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elminx · 2 years ago

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Energy Update: May 2023

May is a "3" Universal Month [5 (May) + 7 (2023) = 12 = 1+2=3] in a "7" Universal Year. Three is a very active number, after going out on our own (1) and then finding somebody to settle down with (2), we can finally think about getting together and socializing. 3 months almost always require some give and take. Perhaps even some working together. It's worth being mindful that we enter the month mid Mercury retrograde and between eclipses. Energies will be high, but compromises may be hard to come by.

The Set Up

We begin the month of May with the Sun, retrograde Mercury, Uranus, and the North Node in Taurus; Venus in Gemini; Mars in Cancer; Jupiter and Chiron in Aries; Saturn and Neptune in Pisces; and Pluto in Aquarius. It's worth noting here that all of the planets except for Mars are still in the left two quadrants of the horoscope wheel and fairly closely spaced together from Aquarius through Cancer. This shows us that collectively we have work to do in these sections of the horoscope.

By month's end, the Sun will have moved on into Gemini, Venus will have transitted into Cancer, Mars into Leo, and Jupiter into Taurus. Mercury will have finished off their retrograde cycle in Taurus and Pluto will have retrograded in Aquarius. All eyes are on Mercury, Pluto, and the North Node who will be the big players in the events that will transpire.

The Nitty Gritty

As each month is "born" on the first, the astrology of the day can be used as somewhat of a portent of the incoming energies. In the way that a natal chart is read for the life ahead, this can be read for the month ahead. We can see that May is going to be eventful as two significant transits occur.

The first is that our Sun and retrograde Mercury meet up in conjunction with one another. This is often referred to as Mercury cazimi, a term that comes from Arabic and vaguely translates as something like "in the heart of the sun". This is one of the most common transits we experience as it happens from 6-8 times a year as Mercury makes its regular trips backward through the horoscope wheel during its retrograde periods. This is the only aspect that the Sun and Mercury can make with one another as the two bodies always appear within 28° of each other in our skies. It can also be seen as the nadir of the Mercury retrograde cycle.

Additionally, Pluto stations retrograde at 00° Aquarius. Pluto's ingress into Aquarius was one of the big moments of the year. We're going to all have to learn to deal with the modern implications of Pluto in the ever-expanding vastness of Aquarius in our tech world, just as we had to deal with the modern implications of Pluto in our finances while the planet of death and transformation was in Capricorn. We're not quite there yet. Not quite done with that old goat of a story. Not quite ready for that leap into whatever head trip Aquarius is on about now.

That is beyond us though. Those outer planets always are. Nonetheless, we will stew in this energy all month long. (Yes, the Sun is in Taurus - I'm going to be all in on the food metaphors.) Taurus has been having a tough go of things as both unpredictable Uranus and the North Node of forward-facing fate have been making their way through the normally unflappable sign of the bull. You might even notice some ruffled feathers or broken horns. Taurus may be slow to anger (so long as they don't have any Aries or a strongly aspected Mars in their chart), but once they have seen red, all bets are off. Prepare to be gored. Or, at least, maybe don't wear that red dress out to the place where you know you have enemies. That message is for someone. (maybe me)

The feeling of the beginning of the month is going to feel like a crescendo that will likely peak somewhere on either side of 5/9 when the Sun conjuncts Uranus at 18° Taurus. There is a feeling of the finality of endings in the air. I don't think that these endings or transitions will be a surprise to most people, but that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be in their feelings about it. Our eclipsed full moon on 5/5 is the last in this series to fall in Scorpio - that is a part of this finality that is hanging in the air. This was a split eclipse where the solar eclipse did not fall in the sign opposed to the lunar eclipse (in this case Aries and Scorpio). Instead, we began and end this cycle through Mars. Action can be taken to create the needed finality during this time. The eclipse will certainly be a high point in this energetic month. Though the full moon closes out eclipse season the energy may hang around for a little bit longer as the Sun meets up in conjunction with Uranus on 5/9 (Uranian energy feels very similar to that of eclipse season) and Venus in Cancer makes a sextile with the North Node and a trine with the South node on 5/10. This is a double emphasis on our South Node through both the Scorpio full moon and Venus' impact which shows up that release is needed during this time. Once we pass this point, the energy may slow down a bit and start to feel more traditional for Taurus season. As we enter the weekend of the 12-14th, we get a big push of reality as retrograde Mercury, Venus, and Saturn all line up with one another. Mercury in Taurus makes a sextile to both Venus in Cancer and Saturn in Pisces, who, in turn, are trine to one another. This feels like the consequences of our eclipse season coming home to roost. With Venus in Cancer, things are bound to get wet and weepy, so bring a towel or an umbrella. Mercury exits their retrograde cycle on Monday 5/15 which is yet another ending that we will have to contend with. Things do start to right themselves as Mercury stations direct, but it is worth remembering that we have a third phase of the retrograde cycle to go through (the post-retrograde shadow) where Mercury retraces their steps all the way back to 15° Taurus before we move on to new territory. If you've been avoiding your shit, it may come back around again for a third time for review. Things will get even more Taurusy as Jupiter enters the sign of the bull on 5/16. This is a great time to do magic towards growing your finances or manifesting something physical like a home as Jupiter expands and Taurus rules the physical accumulation of things. If you work with the Elder Futhark, the Fehu rune would be a very appropriate companion all month and especially around 5/16 when Jupiter enters Taurus. That said, Jupiter immediately squares off with retrograde Pluto in Aquarius. This aspect goes exact on 5/17 but will be felt immediately as Jupiter enters Taurus and will remain strong for most of the following week. Outer planet aspects like this have a more societal impact, so we may see some more of the fallout of Pluto in Capricorn (failure of banks, money systems, etc.) come to light during this time. Both Mars and the Sun will also make aspects with Pluto this week (Mars in Leo opposed on 5/20 and Sun in Gemini trine on 5/21) so death and transformation energy will likely be close to the surface all week long. The advice to Let Things End often falls on deaf ears, but it bears repeating in this regard. Beware the Sunk Cose Fallacy - just because you have spent time on a situation does not mean that you have to stick with it. Let the things that need to leave your life leave.

Newly direct Mercury meets up in Sextile with Saturn once more on 5/19 under the light of the Taurus new moon. There are a lot of possibilities for a new beginning here, but you are going to need to work for it. This isn't a cakewalk (sorry Taurus). Saturn demands that you put in the work to reap the results. Those that AREN'T willing to put in the work are going to be really in it as they don't see the result. Mars enters Leo on Saturday 5/20 which brings us straight to ego town. The Sun enters Gemini the next day - this weekend has drama written alllllllll over it.

If that's your thing, have at it.

If it's not, lay low.

The energy will persist into the final week of May as our Sun in Gemini sextiles Mars in Leo and Mars squares off with Jupiter in Taurus. The way forward during this transit is not to brag about it, as tempting as that may be. Don't get ahead of yourself here - only promise what you can actually deliver. Watch out for braggarts, those who are yelling the loudest right now almost certainly don't have anything to back it up. Venus in Cancer squares off with Chiron in Aries, too; emotions are close to the surface and somebody is bound to get their feelings hurt.

Somebody will get lucky (Jupiter conjunct North Node on Saturday 5/27) but it will be the person who has earned it, not the slacker who wants everybody to believe that they deserve it (Sun in Gemini square Saturn in Pisces). Use your best discernment to tell the difference during this time because all that glitters is most certainly NOT gold. Things may feel a bit unsettled as we wind out the month - we are approaching the end of Mercury's post-retrograde shadow and so we may find ourselves having to pay the piper in our own lives, whatever that means for you. If you did it, own it. If it's yours, care for it. If it's not, put down a boundary. Some shit isn't meant for you and that can be a good thing.

The Details

5/1 - Sun conjunct retrograde Mercury 11° Taurus, Pluto retrogrades 00° Aquarius 5/4 - Venus in Gemini square Neptune in Pisces 5/5 - Lunar eclipse/Full Moon 14° Scorpio, Venus in Gemini sextile Jupiter in Aries 5/7 - Venus enters Cancer 5/9 - Sun conjunct Uranus 18° Taurus 5/10 - Venus in Cancer sextile North Node in Taurus/trine South Node in Scorpio 5/12 - Retrograde Mercury in Taurus sextile Saturn in Pisces, Retrograde Mercury in Taurus sextile Venus in Cancer 5/13 - Venus in Cancer trine Saturn in Pisces 5/15 - Mercury retrograde ends 05° Taurus, Mars in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces 5/16 - Jupiter enters Taurus 5/17 - Jupiter in Taurus square retrograde Pluto in Aquarius 5/18 - Sun in Taurus sextile Neptune in Pisces 5/19 - New Moon 28° Taurus, Mercury in Taurus sextile Saturn in Pisces 5/20 - Mars enters Leo, Mars in Leo opposed retrograde Pluto in Aquarius 5/21 - Sun enters Gemini, Sun in Gemini trine retrograde Pluto in Aquarius 5/22 - Sun in Gemini sextile Mars in Leo 5/23 - Mars in Leo square Jupiter in Taurus 5/24 - Mars in Leo square North Node in Taurus and South Node in Scorpio (fixed t-square), Venus in Cancer square Chiron in Aries 5/26 - Venus in Cancer sextile Uranus in Taurus 5/27 - Jupiter conjunct North Node in Taurus/opposed South Node in Scorpio 5/28 - Sun in Gemini square Saturn in Pisces 5/31 - Mercury exits its post-retrograde shadow 15° Taurus

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#astrology #energy update #transits #May 2023 #Mercury retrograde #eclipse season #Pluto retrogrde

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astrosweet · 4 years ago

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🔱✨Makeup in astrology✨🔱

Part 2

.⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆｡˚｡⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆. Neptune through the houses .⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆｡˚｡⋆｡⋆˚｡⋆

☆Neptune represents your flashy or showier side its the planet of illusions and rules over makeup, glamour, fashion, theatre, films, T.V. ( Neptune is like Venus minus relationships and romance).

