#oblique pen

[thetrashiestoftrash]

Tragic News: That New Craft Supply You Bought Didn't Spark Instant Proficiency, Years of Practice Still Required

[twinsunsintatooine]

i need to nuke the pens management because this is genuinely getting ridiculous.

actually pissed tf off right now bc is it not clear as day to anyone with eyes that the roster is not the issue right now it’s the management????

and to obliquely throw a dig at geno (and the rest of the team) is fucking crazy because have you seen who is leading the team in assists right now? have you seen who is leading the team in points? ITS GENO

acting like sid wouldn’t go ballistic and retire if they traded geno🤨🤨🤨

[postsforposting]

when sex is violence, mercenaries are sex workers. soldiers are pledged monogamists to the government god. and the xmen, whose number one rule is no killing, are ascetic monks. virgins, preferably. they don't "have a go" at people. they're the church. who will take anyone, just like strippers and sex workers.

wade explicitly starts his own franchise. his own church. (we're the worshipers).

logan never joined the xmen. he wasn't taking a vow of chastity, of self denial. self denial is the avengers' definition of a team: "it's not about what you want, it's what other people need".

but it doesn't count if you do it over the clothes because there's no blood. no cherry involved. if you can't see the blood, it's not real, it doesn't matter, yeah? like wade's red suit.

red is pleasure, happiness. orgasm. mutant jesus cable knew what he was saying when he called wade a clown dressed up as a sex toy: it was literally true, and it was a COMPLIMENT. that was flirting. he was....having a go at him.

wade doesn't acknowledge it, lets it slide. oblique bodyslide reference to the cable comics. it's metaphorically sex and marriage.

i think wade's line "grower not a shower" is a reference to "don't ask don't tell": a grower is "not telling". but he IS a shower, a flasher, which is showing not telling in two ways. first is literally flashing, and second is he's verbally lying while having shown the reality. in the cable comics, one of wade's famous lines is that he and cable have a "don't ask don't tell" thing going on. which is why he's "not showing" aka not telling: don't kiss and tell. if wade's "not telling" and "not acknowledging".....what happens metaphorically and offscreen is where you find the real crack.

the meta layer--the power of the pen--is real for wade, who can see the fourth wall. cable's carrying a pretty big phallic metaphor. cable is also a jesus foil like wade. can he see the fourth wall? he certainly slides through time, the fourth dimension. i think he slides in and out just fine, and he's....not telling 😘

for the xmen, verbally attacking people doesn't count as having a go, as doing it for real. plausible deniability, justifiable, something they can let slide over the clothes: that's negasonic. it's why scissoring is fine because that's just sliding your bodies around, aka getting married, a commitment, what shiny jesus colossus wants from everyone.

if you wear a red suit that hides the blood, that's offering plausible deniability to keep going at it. he's hiding his orgasm to ask for more. to go again. both sex and violence are until "a little death" do you part.

[leiascully]

“I wish you would write a fic where…” — Scully is pregnant with (or has already had) baby 2, and Diana is somehow not dead & she comes back into the XF…. Set in either IWTB era (Mulder’s depression) or post s11 (the fall out of CSM and Jackson etc)

1/2

Here you go!

Scully’s in the office looking at pictures of baby Joy on her phone when she hears the knock. It takes her a moment to look up. Joy’s only been in daycare a few weeks, and the only person who ever knocks is Skinner. Instead, when she looks up, there’s a tall woman with an elegant grey chignon and a chic suit with a visitor’s pass clipped to the lapel. Scully’s breath catches in her throat. But it’s not Teena Mulder - it doesn’t even really look like her. There’s just something about the aura she brings that carries that same scent of graceful suffering, like a vintage perfume that’s spoiled somehow.

“Diana,” she says evenly. “Or is it Agent Fowley?”

“Hello, Agent Scully.” Diana gestures to a chair. “May I sit?”

“Be my guest.” Scully sets her phone on the desk, face up. Diana would know she’s recording their conversation. They’ve both learned to keep track of the evidence.

Diana glances at her screen. “She’s a lovely child.”

“Thank you,” Scully says without flinching. “She’s our little miracle.”

“Yes,” Diana says, “somehow they do find their way to you, these miracles. But I suppose you deserve them, after all you’ve endured.”

“Is it Agent Fowley?” Scully presses.

Diana demurs, sweeping away the idea with one hand before it returns to clasp around her crossed knees. “Fox might have returned from the grave to his former employment, but I had no wish to rejoin the FBI’s ranks.”

Scully smiles faintly. “That was a long time ago.”

“Another lifetime,” Diana says. There’s a glint in her eyes, a tension around her lips. Scully doesn’t respond to the jab.

“How can I help you, Diana?” She picks up a pen. “Assistant Director Skinner assured me they’ve upgraded the fire mitigation system, by the way.”

Diana doesn’t react. She seems to be thinking. “I suppose I came to talk to you,” she says at last.

“To me?” Scully tilts her head. “I’m not sure exactly what you think we have to say to each other.” She stares at Diana for a long moment, sifting through the memories. It’s been so long. Another lifetime indeed.

She remembers her last encounter with Diana, the oblique contact, the fear, the rage, the genuine sorrow. “I do owe you a thank you. You’re the one who left the envelope with information about where they’d taken Mulder.”

Diana stirs, as if she’s come back from the depths of her own mind. “Whatever you think of me, Agent Scully, I never wanted either one of you to die.”

Scully smiles, just a little. “Likewise.”

“I believed in the mission,” Diana tells her. “I believed it would save us all. I knew I was working for men in over their heads, but I didn’t see another way.”

“I know,” Scully says, and she does. She does, now that the world didn’t end. Now that the black oil has receded and the shapeshifters have vanished, now that the supersoldier project has been decomissioned, she understands the things Diana did, and why. She will never understand the rest, but she has that.

“I’m sorry for my part in what they did to you. But I wouldn’t change the choices I made.” Diana nods toward Scully’s phone. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you got your miracle.”

“Thank you,” Scully says, and she means it.

They gaze at each other, blue eyes and brown. At last they have taken the true measure of each other, and neither is found wanting. The betrayals of their younger years are old scars now. There isn’t any pain there. It almost doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. They moved through different worlds. Of course their paths diverged. Scully, who has loved Mulder and lost him and fought her way back to him a hundred times, understands the urge to reach for him.

Beyond this moment, she knows they will never see eye to eye. She knows Diana knows it too. This is the peace soldiers only find in the middle of the battlefield, when the war is over.

“Thank you,” says Diana.

“For what?” Scully is startled.

“For standing up to the Syndicate, at great personal cost. If their mission was just, their methods were not. Spender’s least of all.”

“Jeffrey came back, you know,” Scully says.

“Yes. He always had too strong a sense of justice to stomach the work.” Diana leans forward just a little. “Thank you for taking care of him.” She doesn’t mean Jeffrey Spender.

“You’re welcome.” Scully’s voice is steady, somehow.

“I can’t say I was deceived,” Diana tells her. “I went into the work with my eyes open. But the world shifted. The plans changed. Whether I couldn’t keep up or I didn’t want to is irrelevant. I wasn’t given the choice.”

“You were a pawn to them,” Scully says.

Diana inclines her head with a economy of motion Scully can’t help but admire. It’s neither agreement nor disagreement, just an acknowledgment of Scully’s own truths. “Well. I’m not any longer.”

“Good,” Scully says.

Diana uncrosses her legs and stands up. “There’s no need to tell Fox I was here.”

