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veni, vidi, discernandem

@blacktealiterature

excessively queer and obsessively reading (she/they)
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In Elias Hodge's mind, his attention (Anastasia Tension) is wasted on menial mundane tasks he doesn't care about, their potential wasted, while his impulses (Imelda Pulse) guides his hand for better or worse.

His curiosity (Hunch Curio) is stuck on the small things in life, craving money and questions. His conscience (Conrad Shintz) is considered childish, every other part of him trying to squash it down, framed as an inconvenience.

His hyperfixations (The Fix) keep straying to everything he abandoned in his childhood (the Orphanage), which he hates and refuses to treat those memories with any sort of kindness- bar one part of his mind which longs for kidness on the child he used to be.

His lust (Daniel Fucks) and pleasures are supressed, believing himself unworthy, and every time he is close to gratification he self destructs, punishing himself for not being enough.

Now there are little thoughts, tiny intrusions, that used to be quiet growing louder. He doesn't want to do bad, not really, but what does it matter anymore? If he can't let himself be happy, why not be malicious? He's not listening to his conscious anymore, his impulses and... something else has a control over him. His 'mental switchboard' is broken, so to speak, and certain parts of his brain are no longer able to communicate.

There is no predicting what that man, that horrifically smart man, might do.

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

No guys you don’t understand.

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing

This is humanity

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Happy Birthday, Curiousity.

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

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I hear the cicadas in summer nights

Hosho McCreesh || Cicadas, Vincent van Gogh || Vespers, Louise Glück || The Complete Encyclopedia of the Animal World, Oxford Scientific Films || Salmonfly Cicada (Platypedia Areolata), Edward S. Ross || Cicadas, Lisel Mueller || Moths, Jennifer O'Grady || @nevver || The World in the Evening, Rachel Sherwood

as a person of color it’s so important to me that miles looked at hobie—rule-breaking, conflict-provoking, dark-humored hobie—and couldn’t help but call him cool, that pavitr and gwen see him as a reliable dude when adults call him a “piece of work”. we see him just fuck around and cause trouble and joke about capitalism and silently advise miles to be skeptical about authority.

idk like its easy to have another charming (usually white) rebel without a cause who stirs the pot for shits and giggles with a smug grin on his face to match his devil may care attitude, that the kind and humble protag shrugs off in his quest to seek approval from authority. but then instead we get teens from marginalized identities looking up to a young black man who challenges them to think about their actions carefully and question what they know, who jokes about things that other people would politely grimace at in response to, who makes adults uncomfortable. i can think of some people in my life like him—those older kids whom i was told were troublemakers, whom adults told me to ignore, to be scared of, to reject, yet were the ones who gave me wisdom and whom i ended up looking up to and whom i bitched about colony and homophobia and fascism with.

and it isn’t just hobie and his throwaway lines barbed with criticism and discontent, it’s also when gwen says “can you stop being a cop for once”, it’s also when pavitr says “this is where the british stole all our stuff”, it’s that level of awareness of unfairness and injustice in the world they live in and as kids they just have to passively accept the status quo and kick the dirt and angstily, cynically point at injustice with a half-cocked smile of irony. of course young vigilantes would say shit like that. of course young vigilantes would have blm pins and trans lives matter flags and jokes about colony and capitalism. of course kids like me would understand that. of course kids like me would look at hobie and say he’s one cool fucking dude.

Before Barbenheimer, there was Apocalypse in Pink,” the August 1983 theme of fashion/culture magazine SPECTAGORIA. The issue’s controversial imagery of Barbie-esque models attempting to stay gorgeous and glamorous amidst nuclear annihilation sought to, in the words of editor/photographer Sera Clairmont, “revel in the morbid absurdity of the new American condition,” an “anxiety vibrating underneath all our plastic smiles.”

“It’s The Hot Pink Cold War,” Clairmont wrote in her introduction. “It’s ‘Material Girl’ on the radio and ‘WarGames’ at the drive-in. It’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ interrupted by the emergency broadcast signal. We’re told to look sexy, dress fashionable, make money, and spend money, but be sure we’re just the right amount of terrified about the bomb. Get that Malibu dream home, keep working on that perfect body, sip cocktails by the pool in your little pink bikini and watching the stocks go up — but STAY VIGILANT! and for God’s sake vote Republican, because that dream home could melt into a pink plastic inferno at any given moment. Just don’t stop smiling as the blast liquefies your skin into bubbling ooze like a Barbie doll in a microwave - it’s bad for the economy.”

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NOTE: This is a work of fiction created by me. This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and interconnected alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

Now that SAG is officially on strike alongside the WGA, remember:

No individual actor or writer is at fault if a project gets delayed or cancelled.

It’s all on the studios, networks, and streamers.

Spoilers for nimona but while everyone’s talking about the really obvious queer subtext I gotta talk about the even more obvious fuck-cops text-text

Like this movie, with absolutely zero exaggeration on my part whatsoever, said “this is not a case of a misunderstanding or sudden action done in the moment or one bad apple or a system with ultimately good intentions. The entire law enforcement of this country from its foundations is corrupt and built on bad bigoted history and deserves to be demolished”

but also yes while I’m here it also said “you cannot change the system from within, respectability politics are a scam that gets people killed, and telling oppressed groups they’re the ones who need to change to make life easier for them is horse shit and do not take it from anyone, not even someone in the same situation as you.”

I HOPE LOVING ME ISN’T THE HARDEST THING ANYONE HAS TO DO.

jenny slate // bernhard schlink // unknown // heather havrilesky // sue zhao // i.b. vyache // fatima aamer bilal // anne carson // bylthe baird // alice notley // jody chan // georges bataille // frank o'hara // emily palermo

The Questing Queens are giving such fun descriptions to their actions and magic. Truly what I love about new players the most. It's their first time encountering a lot of these concepts and spells so their imagination is all there is. They're not limited to tropes and assumptions of what these things look sound or feel like. It's the most pure play-pretend and it fills my heart with joy

@/coffee-cosmos // ? // blasted, sarah kane // ? // henry and june, anais nin // ? // a poem for haruko, june jordan // cassandra: a novel and four essays, christa wolf // a little life, hanya yanagihara