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[sophaeros]

its tuesday and ive decided to believe we have no organs or bones or anything inside us but rather are completely hollow and exist only on the line that might be called a silhouette. every time this emptiness is challenged, every time we’re cut open or sung to or held or in any way touched, the expectation of embodiment that follows temporarily and instantaneously induces itself into truth, and into what we accept as a default state of being, when really it is just a constant and continuous repeated induction of embodiment that keeps us embodied. for example, if you put your hand on mine it will stop at my skin, it will find itself capable of resting there instead of falling through, if i choose i can lift your hand with my own and carry it through space. but this is not grounds for assumption that the parts of our hands that are now in contact were made of hand material before they were in contact.  reality (and this goes not just physically but on every level) is naturally pure concavity (hollowness hunger desire god there are a hundred words for it). when something concave touches something concave we have: )( and )( becoming )()( . this new shape is no longer two concave things adjacent to each other, but 2 convex things. one whole and connected ) () ( and one disconnected and split up around it ) () ( . when )()( is created, the union of two entities )( and )( discovers a transcendental third entity whose concavity has been inverted into convexness (everything in the universe is a binary either in the state of concavity or convexity btw). SO we have () which is convex. and thus convexity — flesh, meat, satiation, tangibility, edibility, love, violence, consumption, etc — is only a state or quality of being, which arises from the union of two concave/intagible/hollow entities. we think of ourselves as embodied, but this embodiment is only discursively produced from kiss and punch and utteration and twitch and memory of riding a bicycle and prayer for future embrace and everything else. in a vacuum we are vacuum. where there are two vacuum nozzles or two hungers or two lonelinesses, the oppositional sucking turns the sucked interstice inside-out into our lived reality. anyway i think it would be interesting and maybe fun also to think this sometimes

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今、船出が近づく、この時に…

the strokes performing my way in japanese @ summer sonic, japan, 2003 (x)

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some of my favorite replies to this tweet. happy lesbian visibility week!

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don’t mind me, just thinking about the little pat on the head alex gets after moonage daydream

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Chrome Hearts Magazine Jewelry Catalog (2001)

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I was shaking so hard then Philadelphia, me whammy fell out. What's your excuse? +

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+ something i saw a long time ago but can't remember where is that if youre feeling stuck in a scene then the problem that's causing it is probably a few paragraphs back, so try going back and seeing if there's something you can change that would help the story flow better

Immediate Writer's Block

Had a comment on another post where I thought I'd probably need more space than the notes in which to respond, so:

constant-state-of-self-discovery Oh I get the envy I feel it right now how the fuck do you manage to write without impassable writers block after 5-9 sentences because I haven't fucking figured it out lol

I do have some advice on this!

I think most writers get blocked from time to time, it's normal and my general strategy is just to wait it out, but if you're frequently blocked after only writing a very little bit, I think the problem is one of two things: either you don't know what you want to achieve with the scene you're writing, or you don't know what should happen next within the scene to achieve that goal. If you frame "I'm blocked" as "I don't have an answer I need" then often you move from just sitting there, sweating and staring at a blank page, to thinking productively about how you're going to get where you're going. It's the difference between not knowing an answer and not knowing an answer but knowing where to look for it.

An invaluable piece of advice for this, which I think I picked up from someone who got it off a National Novel Writing Month messageboard, is "When in doubt, ninjas attack." It's not meant to be literal, you don't need to have ninjas or fight scenes just because you don't know what to do, but it helps to get the creativity flowing again. If you don't know what should happen next, or you know but you're having trouble actually writing the scene, it can be very helpful to induce a moment of uncertainty or surprise -- to have a metaphorical ninja attack. One time I did this literally -- the POV character was just on the road somewhere and I didn't know how to get them from a pastoral country road to their actual destination in an interesting way, so I had them get attacked by highway bandits and have to fight them off, which also allowed me to demonstrate that the character had significant unarmed combat skills. But it can also just be like, two characters who are having a boring conversation can be interrupted by a third person, even just a stranger asking for directions, or there can be, IDK, an explosion, or something goes missing, or etc.

Sometimes it also helps to leave it alone but keep it in your mind and go do something else -- listen to a podcast, take a walk, read a book, not because those things are distracting but because all our inputs eventually feed into our brain and come out as reactions. If you're thinking about your book while you're wandering around a park, something you see in the park might have an impact on it. If you've got YOUR story in mind while reading someone else's, you might be more inclined to look at what they're saying and see what you think of it, how it might play into your work.