☆Your Neptune placements/aspects can tell you about your makeup style and what will suit you best.

🔱 Neptune in the 6th house could be sensitive/allergic to makeup or it could break you out or you already use clean natural makeup. I would say try to take a break from it for about three days to see if it is affecting your skin but the 6th house is also the house of daily life so you wear it every day either because you like to or you have to wear a specific makeup look for work. your pet always watches you do your makeup. you probably do your makeup in a weird order like mascara first then foundation after that eyeshadow/liner or have a different approach to your makeup every day, but you do it so fast and probably without a mirror because the routine is branded in your brain. the 6th house is ruled by Virgo/ mercury so similar to the 3rd house the innocent and doe-eyed looks are gorgeous on you. also try to do something different with your makeup every day. a daily routine of artistic self-expression is important for you.

🔱 Neptune in the 7th house (this one was hard ngl. it's literally the opposite of self and individuality). People will admire your makeup. It's something you bonder with friends. your significant other can also love how you do your makeup. similar to the 1st house people can give you a lot of shit for your makeup or will use it as a quick jab to your ego but it's really because they're jealous of your beauty. the 2nd & 7th are ruled by Venus but the 7th/Libra energy is much more showy, masculine, and dramatized glamor compared to 2nd/Taurus which is more of sweet feminine glamour. this placement kinda reminds me of New Year's makeup lol but really glamorous and extravagant yet you still want some classiness compared to just a normal party look. gold looks great on you and as well as bronzy contour.

🔱 Neptune in the 8th house. I have this placement so I'm gonna try to not project myself onto this one. but tell me why we all had an fx/gore makeup phase lol. your makeup is bought by someone else or just not with your money. you could also get makeup from other people like the stuff they never used. when you go through transformations you change the way you do your makeup. your makeup is dark even if you didn't mean for it to be. mascara will always smudge and look like you used lower eyeliner so might as well just add some lower line eyeshadow anyways. darker makeup looks best on you but if you are not comfortable with the dark looks just add a little brown (I just use my bronzer) as eyeliner. just a little flick on the end and maybe some on the lower lash line. overall this placement gives me maleficent vibes. you can get Inspo from people who are sex symbols or exude dominant femme fatale energy. Neptune in the 8th house can be really secretive with their creativeness and self-expression and a lesson you have to learn this life is to claim your power and natural creative talents and learn to show them to the world. we naturally have bad bitch, femme fatale energy so embrace it bb ;). you have the power to manifest creative abilities if you want.

🔱 Neptune in the 9th house you could be into culturally different kinds of makeup like Korean makeup, or French makeup, also you could be into cosplay or specific aesthetics like dark academia, and cottage core. you might have lived in a strict household and you were not been allowed to wear makeup. or it's just something that didn't interest you till you got older. as you get older you get better at doing your makeup and if you are good at it and like a specific niche the best look for you is bronzy and sun-kissed. you could be into different makeup aesthetics from different countries and generally like to be adventurous with your makeup.

🔱 Neptune in the 10th house. you could have gotten public praise for your makeup or for being creative. Creative careers are generally best for you. you also could have been told that you need to wear makeup in public or at work. your father(or if you have a dominant mother) could have also been kinda an ass about you and makeup. if you're not into makeup now and you are young you might learn how to do it because it will be an expectation in your career when you're older. bronzy looks and heavy contour can look good on you as well as dramatic but neutrals in more of a glamour way.

🔱 Neptune in the 11th house. you probably learned to do makeup through YouTube and friends. I know you have a makeup inspo Pinterest board with a thousand pins in it. makeup can be a creative outlet for you. a common interest you have with your friends is makeup and beauty gurus.. this placement also gives me euphoria vibezz. y'all can pull off crazy wild looks. the 11th house is ruled by Aquarius which reminds me of blue/greens and glitter lol. also pale regal-like skin and soft features. post ur looks on TikTok/ YouTube/insta you have luck with publishing ur art and posting it can be a service to people by inspiring them and teaching people

🔱 Neptune in the 12th house. I love this energy Pisces rules both Neptune and the 12th house. though this placement does kinda remind me of Neptune in the 8th where you keep your talents and creative abilities a secret. you can get inspiration from your dreams. or your dream of being showier with your talents. a big lesson for you in this lifetime is understanding and showing your hidden talents as well as overcoming the fear of judgment towards your creative abilities. you're amazing at drunk makeup. if Pisces is dominant in ur chart then you won't be as shy with your skills. light blush on ur cheekbones will look amazing on you also white liner in your waterline. and reddish-pink lips but not overdramatic. similar to the 8th you have the power to manifest creative abilities if you want.

Sorry this one took a while I posted part 1 on my birthday and we all know a Leo birthday is not just one day it's a Multi-day event lol.

this one was kind of hard to write bc my birth chart is very left side dominate. part 1 was more intuitive and natural for me to write but for part 2 I had to do a lot more research which my Gemini north node loved. so let me know if you resonate :)

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alexwritesfiction · 4 years ago

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-> About Me (navigation)

Call me Alex. Born 2006, i’m a native indian student in high school. i like to write excessively in freelance times and make oddly specific playlists. 5SOS, One Direction enthusiast. It’s all about the aesthetic <3. I really love cats so please flood me with them. I love using emoticons :)

-> About My Writing

I mostly write contemporary fiction with diverse character representation. Number one enemies to lovers trope stan even though found family comes a close second. I also write fantasy (i love worldbuilding) and different genres to refresh. requests for drabble and fics are open! but it might take time since i get flooded sometimes.

-> About My WIPs (masterlist)

One Shots and Drabbles in Masterlist

Let Me Know To Be Added To The Taglists

Hey Micah (ongoing)

In which ayla has been in love with her best friend for as long as she has known life but his fate has other plans for him and alyssa.

“and i know in the depths of my heart that whatever happens to the three of us, we’ll always make it though. back to each other. home”

tw // major character death

Oblivion Of Everything (camp nano)

In which ten nights and a whole lot of coffee changes the connections between an insomniac and a sleepyhead, who just want to know what life is.

“whatever you do, don’t fall asleep” “well that’s ironic”

tw // insomnia

Noah And Peyton

in which two 15 year old best friends agree to date each other if they can’t find love till 19, and Noah is determined to not let Peyton’s relationships last.

“we made a pact, pey, and i’m just following it. break my heart, but don’t break the pact. or it’s gonna break us,”

best friends to lovers | diverse | coming of age | teen fiction

tw // eating disorder // assault

Xavier

in which a gang leader’s daughter is arranged to marry the world’s biggest mafia leader. Xavier Blackheart has been putting up a shield all his life, only to be ripped apart by Catherine’s diamond dagger, and she’s the queen he never asked for.

“i’m a spitfire, and he’s ice cold. i wait for the day he’s gonna melt and i’ll finally be able to see the boy beneath him. because as much as i hate to admit it, i know he’s there, trying to hold on to life while the world crumbles around him,”

tw // violence and gore // assault

She’s The Man

in which a neurodivergent girl dresses up as a boy to attend the most elite prep school to study and change the world, and she does. with the help of two twins, no less.

“I’d never really wondered how i’d look in a boys uniform. Until today, of course,”

“I might be able to live without one, because life goes on whether we want it to or not, but i certainly don’t want to. Live without you, that is. My world has two suns and i’m just as grateful to be their whole universe.”

Ashton Garcia and the Teenage Side of Things

in which a non binary pansexual Ashton Garcia tries to discover themselves while still struggling through the hell that is high school. coming out? therapy? fake friends? what has their life come to? they try to find all the answers by themselves, and realise along the way that sometimes, it’s okay to be different and it’s okay to accept help. they’re not alone, not if Tyler Jones has anything to do with it.

“the words on the billboard blurred as my clothes became wet in the rain and i couldn’t believe that, standing there, someone accepted me more than i accepted myself. and what do you know, it was a mind boggling feeling on its own,”

tw // minor transphobia and homophobia

Breathe - letter side project

a project that will contain letters for aesthetic topics and just normal every day things observed through the eyes of a visionary, with all of the freshness of new ideas and optimism and deep things. a salvation of sorts. words that are too different to merge into works but too important to not share with the world.

