#floral aesethetic

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

II Bushing the door, my arms full of wild cherry and rhododendron, I hear her small lost weeping through the hall, that bells and hoarsens on my name, my name. O love, here is the blame. The loosened flowers between us gather us, compose for a May altar of sorts. These frank and falling blooms soon taint to a sweet chrism. Attend. Anoint the wound.

Seamus Heaney, from "Summer Home" in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996.

[shopwitchvamp]

Red, White, and Blue. But like, in an Utena honoring way rather than USA USA 🖤witchvamp.com🖤

[baesol]

HIII WHAT TAGS DO YOU YOU USUALLY USE TO GET YOUR MBS & ACC POPULAR???

kpop moodboard, alternative moodboard

and depending on the aesethetic,

y2k moodboard, retro moodboard, vintage moodboard, pastel moodboard, soft moodboard, clean moodboard, grunge moodboard, simple moodboard, fresh moodboard, cottage moodboard, carrd moodboard, farm moodboard, floral moodboard, coquette moodboard, dollette moodboard, food moodboard

and depending on the colour,

brown moodboard, beige moodboard, black moodboard, white moodboard, pink moodboard, blue moodboard, orange moodboard, etc

if you're making a kpop idol moodboard make sure to tag for example

wonyoung moodboard, ive moodboard, izone moodboard, gg moodboard

but please please dont use unrelated tags like i see some people making a le ssera mb and tagging "wonyoung moodboard" 💀

[iheartliquor]

[sickromantics]

a trip to my garden

[moggzy]

[conscientious-ness]

[hoe-flepuff]

h o e - f l e p u f f

[syzygyzip]

Casting the Curtain: the Other in Danmaku

Short essay on player identification in complex visual fields, from a psychological perspective.

All games are about the negotiation of the Other. What is the Other? Whatever I feel I am not. The more strongly distinguished from oneself, the more other the Other is. Just as it is typical to project one’s identity into the player-character of a game, it is also typical to project the Other onto adversaries in the game. Players met online, enemies, bosses—obviously I am not them, so they must be Other. We may do the same thing for supporting characters, NPCs. As in life, the Other is elusive and mutable.

Even if there are not characters in the game to project upon, the Other is present. Games typically present some kind of challenge, or at the very least, the tension of response to player action. The Other is constellated throughout all of this, even in the most apparently solitary games. When you play Tetris, for instance, the Other may be felt in the force that seems to be competing against your interests, accelerating blocks and deciding which pieces you get.

In any case, the striving that occurs within the game, the tension that propels the experience in any form, is due to the distance between the egoic projection and the Other. This striving—this negotiation between these two beings—is the game.

The first computer game ever, Spacewar!, was a shooter. Why is shooting such an incredibly effective motif in video games? For as long as there have been projectiles, humans have been associating them with, uh, projection. We are intuitively aware that we are always “firing” our attention at objects. We are able to see due to the reflection (“throwing back”) of light. As such, the casting of coarser objects—stones, arrows, bullets—is easy to associate with the coarser projections that are typically the volley sent to the big O. And, by definition, things can only be thrown AT something that is apart from the thrower.

In a game whose gameplay centralizes shooting or throwing, we can usually expect that the negotiation with the Other is one of space: projectiles hitting where something is or where it is not. In many cases, the player wants to avoid being hit and to successfully hit other things. Amazing.

The danmaku (“bullet curtain”) subgenre takes this concept to an extreme, where in certain encounters the occupiable space is reduced to almost nothing, so that the player is forced to follow a tiny crevice of empty space between curtains of bullets. This makes apparent the negotiation of space between the player and the Other: the screen is turned into an intricate, moving mesh of positive and negative space, and the entire game is about being where the bullets aren’t. Staring at a game like this for long enough can create an optical inversion effect, where the empty, occupiable space appears to become embossed—as if the bullets are the background and the space between them is the overlay.

