#the kindest heart still is eaten away by that poison. it's about the difference between wanting to understand something

[saintofblasphemy]

oh ok i see so basically this is one of the best shows to come out of the last ten years. got it.

Ok i will watch the terror

[yurayuramiharin]

Ruthari #7 for the prompt? 👀

Ship + kiss writing challenge

7: A kiss to shut up

When the two elves were heading back to their sleepy village, the horizon was glowing with pinks and violets of the incoming sunrise. They’d been out all night, watching Moonstriders on a secluded clearing by the waterfall and strolling through the Moonshadow Forest trembling with the magic of the Spring Equinox. 

Ever since they’d left the clearing, Ethari was silent, so silent that Runaan, the least talkative elf in Silvergrove, was starting to panic and making up the worst scenarios. He’d asked the young metalsmith for a hangout a few days ago when Lain had literally pushed him inside the forge and demanded that he finally asked Ethari out and quit his endless pining. Runaan would never dare to call it a date, let alone say it out loud. And certainly, he would never expect that Ethari would agree to hang out with him. 

In his head, Runaan thought that Ethari hated their hangout and would rather keep quiet about it than make Runaan sad. He should’ve planned this hangout better. Shadows, he didn’t even know if Ethari liked Moonstriders in the first place! Runaan should’ve known that not everyone was obsessed with Moonstriders as much as he was because regular elves were not necessarily interested in details of their behavior, when and where they migrated during the year, or how their age could be estimated by the slight differences in the color of their feathers–

“Runaan?” Ethari’s gentle voice struck him out of his thoughts. He rapidly turned his head towards the metalsmith, afraid that on top of everything, he'd upset Ethari by ignoring him. Instead, he saw Ethari smiling at him in a way that made his heart skip a beat every time.

"I was asking if you think they're going to be there next week too?" Ethari asked, continuing to walk leisurely next to Runaan.

"Y-yes, they should be there until mid-May," Runaan mumbled in response.

"I see," Ethari nodded before the silence fell between them again. Runaan couldn't bear it. He stopped and so did the other elf.

"Ethari, I… Please don't have to pretend you're enjoying this," Runaan stuttered. "I know you agreed to come only because you're too kind to refuse,"

"Runaan, I'm not pretending!" Ethari instantly protested but Runaan was too caught up in spilling his thoughts.

"I know that I can be annoying, t-that I don't usually talk, and when I do I mostly talk about Moonstriders or combat. And I know I don't always get the jokes you and Lain tell me," 

"Runaan…" 

"A-and even though I know you're the kindest elf in Silvergrove, I didn't expect you to agree to come to hang out with me like that, a-and you asked me if I know someplace special and this was the only— mmh!" Runaan was not allowed to finish his sentence when Ethari cradled his face in his hands and pressed their lips together. 

Just like that, the whole world around them went still. Runaan froze, too stunned to react when Ethari's soft lips kept moving against his own, and it felt nowhere near the way Runaan had pictured it in countless of his dreams. It felt even better, warmer, and sweeter than Moonberry Surprise and Runaan wished their kiss would never end.

In the end, Ethari pulled away from him but didn't let go of Runaan's face. He was looking at him with those deep brown orbs and Runaan had to remind himself how to breathe again when Ethari chuckled and shook his head with eyes closed. 

"Now that you finally shut up, listen to me," Ethari laughed, slowly stroking Runaan's cheekbones with his thumbs. "I loved our hangout, every second of it. I love when you tell me about Moonstriders, how your eyes light up whenever you do," Ethari spoke and Runaan could swear that if it wasn't for the rising sun blinding him from behind the trees, he would think that he'd eaten poisonous berries and was now hallucinating. 

"You're not annoying in the slightest. Even when you're not talking, you're a wonderful listener and it made me so happy when you invited me to come with you tonight. It was amazing and I was hoping we could do that again."

"E-eee…" Runaan tried to say something but it seemed like Ethari had temporarily taken away his ability to form coherent sentences. Ethari was practically grinning with delight now, his smile brighter than the sun before his eyes. 

