#that's where i do most of my stream of consciousness blogging these days

[actualmermaid]

I posted ages ago about how "ibn Fadlan among the Rus" would make an excellent historical comedy movie/series, but I think there's an equally excellent movie/series to be made about the "conversion of the barbarians" circa 500 CE

Our main character is this dude Gregorios, a priest who was educated in like Alexandria or Constantinople or some shit, and he's just the worst. Supercilious, condescending, arrogant, and he has ambitions of going down in history as the "apostle to the barbarians"

His bishop sends him to bring the Good News to a barbarian warlord named BEORTHOGOTH THE SKULL-DRINKER (or whatever), and Gregorios is READY. He's studied all the proofs, he knows all the biblical languages, he can do rhetoric and oratory with the best of them and he is going to convert this barbarian warlord and become a SAINT or else a MARTYR.

So Gregorios sets out on his mission and locates the mead-hall of Beorthogoth the Skull-Drinker. He is received and "enjoys" their rough hospitality.

We get a "comedy of conflicting manners" sequence here, just like in the ibn Fadlan story. Gregorios is scandalized by their pagan debauchery, and the barbarians have already decided that he's some useless imperial eunuch.

Nevertheless, Beorthogoth decides to hear him out. "TELL US ABOUT THIS SUPREME GOD OF YOURS," he says (all of his dialogue is in all caps).

Gregorios, out of his element, starts droning on about homoousious and shit, and the barbarians are like

One of the young barbarian warriors pipes up with "do you know the one about the beast with seven heads?"

Gregorios, eager for the humiliation to end, is like "whatever" and launches into some nonsensical fire-and-brimstone preaching out of the book of Revelation. Beasts with seven heads, dragons, the whore of Babylon, cities with golden streets and gemstone towers, etc

The barbarians fucking love it

Beorthogoth is still not convinced, and he's like "VERY WELL, YOU HAVE ENTERTAINED MY COURT, I HAVE ONE FINAL TASK FOR YOU BEFORE I BOW TO YOUR GOD"

He sends Gregorios on a snipe hunt in the woods. There's no way for him to complete the task, and Beorthogoth is very much just trying to get rid of him. Gregorios is still determined, and he sets off.

He's a city boy. It's a shitshow. He gets attacked by bugs/wild animals/bandits/bad weather/whatever.

He's the saddest, wettest rat in the whole forest. At some point he's taken in by peasants from an idyllic little village, and when he recovers, he walks around and realizes that the community is set up around a humble monastery, and the village is already Christian. However, they're doing everything WRONG and venerating UNAPPROVED SAINTS, and it upsets Gregorios more than the pagan barbarians did.

The abbot receives him. He's a really casual, earthy sort of guy with a wild animal for a pet.

Gregorios launches into a speech about heresy and the authority of the Church, blah blah blah, and the abbot is just sitting there like "go on :)" while he pets his tame fox

The abbot takes Gregorios for a tour of the monastery and village. They've been there for like 300 years already. They're taking in widows and orphans and providing for everyone's needs. Gregorios, eventually, is surprised and humbled by their story.

At this point he admits that he was sent to convert Beorthogoth the Skull-Drinker, and Beorthogoth sent him on an errand which he is starting to suspect might be impossible. The abbot is like "oh yeah, he's done that to a few other Romans before. He doesn't bother us, we just send tribute every once in a while." He offers to return Gregorios to Beorthogoth and to mediate between them so that Gregorios can get back home safely.

Gregorios and the abbot (let's call him Mikael) go back to Beorthogoth's mead hall, only to find that Beorthogoth is preparing for war against the neighboring warlord, FJALBJORG THE KNEE-SMASHER!

Fjalbjorg has sent emissaries with a surprising demand: convert to Christianity, or be subjugated! It turns out that he's a newly-converted Christian zealot, and one of the emissaries is some bitch that reminds Gregorios of his old self: another slimy, intolerant, aspiring Apostle to the Barbarians

Fjalbjorg is more powerful than Beorthogoth, AND he has the backing of the Roman Church. Mikael is concerned for his monastery village, and Gregorios is disillusioned with the whole thing, and dislikes the other Roman priest. Mikael and Gregorios work together to present a version of the Gospel that speaks to Beorthogoth's position as a tribal warlord, while staying true to orthodox doctrine (Gregorios ends up going "😬 I GUESS" a lot during this process")

The main plot resolves with Gregorios baptizing Beorthogoth, as he set out to do. However, he's lost interest in becoming the missionary-saint that he set out to be. Mikael is like "why don't you come home with me instead?" And Gregorios is like "okay 🥺👉👈"

The movie ends bittersweetly. Gregorios was forgotten by history. The monastery village was eventually subsumed by the Roman Church, and then destroyed in the Reformation.

The final shots are of the ruins of the monastery, which have been reclaimed by the forest, and charming little creatures are building nests in the old church. In the cemetery, Gregorios and Mikael are buried side-by-side.

[quirkymarshmallows93]

Gas Station Stream of Consciousness Post

Gas Stations as Liminal Spaces

I've had quite a few hyperfixations in my day - ATMs, laundry detergents, credit cards - so my current one pertaining to gas stations is fitting considering my affinity for liminal spaces and the dedication of this blog to them. Liminal spaces are transitory in nature, hence their portrayal in online circles through photos of carpeted hallways, illuminated stairwells, dark roads, and backrooms, among other transitional points.

Gas stations are posted online as well; images of their fuel pumps or neon signage photographed through a rainy car window communicate their liminality and the universal experiences they provide to all of society. Perhaps they are the ultimate specimen of a liminal space. The machines they are created for, automobiles and tractor trailers alike, themselves are tools for motion, vestibules that enable travel and shipment across long distances at high speeds. Cars and roads are liminal spaces, albeit in different formats, and gas stations serve as their lighthouses. Vehicles at filling stations, therefore, are in a sense liminal spaces within liminal spaces within liminal spaces.

The uniqueness of a gas station as a liminal space, however, is its intersection with the economics and aesthetics of capitalism. Gasoline (and diesel fuel) is a commodity, downstream from crude oil, merely differentiated by octane ratings. Some argue that minute distinctions between agents, detergents, and additives make some brands better than others. Indeed, fuels that are approved by the Top Tier program, sponsored by automakers, have been shown to improve engine cleanliness and performance, but this classification does not prefer specific refiners over others; it is simply a standard. To a consumer, Top Tier fuels are themselves still interchangeable commodities within the wider gasoline commodity market.

The Economics of Gas Stations

The market that gas stations serve is characterized by inelastic demand, with customers who reckon with prices that fluctuate day in and day out. This is not to say that consumer behavior does not change with fuel prices. It has been observed that as prices rise, consumers are more eager to find the cheapest gas, but when prices fall, drivers are less selective with where they pump and are just happy to fill up at a lower price than last week. In response, gas stations lower their prices at a slower rate than when increasing prices, allowing for higher profit margins when wholesale prices fall. This has been dubbed the "rockets and feathers" phenomenon.

When portrayed as liminal spaces, gas stations are most often depicted at night, places of solitude where one may also enter the adjacent convenience store and encounter a fellow individual who isn't asleep, the modern day lightkeeper. The mart that resides at the backcourt of a gas station is known to sell goods at higher prices than a supermarket, simultaneously taking advantage of a captive customer, convenient location, and making up for the inefficiencies of a smaller operation. It may come as no surprise, then, that gas stations barely make any money from fuel sales and earn their bulk through C-store sales. This is a gripe I have with our economic system. Business is gamified, and in many cases the trade of certain goods and services, called loss leaders, is not an independent operation and is subsidized by the success of another division of a business, a strategy inherently more feasible for larger companies that have greater scale to execute it.

