#And holy cow. The cognitive dissonance

[bare1ythere]

Okay, I just finished Strange Aeons' Dashcon video and I have two major conclusions, but the more important one is that the general experience for the participants, not the vendors in the artist alley, guests, staff, or security, but the nerds who bought tickets and attended the con, was generally MUCH more positive than I thought it was. And also, that people on tumblr who were not there were MUCH more vicious and mean than I thought they would be.

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

Someone in the comments of a Youtube video pointed out that Tartini's account of how he composed "The Devil's Trill" sounds like he had an episode of sleep paralysis that morphed into a lucid dream and it kinda stopped me in my tracks because I'd never heard anyone else confirm that was a thing that can happen. I've totally had that happen to me. But uhhhh... given my own personal experience I now have a VERY different take on what Tartini means when he says "everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire".

Oh God, am I telling this story? I guess I'm telling this story. Buckle in for some stuff that sounds very wooey-woo (but probably isn't), this is where shit gets weird.

Because I was a strange and off-putting child, I read the entire-ass Time Life Mysteries of The Unknown series when it came out. I'm pretty sure that was where I first heard about the idea of creating a Theosophical tulpa and how it could blur the lines between actual haunting/seance and psychological phenomena. In my teen years I had resigned myself to the idea that I was going to be Forever Alone because there was something wrong with me, etc. etc. and out of desperation I decided to try and manifest some kind of incubus thing through sheer force of will. Keep in mind my parents were making me attend a very conservative Baptist church at this point in my life and they probably would have considered this witchcraft. I'm pretty sure I had some cognitive dissonance about it but church was a miserable time anyway and it absolutely did not stop me, LOL.

I won't pretend I had any sort of exceptional gift for meditation or whatever the fuck is thought to be required to manifest a thoughtform. But through some combination of chronic sleep deprivation and the deep wish to be less lonely I successfully induced my own sleep paralysis episodes.

You may have heard that a common symptom of sleep paralysis, besides being unable to move, is the feeling that someone else is present in the room with you. Usually that aspect of a sleep paralysis episode is described as terrifying. Apparently if you're pathetic enough it's kind of exciting! It helps if they're hot. And a fun part about the whole incubus/succubus thing is that they can change genders at will, which this one definitely did just to mess with my closeted-ass head from time to time!

And the thing is, these episodes would start out with the sleep paralysis but quickly turn into lucid dreams where I was still aware on some level that my actual body wasn't moving but it felt like some kind of astral-projection version of me could. The tactile aspect of these dreams always blew me away--ahem.

It wasn't even all just hot sex, there was this dimension to it all that I'd call quasi-spiritual: a level of connection there that isn't possible in the real world with other real humans--it makes sense that it's only possible to have that with something that is/was in some way part of your own psyche. (And this was all something happening in my brain, of that I'm sure. There's no reason to believe that my childhood house was haunted; moreover, these episodes continued even after I moved away for college.)

But also... holy cow was all of this rocket fuel for my own creativity. I definitely had moments of waking up and scrambling for a pencil and paper and I mean, tell me this doesn't sound like the same thing that happened to Tartini. So yeah, I'm never looking at The Devil's Trill the same way again. Hell, I hadn't even considered learning it because it's beyond my current skill level, but realizing I may have a sort of weird connection with this piece is causing me to consider trying anyway.

[itsvicksen]

🌸 bidding hello // intro post !! 🌸

Holy cow, is that CURRAN WALTERS? Nah, that’s just TAYLOR “TAY” PARTON, the TWENTY-year old, STUDENT ATHLETE who is an UPPER citizen. I wonder what HE a CIS MALE is doing in Boystown?

hi everyone! im robbie, and im super excited to get started here, if you cant tell by my urgency to start rping with everyone! im slowly making my way through the follows but boy is there a lot of them. if you would like to plot or say hello, hmu my dm’s are always open

im sure you are much more interested in hearing about taylor than about me, so im just gonna drop some quick facts below to give us something to go off of while we start to rp!

taylor, goes by tay

grew up in chicago for his whole life, and so is very comfortable maneuvering around the city. his family traveled a lot, tho

he’s the son of a Chicago Blackhawks hockey player who played for the team around 1998-2003

only child vibes

he took up the hockey legacy at a young age and has been playing ever since

many broken bones cause of it, ouchie

but he is v v good at the sport!!

