Jeff, who, just like other humans is confused and groping about for a sense of what's up and what's down. Fortunately for him, Shepard is part of that sense of stability. He's just better at hiding it, because avoiding it and telling himself to focus elsewhere is second nature to him by this point. But things are a little different, now. Shepard seems looking around for a connection too. Future days seem short in number and the rulebook less and less important by the minute. Denying it to himself becomes impossible, and even EDI prods him about it. Shepard won't stop being so goddamn nice to him and even responds with things that if he didn't know better, he could interpret as... But then all the old insecurities come rushing back and he's walking on his own damn eggshells again. Fuck it. It's time to admit it. To come clean. S/he has to know.

So he asks. And s/he accepts. He's equal parts thrilled, stunned and terrified. He's even on some level, suspicious. Is s/he setting him up for a fall? Are they angry about his responsibility? What do they want out of this, actually? He hasn't explained what it'd be like. That what they're doubtlessly expecting of him is unrealistic. That he's completely inexperienced. I think at this point, he's a bit pissed off with himself and feeling a lot of dread because he's pretty sure how this is going to go. He realises he's got so caught up in it that he's done things in the wrong order. Damage control. He has to talk with Shepard and explain what s/he should expect from him, because it will be different. Manage expectations because he's had to manage his own. He goes in steeled.

But s/he knows it will be different, it turns out. As ever, Shepard has made no assumptions whatsoever. S/he only wants to get to know him. Wants him for everything he is, and accepts what he is not. It was never an issue for them beyond understanding how to work with it, because he is worthy just as he is, and has worked hard enough. He has to teach them about his limitations, about underestimating and overestimating... But where there's a will, there's a way. Time for a few shared moments of peace before the end of days, and through all the craziness, something feels right at last. He feels safe enough to let Shepard in properly. Thus begins his reassessment of himself and reckoning with letting go of the insecurities he has that aren't actually his own, but come from outside.

Also he totally gets to sext the Commander now when s/he's on missions. Nice.

So. There's a lot more I could say and expound upon but it's been hours and I have stuff to do. That's my direction. It's not going to suit everyone, and I doubt I can get everything across... But I'll try. I'm just one person, with just one perspective, with just one version of this story. But I hope people like what I come up with surrounding this framework, because I have lived a lot of it myself. Just a few less Reapers in my version. Not everyone's experiences and responses will be the same.

#shoker #shoker mod #hatboyproject #jeff joker moreau #character study #my approach

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autumnblogs · 3 years

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Day 2: Symphony Impossible to Play

Picking up from yesterday, we just met Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/220

Right out of the gate, here’s something interesting - another one where a character interacts directly with her medium! I wonder whose eyes she feels on her. Are Rose’s Seer powers allowing her to detect us watching her? Later on, it turns out that Kanaya was watching her all along during her intro. Maybe that’s who she senses? I think it’s possibly both of those, and a third option - Rose is a paranoid girl who doesn’t feel very secure in her own home, or comfortable in her own skin.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/223

John does a lot of roleplaying, and this is one of the earliest spots in the comic where he does this. Specifically, John performs a lot of his favorite scenes from different movies, and no surprise to anyone, almost all of the times he does, he’s performing either the role of a lover, or of a father. Malo, who I respect a lot, talks a little about John’s appreciation for signifiers here, along with some of their chums. I was going to say something about other points where John’s inner voice comments on the necessity of signifiers to make a thing itself (OR ELSE IT’S A PRETTY PISS POOR EXCUSE FOR THE THING) yesterday, but I didn’t have the thoughts fully formed at the time. Luckily, Malo will call attention to it for me.

This is another one of those weird things about the way that reality works, and it might all retroactively work that way because John expects it to work that way. Homestuck is full to bursting with symbols - everything in Homestuck is extremely abstracted as part of the art style, and also as part of the storytelling, often rendered down to some basic elements that make it recognizable. An example of something Homestuck uses as a symbol would be like, Mustaches - a symbol associated with Grandpa. Swords, symbols associated with Striders. The symbol doesn’t have to have any kind of literal logical association with the thing it represents, but we associate the two things with each other because of cultural context.

https://homestuck.com/story/225

I always liked Rose’s house best out of the group. There’s something deeply romantic to me about the premise of a wooded retreat far away from civilization. I’m pretty sure the Lalonde residence is based on Falling Water but I could be mistaken. As long as I’m thinking about Symbols, by the way, Cats are a Lalonde Symbol. Their presence in the story always evokes Lalondes even when they’re not in the room (which is not very often, as it turns out!) and by association, witches. Both of the Lalondes are witches in the sense of being powerful women who attain to that power by consorting with dubious and transgressive sources.

Rose is up front and melodramatic about her not so great relationship with her Mom, and it’s pretty much literally always on her mind. (Rose’s Mom is an alcoholic, and I should be clear that her relationship has lots of reasons to be not great, but Mom Lalonde deliberately being spiteful to Rose is not one of the reasons). I like to think there are a lot of these misunderstandings between parents and children and if that we were just a little more open with each other, we’d find that we didn’t have as much to be afraid of in each other as we think. But I might never know. Another one of my favorite series that has the inability of Parents and Children to communicate with each other as a central theme is Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion and if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend you go do so.

https://homestuck.com/story/231

The presentation of the Guardians is so unsettling that in my first readthrough, I thought they must be some kind of monsters artificially imposed into these characters’ obviously artificial lives to create difficulty for them. Clearly, I thought the story was going in a completely different direction than it actually ended up going.

https://homestuck.com/story/236

Rose does not always think her cunning plans all the way through, something she has in common with her biological father.

https://homestuck.com/story/271

I probably could have mentioned this funny little guy earlier than I did, but Wayward Vagabond is in the story now. I’m not totally clear on whether the Carapacians have any greater meaning, but they sure are charming, and like just about everything that isn’t specifically John and his friends, they exist on a layer of the story that is just a little further away from just the text, and a little closer to the audience - they can enter narrative prompts, much like you or I would have if we were involved in Homestuck’s earliest pages. As a rule in Homestuck, the more influence you personally have over the narratives which change the material conditions of the characters’ lives, the more sinister and ambiguous you become. Luckily, WV turns out to be a pretty benign guy, but if you’re the sort of person to be reading this, you are no doubt aware of the fact that most of Homestuck’s narrators don’t turn out to be nearly so friendly. The Carapacians introduce us to the idea that characters in the story are allowed to be audience members and narrators too. So I guess, really, that’s the greater meaning of the Carapacians.

https://homestuck.com/story/272

Always enjoy Rose’s long, outlandish metaphors. Any chance to read more of them is a good chance to. (Although the main one on this page is a holdover from some of the cringy stuff in MSPA’s early days - some of it slightly racist, some of it slightly homophobic.)

https://homestuck.com/story/287

Andrew’s insistence on having characters like Dave rap at us, the audience, actually reminds me a lot of JRR Tolkien’s tendency to pepper his stuff with songs that he wrote for his in universe stuff. And while both are legitimately talented at their craft, as one of my friends put it, “I’m not a rapper... so stop rappin’ at me!”

https://homestuck.com/story/293

Jade is another character whose first post I forgot to mention, but here she is having a bit more to say than before! I think I remember my initial impression of Jade being pretty favorable, and then gradually declining until she got a bit more exposition. Perky people bother me.

https://homestuck.com/story/307

Another one of Andrew’s cool prose poems. I don’t mind these as much as the rapping, clearly. Rain and Strings are another pair of symbols pretty strongly associated with Rose, although I hardly need to tell you that. This obviously alludes to Rose’s mythological quest. I think it also foreshadows a lot of her worst decisions. Rose overthinks and overthinks and overthinks, and then by the time she should have acted, it’s too late, and she overreacts instead, usually in catastrophic ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/312

Dave’s room isn’t nearly as messy as Rose’s, but his bed isn’t made, same as every other Derse Dreamer. This is also probably the first place that we get hints of Dave’s fascination with death (he collects dead things). He’s specifically fascinated with his own death, and fantasizing about self-sacrifice, something that he ends up doing twice over the course of the comic, is one of the ways that Dave experiences masculinity. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/320

Dave almost immediately fails to uphold his irony schtick within just seconds of our getting to know him. For all that he pretends to the same extreme aloofness as his brother, I don’t think there’s an insincere bone in Dave’s body. Then again, maybe he’s just getting distracted by food, of which there is a significant dearth in his household. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/326

I will never get back the time I spent reading Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Was it worth it?

