flowers will grow on necromancy's grave

30s all pronouns. NunPod.com and @clockedtomb on tiktok

[clockedtomb]

I did my first open mic as a poet! It was terrifying but in fairness I did it, like, the most open-heart I possibly could because of who I am as a person. My set consisted of:

"A Poem to Make Your Mom Want to be a Trans Faggot" by Andy Izenson, from The World That Is Coming Inside You

"Spiders" by Andy Izenson, from The World That Is Coming Inside You

An untitled poem of mine whose entire text is "My love for you is the magic in the revolution. My love for you is the terror in the apocalypse. My love for you is wondering if the terror in the apocalypse was only ever a wet hole begging for as much revolution as we can fit."

A poem I wrote a month ago entitled "Things I Would Like to Be Caught Doing to Convince Andy Izenson, Author of The World That Is Coming Inside You, to Fall in Love With Me" The inscription Andy wrote in my copy of The World That Is Coming Inside You, which arrived a few days ago.

[clockedtomb]

[clockedtomb]

The Same Poem Again

Thank you Come closer I am so happy And so in love

[clockedtomb]

It is a sin to wake a sleeping person But you woke me anyway Because you wanted me Asked me gently if I'd like to have coffee with you

We said so much to each other last night about what we are reading and thinking and doing Our troubles and hopes and projects The chicken coop, the article, The new love and the old Deep past and near future, The intimacy beyond sex/not-sex You know that I would permit you anything

But there was more waiting The girl from the party The poem you hadn't read The job interview, the meeting The work that is forming inside us, Calhun and Cohen and Eichmann and the vastness of what we cannot know I forgot to tell you I wrote about you At the poetry workshop this week They asked for a line that a friend loves: So close, your hand on my chest is my hand (So close, your eyes close as I fall asleep)

[clockedtomb]

[hellyeahscarleteen]

“From the start, resist the pressure to “define the relationship.” Sometimes people find themselves very in their heads about a relationship that’s only a few weeks or months old.

Especially early on in a relationship, you don’t know precisely what it’s going to look like. People throw around a lot of terms to describe things like sexual orientation⁠, attraction, and relationships, and it can be tempting to look for the box you will fit into, but fixating on definitions is putting the cart before the horse. Naming things before you know what they truly are just doesn’t make sense.

You might enter a relationship from the outset knowing that you want something temporary; a night in someone else’s house, perhaps, a brief camping trip, or a longer more casual relationship. Or you might enter a relationship with the intent of making it longer-term. You might know that you’re hoping the other person will be a best friend or family, a sexual partner⁠, or a long-term love. Be clear about where you’re at and what you’re looking for with someone while giving yourself time and space to let your relationship develop.”

s.e. smith, How to Build Every Relationship from the Ground Up

[clockedtomb]

Okay but consider

Define the relationship over and over every time you notice the desire to do so. Do it tentatively, playfully, without knowing it'll stick. Do it collaboratively, humble in the knowledge it might not be shared, in a way that invites clarification. Do it independently, boldly, self-consciously speaking only for yourself. Do it in a way that makes you alive with fear and guilt and desire and hope. Do it as prayer.

[delinquentbookworm]

one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.

[clockedtomb]

@faerevolution re #goals, we could do this ritualistically on purpose?? We could make paper out of shit that we want torn anyway, and then make art and poetry and love letters on the paper.

[clockedtomb]

Usually I don't mind when someone disagrees with me, but I had to delete a comment last night because people kept coming in to explain to me that I was wrong about how I feel in my friendships with my friends, and I was just kind of Unable to tolerate this.

I regret to inform my friends that I actually experience my relationship with you as a burden and a heavy weight that I willingly shoulder, which is a really sad thing to be informed of because I was so sure that you were a nourishment and delight and that the moments of service that I render you are themselves a nourishment and delight. In those times that I excitedly text my beloveds about what a joy it was to hold your fear or feed you or create with you I am actually just coping with the great and terrible Responsibility of it all.

I had no idea I was experiencing this deep and serious suffering and I am so grateful to these internet strangers who set me right. I now understand that pleasure is not real and friendship is an awful price we pay in our grinding willingness to do politics correctly.

[clockedtomb]

I don't know when I'll have time to sit down and talk about eugenics in TLT as a whole but here's A Thing Of That:

Vat wombs!

In Eugenics Culture we call this Ectogenesis. It was proposed by the British eugenicist J.B.S. Haldane in 1923 in Dedalus; or Science and The Future. He predicted that by 2073, the vast majority of human births would occur outside human bodies in artificial wombs, using eggs collected from ovaries preserved outside the body.

This was later taken up by eugenicist Aldous Huxley in Brave New World as his "hatcheries," and scientists were like yeah we could probably do that and their work influenced the development of IVF and artificial wombs, which turned out to be REALLY HARD TO MAKE ACTUALLY.

