#Have I mentioned Ito is smallest

[kits-shrine]

Reila hugged her close.

Ito pouted against her making Kagu chuckle "We know you take pride in your work and it is very important to you and your kin. We just want you safe."

[the-loveliest-lies]

OK so I’m gonna say some thing that should surprise nobody. My favorite TV show of all time is (drum roll) Adventure time there is so much lore and history in that world… That world that is full if not overflowing with lovable characters each of which have their own nuances and back stories and arcs. and on top of that It’s got kick ass musical numbers and cool fight scenes. And I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of the shows appeal with this post. There’s just so much. And after 2 years of zero content we are finally getting new episodes again. I’m counting down the days till they come out. there is 37 btw. It was created by Pendleton ward and premiered it’s first episode in 2010. Adam muto took over as the show runner in season 5 but it’s sooooo much more than Pendleton and it’s more than Muto it’s Rebecca sugar it’s Patrick McHale it’s Kent Osborne it’s Elizabeth Ito it’s Natasha Algeri And those are just the writers/story borders I can name off the top of my head not to mention the incredible voice cast. And everyone else who worked on it. this show has Been my rock and best friend for 13 years. I love it. So i want to thank everyone who has ever worked on even the smallest piece of this show. I love you and will always be indebted to you and the stories told in this franchise. So thank you for the adventures now past and thank you for the adventures yet to come

[signalno5]

[02] In which Goshiki thinks about his cute roommate

Or There’s no heterosexual explanation for this

Trig, Calc and stats can eat my entire ass. All the other Math can stay. I also don’t think I mentioned it but italicized text means thoughts. Also shdkjash I don’t have any pre-written chapters any more....

Warnings: Math, reader has set interests (it might ruin your immersion but this fic series is very self-indulgent lol)

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Wednesday

 May 23, 2012 

If there's anything that Goshiki notices about you, it's how quiet you were. You’d always clam up after he tries to make conversation with you. It's like you were trying to desperately find something to say. He'd see how your face would contort into a grimace then a frown then you'd look pensive, as if you were considering something.

You were weird. 

Maybe not as weird as Tendou-senpai but still weird. He briefly wonders if you two would get along if you met. You seemed to be one of those eccentric genius types, with your nose always shoved into your textbooks and your unexpected taste in room décor.  

You looked so serious even though you were surrounded by plushies on the bed. In between you and your Japanese Literature book was your Pompompurin stuffed toy, your chin was resting on its little brown beret and your arms were wrapped around its round yellow body. Beside you were your notebooks and homework packets, neatly piled up. 

He wonders why he was ever intimidated by your quiet nature, looking at you now. It was cute how you couldn’t bear to leave home without your large collection of Sanrio merch. Even though your beds were the same size, yours looked so much smaller from the armada of stuffed toys on it. 

He briefly wondered how pleasant your bed it would be to sleep on your bed; the mattresses were the same but your bed looked infinitely more comfy (which was probably why you were studying there instead of a desk). Your pillows and plushies looked so soft too but he’d know not to lie down on your plushies because he’s seen you look upset when you accidentally crushed little Cinnamoroll in your sleep.

He remembers remarking on the sheer amount of it and you looked so flustered about it saying that the bulk of it were gifts from his parents since they weren’t around much. 

When he thinks about it, you kind of remind him of Gudetama with its lazy, droopy nature. Probably because you promptly fell asleep soon after meeting him. The two of you made a strange-looking pair; Goshiki who was energetic and over-enthusiastic and (L/N) who always seemed tired.

It’s amazing how you became his friend so easily. Goshiki himself was pretty aloof so it seemed unlikely that this friendship would be formed. 

But then again, I’m the one who suddenly declared that we were friends…

It was a bit embarrassing that he did that but he found himself drawn to (L/N). He remembered his broad grin when he took his bags into the room. After 2 months of being his roommate, Goshiki realized how rare it was to get him to smile. 

Ah, I want to see that smile again.

( He didn’t notice that there were eyes on him. Looking back at his blank, zoned out stare with a fond look and the smallest grin. )

He wonders if he smiles a lot during class (You were in different classes after all, with Goshiki being in class 1-4 and you being in class 1-5). He wonders if you laugh at Ito-sensei’s morbid humor or if you go along with your class’s hijinks. 

He wonders if you had any inside jokes with your seatmates (who he knew because he visited your classroom sometimes during lunch). Are you always so serious all the time? Maybe you’re trying to play straight man to their jokes…?

“...Goshiki?”

“Ah..yeah?”

“Did you finish the homework packet that Kato-sensei gave us? I’m not quite sure if I got the value of the tangent right in item #8. I just wanted to compare answers if that’s alright.”

… fuck

He hadn’t started with it yet since he just got back from volleyball practice and he’s been wasting time staring at his roommate like a creep too!! 

Might as well be truthful about it…

“Ah, I haven’t started on it yet”, he laughed nervously. “I just came back from volleyball practice after all.”

(L/N) looked pretty apologetic for some reason. He curled back into his plushie and turned his head away from Goshiki. 

“Right. Sorry if I was disturbing your rest.. I thought you wanted something from me because you were staring.”

!!!

So he did notice!

“Ah… well? I-um wanted to ask for your help? You’re in Class 1-5 so I thought that you’d be able to help me out! Only if you want to of course!” 

He hoped that (L/N) wouldn’t call bullshit because he knew Goshiki didn’t really struggle too hard in academics. He knew that people thought of him as a volleyball idiot but he’s pretty grade conscious too! (Especially since it proved that he was smarter than Ushijima-senpai)

“...Alright but I might need your input in this too. I’m still having a hard time grasping the topic.”

(L/N) looked troubled by this; he was nervous and fidgety, adjusting Pompompurin’s little beret and smoothing out the wrinkles on its surface. His hands looked like they were desperately looking for something to fix or smooth out. This made Goshiki worry; in the few months that he’s known him, he hasn’t really seen him struggle in academics. But they were in the midst of midterm examinations after all, so it would make sense to be stressed out by extra homework.

