The Suppository of Wisdom

She/her. 17. A place for bad writing.

[tastefullyoffensive]

(via rebellenoire)

[apandawrites]

[15x20]

[fashion-clue]

www.fashionclue.net | Fashion Tumblr, Street Wear & Outftis

[apandawrites]

Intial drawing: Cover of my comic project

[apandawrites]

Just some prose.

[apandawrites]

On Genius – 2am Ramblings

So there's this mailing list that I'm subscribed to for like ~$2 a month called The Best of Journalism by Conor Friedersdorf (who writes for The Atlantic) and it's actually one of my favourite things. In last week's selections, there was this article from a magazine that I had never heard of called The Believer about Srinivasa Ramanujan.

According to the article, Ramanujan was a mathematician who "found a way to carry himself over the infinitely steep hill, all the way to the gates of infinity itself, and then, miraculously, to disappear through a keyhole and come out on the other side."

Admittedly, I had not heard of him before. Yes I am a bad maths nerd – but upon some googleing, I discovered that Ramanujan (link to wikipedia) was not just famous for his 3900 theorems but for his incredible life story. He was an autodidact who received no formal training in pure maths. "Without a FA degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics, living in extreme poverty and often on the brink of starvation."

Okay so I'm like: Wow. This article is great, this person is fascinating – I should toally send this article to Yash. Who is Yash? Oh he’s a friend.

So I’m like, "Hey Yash, have you heard of Srinivasa Ramanujan?"And he was like "Yeah! He's a famous Indian mathematician – there was recently a movie about his life." “What? Really! That’s SO COOL.” (something like that)

So he tells me about this movie: The Man Who Knew Infinity (2016) and I’m like ok I need to watch this film. Like, right now. Like, it is an ungodly hour of night but I need to watch this film. So as it loads (read: right now) I had a lot of rambly thoughts.

First of which is: Was Ramanujan some kind of genius? By the dictionary definition, yeah pretty much – but that refers to the idea which we somehow collectively subscribe to, that people are just born great or smart and some were just destined for greatness while others were destined to hang out eating Doritos etc. 

I think that definition of genius oversimplifies people too much. 

The Greeks (at least I think it was the Greeks) believed that a genius was some kind of muse. It was not a person, but a spirit that came to a person. 

So I’m thinking about wtf even is genius but the main idea that I’m trying to get at is the answer to the question of “what is the difference between moments of genius, and normal mental drudgery?” 

And I’m like: Oh, intuition. Perhaps the separation between the genius and the mundane is intuition.

Ramanujan clearly had an intuitive sense for the infinite and if geniuses (such as Ramanujan) are able to "take a few angelic leaps of pure intuition and arrive at an unexpected new truth," (as said in the previously linked article) then I have a worthy question.

Can genius be learned? 

Or, in other words, can intuition be learned?

imo - a: Absolutely.

[imperfectlyxo]

If you are scrolling through Tumblr trying to distract yourself from something you don’t want to think about, or you’re looking for a sign. It is going to be okay. Just breathe. You are alive and you matter. 

[poolsidescientist]

Emotions, Abuse, and Fandom Hatedom

       Recently I’ve had some highly unpleasant experiences with the hateful side of fandom, both on this site and in real life. As a result, it’s gotten me thinking why fictional characters are treated the way they are. Female characters tend to be more polarizing than male, especially when it comes to shipping (I’m looking at you Avatar fans). Most prickly tend to be characters who either are abused, villains, or a combination of both. Avatar the Last Airbender, and Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire fandoms tend to treat characters similarly. At least in my experience. A noteworthy example of this is comparing how Mai and Sansa are treated, as compared with Cersei and Azula.

