#pleonast

[gal-with-pastels]

pleonast , a types of spinel who entertains through singing and putting on a performance.

[gal-with-pastels]

♣️ Pleonast and spinel, Clubs and hearts♥️

[mooseart]

My Gem OCs

Name (weapon) - Blurb

Crystal Spinel (bladed cat-o-ninetails) - A clear gem created in the Kindergarten with the intent of being the most powerful gem outside of the Diamonds, to fight against the resistance and win the Earth. Something went wrong, though, and her gem split in two. The two gems fragments were to be destroyed but Rose Quartz saved them. If she’s ever reformed she runs the risk of being completely unstable. She stands about 7.5 feet tall and is mildly muscular with thick thighs.

Balas Ruby (umbrella) - A pink gem with no feet, fingers, and an inability to retain memories, she is the right fragment of Crystal Spinel. She’s rather naive and very sweet in nature. She keeps mementos of everything in a scrapbook and an old satchel to help jog her memories. She stands about three feet tall and is cute and fat.

Pleonast (bladed knuckle duster) - A opaque black gem with no face and an inability to feel major emotions, she is the left fragment of Crystal Spinel. She wears a mask and is very tactical. She speaks through an audible telepathy in a near monotone. She stands about 6 feet tall and is very lithe.

[londors]

Pleonast

my gemsona

[spellgage]

Announcing a Change

[from Pleonast http://bit.ly/1GTAQft] Most of my readership were friends with me on Facebook. I'm sure that some of you have noticed that I have deactivated my Facebook account. I don't consider this to be a permanent thing, but I do consider my Facebook hiatus to be indefinite. My motives are the common ones: too much wasted time, an inordinate desire to share things, an obsession with trivia that bordered on the neurotic, etc.* I have yet to regret my choice, though, as I said, I may come back some day. In the meanwhile, I find myself lacking an outlet for sharing the few things that I think I really ought to be sharing, which why I have decided to make a return to Pleonast.✝ Pleo offers a few distinct advantages over Facebook. It allows (if not encourages) long-form writing, which FB decidedly discourages. It also supports HTML, so I can emphasize things without resorting to asterisks, and I can denote book and film titles without resorting to angle brackets. It's also less convenient than FB, which I consider a mark in Pleo's favor, since FB's greater convenience encourages the evils that drove me away from the medium in the first place. Perhaps Pleo's most useful inconvenience is its old-school non-mobile design, which will (I hope) discourage me from turning to it on my phone. This has been a long time coming, really. I'm glad I finally took the step of deactivating my FB account just when the impulse to do so hit me. Social media use is very much like an addiction. Thanks for your time and your friendship, and I hope to see you again here soon. Brotherly, Spellgage * I could expound on this at great length. ✝ IFTTT automatically copies my Pleo posts to Tumblr, but I won't be logging in there to check for reblogs, favorites, etc.

[londors]

Gemsonas!!! From top to bottom is Pleonast (mine), Larimar ( @eribent ), and Angel Aura Quartz ( @halloweenmiku )! I'm probably going to do more and I'm always open for requests!

[spellgage]

"On Distraction," which I wrote instead of grading school-work

[from Pleonast http://bit.ly/1sN59Y6] The mind so timidly runs astray Toward faintest pleasures and trifling matters, I cheaply sell my only day. To write a poem seems so gay, Or to imagine how others may flatter; The mind so timidly runs astray. All the pressing tasks I flee today Fall onto tomorrow's hidden platter. I cheaply sell my only day. One cannot long dwell on death or decay, The remnants of time's pitter-patter. The mind so timidly runs astray. Make all those troubles fly away! I wish only to grow older and fatter! I cheaply sell my only day. When over me my children weep and pray, Will they then turn to things that matter? Or will their minds so timidly run astray From thinking how cheaply I sold my only day.

[spellgage]

Give Me a Little Space

[from Pleonast http://bit.ly/1BiKuV8] The European Space Agency's recent feat, landing the Philae probe onto the surface of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, has rightly impressed us all. This is a major feat of engineering, and Philae promises to revolutionize the way we understand comets and their impact on our planet (pun intended; please forgive). But I have often heard a refrain, of which I found myself guilty yesterday on Facebook: that the Philae landing is a major accomplishment not just for ESA but for "humanity." Consider the meaning of the sentiment. The mass culture that has grown up around space exploration often seems to assume that man must first unite on Earth before moving into space. Every major accomplishment in space is met by a chorus of voices chiding us about the division that still reigns on Earth. After all, interstellar travel seems unattainable by a divided humanity; the technology and the resources it requires seem too daunting for any one nation to achieve. Star Trek controls the narrative here: the United Federation of Planets begins with a United Earth government. The ISS mirrors the sentiment of that narrative: space will unite man. What if it actually works the other way? What if, instead of cementing human unity, interplanetary and interstellar travel instead promote a new, expansive nationalism? Biology seems to support the idea: populations which separate geographically tend to diverge in other ways as well. Humanity would have to exercise extraordinary deliberation in order to escape this path of least resistance. Considering how poorly we have resisted the Babel effect here on Earth, I doubt our success out among the stars. Remember that the Third Reich sought lebensraum. What is interstellar colonization, if not unlimited lebensraum? In boundless space, Nazis or their intellectual descendants could conceivably control a world or a whole star system without drawing anyone's ire, escaping notice in some remote corner of space. All of the ideologies and nations of Earth could hold their own planets and systems, free of entanglement and conflict with each other--though, in some cases, still entangled with Earth itself. There would be nothing like the "pivot to Asia" in space, because the American planets wouldn't give a damn what the Chinese do with their own space. They wouldn't need to: space is infinite. We also assume that space will set us free. "Being set free" and "space" are closely related concepts, after all. But imagine an America that didn't have to rub elbows with other, culturally distinct nations. It would be unrecognizable to today's America. Cultural homogeneity has its perks, but it doesn't set baklava and curry at the same table; nor does it shelve Aristotle and Confucious in the same library. Rich liberalism and diverse experience have always walked hand-in-hand. Space may well doom diverse human civilizations to mutual isolation and homogeneity for the rest of time, locked in their own light-years-wide prisons. I lack the vision to pursue this question further in the time which I have allowed myself for composing these brief thoughts. Space may--probably shall--complicate the concepts of ideological affiliation, cultural and national identity, and many other such things that exceed the narrow bounds of "Earth politics." I must leave you to consider, then: are we, with our space programs, advancing humanity into space, or are we laying the groundwork which will ultimately end "humanity" as we know it?