Nevertheless, most gas station owners, whether they have just one or hundreds of sites, find this method fruitful. Even though most gas stations in the US sell one of a handful of national brands, they operate on a branded reseller, or dealer, model, with oil companies themselves generally not taking part in the operations of stations that sell their fuels. The giants do still often have the most leverage and margin in the business, with the ability to set the wholesale price for the distributor, which sells at a markup to the station owner, which in turn will normally make the least profit in the chain when selling to the end customer at the pump. This kind of horizontal integration that involves many parties lacks the synergies and efficiencies of vertical integration that are so applauded by capitalists, but ends up being the most profitable for firms like ExxonMobil, who only extract and refine oil, and on the other end of the chain merely license their recognizable brands to the resellers through purchasing agreements. Furthermore, in recent years, independent dealers have sold their businesses to larger branded resellers, in many cases the ones from whom they had been buying their fuel.

A Word on ExxonMobil's Branding Potential

The largest publicly traded oil company in the world is Exxon Mobil Corporation. It is a direct descendent of the Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil, which was broken up in 1911 into 34 companies, the largest of which was Jersey Standard, which became Exxon in 1973. This title was generated by a computer as the most appealing replacement name to be used nationwide to unify the Humble, Enco, and Esso brands, decades before AI was spoken of. The latter brand is still used outside of the United States for marketing, arising from the phonetic pronunciation of the initials of Standard Oil. In 1999, Exxon and Mobil merged, and the combined company to this day markets under separate brands. Exxon is more narrowly used, to brand fuel in the United States, while Mobil has remained a motor oil and industrial lubricant brand, as well as a fuel brand in multiple countries.

Mobil originated in 1866 as the Vacuum Oil Company, which first used the current brand name for Mobiloil, and later Mobilgas and Mobilubricant products, with the prefix simply short for "automobile". Over time, Mobil became the corporation's primary identity, with its official name change to Mobil Oil Corporation taking place in 1966. Its updated wordmark with a signature red O was designed by the agency Chermayeff & Geismar, and the company's image for service stations was conceived by architect Eliot Noyes. New gas stations featured distinctive circular canopies over the pumps, and the company's recognizable pegasus logo was prominently on display for motorists.

I take issue with the deyassification of the brand's image over time. As costs were cut and uniformity took over, rectangular canopies were constructed in place of the special ones designed by Noyes that resembled large mushrooms. The pegasus remained a prominent brand icon, but the Mobil wordmark took precedence, which I personally believe to be an error in judgement. This disregard for the pegasus paved the way for its complete erasure in 2016 with the introduction of ExxonMobil's "Synergy" brand for its fuel. The mythical creature is now much smaller and appears only at the top right corner of pumps at Mobil gas stations, if at all.

Even into the 90s and the 21st century the Pegasus had its place in Mobil's marketing. In 1997, the company introduced its Speedpass keytag, which was revolutionary for its time and used RFID technology, akin to mobile payments today, to allow drivers to get gas without entering the store or swiping a card. When a Speedpass would be successfully processed, the pegasus on the gas pump would light up red.

When Exxon and Mobil merged in 1999, the former adopted the payment method too, with Exxon's less iconic tiger in place of the pegasus.

The program was discontinued in 2019 in favor of ExxonMobil's app, which is more secure since it processes payments through the internet rather than at the pump.

What Shell has done with its brand identity is what Mobil should've done for itself. The European company's logo was designed in 1969 by Raymond Loewy, and is a worth contender for the "And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self" meme. In recent years, Shell went all in on its graphic, while Mobil's pegasus flew away. I choose to believe that the company chose to rebrand its stations in order to prevent the malfunction in the above image from happening.

ExxonMobil should have also discontinued the use of the less storied Exxon brand altogether, and simplifying its consumer-facing identity to just the global Mobil mark. Whatever, neither of the names are actual words. As a bonus, here is a Google map I put together of all 62 gas stations in Springfield, MA. This is my idea of fun. Thanks for reading to the end!

[quartings]

Thoughts on fan backlash: The Good and the Evil.

With the recent massive Pokemon leak bringing a lot of internal Gamefreak correspondance to light, I wanted to just give a stream of consciousness on my thoughts about people's reaction to fan backlash, and how it can have both really good and completely evil impacts.

I think the Pokemon fanbase has speculated for a long time that low Gen 5 sales caused Gamefreak to begin their excessive Kanto pandering in Gen 6, 7, and early Gen 8 in an attempt to increase profit.

And while I understand the apprehension about fans being unhappy with the Unova dex restriction, I think a sales dip was only inevitable as Pokemon's initial overseas fanbase entered their cringy teen years. Blaming it on foreigners and the entire Unova dex was a gross overreaction. And as someone who was in their early teens when BW launched and only had good things to say about it, it baffles me that the controversy even existed in the first place.

But later controversies had even kid me upset with Gamefreak- the low difficulty of the games (which comes and goes nowadays), games coming out with missing/underdeveloped features, severe performance errors, and of course, Dexit (when I was an adult). BW only having Unova Pokemon in their regional dex was fine, since all the older Pokemon were still in the postgame and game data ready for transfer. So when is fan outrage justified, and when isn't it?

I guess the main problem here is making a series for children, wanting to keep it for children (nothing wrong with that), but trying to get all your feedback from teenagers and adults online, since most kids (at least back in the 2010s) can't access social media as easily to enunciate their thoughts. Because meaningful feedback (Make the stories better paced, make the games at least as tough as they were in Gens 3-5, improve competitive custom games, improve continuity between games, bring back the Battle Frontier, etc) conflict with Gamefreak's backwards mindset of "kids are stupid and want easy games, boring characters, and flashy features we'll scrap next gen". Which leaves the only criticism they can respond to being "Let's appeal to the shallow Genwunners by focusing way too much on Kanto Pokemon."

A part of me worries for the dark potential future where Gamefreak listens to fan backlash about Gen 8's Dexit, and makes a game with all 1100+ Pokemon available. But due to internal pressures and overworking their employees on a poorly planned schedule, the game runs awfully and has next to no postgame. As a result, reception to this game is naturally negative, but both dimwitted Gamefreak executives and a small handful of especially stupid fans think "Oh, this happened because we had all the Pokemon in the game- we should never do this again, and blame fans who want basic features in the games from now on!" instead of the obvious lesson "We shouldn't overwork our employees and instead take our time to make a functioning and fun game."

And for anyone who has followed my blog since its early days, you'd know I am (was?) a huge amourshipping fan, partly because I love the XY anime, partly because I really enjoy Serena as a character, and partly because I had a foolish hope that the anime would try to properly progress Ash as a character instead of what they wound up doing in Gens 7-8. And apparently The Pokemon Company limited Serena's screentime in Journeys because they were too scared of fan backlash at the risk of handling her wrong, with the former XY director getting threats over such issues (I won't comment on what kind of fans were making the threats as they weren't specified in the leak) in her only return episode. And I know this may come across as naiive or insensitve, but... who cares? There's always going to be a handful of crazy fans trying to stan or hate a certain character- what do YOU as a creator think is best for YOUR character and YOUR story? And as long as the overall public is fine with your story, who cares what the few psycho fans think one way or the other? Why sabotage your own story not to appease the majority, not even to please a minority, but to silence a minority? I think more fans both casual and hardcore would be happy to see Ash and Serena get together than the amount who would be upset by it. It just feels like cowardice.

But when it comes for stories made for older audiences, listening to feedback becomes a more complex story. On the opposite end, a lot of fanbases like to bootlick for big companies when they make blatantly discriminatory decisions. For a non-Pokemon example, I'll cite The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. Marvel changed the character from an offensive Chinese sterotype to a self-aware vague Middle Eastern stereotype played by a goofy British man in-universe in order to avoid hate from Chinese audiences.

And there was a lot of fandom drama from this choice naturally, between fans who wanted a real villainous and Chinese Mandarin, and fans who enjoyed the twist and appreciated Marvel's choice to not risk an offensive Chinese stereotype. I was a bit too young to participate in any of this drama at the time, but I generally enjoyed the twist Marvel did, while also sympathising with fans who liked the comic storylines.