Yeah probably.

https://homestuck.com/story/332

I think this is the very first time I’ve noticed that Dave has a nifty gaming computer with the transparent glass pane and the interior lights and everything. Like, this readthrough, this panel. I’m sure I mentioned somewhere that I get more out of this webcomic every time I read it.

https://homestuck.com/story/333

Dave and Rose are another character relationship I just enjoy tremendously. Their verbal sparring is one of the highlights of the webcomic.

https://homestuck.com/story/344

Bro’s puppet fascination tells us pretty early on that this is a hands-off, manipulative kind of guy. While Bro isn’t in a metanarrative layer the way that the Carapacians are, positioning him as a puppetmaster, controlling things from behind the scenes, still gives him the same kind of sinister ambiguity as one of the comic’s actual narrators.

https://homestuck.com/story/357

Far from being the kind of chill cooldude who kills with a straight face and doesn’t look at explosions, Dave kills a random bird and immediately feels remorseful about it. Poor kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/360

There is almost nothing worse than having someone perform interest in something you enjoy to try and influence you. Unfortunately, that is not what is taking place here. Rose is quick to assume malicious intent as she does a bit earlier when she tucks her journals under her bed because she feels like she’s being watched.

https://homestuck.com/story/369

Mom, sadly, giving your daughter oodles of presents and showering everything she does in ostentatious displays of affection is sadly not a substitute for earnest communication with her and your emotional presence. These two need to learn each other’s love languages. (Note to self. Not everybody enjoys lavish presents as much as I do.)

Roxy is a giver. That’s something that shows up time and again, especially when we meet her in person much later.

https://homestuck.com/story/377

Mom Lalonde performs femininity.

https://homestuck.com/story/382

Jade sees right through Dave.

In other notes, I think most of these kids would be way happier if their Guardians were more emotionally available, and less badass.

I’m going to come back to that and write more on it at some point instead of just alluding to it repeatedly. Maybe after Dave Strifes with his bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/389

Is Mom’s compulsive gift-giving because that’s her love language? Is she performing capitalism by giving her daughter extremely expensive gifts as a show of affection? Is it both things? (Roxy is never exposed to Capitalism except by the awesome powers of Dirk’s cached wikipedia archives, and her gift-giving tends to be significantly less ostentatious than Mom’s.)

https://homestuck.com/story/404

John roleplays some more.

https://homestuck.com/story/414

Here’s where I’ll say one of the things that I think is like a big deal, because I guess now’s as good a time as any. A lot of the roleplaying that John does, and the one-upsmanship that he and Dave do with each other, and Dave and Bro do with each other, and Mom’s ironic housewife routine, and the burial of Jasper in a mausoleum are rituals. Like symbols, they’re cultural touchstones that are ultimately empty when they no longer point to the thing that they signify. Funerals are grieving rituals. When a funeral doesn’t functionally serve the purpose of helping with grief, it becomes an empty signifier. Maybe this is how Mom grieved for Jaspers - I’ll have to check and see what Roxy thinks about it when I get that far, because I forgot.

We do a lot of stupid things in a monkey see monkey do fashion because we’ve just always done them that way, even when they were built for a completely different society, and no longer serve the same function that they used to serve. Big ostentatious funerals are like that, I think. Ideally, they’d give big families an opportunity to come together in mutual support, celebrate the joy brought to them by the deceased, demonstrate compassion to the grieving, and so on and so forth. I’m not prescriptively saying “don’t have a funeral” here, my point is just that funerals are one of those cultural narratives that I mentioned in the first post.

This funeral does not serve the function of helping Rose to grieve. It’s just kind of fucked up.

https://homestuck.com/story/415

Oh hey, Rose has more fish language attached to her - she earlier makes reference to her knitting-needle tech by saying that she thinks she could probably filet a fish with them. Here, she talks about having bigger fish to fry. Rose is associated with Water through her planet, the Land of Light and Rain, and with fish through Cetus. She’s also attached to other deep sea creatures in the form of the horrorterrors.

https://homestuck.com/story/420

I’m going to pause for now and post this since I’ve read through another roughly 200 pages of Homestuck this evening on the fortuitous page of 420. It probably helps that I started earlier than I did yesterday. Nanna’s about to give some exposition, and I already wrote my big brain take for the day so for now;

Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

#homestuck #neon genesis evangelion #symbols #commentary #liveblogging

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shonaghhome · 4 years

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Navigating 2020 with Reason

“You are in a unique season where earth’s people have lost reason.”

~ Shonagh Home

Happy New Year and buckle your seat belt! From what I’ve heard astrologically we are in for a very tumultuous and powerfully potent year. It begins with a Pluto Capricorn conjunct, which means the planets meet very closely and that will deliver the magnetics of increased polarization, tension and breakdown in societal structures. This occurs individually as well as collectively so be prepared to go into your own ground and address any unresolved personal material that will undermine your ability to create from a place of empowerment and maturity.

This next year also brings in a new cycle whose focus is on building structures from foundations that have been laid. One astrologist wrote that Saturn and Pluto together impart a cathartic intensity that forces us to cultivate courage and determination as we head into a chaotic time of change, hopefully for the better.

2020 is also an election year and you can be assured that the powers that be will use the dark wand of media to instill even greater tension and enmity between people, and no doubt we will have another major “event” that will cause incredible division. This is an ancient technique called “divide and rule,” and I shake my head in wonder that so many people still fall for such blatant manipulation. We are being played. The cultural narrative through all forms of media and “education” is fallacious nonsense designed to get us to despise each other rather than come together harmoniously.

Navigating 2020 will require the ability to see through the thick scum of daily bullshit, and you can do so by truly empowering yourself with knowledge and understanding of the Logical Fallacies.

We have not been taught this reasoning tool in our state-run schools. Logical Fallacies are flaws in reasoning used extensively in media and politics to trick the public. A proper rational argument consists of cogent point, counterpoint. It does not include name/term calling, fabrication of an entirely different definition of what someone said followed by a treatise on that fabrication, the stirring up of feelings so people react from emotion rather than reason, etc. etc. The actual terms for these approaches are found in the list of Logical Fallacies, which are written in Latin and English, giving us an idea of just how old this knowledge is.

Human nature hasn’t changed much over time and the powers that be have a better understanding of how the psyche works than the average Joe. That understanding is used to manipulate us to adopt ideologies, desire stuff we don’t need, hate on each other, etc. When one learns the logical fallacies they can no longer be manipulated because they can recognize the contradictions in what they are hearing or reading.

