#it feels like im in some sort of language limbo

[tiredfoxtf]

When I read I don't think much about sentences and how they constructed, what words are used. (especially in english)

But when I write, oh ho ho, man I am a king of overthinking it. (especially in english)

[riotzerosys]

Yea uh hi chat im gonna yap abt these two shadow ocs

Ghost!Shadow

- Sonic.exe au... duh.

- Blud died to exe, very visceral, he fought back hard though before that mf shanked him in the chest with its fist; ripping his heart out.

- He wandered the limbo that is the "..." zone for a long long time, even long after the world was fixed and restored by Sonic who got rid of the exe.

- Knuckles eventually goes to investigate some strange chaos energy in the now abandoned areas that were the outside and inside of Eggman's old base.

- He sees a bloodied corpse in the distance and investigates it, picking up Shadow's gun and inhibitors. He has a bad feeling, but the blaring sirens and flashing red lights make it hard to see or think... so he enters the basement.

- Knuckles finds Shadow's ghost, only able to see it if the inhibitors are on his person. He communicates with Shadow, who has amnesia and is just glad to have someone to speak with again.

- Knuckles guides Shadow back home, and with some assistance, gets the inhibitors into wearable pieces for everyone; so they can see Shadow.

- Overtime, Shadow remembers what happened, recounting it to Knuckles whenever he can (which is whom he spends the most time with, as Knuckles being around the master emerald somehow indirectly gives Shadow more energy).

- And uhh yea shadknux yippie.

- Edit: Shad nonverbal btw, he communicates in sign language and/or gestures.

Chronic!Shadow

- Everything happens as lore intends, however when Shadow is sent to earth in the escape pod, he awakens early from a sort of hyper-sleep, not yet found by G.U.N. and makes escape.

- He overtime gains serious chronic pains from how harsh the landing was, and although he's being hunted down by the G.U.N., he somehow gains access to a gun; continuing search for Maria in hopes she's still alive, despite his memory.

- Sonic eventually finds Shadow one day, and takes him in, as Shadow is in immense pain.

- With some help from Tails and even Eggman, they stabilize the pain a little, and manage to get some information out of Shadow; Eggman sadly informing him that Maria is indeed dead.

- Sonic plays host to Shadow, letting him live with him, and growing close overtime.

- Sonic helps Shadow with his pains a lot, and the two eventually grow close enough to form a solid bond.

- Ahem sonadow ahem.

ANYWAYS um yea i like seeing shadow weak and pathetic (/pos) he makes me ill <3

[littleeyesofpallas]

Hello! I come from your 2019 post (that I found on a Google search while doing some research) where you "disect" bleach character's names. I also want to create a very meaningful name for my oc, but I have no clue on the language. Do you have any advice on how I could go about this? Google is no help ):

(Im so sorry i started up a draft for this what feels like forever ago and it never quite took solid form and just sat in limbo for a while. Anyway I have a samurai TTRPG campaign I'm trying to piece together and came back to the subject, so it seemed like a good time to try and finish this... )

Oh boy, so I don't really know if i'll actually be much help with this, as I'm not a native speaker so I don't have the ear for Japanese that lets me just intuit when things feel "off" or "unnatural", but I can sort of walk you through some common tropes:

One approach is to take a core word/kanji and work the name out of them, fiddling with suffixes or pronunciations until you get something that "sounds like a name." Given that a lot of anime characters don't actually have "real" names this gives you a lot of wiggle room, but also there are definitely some sensibilities that --again I'm not personally a good enough judge of-- that make certain non-names sound more or less passable than others. This can be a tricky thing to play with, but there are a few shortcuts that might help.

Several suffixes are extremely common in Japanese naming conventions and most of them are gendered. A handful of super common ones are things like....

-ko[子]: "child" but typically denotes a girl's name

-me[女]: "woman/female"

-mi[美]: "beauty/beautiful"

-ne[音] "sound" but implicitly a pleasant one, like a chime or a musical note

-ka[香]: "scent/smell" but again implicitly a pleasant one like flowers, perfumes, or incense

etc...

...for girls. Or for boys, things like...

-rou[郎]: "son"

-tarou[太郎]: "big/thick/fat son" (implying he's health/plump/robust, not obese)

-suke[佑]: "help(er)/assist(ant)" but more colloquially just denotes one who facilitates the appended thing.

