#Beyond White Space

[headphonemouse]

redraw (light mode users try clicking it! dark mode users there's a solid version below)

My favorite tags from @borealiszero that gave me the strength to finish this

[starlooove]

No one is asking you to like cops IRL, not even the show. If you look at Arcane and what you see is copaganda, if you look at Cait and only see PoLiCe OfFiCeR and not the character, the problem is YOU.

1. I never said anyone asked me to like cops irl

2. I know that’s what I said.

[g0thsoojin]

.

[rotzaprachim]

one thing i’ve been thinking about is the claiming/not claiming experiences in fiction thing and the necessity of empathy or writing the stories of people profoundly like unlike ourselves without laying claim to specific experiences. but also one thing i find is that my /own/ specific experience, my community’s, they aren’t monolithic in any way or something i could write down as This is /ME/, but that when i write profoundly different settings and characters shards and aspects of that experience pop up in the strangest places. there’s little shards of my home town every where i go. i think it’s really important to avoid that form of writerly solipsism which places physical and embodied personal experiences and understandings as the universals of everyone everywhere, so i don’t want it to be that, but it is especially interesting to me as i expand my writing especially in fantasy and sci fi locations what it is that has that resonance 

[gamebunny-advance]

*Exhale*

Alright, I've been teasing it long enough. Anyone that's been paying attention has probably figured out what my oh-so secret project has been (not that it's going to stop me from vague-posting about it), and he really is close to being finished.

Face-up. Done. (Though I would like to touch-up where the paint has chipped)

Clothes. Painted.

Wig. Styled.

I literally just need to put the fringe on his scarf, but for whatever reason, I've just been hit with this wave of fatigue since about the time I wrote the last confessions post (frankly, if you ever see me writing/posting long-ass posts, it's because I've lost the energy to use my hands to make things).

I guess I just burned myself out from making both him and Kun3h0 at the same time, that when Kun3h0 got finished, my whole body shut down having felt relief from "completing" the project. To be fair, this has been going on since at least mid-Janurary, so I am more than ready to close the book on this one.

I'll try to finish him within the month, but there are also a lot of other things going on with me ATM, so I wouldn't hold me to it.

[starpros-sunshine]

I think my main problem with minimalist architecture isn't even that I find it ugly and loveless (which is a separate thing I'll try not to go into) but that it just feels unfinished to me?

Like, I know this is a finished building but it just kinda looks like there's something missing and it irks me on a level that goes beyond if I think it's aesthetically pleasing because I can get that. Not personally but I can see why someone would be into the sleek and stylish cube look because of the "modern" appeal or whatever I can see how someone would explain their like of minimalism in architectural design.

But on a personal level it just feels to me like you started something and then you just. Stopped. Minimalist buildings to me feel like a work in progress that's just been abandoned and given up on. Like when I sketch something and then abandon that to sketch another idea I just had and that goes on and on and on and on so there's this abundance of unfinished sketches that have just been left to themselves but I tell myself that they're finished because "You can see what it's supposed to be. Mission accomplished." And they just make me a little sad to be honest because it looks like someone started something and then they just. left.

[wolfisland]

like idk if you ask me w some of these dudes it just reeks of men who'd hit women but dont think theyd get away with it bc theyre not cis but whatever thats my two cents

[cat-with-a-keyboard]

i am........... not well

[verbjectives]

not to be a tech librarian who's also a technophobe but i shouldn't need to have a fucking username/password to use my own personal printer

[istandonsnowpiles]

From Worlds Beyond Earth in the National Air and Space Museum Planetarium

[metagalacticx]

i’m actually tired of being pissed off at fandom stuff like i swear im not trying to be annoying on purpose but unfortunately i kinda spent most of my formative years on tumblr, in this fandom, and to see this kind of stuff still so prevalent is disheartening and it sucks i genuinely wish i didn’t care

[beemovieerotica]

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍

[mcmansionhell]

we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! Student loans just started back up!

[abookishidentity]

Books read in July 2024

-Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic by Brendan Blaber started July 1, 2024 and finished July 3, 2024 - 5/5 stars. I liked this book a lot. This was a story between two sisters and how the death of their mother affected them both. Molly’s sister has such an interesting epithet and it clashes against Molly’s. The characters we are introduced to are so interesting and I love that Giovanni came back. He truly had Molly’s interests at heart. He was incredibly supportive of both sisters which was sweet. The ending was rather cute. Molly was finally with people who truly cared about her. I hope we get more from the Epithet Erased universe. Brendan Blaber writes his characters very well. When I was reading this book I was reminded of a video he put out (JelloApocalypse is the youtube name) called “So, You’re Stuck in a Time Loop!” Due to the fact that nearly each time Molly met her sister in her dream world she would force Molly and her friends out and they would have to go back to the beginning to find their friends. It was such good shit. 