“I assumed you came to see him.”

Diana tilts her head and smiles. “No, Agent Scully. My unfinished business was with you.”

They don’t shake hands. Scully watches Diana leave. She taps her phone to stop the recording and then cups her chin in her hand, staring into space. She wonders if Diana will be on the security footage. She wonders if anything has gone missing in the last hour or two. Maybe respect can look like paranoia. Maybe the past can’t be entirely overwritten, but the book can be closed. Maybe this is what peace feels like when a ghost is laid to rest.

Mulder comes in half an hour later and finds her still thinking. He sets a coffee down on the desk in front of her.

“Missing our pride and Joy?” he asks.

“Hmm?” Scully says. “Of course.” She comes back to herself and shuffles the papers on her desk.

“What were you up to all morning?” he asks, settling into a chair with the lazy grace he’s never lost.

“Oh, talking with an old friend,” she says, and it hews close enough to the truth.

[johannestevans]

Peace in the New World

Short fiction. Moshe and Yosl discuss life after work. 

2k, rated T. Two Jews talking over tea in late 19th century USA. Bonding over poverty, philosophy, old trauma, that sort of thing. 

CW for mentions of past abuse, although oblique. Adapted from a TweetFic. 

On Patreon / / On Medium.

---

Yosl worked these days down by the docks – he was a very big man, muscular, with very strong hands, and he looks like a dockworker. He never looked out of place amongst them when Moshe saw him at the dockside or walking with the other big, burly men about the streets.

When they’d taken him on as a lodger, he’d been a little nervous of him, had thought he might be brash or a lush, but Sprintze had said that that some of the other dockworkers’ wives spoke well of him, that he was kind, respectful, and Sprintze’s judgement was always good.

He’d still scarcely been able to believe it the first evening he’d come home from his own work and seen him sitting at the table in their small living room, working so delicately with his big hands. He had been the son of a bookbinder, had worked alongside him in his shop before coming to America, and he took on little jobs here and there.

With a lot of time dedicated to his craft and a great care taken with his pens, he wrote out astonishingly beautiful calligraphy on good cardstock, and it took Moshe’s breath away sometimes to glance over at the work he was doing, the art he was creating.

He wrote out fine wedding invitations or little decorative cards, wrote out poems or sections of the Torah, and alongside the fine and lovely lettering, he could draw small etchings, would occasionally add in elements of gold or silver filigree, or splashes of colour.

“Do you miss it?” Moshe asked one evening.

They had been sitting in companionable silence for a little over an hour, Esther already laid down to sleep – she’d been struggling with bad dreams of late, and Sprintze was in with her, perhaps reading or sewing if she wasn’t asleep herself, no matter that it was so early.

“Miss what?” Yosl asked without looking up from his work.

“What it was like,” Moshe said. “The Old Country. You had different work there, work like this, creating beauty. You didn’t have to live as a lodger.”

“No, I lived in a sprawling library from one hill to the other,” said Moshe dryly, and Yosl laughed, looking down into his evening drink and shaking his head.

“I’m not disparaging your work at the docks, I’m sorry if it—”

“No, it’s not disparaging,” Yosl said. “This is fine, educated work, more respectable than hauling cargo at the docks – but work there’s little call for here in America, not enough to fund a man’s life or account for a family. Why shouldn’t I miss the comfort or respect my old life might have offered me?”

“Do you?”

“Sometimes,” Yosl said. “But my father dying, I could not stand it, to live there, in the grief, in the shadows he left behind him. I respect the things he taught me, the skills he carried with me – I carry on his legacy when I do these little things here and there – but to step into his shoes, to take on the whole shop for myself? For people to think of the sign as being my name, and not his?” He shook his sadly, setting aside his pen. “I could not stand it. The Sefer Hasidism warns us against wearing the shoes of the dead – would I not be filling his shoes, to take his place? His memory haunted me, not as an unclean or cruel spirit, but just as so much grief.”

Moshe exhaled, leaning forward and looking at the other man properly as he rested his hands on his belly. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” Yosl said, giving him a small, sad smile. “It’s good for a man to speak on his grief to another, I think – my father was a great man, principled, studied. It is that I loved him so much that I could not stand to live in the shadow of his loss. And in any case, as a practical concern, the time a bookbinder can make a living even in Poland, I feel that time is soon at an end.”

“Perhaps,” Moshe said. “It’s beautiful work, what you do, but slow, old. There is not much care for that here in America.”

“No,” Yosl said. “The New World, they call it, but it’s not just here, is it? The whole world is changing – evolving, developing. The old ways, too slow, too old-fashioned, too high-strung, too buttoned-up.”

“People are impatient, demand more speed, more haste, more rush. Why not more beauty?” Moshe asked, and Yosl chuckled.

“One for the rabbi, I think, not for me,” he said, and Moshe laughed as well. “Your father, does he live?”

“No, but we had a great deal of forewarning before his death, he’d been a very ill man,” Moshe murmured, rubbing his knuckles through his beard. “It doesn’t make the loss of him easier to bear, I feel the emptiness he left behind sometimes, the shadow of him, as you say, but at least it wasn’t sudden. We had time to grieve him while he was alive, I suppose you might say – and to share in it with him, which I think brought a little solace.” He felt a twinge of old guilt, as he did from time to time. “Does that sound awful, involving a man in our grief for him?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Yosl said. “What is grief but love at its end? How can it be anything but a privilege to share in it?”

“You’re a very soothing man, you know,” said Moshe. “As good as Reb Levinson.”

“But my mouth doesn’t dimple when I smile like his does,” Yosl pointed out, and they both laughed, taking care to keep it quiet so that the sound didn’t carry.

As Yosl picked up his card and blotted it, setting it aside to dry, Moshe said, “Sprintze said you’ve been teaching Esther. I wanted to thank you.”

“No need for that,” said Yosl. “She’s a good student, a good learner.”

“She’s a girl,” Moshe said, and he watched the shrug of Yosl’s broad shoulders, watched his expression scarcely change at all. “Why teach her? What do you think she’ll do with it, what you teach her?”

It was an experimental question, a test of sorts, and Moshe wondered if Yosl knew that Moshe was testing him, if he was pressing on him. If he did, he showed no sign of it.

“Whatever she wants,” the bookbinder answered simply. “I didn’t make the word, I was only taught it – now, I teach it. What she does with it is her own business. Argue scripture with her husband, if she wishes – teach their children.”

“A lot of men wouldn’t think to waste time teaching another man’s daughter this sort of thing,” Moshe said. “They dismiss a little girl with no thought at all.”

“I’m just one man, not a mean of them,” said Yosl, and it made Moshe laugh again, although he took care to muffle the sound with his sleeve. Yosl’s cheeks didn’t dimple when he smiled, but his eyes crinkled in a very pleasant way.

“You been to the marriage broker?”

“No,” said Yosl. “Why, want rid of me?”

“We need a lodger’s rent – and you have the money for it, but I don’t know what you got it for a wife.”

“Too true.”

“But you don’t want one?”

“I don’t have the money, you said.”

“Still.”

Yosl said, after a few more seconds of quiet, “I could be a husband, I think, but not a father. And I wouldn’t deny a woman motherhood.”

“You teach my girl – but you couldn’t father your own?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My father…” Yosl began, and then stopped, breathing in very slowly. “He was a bad man.”

“But you said—”

“Principled, studied, a great man, all of those things, yes. I grieve him, I do, but he was not a good man. Your father, you said, was loving, mine was… Mine was not.”