I guess even people like him have a hard time.

“You can count on me (L/N)!”, he said in a voice too loud for a room with only two people in it. 

He heard a quiet chuckle and looked at his roommate to see him leaning on his Rillakuma pillow (weird considering he liked Sanrio characters more) with a smile wide on his face.

“That’s just like you to say, Goshiki.” 

Goshiki hoped that his ears weren’t deceiving him but he sounded fond? He said it in a way that made Goshiki warm.

It was fluttery too and light. He felt like his chest was a balloon being inflated with a pump. It felt like someone was stepping on the pedal faster and faster with the air going in until his chest felt full. 

What a weird feeling it was.

[holographings]

me being me, hopping on trends like 10 years late. i finally got around to making an influence map! i elaborate on most of these under the cut bc it’s LONG, but if you’re interested here u go!

Bill Watterson and the entirety of Calvin & Hobbes- I feel like i’ve droned on about this to anyone that knows me irl so i’m sorry but it’s the earliest comic strip i can remember reading, the lazy sunday collection has been passed around my family like a relic and it’s what taught me art can still convey so so much even if the art seems playful and kid-friendly. so good will never stop talking about it.

Junji Ito- the man the myth the legend, seeing his work for the first time when i was like 11, especially uzumaki, was like a revelation. i have an issue in life where i feel like some things are off limits/not allowed for me personally, even the smallest things like what you’re “allowed to draw”. and seeing his art flipped some sort of switch in my brain like. yeah actually you can draw anything you want and that means Anything. also how i got introduced to guro art.

Malcolm Liepke- god all of his art is so wonderful, the strokes he uses are so bold and raw but the figures remain very well defined. very influential to the way i’ve tried to work on painting in general.

Riyoko Ikeda- thisss womannn... all of her stories discussing gender and sexuality and how they overlap/their grey zones were a big BIG influence in my early teens, especially oniisama e. and her work was the first thing that made me see how much i love character drama driven plots. her + other year 24 group artists were a major influence for the kinda androgynous way i draw most of my characters

Early 2000′s dreamworks studio productions- ok i’m not sure if this one counts but even as a pre-schooler i had hyperfixations and movies like the road to el dorado/sinbad/the prince of egypt were the SHIT i can quote them word for word to this day, and literally everything about the stylization in the animation and the way it lends itself to the storytelling / early concept art is honestly something i strive for (and i doubt i’ll ever reach that level, but i try not to think like that!)

Moebius- fucking Impeccable artist, i think i’ve picked up the way i use lines in some of my composition from him, and his illustrations remain such a huge inspiration boost whenever i need it

Nitro+chiral studios- i should put this under the “things i discovered too early for my own good” tab, but in every single visual novel of theirs the character design is fucking amazing and, again, a level i strive to reach. every game of theirs is so stylistically well defined, and their dramatic/sometimes plain too much storylines is something i love. again. probably shouldnt’ve looked into visual novels at age 12. but i’m thankful nonetheless

Natasha Allegri- the woman that made me realize i wanted to do art!! her character design/storyboarding for adventure time is the reason i am the person that i am today and i say that with absolutely not a hint of hyperbole. i owe this girl an entire 8+ years of my life spent on art, and hopefully many many more

The rest are various online content creators/artists! i’ve mentioned this but i have no actual formal art education, so i was basically raised by the internet. people who posted their art online were, in a way, the most influential because i could often see their process/how they thought about art, and that made it easy to pick up bits and pieces of their techniques and adjust it or fit it into my personal style. most of them are no longer active online sadly, i’ve been following some of these people for YEARS and i mean like.. longer than i know any of my best friends. my love for them knows no bounds, i don’t want to tag them but if you want to look them up, some of the ones i featured in the map are c-bedford, turndecassette, tumblr user cawoshin, vewn, and rebleflet

[salemrising666]

my depression and health battle

DEPRESSION

IS A BATTLE THAT CAN BE WON

as I pull the petals of this beautiful flower I noticed I had reached the last petal as I muttered to myself im lucky and tore it away from its steam I noticed one small underdeveloped petal hanging on for dear life and I muttered im not lucky and with my bad luck streak in life I thought it was some kind of omen was this a sign that my bad luck streak would never end or was I bein stupid overthinking things yet again I guess we can only find out as I battle my demons.

I sat there for a few minutes trying to talk myself out of this sign that everything would be fine it had to be my luck had to turn at some point hadnt it?

When I was 15 I started having eye trouble and my thirst for sugar had increased dramatically my parents had noticed this more than I had and suggested I go see a eye specialist to sort my eye troubles out when we got there my parents mentioned the sugar intake and they tested my blood sugars which were off the charts high I had further blood tests to soon discover that I was a type one diabetic and because of all the sugar in my bloodstream had temporarily changed my eye shape hence the blurred vision,i was sent to a hospital for two weeks to earn the ins and outs of how to take care of myself with this new disease it was scary and so hard I had never had a phobia of needles but to learn that I would here on out have to stick a needle into my stomach with each meal snack and drink was scary and take my sugars before each meal which would mean also stabbing my fingers scared the hell out of me and I thought why me why now anda lot of damage had already been done as I could have been diabetic for wuite a while before they had found it