“it was a cluster of lost droplets falling onto the ground with ferocity, as if they'd lost their way home and had surrounded us with melancholy. seems that someone unravelled the bright cloud and poked it enough for it to break, to turn dark and broken and finally let go of the weight it was holding. only if the sun had been shining now, the sadness could have been converted into a beautiful spectrum of colours, a companion to the endless tears of the cloud, a smile in the darkest depths of the broken world.”

aesthetic | letters | philosophy | visionary | deep

We’ll Never Die (5SOS fanfic) (30k)

in which michael clifford and his fan meet on an airplane and the walls he’s built fall for her.

-> Do Not Interact

TERFs / queerphobic / racists / ableists / nsfw

-> Tag Lists

1. everything

@neptune-falls @metanoiamorii @thescatteredscribbles @little-boats-on-a-lake @talesofsorrowandofruin @w-l-ink @baguettethebooklover @euphoniouspandemonium @wannabeauthorzofija @lady-of-himring @the-writing-avocado @ink-fireplace-coffee @your-local-bi-disaster @a-completely-normal-writer @felonyfairy @cool-but-confused @47crayons

2. Hey Micah

@mel-writes-with-her-dragons @zoya-writes

3. BREATHE

@zoya-writes @unbalancedscale @just-colorful-regret

#about me #writeblr intro #writeblr reintroduction #writeblr introduction #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #writer #hey micah #writer memes #spotify #writers kit #poetry #poets of tumblr

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stxrsfxlling · 4 years ago

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violent delights. | your megalomaniac soundtrack for world domination. sounds like kingdoms falling, castles quivering in fear, and people bending to your will.

J2 Hit Me Baby One More Time / 2WEI Survivor / Jetta I'd Love To Change The World / alt-J In Cold Blood / Lorde Everybody Wants To Rule The World / Tribe Society Kings / Stephen Crossfire / Unlike Pluto Worst in Me / The Phantoms Into the Darkness / Hozier Arsonist's Lullabye / K.Flay Blood In The Cut / Mischa "Book" Chillak Ready or Not / Zayde Wølf Built for This Time / Malia J Shout / Sam Tinnesz Play with Fire / Ruelle Game of Survival / grandson Blood // Water / MISSIO Twisted / Fleurie Soldier / Lorde Glory And Gore

violent ends. | the kind of soundtrack that reminds you of that villain getting their redemption two episodes before they die. songs that make you think they might have been a person all along.

Gang of Youths Achilles Come Down / Matt Maltese As the World Caves In / flora cash You're Somebody Else / Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds O Children / Matt Maeson Dancing After Death / Lincoln Saint Bernard / AURORA Runaway / Amber Run 5AM / Sleeping At Last Two / Daughter Medicine / Sleeping At Last Neptune / Sam Tinnesz Man or a Monster / Winter Aid The Wisp Sings / BANNERS Ghosts

#blood tw #muse #playlists

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szopenhauer · 4 years ago

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What one event, big or small, are you going to tell your grandchildren about? I won’t even have kids...

What is your least favourite thing about your full name? it’s long, it’s polish, it’s feminine, it starts on a letter Z that is rarely used, people don’t know how to write my surname down, it reminds people of a stupid song that I hate etc.

Do you like sunglasses? it’s complicated Do you think dreams can give us insight to things? sorta, sometimes Besides your computer, what else is cluttering your desk? what isn’t...

What is your favourite glass to drink from? prefer a mug When did your family immigrate to wherever you live now? they were born in Poland where we still live What time is it in the country you get the most of your heratige from? 14.42 Would you rather live in the 1960’s or the 1910’s? 60s Is the computer your only current light source? window/sun too Do you think you look good with a hat on? I’m ugly no matter what so...

Do you have anyone you fully trust? not fully, not even myself, some I just trust more than others When did you last talk on the phone with someone? yesterday with M.

Have you ever deleted Facebook friends for a significant other? kinda When did you last receive a hug and who was it from? mom, this day Was the last movie you watched a horror film? noooo Do you own a lot of tee shirts? shitload Do you handle pain well? been told Have you ever been so nervous you threw up? I never threw up out of stress, I can feel nauseous though Do you enjoy your hairstyle? not really atm but it’s not the worst How much make up do you wear on a daily basis? none, ever Do you have a leather jacket? fake

What is the worst insult someone can call you? I’ve already heard everything I suppose... Do you write on your hands a lot? not anymore Do you think hugs are awkward? often Ever play Angry Birds? flappy bird only How late did you stay up last night? till mornin’ Has anyone ever been weirdly obsessed with you? mhm Are you afraid someone might steal your identity someday? they would have to be really stupid to choose mine tbh Is there a place you’d rather live right now? on my own... Do you go out often? lately Is there anyone who is overly nice to you? my current partner, I don’t deserve her If you’re reading a book, what page are you currently on? I’m not reading anything Do you have a job you like? I don’t have a job How many scarves do you own, if any at all? uh oh :x

What is one way in which this year is different from last year? where should I start... Do you feel like you have too much on your plate and your life is too hard? for me it is too hard Did you do anything you regret within the last 24 hours? probably What is your favorite day to go grocery shopping? I don’t have a favorite day to go but I don’t shop on Sundays and Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays are usually the hardest to get anything Would you follow God even if it meant losing your home, your source of food, all of your friends, or even your life? jeśli byłabym 100% pewna, że Bóg tego chce i co mam robić Who’s death has affected you the most? my brother’s Have you ever grown sunflowers? they didn’t turn out well Are you scared to stand up to a police officer? no idea What is your doctor’s first name? which one?

Do you hate political posts on facebook? when there’s plenty, especially wrong How many pictures do you have stored on your computer? omg Which type of camera do you prefer: digital or Polaroid? hard to tell Have you ever had a camera that took film? we had when I was still a kid Do you ever squirt whip cream onto a plate and then eat it by itself? disgusting Have you ever had a hot flash? common Are you ok? my heart hurts badly Would you rather wear purple glasses or black glasses? black If you’re a girl, do you ever shop in the boys or mens section? absolutely If you’re a guy, do you ever shop in the girls or womens section? I’m a woman What do you think of when you hear the word “Christian”? religious person lmfao How many pullover hoodies do you own? bunch Which do you take more: videos or photos? pics What is the most embarrassing thing you can think of happening? my imagination is vivid What are two names you used to get mixed up when you were younger? for example - Ada and Adrianna What do u think of the quote “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing” I disagree Do you wear earmuffs when it’s cold out? I don’t own any

If you type for awhile, do your fingers start to hurt? on my phone, not computer What do you smell right now? luckily nothing much If you were an instrument, what would you be? smth annoying? Do you hate the usual 100 questions surveys? EX: Eye color boring Does your house have a doorbell? of course Do you know someone who has dropped out of high school? my classmate If you were to get a pet turtle right now, what would you name it? mine was called Bob and I don’t want a new one What’s your most hated commercial to watch? most of them are shit What was the last thing you charged? cellphone When you were younger, did you believe you could fly? if I did I would be dead by now (jumping out of window or smth) Favorite farm animal? chicken What’s your favorite name that begins with B? I don’t like polish names starting on B letter If someone payed you $500 would you take a bath in milk? why not Do you enjoy having time to yourself? :3 Can you do a cart wheel? still but crappy Do you like Ed Sheeran? blergh Would you rather become an author or teacher? author How many people are you currently texting? just 1 This time tomorrow, what will you be doing? hopefully spend time with @jonasz-cat Would you rather get money or gift cards for your birthday? money Have you ever been inside a recording studio? I have not Would you rather visit Mars or Neptune? Neptune Does it bother you when people keep talking to you and you want to leave? very Have you ever texted a landline phone by accident? my sister did Do you like quotes about love or life better? love is part of life What color is your garage? not applicable Do you like it when people give you compliments? they’re lying Was your hair straight today? my hair is wavy Do you ever share things on Facebook? quizzes from buzzfeed, music link from yt and selfies Do you pick out your outfits for the next day the night before or the AM? am What color was your swim suit this year? bluish Do ladders scare you? I’m cautious

1 through 10, how would you rate your day? low Any specific reason why? how I feel physically and those mirror demons mostly + some minor things

Salt or pepper? salt If you look to your right & then look down.. What do you see? bag Did you use swear words today? sigh... What did you buy today? food

If you had the choice to meet three famous people, who would you choose? dead or alive? Do you own any animals that aren’t domestic? dog is domestic ;)

Do you think people under fourteen should have sex? hell no How old were you when you had your first alcoholic beverage? 20+ What is something most people think of as lame, but you don’t? my interests? Have you ever feared that you would lose a body part? just my teeth, fingers or eyes Do you like gore? no thx Would you rather receive a kiss on the cheek, or on the forehead? neck :P Have you ever had a friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend flirt with you? someone who seriously tried to become my friend’s bf flirted with me and her sister and that’s one of reasons I say that you can lie with both actions AND words Where is your biological mother at the moment? kitchen Do you enjoy going places with your mother, like running errands? ... Do you have any annoying siblings? she indeed annoys me How many people are in your immediate family? I count my parents and eventually my sister as immediate family Would you say you have good or bad luck? bad Do you like your laugh? uh... Do you hate it when people ask you how their survey was at the end? because they should do better, be more unique, sorry not sorry What are your plans for the rest of the day? we’ll see