-suke[助] actually a homonym/synonym for the above.

-maru[丸] lit. meaning "circle" or "whole/full/complete" (kind of functions as just "...one" in the English sense? Like the meaning "One who is XYZ" might comparably be rendered XYZmaru.)

-emon[衛門]: "defense gate" but it has a distinctly old-fashioned sound to it, and kind of evokes samurai or yakuza depending on the era.

Attached to these are a few other sort of commonalities. Ichiro[一郎], Jiro[二郎], Saburo[三郎], Shiro[四郎], Goro[五郎], etc... are common boys names that are just a # and "son" indicating order of birth...

[edit]: okay no I super underestimated how stupid long this post was gonna look in Tumblr format... Cutting here for length, more under the cut

...the -suke:"assistant" suffix is often appended to aspirational traits or values, sort of like how English Puritans had a habit of naming kids English words like, Charity, Temperance, Faith, Credence, Prudence, etc... albeit without the background radiation of the cultural baggage of the Puritans.

But these suffixes are also often used to make unique fantasy names that are pretty distinctly not real names historically. In Shaman King, the ghost of a samurai named Amidamaru[阿弥陀丸] is just the suffix -maru[丸] slapped onto Amida[阿弥陀], the Japanese name for Amitabha[अमिताभ] the Buddha. This is absolutely not a name any real person has, but in the context of the manga you wouldn't expect to question it, although it sounds a tad silly. -maru specifically is also a common name-ifying suffix for nonhuman names, things like naval ships and swords often get names that are distinctly not human passing, but still very overtly "namey" names.

Incidentally it should be kept in mind that depending on the sort of characters and settings you're dealing with there are certain restrictions that you might want to consider. For example, the real world Japanese Ministry of Justice has maintained a list of Jinmeiyo kanji[人名用漢字] since the 1950s which dictate which kanji are permissible in the legal documenting of a person's name. For the most part this is to prevent weird or stupid rude or inauspicious names; you cannot for example name a newborn something with the kanji for death[死] or shit[糞]. But plenty of anime characters absolutely do not abide by this.

Otherwise there are some common conventions you can turn to with anime in particular, as again there is a certain affordance for nonsense.

Names with obvious color associations are super common, often by proxy of Super Sentai as a franchise and derived tropes. This can apply to either given names or surnames, and often are worked in as puns rather than kanji specific readings.

aka[赤] red

ao[青] blue

ki[黄] yellow

ha/hakku/shiro[白] white

kuro[黒] black/dark

kin/kane[金] gold

gin/shirogane[銀] silver

momo[桃] pink, but literally "peach" as momoiro[桃色]: pink color(ed)" is literally "peach colored"

which brings me to another point: Japanese names refer very heavily to plants and flowers specifically. Most common flowering plants, be they cultivated for lumber, decorative flowers, or food have some notable presence in Japanese naming conventions and can be pretty readily turned to. These tend to be predominantly girl's names either alone or as a root, but not exclusively,

sakura[桜] cherry

tsubaki[椿] camellia

azami[薊] thistle

ayame[菖蒲] iris

sumire[菫] violet

kiku[菊] chrysanthemum

etc... (although not all of these can function as names on their own without some appended suffix/prefix) But also a wide wide array of other regionally specific and seemingly more obtuse plant names pop up all the time. Also, while flowering/fruit bearing plants are very commonly evoked for their beauty as girls' names, there is also hanakotoba[花言葉] the japanese flower language, which can be a quick reference for what features might be evoked by specific flowers more generally, and for both boys and girls.

Oh and a few more general terms also show up in a lot of names, ha/ba/wa[葉]:"leaf" in names like futaba[双葉]: "Twin leaf"; [梢]: "Treetop/tip(of a branch)" [枝]: "Branch", [幹]:"(tree)trunk," etc... Not all plants as names or nonspecific plant related terms are as flashy or romantic as you might expect.

Animals are also a popular motif, but I won't get into those because that's just an endless list of like every animal... You can probably think of some really obvious ones just off the top of your head though.

Typically they stick to very general types or families of animal and of course those most obviously native to Japan, or else those with names borrowed from Chinese, both for the real and the mythic. In fantasy settings these may be evoked directly, but more realistic settings may opt to reference more menacing or otherwise less dignified animals(vermin especially) only through puns/homophones.