I was to face some debhilitating challenges almost dying and permenant damage that would change my life forever things I would have to learn to live with and adapt to such as permenant eye damage agonizing diabetic neuropathy the loss of my left small toe then a further amputation of the joint including multiple procedures like laser eye surgery eye injections eye surgery two amputations the removal of all my teeth due to gastro peresis stages where I couldnt stomach any food throwing it all up losing weight to where my organs were failing and me on my death bed and not knowing why I have neer given up in all these struggles even though I knew oh well eating will end up with me bent over the toilet for hours being labelled as having a eating disorder and trying to convince doctors no this is medical and something was wrong having a feeding tube forced down your throat becausee of these labels and watched while I showered and used the toilet was horrible being in hospital for three months fighting for my life as I never realised how important food was for your body till I was striken with gatsro peresis and not being able to consume it and practically starving to deathi thought this was it this would kill me as nobody could find what was wrong and trying to tell me I was doing this to myself on purpose I refused to leave myhouse as I was ashamed of how thin I was I got down to 31 kilos and there was nothing left of me I was stuck in mental health and was forced to talk to psychiatrists about my so called eating disorder as they tried to help me but how can you fix something that doesnt exist they finally realised months later after leaving the hospital that it was medical from all of the tests I was made to do im still battling these issues today truing to gain weight I have also lost a large portion of my eyesight due to diabetic neuropathy when the blood vessels overgrow and cause permenant damage and the obly way to stop th further damage is to have laser ee surgery to try stop the vessels from growing which worked for a while then I was told they were growing again

so the next step was to have multiple injections over months into the eye to try shrink them which I am still having today as they have flared up again I now have to wear glasses but I can never drive as my vision is that impaired.

Another thing I battle wth is diabetic neuropathy which Is where your nerves send misfired pain signals to your brain when nothing is actually wrong you feel shock like pains hot pins and needles aches and some feeling losswhich contributed to me losing my small left toe I had gotten a blister that I didnt know I had which turned into a foot ulcer got infected and ate its way down to my bones I then got na serious bone infection called ostemyelitis which eats away at your bones they tried a long course of iv antibiotics to get rid of it but it falled and the only way to stop me from losing my whole leg was to amputate the small toe I was terrified as I lay in hospital and the doctors came in to wheel me ito surgery next thing I knew I was waking back up in my ward and my foot was being unwrapped I was in shock seeing my little toe missing they put something called a vac seal on it which helped fill the giant hole I now had in my foot and healed it three times faster than without it because of my compromised immune system from the auto immune disease they think I have that hasnt been even named yet I struggled to heal fully allowing infection bac into the amputation site which meant round two but they were to tell me I was going to loose my whole leg and had two weeks until surgery so as I went home and tried to prepare one day post surgery checkin they told me we are just going to amputate the remaning joint I had a sigh of relief but it was still loosing more of my foot I have had a rough life health wise as there has always been something wrong I have had the worst luck possible so many long hospital trips and now being 27 I just want to be as healthy as possible and live the life I know I deserve after all this grief and I have learnt to appreciate even the smallest of things and especially all the people who never left me in all my struggles and mood swings I am forever grateful for them as I know I wouldnt be here without them although they tell me they understand what im going through they couldnt possibly but I hate that ive had to go through all this and more I hate more the people I love have had to watch me gp through this amd I am usually a happy bright bubbly person but I mean I have my bad days where im depressed and wished all these afflictions didnt plague me everyday and it is also hard as I cant just forget I have these things as they impair everything I do I cant just turn around and be like I dont feel like being type 1 diabetic for a day as I would face horrible repurccusions .

In all this hardship I know there is people suffering out there more than I am I just wish I didnt have to fight everyday with all of this and fight to keep my life I want to just live it and be happy and I know I will get there I will never give up no matter how bloody hard this is or will get but I just wnted to tell a small portion of what I have gone through in my life in the hopes it may inspire of help somebody suffering with anny of these issues and yes depression is a hard thing to overcome but there are always things to help I find art and writing in a journal helps and venting all it takes is that one special person to listen and have your back if anybody reading this wants to chat I will always lend a ear to you so dont be afraid I may look odd and be odd but I am friendly and have a massive heart thank you for reading.

[jdmndw]