Well apparently, the fan backlash to Iron Man 3 was enough to compel Marvel to make a short film called "All Hail the King" in the same year, where they confirmed there was indeed a real East Asian villainous Mandarin somewhere in the MCU. And eventually in Shang Chi (8 years later), the real Mandarin did appear as Xu WenWu, an incredibly cool and compelling villain who wasn't harmfully stereotypical at all! I know the extremely racist Marvel executive Ike Perlmutter getting fired after Iron Man 3 and before Shang Chi probably contributed, but I can't help but wonder if fan backlash was the main cause for us getting WenWu eventually? In the alternate universe where everyone agreed to shut up and happily accept the Iron Man 3 version of the Mandarin, would there be no WenWu? Would that universe be all the worse as a result?

And then, there's the difference between "fans" and "fandoms". Sometimes I think both creators and fans forget that the main audience for a show does indeed love it, but rarely do they "obsess" over it. I've always said that children love good stories, while adults find excuses to love bad stories. Take my brother for example- he loves many cartoons, and has a lot of valid points to say about their storytelling, but I would never at all say he's a "fandom" kind of guy. Meanwhile, myself and all my animation colleagues are very much in fandoms, or at least aware of them. So one of my fellow animator friends was very surprised when they found out my brother and his friends had no idea what a "tumblr sexyman" even was, but still enjoyed cartoons and their stories nonetheless. You mean you can enjoy a cartoon for the actual content it has, without obsessively thirsting over characters or getting attached to completely fictitious ships and headcanons? No way!!

It's important to remember that when making stories for kids, the shipping/thirst/drama opinions of fandoms never really matter as long as you've put genuine thought and care into your characters and story. You don't have to deliberately insult, offend, or repel fandoms (though with enough skill and tact it could be funny I guess), just pay them no mind as you try and make the best show you can. Which is a lesson I'd like to take in making my own stories. As I make content on Youtube and beyond, I keep reminding myself that the most important viewers I have are the ones I'll hear from the least- kids with very little social media presence. And if I barely hear from that audience, the best I can do isn't to pander to my adult fans (though I still hope they like what I do if it suits them), but to keep having faith in my own content, and to be open to constructive criticism when it arrives (obviously different from insults and threats, which I've thankfully never gotten anyways)

[pokemenlovingmen]

A mlm pokeimagines blog? In this economy? God where have you been all my life.

Apologies in advance if its a long ask lol

Seriously though you would not believe how happy I got when I saw this blog pop up! Barely any mlm reader stuff so finding you got my lil poke men loving heart all excited!

If requests are open I was wondering if you could do Emmets reaction to a male reader who loves the fact that Emmet is so blunt? I've seen some stuff like this in the past were reader loves Emmet DESPITE him being so blunt but I love him because of it!! I find it useful and charming!! I have a hard time understanding most people because I'm bad at picking up subtext and stuff in conversation so characters like Emmet that are just blunt and honest are always appreciated!

Also, claiming 🐗 boar anon in advance lol

Hi hi boar anon!!! I’m glad you like my blog so much! I literally made it bc I couldn’t find enough male reader content, and as a trans guy that gendered language is really affirming to me. Also not being courageous enough to get into a relationship with real human people lmao I gotta be gay somehow!! Literally all of you who’ve come to visit me on this blog are so sweet. I changed the blog description up for a reason, it really does feel like I’ve invited a bunch of funny gay guys into my living room and we’re all sitting in a circle whispering about boys. Doing this makes me feel so stupidly comfortable in my own skin and so much like a part of the LGBT community when I’ve had to stand on the sidelines most of my life, I just can’t explain how stupidly therapeutic writing imagines for fictional men from a fictional monster battling game is LMFAOOO

And we’re always here for supporting the autism shit lol, you can pry my autistic submas out of my cold dead hands, my submas will always be pretty heavily headcanoned and a post appreciating those verrry autistic coded traits is a huge win for me :) Emmet deserves to be loved for just being Emmet

Straight (Gay) to the Point— Emmet x Male Reader

⚪️ — Emmet and Ingo have grown up with a lot to be self conscious about, from their appearances to the behavioral quirks they share and the quirks they don’t. Kids can be cruel when you’re neurodivergent so different. So when you get together with Emmet and he comes to realize you LIKE his speaking patterns, he’s floored.

⚪️ — Emmet has always had a lot to say, but he’s quite bad at phrasing things. Compared to his brother who is a constant stream of consciousness, just prattling on about anything and everything that crosses his mind once you get him into conversation, Emmet needs to carefully plan out each word and it never comes out how he wants. Sometimes it feels like with his more approachable appearance (even if some call it creepy) and Ingo’s ability to talk (even if some say he rambles too much), they’re just two halves of one fully functional person. But you like him. Not his brother. Not him and his brother. You like him. How crazy is that?

⚪️ — He doesn’t have time to waste on careful wording. Do that, and he’d be plotting his course of conversation for ages. And he’s rather aware of that fact, so one day, he offhandedly mentions that he’s sorry his bluntness can be so off-putting, and he really hopes he hasn’t said anything to offend you.

⚪️ — Imagine his surprise when you said the contrary! When he heard you liked him because he said exactly what he meant, and he was always so clear-cut and easy to understand, it was like a fuse blew in him. Growing up, he’d always heard the opposite, and while Ingo never criticized him for it, plenty of other people did call him out for being rude when he didn’t mean to be.

⚪️ — He feels verrrry comfortable in conversation with you, yes indeed. Your sense of communication with one another is very strong and any conflict gets resolved very quickly. Emmet is happy to just talk with you and not have to pretend to have conversational skills he doesn’t have. You like him, his brother likes him, that’s all that matters.

⚪️ — He wants to talk with challengers on the Battle Subway more freely, so he’ll often come to you about the best ways to translate the things he wants to say into more “socially acceptable” ways of saying them. Of course, he’s also fully aware that he can come to you and not need to jump through all those hoops.

⚪️ — Since he’s so comfortable with you, he’ll say just about anything to you or around you and knows he can say things to you that will make you laugh, while others would just shush him for it.

⚪️ — After all, nothing makes you laugh quite as hard as sitting on your bed only to hear “OH DEAR! THE GALVANTULAS ARE MATING ON THE SOFA!” from across the apartment. Like cool Emmet, you definitely did NOT need to hear that—also please make them stop??—but that got the best laugh out of you you’ve had in a while.

⚪️ — He’s genuinely just so funny without trying. Another iconic moment you can recall is when, on a Friday night, a particularly inebriated woman was getting a bit too comfy with Emmet, which he was oblivious to at first, too preoccupied with the joy of battling. When you did tell him, though, you ended up laughing your ass off as he gasped and ran off with great urgency to apologize to the woman, as he was unable to reciprocate her advances due to both being taken and, I quote, “a homosexual”.

⚪️ — You’ve definitely made him a lot more comfortable, even in public situations, which he doesn’t seem to realize. The Battle Subway staff has regularly mentioned Boss Emmet has been way chattier than he used to be (which still doesn’t mean anything dramatic, but it’s a big step to him and that’s all it needs to be!) And anyone who has a problem with Emmet’s mannerisms can answer to you.

⚪️ — You’re more than just Emmet’s boyfriend, you gel perfectly into his family. And granted, that family is only Ingo, both of their Pokemon teams and Elesa ever since she basically adopted them, but it’s perfect anyway. It’s not like Emmet has been telling his brother about how much he wants to marry you eventually or anything.

⚪️ — You have literally so many Joltik grandchildren already.

⚪️ — Since both of you can struggle with reading other people, you often put your heads together to try and figure things out. (If it’s anything like the attempts at two neurodivergent people trying to use their combined knowledge to socially navigate that I’ve been a part of, it probably accomplishes nothing, but at least you can both relate to each other’s struggles and have a good laugh about it at the end of the day.)

⚪️ — He acts like a little kid with a crush around you and when he’s not working, he follows you around like a lost puppy.

⚪️ — He also knows that when he’s specifically feeling insecure about his mannerisms, he can lean on you for comfort, because you unashamedly love that about him. All of it. One night, after a particularly rough day, you remember him cuddling up to you and getting teary-eyed about how much you love him.