Have you ever unbuttoned your ex’s pants? ... buttons? not zipper?... What does your last text say? it was the link to the article

Do you ever think about the past? I’m nostalgic and an overthinker Is math your favorite part of school? even in middle school when I was getting high grades for math I didn’t like it that much Have you held hands with anyone in the past 24 hours? yesterday You’ve taken fifteen shots of vodka, what are you doing? exactly, WHAT AM I DOING?! Do you regret any of your relationships? yasss but I guess I learned yadda yadda yadda Whats the last taste in your mouth? stomach acid :(

What are your countries staple dishes? (Italians - pizza, pasta etc) *shrug* What was the last thing you felt disappointed by? my very own self Do you play games on your phone? nothing else but Choices Do you have music on your cellphone? spotify Name three black things that you can see? necklace, cellphone, calculator Do you like your best friends parents? Could you even tell me their names? I liked my elementary school’s bestie’s mom - Mrs. Krysia she was like an aunt to me and still recognizes me on the street, I miss her Are you more of a mums kid or dads kid? dad’s Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn? Marilyn Monroe forever anything silly that annoys you? (i hate hearing nails being clipped) for example - someone scratching their plate with a fork, jak ktoś sztućcem zgrzebuje resztki jedzenia mam ochotę go zamordować >.< would you perfer to do the dishes or hang washing? dishes

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zipegs · 5 years ago

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epiclesis // 3.4k, horror, m, hodgson-centric // ao3 written for halloween terrorfest day 7: a disquieting metamorphosis warnings for body horror, cannibalism, and gore

The first time Lieutenant Hodgson eats of man, it slides down his throat and sits like in his stomach like a stone.

The meat is slimy and tough between his molars, like the gristle they used to toss beneath the table for Neptune. He chews until his jaw aches with it, teeth loose and wobbling in their sockets.

The flavor falls somewhere short of abhorrent. It’s bland if a bit gamey, with a thick, sweet aftertaste that coats the back of his throat like syrup.

It sickens him, how little he dislikes it.

Hodgson does not want to be like these men. These traitors who look at a man on the verge of death and see only a feast. He does not seek to commune with mutineers, to bathe his own hands in the blood of his brothers, and thus lingers about their fringes. Perches himself on a barrel apart from the other men as if, through distance, he might station himself above them.

He pokes at the glistening lumps of meat with shaking hands, fork rattling against his plate like a castanet.

At the table, Hickey and his men sit in silence. They pick up chunks of Billy Gibson with their fingers and drop them like candies onto their tongues. Lick his pink juices off their thumbs, their forefingers.

This is my body, Hodgson thinks, milky gaze fastened on the silhouettes hunched against the pale, colourless horizon. Light winks through the perfect, clean slashes in Hickey’s navy wool coat. Like fingers of sunlight parting the clouds.

His throat burns. Tears prick at his eyes.

There is beauty in all things.

Eternity through atrocity.

The second time Lieutenant Hodgson eats of man, he closes his eyes and thinks of salvation.

---

He feels it in his bones first.

They ache—a constant, deep-seated throbbing. Like someone has grabbed hold of each end and pulled. It’s a new kind of agony, wholly unlike the thick, dull pain he has come to acknowledge as scurvy. This is harder, somehow—more primal. It is as intense as any pain he has known here in this distant circle of hell, and yet there is divinity in it, he thinks. Holiness.

He closes his eyes and relishes the pulse of it through him, like a second heartbeat hiding just beneath his own.

The other men do not take to it as kindly. They grunt in their harnesses—low, guttural sounds that layer themselves atop the scrape of wood over rock. Des Voeux whines high in his throat like an animal. Armitage burps out an occasional moan. Tozer is silent, but he wears his suffering plain on his face. Hodgson can hear it all clearly—the wind has died, and in the silence that follows, thick sounds of agony ring like a clavier.

Hodgson lets his own pain resound in him, swallowing around the shape of it in his throat. He imagines it as a summer sun, glowing warm and radiant from within his ribcage.

How long they go on like this, he cannot say. Time itself seems to freeze—there is nothing but the pain. The noise of it. The phantom taste of meat on their tongues, pieces of it clinging like taffy to the spaces between their teeth.

This is repentance, he thinks. Atonement.

Pain is the price of redemption.

There is an Agnus Dei to be found in their clenched jaws and wet panting; Hodgson pictures it spiraling outward to whatever deity will listen, a new kind of music for a new kind of god. In the distance, the blue of the sky glints like stained-glass windows darkened by clouds.

His fingers are throbbing. Looking down at them, they seem longer somehow, punching out like new shoots from the bulbs of his grey fingerless gloves. Like the promise of spring after a long winter’s thaw.

He curls them around the leather of his harness and hauls.

---

The days stretch into each other.

Haul. Rest. Haul again.

Each evening, when Hickey decides they have gone far enough—one mile? ten? twenty? there is no way to tell—the men unchain themselves and draw their tents from the sledges, dragging the ungainly canvas-wrapped bags over the boat’s side like shrouded bodies. They fall freely once liberated from their resting place and smack against the shale with a solid thump.

He can feel Hickey watching. Assessing. The weight of his gaze sliding over them like seal fat.

There is glory in being seen.

No trial without a witness.

Around camp, the men move like wind-up toys on the last legs of life. They erect their shelters slowly, stopping to rub at their jaws and forearms as though they might scrub the pain from their skin.

That is the crux of it; they do not see what Hodgson does. These men think they deserve to be clean.

He closes his eyes. Listens to the creak and groan of the tent-poles, like cries for liberation. The sound is echoed someplace deep in his bones. He lets his agony grow, taking root in his marrow like fungus and spreading its spores outward.

At the edge of the camp, Goodsir’s tent sits silent and empty.

A promise.

A reminder.

The men have witnessed what comes of weakness. The kind of end served to those who cannot stomach the gift they have been given.

He thinks of Billy Gibson and his empty harness. The pink-stained bags tucked in the sledge like heirlooms. The mouth-watering smell of copper and the way it carries on the scentless air, trailing them like a cloud of incense.

In the morning, he sits on the edge of camp and feels the lengthening gaps in his spine. Sticks his fingers between them and worries the corded muscle there. Near the center, Hickey pries one of the bags open and reaches in so far its ruffled jaws swallow his arm all the way to the shoulder. He pulls out a fistful of flesh, muscle quivering in stringy strips between his fingers.

Hodgson can feel the phantom slide of it down his throat. The fullness which would blossom in his belly.

Need is a wild beast inside him.

“Come,” Hickey says. The men hobble out of their tents, bodies frosted with sleep. As they gather around him, he keeps his hand outstretched, proffering pieces of Billy Gibson’s body like some kind of saint. “Come eat with me.”

Juice drips down his forearm and gathers in fat drops at the sharp point of his elbow. It gathers the light of the sun and falls in a steady pat onto the shale.

Hodgson rises and falls into line with the others. He looks at the meat in Hickey’s fist and thinks of pomegranate seeds.

---

By the time Billy Gibson is more inside of them than inside of the bags, there is no denying it.

Something is happening.

The men are afraid—Hodgson can sense it. The stench of their fear is thick in the air, astringent and saline. It fills his nostrils and carves out a home there.

As a lieutenant, it was once his job to manage men. To listen. To encourage.

It is not like that anymore.

Whatever comforts he has left, he keeps for himself—he will not waste them on men like these. He might sit among them, might haul alongside them, but he is not one of them.

He huddles with several around the pale fire, hands folded awkwardly in his lap. His nails are so caked with grime they seem almost charred, tips grown jagged and pointed. Like most, he is hunched forward like a fern, shoulders drawn inward and spine curving down like a fish hook.

It is their natural state, now. Like their bodies are dragged downward by the weight of their sins.

Confiteor Deo et beatae Mariae semper virgini.

He has been given his penance.

They all have.

In the distance, up on the hill, Hickey stands immovable and erect—a prophet receiving revelation. Hodgson’s eyes are drawn to him; he cannot look away. In the dimming light, Hickey’s edges seem to blur into the landscape, the border between flesh and linen and sky smudged into each other. Like he is become part of this place.

Like he belongs here.

“It’s not natural,” Pilkington is saying to the others, arms wrapped tightly about his knees. “I can tell you that much. Feels like my spine’s punchin’ its way outta my back. Like a great big fist, pushin’ up under my skin.”

From the corner of his eye, Hodgson observes the hard clench of Pilkington’s jaw. The way Tozer’s gaze stabs at the ground. There’s a patch of skin just below his right eye that has turned grey and scaly, like day-old beef. Hodgson caught sight of it this morning. He remembers the desire that shuddered through him, the need to reach out and peel it off.