You

Dear Ian, Hello! If you are reading this, welcome! First of all, hindi ko alam kung bakit ko naisip na gumawa ng post or letter about you, I just want to. Anyway, please read it and please bare with me, baka kasi maging mahaba ang letter ko for you. Today is Decemeber 26, 2020. I’m not sure if I’ll send you the link for this special letter, but we’ll see. I’m writing my letter for you, not because you are writing your letter for me. I’m not yet late kasi hindi pa naman tapos ang year na ito. I just wish na tumagal tayo, we are not yet official, but soon. I do really like you. I like everything about you, to the point na gumagawa ako ng letter sa Tumblr. What do I like about you? Your personality, your attitude sa career and life, your beliefs, your smile, your positivity, your heart, your care for other people, your honesty, your good voice, and your face! I will do my best na hindi ka mawala sa akin. Again, I’m writing this letter para mas masabi ko ang mga gusto ko na malaman mo, sa span ng 4 months na we are talking and getting to know each other. Ang bilis lang ng panahon. I can still remember the night na nakausap kita through online, nakikita na kita sa camera pero hindi lang maliwanag, sinabi ko pa nga sayo na baka kilala kita kasi familiar ang face mo kahit sa dilim, so I politely asked you to speak, and you did. I know, ayaw mo sa mga tao na demanding, but you did speak para lang marinig ko ang voice mo kasi I thought na kilala kita, may classmate kasi ako na somehow same kayo ng eyes, sa voice ko lang talaga malalaman. Anyway, it was a memorable night, we talked about a lot of random topics. We were getting to know each other kasi strangers nga tayo. And we clicked! You asked for my FB account and binigay ko agad, agad! And I can still remember the stare na ginawa mo when you saw my profile picture sa FB. I had no idea kasi. After that night, hinanap kita sa FB, and ang hirap mo hanapin. Bakit kasi nickname lang ang nasa FB account mo? I did my best para mahanap ka. You mentioned your province and city naman, and also your school, so nag-rely lang ako sa information na mayroon ako, and I successfully found you. Magaling kasi ako, kahit sa stalking lang. Bigay mo na sa akin, ikaw naman kasi palagi ang magaling sa lahat. Always MVP! Anyway, ako ang unang nag-chat sayo pero just to be clear again, hindi ako ang unang nagbigay ng motive, it was really you. Nag-chat lang ako kasi sinabi mo na mag-chat ako if ever I need someone to talk to, and I did chat you. Case closed! Moving forward, nagtuloy ang usapan natin kahit sa chat lang. Hindi ka nga sanay na may kausap sa call, lalo na kapag stranger pa lang sayo. I can’t remember kung paano tayo nagsimula maglaro ng ML. Hindi ako sure if ako ang nag-ask or ikaw about sa ML. So, naglaro nga tayo. And first game pa lang ata, MVP ka na agad. I’m just kidding. I can’t remember our first game, pero I’m sure na mas mataas ang score mo. I always ask you if hindi ka busy sa work mo before tayo maglaro. I was shy pa sayo kasi you are working na and I’m still a student. And we always play ng ML, every single night, or minsan kapag hindi mo gusto, kahit usap lang sa chat. It took us weeks before kita nakausap ulit through call, hindi ka nga kasi sanay pa, and I was a stranger pa sayo. May mga naramdaman ako na hindi ako sure, to the point na I asked you kung paano ka ba sa isang tao lalo na kapag gusto mo siya, or how do you flirt, or ano ba ang gusto mo sa isang tao. I was clueless talaga. Fast forward na kasi parang ang haba na ng leter ko, sinabi ko sayo na I like you, and I don’t know what to do with my feelings for you. I was in a toxic situation before tayo nag-usap. I was really confused pa. And you made me feel special, you care and you respect everything about me, ang dami ko na kasi sinasabi sayo about sa mga nangyayari sa buhay ko, kahit the smallest detail pa, sinasabi ko pa din sayo, kahit walang sense. I don’t know, transparent lang siguro ako sayo. I always enjoy kapag we are playing ML or kahit usap lang sa call. Small things matter talaga. Ang saya na para sa akin. I know na may insecurities tayo, as a person, pero for me, I will accept those flaws of yours, kasi it is still a part of you. I’m not looking for the perfect man for me. I’m just looking for someone na kalmado lang and pasok sa hinahanap ko. You showed your true self sa akin and thank you for letting me see some of it. Iba pa din kapag sa personal na and kasama na. So, don’t worry about it, I won’t force you to change or to enhance for the better, you are perfect na. No wonder na maraming may gusto sayo. Before this year ends, I just want you to know that I’m happy, grateful, thankful, and still excited na I get to spend the last quarter ng 2020 with you. You made and you are still making my 2020 a memorable one. Also, I am not perfect para sayo but I will do and try my best to be the best man for you. I will take care of you, soon. Thank you for accepting everything about me, literally, everything. And hindi ka nag-hesitate sa akin, mas inisip mo pa ang good side of me. Mas gusto mo na makilala talaga ako kasi one thing doesn’t define me, as a person. I know that I’m unpredictable. I am weird, in my own ways, pero you are still accepting me for who I am. Lahat na lang ng mga sinasabi ko, you still manage to understand me and accept it. Let’s be realistic, we don’t know kung ano ang mangyayari sa atin, sa kung ano ang mayroon tayo ngayon, but let’s make our best to maintain and keep our connection stronger. We may be different sa ibang bagay or may imperfections tayo bilang tao, pero let us still do our best to understand, respect, and love each other. I’m very excited to see you! Everyday, I’m always anticipating sa araw na magkikita tayo. Soon! Let’s not rush it kasi we believe in the perfect time and moment. Another, I just want you to know na you don’t have to rush anything, lalo na sa sarili mo. Just take your time. We will get there, not just by yourself, together. You will get to express whatever you want na, soon. Basta, nandito lang ako. Enjoy ka lang muna sa kung ano ang nangyayari ngayon. It is normal na mag-commit ng mistakes kasi naniniwala ako sa improvement. Working progress. Kung ano man ang plan natin, and ng universe sa atin, we will get there. Let’s trush and wait for the perfect time and moment. Again, sana umabot ka sa part na ito, thank you for still reading this part, my letter. It is too long na, baka tulog ka na agad. Kapag kasama kita tapos natulog ka sa tabi ko, bahala ka. I’m kidding! You can trust and lean on my shoulder naman. Pero not to the point na matutulog ka na talaga, nap lang. Lastly, sana maging MVP na ako sa buhay mo. I’m very excited to see the world with you. I’m very excited to open my new chapter with you. You are important, you are special, and you are beautiful. Don’t be too hard sa sarili mo, sa ibang bagay lang. And for sure, you are smiling na naman sa part na ito, iba kasi ang nasa isip mo. Hindi talaga ako ang may mali, ikaw din talaga, same tayo ng level when it comes to this topic pero tago lang ang sayo. Don’t worry, I won’t judge you kapag gusto mo na mag-share about that side of you. It is very normal. May tamang lugar and platform for that, soon. Anyway, this letter is too long. Ang summary lang ng letter ko ay grateful ako. I’m kidding! Lahat ng thoughts ko ay important. Please do read everything, don’t skip even a word. Read everything carefully. This is for you. Cheers to our love! Let’s face 2021 with positivity! This year made us feel a lot of things pero we manage naman to surpass everything, and I’m proud kasi nandito tayo sa last week ng 2020. I’m proud, happy, and blessed kasi healthy naman ang family mo and my family. Let’s hope and wish na matapos na ang pandemic so that we could get back to our normal life, and para mas magawa na natin ang mga gusto natin, together. We can still see each other naman, may limitations nga lang. I’m not sure kung kailan mo ito mababasa, I’m planning to show you this love letter ko, baka sa January 1 na lang. I don’t know. Sana umabot ka sa part na ito, sana umiyak ka naman kahit papaano. Or kahit happy na lang. Sana you are still smiling while reading this part of my letter for you. Again, thank you for listening sa lahat ng mga sinasabi ko kahit walang sense. Thank you very much! I do appreciate you, everything about you. I may be complicated pero please understand me na lang. Alam ko naman na how many times ko na nasabi sayo about this one, pero please do understand me. Last na talaga, I miss you! Kahit hindi pa tayo nagkikita, I miss you na! I enjoy your company, I always do. I feel so safe kapag kausap kita. I’ll take care kung ano man ang mayroon tayo ngayon para mas tumagal tayo. I will support you sa mga gusto mo, just let me know. Please let me take care of you, hanggang kaya ko. Ian, thank you! And I love you! After reading this letter, please do take a picture of yourself, para makita ko ang reaction mo. And send it to me. This is not a demand, this is a survey. I need to know your real emotion. Important ka kasi sa akin. Love, Ked