⚪️ — Please stay in his life, okay?

[shelandsorcery]

help! i'm digitally gardening my website

I am slowly overhauling my website away from static portfolio into big vibrant pile of sortable stuff, and like many old folks who do a variety of things online, I am intrigued by digital gardens and the idea that posts grow and build upon themselves and change, sharing some thinking and development processes live on the internet. (also i have a sneaking suspicion past websites i built by hand on geocities would have counted as digital gardens, and i am Not Immune to Nostalgia)

So I think for me the big post type division I need to tackle is separating my more formal, longer, click-in-and-read-or-look-at-many-images style posts from my Stream of Consciousness posts, which I think I'll try to keep to one image, one referenced link or video, and/or one paragraph of text.

What i'm looking for right now is some suggestions for the nomenclature that will divide these two post types.

Ideally I'd like the terminology to be more interesting than long post // microblog or similar; but also the content should vary a fair bit within these types and I don't want to promise essays or blog posts or image only feeds where I don't intend to stick to those boundaries. Also, and this is the bit my brain is most excited about, I intend to build longer posts out of shorter posts, so it would be so cool to find snappy short terminology that kind of made that obvious.

now I don't know if I personally need to run with a gardening metaphor, but my website is called Portable City and while no one asks me about hypertext metaphors these days, they certainly could at any time and i'd be ready, so maybe a city metaphor could be fun?

anyways it's one of those decision points I've completely frozen on, and it's blocking my ability to finish setting up my templates, so if you have a moment to throw some ideas, goofy or otherwise, in the comments, I'd really appreciate it!

[lesbonym]

>\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\< so rude cause I am blushing like mad but you aren't supposed to know that cause I definitely don't get super flustered over your responses

If you save me riding you for last then it might end up with me laying on your chest with you helping me move my hips up and down, sometimes being horny gives me more stamina but especially if I am subbing I tend to melt into a puddle

>\\\\\\\< I would still really like to pleasure you tho, wanna make my pretty boy feel so good even if you are mean to me (don't apply logic to this, I know that I will beg you to be mean to me cause it's very hot >\\\\<)

Despite turning into a puddle I do have the stamina, there was a bit where I couldn't figure out how to make myself cum (love sex ed classes that don't actually teach anything about sex ed) so I would just keep going until I was ready to stop, so I am used to going for actual hours just being played with if you wanted to keep playing around with me for a while (fun fact, because it took me a while to figure it out now I can't edge myself like at all cause I keep turning my vibe up and putting it right where I like it and then I cum before I even have a chance to think about trying to edge)

Also I am so proud of you for doing good on your assignment!!!!!!!!

I have been working nearly every day the past couple of weeks which is why I have been less active on Tumblr, my body isn't used to working this consistently cause my other job would call me in like 3 or so days a week, I'm still liking my job but until my body builds up more stamina most of my waking hours are spent at work and I take lots of naps when I get home

>\\\\\\\< but I still usually check your posts at night before I go to bed and get all flustered and touch myself before I go to sleep >\\\<

But I'm glad your professor decided to be not stupid about it and let you go online! That's sick!!

(also ignore my stream of conscious going between horny and not horny one paragraph to the next, that's just how it be today)

(No worries, baby! I'll probably just try to organize mine cause mine gets pretty stream of consciousness too. I'll probably answer nsft stuff first and then sft stuff. Sorry if I miss stuff though)

So cute, I know you so well. Just knew you'd be blushing so bad to my response, and it's so cute. My pretty boy has always been so cute since being more yourself in asks.

I'd be more than willing to help you ride me, baby. I'll take such good care of you and coo praises to you for doing so well. Maybe I will be a little mean about how quickly you melted, but I think you'd love that.

My sweet boy wants to make me feel good? How cute. You could barely keep yourself up, and yet you wanna make me feel good. Of course, begging so cutely for me to be mean, too. I'm curious how you'd like to pleasure me, sweet baby?

Poor thing is all pent up, hm? Having to use that pretty head too much at work so you scroll my blog at night to feel good. God, you're so cute.

Yeah, I also had really shifty sex ed classes. Most of them were abstinence-only classes and only taught us parts of the penis cause the vagina was "gross." Most girls in my grade had no clue the urethra and vagina were separate holes and thought they peed through the vagina... it was awful. This was a high school class too. (So many were pregnant by senior year :/)

That sucks that work is keeping you so busy, but I hope you are getting good rest! I'll be okay with you not checking in as often if you're taking care of yourself. But I'll always miss hearing from my pretty boy ;)

I'm very glad that my professor did too. I think he realized most people had no way to get there and also would probably be locked out so it was kinda a hybrid class.

[blazehedgehog]

hey! regarding people who are politely declining to comment their opinions on your Frontiers video, i don't think it's anything personal – i think some people just find engaging with the greater Sonic discourse to be exhausting (myself included!) and would rather respect the opinions and personal space of others than engage in debate.

which brings me to my question: how do you handle it? you've been fielding comments and asks from rabid Sonic fans for so long, you seem to have it down to a science!

I can understand being exhausted with discourse, yeah. There are some things I'm like that with. But... I dunno, the response to the Sonic Frontiers in general is also a little weird and I'm starting to think I made a bad first impression with some of what I had to say. Some people are taking it personally in a way that it's not directed at them.

But -- and I do not say this disparagingly -- that's Sonic fans. I get it. It's not true so much these days, but ten years ago, twenty years ago, this industry loved to beat up on Sonic and especially Sonic fans, eventually. Some people don't see that I'm one of them too, which is also understandable, because not everybody knows me.

I'm weighing options on how to deal with that. I've said it before but doing follow-up "correction/comment response" videos seem to be a good idea, but I don't know if I should wait until the final DLC is out or try and get it released sometime next week.

As for how I handle it... I don't know. Maybe it just comes naturally. I remember way back when I first got on the internet, when I was on AOL, the big thing everybody was doing back then before blogs was Mailing Lists. "MLs" for short. People would send you a message like "I would like to subscribe to your ML," so you'd write down their email address, and once a week or so you'd send out this gigantic email that was practically its own whole website.

And I juggled two or three MLs, for Sonic, for Pokemon, for Sailor Moon. I'd attach files for MP3s, I'd do Q&A sections, the whole nine yards, and I was like... 15. And I'd get comments (email replies) from people telling me that they loved how natural I sounded. Apparently people running other MLs were pretty wooden and robotic with their writing style, but I was always very conversational and approachable. And the numbers bore that out; I remember having several mailing lists crest 100+ subscribers, which felt like a huge deal.

And it's weird, because if you met me in real life, I'm maybe the most quiet, reserved person on earth. I have to force myself to speak out. I live in a house with five other people and I will go days where the only thing I say to anyone is telling my nephews good night. I feel like I can't talk. Like I don't know how. Which is a whole other kettle of fish, especially when it comes to recording voice over for a video.

But you sit me down in front of a keyboard, or even maybe a phone to some degree, where I can type out my thoughts? I used to be able to type as fast as some people could speak. And literally as I write this right now, I am more or less mouthing the words, either physically or in my head, as I type them. Like I am saying them. It's all a stream of consciousness. That goes for things I write here on this blog and it goes for video scripts, too. It's always flowed as naturally as running water (maybe too naturally, for how rambly I can get).

I would love to have the confidence to speak in the same way I type, and I know I have the capacity for it. I just get too nervous in the moment.

And as for how I handle people who are rude or don't understand me or whatever, I mean I have theories, but ultimately I don't know.

Like, something I learned early on was to distinguish the difference between people who are actually angry and people who are just trying to hurt you for laughs. I remember, all the way back when I was in Kindergarten or First Grade, some kids on the school bus were trying to get a rise out of me and in my head I kept thinking "They're just trying to make me mad, so I won't give them the satisfaction." And I just went totally stonefaced. When I objectively refused to react, they left me alone.