To take it inside of himself.

Across the fire, Des Voeux is shaking. His chin is tucked down, his throat extending too long for his body.

“My legs,” Pilkington continues, filling the taut silence with words that hang like rocks on a tenuous membrane. Any moment now, Hodgson thinks, it will rupture. “They don’t fit in my trousers anymore. I mean, we’re supposed to be starving, right?”

He looks up at them, eyes large and bloodshot under what remains of his lashes.

No one speaks.

When he resumes, his voice sounds rubbed raw.

Hodgson thinks of ground meat. Pictures the lining of Pilkington's throat shredding itself as he speaks.

He wants to shove a hand down into the boy’s mouth and scrape the sweet pulp out with his fingernails.

“I’m so hungry, all the time. But my calves are— They’re— It doesn’t make any sense.” Pilkington’s voice cracks off. The bumps of his knuckles are white, fists clasped in front of his shins. He blows out a watery breath. “He knows. I’m sure of it.”

His face is strangely bestial in the fire’s hellish light, eyes sunken and cheekbones high and pointed.

Hodgson can trace the paths of muscle just under the skin, wrapping down over his jaw.

The whites—reds—of his eyes are pronounced and wet. Hodgson imagines scooping one out with his pinky and popping it between his molars like a cherry.

“He knows exactly what’s happening to us.” Pilkington is looking out at the hill. At Hickey. Though his voice trembles, he does not look away. Transfixed, as Hodgson was, by the pale glow of him.

---

Billy Gibson does not last them much longer.

In his place, the men fall like vultures upon what remains of their tinned provisions, but those too are dwindling. Hodgson shovels the watery sludge into his mouth along with the others, feels it sticking like mud in the back of his throat.

It does not fill him. The more he eats, the hungrier he becomes.

The men appear to feel it the same—their fervor increases with each spoonful, like bacchants at their first sip of wine. They scrape desperately at the bottoms of the tins, as though clawing at the lid of a coffin, and snatch seconds from the crates, thirds.

Hickey does not stop them; he looks on with beady eyes, a smirk curling on his lips.

This is repentance, Hodgson reminds himself.

His jaw aches.

Soon they will be free.

When the fervor has died down, sluggish desperation takes its place. He looks out across the shale and sees it littered with tins like hollow carapaces, cracked open and dented. A wasteland of steel and lead, lids popped up and out like gravestones.

The men cradle them against their faces. Let the rims slice deep into their tongues as they lick at the thick juice that clings to the bottom and sides.

Their moans rise off them like steam, a discordant harmony Hodgson feels echoed in his marrow.

Absolution, he thinks desperately. Purification.

In their haste to pry the tins open, some of the men drive knives deep into their fingers—John Diggle slices the webbing between his thumb and forefinger right up to his wrist. When he moves his hand, the hole gapes like a slack-jawed mouth, drooling blood onto the cold rock. Hodgson watches, entranced, as he wraps his lips around the gash and sucks.

His mouth waters.

He does not think he’s seen anything so beautiful as that steaming crimson. It runs in rivulets over Diggle’s waxen chin, the leathery skin of his arm.

Poured out, he thinks, for the forgiveness of sins.

He wants to taste it for himself.

---

When they wake one day, ravenous and desperate, and find Pilkington lying facedown on the shale, they are too relieved to mourn.

---

It is not long after that death becomes a constant presence among the men.

They cease hauling; none of them are strong enough anymore, except perhaps Hickey. The weakest lie in their tents and hunger. They stare glassy-eyed at the canvas above them, jaws snapping slow and empty, as though they mean to chew the air itself.

Their comrades gather at their bedside, huddled close—not to help, but to wait. To be the first to taste.

Some of the deaths are not easy; men pass moaning, screaming, convulsing. Bones snapped, muscles corded. Like something in them could not find its way out. Hodgson passes his fingers over their faces, their necks, their arms.

He wants to grieve, but finds gratefulness in its stead.

Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts.

When there are more men dead than living, Hodgson lets his questions rise like a tide within him. He finds Hickey sitting cross-legged on the shale.

Hunger gnaws at his stomach. There is a blinding pressure in his jawbone.

“Lieutenant.”

He opens his mouth to speak, and something tears through his gum.

He gasps—the copper tang of blood floods his tastebuds. In the distance, he can hear Tozer screaming.

“Are you alright, Lieutenant?” Hickey asks. He looks up with mild intrigue, and does not move.

Hodgson’s mouth is aflame. The pressure in his jaw builds and builds until it comes to a head; a sharp, jagged pain, like serrated knife-points sawing upwards from beneath his gums, scraping his teeth out from their sockets. He cries out, and they clatter like pearls onto the shale.

His knees buckle.

There are more of them swirling in his mouth, loose and hard, like pieces of bone loosened from poorly-butchered meat. Hysteria boils within him. He retches, and spits them onto the ground. When he closes his lips, they form around new teeth—long, pointed things. Animal. Savage.

“What is this?” he asks. The words are fat and ill-formed—his mouth is foreign to him. “What’s happening to us?”

Hickey reaches down and picks up a molar, its root shallow and wet with blood. The pad of his finger brushes over it slowly.

Reverently.

A half-smile curls on his lips. When he speaks, he does so without lifting his gaze.

“Divinity.”

---

One morning, Hodgson wakes to find a patch of fur on his cheek.

He tries to rub the sleep out of his eyes and fails—exhaustion is a constant film over his vision, a third eyelid.

It’s then that he feels it. A brush of something against the back of his thumb. An echo of feeling on the apple of his cheek.

At first, he does not know what it is, only that it does not belong. His stomach lurches into his throat. He scrapes the back of his hand across his cheek in a panic, as if to brush the thing off.

Pain throbs where he touches.

There is no other change.

Trembling, he raises his hand again. The thatch of hair is easy to find, about an inch in size—sprouting from the high line of his cheekbone. It’s sparse but coarse, and feels akin to mangy fur beneath his fingertips.

Anxiety buzzes under his skin.

He knows without looking that it is not stubble. The feel of it is wrong, and he has never known stubble to bring with it such pain.

Hodgson thinks of the throbbing in his bones, the tattered mess of Pilkington’s lips. The odor of decay that clings to all of them. Like their flesh is rotting on their skeletons.

Doubt coils in his stomach.

The need to be rid of the thing is expanding inside him; there is not room enough for all his desperation. It swells and swells, pressing his organs against the small of his back, shoving his stomach up into his throat. His heart hammers in his chest.

This isn’t right, he thinks, twisting the strands between his fingers. The movement tugs at his skin, and sharp pain shoots out as if in answer. He gasps—a quick, hitched inhale—and pulls his hand away.

When he looks down at his fingers, they’re dotted with blood.

Trembling, he sits up and pushes his woolen bedcoverings back. More fur pokes out from beneath the hem of his trousers, off-white and short. The fuzz of a lad’s first beard. Beneath it, the entire span of his skin feels tender, like a bruised peach. He can feel every place a strand of the stuff pierces his flesh. Like hundreds of needles stuck into his skin.

The desire to look is almost as fierce as the desire to close his eyes. To hope he might wake again and find it all a dream.

He reaches down. Curls his fingers under the hem of his pant leg and slowly peels it up.

There’s a small patch of the stuff right where his leg meets his foot. It’s haphazard, as though a child has taken a collection of thin white thorns and impaled them there with little care for pattern or consistency.

At the base of each strand, tiny pearls of blood gleam like rubies.

He lets the hem fall. Swings his legs over the side of the bed.

His heart is rattling in his ribcage. The need to do something holds every muscle taut. He wants to take a razor and shear this affliction from him, skin and all, and yet fear keeps him locked in place.

Outside, the wind has kicked up. It sucks at the canvas of his tent.

He can hear the men moving around outside, the slow shuffle of their feet.

Hodgson raises a hand to his face.

Squeezes one strand of fur between his thumb and forefinger.

And pulls.

Pain explodes behind his eyes; he cries out, pulling harder. Harder. Wildly, he thinks that it must be out by now—that the agony has to relent. How much of it is stuck inside him? But it throbs even stronger, spreading outward until his entire cheek pulses with it.

Repentance, he reminds himself, hand trembling as his fingers sweep over the patch.

He fears he may pass out; his vision slips in and out of focus, unconsciousness washing over him in strong waves.

Atonement.

It’s still there, poking out of his skin like a weed. Only it’s longer now, as though there is a spool of the stuff buried in his cheek.

Nausea swirls through him. He covers his eyes with his hands.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

By nightfall, he is covered in it.

---

“Lieutenant Hodgson.”

The flaps of his tent part, like skin peeled back from an incision. Watery light filters in through the gap. He can make out a shape blotting out some of it, a dark, blurry form that grows larger and larger until it is all he can see. Behind his head, the gray light cuts a shape like a halo.

“You don’t look well, Lieutenant.”

There are hands on his face. He tries to bat them away, but his limbs are slow to respond.