Domesticated animals or those with virtuous/valorous associations would be easier to accept at a glance, real or not, while those with overt negative characterizations might be a little campy. (I actually totally forgot but Hiruma[蛭魔] in Eyeshield doesn't actually "evoke" the word for leech phonetically, it just straight up IS the kanji for leech in his name. [蛭]:"Leech" + [魔]:"Demon/EvilSpirit" in fact. Like, for every test he ever took all middle/high school he just signed "LeechDemon" at the top. Neither of those are legally approved jinmeiyo kanji in the real world of course.)

Also worth noting as an extra layer in all these considerations, is that most common Japanese names will probably average 2 or 3 characters, maybe 4. A handful of names are single kanji and as you'd expect are thus very straight forward in their meaning. 5 or more kanji to a name certainly aren't impossible but they can be unusual, and I feel like they tend to appear as older, outdated, and samurai-esque names, if not just weird or ostentatiously silly.

(for example, in Bleach, Marechiyo's whole family shares the root Mare[希] and as each family member is introduced the names kind of escalate in silliness, until we get the younger son, Marejirousaburou[希次郎三郎] which even comically uses the -rou[郎]:"son" bit twice. His name literally reads as "Rare NextSon Third Son." It sounds very stupid and kind of pegs him as a spoiled rich kid. I guess in a way we sort of have a similar cliche in English about rich kids from stuffy old money having multiple middle names and "Jr." or some roman numeral tacked on.)

Rather famously there is just a random living businessman in Japanese whose given name is Taroukizaemonnoshoutokinori[太郎喜左衛門将時���] which might more readably be broken down as Tarou-kizaemon-no-shoutokinori. Written this way you might notice that basically each individual section could itself be a name by itself.

There is also supposedly some record of a meiji era citizen registered under the name Egawafujifumishigozaemon’nosuketarō[江川富士一二三四五左衛門助太郎], Egawa-fuji-i-fu-mi-shi-go-zaemon-no-suke-tarou. You may note that thoes are like 3 separate nameifying suffixes just slapped onto the end there(-zaemon, -suke, and -tarou) and the middle bit is just "1,2,3,4,5." So as I said the tendency for super long names is a distinctly silly tone.

Once again there is a distinctive kind of aesthetic or familiarity to long names that someone who knows better than me can definitely just kind of tell when a long assemblage of kanji and syllables just does not sound like a name. No advice for how to sus this out yourself, it's kind of just a matter of prolonged exposure.

On the flip side of things, it's entirely possible to write names with no kanji at all. For example, despite the very obvious evocation of cherryblossoms in Sakura's name in Naruto, her name is just written SA-KU-RA[サクラ]. If you just like the way an existing name sounds and don't want to risk implying other meanings that picking a random existing kanji writing might, you can in fact just opt out of it. It'll still carry some connotations but it at least won't look like you were trying to hone in on one reading in particular.

In some cases I also think it's just a common practice for media aimed at elementary school kids, as it foregoes excluding anyone on the basis of their reading level, where as you're less likely to see this kind of thing in manga aimed at, say, young adults.

So after hacking our way through all that... the other approach is to take a real existing Japanese name's phonetics, and find kanji that can serve as a homonym to the more conventional root in the name.

So, for example, the name Tanjirou is a real name, but it's written any of a few ways, including [丹士郎]: "Rust-Colored Samurai Son," [丹次郎]: "Rust-Colored Next Son," and [丹治郎]: "Rust-colored Peace(&order) Son," but in Demon Slayer the protagonist's name is Tanjirou[炭治郎]: "Charcoal Peace(&order) Son" alluding to his family's job as charcoal artisans and his affinity for the fire and sun elements by swapping in an unusual character with the same pronunciation. (the "peace and order" part probably referring to like a governor being a peace keeper which makes it a partial synonym with "samurai" as a part of the ruling class)

Does that all make sense? I can't tell how easy to follow any of this is for someone without a kind of cursory familiarity with this stuff...