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Small World

@thekittenpopper   @butterflyinthewell This is kinda for you and kinda just a general post musing at life and the world.   With the new Deuce and HU albums, I’ve been thinking a lot about the last few years of my life and how everything impacts everything else.  How the smallest thing will interconnect our lives forever.    I met one of my best friends on here b/c at the time we were the only two people I knew tagging Deuce stuff.    We started talking about Deuce, then art.  Then we started talking all the time.  We started to do role plays with OC’s and I began to notice that this person's characters were all obviously autistic.  When I mentioned it, they seemed really upset and finally said “Well I guess it’s because I’m autistic.  I never wanted you to know, I tried to hide it as best I could”.   That boggled my mind.  “Why would you hide that?”  I asked.  and the reply was “I didn’t want you to hate me.” I was stunned.  Because that was the last thing on my mind.  I thought it was brilliant that these characters were autistic.and that it had been crafted ito the storylines.   Later on, I also found out this person was trying to transition.  They said something about wanting top surgery and I said  “It’s your body and if that is what is going to make you comfortable, then do it.  Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with it.” Apparently, I was the only person in the world that had ever said anything encouraging or along those lines to my friend.  From that moment on there was a bond between us, stronger than anything or any relationship I’d had in my life in years.

In turn, they brainwashed me into leaving my abusive hsuband.  And I use that word because  it had to be like that because he had brainwashed me to think I was weak, powerless, unable to ever care for myself and unable /not worth to ever be loved by anyone else.    This person is part of the reason I am still alive.

   We ended up spending the summer together and it was not easy because I had never been around an autistic person before.  It was also hard because  I saw how this person was conditioned to behave with and around a borderline abusive parent, and how they blossomed and became a totally new creature with me, given unconditional love and freedom, only to have to watch them go back in their shell once I had to return them home.  Before I made the cross-country trip to see them and take them back home with me, they had laid it out to me with brutal honesty, and I was prepared.  It was the best summer of my life.  It changed me forever. Fast forward two years. I am now in my second year teaching and I have an autistic student that I love with all my heart.   He is kind, funny and brilliant beyond his years.  I attended my first ARD meeting with school officials and his family a month ago and his Mom and Grandma came up and said “Are you Miss _____?  We just had to meet you, you are all he talks about.  You are his favorite teacher and he just says “She gets me like no one else does”  And again I knew we were going to change each other's lives.

But I could not have changed his without understanding autism (and I am no expert there is still so much to learn), I could not have understood autism without meeting my friend, and I would have never ever met that fan/friend/bestfriend/platonic soulmate, had it not been for Deuce.  

I am sitting here drinking my coffee, thinking about what a small world it really is 

Weak or strong, not just a song We sing along when things go wrong You will need me when you fall And I will need you when I'm wrong Tears lead me on They let me lead you so far Weak or strong, I'll hold your arm

[nny11writes]

Fictober 21- Family

Anakin rolled his eyes as Obi-Wan bustled around their cramped apartment with a spray bottle and rag. The space, while probably lush by many coruscanti’s standards was tiny, stupidly over designed, and frankly made Anakin feel like he was living in some minimalist’s wet dream. Rent, however, was cheap when your adoptive big brother loved you- and you were still attending at the local engineering college. The tuition was expensive, his books were expensive, his lab fees were exorbitantly expensive, and the cost to rent a dorm smaller than a standard jail cell was astronomical. Deciding that his dignity literally cost less Anakin had done the mature thing and shown up at Obi-Wan’s door with a small duffle. In the three years he’d been living here the apartment had been spotless. While Anakin had been allowed to be as unorganized as he pleased in his own room, and eventually had wiggled an exception in for the study, the rest of the space had been declared a junk free zone.

If Obi-Wan could even find something more to nervously clean, Anakin would eat his own socks.

He tried to focus on the pod race on the holo instead, jamming a fist full of cheesy chips into his mouth. His feet twitched restlessly back and forth on the low coffee table, Anakin forced himself as far back as the squishy tan couch would let him. If he was being mature right now, Anakin would admit that he was also nervous. Instead he obnoxiously ate his snacks and glared as Obi-Wan ended up half covering the screen.

“Watching the race here Obi,” Anakin spoke around his half chewed food.

Obi-Wan’s glare spoke volumes to how unimpressed he was. “Yes, I can see that. Meanwhile I am actually trying to get everything ready.”

Anakin scowled and bounced his feet a little faster. “She’s not even gonna be here until tomorrow old man.”

There was a long pause as Obi-Wan’s eyes fluttered closed as if in pain. Fierfek.

“She...she is coming tomorrow right?” Anakin found himself swallowing hard.

“No, Anakin, she should be here in ten minutes.”

He was suddenly very, very aware of the fact that he’d been wearing this same set of pajamas all day...for three days straight. His hair felt greasy from not having crammed his too tall body into the sonic for a refresh, he was pretty sure he had powdered orange cheese on his face and hands, and he hadn’t cleared the last few droid parts out of the study. The study that was going to be his niece’s room. Clearing his throat and casting desperately around Anakin managed a weak, “Yeah, well, she’s like, a kid. And kids are gross right? Right. Gross and terrifying.”

Obi-Wan moaned, or at least Anakin was pretty sure that was a moan. It actually sounded a bit like the trains when they squealed around too tight corners.

Under his big brother’s big scrutiny, Anakin both wanted to disappear into space and bristle at the implications. Especially when Obi-Wan’s eyes turned towards Artoo, their little bunny droid. “No loose wire jokes.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Obi-Wan sighed as he went to put his cleaning supplies away.

“You were going to,” Anakin craned his neck backwards over the couch back to glare. “He’s a good droid, and I’m working out the kinks in his system.”