-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine- The Dog of War by Mike Chen started and finished July 3, 2024- 4/5 stars. When I ordered this book I really should have realized it was a graphic novel. Graphic novels are very fast reads. It was pretty good. The illustrations were quite astounding. There were quite a lot of them with the characters and other dogs. It was cute. The story was solid. I got it because I wanted to read more of Mike Chen's stuff. His work is great.

-Thicker than Water by Mike Carey started July 3, 2024 and finished July 8, 2024 - 5/5 stars. Man I love the Felix Castor series. Didn’t care for the beginning too much but I guess the succubus character has to be reintroduced somehow. Other than that this book was quite amazing. Fix’s brother had a role in this book which means we got some family drama and shit. It’s interesting to me how “F Castor” was painted in blood on a car window and the police think its the main character who is involved. I mean the person who painted it could have been saying “Fuck Castor” right? Anyway there was a background story detailing something that happened in Felix’s childhood and I know immediately that Anita Yeats was the one married to the guy who got ripped to shreds and wrote “F Castor” on the car window. I like how Felix is good with children. I liked this book a lot. I need to buy the next book in the series at some point. 

-Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson started July 8, 2024 and finished July 11, 2024- 3/5 stars. I try to read urban fantasy written by women and the main characters are women. They never hit the same as ones written by men and are about men. The setting of this book was quite interesting. New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. It broke or at least damaged the border between the real world and the supernatural world. The main character’s mentor goes missing and she is on the hunt for him. It was interesting to find out that the mentor was actually her dad this entire time. This is the third or fourth urban fantasy book I have read in which the mentor is killed but the fact that it’s her dad is kind of heartbreaking. Don’t think a mentor/dad would assign their protege/daughter a mission to flirt with a magic dead pirate to trap him and bring him back to the other world.  Perhaps that will harden her in the next book. She is a wizard and gets assigned essentially a wizard cop as a partner. He is strangely protective over her. It’s a little obsessive for my tastes. He also can shapeshift into a golden retriever which he uses to essentially sleep in her house. It’s weird. His cousin appears as well. It’s a weird love triangle until he is taken by the magical creatures for some reason? I don’t know. I think I should read the second book. 

-A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White started July 12, 2024 and finished July 16, 2024- 4/5 stars. I’m glad I kept reading past the first chapter. I was going to be pretty bored if the race car driving was going to be present in the book a lot. This book was quite interesting. Science fiction universe with space travel and all that and yet people could do magic. Not everyone has the same magic and one of the main characters can’t do magic at all. The other main character can essentially read machines with her magic. It’s fascinating. There’s also a sapphic relationship in this book which is interesting. I like how the spaceship crew essentially kidnaps the magicless character and the other character is essentially brought along for the ride. She kind of has to as she is framed for murder. They are on the hunt for a missing ship so it’s a treasure hunt. Good book overall. The library doesn’t have the sequel so oh well. 

-The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp started July 16, 2024 and finished July 20, 2023- 4/5 stars. This book also takes place in New Orleans post Katrina. It’s constantly being referenced as “The Storm” which is weird and repetitive. The main character is the son of a god but it’s never revealed who it is. All sorts of gods are talked about in this book. It seems like every god from every culture exists in this book which is kind of cool but it also makes the book feel unfocused at times. The main character can find things and has powers of his own which he loses for a bit when he is essentially forced into a card game with various gods and beings who are powerful. This book has various parts which is good. In some ways this book didn’t feel like the first book of a trilogy but rather the last book as so much shit happened in it. The book became infinitely more interesting when the main character died and was resurrected in a woman’s body. She is then referred to as she. It’s quite interesting. It was essentially a murder mystery until this happened. I think the other two books are at the library so I should check them out at some point. 

-The Stars Beyond edited by Charlotte Wells Llewelyn started July 20, 2024 and finished July 23, 2024- 3/5 stars. Anthology book with 6 stories about contact. I read that as first contact. I liked the first two stories a lot. The last story was pretty good too. There isn’t much to say. I like the Twilight Imperium universe. It’s quite interesting how a board game series was written into a book series. 

-Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky started July 23, 2024 and finished July 27, 2024- 5/5 stars. This book has some great world and character building. I don’t usually go for 600 page books but this was given to me to read and so I didn’t feel guilty for taking quite some time to read it. The chapters about the sentient spiders were quite interesting to read. I feel bad for the human main character, being woken up from sleep every so often to some utter bullshit. For the longest time this was a 4/5 stars for me but the ending really sold me. I like that instead of complete genocide of the human race and or the spiders, the spiders essentially infected the humans with a chemical and they all work together now. Can’t wait to read more of that in the sequel. 

-Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett started July 28, 2024 and finished July 31, 2024. - 4/5 stars. I needed something different after reading a longer science fiction book. I heard this book was good and I do want to read more about the fae. I like how research focused the main character is. She’s awesome. She doesn’t really read people all that well which is entertaining to read. Bit relatable. It’s quite interesting how her Cambridge coworker, Wendell Bambleby is a member of the fae and seems to care for her a lot. Based on his attitude towards everything you wouldn’t think so. There is moment in which he is saving her from fae and he chops off their heads, thinks its satisfying to do so and then rewinds time to do it again. It reminds me of something. I think something similar happened in a Stephen Blackmoore book? I’m still unsure but it’s such an intriguing moment. Didn’t think Bambleby would be capable of doing something so gruesome and powerful. Overall good book. I think I shall check out the sequel at some point. 

[emacrow]

"Hey, can you move your Lantern Corp away from my Grave? Your blocking the view."

"What?" Hal said startled as he noticed a floating white hair teen with green eyes looking annoyed.

It would've be common event if it weren't for the fact that they in the middle of space near Mar.

"Could you please move the lantern Corp away from my grave, it's blocking the my view of the stars." The boy said pointing back at mars then back at Green lantern Corps.

"This is the second time this happen and I would like to just rest in peace."

The more Hal look at the floating boy, the more he realized how humaniod and alien like he began to look, the clear white hair with sparks of stars dust in it, the freckled covering his face look a splatter of dwarf stars, the toxic green eyes, and the odd looking clothes that look barely human like with the kind of reptile skulls on his shoulders.

Oh

OH

Oh..

"I'll tell them to move it from your view.." Hal said paling a bit as later on he went closer to Mars where that floating alien child has pointed then disappeared.

Only to see a makeshift grave made from unknown mineral in the red dirt that looked ancient and beyond dusty level that almost made him sneeze.

Hal move the dust away from the tombstone like made of extinct like mineral, with a name that took his lantern green 3 hours to translate which static and glitch.

"Danny phantom

Brother

Planet Savior

Hero

Clockwork's apprentice

Forever King of balance

May he sleep peacefully."

[kitkatscabinet]

Nothing fucks with my baby

Simon Riley x wife reader

Summary: Simon is the Earth orbiting your sun and he'll do anything to keep you safe and happy, even if that means resorting to bloody means.

Word count: 1.4k

Warnings: attempted non-con (not by Simon)

@ghosts-cyphera for you pookie, hope you enjoy!

Eight months. It’s been eight long, tortuous months since Simon saw you in person. Eight months of living off brief Skype calls interrupted by work schedules and shitty internet cutting out mid-call, an age since he’s touched you. Since he’s breathed in your scent and cradled you against his muscular chest, since he’s tasted you. Pictures of you weren’t enough, even if you’d gifted him a set of delectable Polaroids showcasing your gorgeous body decorated with black and white lingerie.  

Long deployments had never bothered him, not until you’d become the central part of his life. Simon was the Earth, orbiting your sun reverently and fervently. He’d worship you on his knees for eternity if that’s what you desired.

His appetite for you has always been ravenous, but his need for you has been greatly nourished after months of no contact. The door to your shared home swings open with a bang, the anticipation coursing through his veins diminishing his control in a way he knows you’ll scold him for. His bag is dropped carelessly in the foyer as he stalks through the space, a man on a mission to find you. Not even the weary exhaustion after months of shit sleep and shared communal spaces would deter him from his mission. 

You’re not in your home office or the bedroom and Simon’s frustration simmers under his skin as he marches straight back out the door. It’s only the knowledge that you’ll be devastated to have missed his surprise homecoming that tempers his annoyance. 

Ghost is beyond irritated by the time he arrives at your work, not necessarily at you, he knows how seriously you take your career, it’s one of the reasons he was so drawn to you. Once some lowly private had made a snide remark about you being the breadwinner, scoffing at Simon for letting his wife ‘emasculate’ him like that. It was only Price playing damage control that kept him from a dishonourable discharge that day. He had no regrets, especially after the incident taught people to keep your name out of their mouths. 