Moshe reached out and touched the other man, squeezed his shoulder, and he didn’t comment on the slight mistiness of Yosl’s eyes. Half-jokingly, he asked, “What happened to honour thy father, eh?”

“I honoured my mother,” Yosl said. “Half the job is enough for me.”

“They must love you at the docks.”

“They do, in fact.”

“Esther loves you too,” Moshe said, smiling. “Sprintze says you dote on her.”

Tension showed in Yosl’s thickly corded neck, in his shoulders, and as Moshe walked past him to rinse out his cup, Yosl turned his head to look back at him. “Moshe,” he said. “Are you angry?”

“Angry?” Moshe repeated. “By God, no. You think I’m angry? My daughter has a mother and father to love her – now another to teach her, and a smarter man than me.”

“I’m just the lodger.”

“The lodger who dotes on my daughter and repaired the stove for my wife before I came home from work.”

“Sprintze’s a dutiful wife.”

“She is, and a very good one.”

“I mean nothing untoward.”

“I know you don’t – she says you don’t look at her.”

“I do.”

“No.”

Yosl didn’t seem to know what to say to that. His brow was furrowed, his expression serious. Moshe and Sprintze had talked a little more about this in private, on nights when Yosl was out overnight.

“He did something awful to you, your father,” Moshe said.

“Things, multiple, yes.”

“Things that would make you…” He didn’t know what words to use. He and Sprintze could use certain words amongst themselves, but even then, he wouldn’t use them elsewhere.

Moshe is hardly the most pious of men, but he’d asked the rabbi’s son for advice on the subject – Reb Levinson himself was too old, would never have known how to approach it no matter his nice dimples, but his son was wise enough.

“Things that would make you unable to be a husband,” Moshe said. “To, er… fulfil your duties.”

Yosl’s expression softened, and he exhaled. “Not in the way I suspect you’re imagining,” he said quietly, with a glance toward the door, but there had been no sound from where Sprintze and Esther were settled in bed. “But yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s a shameful thing.”

“I don’t see the shame in it. You love, you teach, you write. You honour your father no matter his sins, his cruelties toward you.”

“How would you know shame, Moshe? What have you got to be ashamed of?”

“I’m poor, ain’t I?”

“Pah. Only in money.”

Moshe grinned at him, and Yosl smiled back. He wasn’t a big drinker, but when Moshe took down two glasses from the shelf instead of one, he didn’t make his customary protest. He took the glass as offered and stared down into it, at the strong spirit Moshe poured within.

“L’chaim,” Moshe said.

“I’d say l’chaim and v’l’vracha,” Yosl said, “but I feel pretty blessed.”

“What, we’re rich enough to be turning down blessings now?”

“We?” Yosl repeated wryly, but he smiled as he clinked their glasses together, and they knocked them back as one. “You should take one in for Sprintze,” he said – Moshe’s hand was already on the bottle, and they had to stifle their laughter to keep from waking up the whole building when their gazes met.

* * *

Sprintze took the glass when Moshe stepped into their bedroom, and she held it in her lap as she watched him undress, easing off his clothes. She had been sewing, Moshe supposed – her needlework was now set aside, but the lantern was still lit, albeit dimmed.

“That man is a blessing, you know,” Moshe said.

“I’ve been saying, haven’t I?” she responded softly. “L’chaim,” she murmured, and drained the glass, setting it beside her sewing.

Moshe leaned over Esther’s sleeping form to kiss her on the head before climbing into bed beside his wife, banding an arm around her belly.

“We should get a bigger bed,” Sprintze murmured.

“You don’t want a bigger apartment first?”

“You didn’t say no.”

“S’pose I didn’t,” said Moshe. “He’s gonna be working all night. He was picking up another card to start on when I came in here.”

“Whichever of us wakes up in the night first, tell him to bed down,” she said.

Moshe couldn’t see her well in the dark as she turned off the lantern, but he could brush their noses together, and he kissed her lips, stroking his thumb over her cheek.

“Deal,” he murmured. “But if I tell him and he argues—”

“I’ll come out and whip you both,” she finished, and Moshe muffled his laugh this time against her neck.

FIN.

[peachdues]

PEACHIEEEEE!!!!!!! i am here, i am sat, i have a notepad and pen, and i am ready to hear whatever you want to share about setsuna. favorite food? does she have a sweet tooth? does she prefer hot weather or cold weather? cats, dogs, both, or neither?

if you've thought about her in a modern au/context: what would her job be? would she go to college? would she have tattoos/piercings? if she had an aesthetic what would it be? would she drink coffee?

basically i wanna know everything skjghddkshg

Hehehe thank you, Fallon!! My angel fr.

Setsuna’s favorite foods — girl has a MASSIVE sweet tooth. Like huge. While she’s described as having a ✨hint✨ of abs, she doesn’t have any definition beyond her oblique line. Why?? Because she likes to eat and she likes sugar (and Mitsuri does NOT help this).

Traditional favorites include somen (chilled dip noodles), imagawayaki, and yatsuhashi. When she was Sanemi’s tsuguko, he did bring her onto ohagi, though she finds it a little messy. After Sanemi is fired as her teacher, she still buys ohagi on the DL and acts like she has no idea why smh.

Setsuna’s father was a well-known merchant who dealt heavily in Western goods, which was incredibly advantageous during the Taisho era. As a result, Setsuna also had access to western style sweets as a child and developed a taste for them! Her favorite are western style cakes and especially a lemon taffy her dad used to sneak her behind her mother’s back.

She and Mitsuri bond heavily over their love of food and often pig out together. Mitsuri treats Setsuna more as a live-in best friend than a tsuguko, and sometimes gets in trouble as a result 😭 even after Setsuna becomes a hashira, they frequently stay at one another’s estate’s!

Favorite weather — warmer, but not summer. She loves spring. Hates the snow/winter, but that has more to do with the events of the prologue for Wind and Moon than anything.

Animals — LOVES dogs, hates cats. This is where she and Mitsuri butt heads lmao. Mitsuri once caught her hissing back at a cat.

And some bonus factoids no one asked for:

She despises the fact she’s a demon slayer. She wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and take over the family business. She is deeply unhappy to be in the role she’s in, and wishes she could leave/quit.

As her masters, both Sanemi and Mitsuri spoil her, in their own way. Sanemi because he lets her have a little free time every now and then and Mitsuri just pampers her.

The one year time skip in which she serves as Mitsuri’s tsuguko and ascends to hashira is the most healing for her. When Sanemi finally sees her again (after she becomes a Hashira) she is noticeably more at ease and smiles. He doesn’t know why that makes him feel embarrassed (yes he does lmao)

Hated her sword and honestly was overjoyed when it got blown to smithereens in the event that led to her being fired as Sanemi’s tsuguko. Doesn’t even care that it shattered her sword arm in the process, she was just so happy to be rid of it. Loves her naginata.

Speaking of Setsuna’s naginata — some say, if you look close enough at the hilt, you’ll see not just a small moon charm (she’s a lunar breath user so obviously) but also a charm that looks oddly similar to the Wind Hashira’s sword hilt….wonder what that’s about….

I’m still working on modern AU Setsuna, but Fallon!! Thank you for asking!! Feel free to talk more, I will gab about her nonstop.

[tuxpaint]

Tux Paint 0.9.32 is available!

A number of new tools have been added! Download it today for Windows, macOS, Android, Linux, or Haiku!