“I didn’t say anything, and as long as he doesn’t electrocute Ahsoka or myself I frankly don’t care. I just don’t think-” Obi-Wan didn’t even have time to stand up straight before Anakin pulled himself around on the couch.

“That’s saying something!”

“Anakin, my couch! Blast it, you’ve gotten smudges all over it.” Anakin found himself magically booted out of his seat as Obi-Wan applied the upholstery cleaner. “Besides, this is exactly the sort of thing I got that droid for.”

“Tch, he works better as a protection droid, no one expects the bunnies Obi-Wan. Besides, gross kids remember, get used to this dad.” Anakin took the four steps needed to be in his bedroom doorway.

“I assure you,” Obi-Wan raised his voice to still be heard as if the walls weren’t paper thin, “my new favorite child will not be as big a mess as you.”

Anakin rolled his eyes at his mirror as he changed into a fresh change of clothes. As if.

The doorbell rang about a half second before Artoo growled, which was a second before Obi-Wan yelped and a crackle of electricity could be heard. Anakin smiled proudly. That was his perfect boy, defending his dad the way he should.

“Anakin get your droid under control and uncross his blasted wires!”

“Obi-Wan, you promised-”

“Take care of him now please.”

Anakin huffed as he went back into the main room where Obi-Wan was using a wooden vase to have a shield between him and the bunny. The doorbell rang a second time and Artoo warbled a miniature battle cry. “Artoo, down boy. Ahsoka’s gonna be your new sister. Be nice.”

The electro prod slowly retracted and Artoo let out a grumble. “I know buddy, you can have all the fun you want after she’s settled in.”

Obi-Wan had unfortunately already palmed the door controls when he turned around to hiss at them, “No hazing Ahsoka!”

“Is this a bad time Mr. Kenobi?” Plo Koon was a large kel dor with a deep booming voice and a penchant for finding orphans, and then finding them homes. Anakin was still unclear as to how Obi-Wan had met him, but had a feeling it was their mutual affections (which they then both tried to pretend they didn’t hold) for small pathetic creatures.

Obi-Wan smiled even as his whole face went pink. “Not at all, please come in.”

Anakin, wearing a pair of dark pants and an undershirt only, tried to backpedal to his room to at least put on his shoes and a proper shirt. Obi-Wan grabbed his elbow and dragged him to sit down on the couch by the still foamy upholstery cleaner. Anakin pulled him down next to him. If he had to suffer through the cloying fresh scent of Naboo’s open fields, so was Obi-Wan. Plo sat down gingerly on a chair that was simply not sized for kel dors, giving him the appearance of moderating a child’s tea party. Ahsoka was probably the smallest and scrawniest togruta Anakin had ever seen. By contrast to her caretaker, Ahsoka looked almost too small for the same sized chair. Her feet barely reaching the floor even with her hunching over the small backpack clutched to her chest as she looked at him suspiciously.

Where Obi-Wan and Ahsoka had met several times and hit it off, Anakin had never met her himself. Seeing her looking at Obi-Wan like a hero and him like a stranger kinda hit home how she was literally going to start living here. For, like, ever. Until college. Until after college Anakin amended.

Obi-Wan and Plo had already started talking, the last few arrangements and thumb prints taken to finalize the adoption process. Anakin sat stiff and uncomfortable and feeling half naked as she critically looked him over. He smiled and wiggled a few fingers at her, and felt that smile become more natural when she grinned a little and wiggled a few fingers back. Yeah, Cool Uncle Anakin. He was rocking it. Gods preserve kids are terrifying?

“Let me show you your room while the adultier adults wrap this up.” Anakin stage whispered, and was rewarded by feeling Obi-Wan’s blistering glare on the side of his head.

It took them literally ten seconds to get to her room and then a half second longer for Anakin to nervously start sweating. He bustled in, gathering up as many droid parts as he could and started to babble. “Sorry about the mess, I forgot when you were, anyways, so I’m an engineering student, uh, I’m Anakin. Did I mention that yet? Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan brother, anyways,droids you know, so uh, this was a study and I forgot, do you like droids?”

When he turned around, barely balancing the stack of parts in his arms Ahsoka started to laugh at him.

Well he was trying to be nice!

She sat down on her new bed and bounced slightly as her laughing fit slowed. “Nice to meet you Skyguy.”

“Snippy,” he grumbled ito a few circuit boards balanced half on his arms and half on his chest.

“What?”

“I said sure thing Snips.”

Anakin bit his tongue and let the awkward silence grow, watching as Ahsoka shook her head slowly and then pulled her bag up to start unpacking. As she started stacking a few paltry bits of clothes, Ahsoka shrugged, “Droids are alright.”

He was kind of offended on Artoo’s behalf. “Droids are super cool. We have one. A little bunny droid, Artoo. I built him. Uh, just be careful around him. Artoo’s got a personality and an electro prod.”

Ahsoka froze, a can of something in her hand and turned to look at him with one brow raised. “You put an electro prod on a bun? That’s, actually that’s kinda brilliant. In a mad scientist way.”

Alright he was no longer offended on Artoo’s behalf.

[mathematicianadda]

G2D2, 2: first week

The campus of the China Three Gorges Hotel has a small river, full of waterlilies and lotus flowers. Beside it runs a main road, along which big water trucks run, shooting atomised water from cannon-like structures; we are told this is to reduce the air pollution.

After an introductory party on Monday, the conference opened at 9:00 on Tuesday morning. In the first week, much of the activity is minicourses 1 and 2, the first on “Laplacian eigenvalues and optimality” given by Rosemary and me, the second on “Topics in representation theory” by Tullio Ceccherini-Silberstein.

But first, some words on the two logos, which appear at the top of the first post in this sequence.

The meeting is being held in the Three Gorges Mathematics Research Centre, whose logo is on the right. It is part of the China Three Gorges University, near the famous Three Gorges on the Yangtse River. The University’s logo, which I am sure your search engine will quickly find, features three vertical wavy shapes, which presumably are intended to suggest water cascading through the three gorges. The TGMRC logo cleverly replaces these random shapes by integral signs, which they somewhat resemble.

