This scribe, too, may cry.

Personal blog for venting and observations. Still seeking the higher fidelity that negates gods and raises rocks. Mind the trigger warnings.

[this-scribe]

Real talk, but we need anti-war video games that ARE shooter games. Set the protagonist up to be the "young patriot and first-time enlister on their first deportment overseas", give them missions that the player CAN succeed in, and along the way, the game fleshes out the protagonist's backstory. The story of the side characters play out too, and friendships/bonds are developed, so they all become deeply humanised and the player sympathises with/roots for them. Then have the protagonist die near the end of the FPS, after all their squadmates die abruptly because "their intel was bad". Have the operation they assisted in towards the end of the story fail, or have it be revealed after the death of the protagonist that the operation succeeded... in serving a corrupt politician catering to foreign or corporate interests.

Because, as it turns out, the "enemy state" the PoV characters were all told to fight interfered with the interests and agendas of the powerful all along, and every soldier and life on both sides were just tools to that end. Then hammer it home again how meaningless all those deaths were, by showing the aftermath of all those deaths in the credit scenes. The families who struggle to recover the bodies, the families who DID get those bodies back and broke, the young adults who hear about how "heroic" those losses are in propaganda news, with hints that they'll enlist eventually, because the cycle doesn't fucking break.

Tbh, I don't think a game like this will get most gun fetishists, every late gen alpha/zoomer who doesn't know/remember the pointless wars throughout history that the world (and the US) has had, all the nationalists and hero wannabes out there to actually think or consider the military propaganda they've been fed. Most likely you'll get a hell lot of reactionary backlash actually, panning such a game as "woke" if they were led into playing it, thinking it wasn't anti-war.

But planting that seed of discomfort/doubt in some, that MAYBE they don't wanna risk their lives going so far away from home to kill "for God and for country"? That their life isn't worth the lives of a few other enemies, whichever people they're convinced they hate enough to kill? And introducing the possibility they're being played by lobbyists even irl if they enlist, even if it's presented as "leftist propaganda" to their social circles? That's something worth doing. Because, as much as a lot of the "for the glory of my motherland" types tend to be dipshits and fools, dying pointlessly, and for politicians and corpos no less, isn't something I'd wish on anybody.

[after-fear]

Overly Honest Methods in science.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

ooh this version has some ones i haven’t seen before, priceless

[wanderingandfound]

  #we chose macrocystis because every other kelp was rotting at that time of year    #we kept the crabs 12 to a sea table because we were sharing the space and couldnt use more    #the crabs were subject to a non-natural light cycle because other researchers kept leaving the lights on overnight (via Dicrocoeliumdendriticum)

[poepower]

Archaeologist. We sometimes choose places to dig because our gut says “this is nice, I’d settle here”. I’ve had field directors say “this has paleo energy” about areas. Often we see big hill in our dig area, we dig on big hill. 

Most recently, I’ve found two sites because I was walking to my next hole and saw some petrified wood I wanted. Started picking up pieces and saw a half buried biface lmao. 

Other site, I was walking and imagined a little native girl running along the ridge. I had a gut feeling to dig like 5m from where the hole was. Found a utilized petrified wood flake. Could’ve written it off as a plow fact, but due to all the pet wood I’d been collecting throughout the area (I’m a greedy little thing who wants pretty rocks), I knew the was it was broken was inconsistent to how the pet wood naturally breaks. 

What sealed the deal for me was cleaning the mud off, and it cut me so, yup, definitely utilized. 

[megalunalexi-aesthetic]

So glad you commented this because I was looking for the term for “people saw a pretty rock and took it with them” forEVER now and couldn’t find it. Fuckin love manuports

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

eternal human urges:

shiny rock!!

throw object in body of water

big hill. climb.

not come in to lab on weekend

[thatdisasterauthor]

We found our T. rex last summer by just walking around and sticking a very long, thin stick in the mud until we hit something hard, then we dug.

[ospreyonthemoon]

@katy-l-wood PLEASE tell us about your t-rex

[thatdisasterauthor]

Here’s the article/press release I wrote about it!

https://www.rmdrc.com/post/25-years-and-thousands-of-miles-walked-to-find-a-t-rex

[taavicleric]

The Dinosaur Resource Center is absolutely amazing. Next best dinosaur exhibit I’ve been to after Actual Literal Dinosaur National Monument. NYC and Denver have great set-ups, too, but both National Monument and the Resource Center feel very current but accessible.

If you’re ever down in Colorado Springs, folks who haven’t been, it is a shortish gorgeous drive, especially if it’s rained recently.

[quill-of-thoth]

Recent archaeological dig tour had me (with permission) going around poking bones going “burnt, burnt, not burnt, burnt, polished” because it turns out I handle bones. Often.