Fear is coiled in his breast, but his heart taps a slow, measured beat. It is, he thinks, quite unable to manage anything further.

“What—” His lips feel thick around his teeth. The taste of blood is hot on his tongue.

His mouth is pasty, as though his spit has turned to tar. It is difficult to swallow.

“Shhh.”

The hands move to his head. They stroke it gently, lovingly—a mother soothing an unwell child. He can feel his hair ripping in wet chunks away from his skull.

“We’re close now,” the man whispers. Hodgson can feel the heat of his breath. It dampens his ear canal, penetrating deep and making him shiver. “Can you feel it?”

The richness of flesh perfumes the air.

Blood pounds loud and eager through the man’s veins. Like a summons.

Hodgson wets his lips. He feels lightheaded; there is nothing in him but hunger.

Dis-moi ce que tu manges je te dirai ce que tu es.

He turns his head and bites.

#halloweenterrorfest #the terror #the terror amc #the terror fic #george hodgson #mine #mine: writing

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thisguyatthemovies · 5 years ago

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The space within

Title: “Ad Astra”

Release date: Sept. 20, 2019

Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland, Loren Dean, John Ortiz, Greg Bryk, Kimberly Elise, Anne McDaniels, LisaGay Hamilton, Kimmy Shields, Ravi Kapoor

Directed by: James Gray

Run time: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Rated: PG-13

What it’s about: An astronaut travels deep into space to find his missing astronaut father and try to save Earth from deadly power surges.

How I saw it: “Ad Astra” is a movie that takes its protagonist into deep space, but the heart of the story takes place within the heart, soul and psyche of that protagonist. It explores the Milky Way, but more importantly it explores how we connect with others on this planet. It explores what it means to be human. It explores what it means to be a man, a father, a son. It explores our search for higher meaning, for legacy. “Ad Astra” is a great film, one that is visually arresting (I am wishing I had seen it in IMAX, and I might yet) but one that is, more importantly, one of incredible thought and depth.

“Ad Astra” is the story of Roy McBride (Brad Pitt, who co-produced and had worked on this project several years), a middle-aged astronaut who, like so many men, has followed in the footsteps of his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). When we meet Roy, he is working on a satellite tower that goes into space. (“Ad Astra” is set in an unspecified year in the “near future.”) The tower is hit by power surges, and Roy McBride is asked to help find out what is causing the deadly problem.

Complicating matters: His father, who went to Neptune some two decades prior as part of a space program to look for other life forms and never returned, is believed to be still alive and possibly causing the surges. Roy McBride’s higher-ups want to use him to send a message to his father, with the ultimate objective being to go to Neptune to either capture or rescue H.C. McBride.

So far, we have the makings for a straight-up, action-filled science fiction thriller, and “Ad Astra” has its moments of intensity and even gore. But director James Gray (who co-wrote with Ethan Gross) is aiming for much more here. And he hits the target time and time again, thanks mostly to Pitt’s Oscar-worthy performance.

Pitt’s Roy McBride narrates throughout, and we are privy to his thoughts and feelings. McBride is a man’s man. He is renowned for his ability to perform under pressure. He prides himself on keeping his heart rate in check even during times of distress. He has a unique ability to focus on the task at hand and bury his feelings. He is, in effect, a machine, which is exactly what the space program wants him to be. And exactly what society’s traditional definition of masculinity has demanded.

But McBride’s buried emotions are hurting him in his relationships, especially with his love interest, Eve (Liv Tyler). McBride has closed himself off from others, and as the story of “Ad Astra” unfolds, we learn much of this is because of his troubled relationship with his father. Roy McBride was a young adult when his father left, and that has shaped who Roy McBride is. When he learns his father might be alive (and might not be the heroic space explorer he thought he was), he is forced to confront his feelings. And that might make him a liability in the space program. Roy McBride is subjected to frequent checks of his mental fitness for the job, and, not surprisingly, he starts failing those tests about the time his repressed emotions begin surfacing.

“Ad Astra” provides great commentary on traditional masculinity without resorting to an overall condemnation of it as “toxic.” It also has much to say about how we relate to our fathers, especially fathers of previous generations who saw their role strictly as someone who provides and gets things done but does not openly show love. H.C. McBride even tells his son he does not love him or his mother and that he had much more interest in finding wonders beyond the Milky Way than he did being a part of their lives. The elder McBride, as his son explains late in the movie, was so caught up trying to see what is beyond this universe that he could not see what was important right in front of him.

That this kind of exploration of the humanity takes place among beautiful, vast expanses of space is a bonus. Recent space movies – among them, “Gravity,” “Interstellar,” “The Martian” – have proved that outer space (at least the movie studio version of it) is an interesting palette to work with visually. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (who earned many honors for his work on the Christopher Nolan films “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk”) here produces one beautiful image after another and has helped Gray achieve what was a stated goal of the film – to make it “the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s been put in a movie.” Score composers Max Richter and Lorne Balfe help set the tone and emotion with mostly ambient electronic music that never interferes and goes silent when need be.

But “Ad Astra” is driven by Pitt and the transformation of his character. Early on, Roy McBride, during a test of his mental state, describes how he can focus on the “essential” without being distracted. He uses the same terminology at the end of the movie, but by then what he defines as “essential” has changed. It is that transformation, that learned ability to see the big picture and open himself up to others and his own emotions, that is at the heart of “Ad Astra.” And that is what makes it a special movie.

My score: 96 out of 100

Should you see it? Yes, if you like a great movie that will make you think. If you go to the movies to escape reality, oddly enough, this science fiction film might not be for you.

#movies #movie review #movie recommendation #ad astra #brad pitt #tommy lee jones #science fiction #sci-fi fantasy #astronaut #outer space #masculinity #modern masculinity #fathers #james gray #oscars

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solchosen-blog · 6 years ago

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little drabble about the mad bomber ft @blitzherz & @aporiabled

“Julia--”

“I know. I know, keep my head about me.”

They stand back-to-back, guns raised, Light growing. Keylime sits in the distance, sniper flicking to cover their backs, while the pair of Awoken take the challenge head-on. It isn’t an easy task they’ve been given; it isn’t fun, to stare down the men who murdered the Hunter Vanguard. But it is one that Julia accepted with sober understanding. They will bring the Barons and Uldren to justice, and they will do so merciless.

And when they are done, Julia will burn the Princeling’s body until there is nothing but ash. She will scatter the charred remains until there is no hope of the Scorn ever reviving him. She will dance on his grave, drink to remember, and kill to forget. There is no other choice.

“On your left!”

The Titan spins with almost inhuman agility, firing off three shots. Her hands are shaking, the fire growing to a gentle crackle, but still the bullets land. Scorn fall at her feet. The bomb above them ticks away. They only have a minute. Only a minute to get rid of the explosive, and still get out with their lives. They can do this.

“Lime, status?” Neptune slides between Julia’s legs, knocking another away with the butt of her gun. Two shots finish it off. “We need sights on Kaniks!”

“Working on it.” The rifle flicks to the side, and the sound of a Screeb exploding rings through the cavern. The bomb above them screeches, then fades into nothing. As hissing fills the air, “Eight o’clock!”

“Fastball!”

That’s her cue.

Dropping her gun, Julia grabs the Hunter by the scruff of her cape and the belt of her pants. Her feet move quickly, dirt and pebbles flying into the air. One, two, three rotations, and-- Neptune flies into the air, shimmering with Solar energy. Six shots echo. Kaniks screams in pain. Julia laughs.

The Hunter lands in her arms, a grin brightening those beautiful eyes, and Julia places her back on the ground. They aren’t out of the woods, not by a long shot, but each bullet they put in his body is a step closer. Blood spilled for Cayde, for vengeance, for the fire burning bright in them all.

“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are when you do that kinda shit?”

“Is now really the time to flirt!” Keylime’s voice is frantic as he slides the bolt of his rifle. “We’re kinda busy!”

Right. She can be a useless bisexual later. For now, they have work to do. The Titan trades her handcannon for an exotic auto-rifle and slides in the mag. Authorized mission or not, they will see this through. She will bring the Barons’ heads back to the Tower and hold them proudly for others to see. She will not look at Zavala, see the disappointment in his eyes. She will not think of his last words as she departed, nor the way he refused to look at her. She can’t--

No. No, not now. Deep breath, Julia; raise your gun, find your mark. Now is not the time for hesitation or regrets.

Kaniks leaps from one ledge to another. Their bullets shift with him, and blood sprays. It smells of death; of burnt corpses and a prison she wished she could forget. Her stomach churns. In the midst of the chaos, the Mad Bomber laughs.

Friend Cayde? No fun to play with! No fun at all. Such a boring boy to kill, kill, KILL!

“Julia!”

“I’m fine.”

She’s not. Light knows she’s not, but she’s trying. The fire within wants to be released, to rage and consume, to steal away the life of all around her. She cannot allow that. If it was just her in this place, perhaps; perhaps she would risk her life, her Light, for that. But her fireteam is here, as well, and they are far too important to lose to rage. She will lose no one else.