It’s late, well past working business hours when he keys into the building using the code you’d given specially for him. So it shouldn’t surprise him how empty it is, most of the lights turned off as he made his way to your office, but Simon hadn’t survived over a decade in the military without learning to trust his gut. A distinct uneasiness settles in his body, narrowed eyes surveying the space for anything out of the ordinary as he increases his pace to get to you. 

The light in your office is on, the door is left open carelessly and gives Simon a clear view of the sight of you bent over your desk trying not to cry as a man holds a gun to your head and fumbles with your sleek dress pants. Simon thought he knew rage, but any anger he’s ever felt is drowned in comparison to the sheer righteous fury that alights his veins. 

He closes the gap in record time, red filtering out the corners of his vision and spraying over his knuckles as he rips the interloper away and viciously lays into him. Any slurred words pleading for mercy are ignored and shut down as Simon’s fist renders the man’s mouth an inoperable bloody mess. 

His arm aches furiously by the time he pulls back, chest heaving with breaths that have long since been silenced from the scumbag that now lay dead on the floor of your office. It’s the sound of your shaky sobs that pulls Simon back from the brink, immediately darting towards you, shaky hands stained with blood cradling you against his bulk gently. 

He’s vibrating with an explosive cocktail of fury, fear, outrage and relief. You press yourself tighter against his chest like you’re trying to burrow into the safety of his ribcage. Simon can’t bring himself to speak, mouth dry and tongue heavy as he buries his face into the top of your head. The silence is broken by the shaky inhales of your rattling breaths and sobs. 

All too soon you’re pulling away, even when he fights to keep you safe and sound against his chest. “Simon? What… what’s going to happen with-” You try and turn your gaze towards the corpse staining your carpet but Simon prevents you with a hand grasping your jaw, preventing you from getting a glimpse at the carnage. 

“Don’t worry your pretty little head darling, I’ll take care of it. But first, let's get you home yeah?” He walks you from the building to your car with a supportive arm wrapped around your shoulders, tucking you against his side before sliding you into the passenger seat of your car. It’s a testament to how shaken you are that you don’t protest, remaining silent and clutching the hand that grasps your thigh like a lifeline. 

It doesn’t take long to tuck you into bed, wrapping you tightly in the blanket like it will protect you from the horrors of the outside world. The adrenaline had faded from your body making way for the exhaustion. Simon doesn’t leave your side until he’s sure the clutches of sleep have pulled you under, and even then, it's with extreme hesitation that he stands and leaves the bedroom, reaching for his phone to make a call. 

Luckily, you don’t wake even once in the hours that follow as he waits for news of the cleanup. He spends that time alternating between checking in on you, watching you breathe peacefully and pacing the linoleum floors that you’d insisted on. 

A single knock on the front door pulls him from the spiral of thoughts that threatened to pull him further and further into darkness. He opens the door to an unimpressed Price, who pushes his way in with Gaz and Soap trailing after. Expectantly he stares at them, watching as Price lights a cigar and takes a long drag. 

“It’s done. Did you have to make such a mess though son?” It’s an innocuous enough comment but one that raises Ghost’s hackles anyway and he shoots a venomous glare at his captain that would never have been acceptable in any other circumstances. His shoulders tense and it takes everything in him to keep his voice somewhat level. 

“That fucker laid his hands on my wife!” He inhaled shakily as he remembered what he’d almost been too slow to prevent, unable to prevent the rise of volume as he yelled at his captain, “My wife! He’s lucky I didn’t paint the room with his insides!” The baritone of his booming snarl is loud enough that even Soap flinches slightly with widened eyes. 

There’s a tense silence but his captain nods, something like approval in his gaze before his eyes slide towards the right and Simon turns just in time to witness you call his name, voice hoarse with sleep and eyes red from tears. 

He crosses the space and curls you against him in record time, nonchalantly throwing a dismissive wave towards his team who simply nod in understanding and file back outside. “Were those the boys? You didn’t have to kick them out” you murmured though Simon was already hushing you, leading you back to bed with a firm hand on the small of your back. 

“Don’t worry ‘bout them lovie, they were leavin’ anyway” he waved away your concerns, finally kicking off his shoes, trapping you in his arms and pulling you down onto the mattress. You squeak at his actions, giggling as his stubble tickles the skin of your neck. 

Despite how pent-up and desperate for your touch he is, Simon makes no move to escalate the situation, settling you in his arms and simply breathing you in. Neither of you speak about the earlier incident, not willing to shatter the peace. Though Simon lets out the occasional hum when your hands trace gentle circles over his heart, focusing on the steady beat of his pulse beneath your palm. 

Inevitably the lingering emotions of the day would have to be dealt with, but not yet, Simon would allow himself to relish in the peace just a little longer.