An all too common logical fallacy is Ad Hominem, meaning “attack the man.” Vast numbers of people now are quick to label others “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic” – (and too many more examples to count) as soon as they disagree or misinterpret what someone else has said. This shuts down rational dialogue and the spirit of inquiry, and results in a complete breakdown of intelligent discussion, which means nothing gets resolved and emotions, rather than reason rule the day. When one can recognize this, they can immediately disengage from pervasive toxic dialogue and seek out others who are capable of intelligent, thoughtful and rational discussion. If everyone had this understanding there would be no room for the deplorable display of toxic, irrational communication we see everywhere.

The list of Logical Fallacies is too long for this newsletter but you can learn them through listening to a few good vids on the subject that will offer examples of each.

Here is just one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IawIjqOJBU8

You can also check out this website on the Trivium to learn what used to be taught to children before the federal government imposed compulsory schooling that included Pavlovian and Skinner conditioning and indoctrination techniques designed to produce unquestioning compliance and an inability to reason.

www.triviumeducation.org

Navigating 2020 with this understanding will save us from tremendous stress and heartache. Keeping our eyes on our goals - as well as our own personal material - will serve us well and even protect us as we enter this new decade.

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foilfreak · 3 years

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(LOL JK, I WROTE BOTH CHAPTERS IN LIKE 4 HOURS. NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM!) Beauty and Her Beast: Chapter 6

WARNING PLZ READ BEFORE CONTINUING: This fic is rated NSFW and contains graphic depictions of things some people may find disturbing or alarming, including, but not limited to: violence, gore, unhealthy family relationships, Oedipus complexes, gratuitous amount of pornographic literature, ableist language, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, etc. If you are someone who does not enjoy fiction with these elements in them, then I suggest you refrain from reading this, because this fic will have all that, and probably a lot more. So, this is your first and final warning to turn around and go somewhere else if stuff like this just isn't your vibe, because from this point forward, your emotional wellbeing is in your own hands, and I will not be accepting blame if you disregarded my warnings and ended up reading something you didn't like. Idk why I feel compelled to write one of these despite this being Resident Evil fanfic, but I figured I'd cover my ass just in case.

(AO3 link posted in comments below)

“SALLY!!!” Angie greets in a cheerfully aggressive way, flying out from nowhere and knocking Salvatore to the ground as he heaves his way up the path toward the Beneviento estate.

“G-good evening… A-Angie… is D-Donna… home? I-I’d like to… t-to speak w-with her” Salvatore asks, somehow not even surprised by the fact that he was currently looking up at the darkening sky as the spastic porcelain doll his sister communicated through frantically flew in circles around him, like a small child who’d been given too much candy all at once.

“Hahaha, ya, she’s here. We saw you coming up the hill, so she should be waiting for you inside” Angie answers, giggling to herself as she slowly levitates up into the air, staring at Salvatore all the while. “This better be worth our time, Sally-boy, or you’ll owe us a huge favor, you got it?” The matrimonially dressed doll croons before frantically taking off toward the house without waiting to see if Salvatore was following, laughing maniacally all the while.

“I-I’ll k-keep that in m-mind…” Salvatore mumbles under his breath, flipping himself upright from the prone position in which he’d landed on his back. Picking himself off the ground, Salvatore took a deep breath, hoping that Donna was in a good enough mood to give him what he needed, before finally following after Angie.

“DONNA! SALLY’S COME FOR A VISIT. I DON’T KNOW WHY, THOUGH!” is what Salvatore hears Angie scream just as he hobbles through the front door of the estate, the Beneviento home looking just as dark and empty, save for all the doll’s of course, as the last time he was here.

“Tores,” Donna greets simply, appearing out of nowhere behind the hooded man, much like her doll had done just moments earlier.

“D-Donna! Y-you’re looking w-well” Salvatore greets back, fiddling nervously in front of the younger woman, his inability to read her expression due to the presence of her black veil causing the deformed man to sweat anxiously, despite both Angie and Donna’s use of their familiar nicknames for him. “How a-are you d-doing? H-have you m-met… your g-gift yet?”

“I have” the veiled woman answers simply, after a long moment of silence, turning her gaze to the other room, where some ornate chairs, a coffee table, and a couch sit in close proximity to one another, creating a delightfully cozy area to host party guests, if such things were to ever actually grace a house such as the Beneviento’s. Currently the only thing the sitting area hosted was a tall, grim looking man, dressed entirely in black, with a pale, gaunt face, and long, unkempt black hair that fell gracefully upon his sleeping face.

“All he’s done since he got here a few hours ago is sleep and stare off into space” Angie whispers quietly to Salvatore. “Donna says he’s just resting and adjusting to being out of the pod for an extended period of time, but I'm starting to think he might just be brain dead.”

“I take it you have met your gift as well?” Donna says suddenly, regaining Salvatore’s attention just as she motions for the deformed man to follow her out of the room and away from the still-sleeping man in the other room.

“U-uuuuuh… y-yes… yes I’ve m-met mine… th-that’s… actually th-the reason w-why I’m… h-here…” Salvatore stutters nervously, as he hobbles behind the younger woman, struggling to keep up as Donna effortlessly floats through the confusing maze of the Beneviento estate.

“Hahaha, keep up, ugly, or I’ll make you test one of my puzzles before entertaining your little request” Angie giggles sadistically as she flies past Salvatore’s shoulder and zooms down the hallway to the left. Hoping that Donna wasn’t purposefully trying to trick him so that Angie could make good on her threat, Salvatore books it down the hall, breathing a sigh of relief when he catches up with Donna just as the funeral clad woman enters her personal quarters.

“I’m sorry for the sudden change in location, but I wanted to give your concerns my full attention without fear of waking Antxon from his slumber” Donna apologized once Salvatore had closed the door to her workshop behind him, removing her veil from her head and placing the ornate head covering on its designated stand, revealing the large, veiny tumors that grew from her right eye to the deformed man. Smiling kindly at Salvatore as the deformed man removes his hood.

“N-no worries” Salvatore assures, lowering his hood to reveal the array of bulbous growths that grew along the front and back of his neck. “I’m j-just glad you… h-have s-some time to h-help me.”

“Of course, it's not a problem at all, Sal. At least, not after the incredible favor you did for me, it isn’t. I didn’t know what I was going to do when that huge storm we had last year broke parts of the waterfall off and flooded the house. I thought I was about to lose everything all over again before you came in and diverted the water flow back down the opposite side of the cliff. The fact that it’s a little late in the evening means nothing if I can repay you for saving what remains of my home” Donna says kindly, a beautiful smile spreading across her face.

Salvatore giggled and looked away in embarrassment, unused to being praised so heavily, even by Donna, the sweetest and calmest of Salvatore’s younger siblings. But regardless of that fact, yes, it’s true, Salvatore is, in fact, the reason why the Beneviento estate still stands proudly, if a bit dilapidated, on the cliff it had been built upon however many centuries ago by Donna’s ancestors. After a large summer storm knocked out several of the rocks that had previously ensured the waterfall pointed parallel to the house, the flow of water was forced to change due to the presence of a new hole through which water could, and did, flow heavily through.