⦬ 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspective

Three pairs of new tools provide ways to easily sketch drawings in Tux Paint using 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspective, as well as adjusting the different perspectives' vanishing points. The drawing tools are similar to the Line tool, except only certain angles are possible, based on the position of the line relative to the vanishing points. For example, in 1- and 2-point perspective, lines may be drawn vertically and horizontally, but diagonally they must always be angled toward or away from the vanishing point(s).

🧊Isometric, Dimetric, Trimetric, and Oblique

Another new set of tools provide ways to sketch drawings in an isometric projection, plus two other orthographic projections, dimetric and trimetric, as well as oblique. For the latter three, it's possible to adjust various drawing angles that each tool allows.

🟒Epitrochoid and Hypotrochoid

Two new tools have been added that draw "centered trochoid" curves — patterns created when one circle rolls around the inside or outside of another circle. The resulting shapes are similar to those created by devices such as the Spirograph. The radii of both circles, plus the position of the virtual pen relative to the moving circle, may all be adjusted.

Read more in our press release.

[pen-inks]

Pen inks shows you all their poems⁉️

Open hands he bestow

The king, yet humble, with his crown

How eyes so holy, wry and frown

Is that the harp? Is it now?

Aye- listen to he who cry

The blood of the morose

Fills the sky

None shall come to thee if not for lie

Busy hand at the harp

And none shall heed to thee; If not what is last—

And tremble do my shudder dry—

The hands, down, thrown

If he, dear dove, dare not fly.

If not the cross,

Whom is the stallion of dawn,

If not what is past?

If not Mortes, death upon me, the last?

And shall useless choir sing low,

The blood of the harp, our lungs; Hark!

Ah! And the image of he

Does the wings of salvation

Feather upon me?

And thou shall not pluck a single from the plume

Aye, cry Hark!

Doom, Ires, whom?

Brutal and barrage

Crawl, rage, bawl!

Spines of the sun stab us gone

Blood of harp; note long.

Ah, I rest here.

And his voice to me

“Come back, come back!”

And my harp, heed at last,

“No,” I say, “The ripping of mast.”

The eyes they grimace

The lip, it foam.

The words they rave

Fist, curl;

Hand of stone.

And into my bosum;

Into my heart,

Into the harp, where busy hand start

Where holy feathers; they fall and fly

And sinner I, sinner I die.

NEXT POEM

He perch on throne thine wrath

He relinquish in memory hath

And would thou tremble at that

He say

“Thou shall shutter at the glass”

Tyrant restraint of thy mind

Estne in my judicious eye

Caedes! Alas! Removed my heart, did he see

Beat, bruising, moral flee

O’ woe of thee!

And upon the dreary throne

Rex de la pallid, horrid light shone!

I do not do as he so!

He who marionette the throne;

tremble the trees

And glass shutter and shriek

“Thou will not come” he so believed—

Ah, and wondrous plague!

Oblique arrival, goth and vague

Of wine in pax would drift away

And in the inferno of the past

Luctus! Shutter glass!

In crimson blood dare he lay

In stone, and blade of heart

Shriek they:

“He shatter Glass! He shudder free!”

He lay there as wrath of me

And yet, behind those glazed eyes

Glare and less

And mind portrait me as best

A horrid brutus!

And Mortes say up at me

“Sallow morose, sin of thee!—

Lie here the body, forgiveness plea”

Whom is the impetus of ires!

But the likeness of me!

NEXT POEM

I’ve always been fond of your embrace

Your crystal eyes, how they rest in your face

Your mouth so soft with its distinct taste

It makes me wonder if you feel the same

Every night I fantasize,

With the moon in its sigh

You approaching me at my door

“Hello friend” and not more

But we look and we share

Something we want there

Something we know in our hearts.

Very much.

And maybe to be entertained, my heart is beating in vain

and I wish you would pull me apart

so that this hideous beating was to stop

and even if they never know

a phallic symbol is always thrown,

We love so closely,

I feel at home

And even with our depart

How I want you to pluck me apart

like the feathers on my tongue

What is my lungs but a sack of filth? May your holding grasp choke them until my blood runs cold

until my eyes roll back

until you are told

But how can you stop, if I am dead?

You mustn’t, no shouldnt,

There’s all this blood to be shed.

My wings are twisted and crooked,

and God laughs in my pain.

My bones they poke out

the ivory in the gaze

I am nothing but wine and meat

A sinner unsaved

Feast upon me!

I consent to your game!

Maggot like do!

I cry and sob, but it’s none to you.

They slither, my insides, like mulberry snakes

and your teeth, so white, will be colored the same

I wrestle and choke and bleed and cry

I beg for you to let me die

But to make my whines cease,

You break my jaw, expose my teeth

With all this sickness and blood and gore

Out jumps my heart, beating and sore

Beating.

The hideous beating.

It’s all in my jaw

So cold and broken,

and to never be thaw

A face of winter

White and blank

I turn plum,

My mouth agape

But in the end, with all this agony,

the price of your love

it kills me

You grab my face

“I love you most”

And to your lips

So sweet

So raw

I simply…

And that is all.

And when I am dead

as you suckle my lung

all fall out, the feathers on my tongue

NEXT POEM

Mist was in the air

I looked up above

It tickled on my face

Feather of the dove

I asked it to rain

But with a refuse to pour

“You ask me so rudely! Frozen to your core!”

I ask it again, I once more implore

“Please do rain”

“I refuse to pour!”

“Snow, you must!”

“Mist I be!”

I looked out, and abounded

Oh forgetful me!

Ghosted was the memory, right under my toes

And once I had realized

I was unknown

I needed the rain

I pleaded once more

And with a lethargic sigh,

It started to pour

Right onto my head

Right into my mind

Wash away the dust, the dirt, the grime

Listen to me, listen as I speak

I reveal such a secret, one I shall not keep

I was simply asking

Begging, implore

Heartache, throbbing,

Coughing so sore

And for only a while

Did the rain dare to pour

And when I was washed

And the sun washed on shore,

I sheepishly smiled,

And begged no more

NEXT POEM

The Wolf of Massachusetts

There was a certain wind

That laid so high

A scent so faint

Like the tear in my eye

I tell you this tale

With much discrete

I tell you so softly

Heed me as I speak

I lived up North

A healthy man

A wealth to be respected

known among the land

And I walked upright

On my Jersey boots

On tether a dog

With an acute snoot

And as I make my way with the rifle

I pinprick the sound

It was ever so trifle

So faint

So dainty

I tensed my loose

And thereupon my track

Was The Brute of Massachute

I am a keen man

And I knew the land so well

I could decipher a noise

With no prevail

And I crept so sneakily

I caressed the ground

I did so quietly

As not to rustle abound

The pelt was of cloud

Like storm above

A transgression of lambs

With a tail that hung

Between his haunches

I could see

An animal painted crimson

Torn by he

As the hunter I am, as I was before

To return to town, my snoot implored

But to refuse such pelage

No, I’d never wanted more

But no! I was foolish!

The beast was the shrewd!

He snapped suddenly

For what could I do?

The monster growled

The largest in Massachute

I stepped back meekly

Who could save me, oh who?

And with each step,

I tell you as he do,

He grew more robust

He grew and grew!

Horns of the ram!

Bust of the hen!

I thought I was to never hunt again!

It growled like a cat!

It hissed too!

So helpless was I,

For what could I do?

I fired a shot, I fired two

But it was futile

Who could help me, who?