Another sensation a danmaku player may feel, as their occupiable area becomes ever smaller, is that each pocket of territory they find is an acquisition—a fleeting refuge. In other genres, including the predecessor of danmaku, the shmup, the typical object of acquisition is a power-up, something that increases your liberties and capacities. The psychological analogy here is that some characteristic is being integrated into the mediating vessel (the ship). In a danmaku when a player finds a secure space, that can feel equivalent to the attainment of a power-up, in the sense that it also expands a player’s liberties: it buys them one more second of time. Simple empty space becomes “like” a power-up. This blurs the line between game objects that are otherwise conceptually totally distinct, and the blurring is due to the anchoring of the player’s attention. An old shmup like Gradius might have so many power-ups on screen at a time, that they can occupy a constellation of attention that is similarly arranged to the meager empty space in a modern danmaku.

The experience of playing a danmaku may produce a certain psychedelic effect, but this is not due only to the floral patterns of projectiles. As we have seen, there are a number of inversions that the danmaku facilitates: the empty space can visually move to the “top” of the layers of action, even though this is diegetically false; the empty space erodes its status of mechanical neutrality as it comes to feel more like an acquisitional territory. And above all else: the weaving in between bullets makes bare the central premise of negotiation with the Other. When the screen becomes essentially a moving arrangement of color, you are looking at a direct visualization of “what is me” and “what I am not.”

“Bullet curtain.” The casting of a curtain over an object emphasizes its form and contour. Like with Tetris, the entire dramatic action of a danmaku is simplified into maneuvering segments of space that are either advantage or detriment. The flatness of such a procedure is even less atomic than it is in other 2D games—the player approaches an asymptote of incorporation into a single object—me-and-the-other—rather than participation as one acting agent within an objective field. The bullet curtain in its extreme is also a convenient visual metaphor for the Deleuzian fold, in which a sufficient amount of exterior complexity produces an interiority; we see this in the example of the negative space “popping out,” inverting the backdrop.

In other essays, I have elaborated the idea that game-entrainment—the psychic projection of the player into the game—is best engendered by qualities like focus, repetition, and meaningful aesethetic-somatic relationship. The extreme amount of focus required for danmaku play of course accounts for much of the projective gravity, but we should also not underestimate the draw of the asymptotic fold. If indeed the exterior complexity is the condition for a sudden flip into interiority—an intensity born out of extension—then maybe there is something that occurs at high-level danmaku play, where the player is more within the game’s field than their own body, and they momentarily witness that body as an exteriorization of the being who is currently in the game. Does this not account for the fantasmic, wish-fulfillment puella imagery of popular danmaku games? Does this not account for the stereotype of danmaku players’ deeply intimate and fixated relationship with these games?

[theinstantblog]

Philosophy for Sommeliers

“Philosophy for Sommeliers” isn’t to say that there is an exclusive area of study reserved for those quirky specialists dubbed “Sommeliers,” but rather in the practice of wine service there may be some philosophical musings that best unfold challenging concepts and better construct ethical attitudes in service. Roger Scruton in his rather distinct and British fashion said it best: “By thinking with wine, you can learn not only to drink in thoughts but to think in draughts.”

When I started my wine training amidst an awesome and vast collection of knowledge and experience to be had, the best way I knew how to approach it was through a primarily philosophical experience. In other words, I had to preform what I new best as “conceptual analysis.” However, in what way could wine be philosophical? After all, our musings may be short had if and only if we are concerned with the “that-ness” of wine. Wine is a material object with chemical components and thus investigation seems to be left with the sciences. Wine does however level to more existential areas of the human experience.

First there was the way in which I had to organize my thinking: the “natural order” of things; the process of fermentation, grape varietals, growing regions,etc. These are in my view similar to what Aristotle considered as ‘first principles,’ the basic and primary principles that count almost as the basis of proceeding knowledge. Then came the sort of “experiential” aspect of this: unveiling just what exactly is being had in the glass from (i) the varietals, (ii) the growing region, (iii) the taste “profile” of the wine given (i) and (ii), and so on and so on.

When it comes to these various details in wine, sommeliers have ‘shortcuts’ so to speak with the language they impart. I’d encourage you to read a professional review or the tasting notes of a higher-end wine (say $150) by a wine professional (CSW, CWE, Sommelier, whatever). You’ll notice practically another language being spoken; all the while referring to the viscosity or alcohol content of a wine, its tannic structure or dryness, its aging and its style and so on. Some descriptors of wine that I regularly use for example:

herbacious – Wines that smell of fresh herbs (basil, oregano, rosemary, parsely) limpid – A wine that’s luminous and bright minerality – Lick a stone; you got it. leather – Notes of leather usually left behind the wine from oak aging. volatile – talking about acidity, almost vinegaraic. high tone – refers to big aromas that are sometimes otherwise not pleasant. viscosity – rich and concentrated masculine – Full-bodied red. lush – Wines that are rich, soft and velvety. earthy or gravelly  – Wines with an earthy smell.