The TGMRC is on a corridor on the top floor of a U-shaped building called L1 or L2, depending on which side you enter. The top of the U is closed by a high bridge. So it somewhat resembles the new location of the ICMS in Edinburgh, except that that building is entirely enclosed, whereas the central courtyard of L1/L2 is open to sun and rain. There is a nice lecture room with comfortable chairs. Although there is no public space except for the corridor (where the welcome party was held), there are a number of rooms which can be used as “breakout rooms” for small discussions.

The conference logo on the left is a Deza graph. There has been a recent upsurge of activity on Deza graphs, which I suspect is driven by Sergey Goryainov.

A Deza graph is a regular connected graph for which the number of common neighbours of two vertices takes just two distinct values. If adjacent vertices have one number of common neighbours and non-adjacent vertices the other, then the graph is strongly regular. So a strictly Deza graph is defined to be a Deza graph of diameter 2 which is not strongly regular. The graph in the G2D2 logo is the smallest strictly Deza graph, as you can easily verify. I do not know whether the colours have any mathematical significance.

On Wednesday, Dmitry Panasenko told us about a clever computer search which found all the strictly Deza graphs on up to 21 vertices. For one parameter set (I think on 20 vertices) there are many non-isomorphic graphs (I think around 20 or 30, though I didn’t copy down the number from a long table). Then Soesoe Zaw told us about some new constructions of strictly Deza graphs from the Berlekamp–van Lint–Seidel graph, using the operation of dual Seidel switching due to Willem Haemers. This pleases me, since I am typing this on a computer called Seidel.

The Berlekamp–van Lint–Seidel graph is a graph on 243 vertices which is dual (in the sense of Delsarte duality for association schemes) to the graph associated with the perfect ternary Golay code C of dimension 5 over the field of 3 elements. Take the dual code of C (which is 6-dimensional of length 11 and contains C as a subcode of codimension 1). The vertices of the graph are the cosets of this dual code; two vertices are joined if their difference contains a word of weight 1. It is a “sporadic” strongly regular graph with 243 vertices, and from it Soesoe was able to construct a strictly Deza graph on 243 vertices and two of them on 486 vertices.

Seidel’s name came up again in Wei-Hsuan Yu’s talk on equiangular lines, in which he began with the results which I saw from close-up in the early 1970s by Lemmens, Seidel, Higman, Taylor, Gerzon, and so on, and then gave some improvements, some of which have been obtained by semi-definite programming; and again in Alexander Gavrilyuk’s talk on digraphs whose Hermitian adjacency matrices have spectral radius at most 2.

One of the invited speakers was Gareth Jones. He was going to tell us about his recent theorem that many triangle groups contain uncountably many maximal nonparabolic subgroups (subgroups maximal with respect to containing no parabolic elements in their action on the hyperbolic plane). But for reasons not revealed, he was unable to come to the meeting. Instead, Alexander Mednykh had offered to give a talk to Gareth’s slides. Very brave, I thought. But Sasha began by explaining to us the basic idea behind the proof, a mix of maps and hypermaps, coverings, Riemann surfaces, etc.

Qing Xiang gave us new bounds for the size of a partial ovoid in either the generalised quadrangle E(5,q) (what I might call Ω−(6,q) and in the Ree–Tits generalised octagon; in each case, previous bounds were of order a power of q, but he and his co-authors have managed to lower the exponent of the power. He showed us Chris Godsil’s nice proof of Jef Thas’ q3−q2+q bound in the GQ case, based on association scheme techniques (and so potentially useable in much more general situations). The new bound uses modulo p techniques and very specific results about dimensions of modules for algebraic groups, and while much more powerful in this case is likely to be much more specialised.

There have been several mentions of Cayley graphs, and I must point out a notational trap. Given a subset S of a group G, not containing the identity, the Cayley (di)graph Cay(G,S) is the graph with vertex set G and with an arc from x to sx for every s in S. If S is inverse-closed, it is an undirected graph. It admits the action of G on itself by right multiplication (the right regular action) as automorphisms. In fact, any graph which admits G acting regularly as a group of automorphisms is necessarily a Cayley graph for G.

Now there are two, quite different, definitions of a normal Cayley graph:

The definition I learned first says that Cay(G,S) is a normal Cayley graph if S is a normal subset of G (closed under conjugation by elements of G); equivalently, the graph admits both the left and the right regular action of G as automorphisms.

The definition which seems to be standard among participants at this conference is: Cay(G,S) is a normal Cayley graph if G is a normal subgroup of the full automorphism group of the graph.

The first definition is very restrictive but also very useful. For two examples,

A graph invariant under the primitive group of simple diagonal type whose socle is the product of two copies of the simple group T is a normal Cayley graph for T.

For n > 3, Henson’s universal homogeneous Kn-free graph is not a normal Cayley graph for any group (though Greg Cherlin showed that it is a Cayley graph).

The second definition, by contrast, says essentially that a normal Cayley graph has no “unexpected” automorphisms: its automorphism group is contained in the holomorph of G. In accordance with the principle that graphs tend to have few automorphisms other than those you must have, we would expect that most Cayley graphs are normal; this has indeed been conjectured, with some evidence.

I wish that we had different words for these two obviously useful concepts. But it is probably too late for that now; one of them will just fade away.

The paragraph two above reminds me of an old theorem of mine, the citation for which was just imported from Scopus into the St Andrews research repository. For every finite group G, there is a constant α(G), between 0 and 1, so that, in the class of n-vertex graphs whose automorphism group contains a subgroup isomorphic to G, the proportion whose automorphism group is exactly G tends to the limit α(G) as n→∞. In accordance with the above principle, you might expect that most groups have α(G) = 1; but in fact this happens if and only if G is a direct product of symmetric groups, and the values of α are dense in the unit interval.