Donna was practically paralyzed from her hysterical sobbing when Salvatore finally arrived with a potential solution to the slow but agonizing destruction of her childhood home. Angie was all but convulsing madly on the ground just a few feet away, a sickeningly humorous display of the debilitating fear and madness that was flying around inside Donna’s brain at that moment. Shockingly, Salvatore’s potential solution, to open up a new, larger hole on the opposite side of the cliff that would hopefully divert the flow of water away from the Beneviento house, ended up being exactly what was needed to solve the problem.

A couple of powerful swings of the tail of his much larger, much stronger fully-mutated form had the rock on the other side of the cliff falling away like small pebbles, allowing the river water to burst forth from the brand new opening. The hole through which water had been escaping onto Donna’s property slowly drained itself of water before stopping altogether, the waterfall having been successfully diverted to the opposite side of the cliff side, saving the Beneviento home from previously certain destruction.

If it weren’t for how understandably distressed and thankful Donna had been due to the results of the situation, Salvatore would have been just a bit annoyed by how frantically she sobbed while insisting upon paying the deformed man back for his kind services. Salvatore didn’t really see the need. He was more than happy to help Donna out with her problem, but he didn’t do it with the intention of getting a favor or payment out of the younger woman. Sure, it would be nice if, because Salvatore did something nice for Donna out of the kindness of his heart, Donna was willing to extend the same kindness to him when he called out for assistance, but that had never been his intention.

He wasn’t Karl, after all.

Regardless, Donna had been insistent that Salvatore may call upon her for whatever he may need in the future, and it would appear as though today was the day that he would be able to take advantage of Donna’s kind offer.

“I-It was n-nothing… I a-assure you… I was… h-happy to do it f-for you… b-but since… y-you offered to d-do something… for m-me… in return f-for what I did… I-I figured I’d… make u-use… of i-it…” Salvatore trails off, hoping he wasn’t imposing too much upon his sister. He knows she said he could ask anything of her, but even someone as talented and powerful as Donna had her limits. The deformed man can only hope that Donna will be able to assist him this time just like she has many times before.

“Of course. What is it that I can do for you? If you’re looking for manual labor of some kind, I’d certainly be willing to lend you as much of a hand as possible, but unfortunately my true skills lie in only a few areas, so I apologize if I prove to not be much help in the long run” Donna says bluntly, though her unintentionally self-deprecating speech is quickly shut down by Salvatore.

“N-no no, not a-at all… I’m w-well aware of… w-where your s-skills lie… and th-that’s why… I’ve c-come to you f-for this” Salvatore explains hurriedly. “I-I need… a dress.”

“A dress?” Donna asks, the rise of her left eyebrow revealing just how much Salvatore’s request had shocked her.

“Y-yes” Salvatore nods his head. “A d-dress… f-for a very beautiful y-young… young woman…” the deformed man says, trailing off as his cheeks begin to burn from outright embarrassment of his own words. How much more desperate and pathetic could he possibly sound?

Donna merely chuckled at the older man’s sudden bashful behavior. “Oh? So you’d like a dress commissioned for your gift would you? Well, isn’t that sweet.”

Salvatore turns away as his whole body burns with shameful embarrassment. Now, it wasn’t as though the deformed man wasn’t comfortable around Donna to talk about these sorts of things, but Salvatore wasn’t nearly as close with Donna as he was with Karl, so a part of the mutant man couldn’t help but wither slightly as the black clad woman’s soft laughs slowly came to a stop.

“Forgive my rudeness, I don’t mean to make you feel bad by laughing at you. I actually think your idea to give your gift a gift of her own is quite smart and charming. Are you looking to woo your gift, Tores?” Donna teases goodnaturedly, using her nickname for him to boot, as she walks over to a nearby drawer and begins pulling out fabrics of various colors and materials, gently placing them all out on the table in the middle of the room for Salvatore to see.

“I-I don’t k-know about… th-that… I th-think I’ll just be h-happy if…i-if we can at l-least… be f-friends.”

“But you would like more?” Donna asks knowingly, smoothing the fabrics out.

Salvatore let's his gaze fall to the floor as he fiddles with the leather bracelet on his left wrist, grimacing as selfishly filthy and domestic thoughts begin to fill the deformed man’s mind, twisted visions of tender embraces, brutal love making, and soft, loving kisses shared in a bed filled with so many children; his children; their children, scattered here, there, and everywhere across the warmth and safety of their nest, filling in every space not currently occupied by either of their parents. Surrounded inside and out by the love of the family he’d never allowed himself to dream of before. Not that Salvatore's sick and disgusting mind could ever come up with an image as pure and wholesome as this one on its own.

“I-I would… I’d l-like… a g-great deal m-more… th-than I’ll p-probably ever b-be worth… b-but I can’t h-help it… she’s just s-so… so… sh-she’s everything I’ve ever w-wanted in life… and s-still someh-how s-so much more… I h-haven’t been able to… t-to stop th-thinking about h-her… since I f-first laid eyes u-upon her… I-I want to g-give her… e-everything… I w-want to be h-her everything… i d-dont know… if it’ll e-ever work… b-but a p-part of me can’t help b-but… can’t help but w-want to try… just t-to see if m-maybe… maybe… i-it could?” Salvatore admits somberly after a few moments of silence.

Donna hums in understanding, remaining silent as she continues to gather up her supplies. After a few more moments of searching, the younger woman finally sits at the large sewing table, turning to Salvatore as she picks up a thick and luxurious looking silk material, dyed the color of bright red blood, a small smile on her face. “Well, if you’re planning on winning your gift’s affections through the use of gifts, then we’d better make sure we make her a gift worth falling in love over, yes?”

Salvatore gasps in excitement as he realizes what Donna’s words really mean. She’ll help him make a dress that he can gift to Nadine!

“O-oh thank you… th-thank you, thank y-you, thank you thank you thank you!” Salvatore praises, grabbing Donna’s hand and shaking it excitedly between them.

Donna chuckles in amused fondness. “But of course! Anything for an older brother as reliable and helpful as you! Now, the actual construction of this dress will, unfortunately, take some time, if you are looking for something fancy and luxurious, that is. There’s also the issue of measurements, as the dress will need to be custom fit to your gift’s unique frame if you want it to look the way it's supposed to. However, if you’re in a rush and would like something to give her today, I could throw something suitable together for just the time being. It won’t be the final version of course, but she'll at least have something to wear while I work on the real dress in secret. Does that sound like an agreeable plan, Tores?” Donna asks, folding her hands in front of her, making her look very professional and serious.

Salvatore nods his head. “Yes, th-that’ll be j-just fine! I’ll l-leave the d-design of the d-dress… u-up to you, D-Donna… I t-trust your e-expertise… h-however if y-you do h-have… something… th-that I could g-give Nadine t-today… then th-that would be a-amazing… as well…”

“Nadine” Donna repeats slowly, smiling again. “What a pretty name that is? Which one is she?”

“Th-the blue one… w-with white… f-freckles… an-and fins.”

“Ah yes, I remember now. Mother Miranda spoke quite poorly of that particular subject. Said she was an absolute menace, if I recall. What do you think of her?” The black clad woman asks, curiously.

Salvatore shrugs his shoulders. “I-I’ve not m-met her officially… yet… I g-got nervous an-and hid… under some c-crates… when she f-first woke up… b-but she seems… surprisingly… m-mild mannered and calm… as f-far as I c-can… as far as I can t-tell.”

“I see” Donna says, “well that sounds interesting. Though… why were you hiding under crates, again?”

“... I-I don’t w-want to talk about i-it” Salvatore mutters softly, the embarrassed heat returning when Donna chuckles at his behavior.