The rifle vibrates in her hands. Bullets fly, heels digging into the ground for support. She will not allow herself a moment of supernova, but a cannonball? Oh, now that sounds wonderous. Solar energy flares as she summons forth her grenade and lobs it at the nearest group of Scorn. The flash of heat warms her skin. It does little for the rage within.

Focus, girl, she thinks, and glances briefly over at her fireteam. They’re holding their own. Focus on the enemy, on the monster that took Cayde from you. From the Guardians, from the Light, from the world itself. Zavala may not approve, but it is what needs to be done.

A familiar scream pierces the air, and Julia whirls. She cares nothing for the Screebs behind her, the acid tearing at her back. Bright eyes instead search the sniper’s perch, desperate. She’s already lost one. She’s already lost so many. She can’t lose him, too; not her brother.

“Lime?”

“I’m fine!” The tip of his rifle peaks from around a boulder, levels once more. It does little to ease the tendrils encircling her heart. “Just a potshot. Pie’s taking care of it now.”

“Be safe.” It’s whispered as, once more, Julia turns to the carnage. She trades out her mags, presses her back to Neptune’s and fires off three more shots. Something flickers in the corner of her vision. “Watch your two, Nep. Blue smoke.”

Kaniks laughs, the sound echoing all around her, as he materializes once more.

Cayde beg and beg and beg! Mercy, ah! Mercy, please, Prince Uldren! Oh, pretty, pretty please, oh, please!

It is too much.

The scream that comes from her is inhuman, feral and terrifying. It tears through her throat, ripping from her lungs until there is nothing left. The fire burns from within, swelling, threatening to consume her. And, for the first time in her young life, Julianna Vesh allows it. Her hammer materializes, fingers curling instinctively, as she runs forward. Behind her, she can hear Neptune screaming, but can understand none of it. All she knows, all she understands, in that moment is the pure, unadulterated rage rushing through her.

The world moves too fast, and yet not fast enough.

She leaps into the air, and the fire arches to meet her.

Scorn rush to block her path, but there is nothing they can do. All who approach scream, bodies writhing as the flames take them. She cares not. They are nothing but pawns, but stepping stones to the real monster. They are ash beneath her feet.

The strength of a lion beats within her breast, its roar coming from her lips as she brings the hammer down. There is no throwing, not light-hearted tossing. For Julia, her super had always been something of a game; a moment to revel in the love and Light in her heart. She’d laughed through the fire, danced with the flames. And when she was done with it all, she’d toss her fireteam a thumbs up and keep moving.

But not this time.

Both hands grip the hammer as she brings it down, again and again, into Kaniks’ face, shoulders, back-- whatever she can reach. Whatever will cause the most damage. Blood sprays, and the flames lick it up. Devour, consume; a wildfire, burning bright. She will hurt him, just as he has hurt her. She will destroy him, just as he did her family.

The smoke begins to swirl again, but Julia is too far lost. She reaches out, grabbing his belt, and pulls herself to him. Their screams merge, twisting together in an macabre dance, as she feels her body being split in every direction. The ground beneath her shifts, her stomach churning. But despite the pain, she does not let go.

She’s felt worse.

Cayde murder Eliksni. Think you different? Think you--

“Shut the fuck up!”

Later, Neptune will tell her how her flames burned blue, how the smoke and heat seemed to consume them both. Lime will refuse to meet her eyes, but mention the way her fingers dug into the Bomber’s skull. It will sound nothing like the woman Julia Vesh knows she is, and yet the satisfying emptiness in her stomach will tell the story.

She takes his head in her hands, a disturbing twist on a usually comforting embrace. Her legs wrap around his middle, even as he screams and writhes. Try to dislodge me, she seems to say. You will not escape. I will show you no mercy.

Though the Titan is small, there is considerable strength behind her grasp. Adrenaline pounds in her head, rage burning in her heart. With all the might she has in her, Julia squeezes. What little flesh remains beneath her flames gives way. Something cracks beneath her touch. Kaniks screams. He screams of Cayde, of heroics, of Uldren, but she does not care. She does not stop.

The pressure finally gives, and Julia’s hands meet in the center of his head. Blood and gore are consumed by the flames as both fall to the ground. And there, sitting on the Mad Bomber’s chest, she raises clenched fists. Once, twice, thrice, the Titan brings them down. Ribs crack, flesh burns, but the fire is satiated. What was once a supernova becomes little more than a simmer. Footsteps approach.

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Neptune pulls her from the charred corpse.

“We need to get out of here.”

#❝ DANCING WITH THE SUN IN HER HEART 〈 ABOUT 〉#my shit #bc julia is young and sometimes stupid and uh #she's not a fantastic fighter #but the Light is strong in her

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valisi-clark · 8 years ago

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I need to clear my head out. I can’t creatively write when it’s so cluttered in here.

Warnings for drugs and a ghost story and all of the gore that goes with both of those things, no joke.

Lately, I’ve been talking about personal shit pretty often. Tumblr has been a pretty great outlet for that, and I’ve gained some really great friends through this platform. And they haven’t heard things about my life before. And they’re interested! I didn’t think anyone cared about this personal shit.

Recently, I asked my partner why I felt so out of place when I share those personal stories. The conversation was pretty interesting. He said something along the lines of:

“You’ve taken a lot of risks. That’s why you have stories like that. Not everyone is willing to take risks.”

And shit. He’s right.

“When you tell war stories, do you feel like the story sounds made up?” I asked him.

“Yep,” he said. He also mentioned that specifically the stories about body gore always sound made up. I won’t tell the details. It’s his story.

Isn’t that weird? I know that the shit I’m talking about has happened to me personally, but when I talk about it, it sounds like I’m fucking telling a bunch of lies. He knows that the things that happened in the war definitely happened. He didn’t collectively imagine it with other soldiers. So, why does it sound so fucking outlandish when we talk about it?

I like taking risks. Not necessarily for the adrenaline. Just because I want to see what happens.

In my hometown, there wasn’t any way to entertain ourselves except fuck in cars, try drugs, and break the law. Any time a new restaurant came to town it made a shit ton of money because people were desperate for something new. But it would always close down within a couple of years. There are certain buildings in that town that you just don’t buy because it’s not going to succeed, no matter what you put in it. You could put a miniature Walmart in some of those buildings, and it would still fail. I’m literally saying that Walmart cannot lift the curse of those failed-business-buildings. That’s the kind of town that I grew up in, and I loved it and hated it simultaneously.

There was a house in my hometown that was considered “haunted”. The story that went around about it was the owner murdered his entire family and then hung himself. But that’s not true. It was just an old house that was easily accessible, and kids broke into it because it was something to do. The family never took care of it, and of course it looked shitty after years and years of sitting. Shitty houses always look haunted because we know that it’s wrong for them to look that way. The constant break-ins didn’t help matters at all. I was never brave enough to go into it while it was still standing, but eventually it burned down.

A few weeks after it burned to the ground, Finn and I went to check it out. We picked up a few things and put them in the back of my car. Bricks from the fire place. Tiles from the bathroom wall. Knobs from the knob-and-tube wiring, which you won’t see in a house because it was such a fire hazard. We had done things like that before. We steal stupid shit from abandoned places because we had no concept of ownership if the item wasn’t worth anything.

We broke into another abandoned house, and she ripped a medicine cabinet out of the wall and took it home for a makeup case. It was fucking cute.

That’s a couple of my favorite memories with Finn. Finn had gorgeous, long, red hair. And a beautiful face. Pale skin. Slim, long fingers. I was fascinated with her hands. They were so small compared to my giant Sasquatch hands. I’m now educated enough to officially say that she was a smol. I don’t remember her laugh anymore, but I know that I loved it. Her sense of humor was exactly like mine. We both loved Disney princesses.

Fuck, I think I loved Finn. I met her when I was in high school, and I didn’t like her because the guy that I had a crush on had a crush on her. That type of complicated, and oh so important, high school shit. One day, I said something really shitty about her to someone(I don’t remember who), and when I walked away from that conversation I realized: “Fuck. I don’t want to fight her. I need to tell her what I said before someone else does. I’m not this shitty.”

After a couple of classes, we had break. I ran through the school, found her, and asked to talk to her outside. She gave me a weird look and said sure. We went outside, and I said something dumb like:

“Hey, I called you a bitch because I’m jealous of you. I don’t know you, and I’m sorry that I said that. I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.”

And she was surprised. Mostly surprised that I told her to her face, I guess. Later she told that she thought I invited her out there to kick her ass, and it surprised her that I apologized instead. She knew that I had a crush on the guy who had a crush on her, and she wasn’t sure how far I was willing to go to make sure that I won his dick-trophy. As an adult, that all sounds very stupid, but that’s how things started.

Anyway, I have a lot of memories of her. She had the worst boyfriend when I first met her. He was such a shitty person. I think I remember watching him yell at her in her front yard one time. One morning, she came to school crying because of something he had said to her, and I told her something sickly sweet like: “It’s not fair that you’re so beautiful even when you’re crying.” Me, a poet, right? Fucking lame ass high school pick-up line. But it was true. She was beautiful even with makeup and snot running down her face.

