oozey mess
Cosmic Funnies
Love Begins
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
if i look back, i am lost
⁂
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Stranger Things
h
Peter Solarz
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Xuebing Du
YOU ARE THE REASON
Three Goblin Art
Mike Driver
pixel skylines
No title available
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
ojovivo
NASA
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@lightpollution
I am not taking a risk
Not risking it pals
U know what I want potato of luck
Damn right I’m reblogging. See previous post re wrath of whatever from high atop the thing.
potato I will never ask you for anything else in my lifetime please potato for fuck's sake
come on potato do not fail me now
made me think of this
[id: x/twitter qrt from user styloshka that says "I read a forum post about art once, that it's a product of the dialectic between the effort of the artist and the friction of the medium. You push on the thing and the thing pushes back on you, it has its own voice. The weight of a piano key, the tension of a guitar string." original post from user colleen_daves says "Don't you want to skip over the mindless drudgery that is making art?" I do six stand embroidery and break like 10 needles a day, would I prefer that activity didn't hurt my hands and make me angry? Sure. But that's what makes having the finished piece after so worth it to me."]
link
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved when I got assigned a solo and would dance it over and over as much for pleasure as for the quest for perfection, but I loved the rest of it too.
I loved the slow methodical mediation of the stretches before class. I loved the quiet discipline of the barre exercises, the endless repetition, the feel of me shaping my body into the same forms, closer ever closer to correct.
Most of the others didn't rush onto the floor the moment it cleared to stretch alone.
Most of the others complained endlessly about barre. For me it was part of it. All of it was dancing and I loved dancing in every fiber of my being, pushing ever pushing at the boundaries of what my body can do.
It was never boring to me, not even the most mundane, repetitious parts. I gave no fucks for those few performances in front of the audience; I was dancing for me and that included doing feet positions over and over at the barre. It was doing the thing that mattered and I loved every second of it.
I was the same way with the assorted marital arts styles I studied over the years until my body gave out. The spars are the glamourous bits, but I loved the drills too, repeating, repeating, repeating.
I was the same way with candle wicking and needlepoint, my fingers reading canvas. My fingers mindlessly going in and out or doing the knots over and over.
It is possible to love every part of the thing, the colours unrealing on canvas, the patterns on linen, the repetition of form of drill of motion. Effort and beauty and sweat forever tangled together.
This is what Annie Dilliard said
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ”Do you think I could be a writer?”
”Well,” the writer said, ”I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”
The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ”I liked the smell of the paint.”
Lan Xichen and Qin Su had quite a bit in common when it came to Jin Guangyao:
- First met JGY when they were in peril and he came to the rescue,
- Notably kind, beautiful, and good-natured,
- Did not place value on his origin or look down on him for his mother's profession,
- Were vocal in their support of him socially.
Which makes me think that we were robbed of maybe the greatest potential JGY partnership: Wen Ning.
Wen Ning: so ride-or-die that actually dying did not stop him from continuing to be ride-or-die. Wen Ning, presumably in quite the tenuous situation in Nightless City after the Jiang heir disappeared under suspicious circumstances, right when Meng Yao was working is way into Wen Ruohan's inner circle. Wen Ning, the sweetest cinnamon roll.
Slight canon divergence where Wen Qing missed one single opportunity to send Wen Ning out of Nightless City for a while, Wen Ning gets into juuust enough trouble, Meng Yao has the keys to the cell... one flash of Wen Ning's bambi eyes and he would have been a goner.
My physics professor just told the class the wildest story from when he was in grad school about building a high voltage unauthorized Tesla coil with the ability to kill a man
No I’m still not over this - this man along with two other graduate students rigged a Tesla coil and a faraday cage without a budget and the arcs of electricity that came off of it hit things in the room like exposed gas pipes. He found a thick piece of plexiglass that he sawed into smaller pieces, he found a screwdriver that he filed down to a sharp point, and he reasoned that by charging the plexiglass with a shit ton of excess electrons and striking it with the screwdriver-ice pick immediately after flipping the coil off but before the energy in the room had a chance to dissipate, they could see the physical path of the conducted electricity as it conducted through the excess electrons.
These men rigged up an empty storage closet in their lab with the faraday cage and Tesla coil and ran their little experiment. My professor ran into the room the instant the coil was turned off, grabbed the grounded screwdriver-ice pick, and stabbed the plexiglass millimeters away from the edge where he could’ve missed.