Fruitless, per se

While whimper from I

My snoot, a bay

And I, so clearly

Remember the day

The Brute of Massachusetts

Came to my dismay

The horns like lamb

Ivory in day

But the shade of brute

Choked the sun away

My snoot it dashed

And I was at last,

Met with no companion on my side

No where to seek refuge and hide

And I remember last

Among the blurry past

The creature’s crimson eyes

The kind no fauna has ever hast

Now if you fancy me

Don’t fancy me mad!

The scarlet is bore into my skull

You may look when you’re mourning and sad

I claim so big! It is in my mind

The hunger that lay so darkly upon those eyes

It had the teeth of daggers

It had the fangs of knives

It had a heart of frozen time!

The saliva… it dripped so slow

It hung in glass

And hung in a row

And came upon me!

The wretched brute!

And pounced upon me, The Creature of Massachute!

But I, a hunter as before

A hunter until death

A hunter till sore

I knew that if I was to go

Then glory it may be!

The creature’s wit was no match for me

Logic? I could

But instinct?

Not I.

But in such time, I was as vigilant as flies

And stared up the beast, into its’ very eye

And with a swing of the rifle and an audible wack

Fell down the Massachute

To aid him no pack

And up he arose

And vaulted on me!

His teeth gnashed!

I clambered

I cried!

But so stubborn, the hunter I

Slipping out of the grasp,

And with my Jersey boot,

I kicked down the beast

The brute of Massachute

And I stomped it down

And grabbed my rifle too!

And with a BOOM!
I CLAIMED VICTORY ON THE MASSACHUTE!

You fancy me crazy

You fancy me mad!

But around my neck

Horns of ram

Lay so subordinately

Around my pipe

In the fire, it gleams,

The intrinsic stripes

No goat I’ve ever seen

Has the pelt I claimed as a lad

And I conclude the story I have

I tell you my truth, with arrogance and glad

That the Wolf of Massachusetts was slaughtered at last.

NEXT POEM

Upon the window

I look on the candle

And the fire that dances upon it

the riches of past

I dis-lawfully grasp

So very egotistic

A creative mind

inside I

I think of that before me

I peer at the flame

And make a game

Of fantastic phony

If the flame were a woman

so slim in her frame

a dancer of fire

A dancer of fame

and upon her dress there lick different shapes

As she convulses in grotesque ways

in her stomach, it is dense

Brighter and bolder than the rest

She shed not a tear to flow away

No,but I am not that way

I ask her a question

"The weight on my heart?"

She replies with only a strut and a hop

And upon her sea of rays,

she gracefully grande plie

And I look at the time on my watch

one of the many who line up on my haunch

"And for what must I sore?"

The ballet turns phoenix

abolishing the core

Feathers abound and astray

But no reply for the things I dismay

I ask her again

answer I implore

"The weight on my heart?"

But she says no more

My face grows hot

I red when fall is to stay

I beg her to give it away

But she dances gracefully

And I cry painfully

"The weight on my heart?"

I ask once more

no reply for I

I am no more

I snuff out the candle with a lick of my finger

And the remaining wax falls so slowly

as if to linger

to remind me that of my murder upon her

Was my own guilt of the reminder

NEXT POEM

A bunch of words

Spewed on a page

Are not so wise at long

You say a thing

About love and gain

And you leave it out to thaw

You break it every other word

For a

sentence

you

can just

say

Call yourself an artist

Yet you do this all day

If you call yourself a poet

And follow that simple law

It's just a phrase

For the gaze

And not a poem at all

NEXT POEM

Balls balls wiener balls

And upon the sultry crimson

That lay before I

He came to me to speak

Softly, his whispers rising high

"Dear, I fear

You are not near

The one I do seek

And if you wish

To accomplish this

Then you take order from me"

And for the stumble tumble wry

And upon the whimpering quake

The hand of he

Struck upon me

My heart pulled to ache

"Think of heaven and sky above, think of what's at stake

Think of glittering glamorous groves

And fluffy Angel cake

Think of what I want for me

And what I deserve

And if you were smart

The striking of art

You'd have the nerve"

And dear me my lie crystal skies

Across the darken cove

Would I stagger

As he went madder

I fell below

A blade of good man and mind

A blade of wonderful sheek

The price to pay

A horrid game

A slash upon my cheek

Blood trickle down my face,

Among the softened scars

Like tiger flesh

Or a random guess

Among the looking stars

Hand grip around my pipe

Busy as if rope

And pull and choke

My will broke

And gasp for the floor

Starry glittering freedom

Handsome wonderful things

I want to see

Beyond the sea

Beyond the rushing lake

Pry my hands

wry my face

Wrinkled, pitiful, cry

But he say, address my name

With a voice not mumble nor meek

"Fine the seek I dare shall find

Find it with your eye

And then we will see

Another week

The true man who should die"

NEXT POEM

"My dear friend left me

On Tuesday cold and drew

With a bottle of water

And a dollar for stew

A flute in his baggage

His voice not ravish

But rather silk and skin

With butter flat

And a tip of hat

Off his trip began

And off my dear friend go,

Luck in his gait

To distant lands

Beyond man

Beyond the glittering lake

Discreetly intangible,

Choke dear me on light

Would it be unfashionable

To reach the night

Ah, and what wonders does glee provide me

If not certainty

If not insanity?

Would it be that I would dare clamber upon

The hearty seed

And shoot into the sky?

Across the bridge

Graze the ridge

With my sugarcane eye

And there my imaginary mind go

beyond the quivering snake,

And beyond the venom of wolves howling

And stinging of fate

No, it seems, beyond the bend

Beyond the mulberry grove

Where blood and shatter and nothing of matter send

Things I know

Beyond my dearest mindset

God foresaken me

And watch my friend and dear holy men

Curse at the sky for me

So I stare at a page

And sleep in my cage

And know that I am free

I act like my quick feathered life

Has much before me"

THATS ALL

@cecilthecowardly

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dartagnan at Daily Kos:

As anti-Israel protests have spread across many of the country’s most prestigious college campuses this week, several Republicans in Congress have sought to burnish their pro-Israel credentials by calling for the U.S. military to respond.  Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton exhorted President Joe Biden to send in National Guard units, while obliquely encouraging motorists to run over protestors. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley similarly demanded a militarized federal response “to protect Jewish Americans,” while Mitch McConnell and John Thune penned a letter, signed by 25 of their fellow GOP senators, calling the demonstrators “anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs” and demanding that “federal law enforcement” respond.

Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson paid a visit to Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday where he was greeted by catcalls and boos. Upon leaving, Johnson also declared he would be demanding that Biden deploy the National Guard to quell the protests if they continued.  As Adam Serwer, writing for the Atlantic, observes, these reflexive calls by Republicans for a military response to protests seem to be less rooted in genuine concern that the protests pose a serious danger to the public or Jewish people than “because these powerful figures find the protesters and their demands offensive.” Serwer points out that school administrators have, when necessary, called in local police to address potential violence, harassment, and property damage, and thus far, the protests do not evince the kind of “mass violence and unrest” that would normally suggest the need for federal involvement. He also notes that such a deployment of federal troops would likely escalate the protests. 

Without debating the relative merits or lack thereof of the protests themselves, then, it’s important to note that these demands for a federal militarized response are coming almost entirely from one side of the political aisle. As Serwer points out, they echo the same sentiments Republicans expressed in 2020 in response to the protests by Black Lives Matter over the police murder of George Floyd. 