"I take it as a 'yes' " Ethari whispered before he pulled Runaan's face closer once again, sealing their arrangement with a kiss. 

[indd40041020202021]

a week and a half of revving my engine

This last week I thought a lot of time thinking about what my project could be. It feels like I’m back at square one in a way, but I think that moving through all of the ideas that I’ve had has made me come to more manageable decisions - even from last week. 

I had originally come back to this idea of playground, or taking a literal piece of another world and planting it on the school patio or parking lot roundabout, something that be big, stand out, stand in it. But I think that I don’t have enough time for this! After speaking to Sophie and Keith, I realized that I can still approach the idea of design fiction or even a counterfactual through a single object. I think I’d like to do 2-3 objects to get a rounded understanding of what ‘objects’ might be in this world. Even the word object, sopping with use, may not be applicable in the final work. Sophie mentioned how nature and technology are often at an impasse, oil and water. Carbon technology may be a way to move away from that idea. 

This week, Neri Oxman did a quick chat with Paula Antonelli about some of her work in material ecology. One thing that stuck with me was her explanation of the same issue, the oxymoron of nature and tech or material/anthromass as she says, that it is an oxymoron only until it isn’t true. She spoke about the idea of reincarnation. I thought about planned obsolescence. Currently it’s a false obsolescence, it exists forever in dumps, buried in the ground and contributing to the Anthropocene, or in the ocean as micro-plastics clinging to the gills of fish. If we are designing with nature, we need to understand nature’s process, which includes the process of death, or true obsolescence. How can it go back? I’m glad she made a point of saying “NOT circularity, but reincarnation”. In third year, we did a project on circularity, and its faults seems glaring to me. This idea of the circular design system is false as well - the material will always end up as garbage. It’s more of a spiral than a circle, the recycling only prolongs the cycle. This is not to say I don’t support re-use and recycling (if things actually get to recycling and not the Phillipines as Canadian trash), but I don’t think it’s the answer to our massive and wicked problems. Our anthro-mass outweighs naturally produced biomass globally. That is INSANE. 

Neri also spoke about templating; this helped tie together some thoughts I had been having about politics of use and humans’ issues with control. How can I create, take ownership for work done by other species, or avoid ideas of ownership altogether but still have some control of material direction. Neri spoke about how her team uses generative modelling, programming, and ‘templating’ to create an idea of where the direction of the work may go, but leave a lot of the actual understanding of how things will be brought together to the other species, such as silk worms. If I am imagining myself in this other world as a ‘designer’ or hacker or builder or whatever word makes better sense, I think this idea of scaffolding the intent is where I need to be going here. How can I support other species to create in tandem with us, in a way that remains beneficial and non-exploitative for all parties involved. ..or is that putting a lot on myself? hahahah I often hear retorts to this co-exist idea with Darwin’s survival of the fittest, but in reading more about Darwin’s work, it seemed survival of the kindest was much more akin to his beliefs. I heard an incredible story on the radio today about the Monitor Lizard. Recently, Monitor Lizard numbers have been dropping because of a poisonous invasive species called the Cane Toad. For this reason, scientists have been researching the Monitor Lizard more closely, and discovered something incredible about the way they lay their eggs.

The Monitor Lizard lays its eggs underground in a burrow, but a burrow unlike any other. They dig down into the earth in a helical pattern, digging for up to 3.6 meters! The giant underground network is then used not only by the lizard to lay their eggs, but 750 individuals of 28 different vertebrate species in a combination of 16 warrens made up of many individual nesting burrows and a handful of foraging burrows. This blew my mind. This lizard - a massive, dangerous predator - was not only coexisting, but building the structures in which to do so. The scientists who discovered this warned about the decline in Monitor Lizard population because they also maintain these burrows, preventing them from caving in and allowing species continual safe refuge. 