And then surnames... I don't want to get into this oneb bcause it's just too damn big. but they do tend to follow some pretty familiar conventions used in the west. Locational surnames are common, denoting landmarks:

yama[山]: Mountain

kawa/-gawa[川]: River

mori[森]: forest

tani[谷]: valley

ta/-da[田]: field

mura[村]: village

etc... Some also reference manmade landmarks like towers, temples, bridges, wells, marketplaces, etc... Or even more general elements like "stone" or "tree" without pointing to an actual singular and specific object in the landscape. These kinds of root words can then be modified by adjectives like colors, size/dimension, cardinal directions, (one of)twins, and very often eachother. (i.e. Yamada[山田], Yamamura[山村] Kawamura[川村], Yamagawa[山川], Tamura[田村], Kawada[川田], etc...) I don't really know how to cleanly or neatly break these kinds of things down into easily referenced categories... It's just kind of a broad range of things that can be applied, and that's just in regards to real names, the realm of fantasy settings, even mundane ones, opens things up substantially.

But unlike a lot of western languages, there aren't actually a whole lot of occupational surnames. i.e. things like Smith, Baker, Carpenter, Mason, Miller, etc...

(and... uh... I'm not getting into kira kira names... that's a whole other can of worms and a very modern/recent issue, and I dunno that I know enough to really comment on it meaningfully. you can google it though and you'll find stuff even in english discussing it in some detail.)

Oh and of course the last "method" is just that some creators will just straight up lift their character names from other characters entirely. Like, in Naruto Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru are all just the names of the characters in the 19th century folktale Katakiuchi Kidan Jiraiya Monogatari[報仇奇談自来也説話]. Like the names don't have any directly evoked meaning based on how they're written, they're just direct reference to the themes and motifs of preexisting characters. Same way Sasuke's name is just lifted from Sarutobi Sasuke[猿飛佐助], popular turn of the century fictional ninja hero.

I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of this one. It tends to feel flimsy and shitty. The only exception being those characters that are actual in-world evocations of historical characters/figures, like Ishikawa Goemon XIII, in Lupin III, just straight up being a descendent of the legendary Ishikawa Goemon. Although in Eyeshield 21 Takekura Gen has a cool one where the name Takekura[武蔵] is written the same as Musashi[武蔵], and so he's given it as a nickname and given a reputation and motif evoking the samurai Miyamoto Musashi.

Anyway that was a lot of blustering about just to get to the point now where I can say: This all is extremely incomplete/unexhaustive, and of questionable real practical use to anyone as a guide to actually making up new names for a sort of anime/manga type setting. This really turned out to be less of a guide and more like a laundry list of just loosely adjoined/adjacent observations: Less a guide to bowling and more just a pair of bumpers to put in the gutters to help guide otherwise still utterly untrained attempts at success. It's as much as I can really muster in this regard.

[mp100fanworkstranslation]

Slice of Folklore: An Asian Historical Folklore AU

 by Tamadango

Oh god....Okay so this is an AU based on Chinese Folklore.

Reigen is a Daoshi Priest. This is a real sect of Taoism. But within the context of folklore, these Daoshi are more like Mages. They travel from village to village, doing exorcisms, performing rituals, removing curses, treating illnesses, presiding over ceremonies like funerals and also reanimating the dead so they can be walked to where they need to be buried.

Ekubo is a Jiangshi. More on this later.

That idiot villager…. said this route was a safe and easy hike

This is taking way longer than I expected. The other route would have been much faster

As he’s walking through a cave, the path underneath his feet collapses and he falls into a lower level of the cave.

(In chinese folklore, humans live on the surface and monsters/the dead/ spirits reside underground. Caves are sort of a limbo area inhabited by monsters, that average people avoid. 

The path collapses underneath his feet, and he falls. -Screaming- Holy shit! 

He falls and grunts in pain before looking up.

Directly in front of him, is a Jiangshi.

SAFE MY ASS!!

(Jiangshi are monsters from chinese folklore. They are corpses reanimated by blood spells. Lower level Jiangshi are just straight up zombies. Higher level ones are spirits sealed into dead bodies so they have some kind of will/consciousness like Ekubo here. They are reanimated by Daoshi priests and are obligated to serve them.

By default, Jiangshi are servant monsters, they ALWAYS have a master. Since they are dead/decaying bodies, they feed on the lifeforce of living people, ie blood. They can be powered up with blood, sealed with blood seals, sustained/controlled with blood. etc.  

It’s sort of the mix between a zombie_ (undead, with poisonous bite)_, a vampire (needs blood), and a summoned demon (serves a master.) in western fiction.)

Reigen reaches around for his bag as the Jiangshi hops towards him. “Dammit all my tools are in my bag.” 