In other words, thus far we have seen a markedly asymmetrical, political response by Republicans to  campus protests this week. But we are also witnessing something else: an explicit acceptance of a militarized solution to protests where Republicans find it politically advantageous. Notably, another well-known Republican has also proposed sending the U.S. military and National Guard units to quell anticipated public protests, albeit of a far different nature, should he be afforded another term in office. That person is Donald Trump, and the people he proposes to target are those Americans he suspects would turn out in the hundreds of thousands to protest the policies he intends to implement.

Prominent Republicans such as Tom Cotton, Donald Trump, and Mike Johnson are demanding a militaristic response to end the pro-Palestinian protests across the nation's campuses as a way of burnishing their pro-Israel Apartheid bona fides.

Such a response would further escalate protests instead of quell them.

See Also:

Vox: Student protests are testing US colleges’ commitment to free speech

The Nation: The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is Happening Everywhere

[hbogirls]

Riverdale characters as taylor swift albums?

THANK YOU!!!!!!

cheryl - okay it might seem obvious to say red for cheryl because she invented red and is red etc etc etc BUT consider for a moment: evermore. it deals in many kinds of loss and change, from romantic to familial to historically-tinged tangents that implicate the narrator in a sort of oblique but no less interesting way. ivy stands out as the main reason for this choice (it's a goddamn blaze in the dark! my little gay pyro!!), but i also think it applies throughout. evermore is an album about drama, and it's also the album with the closest aesthetic nod to tapping maple trees for sap, which is a secondary consideration but no less relevant to me here.

archie - 1989! it's kind of tempting to say rep for archie because of the way he is always fighting back against a fate that has befallen him, but 1989 captures his essence more. it's very stripped-back lyrically, which leaves it sort of unable to be characterized as a breakup album or an album of love songs or anything else. it simply is 1989 in the same way archie is a firefighter and a poet and a miner and a boxing gym owner/youth outreach coordinator (among other things). like archie, 1989 brings all of these together into something cohesive and motivated by the same ideals. it's also very flashy and optimistic! sad songs are disguised as upbeat pop numbers. this is very archie, too, as he is generally darling and sweet in the face of torment. also, archie is always somehow just learning about bisexuality for the first time, and that's pretty much also what 1989 is about.

betty - rep!! i could simply point out the fact that her little black bob wig is not dissimilar to taylor's small aesthetic shift toward edginess during the reputation era, and that would be enough. BUT! the album itself is also very betty. she believes herself to have an inherent evil inside of her that must be exorcised, but she's actually outwardly very normal. like she ultimately is falling in love with people and living her life as the girl next door, and then every once in a while she does snap and is like by the way i am still kind of a violent and angry freak!! and you're like oh yeah!! taylor very much entered the rep era feeling like she was a dangerous, unloveable liability, and that's also how the serial killer gene makes betty feel. even during season seven she feels something growing inside her that is strange and inherently destructive to a provincial, buttoned-up way of life, and then it turns out to just be sexual desire, specifically bisexuality, which is also very rep.

jughead - i mean .... he's THE tortured poet. ttpd. like taylor writing ttpd, he's incredibly aware of the narrative surrounding him and the way his pen can influence it. he's a little pretentious and maybe a little too reliant on literary allusions, but real fans get it. one of my favorite things about ttpd that is misunderstood by a lot of people unwilling to give taylor the benefit of the doubt is how tongue-in-cheek and ironic a lot of it is, a fact that is also true of jughead's magnum opus (riverdale).

veronica - can i say something shocking? lover. the man is the obvious jumping off point here, but yntcd is very aligned with our first ten minutes with veronica in the pilot when we hear the exchange "kevin is...." "GAY! thank god." lover is also very sure of itself aesthetically, and it outwardly presents itself as in love and put-together, ready to enter a new adult chapter of, like, guest judging on the voice or whatever. but hidden not too deep below the surface is a churning sea of insecurity and fear about both romance and career. i believe this, too, is what motivates veronica. she's terrified that she'll become her father, but she's also terrified to not be like him at all. she can never quite find a love where she feels totally secure. archie will always have a thing for betty. reggie will never quite meet her needs. veronica really is kind of a lover girl at heart, and she's always making sort of suspect decisions in the name of girlbossery, which is very on theme.

[blackjackkent]

Hector made a quick stop with a sad family on the docks who didn't have enough money to get all four of them on a boat out of the city; paid off the father's passage as well so the whole family can go safely. Yay! (And Jaheira and Minsc both approved.)

And now back to camp to see what crucial intel Volo has dug up.

"It is splendid to see you again, my friend! If you hadn't saved me from that mob, I'd be penning a Guide to the Afterlife, based on first-hand experience. Perhaps you would hazard a guess as to why the mob turned on me?"

Several options for guesses here - he could have easily pissed off Orin, Gortash, or the Absolutists. Hector, though, suspects Volo is going to tell him anyway, in great detail, so he allows himself a flash of humor instead. "I just assumed decades of spreading lies and misinformation had caught up with you," he says dryly.

"Nonsense," says Volo stoutly. "It is my dedication to *truth* that endangers my wellbeing, and I have uncovered the most startling truth imaginable!" He spreads his arms wide and declaims in a dramatic shout, "The Lord of Murder has returned! As he did a hundred years ago, Bhaal has set his accursed sights on Baldur's Gate, and his temple runs red with the blood of the innocent."

Hector looks at him expectantly. Yes, and...? They've known about Bhaal's involvement in the Absolutist plot for quite some time. This is troubling, but it's not news.

"Orin is his Chosen," Volo goes on earnestly. "And like Sarevok before her, she is able to take on the savage form of the Slayer! If the Slayer is not stopped, it will slaughter every living thing in this city. As one of those things, I'm particularly eager to stop it!"

Hector's skeptical eyebrow lowers slightly. This is news - and also troubling. He has read in some of his history tomes about Sarevok's near-reign of terror, about the Slayer form he could take as an offspring of Bhaal - and about Caden, who was also able to take that form although he rarely did. It's said to be a powerful transformation, a manifestation of the darkest of divine magic... and if Orin has control of it, that is bad news indeed.

Volo perks up, seeing that his message is starting to get through. "And there is a way. I have a study of the beast, penned by the wizard Irenicus himself. It contains all of the knowledge needed to slay the Slayer."

Hm. Concerning.

Irenicus was the big bad of BG2, responsible for (among other things) torturing Caden and Imoen mercilessly and ripping out their souls in pursuit of the Bhaalspawn power in them, as well as killing Jaheira's husband and Minsc's Wychlaran and just generally being an insane megalomaniac. Hector (presumably) knows at least some of this, certainly enough to recognize the name, and is more than a little skeptical about anything that might have come from the mad mage of Amn.

On the other hand... they need to fight Orin no matter what. And any scrap of information is potentially useful.

"Now," Volo goes on pointedly, "I just need a brave adventurer willing to face Bhaal's Chosen and to put the knowledge into practice."

Hector lets out a heavy breath. Well, then, I'm your man, I suppose, he thinks wryly. "I'll do it."

"Wonderful! I can scarcely think of anyone more suitable. It will serve you well - 'A Study of the Slayer' penned by Jon Irenicus. It's a one-of-a-kind, so do try to keep it away from the inevitable bloodbath."

-----

Eeeeeenteresting. Hector has a few follow-up questions he can ask, although they're mostly just exposition for people who didn't play BG1/BG2. Oblique reference to Caden which is always nice to hear.