Familiarity with these descriptors by all means comes with time and experience. The importance of the sommelier – as it seems – lies within his or her understanding of these descriptors and the profile typically associated with a wine or a varietal that’s grown in a specific region of the world.

The nice thing about these descriptors is that they can be organized in that similar ‘hierarchical’ way that I mentioned before: More general descriptors of aromas would be things like vegetation, fruit, nuttiness, spice, florality and so on. From there, you could elaborate on what kind of vegetation (fresh vegetables like green beans, mint or bell peppers or can/cooked vegetables like artichoke and black olives?) or on what kind of fruits (drief fruits? citrus?) or on what kinds of flowers (rose? orange blossoms?)

Language and the World

Why do this? Because tasting wine in the form of “objective perception” includes multiple facets of analytical experience that involve more than mere pleasured evaluation. The wine’s overall evaluation is grounded in the drinkers sensitivity and perception, acuity or “sharpness” as well as his memory and careful attention; and even after all this has been done, the entire experience is unified into one aesethetic description.

Language is important in wine because there can be a discernment between what are known as “objective” and “subjective” qualities in wine. Simply put, wine has a chemical makeup. Whenever you smell cork or wet newspaper from a bottle, or an overwhelming aroma of honeydew from your Sauternes, or even sometimes a barnyard smell, these can all be attributed to various chemical explanations – the wet newspaper from 2, 4, 6, trichloranisole (TCA, or “cork taint,”) the honeydew smell from botrytis (plant parasite or fungi) and the barnyard smell from brettanomyces (“Brett” for short, a genus of yeast). I always loved making a joke of barnyardy-wines whenever I came across them: “It looks like Brett got in your wine again.”

These are the objective qualities that can be detected due to the wines influence and chemical makeup from fermentation. However, the more challenging qualities – and hence, room for mistakes – are the subjective ones. These are familiar as “characterizations,” that is to say, personal assessments gathered from an experience of what’s actually there in a wine.

For example, I can say that Johann Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion was “pastoral” and his Suite for Cello in G Major was “lively.” These are characterizations I’ve personally made about these two pieces of music. They are assessments insofar as I’ve experienced the music and drawn something from them. However, I’ve said nothing about the song’s “objective qualities” because my assessments rely soly on the posterior analytics of my experience.

Knowledge and Being

The sommelier is allegedly made by what he knows. Yet the staple of sommelier practice resides in what he does in light of what he knows. His actions and disposition are all components of one unique service personality. In a position of service to another he participates in agape; acting and suggesting with humility in light of this context of love. Of course, he does not merely love but he serves. He is in a position of constant relationability; stretching heaven down to the earthly beloved because he himself has already tasted it and must share it with others.

Knowledge must then be understood as grounded in personality. Amidst the vast collection of information cannot be more or “mere” information as its goal or center; knowledge is striving for completeness and will not find satisfaction in this life.

What I find interesting with this point – and I suspect it won’t sit so well with currently practicing sommeliers – is that there is an epistemology (theory of knowledge) being described here that may not be necessarily religious, but surely looks to religion as an example. The example Jesus Christ gave was under a scheme of redemption; transferring new concepts like forgiveness and grace to not merely surpress hate or limit it, but to treat it completely, or even better, to redeem it.

I think this matters because wine is intimately related to categories of soul and body – along with things like philosophy, knowledge and religion – and calls for our attention of thought to them. Religion offers redemptive insight into the grace and knowledge of a sommelier, while philosophy offers an ensuring way to conceptualize and encounter these things seriously.

[moggzy]

[hoe-flepuff]

h o e - f l e p u f f

[hoe-flepuff]

h o e - f l e p u f f

[hoe-flepuff]

h o e - f l e p u f f

[hoe-flepuff]

h o e - f l e p u f f i havent posted in so long im sorry have some almost-monday posts

[conscientious-ness]