“Oh, don’t worry, Tores, you know I’d never judge you about something like this. Were you afraid she’d hate you when she saw you? Is that why you hid?”

Oh, Donna, sweet, kind, wonderful, omnipotently all-knowing Donna. How Salvatore hated her ability to read him like yesterday’s newspaper.

“M… maybe…” Salvatore hesitantly admits, before a thought crossed his mind.

“W-were… were you… w-wearing your veil… f-for the same r-reason… Donna?” Salvatore asks, realization causing his eyes to grow wide as he looked up at the younger woman, a soft chuckle escaping her in response.

“I suppose you could say that” Donna breathes. “I know my… mutation, isn’t nearly as bad or even life altering as yours were, but… I simply can’t handle the looks of pity, disgust, and fear that the villagers leveled me with whenever I dared leave my home. Not like you can at least.”

“I-I don’t know… i-if I’d call what I-I do… ‘handling’... I-I try to hide m-myself away… j-just as much as y-you do, Donna” Salvatore interjects, taking a step forward and reaching out to take the younger woman’s hand in his own, a comforting gesture is what Salvatore hopes it comes across as.

“I suppose… but at least you feel a sense of comfort and confidence whenever you’ve lured someone into your reservoir. You have the home advantage and are capable of utilizing and manipulating your surroundings to best fit your needs. Whenever someone enters my home however… well, let's just say the comfort of a home field advantage isn’t enough to soothe my mind of the constant worries and anxieties that come with having a total stranger in my home.”

Ah, so that’s what this was about. Salvatore was more than aware of Donna’s uneasy and traumatic upbringing, as well as how much more damage her cadou mutation did to her as well, both physically and mentally. Unlike Karl however, Donna at least had the distinct advantage of being an adult when her mutations took place, but this didn’t really end up doing very much for her in the end, only shoving the already reclusive young woman even further into her grief stricken shell.

It had taken Salvatore no shortage of effort and time to slowly but surely work his way past the hard exterior of Donna’s shell, slowly convincing her to open up until she was comfortable enough around him to both hold a conversation for longer than 5 minutes, as well as take her veil off in his presence, a gesture that Salvatore honored by removing the hood of his cloak as well. Since warming up to him however, Donna has proved to be a valuable, if difficult to get a hold of, figure in Salvatore’s life, and the deformed man was proud to call such a talented and pleasant young woman his younger sister. Even Donna herself would admit to greatly enjoying the times when the deformed man would go out of his way to pay her a visit, if only to sob about the latest romance film he’d watched while she worked on her personal projects.

In the years that they’ve had to get to know each other, Salvatore is proud to say that he’s managed to learn quite a few more personal things about Donna, and one of those things happens to be the fact that Donna hates nothing more in this entire world than random strangers in her house.

“I-Is this… about h-him?” Salvatore asks, knowing Donna knew exactly who he was talking about, despite having turned her head away so the unhooded man couldn’t read her expression.

A gentle squeeze of the hand has Donna talking. “I just… don’t know what to do with him. Mother Miranda gave us these gifts but didn’t tell us what we were supposed to use them for, other than “whatever we want”. But what if I never wanted a gift in the first place? What if I don’t want to have to tiptoe around my own damn home just so that some poor sap doesn’t have the daylights scared out of him the second he sees me?” Donna laments, sighing heavily in frustration and fear. “From what I’ve hear, your gift sounds like an absolute madwoman, so at least you’ll have something interesting to look at even if she rejects you. All mine had done all day is sleep and look like he left his brain behind in the pod. What on earth am I supposed to do with a brain dead body? I might as well give him to Heisenberg as an early birthday present.”

“W-well… I don’t k-know if I have a-any better of a “ch-chance” with my g-gift as a-anyone else… b-but I do th-think that… if you w-want to have a g-good relationship… o-of some k-kind… with y-your gift… then… m-maybe you need… to be th-the one to r-reach out… reach out an-and try and start it… y-yourself… sh-show him th-that you mean… n-no harm… and that you j-just want companionship and a-acceptance… an-and maybe… maybe if h-he wants… the s-same thing… you can… you can m-make something… out of th-that… m-make things w-work out best f-for the both of y-you… i-in whatever w-way works b-best… for the b-both of you… not a-anyone else” Salvatore suggests, feeling like he’s talking entirely out of his ass at the moment, but hoping that Donna, as smart as she was, would be able to get at least something out of his meaningless rambling.

“Hmmm… make things work for us in whatever way works out best for us, huh?” The younger woman asks, though seemingly more to herself than anyone else. “You know what… I think I might just give that a try. Thank you, Tores, you’re always such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom!”

“W-well… I c-certainly do my b-best” Salvatore blushes, rubbing the side of his neck happily as Donna giggles and turns her attention back to the fabrics.

“Alright, well, with that emotional conundrum handled, why don’t we finish our conversation about the dress you’d like to eventually give to your gift. I have a few pieces already made lying around that I'm sure will fit her, I’ll just need to shorten them a tad bit, so I'm not as concerned about what you’ll be giving her today as I am about getting an idea of what you’re looking for in the dress you plan on giving to her in the future” Donna says, breaking back into her serious business mode.

With a nod of his head, Salvatore begins describing to Donna the vision he has in his head, both for the dress as well as how it will fit on Nadine’s uniquely structured body.

“Hmmm, that definitely does sound like a challenge” Donna admits once Salvatore has concluded his explanation, “however, I don’t think it will be so difficult that I won’t be able to do it within the next few weeks.”

“S-so, you’ll d-do it?” Salvatore asks, hopefully.

“Yes, I’ve already said that I’d be more than willing to aid you in whatever you needed, but the fact that you’ve come to me with a problem I can solve with my needle and threat just makes me excited to start working. I hope its to your liking once its finally finished!”

“Oh, t-trust me, Donna... I k-know both N-Nadine and I… will be v-very pleased… with th-this dress… once i-its finally f-finished,” Salvatore assures as Donna leads him out the front door of the Beneviento estate, their conversation having concluded and Salvatore still in need of something to go along with the gorgeously pristine white satin nightgown that Donna had given him to gift Nadine until her real dress was ready.

“Well, I certainly hope so,” Donna says kindly. “I’ll do my very best on it, you can rest assured about that, at least. Anyways, I won’t keep you much longer, since you still have quite the night ahead of you it seems. At least, if you’re planning on heading up to see her too, you will.”

Heaving a heavy sigh, Salvatore nods his head solemnly. “Y-yes… I am s-still planning on g-going up to see… Alcina… just to see i-if she has… anything else… I c-could possibly g-give Nadine.”

“Whatever it is, you’ll have to pry it from her like an old rotting tooth, I imagine” Donna comments quietly.

“I-Im afraid you m-might be… b-be right about th-that one” Salvatore laments, though the thought of surprising Nadine with an even more incredible gift than just the satin nightgown filled him with a sudden inexplicable feeling of determination, as though nothing in the world could stop him so long as he had his beautiful Nadine to return to.

“B-but anyways… I w-wont take up… any more of y-your time… th-thank you, Donna… you h-have no idea… how m-much this means to m-me” Salvatore thanks as he begins heading back down the hill.

“You’re welcome, Tores. And who knows, perhaps one day… if things with both our gifts turn out well… we could all get together and share a meal… all of us together?” The black clad woman asks, her hope and apprehension for what the future may hold plain as day in her voice.