I spent so much time with Finn. I would go and pick her up, bring her back to my house, and we would color pictures, and talk about everything, and take naps together. Snuggling her was the best. She smelled so good. Sometimes we would stay up late at night and just laugh. She always complimented my mom’s food. She never wanted to leave my house, and I wanted her to stay forever. Whenever I hugged her goodbye, my arms felt so empty when I let go. I hated taking her home. I wanted to be her home.

That was the point that I should’ve asked Finn to be my girlfriend, and I didn’t. I was afraid that I wasn’t really bisexual. I thought that maybe it was just popular to be bisexual at the time, and that’s why I thought she was so gorgeous, and funny, and perfect. And I was afraid to come out as bi when I wasn’t even sure if that was real.

When we were older (she was 21 and I was 19), Finn moved in with her friend Skitter. I was so fucking jealous of her friendship with Skitter. That jealousy didn’t make any fucking sense to me, and it still doesn’t. But I was so jealous that they lived together and had such a close relationship.

On Skitter’s 21st birthday, I went over to Skitter’s house and got high with both of them. That was the one and only time that I smoked spice. It was the worst fucking thing. I know that I wasn’t a pleasant person when I was high. I was so fucking high that I left the planet. I had a dream that I went to Neptune and almost drowned, but I woke up because I was choking on water my body was trying to vomit. Thankfully, I didn’t throw up all over Skitter’s lap. I don’t remember how my head got into her lap. I guess I crawled over there. I’m pretty sure that I ruined Skitter’s birthday by being a piss-poor drug virgin. But I’m not really ashamed of what I did. I don’t regret it. I learned a lot from experiencing that.

I don’t remember how long it took, but eventually, Finn moved out of Skitter’s house and into the house with her new boyfriend. They had a kid together, and I visited Finn a lot. I was still pining for her. I remember that I still wanted her because I talked about buying a house, her moving in with me, and us raising her child together. She was into it. But if I had really done it, I doubt she would’ve actually moved in with me. I realize now that our feelings were very mismatched.

There’s not really a word for this kind of thing, I guess. I wouldn’t consider her the one that got away. I don’t think she would’ve been happy with me. It’s alright that it didn’t work out. But I still think about her. I still think about that one risk that I didn’t take. I’ll never know what would’ve happened with her. She probably would have rejected me completely, and that probably would’ve been more satisfying for me than wondering what might have happened if I had just fucking tried.

This has helped a lot. I thought that I was still pining for her, but I’m actually just irritated that I didn’t take the risk. I’ve done so much crazy shit, but I didn’t have the balls to take the leap for that girl. Dumbass. Lesson learned. That’s alright now though. I’ve taken a lot of risks since then.

When I met my current partner, I fucked him the first night that I met him. That wasn’t usual for me, but I didn’t care. Intuition and Curiosity both said yes. Risk dragged all three of us the whole way. I moved in with him four months later, hours and hours away from my hometown, giving a giant middle finger to my safety net. I’m still here with him almost four years later. He’s exactly who I want for a partner. There are still risks to take.

Writing Smack has brought up a lot of memories that I’ve forgotten. It’s just not fun to admit that writing a piece of fiction which was intended to give me some kind of peace has brought up so much shit that I’ve purposely forgotten. But fuck it. By the time this is over, I’m going to be better.

#personal

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marymosley · 5 years ago

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“Blood-Chilling” or Just A Tweet? Debunking The Coup d’Trump

Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the continued speculation over President Donald Trump delaying or cancelling the 2020 election. This conspiracy theory first appeared shortly after Trump’s election and became the rage when Vice President Joe Biden predicted that Trump would try to halt the election (and try to steal the election through the Postal Service). Despite the overheated coverage, Trump did not try to delay the election. He cannot delay the election. He asked a question of whether it should be delayed, which Congress can legally do. However, as I said immediately after the tweet, it is a question that is politically absurd and legally unfounded. However, the only thing more ridiculous was the response to this eleven-word question. It is all part of the panic disorder that seems triggered by Trump tweets on a daily basis.

Here is the column:

This week, American democracy either died or it didn’t, but you couldn’t tell from the news coverage. Some commentators and members of Congress warned that we are looking at “nothing less than a coup.” Others called for organized protests, proclaiming it is now clear that President Trump’s “anti-democratic intent was blood-chillingly real.” One leading academic called for Trump’s immediate impeachment as a fascist out to destroy our constitutional system.

We have not seen such rhetoric since Aaron Burr tried to peel off the entire southwestern territory of the United States. The cause this time was an 11-word Twitter question from President Trump. Returning to his favorite subject of denouncing mail-in voting as a disaster in the making, he ended his July 30 tweet by asking, “Delay the election until people can properly, securely and safely vote?”

As I said at the time, the tweet was reckless and repugnant. However, cries of some Twitter-based coup d’état were equally unconnected to reality. I have written repeatedly about this conspiracy theory that Trump will never allow an election to occur in 2020, which has raged on liberal websites and cable news since soon after his inauguration.

Trump does not have the authority to delay the election. Even if he could persuade Congress to change the date, with the implausible assistance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Constitution still stipulates that his term ends at noon on Jan. 20. In the interim, not only do citizens have to vote, but electors have to cast ballots in the Electoral College, and those votes must be certified and counted by Congress.

It is not much of a coup when you do not extend your time in office. It does not matter what Trump would like; it is what the Constitution will allow. A demand to delay the election has the same impact as Trump declaring he will change his name to “Joe Biden” if needed to claim victory, or that he will adopt Neptune’s calendar to extend his four-year term to 660 years.

That is why this conspiracy theory has been so maddening. Indeed, in a column in April, I criticized former Vice President Joe Biden when he took up the theory, triggering another round of panic; Biden added a second theory to this baseless fear, suggesting that Trump’s opposition to funding the U.S. Postal Service was part of a plan to steal the election. (I later wrote an equally caustic criticism of Jared Kushner when he equivocated about Election Day.)

While I portrayed Biden back then as a virtual nut for raising this conspiracy theory, many now have proclaimed him a virtual Nostradamus following Trump’s tweet. Biden was not right — any more than Trump is today. It is no surprise — and no sign of a conspiracy — that Trump might suggest something outrageous, such as a delayed election, on Twitter. Such behavior is an established fact that occupies many of us on a daily basis. The “conspiracy theory” is to suggest that Trump could actually halt or delay the election.

In fairness to Trump, he has not stated that he can unilaterally delay the election but rather has asked if we should do so. Later, he denied actually wanting a delay. Still, the tweet still showed terrible judgment and rekindled this conspiracy theory on the internet.

Normally sensible people seemed to take leave of their constitutional senses. Northwestern University professor Steven Calabresi wrote a column for The New York Times calling for Trump’s immediate impeachment over his question. Calabresi said this “latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”

Having testified at the Clinton and Trump impeachments, I have no delusions about how impeachment often is a magnet for claims of high crimes and misdemeanors. Indeed, in the last few years, various experts and members of Congress have demanded impeachment for everything from Trump’s tweets to his criticism of the football player “kneelers.”

Yet Calabresi is not some internet loon; he is a respected academic who is suggesting that asking if an election should be delayed due to a pandemic is grounds for removal. Keep in mind that it is legal for Congress to delay the election, so Trump was suggesting something that can be done constitutionally. It would be practically illogical and politically impossible, but it would be legal. So is a president to be considered removable for suggesting legal if illogical measures? Imagine that as a standard in history. I would sooner impeach him for using three successive question marks in his question.

As is so often the case, Trump’s loose rhetoric overshadowed what might have been a lucid point. Trump objected that a shift to mail-in voting will cause delays and challenges after Election Day. I have covered presidential elections as a legal analyst for several decades; each election has had challenges, including the lingering controversy over the 2000 Bush-Gore contest ultimately resolved by the Supreme Court. While we have long used absentee balloting, we have not used mail-in voting on such a massive scale. It will, inevitably, add a new layer of problems and potential challenges. Trump also is right that it will likely delay the final counting of votes.

There is every reason to be worried. We have a relatively short window for challenges and recounts before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14 to certify the results. While that date also could be changed, it would soon collide with another statutory date — Jan. 6 — when Congress must meet to certify the results. There is a real possibility for floor fights on the certification of the votes from given states and the possible failure to certify some states caught up in litigation. It is even possible that such challenges could continue to Jan. 20. What is not in doubt, however, is Trump continuing in office: On that day, he is no longer president unless he is reelected.

Indeed, for Trump, the only thing more nightmarish than losing would be if no duly elected president can be determined. Pelosi could theoretically become the acting president as the next in succession. One would think that would be enough incentive for the Trump administration to be sure that the Postal Service is fully prepared for Election Day. That is why we need to put this conspiracy theory to bed. Trump cannot unilaterally delay the election. Our real concern should be what will happen when the election is held on Nov. 3.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.

“Blood-Chilling” or Just A Tweet? Debunking The Coup d’Trump published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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