And it worked.
This man captured a god damn lightning strike in physical media. That shape is from the electricity breaking through the structure of the plexiglass. That’s literally the conduction path.
Anyway I was talking to one of the lab instructors about it and she put her head in her hands and literally groaned. “I wish John hadn’t told you that story.”
You run a Bakery, just a normal bakery, the only problem is that your customers at midnight to 6AM are mythical creatures who pay with gemstones and ancient gold and silver coins
“My guy, you are overpaying for your bread.” I tell the being in front of me, getting a hissed out sound that could be a laugh, could be a death rattle. There are six sourdough loaves on the counter, unbagged and still a little warm from the oven. It’s four-forty-five AM, and sunrise is in thirty minutes. “Unless this is a trick coin that disappears when the sun rises.” I muse, looking down at the very suspicious *solid gold* coin sitting on my counter. It’s happened before. “I’ll go get the scale I guess.” I say, resigned, and head back to the office where I keep the box of jewelers-grade tools for this kind of thing. If the coin is real, it certainly is heavy enough to be Significant. It’s nearly two ounces of solid gold. “Look.” I say, sighing as I look up the days gold prices. “If I take this coin as a solid piece, *and* it’s genuine through a year and a day, I’ll take the value and set you up a tab so that you don’t have to pay every time. Human money isn’t worth as much as this any more, and it’s not fair to overcharge you for *bread*.” I tell it. The coin is worth over five thousand dollars in modern human American currency. That’s absolutely going to be a pain to explain to the IRS. A chittering sound like birds in the dark. Agreement, probably. Should be anyhow, my refusal to cheat anyone has been the reason these strange beings show up more and more often. “So I can’t make change for this.” I tell the being. “I’ll add it to the Vault, get it appraised once I’ve got it authenticated, and in the meantime you can have as much bread as you want.” I say, and the bread vanishes into the things robes, to a very loud chirping storm that is silenced when the robes fall back into place. “Pleasure doing business.” the being says in a voice that isn’t human, is very much *not* human and I don’t want to ask further. “We will return. The wild seed rolls are delightful.” it says in six different voices, and I grin and nod. “Come back on Thursday.” I tell them. “I’ve been experimenting again, and I think the sunflower and pumpkin seed rolls are ready to go live. We’ve got the drop scheduled on instagram and tiktok!” I tell them, and they whistle a chirpy tune as they pull a cell phone out of nowhere and scan my code that I had etched into the counter so that I didn’t have to make business cards. Even the eldrich have smartphones these days, and it’s just easier to have something available that they don’t have to touch to get what they want, since some rules still say that they must offer something of equivalent exchange and cannot take gifts. Like a business card. It’s not easy running a bakery, and nobody else will work the witching hours, but it’s a lot of fun. I’d had no idea that so many *interesting* beings also loved bread as much as I do. I turn from waving to the strange being, and I move to check out my next customer. Who is absolutely not three gnomes in a trench coat. Absolutely not. That would be absurd. They want three sandwiches, three giant cookies, and three coffees. Can’t be three gnomes in a trench coat though. The rubies they pay with are very pretty though, and I consider again how hard it would be to find a jeweler who didn’t ask questions. A ruby necklace would be a lovely way to turn the gems and gold into cash for the business account. I reload the gnomes tab, and they leave with their sandwiches and coffee and cookies, and I throw in a pack of ginger snap cookies for them to try too, since they always leave me good reviews on the local facebook pages.
@caffeinewitchcraft @ravensknowledge
You were absolutely right to tag me in this, this is phenomenal! Fun and fresh and endearing! The gnomes in a trench coat has my cry-laughing after the day I’ve had. Thanks so much for sharing your writing @jazzybot4
Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.
The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.
Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.
Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.
When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.
Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.
Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.
Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.
And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.
He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:
he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian
he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian
he cares a lot about ethical behavior
he's conflict-avoidant and gentle
he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it
his communication skills are mediocre at best
he doesn't understand jiang cheng
he has a dumb sense of humor
Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.
But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.
Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.
Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.
The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.
Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.
I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.
So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.
oh gods it was parents evening again tonight..
other parents: how did you do that?
Me:do what?
Other parents: your teenager is eating a salad..