I feel as though our narratives of killer stories that we have pushed onto nature are becoming increasingly moth-eaten. There is this interconnectedness, this holistic entanglement (as this project was first called) that creates a mesh of life that supports all of us. I thought it was really beautiful while reverse searching this image in hopes for a fuller version, that Google’s algorithm pulled results from DNA strands, human spines, wisps of smoke. These visual comparisons feel like some kind of key in unlocking meaning the world - like how tree branches look like lung bronchioles or how wool looks like mycelium, or how onion rings look like tree rings, or how a myriad of other things mimic each other in form.   I watched a show called Alien Worlds this weekend - it’s like Planet Earth, except astrophysicists and astrobiologists estimate what lifeforms would be like on other planets. It was amazing to see how science uses fiction to not only project onto other planets, but also interrogate our own planet, trying to go back and forth between planets to understand the other. Many times in the show, I found myself asking whether the planet they were on was Earth or an imagined one - like the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia - so incredible! This show reinvigorated my sense of fiction as a real way of working through problems.   

^This is on Earth, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia

So I have been doing more than just reading and watching and listening (although I believe these are all valid forms of work for my project).  I’ve really been thinking about what the final form is going to be.  In this world, biomimicry will not be a word because it will not be an outlier activity that needs to be defined, as it will be part of the makeup of how the world works. I want the items to feel as though the integration of nature is seamless, somehow harnessing its ways of working through templating structures.  In these drawings, I was thinking about comparing things we use now to how they would look in this other world. phones for communication might not rely on sound but on vibration to transmit messages. Maybe sound or bioluminescence is a language of its own (or hacking into a mycelium network). I was trying to mimic patterns of deep sea squids for their light patterns. I thought about combining a free energy coil with a spinning magnet that smacks against a crystal - this, in theory, could actually act as a battery (the coil itself would be enough, but hitting a magnet on a cystal supposedly acts as a capacitor from what I’ve read, so it would be a way of storing energy in a natural way)

Below I thought about screens, and how often we use them. I found a video on youtube that shows how to use smoke to display video. Could steam from a geyser or from dry ice work in the same way? I also thought about direct reciprocity - offering the privilege of warm-blood to our cold-blooded creatures. (although I’m also thinking about layered reciprocity - again, to reference Alien Worlds - the snottites in extremeophile caves - bacteria feeding off chemicals, the snottites dripping into the pools below, feeding the fish, the fish giving off chemicals, etc) I’ve been thinking about ceramics because there is this connection to earth in a way that many other mediums don’t have. I was thinking about Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter, how technology like that could be better integrated into nature and used for building materials or even for creating art. I imagined a tree hanging over a beach with a large lens grown into a crotch in the branch. As it sways over the sand below, the lens magnifies the heat from the sun and creates a glass structure beneath it. 

I started thinking more about bioluminescence, knowing that some seaweed hsa that property. I also found out that certain lichens glow under UV blacklight (also scorpions, as per the Alien Planets show). I think there’s something that feels otherworldly with bioluminescence, and it may be a good way to visually connect other worlds with this world. (also thinking of Sputniko’s transgenic silkworm bioluminescent jacket here)  I bought a UV flashlight and am going to take it out to explore the forest at night for inspiration! In my world, I thought about structures. As Sophie mentioned carbon-based technology, I tried to imagine what an engineered version of this would look like? bioluminescent seaweed lights up when agitated, what if we could use this as an indicator of chemical agitation, such as water pollution, or maybe even engineer the algae to create freshwater - desalinating pockets so that we don’t take too much from our finite sources of freshwater. I also thought about the possibility of asking for help with health indicators. If, for example, this world is part of a counterfactual where we responded to environmental warnings back in the 70′s and we did not spiral into the sixth extinction; we would hypothetically preserve many species extinctions, including those who have gone extinct before we had a chance to ‘discover’ them. In this thought, I thought about a species of leech that developed bioluminescent qualities, such as the algae. We can interact with the leech by allowing it to take a sample of our blood, and we can read the colours it flashes back to us as an indicator of our blood levels or heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, etc.  At first I imagined this as the real-world exhibit prototype - a porcelain  that you put your finger into, a sensor triggers a motor that triggers an arm with a spike on it to prick your finger. This tells the computer to turn the lights on, and a projection of a leech-like shadow swimming inside, that flashes colours.  My husband is a film maker and I was asking him how this could be done and he just said to me “why would the leech be in a container in this world?” and I said back “well, it would be this pocelian hub that sticks out of the water with a finger hole in it so you knew where the leech was”... and he kind of looked at me and said “why don’t you just put your finger in the water?” .. duh.  So I thought about a different way, a MUCH easier way - I can create 3D model of a leech/fish, 3D print it and make a silicone mold with a cavity inside. I can then take a simple swimming motor from a childrens toy and hide it inside, insert an LED, use a silicone shell to make it water proof, and have it swim around in a tank as an example of what it would look like. I really love this idea as it speaks to extinction, other creatures, and reciprocity as well (feeding the leech). 