A few years later, I had friends who turned out to be bitter enemies that may or may not have ruined my life, and again, I learned new skills to deal with baseless people who were just trying to make me angry. I learned how to cope with or avoid some of that.

(Until eventually the bomb went off, I beat a kid black and blue, and was nearly charged with assault at 13 years old.)

And then a few of my first internet friends were deeply stubborn people who reveled in their ability to be rude, frustrating assholes. And, again, I learned ways to avoid, cope with, or defuse those people.

(Until I got tired of dealing with them and cut them out of my life entirely.)

Like, compared to some of the things I've had to endure, some of the things "friends" have said or done to me, an angry internet comment feels like a stiff breeze.

And I also just love putting myself in someone else's shoes. Thinking about how they came to a different conclusion than I have. Ask people who knew me 20 years ago and they'll tell you I used to (and still sort of do) live by a mantra that all arguments start as misunderstandings. If two people come to terms with their differences in perspective then all problems can be solved.

So I learned that when someone has a problem with me or something I've said, I just need to explain it better, or explain it more. If the scope of what I said is too small, then I need to provide a bigger picture view of where I'm coming from. And 90% of the time that is a great way to solve a problem, to come to terms and say "Tell me where you're coming from and I'll tell you where I'm coming from and we can meet in the middle." You're being heard, they're being heard, everybody (usually) wins.

I always try to come at everything in good faith like that. Even anger comes from somewhere. Understanding that helps everyone.

(Now, I don't always have the energy for that. There was a twitter thread last week where I incited quite a bit of Discourse™ and I eventually became exhausted by the endless supply of people who were looking for cheap dunks, or were being weirdly rude, plus I was deep into deadline stress... I ended up getting kind of punchy in a way I'm not super proud of)

And I guess just... all of this stuff, it all just combines into my ability to mostly handle it.

Which is why it can feel so weird when people don't want to engage me.

[oldguardleatherdog]

CW: Looooooong post

https://werewolfbarista.tumblr.com/post/697188935986708480/now-that-tumblr-user-hypnokinkdoggo-seems-2-have

This is about me. My termed blog @hypnokinkdoggo is being used to heap abuse and hate speech on me based on my age, disability, 9/11 injury, HIV status, and perceived mental state.

People are actually encouraging others to search for my posts and artifacts and continue harassing and abusing me. Check out some of the more toxic comments that have been slung my way:

This began with @commonpigeon in August 2022 and has caused me to be ridiculed by more than 9,000 people.

Repeated reports have been ignored.

I'm finding more of these all the time.

Cyberbullying is against the law. So is online hate speech.

I have hundreds of screenshots of what's been posted and I'm gathering more each day. Anti-harassment resources are out there, and I'm using them.

As I muck through this cesspool of violence and hate targeting me, I've been posting excerpts here with context and commentary. Some will be springboards for monographs I'll post here where I will explicate a hate comment and find the connection to our fight against the storm of RW laws etc. coming our way.

I'm not "calling people out" or encouraging others to make trouble for these posters: they're overwhelmingly Gen Z, with all the purity culture, casual cruelty, and lack of self-awareness and basic human decency that years of 4chan and bad parenting and moral numbness and MAGA have wrought on these kids.

But if you look at their blogs, they're trans, furries, queers, kinksters, pup players, artists, fandom experts, writers, students and more who fill their spaces with beauty and musings and song and art of their own creation and self-healing and introspection that's remarkably perceptive, sometimes moving, even profound.

They're capable of compassion and caring about strangers who just might be queer, furry, kinky, GNC, pups, seekers, writers, and fighting for trans rights - *their* rights - in ways not so different from their own.

But they refuse to show that care and compassion to me, and I don't have the slightest idea as to why I've been singled out and targeted for the most horrific and vile abuse I've ever seen in 60 years of hard living.

And it's not because of my identity, or anything I did that was controversial, or any political or cultural stance of mine, or that I behaved in an antisocial way or slurred anyone with hate or threats -

Its because a 20-year-old girl in Scotland found a stoned 3 AM post I made on a religion thread that was, well, a stoned 3 AM post about religion (I was a Lutheran seminarian and LGBTQ+ equality activist in the 90's) Stream-of-consciousness, rambled a bit, but nothing at all remarkable.

She copied my post from the blog where I'd replied, and she reblogged that *stolen* post for the express purpose of "dissecting" it for ridicule by her followers, and they obliged. Hard. Gleefully. Death wishes toward me included. Done just for laughs, for entertainment, for the lulz.

When I posted some of this a while ago, a follower of mine said, "I feel like the worst part is that they're not even like, 'I'm x-phobic and I hate you', this is just like, a Thursday night for them, it seems".

I've spent my life fighting - effectively - for our community from the minute I came out. Queer Nation, ACT/UP, med cannabis, marriage equality, trans rights, I've been there and I'm still here.

I'm not about to give up. There are too many younger than me who have been asking me to share my experiences with them, and I'm eager to do just that. I know how to fight the fascists with tactics you won't find online; they're in my activist heart, and they're yours for the asking.

For a useless cringe pervo insane grandpa on death's door whose ancient presence here is scandalous, I've got a good supply of wisdom and understanding. But with this, I am at a loss, and no one I know can figure it out.

I'm fighting for my own justice here. Thanks for reading. Peace.

[duhragonball]

Nanwum VII Update: 72,197

I'm starting to run out of gas, which is probably not a big deal since I already cleared 50k, but this bears out my whole strategy of building an early lead. My intention was to pull down 2k per day from the 13th to the end of the month, and I'm still on track, but on the 14th I fell a little behind and only got to 1709. It's not a problem, since I got caught up, but I need to be careful from here if I want to make it to 100k. Not that I need 100k, but I like bragging rights.

To reward myself for the insane wordcounts I put in earlier this month, I decided to watch all of the recent DBZ review videos that TotallyNotMark put up. You know, the ones with the new Team Four Star DBZA clips in them. I'd already watched the "Buu Bits" in a separate compilation video, but now I'm finally checking out the review and...

I don't know, there's a lot of good material in these things. The editing is top notch, and you could play these videos with the sound off and still enjoy it just as an hours-long DBZ highlight reel. And Mark has a lot of salient insights on the series. I particularly liked his analysis of Gohan and Videl's dynamic, and it's also refreshing to see a DBZ fan who, you know, actually likes the show. Like, he's gushing over Vegeta's character arc, or talking about how great the androids and Cell are without a bunch of qualifiers, and it's just refreshing to see that.

That having been said, the writing for these videos often ends up sounding like this:

Like, arguably, you can't do a six-hour review of a cartoon show without being a little pretentious, but there's sentences in these videos where it feels like YouTube is paying Mark by the word.

Also, he tends to make these off-the-cuff style remarks, like he's discussing creative decisions about making the video in the video. I get that too. I write my blog with that same stream-of-consciousness energy, because I really am making this up as I go. It's a blog, there's not gonna be a second draft. But he's doing a YouTube video, and there's a lot of production values involved and the work is pretty polished. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for him to talk about how the sausage is made. Just give me the sausage, which is footage of the cartoon with a guy telling me what he liked about it.

I've sort of had this fascination with the writing style throughout the series, and I think if I had to spoof it, I'd go with something like this:

"Again, as I said before earlier in this video, when I started this review, I wanted to avoid sounding pretentious, an attribute the likes of which can be disastrous for the making of a successful review. But, having established that fact firmly and decisviely, perhaps even conclusively--not withstanding earlier comments made about the length of Piccolo's cape, which is a subject for another day-- I can say with great certainty that Goku and Vegeta do indeed comprise a dramaturgical dyad, not only upon which the series depends upon, but through which we can see the true genius of one of the most influential manga authors of all time."

And while you hear this word salad, there's a cool shot of Vegeta beating up Pui Pui or something.

The weird thing is that I didn't really pick up on this in his GT, Super, or OG Dragon Ball review videos. It's almost like he's purposely writing more stuff so he has room for all the cool footage.

