#for self-archival purposes

[deadbeatescape]

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN GMAN IS ONE OF THE SKIBIDI TOILETS

[robinsnest2111]

I just knew he'd slay that crop top sheer blouse and black velvet skirt look 🙏

[crebbyhermit]

cover art mockup i made

[jonahmagnus]

Woah mr magnus what are you two up to

[senkamikakushi]

boy to dragon

Hiroki Miura / Kotaro Daigo as Haku - Spirited Away: Live on Stage (2022)

[moonlit-tulip]

Wholeheartedness, Part 2: Flinch-Elimination

Long ago, being in the presence of wasps made me very nervous. What if they stung me? The swelling would be uncomfortable, and the pain would be inconveniently distracting! This would be a bad outcome; I wanted to avoid it. Thus I would, whenever I noticed a wasp near me, stand still until it went away.

This habit caused me more inconvenience than the two wasp stings I'd received in my life up to that point ever did.

Once I noticed this, I decided: fine. Let's just go get stung by more wasps, then, until I'm inured to it and no longer freeze up when wasps are near.

And thus, having resolved this, I no longer had any need to fear the attacks of wasps. If I were to walk at full speed near one, and it were to respond by stinging me, this would be a step forward along the path to inurement, which would be an acceptable thing to gain in return for the cost in discomfort and inconvenience.

It's an old story. (One I've told before, even.) But the relevant principles don't end with wasp stings.

Currently, I do my web searches via a paid subscription service, rather than free via Google; the results are better, and with how much web-searching I do and how much money I have to spare it's a pretty solidly worthwhile deal. But they offer only a limited number of searches per month complementary with the subscription; if one exceeds that number of searches in a month—200, at my current subscription tier—one will need to either stop searching for the rest of the month or start paying 1.5 cents per search. And when I first subscribed I got very flinchy about trying not to search too much, out of fear of that extra charge. Because 1.5 cents is a cost, and surely I'd rather avoid paying that cost on any given search if I don't have to, right?

But, of course, making substantially less use of web search would be a much larger cost than an extra few dollars a month. (I am, after all, paying them money specifically for the sake of getting more out of my web-searching; searching less would run actively counter to the reasons I subscribe at all.) So I did the natural thing: I decided to deliberately search profligately until I broke the 200-search ceiling and started paying additional marginal money per search, for a couple months, until inured to that experience. It's been going great so far: I haven't yet hit the ceiling, but I sure am no longer flinching away from the searches I want to make.

Or, for a third example, this time one where I actually succeeded in exposing myself to more of the flinch-inducing thing: water bills. I used to flinch away from drinking water, because I knew it'd add on the margins to my house's water bills. This was doing me more harm than good. So I took a few extra baths, compared with what I'd otherwise have taken—together summing up to an amount of water-use that my drinking rates would have taken weeks or months to sum up to, since a bathtub's worth of water is in fact A Lot—and I observed that no great financial disaster ensued as a result, and that was the end of my flinching-from-drinking-water.

Backing off and generalizing, now: sometimes, there are inconveniences whose possibility I flinch from, where the flinches cost far more than the cost of just enduring the inconveniences occasionally. And, under those circumstances, it can often be useful to deliberately overcompensate against the flinch response. To try, not just to suppress the flinch response in each individual instance (which tends to be an attention-demanding and difficult process), but to actively toss myself at the flinch-inducing thing until I'm so thoroughly inured to it that it ceases to produce flinch-responses-in-need-of-suppression in the first place. As long as I'm tossing myself in that direction, the tossing overrides the flinch response. Once I've succeeded sufficiently in the tossing, inurement will override the flinch response. And thus the mental overhead of needing to suppress the response will be eliminated, to my benefit as long as I was correct in my choice of what flinch response to get rid of in the first place.

Because intuitively-appealing steps to avoiding inconveniences can be more inconvenient than the inconveniences being avoided, sometimes. And it's valuable, when that happens, to be able to just stop avoiding them.

[lucky-numberme]

[Image ID: a version of the "one fear" meme. The middle panel stating the object of fear says "Gerry gettin' done dirty in Mag 2." End ID.]

[lucaonthropy]

The Liu-Shen-Mu trio

[cursezoroark]

haikyuu style character sheets for the ocs

[unabletomakedecisions]

I think I need to add The Flesh to a list of my possible alignments...

Yesterday, my lab partner and I dissected a rat in class, and before going to sleep I thought about how *I* would be dissected (humans are not so dissimilar to rats) and traced out the lines where each slice would be on my body.

This isn't the Flesh part (although it is very Flesh).

No, the Flesh part was when I imagined looking at a section of the flesh at my neck, open in plain view from the incision, and kinda wanted to eat it. Despite the meat being both imaginary and me.

Come to think of it, I have also wanted to bite people and/or myself in the past (non-aggressively).

Meat!

We are all just meat.

[lena-oleanderson]

sort of a companion to this poem.

[phvnthom]

I miss when Gwen was actually Gwen and not the average man's "edgy goth manic pixie dream girl" wet dream

[flowerygraves]

i love how much info last.fm shows for your last.year :333333

[crebbyhermit]

oc textposts :) 

[catharsistheory]

lover i dont have to love

[robotae]

「  a recollection: 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘩.  」

DATE: 08.12.1984 TIME: 03:12 PLACE: A STUDIO OVERSEAS

                                                              some things are too terrible to grasp at once.                                                               other things — naked, sputtering, indelible in                                                        their horror — are too terrible to even grasp at all.                                                                            it is only later, in solitude, in memory,                                                                                             that the realization dawns:                                                                                              when the ashes are cold;                                                                              when the mourners have departed;                                                                    when one looks around and finds oneself                                               – quite to one’s surprise – in an entirely different world.