Me:i never forced him eat, now he will pretty much eat anything…except chicken casserole which we both agree is gross
Other parents:we don’t get it.
Me: our only rules are bed at eleven on a school night and don’t hack any important government agencies.
Other parents: you don’t restrict screen time?
Me: you know 95% of kids will self regulate, given the chance?
Other parents: thats not true
Me: have you tried it?
other parents:…but, now he’s reading 1984
Me: he has had a university reading level since he was 12, what am i going to do censor his reading material?
other Parents: what if he reads something you don’t approve of..
Me: i fail to see your reasoning…
Me: you know he cooks too..it’s our mother/son time, we talk about his friends…
other Parents: he talks??
That “he talks??” bit gets me
Yeah, kids talk. If your kid doesn’t talk to you, it’s because of one of two reasons:
You’ve created such a hostile/unwelcoming home environment that they don’t feel comfortable enough to talk
You have signaled to them somehow, some way, that you don’t care about what they have to say. That what they have to say isn’t important.
Kids are not stupid, not at any age level. They pick up on shit and they remember and then when they grow to be teenagers, they know who they can talk to about stuff and who they can’t.
My 13 year old nephew is not particularly affectionate with his mother and he rarely talks to her about anything important, but there are times I can’t get that kid to stop hanging off me and he has those serious conversations with me, like when we discussed his friends coming out to him as bisexual.
It’s not even that hard to make a kid feel loved and welcome. I don’t even know what my nephew is talking about half the time with his games, but they’re important to him, so I let him talk and I make appropriate noises of shock and sympathy when they are needed.
He watches a lot of YT channels, so we’ve discussed the importance of regulating your media, because I don’t want motherfuckers like PewDiePie shaping his world view.
He reads anything from Stephen King to manga and he does that because I’ve been reading him books since he was a baby. I do it with all of my nieces and nephews; when they get school-aged and old enough to read on their own, our “us” time is going to the bookstore and letting them pick out a drink and a book.
Because reading is important to me and I want it to be important to them, too. Now, it’s not something I suggest, it’s something that my nephew asks for.
“I finished my book, Aunt [Dessie], when can we go to the bookstore again?”
And when I tell him a date, I make sure to keep it.
Saying, “You can talk to me about anything” and “you can rely on me” is all well and good, but words are just words. You have to mean it and you have to show them that you mean it.
Otherwise, when it gets to those important moments in their life, they’re gonna shut you out rather than let you in.
Seriously though, you guys. Like.
Here is a secret:
Children and adolescents are actually fucking desperate for adult attention and approval. They really are. Even the ones that have in fact kinda got fucked up so far and have learned that The Only Kind Of Attention They’ll Get Is Bad and so act like shitheads, or the ones that have learned to be inhibited (and it might not even be you who inhibited them, it mighta been their peers or some teacher somewhere, which sucks!) and learned that by showing need they’ll just end up humiliated, or whatever?
Yeah them too.
Kids want to make you happy.
They’re often TERRIBLE AT IT. They’re kids. Their brains don’t work right, their bodies are weird, they have terrible impulse control, horrible deferred satisfaction, they’re shitty at projecting future consequences, and especially if they HAVEN’T been taught they’re probably bad at showing you positive emotions!
They’re BAD AT IT. And they often don’t want anyone to know it. And they’re embarrassed about it.
But they desperately want to. So much.
So one of the most crucial things is:
a) make sure they know how to make you happy. Don’t assume they can figure it out! They probably can’t!
b) make sure that’s something that is literally possible for them to do.
c) make sure, when they do it, that you SHOW THEM YOU’RE HAPPY WITH IT.
It is absolutely ASTONISHING HOW FAST this can create a self-sustaining cycle with the SMALLEST of starts.
i know someone who works in conservation, who on the side has a large outdoor aviary and roughly 20 rainbow lorikeets they’ve taken in as they’ve been dumped/unwanted gifts or long-term pets/pets that have been released/etc, and she’s very knowledgeable and keeps them in great condition
i love seeing them though because we have a terrible and hilarious game. in the aviary i will be leaving out fruit skewers and things for them, and then i’ll dramatically lie on my side and pretend i died. it takes about 5 minutes, and then there’s an entire flock of lorikeets climbing on me, squeaking, nibbling and investigating.