Because English eugenics did not have a Red Scare in the way that the US did in the early 20th century, some of their eugenics movement still had Free Love Socialists in it, and one of the arguments for ectogensis (and the use of donor gametes!) was that it allowed people to separate sexual pleasure from reproduction, allowing people to form sexual relationships with anyone they liked while still orienting reproduction to the good of the race.

There were Free Love Socialist (and Anarchist) eugenicists in the US but they got, like, arrested and deported and executed and made into jam and fired into space and whatnot. So in the US there was lessss of this and it was mostly (a) wealthy white women who wanted to become single mothers and were like ACTUALLY I am doing it for the good of the race which is very chill of me and (b) more conservative eugenicists who thought Huxley was neat but didn't have any particular Free Love feelings.

Artificial womb technology is still developing and it's Ethically Threatening for a host of reasons that are mostly "how many ways can this be used to fuck over people who would otherwise have a natural pregnancy or who would otherwise have NOT participated in reproduction?"

The presence of vat wombs in House culture indicates that John has solved these problems, like many of his ethical problems, with hand waving about the risks to others! Had to happen, very sad, big picture and all that!!

[fancyratlady]

Was Huxley a eugenicist though? Is there some historical context that I’m missing? Because as I read it Brave New World is about the moral failure of eugenics.

[clockedtomb]

Aldous Huxley was a reform eugenicist who opposed technocratic government overreach, not eugenics. Eugenicists understood the limitations of Huxley's critique and did not view him as an enemy to the cause. He strongly endorsed the need for society to handle the problem of degeneracy in some way, he just didn't support centralized government management of reproduction. Many eugenicists didn't, especially in England, where the US and German style policies were legally impossible.

[clockedtomb]

there are not enough opportunities in everyday life for me to explain to people that my beloved looked me in my face and said "where you go I will go; your people are my people, your God my God" during sex.

[clockedtomb]

Keep seeing posts that are like "start a platonic polycule but it's a union" and "what if we had a polycule but there's no romance or sex we just fight fascism"

This makes me a bit sad. On the one hand there's a touch of kind of old school communist asceticism you got before the catgirls took over, where people would very seriously tell you that there won't be any faggots in the revolution because wanting to fuck is some kind of bourgeoise degeneracy. There's this sense that investing in relationships that are oriented to pleasure is somehow counter political, frivolous, a waste of energy.

And obviously there's a level of "stop making me hear about polycule and start doing something I actually respect" about it, which, go fuck yourself. It's important to them that it's nonsexual and nonromantic because they find that part gross.

But it also makes me a bit nostalgic for when the far right was cranking out memes showing us as Tom of Finland style muscle boys, bulges a-bulging, lifting our ski masks to make out, and we sent them to each other like this could be us <333

What if you had a polycule that had tons of sex and romance and unionism and fights fascism? What if the sex and romance didn't exist in competition with your deep moral and political convictions but was entangled with them? What if the way you care for each other romantically and sexually teaches you how to take political risks together and what to do when they get costly? What if after the action there was someone there to hold you and tell you that you were so brave and they love you?

[deramin2]

All this. And also,

It feels like people have forgotten about friend groups or groups of comrades. Has social media’s use of the word “friends” so devalued it in people’s minds? You can become union activists with your friends. You can fight fascism with your friends. You can form unbreakable bonds and never be normal about each other again with your friends.

And that big friend group of fighters should have room in it for people who fall in love, or who just want to fuck. As much room as it makes for ace and aro members. Because we’re not at odds with each other, we’re supposed to be comrades working together for a common cause. And if a big friend group doesn’t have room for both, what exclusionary BS is baked into your worldview that’s coming through in your work? Which is a word of warning the people sharing makeout memes generally got, and the new wave of uptight romance rejectors does not.

I remembered being warned about the hollow politics of the assimilationist respectability gays in the 1990s and to be wary of who they’re leaving out of their revolution. That was and remains very good advice.

[clockedtomb]

I had a meeting today with the person who has been leading the program I founded since I left, and I was like I think we should tell people about this and he said I am worried that the university might not like that.

I said there weren't other programs like this then, and we did not know it was going to make it to its tenth year, and I think a lot of our people need hope right now, and I think the university will be okay with it because it is a story about a time that people who no longer even work there were fucking up and we came to them and said hey baby did you know that you could be better than this? Did you know you could be great? And they said I want that! And then they did it.

And my new friend said did you know that we're nationally recognized now? And I said no I sure didn't. But I think we should tell people.

[1-jar-of-stars]

On Friendship.

[clockedtomb]

Keep seeing posts that are like "start a platonic polycule but it's a union" and "what if we had a polycule but there's no romance or sex we just fight fascism"

This makes me a bit sad. On the one hand there's a touch of kind of old school communist asceticism you got before the catgirls took over, where people would very seriously tell you that there won't be any faggots in the revolution because wanting to fuck is some kind of bourgeoise degeneracy. There's this sense that investing in relationships that are oriented to pleasure is somehow counter political, frivolous, a waste of energy.