he is kind of a brat. u can imagine that having a sport star father and lots of money would do that to him over time. getting through life pretty easily, tay never had to struggle for money or popularity

his parents have marriage issues, but they stayed together for him. now that hes in college, tensions between them are at a breaking point

he was torn about continuing education after high school simply because he is not that gifted in the noggin, but he didnt want to miss out on collegiate sports 

hes still not great at school. he has outside tutors who help him with his course work so that he can keep the gpa to continue playing hockey

his attitude often rubs people the wrong way, both on the ice and off. they dont see past the wall of superficiality that tay likes to put up

beyond that wall, tay is pretty insecure. go figure. his biggest insecurity stems from the fact that everyone sees him as this masculine jock and expects that behavior from him, but .. well, its not exactly 100 percent accurate

everyone knows tay is gay, of course, and nobody dares to challenge him about it.

in the bedroom, tay is a hash tag sub bottom boi. its because of this fact that he experiences a bit of cognitive dissonance. his need to be macho in public only increases his savage desire to be submissive behind closed curtains

ill probably add stuff later, but this is the bare bones of what i have sorted out for him so far!

[dots3a]

Always jarring to me how much people actively hate tumblr users. I stumble across threads on twitter every now and again that are just weird, ragey rants about tumblr users and how they’re... sensitive? Or tumblr itself is a “psyop” lol??? 

And holy cow nuts people cannot handle a restriction in access to naked people images. The porn ban really makes people angry at tumblr, as if it weren’t in response to legislationnnnnnnnnn. 

It’s just so strange to watch people get so worked up about other people apparently getting worked up too much about the “wrong” things. ? Cognitive dissonance. See yourseeelllvessssss.

[theabcsofjustice]

WOW WAY TO JUST BREAK HIS BRAIN THERE YUSHOU

Holy cow though, that is some extreme cognitive dissonance he’s having. ;_____; Where do I even start with this?

It’s interesting how extreme his reaction is compared to how Sora, Serena, and Asuka took learning the same thing. Sora definitely had trouble with accepting Academia’s wrongness as well and struggled against anyone trying to change his loyalties for awhile, but ultimately he was able to come to terms with it because of the friendships he’d formed that meant so much to him. I think Serena and Asuka had probably the relatively easiest times accepting that what they had grown up with was a lie because neither of them were ever directly involved in the invasion force. And because of their strong morals they were able to see how wrong attacking innocent people was when they learned of it. Also, both Sora and Serena were gradually introduced to the idea of duels being for fun instead of being for combat. They were able to see examples of this multiple times and were able to learn to enjoy that kind of dueling.

Ed, on the other hand, is plunged into a kind of dueling he’s never seen before in his life without any warning and then he loses because of it for the first time as well. Nothing in any of his training has prepared him for something like this at all and he simply doesn’t know what to do with it. For a moment there when he reached out for Smile World, I think he was almost ready to believe what Yushou was saying. That idea was planted in his head and he couldn’t help but wonder “What if he’s right?” But that thought goes against everything he’s believed to be right and it’s all too much and too soon for him. And thus the complete meltdown he has there makes a lot of sense to me.

Yushou looks so sad and disappointed that Ed pulls back from the edge of accepting the truth though. He really thought that he had gotten through to him and is sad that Ed pulled back and went into denial instead..

[myassbrokethefall]

Extremely negative thoughts below that I just have to get off my chest. I am in a mood. You have been warned. 

Here’s the thing, like...either we will get a kiss, or we won’t get a kiss.

If we don’t get a kiss, I will feel so fucking cheated and like we were baited and teased and led on with something and then denied it, just so Chris Carter could be an asshole because he gets off on asserting his power to infuriate people. I will be furious. I will be frustrated. I will be pissed.

If we DO get one...it is so baseline, so stupid, so unbelievable that after all this time we still have to hope for that, that I’m mad about it anyway. And I hate myself for caring enough to feel like Mulder and Scully kissing on TV is some kind of holy grail of a prize. Like...these fucking people, these characters we have been seduced into caring about, have been together for so many years. The show is literally based on their chemistry. And yet here we are, in 2018, and the series is about to end, and they’ve had a baby (OR HAVE THEY? SUSPENSE) and they lived together and we’ve had a billion different moments where we were supposed to swoon and be excited that it was finally happening and then it never did, and there are two episodes left and we’re all like OMG WILL THEY KISS??? OMG THEY TOUCHED HANDS! OMG THEY HAD A CONVERSATION ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP! Like, that is STILL happening. There is LITERALLY NO POINT to GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY TO WITHHOLD IT, and yet, that is still, STILL, STILLLLLLLLLLLLLL what is happening. If I had been able to see this future in like, 1997 I think I would have thrown myself into the sea. Or at the very least fucked off to some other show that wasn’t going to squeeze me dry and leave me with nothing.