I was thinking about infrastructure, and what a harmonious city might look like. I was inspired by Naomi’s work with rope, and thought about cities that don’t cut down trees - how ‘sidewalks’ would become raised paths, made of strong grass rope. 

I also thought about seaweed as a solar panel, as I was inspired by plant based solar cells. What if street lights absorbed energy through the day and emitted a green glow at night, all through natural means? I thouht about meditation too, lowering ourselves into the earth to be literally head-level with other creatures. It reminded me of something I had written in second year, and I like that idea of embodiment being an important tool in understanding. 

I feel that I’m starting to gain traction in a direction, bringing these heady ideas down to the ground.  I started to look at places that sell live algae culture, but most of them are far away, in the states or beyond. Of all the places I looked, I took an exasperated swing at craigslist and found someone in Surrey who sells live algae for aquariums! So I ran out and bought a bottle. I also bought some grow lights and plan on expanding this bottle so that I can create a little algae cloud. I don't know if this is bioluminescent, but I feel that through growing the algae I might find other uses for it, or somehow add bioluminescent bacteria into it, or something.

I asked my dear friend Rylee, a biologist at SFU about what to do. He gave me a big run down on how to make algae from natural sources (he got back to me after I bought this bottle). I asked him about bioluminescence, and he replied: “ hmmmmm. ya. i dont know of any freshwater bioluminescent algae altho im sure it exists. lots of saltwater diatoms and other non-algae like protozoans or bacteria. theres lots of research on using bacteria to flouresce to indicate all sorts of things. most are genetically modified. im curious how u wud fake it. haha” The algae that I bought is cultured in saltwater, maybe if I grow it in salt water I might have a chance on introducing bioluminescence?

I was doing some other reading, and thought about technology and nature again, and had a thought about circuit boards. Most electronics work off circuit boards, but why does the board have to be hard plastic?  I emailed Tim in the interaction design about it, and he told me that PCB printers use extreme heat for an extended period of time, and for that reason, most organic materials don’t work. However, I knew about conductive thread, and Tim reminded me that the Soft Shop might be able to help me embroider a circuit onto the seaweed. So Tomorrow I am going into the soft shop to work on that. In the meantime, I experimented with sewing copper wire into kombu. The kombu was fairly sturdy, but the grain of the kombu made it difficult to sew as you would with a regular fabric.I tried to sew a rip together, and it seemed to hold while wet.  As it dried, it separated, but didn’t tear other than where the original tear was. Imagine an internet of seaweed, flowing circuits of kelp forests lighting up, powering the world.  I’m really into this direction!

[fasengeta]