Right now I'm in the tail end of the Buu Saga, and while I give him credit for being diplomatic about it, Mark still falls into the same trap I see with a lot of critiques of the Buu Saga: They keep comparing the existing text with some hypothetical better story that they assumed Toriyama was planning to write instead, before he changed his mind.

I think everyone has run across this before. People saw Gohan take the main-character role after the Cell Games and assumed this was a guarantee. When Gohan gets demoted and Goku takes the lead again, they cry foul and complain about how Toriyama failed to make it work, or he just plain gave up. There's an old fan rumor about how he was "forced" to put Goku back in charge because of backlash from angry fans, but this is absurd on its face.

This leads to critiques of the Buu Saga that operate on the premise that there's some idealized "correct" version of the story, where Gohan trains really hard, beats Buu all by himself, and so on. Whenever the published version of the story deviates from this "correct" version, critics suggest that Toriyama got his wires crossed, and blame everything on the awkward pivot back to Goku.

To me, that doesn't make sense. "Gohan and the Next Generation defeat Buu" is a what-if fan theory. Maybe it's better than what we ended up getting, but it's not fair to review the published work by comparing it to a hypothetical draft that may never have existed. That's like if a food critic gave a steakhouse a bad rating because he thought it was a pizzeria and he's still mad that his sirloin didn't have anchovies on it.

When you look at the Buu Saga as it was actually presented, the throughline is clearly not about passing the torch to the kids, because they all get jobbed out and killed. So it's dumb to review the thing and complain that the Gotenks stuff is pointless, and Gohan's power up is unearned, and his loss to Super Buu really sucks the life out of the story, and gosh, this is a really terrible passing-the-torch story. Well that's because it's not a passing-the-torch story. It's a story about Goku trying to pass the torch, failing, and discovering that he still has a place in the world after all. The "torch" he was trying to pass was his identity and personal responsibility, things he can't just confer on someone else.

You can't just tell someone else they're the new protagonist of your story and now they have to go do your job and feed your pets while you play video games. Everyone talks about Vegeta going Majin as a manifestation of his mid-life crisis, but Goku's mid-life crisis was him dying at age 30 and nope-ing his way out of life to train in Valhalla for the rest of eternity. The Buu Saga forced him to accept that this was a mistake, which is why he doesn't just drink a vial full of heart-virus juice after the story ends. He's back in the world of the living and this time he knows he needs to stay there.

And when you look at it from that perspective, suddenly all the Gotenks/Elder Kai Ritual stuff makes a lot more sense as awkward farce. It's anticlimactic and unsatisfying because none of those plans were ever going to work. Nothing worked until Goku and Vegeta both got their heads out of their asses and worked together. The world didn't need martyrs or torch-passings or a 'next generation', it needed adults to put their personal feelings aside for the greater good.

[rodolfoparras]

Helppp, I feel like quitting tumblr cuz my writing kinda sucks but I also don’t want to because I like my little blog and all of the people I followwwwww

-⚰️😔

Noo sugar cube don’t say that!! Listen the most important thing is that you enjoy what you are doing and your writing skills will improve with time

When I started writing in March I’d post every 4 weeks ? Bc I’d be so in head if my piece was good enough I got sick from reading and rereading to make sure everything was alright and I’d also feel frustrated that this whole process slowed me down in terms of posting

So one day I started doing drabbles I think I tagged them as Alec blabbers where I didn’t care about grammar or plot holes or ooc moments i wrote them and posted them bc I enjoyed the idea and thought that someone else would enjoy them too and ppl did!

Now you’ll see me write full fledged fics with super fancy metaphors and 10/10 grammar other days you’ll see 4-5 sentences encompassing an idea, and sometimes it’s literally just hc-like posts but what they all have in common is that I enjoy making them

And with time my writing improved, I felt confident in my piece even if I wrote it in 30 mins compared to the 3 previous weeks I’d spend on a piece

I also want to point out that the beauty of tumblr is that there’s no requirement for what a good piece is, here streams of consciousness are more appreciated than fancy smansy metaphor and grammar

As long as you enjoy writing and posting ur pieces that’s literally all that matters

[tinyhousepanther]

Todays I-am-very-high-and-have-recently-rejoined-tumblr-because-I’ve-realized-I-need-more-social-interaction-but-tumblr-is-all-I’ve-got-the-energy-for thought is

… drum roll….

the most personal, soul exposing thing I think I could ever do, would be to let some one go through my ao3 bookmarks, even the private ones…. Like the amount of #asexual ♠️ 🐉���who kinda likes monsterfucking vibes but is also a depressed millennial who was into Harry Potter and anime and tumblr of yore. Yeesh, how cringe and vulnerable that would be.

Because I like to write when very high and used to write poetry as a moody teen. A good old internet rant into the void. This will get long and old school text formatting like the book House of Leaves is a thing I really love so weird punctuation and spacing ahead.

Also the recursive footnotes in the bartimaeus series

Also, also recently returned to tumblr… lured like a siren into this hell scape of super niche fandoms…. I blame @strange-aeons for making me nostalgic for this place.

On that note. I am actually editing this but mostly because my brain wanted to add things as I read this over for typos because cringe.

Nostalgia leads to reminiscing. I think it was @blackkatmagic who said in a note, that like some niche pairing of fandom like a ship no one asked for but one person dreamed of and a handful of other people liked, is like being in a little boat with them.

(And I had to go find that post so here it is)

And I really like that idea and I like writing stream of consciousness rants when high and also graphs, like data visualization, because I’m an engineer. So a nerd for Venn diagrams that are cool. Like can I make a web diagram bubble graph combo with bubble size for intensity of interest and lines to show how one community spawned an interest in another community? Maybe throw in a color scale for vibes? Like who are the landmarks I use to remember my internet past. Is this what mark zuckerburg is aiming to make for all of us? Can someone build this digital map of my psyche?

Let’s start listing citations to make this glorious journal paper of a post. Giving @strange-aeons or @danielhowell vibes but also @somemorenews and also @scishow and @fishingboatprocceeds energy.

This is like just feeling the need to give a good old trying to describe a very specific mood rant that live journal used to be for.….

Those vibes somehow. Also of course I listen to a lot of podcasts. Like @tanispodcast or @welcometonightvaletranscripts

Who is in this very niche intersection? How narrow of an audience am I?

Or ,

am I yearning for early days Facebook where you just liked a bunch of shitty pages that were just topics. Like quizilla was a window of my internet childhood/preteen (that’s a lie Neopets was first…….)

Which reminds me to also include @dilfosaur and @drawfee. Why do I love the sonic butthole saga so? Is Todd from Mario made manifest into the universe like a tulpa? Am I getting to last podcast on the left now? Do we need to get a net for me??? 🗑️ trap me under a wastebasket like a cat?

God I feel like I’m trying to write a phd thesis on my personality as described via citations of tumblr blogs and other early internet social media. Can I put footnotes in a tumblr post? No. Does my probably autistic ass want them so I can make a hyper detailed thing fully describes a hyper focus moment? Yes. Can I make a whole power point of just internet citations? Yes. Do I have the energy? No.

Should

Be narrating this? I wish, would be interesting if someone I’m citing replies or interacts with this.

Not to brag, but hey I actually did write a phd thesis and some one said it was good enough to give me a fancy piece of paper. I am doctor. Why am I still sad then? Oh, that’s mental illness right. Another citation for a mood elyse meyers

Is this stream of consciousness prose that I am writing while very high and curled in a blanket on my couch while having been overcome by emotion from a fanfic I was reading about a super random cross over of two media from my childhood? Then yes this is me. I am a garbage gremlin of a person who is shockingly successful in life despite my very fun depression and health issues who has way too many parasocial relationships in proportion to real world actual humans I see and interact with on a daily basis.

Is it not the human experience to try and communicate who we are to the world? The innate desire to be seen and known?

Or is that way to high brow for me just wanting to list a bunch of things I like so when I’m having a bad day I can come to this post and just be like…. Oh yeah I did like that one thing.