        All aforementioned characters are abused at some point in their respective stories, Mai, Cersei, and Azula by their families, and Sansa by the family she was intended to marry into. Cersei and Azula are undeniably villains, Mai is initially presented as an antagonist but later (somewhat) redeems herself, and Sansa is one of the main protagonists of ASOIAF. Both Sansa and Mai are vilified by their respective fandoms, in Sansa’s case, by the television adaptation of the series as well. Cersei is presented as a villain, often hated, but treated heroically by Game of Thrones and often seen as ‘badass. Azula, despite being a villain, albeit fascinating one, is often woobified by fans. What do Sansa and Mai have in common to deserve the hatred they receive? What do Cersei and Azula have in common that makes fans justify their actions as heroic?

       Setting aside ship wars, which play a huge role in Avatar the Last Airbender fandom disputes, I think a big part of how these characters are received goes back to how they respond to abuse. Azula responds to her dysfunctional family by becoming a secondary abuser and trying to control the people around her, often with violence. Cersei, though less successful and as a result is more likely to be seen as a villain, does very much the same thing. Both characters abuse a brother, try to emulate their father, and will use any amount of force to get what they want. Both fascinating characters. Both antagonists. Both externalize abuse.

       On the other hand, Sansa and Mai both tend to internalize their emotions. In Sansa’s case, through being a perfect lady, in Mai’s through acting apathetic. Both characters are put in uncomfortable positions by the royal families of their respective series. Sansa is a protagonist, Mai starts off as an antagonist before defecting to the heroes’ side. Neither character is particularly aggressive. And both characters receive ridiculous amounts of hatred. Not rational character criticism, but unwarranted hatred. More so than most other characters in ATLA and ASOIAF.

        I think, as a society, we understand abuse, violence, and retaliation in a certain way. Fandom seems to be a good metric about this. Hopefully someone more knowledge about this topic than me will dig deeper into the issue.

[mariyapilipenko]

A candle for the victims of the Orlando shooting.

[apandawrites]

[angryartist113]

“Is This Healthy” is a comic that I made for an independent study in which I looked deeper into the idea of health, mental, physical, and emotional as it relates to myself.

This project was extremely personal and I thank any of you who take the time to read it

[fortuitoussfindingss]

This really hits home to me.

[conservative-sindorei-deactivat]

Appreciate the intent of the article, but it takes away from the lesson of body positivity to have one of the characters say “besides, skinny girls are gross and boney”. Give positivity to curvy girls everywhere I’m all for that - curvy girl myself. Don’t diminish another group of people to do it though.

[angryartist113]

I agree with you, I hate tearing others down to bring someone up, that is why the line about skinny girls is immediately responded to within the comic with “Why do you have to speak poorly of others to speak well of me?”

I meant no harm against smaller women with that segment, it was based on actual conversations between my partner and I that bothered me a lot and I wanted to put it into my work since it pertained to the overall idea of the comic being about my personal feelings and experiences.

[conservative-sindorei-deactivat]

Ahh perfect I see. I apologize; I was in my car reading between lights and didn’t see that line. Thanks for pointing it out!

[angryartist113]

No problem! I appreciate the dialogue :)

[apandawrites]

This is beautiful :)

[amandatoryfun]

Writing music is still writing right? 🎺🎷

[apandawrites]

If Girls Were Flowers

[shrimplydelicious]

“I’m finally going to write! I have a great idea!”

[apandawrites]

Dear Friend: Unreasonable Deadlines

Every time someone complains about an unreasonable deadline, whether it’s a production deadline, an academic deadline, or some kind of creative deadline, I always think back to that 10 page research paper that I was given like two months to write but decided to procrastinate the shit out of and write in two days. Holy hell, bad idea – bad bad bad bad fucking idea – but I mean I did it.

Point is, don’t second guess yourself. Yeah the deadline might be unreasonable as fuck and difficult as shit but I mean, think about the times that people have procrastinated until beyond the point of reason.

Dear friend: Bitch, if I can pull off some weird horrible research paper bullshit in two days, you can meet your production goal. You got this. You’ve done this before. 

Have a Chinese saying: “世界无难事，只怕有心人”