"This is a daunting task," Hector says quietly. He knew all of this lay ahead of him already, more or less, and yet somehow talking to Volo about it makes him feel rather more exhausted than he already was. "I should begin my preparations now."

Volo looks at him with a sudden, uncharacteristic air of calm intensity. "I am a living witness to Bhaal's defeat, those hundred years ago," he says, "so I know your battle against him his not futile. He can be stopped."

Hector tilts his head, and then smiles very slightly. It's a heartening, encouraging thing to hear - something he badly needed. But, unfortunately, Volo is still talking, and the finish to his little speech makes Hector's blood run cold.

"But not all of those who stood against him survived - and those who did were never the same again. I wish you luck, my friend. And I hope that when I see you again, you'll be in one piece. Two or three, at most."

[daftpatience]

I am politely autism creature lurking at your fountain pen posts bc I love them as well. The lure of fountain pen inks and Jetpens really hooked me. And I've bought the disc elsuim soundtrack

To stay on theme for blorbo matching, how about the insulindian phasmid?

i'm imagining something long, thin, and woody, like a calligraphy pen!

this is the ziller oblique wood nib holder! yum yum!

[jwinsorart]

Descending loop calligraphy drills with pointed pen. I always meant to learn my drills with dip pen but I just never got around to it. It's a very sloooow process. But I did it today! It's amazing how much steeper the learning curve is with a nib and ink. I use mine so randomly that I never really bothered to do the fundamentals. Hopefully this will help with my future pointed pen projects.

🖋@jetpens Brause 361 Steno Blue Pumpkin Nib

@speedball_calligraphy Oblique Nib Holder

🎨 @kuretakezig_usa Black Sumi ink

📜 @cansonusa Marker XL

[ntrlily]

I want to try an oblique penholder but all my usual places for buying pen stuff only have a speedball one which isn't moddable or designed for use with Japanese nibs (or just like, other non speedball western nibs) so I gotta find somewhere else...

[puellafuriadarkmagica]

So it's been a week, exactly as promised. It's just that it's also been some other weeks on top of that. I'll explain why at the end of this post, what I plan on doing about it, generally where my efforts have been lately, and how YOU (yes YOU!) can get involved.

Chapter 5: The Best Venue in this Small, Pathetic Town

From The Chats - Keep The Grubs Out. I mentioned before that my brother got me into The Chats. They're a world away from the kind of music I'm normally into, but they happen to be really fucking funny. That's generally enough for me to make an exception. Check out the music video to their big hit Smoko and try your damnedest to convince me this isn't one of the greatest music videos ever made.

"Oh, Kimmie, me 'n' Kel had the time of our lives. We had twenny-four hour room cervix, eggs derelict for breakfast..." the television blared feebly through its blown-out stereo system.

I've said it before but one of my favourite differences between our world and that of PFDM is that somehow the existence of magical girls has resulted in Kath and Kim still being on the air in 2009.

Fuck, I miss Kath and Kim.

"You, and me, we have an opportunity / And we, can make it something really good…" Zoey hummed from somewhere in the kitchen.

I also remember mentioning that this passage is included to remind people that despite her generally matronly(??) role to the rest of the cast of Part 1, Zoey's only in her mid-twenties. Bit sad, innit?

Thunk. A metal rail, roughly forty centimetres long, sailed neatly past Marie's head, drove itself clean through the skull of the Incubator perched on her shoulder, and dug itself into an oblique resting place in the pavement behind her.

Oh my God.

Oh my God!

They killed Kyubey??

"Introductions aside, have you run this past Lara yet?" "The thing is I think I've got to… warm her up to the idea first?" Danika smirked. "You can say she's too stubborn. It's not a crime, you know." "She's not as bad as you guys say she is, you know!" "Too right!" Hope leaned forward and coughed into a fist. "See, she's actually worse."

She's actually soooo cool and nice with it.

Hold on.

When did "such-and-so with it" re-enter common parlance? I remember it being a pretty ubiquitous way to suffix an adjective back in the late 2000's, and then it disappeared. And now it's back? Where did it go…

"Cool, cool. Hey, would you mind if I just confer with my friends about some stuff? I'm pretty new to what I do, and if we brought you on board that'd be a pretty major undertaking for both of us." "It's okay," Phoebe protested. "I can train her!" Hope shrugged. "Yeah, that's fair. Now it'll be a major undertaking for three of us."

Taking so long to reread this stuff presents the side-effect that I do find myself laughing at my old jokes that I'd forgotten I'd written.

Phoebe shot to her feet and clutched her skull (still contained within the flesh of her head, of course. Only one person with even the most tangential relationship to her life is intense enough to do otherwise). "I can't deal with you people! I can't… I'm… I need some air."

What?

Holy hell, what?

There's no way I foreshadowed Alex burning off her flesh this far in advance. Are you serious?

We've only just recently learned that she will be doing that, what, 45 chapters later? 46?

Hope's jeans pocket blared a harsh, percussive synth monotone. She noticeably flinched before practically ripping her phone out of her pocket and putting it to her ear.

Back when I wrote this, I said it was probably The Presets - My People. More recently I've locked that in. I was going to write that it's one of the few radio hits that's actually good, but then I realised my vision was completely clouded by nostalgia when I began to pen that. The past half-decade or so has been kind of nuts for mainstream pop. Charli XCX has got a couple tracks joint-produced by AG Cook and Hudson Mohawke on her new album, for crying out loud. Death's Dynamic Shroud is getting mentioned on the same electronic pop lists as fucking Beyoncé. Porter Robinson's… well, he's Porter Robinson. How did we get it so good? Should I be thanking Missy Elliot? Daft Punk? Dylan Brady?

Wait. I'm supposed to be talking about PFDM.

"Sure thing." Marie responded with a thumbs-up goodbye, like some kind of absolute mutant.

Not long after I wrote this passage, I did actually give someone a thumbs-up goodbye. Mind you, I was having an absolutely shit day and was pretty distracted, but I've still gotta live that down, on the inside.

"I'll get it," Hope announced. She opened the front door, saw who was behind it, and closed it again. Lara jammed her foot in the door before it could close. "Evening, Fearnley," she cooed. "Would you mind if I popped in for a chat?" "If I said no…" "I'd find other, less courteous ways to open this door, don't you worry."

I've barely started watching Utena, but she's Nanami, isn't she? She's totally Nanami.

"Shame. What's say you and I underthrow Deckard and find a new girl ourselves instead?" "Under… throw?" "It's like overthrow, but she's our inferior. She's really, really inferior, actually. You know how she spends her time? Going on witch hunts with this new girl just for kicks. I hear Woodward - not the dead one, of course - is third-wheeling whatever it is those two have got going on now."

"Underthrow" is one of my favourite Lara-isms, but it doesn't hold a candle to…

"Well then, why would I do that?" She smirked. "Face it, Fearnley. If I needed to psychologically outplay you, I wouldn't resort to spreading rumours. I've got a rapper wit." "You mean a rapier." "A what?" "She said rapier," Zoey huffed. "That's the expression. Rapier wit." "What, like a sword? That's stupid. The only thing a sword ever thinks to do is cut something, and that's only because somebody else tells it to. A rapper, on the other hand-"

"Rapper wit" is potentially my favourite malapropism of all time, and I came up with it. Thanks, me! Why, you're very welcome.