The familiar clatter of shopping carts breaking free from their corral made her flinch inwardly and clutch her bag closer to herself as she walked through the sliding glass doors of her own personal purgatory. The day had yet to begin and with that old bone tired ache drumming a steady beat against her ribcage while financial necessity loped and braided itself around her neck like a hangman’s noose, she knew deep in her soul that today was not going to be a good day. She wanted to go home. Heck, she regretted getting out of bed this morning. Still... it was better for her future to be employed in a job she disliked than to try to get by on what little the state would willingly provide an unemployed student. That being said, the day she finally walked out the front door for that final time, she'd be resisting the urge to moon dance all the way to the parking lot. It would be a long time until that was possible but the distant dream still made a path for the tiny ghost of a genuine smile to cross her lips. Pausing a moment to take a small glance around to judge if today would be busy or not, she was glad to note that it didn’t look like the lines to check-out were overcrowded. The customer service area looked packed, but it was rare to see less than twelve people waiting in line at any given time before 9:00. She started walking once more and smelled a whiff of the faint earthiness from the brightly colored cactus plants that were sold by the anti theft detention system near the greeter’s station. The familiar face of an employee who’s name she couldn’t quite recall… (Greg? Grant?) waved airily at her with all the artificial cheer of a painted clown doll. She waved back, still trying to place his name (the distance between them made it impossible to make out what was displayed on his name tag), the practiced motion having been thoroughly ingrained into her over countless wasted hours devoted to workplace integration videos. The moment of timed obeisance to their company ended and Gabe or Gary(she was fairly certain that it began with a ‘G’) quickly set himself to welcoming the next few people to enter through the doors as she continued on, still idly wondering who it was that manned the door. It probably didn’t matter if his name was Gino or Griff. She wasn’t especially outgoing and the thought of interacting with others made the nervous little butterflies that lived forever in her gut flitter and furl their figurative wings as if pursued by a particularly rambunctious kitten. She had hoped that the time she’d spent completing her training and interacting with others on the job would make that interaction easier but sadly that hadn’t proven the case. Worse still, it had seemed like the gulf between herself and other people had seemed to only widen and she often felt more alone than she had before she’d been hired. A shucked ear of corn slid out of a customer’s overflowing vegtible bag and rolled across her path, causing her to sigh as she bent over to pick it up, and return it to the man. “Thanks.” He’d said, not even bothering to look at her before he’d placed it back with the others in the crate. She frowned and had started to make her way towards the abandoned corn when she’d caught sight of the produce department worker waving her off, pointing to himself then the corn, his unspoken “I got this” was clear as day on his face.  She nodded to indicate her understanding, before she caught sight of the vaguely unnerving gaze of an abandoned plush toy surrounded by a a well-stacked fortress of freshly made marketplace salsa and stone-fired naan chips. One thing that she had become used to seeing while working retail was the various oddities that the customers tended to leave in the most improbable places. At least this time, she thought as she picked up the toy to drop off at the lost and found at customer service, the item left wasn't living. She would never forget how guilty she had felt when she'd discovered one of the store's Betas with the seasonal Valentine's day supplies. The fact that someone had callously abandoned a helpless creature that had never harmed anyone to die among mass produced greeting cards and overpriced chocolates pressed in the form of hearts probably said something mildly phylisophical about people in general but whatever one might have decided called it, she'd taken it as a sign that the fish needed an extra pair of eyes to look after them. The pets area wasn't exactly her section, but checking in on the little guys to make sure they were all present and accounted for was never any trouble. It relieved her to know that they were ok. What would happen to them after she'd finally graduated and left her current job was something she didn't really like to think about so she did her best to put it out of her mind. Shaking the depressing thought from her head as she crossed the double doors that led to the back. Compared to the relative calmness on the sales floor, the receiving area was a flurry of activity as usual, the employees moving crates and pallettes in place as they unloaded the supplies from the food trucks. Without giving much concious thought to the action, her eyes sought out a familiar mop of brown hair. Finding no sight of Amedeus, she purposefully marched up to the card reader next to the computers and swiped her ID. The name 'Marceline' quickly scrolled across the screen and she tapped the 'CLOCK IN' option with more force than what was probably necessary. The system was often finiky and it wouldn't be the first time that it had failed to read a prompt correctly. She’d already sat through the embarrassment of  contacting a salaried manager to help her record the correct hours(she’d tried to take a lunch break and the system had cheerfully alerted her that she couldn’t take a break when she hadn’t yet arrived) and she wasn’t at all eager for an encore performance. The screen informed her that her presence had been noted and she stalked over towards