Salvatore merely smiles as the younger woman. “I w-would enjoy that g-greatly, Donna… an-and Nadine would a-as well, I think… let’s t-try and… and set s-something up… for after w-we’ve all been g-given some time… to a-adjust to our n-new living s-situations?”

“I think that sounds wonderful, Tores. Have a safe journey, and do let me know if Alcina could please return my large mannequin. Those things are a pain to make myself and yet she never remembers to send them back after she commissions a new dress.”

“Don’t w-worry, Donna” Salvatore chuckles as he hobbles away, beginning to make the rest of the journey toward Castle Dimitrescu along the still-snowy village paths, “I’ll be s-sure to let her k-know!”

“BYE, SALLY! SEE YOU NEXT TIME!” Angie all but screeches as she flies past Donna and crashes into something inside. Salvatore chuckles when he hears the audible sigh from Donna, knowing that she’s about to have her hands more than full, even without her gift factored into the equation.

Oh well... at least it would make for a funny story to hear about later!

So long as Donna survived the whole ordeal, that is.

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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Why Spam Guisada Is the Perfect Dish to Make Right Now added to Google Docs

Why Spam Guisada Is the Perfect Dish to Make Right Now

Illyanna Maisonet

Simple, satisfying, and made from pantry staples, the Puerto Rican stew is perfect for stay-at-home cooking

It wasn’t so long ago that social media feeds were flooded with glorified plates of pasta, luxurious meals at Michelin-starred restaurants, and inaccessible Eurocentric ingredients. But as soon as shelter-in-place orders were implemented across the country, the first shelf-stable foods to fill up shopping carts were rice and beans, followed closely by Spam, which reported a spike in sales.

In Puerto Rico, where the shelter-in-place order has been extended to May 25, with strict curfews and staggered essential visits, home cooks are among the many who are stocking up on Spam. As an animal protein that can withstand the heat and humidity, it’s been a part of Puerto Rico’s repertoire of colonial recipes for decades, finding its way into any number of dishes.

But the one I find myself making now is Spam guisada, a simple stew consisting of tomato sauce, sofrito, vegetables, and Spam. Like a number of Puerto Rican recipes, it was born from the island’s historical collision between government-imposed food sanctions and the imperative to make something out of nothing, and has since become a mainstay in many kitchens through a combination of nostalgia and genuine fondness. And if Puerto Rican food should have long ago had its chance to be included in America’s weekly repertoire — after all, Puerto Rico is America — then Spam guisada is a dish whose simplicity and reliance on pantry staples illustrate why now is a good time to start appreciating the island’s recipes.

Before European contact in the 15th century, cornmeal and root vegetables were dietary pillars for the Taino, the indigenous people of the Caribbean. But by 1898, when Puerto Rico switched hands from Spain to the United States, the island’s export-led industrial age had come to fruition and most of its land had been taken for large-scale mechanized agriculture, producing monoculture crops.

After World War II, processed foods started to aggressively appear on grocery store shelves in Puerto Rico, just as they did in much of the United States, including Hawai‘i and Guam. One of the companies that had the most success among Puerto Ricans was Goya Foods: Founded in 1936 (a year before Spam was released onto the market), it targeted Puerto Rican soldiers returning to New York from the war by marketing its canned beans, rice, preprocessed pasteles, hot sauces, and olive oil as accessible tastes of home. Meanwhile, Spam sales had also started to boom: By 1941, Hormel Foods, Spam’s manufacturer, had sold 40 million cans of the stuff. Many of them were finding their way into Puerto Rican kitchens.

During the 1940s and ’50s, poor and rural Puerto Rican communities, like my grandma’s, received government subsidies. Because they had no refrigeration, canned foods like Spam, along with Hormel’s corned beef and salchichas (Vienna sausages), were common. Imagine the look on the women’s faces when they were presented with cans full of gelatinous pink squares of the unknown as part of their subsidy packages. But the canned meats satiated hunger and eventually became emblematic of Puerto Rican cuisine.

Around the same time that the colonial government was sending out subsidies, it assembled a team of teachers to provide weekly “mothers’” courses to show the Puerto Rican mothers of the campo (countryside) how to prepare and creolize their rations. Some teachers, like Lorenza Brunet del Valle, saw their duties as a call to arms. In her book Negotiating Empire: The Cultural Politics of Schools in Puerto Rico, Solsiree del Moral claims that Valle believed that “the teacher is called to bring [to] fruition the very noble task of enlightening the peasant masses, of leading them out of the thick fog of ignorance in which they live.” Something tells me she wasn’t about to eat Spam guisada.

Other Puerto Rican teachers worked together with white teachers to create a curriculum that was mindful of Puerto Rico’s past and present. But in the end, they rejected their white counterparts’ inability to adapt the curriculum to local needs. The latter’s focus on how to cook government subsidies was a waste of time, they argued: The recipes that were being taught in these “home economics” workshops required the use of a modern kitchen and appliances, which ignored the fact that most rural kitchens worked off an outdoor fogon (stove) fueled by wood, and that most households lacked electricity or indoor plumbing. As a result, many impoverished and rural households found themselves excluded from this version of home economics.

Spam guisada is a legacy of this flawed curriculum. It’s a dish that my grandma cooked often, and that I now love to recreate during the summer months, when local tomatoes, corn, and green beans are plentiful. In my kitchen it has evolved into a Californian-Puerto Rican dish: there are still those blush-colored cubes of Spam, but the canned green beans have been traded for fresh ones from the farmers market. Instead of canned corn, there are sunshine kernels harvested at the peak of sweetness. I’ve also added knobs of potatoes — because the Puerto Ricans of yore always had to have potatoes — that float in the sofrito-confettied tomato sauce as it starts to thicken. Once it thickens, I know it’s time to cascade the dominion brew over a bed of sticky rice (grown and harvested in the California Central Valley) intermixed with bits of pegao, the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot.

In the moment I’m escaping into Spam guisada, it’s true that I’m also conceding a kind of colonial Stockholm syndrome. But it’s so good that the escape is what lingers, and right now, that’s exactly what I need.

You can find Illyanna’s recipe for Spam guisada on her website, EatGordaEat.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/5/27/21264216/spam-guisada-puerto-rican-dish-recipe-history

Created May 27, 2020 at 11:26PM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[RF] A scattered narrative of disassociation :or: Her story

I want to tell you a story.

Her story.

It’s like the ones I usually tell. No, this one will be written by her and her alone. She is, after all, the mastermind behind all this. The author, if you will.

Shall I introduce you to her? You’ve must have met her before. Seen her everyday of your life, actually. She’s pretty shy you know, doesn’t talk, doesn’t get out much, doesn’t know who she is yet, really.

I don’t get wet though the ocean sprays me. I don’t get erect though the devils chase me. I have to know before the wind and hope it doesn’t damn me. I’m a wisp, a waifu, a wife, though only one at a time. I follow that dream into the sunset then make up the next day. Maybe if I stay awake longer the dream will persist. A sentiment without thought or image existing into a form permeable through the pores of my skin. I’m an adaptable maladaptive. A sore upon the psyche. Breathe in and I am here, breathe out and I am here, breathe in and out and I am gone. There is chaos in the ordered automatic, a great yearning for the imposed struggle. I can plunge into the abyss until my feet touch the ground. There is no fear of falling, there is a fear of heights. I am falling from a great height from a low point in a high mind. Oh, how tall the sky is! How majestic blue prisms peak behind ashen clouds of water and dust that cloud around my hair and whisper, “you’re not short enough, your hair’s not long enough.” Space vacuum above me, hello stars, hello moon, termite mound below me, I can’t fit through that hole. This is how they view me. This is how I view myself. This is how they warn me. This is how I stop myself.