Like that one video by Drew/Danny/Kurtis that somehow always makes me laugh. Like that friend I had who I could also make laugh by playing the look at this graph vine? 📊. Yes like that. So this my reminder that hey stuff is good and joyful and cringe sometimes, so on the bad days go look at this stuff. I feel @danielhowell has thoughts on this.

That’s it. I should go to sleep. It’s midnight and I have work tomorrow and my cat is glaring at me because we are not snuggling yet.

P.S.

Tumblr really is just MySpace but somehow worse? Yet it’s what we have.

And really the porn had never left. What were they thinking they could do/are doing about it? Like hello tumblrlive makes this app so nsfw to scroll at work when I’ve got time to kill. But also sometimes I want to look at art someone has posted and I’ve got a notification.

[sugarmountainsinmyrearview]

Hello, world! <print>

Or something like that. It’s been a long stretch since my computer science days and all the ambitions I once held for that future for myself. And yet so much is still the same. I’m still the same. I still want to write. I still waste away at the beach and stare at the surf and yearn to be a part of it but sit and dream on the shore. I still think the same thoughts and share the same optimisms, pessimisms, fears and hopes for myself, my family, and the world. I still feel the weight of it from my shoulders to my hands and long to offer it as cupped water in my fingers to anyone who will share its drink with me. I still feel lonely sometimes and my dreams are only slowly and recently starting to feel like mine. Do we all always wonder if these dreams are our own? Didn’t I feel this way when I was spending four years pouring myself into a degree that feels like it should be hung in someone else’s home? I suppose I still dreamt the same dreams then, too. Our work culture has a funny way of capitalizing on humanity’s caring nature. Isn’t the American Dream sort of like succeeding in making money to care for your family in a way others could only dream of? I tried really hard to sell myself on the American Dream. I tried all the practical degrees- the ones my professors, mentors, parents said made the most money and obviously then the most sense. And here I am, still impractical, day dreaming, wanting to be an artist and creator and writer and orator and lover.

I had some concern and trepidation over embarking on a blog. It feels big to me. And self important? I want to connect with people through writing and fear that when I start to put words down that they will just be reflections of myself. Though I think a lot can be nailed down when you ride a stream of consciousness and see where it takes you, even if it’s only the boards of your lifeboat to make it out of your own head without drowning in the depths of yourself.

So here I go, diving in and hoping someone will find comraderie within some poems and thoughts. The great miracle of humanity is that we can communicate and understand each other despite every obstacle and division that should make connection impossible. We persevere, we love, we empathize, we forgo and trust and make leaps of intuition to share the same story. The human story. It is mine and yours and ours.

[anxietyburger]

the blog is back, baby.

it’s been almost a decade since i last seriously used this site. it was this website that first sparked my love for coding; so i guess this is kind of a full circle moment, since this blog will be dedicated to all the nerdy projects i am pursuing including building things. for most people my age, their first stabs at coding took place on myspace. but when that was popular, i didn’t have time for it. then, one day, along came tumblr. shortly thereafter, it was the golden age of fashion and lifestyle blogging. tumblr was a place where i discovered great writers and thinkers, and got to revel in my niche on the fashion side of tumblr. doing things for the aesthetic was born here. this was the stream of consciousness mood board that we didn’t know we needed. tumblr walked so pinterest could run.

being a creative, i fell in love right away. i spent HOURS tweaking my theme and diligently reading the code of themes i liked, trying to figure out what it all meant. i took free coding courses online and lived on stack overflow. i learned about API’s and how to read tumblr’s documentation (even though i understood basically none of it). i had myself a time. and then, between life just…life-ing, and tumblr passing from one wack owner to another, i kinda just fell off.

it sucks that twitter may be dying, but i’m not mad at winding up back here. at least i’ll be able to really keep track of my progress in a way that makes sense for me. for now, though, i’m gonna fight the very strong urge to use my newfound knowledge to code an entirely new theme (though i may add it to my project list).

[goombasa]

Writer's Block Sucks

So this is going to be an interesting experience, writing a blog post about writer's block while suffering from some level of writer's block, but hey, maybe it'll help.

I think one of the things I hate most about Writer's Block is the fact that it's a fairly nebulous descriptor. Yes, it basically describes the phenomenon where someone who writes, or wants to write, just cannot bring themselves to do so. But the cause(s) of said block can be… anything really. And it can last for any amount of time. I've had times where writer's block has lasted for only a few hours because I just couldn't find a decent adjective to describe whatever scene I was writing at the time, while some days I just sit down at my computer and nothing wants to spill out of my mind for no particular  reason, and then that state can continue onward for an untold amount of time. I think most writers have had at least one major stint of writer's block where you couldn't even look at your manuscript for, like, a month.

It can be even more aggressive too, lasting upwards of multiple months or even years, and there isn't really a catch-all cure for it, because the causes can be so different. Emotional states can kill your enthusiasm for a story, you can easily end up distracting yourself if you're the sort who suffers from AD(H)D or some forms of autism, and sometimes imposter syndrome will just take hold and not let go, preventing you from doing anything creative.

Sometimes the ideas just don't come. Sometimes they do, but you can't articulate them. Sometimes they're there, but you just don't have the energy. Not every form of writer's block is due to any verifiable external services. Sometimes you just don't feel it and sometimes life just sucks.

There's also the fact that writer's block can take other forms. The one that everyone's familiar with is the one where you just can't really write anything, you can't sit down and bang out anything at all. But I think one of the more insidious ones, one that I find myself suffering from more often, is one where I can write, but everything I write doesn't feel like it's my best. I've already had issues with cutting myself slack in the past, and so I'm prone to the idea of just tossing something out or stopping working on it entirely because I have trouble saying to myself, ‘eh, it's good enough.' For the longest time, it needs to be perfect the first go-round, and as you can imagine, that leads to a lot of wasted potential when I inevitably sit down to edit or revise a piece I've been working on, I get a decent amount into it, and then I just get frustrated because I have so much difficulty changing things that I know need to be changed.

Now, I can't offer solutions that work for everyone, as just like writing itself, I believe that everyone has their own way of going about it, but something that has helped me immensely, at least when it comes to that second sort of writer's block, is writing this blog. I don't know if y'all have noticed, but this blog and the posts I make aren't super deeply thought out, and their length and quality varies wildly from week to week, and the reason for that is because most of them are just stream-of-consciousness talking points about whatever topic happens to pique my interest that week. It's fast and loose and mostly going off of opinion (though I try my best not to state anything has a hard fact if I can help it unless I'm sure that it is; my last intention is to spread any sort of misinformation), and isn't meant to be any sort of deep statement on anything. It's basically just me doing what blogs were used for way back when, just sharing the odd, random thoughts that I have from week to week. The fact that it isn't anything that's really planned out or deeply researched, beyond the surface facts that I need when discussing certain things, I basically just sit down and bang out a post in an afternoon.

It's the furthest thing from fine writing you could imagine, but it is something that I wrote, from beginning to end, and while it's not amazing, it is something that I can take pride in. I get my thoughts down on paper, in a sloppy way, but I let it spill out onto the page, and it allows me to write. And that's what keeps me motivated. Because even if I have difficulty working on a more formal project that I have going at the time, the fact that I can still write something at all, I think, is an accomplishment. It keeps me from getting rusty, and keeps my creative juices flowing.

I can't say that this will help everyone who suffers from this, but my own way of treating it is… just to write. Writer's block, for me, often keeps me from working on specific things, usually my more serious attempts at storytelling, but just sitting down and banging out something quick and short, and non-committal, even if it isn't anything I plan on sharing with others or showing to anyone. My cure for my own writer's block is just to write, force out something small, keep myself in practice, and weirdly it works. It makes it so much easier to return to things that I consider to be much more in-depth projects and manuscripts. You can no doubt tell that this post is pretty scattered and doesn't have a lot of cohesion, and that's basically the point; it's a post meant to share thoughts and feelings and get something down on paper, keep my skills sharp, and hopefully start a conversation with those reading this.