(Tools specifically associated with being a Daoshi priest, like exorcism stuff, ritual daggers…spell tags…etc)

WHOA!

The creature is lunges at him, snapping. -teeth snapping sounds-

Reigen: ....? What an odd blood seal. Is it possible that this Jiangshi is acting under the control of this spell?

I have to remove it somehow! 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

bottom panel -murmuring-

Ekubo: Hnnnnnngg

I’m finally free… Thanks to you

(So technically, he serves Reigen now. Jiangshi are servant monsters by their nature.)

Reigen: Ahhh the J…..J…. Jiangshi…. It talks! (Low level Jiangshi can’t talk... only the spirit sealed ones can.)

Ekubo: What kind of terrible outfit is this?

Ekubo: Huh? Don’t put me in the same category as those low class monsters.

Ekubo leans over: ....hmmmm

Sniff Sniff

You’re a Daoshi Priest from the Salt group aren’t you?

Eh?

Ekubo: and you’re a virgin….good! good!

Reigen: What business is that of yours?

Ekubo: Haha…What’s your name?

Reigen: Reigen.... Reigen arataka 

(Daoshi Priesthood requires celibacy, virginity, veganism, no alcohol and vow of poverty, along with a lot of other things like prayer, literacy in religious languages, etc.) 

My name is Ekubo. I am an high level creature of darkness!

(In Chinese folklore, Humans reside on the surface and monsters, demons, spirits, reside underground, and are collectively referred as such.)

You’re going to help me find the asshole who kept me sealed for the past couple hundred years so I can take my revenge. 

Reigen: No, I’ll pass. I need to get to the next town, see ya (he says this very fast while walking away)

Ekubo: What?! Hey Wait! There’s lots of gold and treasure in the crypt below. I was guarding it. It’s yours if you help me out.

Reigen’s ears twitch.

(Daoshi Priests are required to take a vow of poverty so he’s not supposed to be interested in riches or accumulating wealth.

Jiangshi are servant monsters by their nature, and must have a master at all times. Which is why Ekubo tries to convince Reigen to go with him. Because If Reigen just left, he would have no choice but to follow.)

They’re looking at a sarcophagus covered in spell seals in the chamber below.

Reigen: Is that the owner of the crypt buried here? Doesn’t look wealthy to me.

Ekubo: Im sure all the good stuff is in the coffin

(In ancient china, as in most ancient cultures, it’s typical to dress the corpse lavishly and fill the coffin with jewelry, money and valuables, so the dead person can be wealthy in the afterlife)

Reigen: Hey, All these coffins in the back here are empty… that’s really strange

-Click-

Ekubo: No… those aren’t normal coffins… these… they’re sacrifices! 

Reigen! It’s dangerous, Get Back!

Reigen: Wait… why are you running?!? Weren’t you looking for this guy so you can take revenge?

Ekubo: Hey I thought he sealed me here to guard the crypt, I didn’t realize I was intended as a snack for later.

Reigen: What?!? Does that mean those coffins are empty because it already ate them? So there’s no actual treasure?

Ekubo: Is THAT what you’re worried about right now? Can you stop being a greedy bastard for a bit so we can get out of here? 

(Again, as a priest, he would have taken a vow of poverty and isn’t supposed to be interested in riches.)

Ekubo: Reigen what are you doing? You cant beat him! That monster is powered up from eating countless other creatures of darkness.

Reigen: Yeah that’s exactly why he needs to be stopped

Reigen: Ridding the world of monsters and exorcising evil is my calling!

Reigen: And you, since you haven’t been eaten yet, help me out

Ekubo: Tch! I want to, but this body is way too weak to go up against a monster like that.

Get down! 

Ekubo: You don’t look it, but you’re actually pretty powerful. Shame it’s not enough to defeat him. Impressive nonetheless.

Reigen: We don’t have time for small talk! Think of something useful! Get us out of this mess!

Ekubo: Alright alright, calm down. You can leave it to me. 

Ekubo: huh! very nice flavor.

The blood from the tongue of a virgin plus my (some kind of power class that is ancient but also protective) 

(I really tried to translate this part but I don’t get the exact words he’s saying. The gist is that he gets a powerup by combining their powers. That’s it.) 

Ekubo: I should be able to break through the protective barrier that he’s using to shield himself. 