                                       ( tw: blood, violence, death, disturbing descriptions. )

                   some things are too terrible to grasp at once.

    a thick brush slides over the canvas, hands covered in paint, eyes looking but not seeing. they are in a trance, mind flowing across memories and getting stuck in one, always getting stuck in that day — that night — it’s all they try to ignore, yet all they return back to. they wish there were a gap in their memories, but then there’s the reality they desperately try to ignore.

     on the other hand, the blank canvas in front of them begins to have its own soul — stark reds and blacks beginning to bleed into the fabric. his hand moves with grace and ease, and slowly, just like that, jean starts to let go. as they let himself remember all that has happened, many things happen at once — at first, the guilt crashes at the bay, then there is the relief of letting go of a weight that has been on their shoulders for so long. and above anything else — there’s that unforgiving fear that they are not who they used to be anymore.

                   other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror –                    are too terrible to even grasp at all.

     there is blood — thick, red, so much of it that it feels like it encompasses their entire being. the metallic tang seems to clog all of their senses. it’s everywhere — there, and there and there — clothes, hands, under their nails. the memory cuts off. even before that, it all begins with ragged breathing, an arm around firm shoulders, their failing frame being held up by an arm around their waist.

    then there is a house. foreign, more luxurious than they have ever stepped foot in— they remember the hospital sheets being rough on their skin, itchy, itchy — the scar on their stomach, the pinpricks on their hand; all of it is itchy — uncomfortable — frightening —itchy.

    then there is a bed. they register that it’s soft, too soft. different than the ones they have been in for a while. a face looks down at them, and it looks so familiar, yet so foreign at the same time. how long has it been ? the memories cut off — they close their eyes.

    when they open them again, they are in an alley, crouched down, their hands grasping their own hair as if trying to tear the strands off — as if they can reach into their own brain and delete the memories by force. as if they can turn back time and make all the blood disappear —- they remember running out of the house soon after they woke up, their whole skin itching in a way that they couldn’t handle anymore.

     there’s thirst, unlike any other sensation. it hurts, and it isn’t like any other pain they ever felt before. for someone who has spent so much time in hospitals, this isn’t something they have ever felt before. and in their own frenzy, jean also realizes they are afraid. they don't know — don't know why — don't know where they are — don't —- it’s too easy to spot a drunkard stumbling down an alley. and the memory cuts off again to them crouching down.

    there’s a body in front of him, an older man, their lips tainted blue, yet their white shirt looks like a carnage. and all of a sudden, jean screams — as if it wasn’t them two minutes ago — as if there is someone else in the alley who could have done that —- rushed footsteps reach their ear, and they look up, to that familiar yet foreign face, and begin to cry.

    a catharsis of emotions, blood tattooed on their hands that will never go away — they look up and wish to forget it all.

                  it is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns:

       the colors in front of them look daunting as if it’s a scene from a horror movie, jean is sure francis bacon would be horrified himself.  yet their hands don’t stop moving, a smaller brush now, sculpting the faces of the figures in the dark alley, silhouettes all drenched in red. it’s a contrast from all the portraits nearby. jean doesn’t paint like this — they are into classics, and renaissance, and german romanticism, this… this isn’t influenced by anything —

                 when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed;

    they refuse to do anything else for a while. curl up on themself and pull the covers over their head in that very soft bed — and refuse to acknowledge anything at all. it’s not real- this is not real. they can’t — they don't know how to deal with it, so they pointedly decide not to.

    the idea of losing themself again is so frightening; they remember that out-of-body experience — the irrationality that took over their entire being, the animality, as if they were a maenad running across the forest, fawnskin thrown over their naked body, ripping apart enemies to shreds, losing their individuality for reasons they can’t fathom.

    they remember reading euripides, being enchanted by that very same ritual, the mystic unity — yet they fear it now, their entire being clouds with worry that they are going to do it again — that they are going to kill someone without being aware of it, encompassed with such bloodlust that they won’t be themself anymore. and idly, jean thinks that perhaps pentheus wasn’t so wrong after all.

                   when one looks around and finds oneself – quite to one’s surprise –

    and just like that, jean shakily steps back and looks down. their hands covered in red and black paint look just like dried blood, and surprisingly, they find themself not caring about it at all — the similarity even turns the ends of their lips upwards.

    and then, they take another step back to stare into what they have just created. a memory, a portal back into the past, their own figure slouched over another dark form, and there is a shadow at the end of the alley brighter than anything else. it would be perhaps disturbing to anyone else, but it fills jean with some kind of… relief — ease. acceptance. as if that memory was the very last thing left behind of who they used to be.

    they take another step back, and another, and finally grins at their own creation. the last remnants of the shackles around their ankles fall down, and they take another look at the body on the ground, and just like that, it’s clear to realize it’s them too. it used to be them.

    it’s them from another world, the ruins of a sick boy who left the world too soon — it is son jinho whose lips are tinted blue, it’s son jinho who has bled out in a filthy alley, and it’s jean who stands over the corpse. it’s jean who is reborn, and it’s jean who will live through the world to the end.

                   in an entirely different world.