And speaking of, I would love to hear what you all have to say. How do you deal with writer's block, and how often do you suffer from it? What sort of projects do you find it affecting the most? Let me know, I'm eager to hear more thoughts on this.

[themerelypersonal]

music

Listening to this song while I write about the story of my life. As music changes throughout this stream of consciousness, I will paste the songs in. I think this is my new blog. Instead of deleting the old blog I've kept over the years, I think it's time to start fresh. I've left my trails blog still open as I've vowed to myself to stop deleting blogs but I feel I need a new blog to mark my season of the cocoon. I've been doing the same in Spotify. I'm currently in Chapter 3 and I think about to begin Chapter 4. Whenever I write posts I want to involve my present experience more and observe it. Hence the music inserts. Music is the first creation of time travel I've found in this human experience.

Ash and Shaka came over earlier to play music. Worked on a song I wrote about Unity and this idea of being so close to a group of people that you don't know where their hands begin and yours end.

I finished Be Here Now by Ram Dass and am in delight and awe of this book. I meditated today in the sun and worked on focusing on my breath. Lots of saying "In, out, in out, "I feel hot" thought pops into my head and I observe it, in, out, in, "the sun feels nice", in, out, in.." and so on for 15 minutes. For the most part, I am able to empty my mind and I'm confused by that fact since I haven't really had a strict meditative practice. However, when I was Christian, I would sit for hours on end waiting for God to speak and in silent prayer. Maybe that time was my meditation. I've been praying quite frequently again too. It makes me feel connected to the deepest wish of peace and joy, to my dreams, and makes me feel like I'm making a difference in the universe via prayer. What I love most about this book is finding Jesus's teachings again and utilizing them. It's wonderful to find that all that studying of scripture was not a wasted effort. I've been wanting to read the bible again. I'm following a mixture of zen, buddhism, christianity, and paganism and its delicious. My mouth waters every time I hear the word "present" and my heart skips a bit when I contemplate love. I think of that verse that in order to inherit the kingdom of god we must be like children. I'm approaching this newfound spirituality like a baby. I seek to be fresh out of the woman, seconds old, ready to experience everything for the first time. Each day, I'll try to spoon feed myself spiritual baby food. Today's meal consisted of contemplating unity. Practice for when I must escape the warm covers of this cocoon. For now, I can rest in the simplicity of the womb. The safe place of contemplation and non-action.Soon, I will put it all into practice. For now, I learn.

I've been wanting to play this song on the piano and sing it. I may soon. I'm making progress on Rock Fall and it's starting to sound pretty lovely. I'm hoping I can video tape myself playing it and be done with it. After that, it's time to go back to The Curious Nature of Photons and play it how I intended. I think I can make it sparkle more. Its my masterpiece, I just know it. It just needs more spice and passion and my love the song has only increased since I stopped playing it. Perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder. For the longest time, I dared not play a note. It was too painful but I think I need to play it again and work through the pain. The only way out is through baby... The piano is a deep lover of mine. It's keys are so familiar. I hold hands with music with every touch. Newtons third law in practice with every note and it makes me giggle. I make love to this instrument ferociously. Loud, soft, big, small, swollen, and then I let the silences between notes speak for themselves. Some silences, longer than others.

I haven't climbed all week and I'm itching to go. I'm anxious to take a whack at the 12- and try again the 13-. I plan to end my workout with meditation and then maybe I'll crawl up in the kids room and read a book in the back until I have to go to work. I only work 30 hours but still wish I worked less. However, I am thankful that I have more of the morning to relax and unwind. On the weeks I have Ez, I will just go climb after I drop him off but on the weeks I don't, I plan to climb first and then go to the mountains after. I need mountains daily so going this week without the mountains will be a little tough but it's all gravy.

Off to the world of roblox with Ezra and maybe make some scrambled eggs/contemplate being the witness in my life and manifesting love.

[liberatingallselves]

August Meditations MMXXIV

My writer’s block continued this past year. It’s difficult to put down in words the thoughts that stream through my mind. They’re like clouds that continually change shape on a windy day. What appears as a fully formed idea in one moment quickly changes adding new perspectives on what was just said. Nothing in this stream lasts for more than a moment. Yet I persist in trying to capture it. Why?

I did post once and was writing another when a new illness intervened. I won’t bother you with the details. Except to say that it made finishing the new post impossible. I may try it again later if it seems relevant.

I intended to remove some of the old posts in this blog but didn’t get to that either. Hard to believe I’ve been at this for 14 years. And that it’s only been in the last couple of years that any of this has really begun to sink in. Now if experience only caught up with intellectual understanding. After all these years there is yet to be a significant switch in identity. No, “Aha!” moment. More like water dripping on pebble on a beach somewhere, slowly grinding it into sand. ‘Was I born to early,” I ask myself, “to be one of those who awaken in this new era of Awakenings that I find myself in?”

Looking back over the past year I see that I’ve for the most part I stopped reading spiritual material. I’ve also cut back on watching spiritual speakers on Youtube. I’m not sure if that’s due to spiritual laziness, the ego resisting its own dissolution, or if some unconscious incubation mechanism is at work that will lead to a later realization.

When I turn to thought I do see more clearly than ever that the ones that use the “I” word are not me. But this doesn’t create a fascination for discovering my true nature. I find that odd. Yet at the same time I’m aware that any attempt to look for my true nature will only produce another collection of thoughts centered around the word “I.” And what good is that?

It is indisputable that true nature cannot be thought. It’s that which is aware of thought but when the mind turns to it, i.e., awareness or consciousness, it automatically treats it as a thought. It can do no other being that the mind is a thinking machine. And following the mind in that endeavour ultimately leads to dissatisfaction, aka, suffering. I’m beginning to see why Zen Master Bankei said that “All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn.” There can be no resolution through the mind being that’s where thoughts, and perhaps the entire universe, is born.

That’s not to say that there is no place for thought. Beyond their usefulness in solving everyday practical problems, they can be useful pointers to true nature. But once you’ve seen where they’re pointing there is no reason to keep on pointing, is there? As Gangagi might say, at that point you just stop.

What is left when you stop? True, thinking continues but it no longer is a distraction. Distraction from what, you ask. Well, from the present moment. From the sensations in your body. The sounds in the air. The sights before you. All those physical sensations that make up the present moment. And there’s no need to think about it. But what, you ask, if there is some real physical danger in your present moment? What if a tiger jumps out of the forest? Shouldn’t you have a plan of escape ready? Well, it is a fact that if you take a moment to recall that plan then it’s likely the tiger will be upon you. The human body is born of a thousand, thousand generations of learning how to respond automatically to physical danger. It doesn’t need a mental plan when faced with a tiger, it just responds. Trust it to do its thing. Don’t fall into a mind trap.

When not distracted by thought attention turns to the immediate moment. For most of us mind will immediately start up again. When it does just return your attention to the present moment and keep returning. Even when the mind tells you there’s nothing there, that it’s boring, or that you should do some important thing first, keep returning to the sounds in the air, the sensations in your body, to your breathing. That’s where the real gold is.

Turning attention away from thought and towards sensation is becoming aware of awareness. Or might I say, awaring? There is no special thing called awareness that is separate from the forms that you are aware of. Thinking there is a separate awareness is just another mind trap meant to keep you going in circles. So don’t look for it. Just see that it is already here.

Years ago, I read that meditation is the practice of turning your attention away from thought towards the present moment. Reading that, my mind went on a journey to discover what that meant. “What is the present moment?” I asked. “What is the best way to turn away from thought?” “How do I stop thinking?” These and other questions were pondered, taking me further and further away from the very thing I sought. Now I know that if you just continually turn your attention away from thought (when there is no practical reason to think) and turn your attention back to the sensations of the present moment, that this practice will carry you all the way to the far shore to your true nature. And that you’ve always been on the far shore to begin with.

Maybe that’s why I read less and watch fewer Youtube teachers. Because there’s a part of me that understands that these activities only take me into my mind and away from present moment consciousness. Or maybe I am just lazy. No need to think about it, I guess.