[avpdvoidspace]

Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.

And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.

It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.

[savouryduck]

when I was in high school, I overheard two older students talking about a friend of theirs.

One of them said something like, "it doesn't bother me that [Friend] was in residential mental health treatment, I just wish they wouldn't talk about it ALL the time".

The other replied, "Well, that was all of last year for them. So when they say 'when I was in treatment,' it's like when you say 'last year'."

I try to remember that any time someone says something that sounds Shocking to me. sometimes one person's scary special crisis is another person's last year.

[wherethewildcatsare]

If you want to be accepting of mental illness, you need to accept the fact that some people's everyday lives are going to be terrifying to you. That doesn't mean they don't get to talk about it. Stop forcing hurt, isolated people to become even MORE hurt and isolated because you can't fathom toughening up a bit.

[this-scribe]

(hella vent for my personal situation, mind the trigger warnings)

Basically my entire experience as someone who's struggling with both mental illness (CPTSD) AND chronic pain and fatigue caused by indeterminate sources (never got the cause properly investigated because advocating for yourself, by yourself, against an entire department of doctors uninterested/dragging their feet is insanely hard) while ALSO dealing with ableist caretakers.

"Hey, how are you doing?"

I can't tell where the pain in my body ends and the pain in my mind begins, I can't get out of bed most days and am stuck alone with my thoughts for days on end as a result, I am unable to eat and shower without assistance sometimes and I don't get that assistance anyway, I am fighting an uphill battle to even have access to OTC painkillers, never mind anything else, I regularly fight with parents who consider my illness and broken body a burden to them without considering what it's doing to me, I daydream of being dead sometimes just to be pain free because I don't want to struggle every waking, conscious moment all alone anymore.

"I'm fine."

(Because that's the only correct answer after losing two friend groups to your constant negativity, you don't want to lose a third now, do you?)

Maybe some day they'll say, "I didn't realize" when the gods finally see fit to grant me a body that will move well, however temporarily, so I can seek the mercy of death with my own two hands. By then, it won't be a problem for anyone anymore.

Nobody wanted to know after all. Nobody could help me, everyone was too busy or didn't know what to do or was too overwhelmed with their own issues or couldn't spare even a scrap of time or energy or attention etc. for whatever reason, when all I ever wanted was to not have to scream silently, to struggle through the pain alone and cry myself hoarse until I mercifully black out.

To have someone else bear witness, to have a friendly voice drop in for a few hours when I can't open my eyes or move the entire day, to have painkillers and an attentive doctor or two, to have someone help me up so I can drink water or go to the bathroom or eat, even on my bad days. Maybe even giving me items that help me address mobility issues and regain my independence.

But all of that's apparently too much. I'm asking for too much. They all want me to be alive, of course they want me to be alive and healthy and happy, why would I say they don't care???

Just not, you know, actually acknowledging the ugly, day to day reality of my body and my life, much less helping even an iota towards making my life not an endless gauntlet of pain and misery.

[this-scribe]

Shower thought, but there's something freakish and terrifying about how light-heartedly some Americans treat guns.

I'm not talking about not having guns at all, but how easy it is for them to reach for it. Rustling in the bushes outside at night? Gun. Hearing your backdoor downstairs quietly open in the dark? Gun. Stranger approaching your house or farm? Gun.

(To say nothing of how it's common practice for American police to draw guns on unarmed civilians, when they have no criminal history and the officers involved are not actively investigating a criminal case with a profile that fits the civilian they just stopped.)

Other countries have guns and gun owners, sure. My grandfather had a registered hunting rifle, and that's still kept in my house. My boyfriend's family and community had guns growing up, and he likely knows how to handle them. (For context, I'm Southeast Asian and he's South Asian.)

But there's something about American culture that treats guns like glorified toys: collecting, displaying and discussing them like anime figurines or limited edition trading cards. Putting them behind supermarket counters like they're the latest smartphone or PS5. Open carrying like they're larping for GTA or CoD, and everyone else around them is just a bunch of coding, instead of real, living people who will suffer terrible consequences if they ever forget to check the safety.

The egregious mishandling of guns and ammo too, like tucking guns into one's pants because their hands aren't free. Pointing guns easily at people, like they're playing NERF or holding a water pistol.

All of which is, quite frankly, blasphemy to me. Every time you hold a gun, you hold a murder weapon. A gun is not a kitchen knife or a baseball bat, its only purpose is to maim deeply or kill. The minute a gun is in the picture and being held, the very second you point a gun at someone or something, you HAVE to be prepared for possibly facing the consequences of taking a life. Because there's ALWAYS a chance you'll make a mistake, and then someone's whole world won't be going home.