She’s asking why she’s denied the love you so easily possessed.

I’ll try my best to decode her words, but this is all stream of consciousness type stuff. You know, the usual angsty teen drivel. Eh, it’s not all drivel, I guess. There’s a lot of rich thought behind what she’s saying, but it’s all lost in her poetic endearments to the inanimate and sentimental. And her crushing dysphoria.

I left with the wind. Yes, that is what I will call myself. Alice. Wind-child. As true as the meaning I gave to it.

I don’t think the name “Alice” has anything to do with the wind outside of her calling herself that when the wind was blowing through her hair.

Oh, look I was distracted again. By myself? Possibly. Am I by myself? Absolutely.

How poignant.

I want to get a haircut. Not to cut it short, but to make it longer. A haircut like a shortcut. A long way away.

This is what dysphoria does to people, I assume. What’s never enough is never good enough.

I’ve gotta learn how to read. Then the signs this guy’s giving me will finally be clear. Clear. I’d love to be. Body, soul, and mind through the life of Christ led us to death to save us all, hallelujah.

Ah, now we’re getting into the big question, “am I a good Christian?” I’ve heard her talk about this one before. There’s a lot to digest here and it’s not all about her questioning herself… well, actually yea, it all about her questioning herself let’s continue.

I remember a conversation with my father a couple of years ago. He talked about something I can’t remember. Either due to lack of focus, or lack of remembering. Either one is the same result, and therefore the same thing. I wasn’t listening.

She’s referring to her confessing homosexual inclinations to her father. He was as dismissive as she was aloof about the whole situation. She convinced herself that she had nothing to fear, and her father did the same. Her inability to communicate intimately with her father further compounded her self-doubt.

It’s more important to do one thing than another. Of course, that much is truthful and honest.

Is she talking about anything specific here? I don’t know, probably. Let’s just assume it’s about the main topic and not something wildly off key.

Dream on you little dreamer, you’ll fall asleep soon.

Ok yea, this is starting to sound wildly off key. I think she’s about to go on an incoherent tangent.

Don’t you know everyone’s out there waiting for you? They’ll be over soon. Forget what I said earlier, this isn’t about you, this is about me, and all reality and metaphor turns, to attention towards it and wonders.

Oh look, I was right.

How soon can we go? How soon can we see? How soon can we wander and wonder and be? Well there’s nothing quite like it, and that’s easy to tell. I love you so much, in heaven or hell.

That last part is the instance of identifiable meaning. You think I’m transcribing more than I should but trust me, I can’t keep up with how fast this girl thinks. I’d say “how much” she thinks, but that’d imply a theory of value that I’m unconvinced her “thought process” has. Regardless, she deserves credit for what she’s doing. She’s scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel for answers to questions she’s never asked.

Goodness gracious, now she’s got me all cryptic. Sorry, I’ll try to keep things straight in the future.

Let’s see what else she has to say first though.

She wants to go back to what she was talking about earlier, that part about loving someone in heaven or hell. I’m pretty curious about that part myself so I’m glad she’s addressing it again.

“Heaven and Hell,” she explains, “are full of God’s… Hello!” she got distracted by someone walking by.

Except that whole interaction was in her head, which she hasn’t gotten out of yet.

…

Are you just not gonna talk now Alice?

…

Because of what I said? Really?

…

Ok, fine! Sorry for hurting your feelings Alice, please continue talking about how much “big sad” you experience on a daily basis.

… ?

And you’re a beautiful person who is visible and valid and blah blah blah I love you get on with it.

“Did he name all things,” she asked to the paper sky, “or did he command us to argue about whether or not he’s a guy?”

Language is the only weapon God gave us. Creation gave everything purpose, language gave everything meaning. God created Adam and Eve, but we created man and woman.

What? That doesn’t make sense?

Ok, Alice wants me to explain what we’re trying to say here. Basically, God created Adam and Eve, but it was our language, our understanding of what it MEANT to be Adam and Eve that made them “Adam” and “Eve” or “man” and “woman.” Speaking of which (pun intended), how do we even know they were called “Adam” and “Eve?” There wasn’t the separation of language yet, so what they were speaking in God tongue? Did their names “sound” like Adam and Eve in English? Or did they sound like their respective names in every modern language. Blah, too many questions to assume it’s binary, hope that clears things up though!

It didn’t?

Well, too bad, read the Bible.

“Hello friend,” Wait, who’s she talking to again? That random guy, or me? “I’d like to get to know you, if you don’t mind too terribly.”

Wait, Alice gimmie a sec, let me get back on track here…

“It’s like getting drunk in prison...”

And there she goes.

“…there’s nowhere to loose an aching mind, so it leaks all across the eyes and tongue.”

Ok? You feel stuck in your head, alright we got that part, go on.

“It’s like strips of newspaper,” I don’t know where she got that analogy from. Maybe taking a story apart to suit your narrative? “you take it apart and the words fall apart. What am I supposed to read? What am I supposed to wear?”

Maybe she’s talking about how she’s restructuring her life around her thought? The questions themselves imply a measure of dualism, like she’s bouncing ideas off herself.

Oh, does that mean I’m supposed to answer her questions then? Cause I know what she wants in these, Reddit memes and swooshy skirts.

“What am I supposed… to think?” now we’re getting somewhere.

…

Hm, she went silent for a bit there. I tried asking her what she was thinking about, but she was too busy thinking. I suppose that was an appropriate reaction.

…

She’s still not talking. Great. I want her to break down her character. Deconstruct rather than decompose for once. Her questions were reaching into the belly of the beast, why didn’t she keep going?

There are many things out to get me at once. All looking to change my opinion all looking to change who I am. Let me make this perfectly clear, who I am, will never change, I am as I as I can be. There is no other I but I if you believe me but be careful that you do for you’ll wish you didn’t. Forget what I’ve been saying. If you do this, then all will be well with you. Because if you consider what I’m saying, I shouldn’t be saying it.

Alice. Alice, c’mon. C’mon on out. I’m not going to hurt you.

You see that horizon, Alice? It’s not the sun you’re looking at, it’s an angel breaking through the clouds like a dream sequestered on music and art as a combination of Heaven and Verse. There is only one outcome. Euphoria.

That didn’t make any sense. I know. But neither does this feeling, so why should the explanation lie about it?

“I wonder if they wrote the Bible this way,” she wonders, “I wonder if this is how the…

I want my happiness to blossom

Not fade in the morning light

So I’ll stay within my daydream

And sink into the sun.

submitted by /u/thezeroinGod [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/34mho8N

#Blogger #Story

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sharynashleybachleda · 7 years

Text

The Paradox of Choice | Origin

Indecisiveness

Multiple choices

One of every color

Small, Medium, Large

First world problems

What should I do with these things?

I might need that later

Just in case

You never know what will happen

Right?

We live in a world constantly stimulated by choices, whether they are mental/emotional or having to do with physical things.

I’m guilty of falling into the trap of “what if” and “But I might need this later”

So how did I get here?

I’d like to say I know what it’s like not to have much.. but the thing is, the love language of my family is the opposite. I grew up with lots of things. Nice things, big things, small knick knacks. I was lucky and didn’t know what it felt like to struggle until my adult life.. and even now, I have people who look out for me and won’t let me hit rock bottom and I’m eternally grateful for that.