And honestly, sometimes you just gotta go past it. I'm working on the next Shivadh novel right now and it opens basically with Simon the chef getting into a spat with his love-interest-to-be over some cheese. He want the cheese, she won't sell him the cheese, so they get off to a very contentious start. But I suck at writing conflict especially when it's basically "A character I like is being pompous and another character I want people to find likable is being stubborn and somewhat unpleasant". I've been stalled on it for a while. But I know where the scene ends up, like I do know what the goal is, so I just...skipped it and went on to writing a scene I like better, where they meet a second time and actually discover each others' identity and that they're about to be forced into the grownup equivalent of a school project. Once I've gotten dug deeper into the story I'll come back and write it, and by then I'll have the benefit of knowing the love interest a bit better.

So yeah -- I think a lot of breaking a writer's block, especially when you don't need rest but are just stumped about what to do, is to twist and look at it from another angle. It's not that you don't know what to write, or don't want to write what you know you have to -- it's that you don't have the correct answer to a question, or you need to leave that part alone to ferment and come back to it later. At least, for me.

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The strange thing about growing up in conservative Christianity and then leaving it behind is that there are a lot of secular/progressive spaces that engage in similar thinking while sincerely believing their ideas are counter to conservative ones. So I thought I would just make a list of things I was taught within conservative Christianity, the stuff that was either the core of our beliefs, or the social dynamics that we created. Some of the language I use is specifically either scriptural, or Christian-speak.

This list isn’t to say “stop thinking this way.” This is actually intended to simply be informative because sometimes social justice spaces assume, “we are crafting our ideals in opposition to conservative ideals therefore whatever we think surely must be the opposite of whatever they think,” without ever seeming to know that their language and ideals look and sound the same.

So, let’s begin:

Sin-leveling: x is bad, and y is bad, and all bad things deserve an equal reaction

Sin-leveling part 2: because all things are equally bad, there’s nothing wrong with inverting the consequences. Hurting others becomes acceptable (because it’s no different than doing something distasteful), doing something distasteful is unforgivable (because it’s no different than doing something harmful)

Avoid all appearance of evil: if I assume that your behavior looks wrong, then you are wrong, even if further context would say otherwise. You should avoid doing anything that others would see as wrong because you are not allowed the benefit of the doubt or to defend yourself.

Sin by association: x company contracted with y company. Y company engages in something sinful, which means x company approves of said sinful thing which means if you purchase from x company, you are condoning, supporting, and have actually committed the sin.

Think only on what is good: or as the pastor of my old church liked to call it, “garbage in, garbage out.” Whatever ideas, thoughts, words, arguments, stories, pictures, books, movies, songs, friends, love you put in your head will create the desire to become that. If you want to be good, you must avoid any bad thought because you will “slip” into wanting it and then be unable to stop yourself from being it. (For example, type into google “is secular music” and click on the autocomplete of “a sin”)

Language as an in-group test: if you do not describe your life, experiences, and beliefs with the exact same vocabulary and in-group speak, you are either not really one of us, or you’re someone who hasn’t thought through their ideas as deeply as I have.

By any means necessary: Also known in the ex-Evangelical world as “lying for Jesus.” If my words create the necessary beliefs and actions in others, then it doesn’t matter if I am exaggerating, saying half-truths, or using manipulative language, because I’m saving others and helping them do what’s right.

Touch not God’s anointed: any critiques of those our community trusts, critiques of those we’ve deemed “the good ones,” are actually people trying to sow discord and disunity to destroy our community and their voice should be silenced because they must be lying.

Judge not lest ye be judged: A scripture that we throw at people when someone says our leadership is abusive, a scripture we cry is being taken out of context when we want to harshly critique someone ourselves. 

There’s more, lots more, but this post is already fairly long. Once again, though, this isn’t intended to be combative. I just want people to know the actual social dynamics that a lot of us grew up with in conservative Christianity communities, so they know when sometimes they’re sharing those social dynamics, not countering them.

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HOLE THEORY

@/wovi / Immemorial Silence, Karman MacKendrick / Track, Tomas Tranströmer tr by Robert Bly / Black Square on a White Field, Kazimir Malevich / Hole Theory, William Pope L. / Overflowing With Empty, Judas H. / The Man With a Hole in His Head, Rick Bursky / William Pope L. / @/vren-diagram / Andrew Wyeth / Eating the Archive, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh / What We Buried, Caitlyn Siehl / Ann Carson

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fifty shows into the fit comp i have had the thought "should i include shots of their hands in case someone wants to see what jewelry theyre wearing" can someone sedate me please im in tears

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this is actually diabolical

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who’s gonna tell tumblr that executive dysfunction is more than Not Doing Things?

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Feeding cats by remote control 😹😹😹❤️

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Passover seder at UC Berkeley’s Gaza solidarity encampment (via twitter)

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The landlord fears the urban oyster mushroom farmer

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feeling a little bummed abt my short hair not feeling femme enough for my fit w a short skirt but then i remembered how hard i swoon over the thought of am alex in a skirt so it's fine actually