And obviously there's a level of "stop making me hear about polycule and start doing something I actually respect" about it, which, go fuck yourself. It's important to them that it's nonsexual and nonromantic because they find that part gross.

But it also makes me a bit nostalgic for when the far right was cranking out memes showing us as Tom of Finland style muscle boys, bulges a-bulging, lifting our ski masks to make out, and we sent them to each other like this could be us <333

What if you had a polycule that had tons of sex and romance and unionism and fights fascism? What if the sex and romance didn't exist in competition with your deep moral and political convictions but was entangled with them? What if the way you care for each other romantically and sexually teaches you how to take political risks together and what to do when they get costly? What if after the action there was someone there to hold you and tell you that you were so brave and they love you?

[clockedtomb]

i'm interested in what you have to say about the ethically threatening nature of artificial wombs in the real world because it's an area i'm very ignorant in and i haven't been able to figure it out at my current level of knowledge. what is the proposed relationship between artificial wombs and reproductive coercion and eugenics?

There are many answers to this but because I live in the United States I am just going to point to the elected lawmakers in my country who believe that it is possible to remove an ectopic pregnancy and re-implant it somewhere else in the body, and wish to make laws requiring medical professionals do this to people rather than treating them with abortion, which is the thing that makes an ectopic pregnancy not kill you.

One prominent ethical concern is that if it becomes possible to move a pregnancy into a vat womb, people will no longer be able to have abortions, but I think a worse possibility is that people become convinced that it is possible to move a pregnancy into a vat womb whether or not this ever happens.

[clockedtomb]

I don't know when I'll have time to sit down and talk about eugenics in TLT as a whole but here's A Thing Of That:

Vat wombs!

In Eugenics Culture we call this Ectogenesis. It was proposed by the British eugenicist J.B.S. Haldane in 1923 in Dedalus; or Science and The Future. He predicted that by 2073, the vast majority of human births would occur outside human bodies in artificial wombs, using eggs collected from ovaries preserved outside the body.

This was later taken up by eugenicist Aldous Huxley in Brave New World as his "hatcheries," and scientists were like yeah we could probably do that and their work influenced the development of IVF and artificial wombs, which turned out to be REALLY HARD TO MAKE ACTUALLY.

Because English eugenics did not have a Red Scare in the way that the US did in the early 20th century, some of their eugenics movement still had Free Love Socialists in it, and one of the arguments for ectogensis (and the use of donor gametes!) was that it allowed people to separate sexual pleasure from reproduction, allowing people to form sexual relationships with anyone they liked while still orienting reproduction to the good of the race.

There were Free Love Socialist (and Anarchist) eugenicists in the US but they got, like, arrested and deported and executed and made into jam and fired into space and whatnot. So in the US there was lessss of this and it was mostly (a) wealthy white women who wanted to become single mothers and were like ACTUALLY I am doing it for the good of the race which is very chill of me and (b) more conservative eugenicists who thought Huxley was neat but didn't have any particular Free Love feelings.

Artificial womb technology is still developing and it's Ethically Threatening for a host of reasons that are mostly "how many ways can this be used to fuck over people who would otherwise have a natural pregnancy or who would otherwise have NOT participated in reproduction?"

The presence of vat wombs in House culture indicates that John has solved these problems, like many of his ethical problems, with hand waving about the risks to others! Had to happen, very sad, big picture and all that!!

[hyperlexichypatia]

IDK I think if cis men are being told that being fat will lower their testosterone and make them Insufficiently Masculine, and cis women are being told that being fat will raise their testosterone and make them Excessively Masculine, and fat trans people are being denied the right to medically transition if they're fat, and thin trans people are warned against HRT because it will make them fat (and this is said about both testosterone and estrogen HRT), and androgynous-presenting people are told that only thin people count as androgynous...

Then maybe...

Maybe...

Maybe the weight loss industry is just using Gender to enforce fatphobia.

[clockedtomb]

I wrote an academic paper about this several years ago and gave an invited talk about it at UCLA called "gender is the opposite of fat" and I agree with this.

[clockedtomb]

This week I had a big travel and I kissed the love of my life for the first time and then I came home and reconnected with my home team and both of these things were so good.

No one who loves me was surprised to hear that I proposed immediately, and no one who loves me was surprised that the outcome was structurally and happily ambiguous.

One of my partners hesitantly volunteered that new love seems "ostentatious" in the right way for me but wasn't sure this was the word they wanted and I was like no it is, that's correct. We are both extremely colorful birds and it is good that we get to be extremely colorful birds together.

My wife has described our relationship as Sleep No More and as House of Leaves but romantic, which is incredible because I haven't even told them that much about the horror elements. She can smell it though.

It'll be several weeks before it comes out but I was incoherent in the most recent podcast. The guest mentioned being in a new relationship playing with a necro/cav dynamic as kink and as never having done any explicitly erotic or BDSM-implicated TLT cosplay and Rimona was like HEY HAN WHY IS YOUR FACE THAT COLOR HAN WHAT'S HAPPENING IN YOUR BODY RIGHT NOW HAN