clefclefairy

[clefclefairy]

I think a lot of people didn't grasp what many of us did on election night, that only bad things will happen on the federal level until January 2029 (if Democrats win in 2028), and they're still in that kind of raw stage that a lot of us were in from November-February, roughly, because they're finally waking up to what we already knew. I don't know how else to say this without sounding mean, but this reality was already baked in on November 5th, 2024 and some people really need to accept that and stop posting "we're never coming back from this" every single god damn day for the next 3.5 years. If enough people do the right thing and Democrats win the midterms and in 2028, then we're in the worst of it now. That doesn't mean there aren't things worth fighting for right now. That doesn't mean pushback is pointless. But what it does mean is that bad shit is going to keep happening for the next 3.5 years and a.) you can't take that to mean it will last forever and b.) you have to find a better way to get through it than spiraling every time you check the news and see things have not gotten better yet before any major election, frankly. The midterms could stop the bleeding, but no, recovery will not happen until after the next presidential election. That doesn't mean it'll never happen, it means you can't throw yourself into existential despair because things aren't better when the facts of the situation haven't changed yet! I'm sorry but time needs to pass before things can change and we can’t speed things up!

[clefclefairy]

[clefclefairy]

Who's Mr. Bean? Is he a villain from a game or something?

yes

[clefclefairy]

sometimes going on tumblr feels like being held hostage at smith college

[clefclefairy]

“All right, so the vampire’s gravestone is–”

“Cenotaph.”

“What?”

“It’s only a gravestone if it marks the location of a body. A monument honouring someone whose body isn’t present is a cenotaph.”

“I’m… not sure that’s how it works if the body gets up and walks away on its own.“

“There’s precedent for gravestones being reclassified as cenotaphs if the body is later removed and reinterred elsewhere. There’s no rule that says the body itself can’t do the removing.“

“Okay, but the body very much is coming back. That’s kind of what we’re here to accomplish.”

“So it’s a temporary cenotaph.”

“And naturally our greatest concern here is avoiding semantic ambiguity.“

“Semantic ambiguity is how vampires get you.”

[clefclefairy]

[clefclefairy]

CHAPTER 1 - THE BEGINNING

[clefclefairy]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[clefclefairy]

original url http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/8671/

archived on 2009-04-26 10:12:33

[clefclefairy]

I went to the library lego contest and it was so good. kids are so funny. I'm gonna try to redact names but I need to include the descriptions they wrote

the 3 legged wolf dragon, seventh grade entrant

titanic, the 2nd scenario, seventh grade entrant (hard to see in the picture but it's being eaten by a sea monster)

the lego duct tape banana, sixth grade entrant

behind the scenes, sixth grade entrant (recreating the image on the event flyers)

the attacks of september 11th 2001 (???!?!), fifth grade entrant

joe, fifth grade entrant

dream treehouse library, fourth and second grade entrants

police robot, first grade entrant. its stats are listed if you can't read them

name: police robot speed: 250/mph weapon: rocket gun food: bad guy drink: oil birthday: 8/26/2025

[clefclefairy]

ALL kinktober submissions must include:

A description DURING sex of the lovers' tripartite relationship with God.

A scene that takes place BEFORE sex that makes it clear that it is NOT secular.

A scene AFTER which CONDEMNS or SHOWS AMBIVALENCE toward EMBODIMENT.

A depiction of both people SUBMISSIVE before God.

It must be thoroughly clear that a SPIRITUAL LOVE is coming and the bodily habits associated with it will gradually come to WITHER AWAY.

Please make it clear whether or not your characters think that the BOLSHEVIKS are the object of the APOCALYPTIC LONGING of our POETS.

[clefclefairy]

tonight i swore a blood oath to the minimum wage workers at my local subway

[clefclefairy]

also pls tag the first game you remember playing

[clefclefairy]

Another comic based on a favorite post of mine, because what can I say? I love posts

Original post by @cryptotheism

[clefclefairy]

part 2 after all (direct continuation)

hahah whoops qwq!

EDIT: part 1 here

(deltarune)

[clefclefairy]

the weed dispensaries should ask if you would like to round up your purchase to donate to PBS. and if you say yes you get to scan a QR code that gives you 30-day free access to the full run of antiques roadshow. this is how drugs can win the war on drugs again.

[clefclefairy]

Sesame Street (1979)