I’ve just hit some kind of wall with this, I think. I kind of don’t even give a fuck if they kiss or not. What the hell does it matter? We’re never going to see them together the way we should have years ago. I thought it was finally going to happen after IWTB, and I waited seven damn years for more episodes, and we got them, and...they started it all over again. I still, honestly, cannot fucking get over that, and that moment, the moment I found out about that, is when this show started to die for me. Because that was when I knew that it was all a trick. And we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and now it’s over. If we get a kiss in the last five minutes, or we don’t get one, that doesn’t negate the literal years of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and being teased and dismissed. It doesn’t negate the years of shoddy writing and inattention to continuity and being strung along and gratification delayed and delayed and delayed. It was all coming to...what? Either nothing, or 30 seconds of something. Fuck that. 

I don’t know, I’m hormonal. I suddenly today just got really mad about this. 

The David bullshit is also not helping. I think because, like, my waiting, and being teased, and being promised something and never getting it, and being counted on to continue to be able to milk the cash cow, have made possible the lifestyle to which David Duchovny has now become accustomed, and this is what he does with it. Why is everyone so disappointing and gross? The cognitive dissonance is starting to get to me, I think, and I’m looking forward to not having to see his face for a good long while. And I’m also PISSED about that, because I’m never going to have this, the show being on, anticipating it, ever again. The timing truly, truly sucks. So thanks a lot. I hope whatever logic you bludgeoned yourself with to convince yourself that this is a completely fine and non-pathetic thing for an adult man to be doing lets you sleep at night.

Two episodes from the end, and the writer does not even remember that Scully’s dead child is named Emily. That’s what we’re dealing with, as we roll toward the (reluctant, on the parts of many people who would love to keep making money off of me for infinity) end of this series. That’s the level of attention and oversight and care and that is being taken here. On this show where they used to smugly tell us that it was all part of a master plan and we should just pay close attention to the details. It makes me feel like, oh, you want me to give a shit? Why don’t you try giving a shit first? I’ll wait. I’m great at that. 

Ugh. I’m sorry. I’m sure I’ll be more excited tomorrow. 

I don’t even want to post this because a bunch of people are going to jump in all OMG YOU’RE SO RIGHT I ALSO HATE IT AND EVERYTHING SUCKS AND EVERYTHING IS BAD AND YOU’RE RIGHT IT’S AWFUL AND GOOD RIDDANCE NOTHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN and that’s also going to upset me. I don’t WANT it to be bad. I don’t ENJOY feeling negative. I have worked so hard to be positive about it all. I love my show so much. And yet. Here we are, in 2018 and we’re all WILL MULDER AND SCULLY KISS, FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2008??? Literally stab me in the face for still subjecting myself to this. 

[matthewebel]

Thank You, Anthrocon

Once again, the big show in Pittsburgh came and went. And man, was it a hell of a party.

I’d been working (secretly) on an all-new, all-dance show for months. Yes, while I was working on Cognitive Dissonance, I was also cooking up a whole new batch of house/trance EDM stuff in my lab. For the record: I don’t think I ever wanna work on two albums at the same time ever again.

Anyhoo, I got to unleash this dance set at Anthrocon at the beginning of July… and holy cow, did you folks seem to like it. I can’t remember the last time I felt quite as nervous before stepping on stage: This was a whole new tech setup, a new style, and unlike most of my shows for the past few years, I was all alone up there. Just me and the keys and a laptop.

And a ton of dancing animals at the foot of the stage.

For those that are wondering, yes I got a live recording of the show (audio and video). I’m currently working on a release for The Officer’s Club, possibly even my first actual live album release later this year. I do also intend to release a studio version of the new and remixed songs so the DJ’s will have something to play with.

But for now, I’m taking a bit of a break and making a mai tai before I make more plans. With any luck, next year will be even bigger and better.

Originally posted at http://bit.ly/2uJippo

[fahye]

As someone who has followed and adored your work since Battlestar Galactica and Naruto (oh, the SUFFERING we all endured), I am overflowing with joy that you are now writing Yuri on Ice. Stargazer and Gravity are spectacular in both writing quality and emotional depth, and I am so tremendously grateful that they exist. Please continue to bestow your gifts upon us (in whatever time you can spare us, of course), oh marvelous one. *runs off to also shower love on inknose because HOLY COW THAT ART*

my inbox is so full of WONDERFUL PEOPLE at the moment and I just have to say how much I appreciate all of you. I’m going through a weird period of cognitive dissonance where I’m struggling with my original writing and half of my brain is doing its usual thing of shouting insults at the other half (YOU’RE A HACK, WHY CAN’T YOU MAKE WORDS, ALL YOUR IDEAS ARE STUPID), but everyone in fandom is so generous and sweet with their feedback and I’m spending time looking my comments and breathing and saying, ok. ok. you’ve got this. just keep putting in the work.

& it’s even more wonderful to know that there are people who have been around since the time I toppled headfirst into BSG fandom and started taking my writing seriously. so. thank you :)))