The idea of terminology fading away came up in Misha Muzychuk’s nice survey of coherent configurations for the summer school. As I have probably pointed out here before, at the end of the 1960s, within a couple of years of each other, Donald Higman invented coherent configurations, while Weisfeiler and Leman invented cellular algebras. The latter notation has faded away, partly because the term has been re-used with an entirely different meaning. But long before this, Bose and Nair invented association schemes, which are an important special case of coherent configurations. There are four levels of generality; in increasing generality, a coherent configuration may be symmetric, commutative, homogeneous, or none of the above. Bose and Nair used the term “association scheme” for symmetric c.c.; Delsarte used it for commutative c.c.; Bannai and Ito used it for homogeneous c.c., and this seems to have become standard. I prefer to use the term “coherent configuration” with appropriate qualification.

Unfortunately Misha did not have time to describe his recent construction, with Klin and Reichard, of proper Jordan schemes; but Mike Kagan will talk later in the meeting, and I think he might say something about this.

from Peter Cameron's Blog https://ift.tt/2KHbSWq from Blogger https://ift.tt/2YVjXzn

[garden-ghoul]

is it time for the shibboleth yet

“hush child my executive functions are capricious and fickle”

As it turns out what I’m really here for is DWARF FACTS. Tolkien asks: 'When were the Dwarf and Goblin wars? When didMoria become finally desolate?' We’d all like to know that, I think, Mr Jolkien. Here he writes just like me trying to figure out a canon from known facts, very muttersome as he thinks about how Moria must have been destroyed a long time ago but people still went in there pretty recently:

'But the appearance of the Balrog and the desolation of Moria must be more ancient, possibly as far back as c.1980-2000'.

The ancient misty days of 1980. My father’s fathers were alive then, still mourning the death of disco.

I’m really happy that Thrain keeps appearing, because I have a permanent echolalia of “Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror.” I love to say Thror. Thrain was the last possessor of one of the seven dwarven rings of power--the rest had been taken back or destroyed. I REALLY WANT TO KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED. Oh I just realized I’m not even reading the chronology, I’m reading the notes on the chronology. maybe there will be info about the house of Thror there. The good stuff starts in 2765 when Smaug happens to the Erebor dwarves; Thror & co try to recolonize Moria but surprise! Orcs! They go to war with the orcs in revenge for Thror’s orrible murder. My instinct is to say this is very Feanorian of them but it’s probably just everyone on Arda who has the constant urge to go to war for the smallest reasons. At the end of the War of Orcs and Dwarves

the Orcs were almost annihilated, and Moria is once more emptied, but the Dwarves also lost very heavily and were too few at the end to reoccupy Moria or face the hidden terror.

Mothgog the Balrog! no idk if the Moria balrog is named. but Mothgog is a pretty funny--NO WAIT. MALLGOTH THE BALROG. My balrog OC.

Throughout this whole thing Gandalf has been intermittently snooping around Dol Guldur (a fantastic name) trying to figure out who the Sorceror is. I was already fooled once during the Lay of Leithian, I didn’t realize the Sorceror on Werewolf Isle was Sauron, so this is pretty understandable. Anyway Gandalf meets Thrain and his baby boy, who have become wanderers, and receives the secret key of Erebor (???).

Fun fact: The Hobbit takes place when Aragorn is 9 years old.

Mmm I also want to know how hobbits came about but I’m too lazy to look it up, someone should just tell me.

OH great and there’s a bit about Durin, this is fun. He was known as Durin the Deathless in his own lifetime, until he died. And then he was reincarnated as another Durin, so it was all fine, everyone was happy. Durin II or III was the one who “delved too greedily and too deep, and awoke a terror of shadow and flame.” They were mining for mithril in Moria and there was a balrog just napping in the rock. Jeez this would make a great Junji Ito, right? Just like, a really good creepypasta. Like that cave one where a good 2/3 of it is just them enlarging the hole with power tools. But the text never does say anything about what happened to the other 6 rings of power... everyone was very secretive about it. But Thrain was tortured in Dol Guldur and Sauron took the last ring. What did he do with it?? Wasn’t the point to control people with them? Or are these the ones Celebrimbor made to resist him?

There’s also a section on Eorl the Young. I have had this name stuck in my head for like a decade and I want to know why. But I suspect I will not find out by reading this. He’s a lord of the men of Eotheod, northwest of Mirkwood. LARGE SHRUG.

Back to dwarves. It says here that although their language was made up by Aule (he’s a conlanger!) they purposefully made it “harsh and intricate” so elves couldn’t learn it. This is really funny to me, I am imagining a dwarf linguistics council meeting to decide how to further obfuscate their language. “Five grammatical genders,” says one, puffing on a pipe. “Decline nouns based on elevation,” suggests another. “Every word has several possible meanings based on context!” says a triumphant dwarf sitting in front of the fireplace with a poker. Everyone mutters approvingly; there’s a smattering of applause. “And don’t write vowels,” adds someone, after a pause.

The Dwarves were in many ways a special case. They had an ancient language of their own which they prized highly; and even when, as among the Longbeard Dwarves of the West, it had ceased to be their native tongue and had become a 'book-language', it was carefully preserved and taught to all their children at an early age.

Can ya make it any more Hebrew, Johnald. My education final is literally on this, it’s great.

There’s a bunch more stuff about dwarf language and the character set they used and their secret names and stuff (devised by... Daeron? well it’s nice that he did something besides play music for his sister. er. crush. I liked them better as siblings.) It mentions that they have frequent, like, conferences where delegates from different tribes come together, which is awesome. There’s a bit about how they started learning human languages in order to ally with Haleth’s people against Morgoth, and also how they refuse to use their true names with any other race or even write them down, which is awesome. I love that this is a history told through the lens of linguistic drift, it is the number one most charming possible way to tell a history. I love.

In the notes it says that most of the doors to Moria had spell-inscriptions of prohibition and exclusion. Fuck yes. Inscription magic.

THIS BRINGS US TO THE VERY BRINK OF THE SHIBBOLETH OF FEANOR. It’s here! Finally! Tomorrow for sure.