And imho? Civilian or law enforcement or no, you should not be allowed to hold or own a gun, PERIOD, if you don't understand the gravity of that.

If you're already a cop and you're like that, then I'm sorry, but you can only be a desk jockey or write parking tickets. Someone who does not have what it takes to not shoot or kill at the drop of a hat also does not have what it takes to save lives.

(If you ask me, this feels like it could be part of why so many people in the US are so jumpy and paranoid too tbh, even when they don't live in actually seedy places.

When every other person can own a gun, or multiple guns, and those are just cool toys to many of them, to make a spectacle of and carry around to scare strangers in public, like a kid with a monster mask yelling "boo"? Yeah. Yeah, I'd be fucking paranoid too.)

[this-scribe]

Developed ARFID when my moral OCD and CPTSD reached a fever pitch, as an end stage symptom to the ongoing abuse I faced at the time. This video explanation 100% fits what was happening then:

The ARFID wasn't just a self-harm mechanism. It was a trauma response and a final "fuck you" to all the medical and familial neglect and abuse I was undergoing: If I couldn't stop my life, my body and my mind from imploding, despite my best efforts otherwise, if I couldn't stop everyone around me from hurting me and overriding my decisions to better myself and my health, just because they wanted to ignore what was actually happening to me and act based on their presumptions instead, then... I might as well join in, by deciding what type of harm was happening to me.

I knew full well the worsening ARFID was likely to have fatal consequences, but it was the only choice I thought I had left: the freedom to decide how I was going to exit my miserable existence, and I wasn't going to let them decide that for me. They'd taken enough. That was the only freedom I had left, and NO ONE was going to take it from me.

(Thankfully, I had a very, very small handful of people who actually cared, and I eventually outlasted the abuse, and, more importantly, the presence of the abusers in my life.)

[alivepet]

There are endless ways to interpret the Gods of the Silt Verses, but a really cool one is that they literally don’t exist—that they are literally and narratively lies that cannot have agency.

Because I’m me, a swag way of to think about this is like how devas function in vajrayana and esoteric Buddhism more generally: that gods are like moulds to pour your own mind and effort into. Like a fluid-based computer, they have no agency on their own—but can cause reliable and reproducible effects by interacting with them in specific ways.

This is obviously already metaphorically true in tsv, but the precise mechanism by which it is isn’t explored (rightfully so). But imo picturing them in this context makes the character work of that show even better. If you remove even the possibility of the Gods having any agency over the story at all—if they’re truly empty—you quickly run out of people to blame.

[this-scribe]

This is my favourite concept incidentally. And also how I approach religiosity in real life.

Like, sure. God exists, for me. Of course He/She/They do. And sure, I can pray to Them out of respect, why not.

But I don't ask for anything in my prayers. And when I bother asking anything at all, usually out of desperation and moments of weakness, I do not ask for God to deliver my end goals to me. Just strength to endure, and preserve my humanity, where possible; wisdom and mental clarity to make the right choices, and the odd moment of reprieve perhaps.

And no matter what I ask, I am always, always prepared to have my prayers go unanswered.

Because at the end of the day, I don't expect God to be interested in me or invested in my struggles. I won't rage if they don't care. If They do, that's a pleasant surprise, but if They don't, then it's just business as usual, and there's always plan B.

[tsvwords]

I’ve been on this earth thirty-one years, and I never found a god I could love more than fear.

— Chapter 11: My Voice Cries Truths I Never Knew.

[this-scribe]

The Last Bedtime Story

(tw: intergenerational trauma, suicidal ideation)

Two children sit next to each other in a burning house. A mother of a mother, and a child of a child.

They're both trapped, but one insists they can still escape. Worse, it wants the other to escape first.

The other does not want to escape. The other wants to watch the fire consume everything, because there's nothing more beautiful than the flames.

Their last minutes will be spent screaming at each other, and neither will get their wish: for none escape, and the other's last minutes will be spent, instead, watching a tear-filled face.

Do you think there's any peace after that, when their charcoal is so fused together, there is no more telling them apart?

Or is there more peace, when the wind comes and takes their ashes away?

Or maybe a third, secret answer, where peace does not exist in the first place?

Maybe it could have been better, if they could tell each other the truth: we are not so different, you and I.

You believe love exists, and is important. I do too.

You believe yourself unworthy. I do too.

You wish for the mercy of death. I do too.

Maybe then, their last moments could have been spent comforting each other.

But that will not come to pass, of course. It is not in their natures, nor written in their fates.

Because herein lies their difference, the one thing that will decide it all:

You believe that love can still save us.

I don't believe it will.