**Ekubo: Bring it! I’ll show you my true strength. **

Reigen: Can’t move… Cant feel my body at all….Looks like the poison is taking effect…. Makes sense… the bite of a Jiangshi

(Jiangshi feed on lifeforce/blood, so their bites can drain a person of their lifeforce temporarily.)

Can’t feel my tongue at all. It’s completely numb

Dont lose you bastard

I’m so tired…… 

Reigen: Ekubo?

Ekubo: Farewell...

Ah!

-tongue hurts - Thinks: so it wasn’t a dream 

**He starts sobbing. **

**Ekubo: You alright? **

Reigen: It’s a talking fart!

Ekubo: Hey! It’s me! Ekubo!

Why are you crying? You miss me? 

(More advanced Jiangshi are spirits sealed into dead bodies so they can be freed if their bodies are destroyed )

Reigen: Idiot! I’m trying to get the taste of corpse out of my mouth! You’ve been dead for hundreds of years!

Ekubo: Why are you so angry? Was that your first kiss?

Reigen: Shut up! Don’t you have some underground crypt to return to? What are you loitering out here for?

Ekubo: Just doing my guard duty.

Reigen: Why are you following me?

Ekubo: Why can’t I follow you? I just saved your ass, you could be a little more grateful you know.

(So earlier, Reigen removes the seal that was controlling Ekubo, and he then serves Reigen by default. After his body is destroyed, he’s free to move on. The implication here is that he’s chosen not to, and has decided to follow Reigen around instead.)

By Tamadango

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UGHHHH. I was not going to translate this. But @gemmawritessometimes prodded me into it. There was so much goddamn folklore shit to explain. 

Also this comic has a lot of terms you ONLY see in folklore and rarely anywhere else. Goddammit. 

Yeah, anyway, enjoy this comic.

[mueritos]

just my opinion in case youre comfortable continuing the conversation, but i feel like most often the slur is used in a transmisogynist way (even though any trans person can get it used against them), so if a person is TME and hasnt actually ever been in a situation where they were under the threat of violence with the word.. well, theres not much to reclaim especially then? like to me the t slur and terms like "trap" have always rang as specifically transmisogynist even if trans men&nb people can get called those things as well by transphobes, so i'd personally never use either term to refer to myself or others

Yes EXACTLY you captured my thoughts on this topic perfectly. TME people should recognize that the term has historically been weaponized against transwomen/femmes, so its often not our place to reclaim it. Even though im comfortable using powered language for myself, the t word was something that feels wrong coming from my mouth. We also cannot have this conversation without talking about how a lot of transmascs/guys who are truscum use the t word to demean other trans people or even to describe aspects of transness, like the “t voice” that Kelvin Garbage coined, which often further perpetuates transmisogynistic ideas. I can recognize that some TME folks want to use the t word as a way to reclaim power if its been personally used against them, but whenever I interact with such people, I always let them know of the way that word has been used against transwomen/femmes. The slur “trap” should DEFINITELY not be reclaimed or used by TME people because it is rarely used in reference to TME trans people, but only in reference to transfemmes/women. Transmisogyny is something much more insidious than transphobia alone, and TME trans people need to recognize this in order to understand the transfemme experience. Yes, some TME folks face misogny, but it is because we are seen as lost women. Transmisogyny works at a different because it views transfemmes as living in a sort of limbo, something less than human, less than woman, and often a predator. That is why TME people should be very careful about the terms we use to talk about ourselves, because we may in the end be contributing to the oppressive power of the terms. Thank you for bringing up more valuable points!

[bonesofapoet]

We Are Unsung Hymns

[jason todd x you]

author’s note: me: im only writing requests this year! also me: what if i explored the more Intense and Darker Themes of being with an anti-hero, especially when they kinda disappear, then show up half dead for the 32nd time? me again: so what im actually saying is due to Recent Events i am once again, projecting onto jason peter todd

p.s. dont judge me for the out of context Shelley quotes + this is a little rusty, i havent written in a hot second. tw blood + injury, alcohol, adult language, loneliness.

word count: 1678 (WOW)

Silence, to you, meant many things.

It was the soft hours of dawn, honey golden light streaming through curtained windows. It was the hush in your soul after a day so divine it felt more like a dream than anything else. Silence was the eye of a hurricane, the calm before the storm.

Sometimes, it was sinister. Silence meant unknown things seeping into hairline cracks left unguarded when things had been going good, going smooth, going so well you forgot life could be anything else, forgot that surprises still existed.