the next part of the game is popping up my head and going “boo!” which is where the real fun begins, because the little rainbow nightmares jump, and then get delighted and start happy squealing and bouncing around (and chewing because they truly never stop)
while we all love this game, ive been cheerfully informed from the outside it looks even funnier, because it looks like I’ve been jumped by a group of lorikeets and they won
Jgy is a class traitor this, jgy is the only person who cares about the common people that. Jgy is the type of guy who would scab during a strike, bring in a union-buster to earn favours from upper management, slowly work his way up to CEO and then give everyone the extra vacation days and payraises they were asking for anyway. Which is an extremely funny type of guy to be. Like, can we all take a break from arguing to agree how fucking hilarious that is?
combine your first real fandom with your current one to create a terrible, terrible au
CATS the musical vs The Magnus Archives dear CHRIST.
I... I really did this though? XD
My last fic was Sagwa×SVSSS and I swear it turned out beautiful.
I have to say that “warm gentle glow emanating from the shell of a turtle” is without a doubt my favorite genre of lamp
[ID: Lamps shaped like turtles in a variety of colors, edited onto a plain white background. End ID]
@blondejaneblonde
We have just digitized our copy of The First Six Books of Euclid by Oliver Byrne (1847) which uses diagrams of intense color as an aid to learning geometry. Although it sold poorly at the time of publication, it's recognized today as a masterpiece of design and printing.
Typ 805.47.3730
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Everyone is so weird about people who cry easily. Fellas, is it evil and manipulative to *checks notes* have an involuntary stress response?
People will hate on LXC for telling WWX he was a mistake, but honestly we're not giving the guy enough credit
Like, things from his perspective ARE. A. SHITSHOW.
I mean imagine you're being supportive of your little brother's crush, he's funny, he challenges him and makes him happy, so you're like 'wooooo let's go baby brother!' and then that mf starts doing the equivalent of harcore drugs. And you're like (•᷄ △ •᷅ ;)
Then your brother starts running after him constantly, trying to help, being like 'please stop, this is bad for your health, let me help' and his crush. not only does not stop. not only does he get worse. not only does he starts fighting your brother every time they speak and making him miserable. But he doubles down and becomes a. Fucking. Convicted. Felon.
And you're like 'bro, drop this hoe omfg😰' and your brother is like 'no, I love him :('.
So then his crush kills somebody and goes on the run. And you have to watch as your baby brother decides to go against the law, against your family, ruining his life, his future and everything he has worked for. To go after this bitch that doesn't even love him back (that you know) .
Your baby brother is gonna go to fucking jail for being an accomplice. You start scrambling. Thank. Fuck. Your family is influential, so you burry his involvement and go after him. But then, WHILE PROTECTING THIS DUDE, that is constantly telling him to fuck off, mind you. Your brother hurts important people and gets LASHED.
Your baby brother gets literally almost killed. He gets send straight to the ICU. He can't walk, he can't move. Doctors aren't even sure he's going to fucking survive.
You have to see as your brother suffers, and worsens his condition by trying to get back to his crush. See him overwhelmed with pain to the point of self harm. See him sad and grieving for years.
And then. After all of that. This piece of shit, that ruined your brothers life, that ruined his mental and physical health for 13 years. That has been taunting him and testing his boundaries for months. That you let into your mother's house and into your family's secrets, only for him to break your brother's heart, again. Looks at you straight in the eye, on one of the worst days of your life, while you are going through your own breakup. And, honest to God, asks you 'Does your brother's pain have something to do with me?'...
Bruh...
I'm just saying, LXC is better than me, because if that was me 'a mistake' wouldn't be the only thing I would be calling him.
My latest cartoon for New Scientist
environmental storytelling.
an angel on letterboxd just dropped a whole playlist of films free on youtube I was filled with so much love and light I had to share with you guys
it also includes short films, animated movies, documentaries of every genre, full recordings of live performances. all spanning different decades from different countries. YOU DONT EVEN FUCKING KNOW
there are also websites like worldscinema, solidaritycinema, and rarefilmm hosting incredible obscure world cinema for free! and if you're more inclined towards the esoteric, there's also evilbjork's avant-garde canon playlist on youtube! also important to mention Maya S. Cade's incredible black film archive and the otherness archive, an obscure queer cinema archive! You could always be watching more films !