The Citadel, like all things, is metaeclyptic with an infinity of other things, places, times. One of these things happens to be a lighthouse on the west coast of Ireland, operated by a young man named Douglas Murphy. Though neither of them knew it, at the exact moment Audrey Wong lost her blue socks, he found a pair of green socks he had lost four months ago. The strangest part of all this, he would remark if he understood his circumstances to any meaningful degree, is that his role as a textbook example of metaeclypticism is, in fact, the only meaningful reason for his existence at all. The speaker god has, as it happens, written a proverb pertaining to this feeling of existential ennui, which goes as follows. From here until the end of the last chapter. It also goes as precedes, until the beginning of the first. Due to the impracticality with which one might quote it, it is considered a very unpopular proverb.

This is one of the passages which I think best encapsulates the style of PFDM, and hopefully my writing on the whole. It's definitely one of those key early moments where I Locked The Fuck In.

Well, that was a pretty short chapter, all things considered. I forgot how little time I actually need to write one of these. Maybe I should try for one a week, but given my track record regarding things taking a week, I don't think I can promise anything.

So what happened?

Life got busy again. I've got a job now, which does pretty much drain the life out of me. But it also gives my time some long-needed damn structure, so three cheers. Also, I've gotten a little carried away on an original webfic I conceived of last year and have been tinkering away at the planning stages of ever since. Actually, let's talk about that. And let's call it Project Anubis for short for now, in a pointless attempt to hide its true name - an aspect of the webfic I'm still uncertain about. It does have a name, and I am sort of leaning in-for-a-penny on that, but for now it's Project Anubis.

Sounds cool. What's Project Anubis?

Nothing!!! It doesn't exist yet, and won't for a serious while! Don't rush me here, okay?!?!

Actually, I'm going to talk about it here with you guys because there's like half a dozen of you maximum and I don't want to talk about this publicly yet. You won't see this on my main Tumblr. Anyone who reads that and doesn't read this, who I want to have see this announcement, already knows what this project is, and, in fact, what it's called. I mention it now, because I'm trying to open the doors to my friends who I know would be available for this, and frankly if you've spent the past… I don't even want to think about how long, conversing with my borderline manic ramblings in the comments section of my own anime fanfiction, well, are we not then friends?

Okay, but really, what is it?

Not too thematically dissimilar from a lot of the themes I've been spinning in PFDM. If you liked the oddball humour, the overly-researched science fiction, and maybe the weird underlying philosophical thriller, you probably will like this. If you were only into PFDM for the sprawling cosmology, the fight scenes, and the fact that it's Madoka Magica, you're gonna outright detest it. It will not be for you. Of course it wouldn't be. It's for me.

So what do you want from me?

I'm glad youu asked, line of bold text I put before this paragraph! Basically, I want anyone who knows a damn about more or less anything to give me a holler. I've got a lot of research to do for this, and anyone who can point me in the right direction would be a massive help. If you know anything about any of the following:

Speculative biology

Computer science

Feng shui

Biosemiotics

Astronomy

Gestalt psychology

Puzzle design

Card game design

Printing

Logograms

Conlang development

Chances are I'm gonna be coming to you for a lot of help. If this has legs, I might start hiring people to help me make it, too. If not on a stable income I can bankroll a team on, then at least on commission. If you're a visual artist who can illustrate things other than people with weirdly specific demands regarding colour palette and image composition, you're a writer and you feel like you can jive with my style (the more naturalistic, less-uranium-dense parts, at least, because this will not be the fuckin' slog that PFDM deliberately makes itself sometimes), or an actor - even if just for voice or photos - let me know that too. But don't expect anything to come of it, and definitely don't expect anything to come of it any time soon. Right now, I'm just trying to keep track of who I know who has X field of knowledge or Y specific skill. Gimme your email or your Discord or something, or just let me know if I can DM you here on Tumblr.

Why "Anubis"?

I had this idea for a gag in something where the main character dies and meets Anubis, who would be depicted entirely with photos of James Earl Jones. Anubis would then explain that everyone has a celebrity lookalike, and the gods themselves aren't excepted from this. Anubis just happens to bear a striking resemblance to James Earl Jones. I don't think this joke is going to be in anything, but I've been thinking about Anubis ever since.

What does Project Anubis mean for Puella Furia Dark Magica?

I dunno dude!!! I just work here!!! Maybe nothing? Maybe a hell of a whole lot? Maybe PFDM gets delayed for YEARS! Maybe the remaining chapters all mysteriously appear online tomorrow! I really don't know! I've just had a hell of a good idea and now I have to make it. I go crazy if I don't. I go. Crazy. If. I Don't!

Anyway see you all maybe next week I don't know? Bye

[hindisoup]

Do you think you can explain in simple terms and with examples (from Hindi) , what the oblique case is, and where it is used?

I've found explanations but they all make no sense to me

In Hindi, there are three main noun cases: nominative, oblique, and vocative.

Nominative is the basic form of the word, used as the subject of a sentence: लड़का दौड़ रहा है - The boy is running.

Oblique is used whenever an explicit or an implicit postposition follows the noun: लड़के ने एक सेब खाया - The boy ate an apple.

Vocative is used when addressing someone directly: अरे लड़के! - Hey boy!

The oblique can be thought of as the essential building block we need, when we want to use Hindi nouns in any other case than in the basic nominative case. With the combination of an oblique noun and a correct post position we can form the dative, accusative, genitive, possessive, ablative, instrumental, comitative and locative cases we're used to in many other languages - and the ergative case that is more rare but not unique to Hindi.

Here's how it works:

Dative (indicates the recipient or beneficiary of an action)

मैंने लड़के को सेब दिया - I gave the apple to the boy.

Accusative (indicates a direct object of a transitive verb)

कुत्ते ने लड़के को काट लिया - The dog bit the boy.

Oblique + को is used with all animate direct and indirect objects. The postposition को is optional when talking about inanimate objects, they can remain in the nominative.

Genitive (possessive) (indicates an attributive relationship)

यह लड़के का कुत्ता है - It's the boy's dog.

Ablative (indicates motion away from somewhere)

लड़का घर से निकला - The boy came out of the house.

Instrumental (indicates a noun that is used as an instrument)

लड़का कलम से लिखता है - The boy writes with a pen.

Comitative (indicates an action done together with someone)

लड़का एक लड़की से बात कर रहा है - The boy is talking to a girl.

Locative (indicates location)

लड़का स्कूल में है - The boy is at school.

Ergative (indicates the subject of a past tense transitive verb)

लड़के ने बहुत कुछ सीखा - The boy learned a lot.

What I am trying to do here is to demonstrate that the oblique + postposition is the way we can use Hindi nouns in various scenarios beyond the nominative case - it is not necessary to learn the names of these cases - it is more important to study the different postpositions and their various uses.

Here’s the basic rule: If there's a postposition after the noun, switch the noun to its oblique form. The oblique form varies depending on the gender and number of the noun but a common transformation for masculine singular nouns is from आ ending to ए: लड़का > लड़के.

Even the nouns that do not change in appearance (eg. consonant ending masculine nouns) are still considered to be in the oblique form before a postposition (like घर in घर से).

With adverbs of time and place the postposition is often dropped and the oblique form alone indicates adverbial use:

मैं पिछले हफ़्ते वहाँ था - I was there last week.

हमारे यहाँ आओ? - Come to our place?

The conclusion here can be that the oblique alone doesn't really mean anything but it is an important indicator that the noun that is in the oblique has some kind of a special relationship with the other nouns or verbs in that sentence. Using it correctly ensures clarity in the relationship between the nouns and their actions or descriptions.

Hope this is of some help. Thanks for the ask and happy learning!