A day of silence had melted seamlessly into two, then drew slowly into four, even five. It had grown harder to keep your mind from straying, to keep yourself focused on the world in front of you and the people beside you. It was easier during the day as most things seemed to be, but, well.

Things were always fine, until they weren’t fine at all.

An arm of the couch, a corner chair. The windowsill cleared of clutter for seamless exits and entries under the cover of night – they all became prime places for dreaming and thinking, for worrying and waiting. For wondering if you were even allowed to be this worried, this affected, because it wasn’t like you and Jason Todd were technically dating, after all.

It was like being suspended in a sort of limbo, a liminal space; floating at a fixed point in space and time where you danced around whatever it was that had grown and blossomed so beautifully between the two of you.

Also known as: a purgatory, of sorts.

So you scrolled through old messages, camera rolls, curled up in the windowsill with a blanket and city lights for company, with city life for a soundtrack. This all dispelled the tension, the sporadic bouts of cracked composure; reliving memories that reminded you of his warmth, of his smile, focused on the ones that surrounded you with comfort. He would come home because he always came home, in one way or another – a little rumpled and tired, or a canvas stained with his journey.

You crawled into bed, grazed fingertips feather-light across his pillow, then dreamed.

Of course Jason was fine. Probably.

-

A few days later, you had become familiar with this feeling, you realized. Adjusting, finally, to all of this from the past, the present. This was your life now, and patience was a virtue. Resilience had to become one too.

Life went on.

And then you received a message, phone vibrating while out on an errand. Twilight was fast approaching, and you tried to race against the heavenly hues as they melted into deep peony pink, bled into bruised violet, became that deep navy blue always mistaken for midnight black.

Night was unpredictable, after all, and this one was no different.

{ Tuesday, 5:36 pm. From: Roy Harper

Coming in hot }

“Oh,” you said, startled. Your feet stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, crowded and loud – then suddenly, abrasively silent – but you began to move again, when your mind remembered what, exactly, that phrase meant. “Oh.”

You were home in record time. Everything happened fast, after that.

The first aid kit was in your hands within seconds, contents already finding their way onto a table, hands acted on muscle memory as they pulled a bottle of liquor, half full, from the cabinet as your front door flew open, ricocheted off the wall.

You didn’t even flinch.

“In here!”

Heavy, shuffled footsteps followed your voice. Roy and Kory hauled Jason onto the cleared space, and you didn’t bat an eye at that either.

His gear was off already, the clothes worn underneath already stained deeper, darker, saturated in places. His white streak wasn’t so white anymore, either. The harsh overhead light hid no details, and you wished this sort of scene still made you cringe, still made your breath catch and your brow crease in worry.

No one ever thought about what changed within you, when the life you crafted was suddenly full of superheroes and vigilantes. It’s never just learning how to stitch, how to help clean fancy bulletproof kevlar, or your rugs by extension. No, some changes ran too deep for anyone to see them, except for you, in moments like these.

Jason’s eyelids fluttered open, closed, rinse, repeat. He groaned, swore brutally when you began to clean up his wounds; you had learned a thing or two by this point, and this was nothing you had not handled before. Kory and Roy held him down while you worked, while you stitched and cleaned and bandaged.

Your routine was a well oiled machine. Everything slowed down after that.

“So this is what it takes for you to answer my messages,” you said, voice loud in the fresh silence, tone caught between a soothing murmur and a sardonic dig. “Just get yourself mortally wounded, avoid all that ‘don’t worry, I’m alive,’ small talk.”

Jason swats away his Outlaws, breathed a cuss as he pushed himself unsteadily upright. He tells them to wait in the jet, and they listened only after you shrugged your indifference.

“Mortally wounded. I thought you just saved my life,” he tried to joke, but this time it didn’t quite land. Not with his voice so rough and his blood on your floor.

“Take what you need on your way out,” you offered to his friends (yours too, now, you supposed). A balm in contrast to Jason’s demand.

You shared a look with Roy and Kory before they shut the door behind them.

“Rarely a dull moment.” Jason continued, more to himself than to you. He picked up the bottle of liquor within arms reach. The cap screwed off easy and he took a drink, then another while you hid the bloody dressing in the trash.

You swore you felt every emotion under the sun in the next seconds that passed. You were careful not to overwhelm either of you with any of them.