But something that has been heavy on my heart lately is.. STUFF

As an artist, I see beauty just about everywhere when I look.

I see potential in almost everything. Someone else’s trash is someone else’s treasure, so they say. For years now, I’ve been guilty of borderline hoarding things.. but mainly clothes and art supplies. It’s to the point where I’m so tempted to just give most of it away and save the things I keep returning to, the things that ADD value to my life, and get rid of the DISTRACTIONS.

I grew up in a very distracting household. From an early age, I had a hard time throwing things away because all I wanted to do was “make stuff” and “repurpose it”... I made dolls out of beads, wire and clay. I started making my own doll clothes. I recycles just about every box and turned it into either a doll house or some type of fort (but I guess that’s pretty kid-normal, right?)

I’ll be honest, I was spoiled.

My father grew up an only child with an abusive mother who only knows how to show her love by giving “things” to people. Naturally, this rubbed off. He worked most of my life and most of the memories with him are on holidays and birthdays or when I’d come home to a new thing he bought me. I realize this is his love language and I’m grateful that he cares enough to keep me in his life, despite our VERY REAL differences. He will never understand what it’s like to be an artist, just like I’ll never understand what it’s like to have been a narcotics cop and think Trump “isn’t so bad”... (I’m not going to let myself get into a tangent on this one just yet though)

My mother grew up with two siblings, being the middle child. From her stories, she’s always had a bit of a hard time conforming. I think that’s where I get it from. She didn’t grow up with very much and learned at a young age to fend for herself. Even though I grew up with “things” and my mother around to care for me, I also learned at a young age to not rely on others. If I wanted to do something, I did it. I’m still that way. I don’t wait for “friends” to tag along. For the most part, If I want to go somewhere, it doesn’t occur to me to even ask someone to join. I’m just a recluse I guess.. but I can get along really well with people and have formed some amazing connections over the years and I’m eternally grateful for those.

The thing both of my parents have in common, possibly the only thing, is that they know sacrifice. I understand that I won’t understand this type of sacrifice until and IF I have a child. My father is one of those entrepreneurs who can figure out how to build just about anything without using a blueprint. He, too, has learned not to rely on others. In his experience, it’s mostly held him back because he wants things done “the right way” and since he’s not very good with words or explaining the picture in his mind, he can’t really show or tell someone how to do something and thus gets frustrated when someone lets him down. Like myself, he’s gone about most things that he wants to do alone. Maybe that’s where I get it from.

I acquired many parts of myself from my father but I think more from my mother. It’s funny how this happens unintentionally.. and the more I grow, the more I do something and think “damn, I’m just like my mom”. My mother is the biggest empath I have ever met. Whenever I’ve been through a breakup, I think she’s the one to cry first. (My father is notoriously cold and hard-headed and I will always have a bit of that but lately, I’m becoming a bit more soft). Mom has saved literally every piece of art I’ve ever made and will forever be my biggest fan (thanks, mom). She’s a worry-wart, over-thinks everything and growing up, wouldn’t let me go down the street without packing me a damn cooler. I think this is where I get my “always having to be prepared” thing from. But hell, she really does mean well. She thinks about things most people overlook and notices tiny details that my perfectionist father also notices. Ok so maybe this is another thing they have in common.

BACK TO MY INTENTION

Ok, so I went off on a few tangents.. but in the end, I’ll get from point A to B

I just might also hit P, E, Q, and Z in between.. (this is another thing I get from my mother.. my ADD-ness and inability to finish a story without starting others)

So, back to how I got here.

Like I said above, I see potential in so many things. I will forever have this child-like quality of seeing magic in wherever I look.. but sometimes that holds me back. I have undoubtedly acquired this part of myself from my mother. She is a pre-school teacher and is wonderful at seeing the beauty in the things that light up a child’s eyes. Sometimes it’s hard to move on when I look around and see all these things that house so many memories, associations, emotions and past-trauma residue (but also sometimes very positive residue).

This past year, I’ve done a good job at getting rid of the things that don’t aid in my well-being but I still feel like I have a lot of work to do. It’s especially bad when I walk into a Goodwill. So, being an environmentalist (or so I try), I’m very much into sustainable fashion. A: it’s MUCH cheaper to buy used clothes and B: I feel much better not supporting corporations and sweat shops, saving the environment one article of clothing at a time, or something like that.

When I walk into a Goodwill, Salvation Army, consignment shop etc. I always manage to spend at least $20 and leave with a bag full of stuff. However lately, I’ve made a new rule for myself and now for every new article that I buy, I have to get rid of 4 things to balance it out. A lot of the time, I don’t even buy things for myself. (this is where I have acquired my father’s love language of gift-giving)

I’ll see a thing in a store that reminds me of a friend, family member, etc and it adds value to my life to add value to their life (if the thing adds any value at all, that is.. I mean, sometimes it’s just a silly thing I thought would make them laugh for a moment). Or I’ll see that something is worth at least 5 times as much as they’re selling it for and think “omg, I can totally sell that”. This is how I’ve accumulated boxes of “clothes to sell”. At one point, I thought maybe I would get into sustainable vintage fashion and open an online shop. I worked at one for a while and learned that I could totally do it on my own and figured, hell, I can totally do this. Then I realized, this would not fulfill me. I’ve done a few pop-up markets and I love talking to people and seeing people come across unique items that speak to them and watching these items go to new homes but I’ve realized that these “things” aren’t my passion. The only things my passion really requires are my eyeballs, a camera, some film or a paintbrush and something to make a mess on. Even without those things, I have an even better time in nature without them sometimes. Part of being an artist is learning to be content with the magic around you and not trying to impose yourself or ideas onto the world. Sure, some of these ideas may be grand but what I realize is more powerful is the connections in nature and community that form the ideas in the first place. More and more lately I’m realizing that if something is really meant to happen, it will come without force. So, I’m still finding my route in this world but I know that at this point of my life, these clothes and things are just making it harder for me to jump. Jump off into the unknown realm of magic and creation of myself within the world, hopefully inspiring others along the way. All I really want to do is help people see things that have always been in front of them. I want to show them the light on the end of the tunnel within themselves and the possibility of creation. When people say they’re not creative and can’t do art I like to tell them “you were created, you can create.. it’s that simple”.

Upon realizing what I DON’T want to do, I’m now realizing what I need to do to allow myself to jump.

LET GO

I’ve been making piles of clothes to give to friends and I’m going to do my best to lighten up my load with things that actually add value to my life. There’s nothing wrong with having lots of things, as long as you use those things.. and the more stuff I buy from Goodwill, the more I realize I am not using over half of the other things I own. And naturally, I really do want to help people. There’s a rescue shelter that I used to help my friend donate food to that I’m going to send some of the clothes to. The rest, maybe I can sell in bulk online or something.. (Ideally, I’d love to make more money off of this stuff but it’s to the point where I just have to let fucking go)

Anyways,

I have a lot of choices that surround these things and it takes up so much physical and mental space that I think I’d be much more happy if I could fit everything I loved into my car.

I’m not going to make that whole leap just yet because, well, I have some large items that I actually use (i.e. a bed, couch, etc) but I’m going to load a few cameras into my bag and a backpack full of my favorite clothes and take a road trip to free myself from this space for a bit.

My route is TBD but if I don’t do this soon, I’m just going to keep holding myself back.

I’ll probably add to the post and finish up a few thoughts on here later.

#words

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