the employees lounge to stow away her perishables in the fridge before beginning her shift. The familiar scent of roasted coffee struck her the minute she entered the room and her face contorted into a sour frown. She hated the sludge her store referred to as coffee but as if eager to worsen her already foul mood, her lack of energy had chosen that moment to smack her in the face and remind her that in order to operate within the required specs of her job, she was going to have to grind up her taste-buds, boil them on the sacrificial pyre of poorly processed coffee seeds, and serve it on a platter of self-castigation. She wasn't particularly picky when it came to coffee, and she could detect  northing in that smell that would indicate that there would be any difference between the brews made in the office and the ones sold in a coffee shop. But,she thought darkly as she picked up one of the small Styrofoam cups, once a person made the mistake of ingesting it, the similarities stopped there. She brought it to her lips and winced, her body seizing up as it tried to process what it was consuming. Marceline had never eaten tobacco products, nor had she ever chosen to smoke, so her thoughts on the matter would be considered anecdotal at best, but that cloyingly bitter smell that wafted out of cheap cigarette butt was the closest analogy she had at her disposal that came to truly describing the abject awfulness that was her store’s coffee. Sadly, while she could openly declare the taste of it to be literally sickening, it didn’t stop her from taking a cup or three when she needed the caffeine. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and free was still free. When the situation called for it, like today, she just had to grin and bear it. The store expected the employees to shroud themselves with a mask of false happiness while working. It made sense that they’d expect the same from them when it came to their coffee too. She tossed the cup in the trash, then rolled her eyes in minor annoyance as the object hit the side of the bin and bounced off, landing a good couple of centimeters away from the intended destination. Secretly glad that no one except the security guard who monitored the cameras could have seen that slightly ego-bruising miss, she pitched it directly in it’s place where it thankfully remained(she might not have considered herself an overly prideful girl, but she did set some standards for herself and tossing cups into cans less than three feet away was one of the more unspoken ones). Having accomplished this, she removed the tarragon chicken salad wraps she’d made for herself and Amadeus for Lunch. Truthfully speaking, it wasn’t exactly a meal worth bragging about, but she‘d been wanting to try the recipe  out since she’d found it in the middle of looking for another meal idea. Inspiration had waited until last night, when her brain knew she would have an exam in the morning to strike and had refused to leave her alone until the wraps were finished. On the plus side, she’d been able to sleep after that. On the other, well... it had been 4 am and after a week of poor sleeping habits, it was difficult to tell the pink of her Iris from the tiny red veins that zigzagged across her sclera. She had liked the results well enough when she’d eaten some of what had remained after she’d made their wraps for breakfast, and with any luck Amadeus would enjoy them too. She hoped he would anyway. With the luck she’d been having lately he might have an allergic reaction to it and she’d be forever apologizing to the kindest person she knew for accidentally poisoning him in her ignorance. Having safely deposited the food she’d kept in her bag in the fridge, marked with a name and a date on the side to inform the maintenance workers who were tasked with cleaning the fridge not to touch it(and supposedly deter thieves), she made her way to the locker room to put her bag inside her little padlocked hidey-hole. It was, like her lockers in both high school, and middle school before it, ordered chaos in physical form. The only thing that differentiated the three was the three was the complexity of the course material they contained but not much else. She still had little doodles on the side of some notes and a series of body parts she’d spent time practicing on another, even a little comic she’d created featuring a tiny stick figure that was carrying a box labeled microeconomics coursework. The box gradually increased in size as the panels went on, weighing down her sweaty and exhausted little character as it tried it’s best to carry it’s progressively cumbersome burden. This continued until it reached the final panel, where all that could be seen of her mini dramatis persona was it’s legs and arms, pinned in place by the massive box it had collapsed beneath after it had gotten too big for her abused person to bear.

[stlaika]

i am feeling so many emotions right now and i think the strongest is like this is a show made of compassion. compassion for those men that died and compassion for the inuit people affected by that colonisation.

it's a story about love and inevitability and odds that will never be conquered it's about the poison of imperialism and how the kindest heart still is eaten away by that poison. it's about the difference between wanting to understand something and wanting to conquer it

it's about tenderness and how it exists in the most hostile places. it's about what people can do at their worst and how they dont need to be at their worst to do their worst

it's about sacrifice- both the willing kind and the kind that imperialism makes for its own benefit.

but most of all i think it's a tribute. it's about saying we remember you. and we are telling your story. warts and all. because we want to remember you as you were. not as an idealized fantasy but as the people you were.

Finished the terror do u wanna see the essay i wrote thru actual tears

abso fucking lutely