“Why didn’t you go to the Manor? You know Alfred does a better job than I do.” your fingers grabbed the bottle cap, played with it while your heartbeat rose and rose and rose. Jason probably heard it from across the room.

You knew the answer of course, at least the one he always told you.

He was quiet this time, though. Tired eyes left yours in favor of looking out the window, curtains still wide open to the prying eyes of nightfall. He went over to close them. “You never told me, but you were worried.”

It was a small truth; he had grown to trust you with those.

You wanted to smile, but you pulled a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with water and took it to Jason instead. Tugged the bottle gently out of his hand, replaced it with the glass.

He huffed a laugh, breath hitching when the movement pulled at stitches. Jason shifted his attention back to the city beyond, peeking behind the curtain every so often. His indifference to the last twenty minutes, the last two weeks-

You ventured out, turned the words over in your mind as you spoke them. “I don’t want to ruin your dramatic return.”

“But?”

“Being temporarily ghosted gives a person time to think.”

His lips twisted into a smirk, eyes bright. “Does it?”

“Jay.” you had grown careful with your words, with their delivery, but they always said fortune favored the bold. “I know you’re not my knight in shining armor -”

Jason snorts, took a drink. You were half tempted to push him out the window.

“- and I’m the farthest thing from royalty locked in a tower,” he kept his eyes to the streets, but yours could never leave him again. They didn’t want to, now that he was here in front of you, acting as if he never left. “But it feels . . . it feels like we’re in a fairy tale, sometimes, you know? And then I don’t hear from you for weeks, or you come home with a bullet lodged in your shoulder, and I can’t help but wonder, ‘What the actual hell am I doing?”

Jason looked at you then, expression closing off, bright blues steeled. “What are you doing?”

You don’t know, and you tell him that too.

But you were still here, and you hadn’t told him to leave. He knew that, and you could see him begin to remember, see him begin to let the tension ease up just enough to be casual.

He said nothing before he stole the breath from your lungs, just like he always does.

“’Death and love are yet contending for their prey.’” he quotes, and you allow yourself that small smile then, moving close enough to touch him, for him to touch you.

You wondered how long it would take, for him to start quoting a poet. Little did he know, you spent enough of his time away reading his favorites to feel closer to your anti-hero, and, well. At long last, two could play that game.

“’Though storms may break the primrose on it’s stalk, though frosts may blight the freshness of it’s bloom, yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth, to feed with kindliest dews it’s favorite flower, that blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, lighting the green wood with it’s sunny smile.’”

Jason’s grip on the glass tightened; he had to look away, because – what the fuck.

Shelley always had a way with words, but hearing them spoken in your voice, so raw and practiced with that glint in your eye -

Oh.

The expression he wore now – it was the most real, the most wholeheartedly Jason, you had ever seen. He cleared his throat. “That’s not even the same poem.”

A quiet laugh fell obnoxious and graceless through your lips, and you couldn’t stop it.

“I’ll work on that one next time you leave me.”

Jason Todd pulled you into his arms then, hid his smile in your shoulder as you held him tight, and held him close.

[letstalksymphogear]

Symphogear, EP. 5

LAST TIME ON SINGY WINGY

ANGRY GREMLIN BEAT UP GOOD BY SUICIDE MOVE SURVIVE BLUE BIRD YES. BLUE BIRD GO TO HOSPITAL FOR WATER METAPHOR WITH AFTERLIFE GIRLFRIEND. TINY BIRD SAD, BUT THEN NOT GET SAD! JACKIE CHAN TIME AFTER MUCH THINKING. WIFE WORRIED ABOUT THINGS. SOMETHING SOMETHING PUNCH GOOD NOW.

Let us continue.

Miku wakes up to see her wife has run off yet again. This is the part of the Sam Reimi’s Spiderman franchise phase where the Mary Jane (not weed) begins having a rockier relationship with Peter Parker (not slang for penis) due to lack of availability.

It’s contrived.

It’s almost impressive that she left a note and had time to draw a tiny Hibiki saying something in a bubble. Glad to see you have your priorities straight, Hibiki.

“you know she might have had a better time in the local art school that doodle aint half bad”

Hibiki is motherfucking Rocky all up in this.

She’s going to kick some ass and nobody’s getting in the way.

“YOU’RE GONNA EAT LIGHTING AND YOU’RE GONNA CRRRRRAP THUNDER TACHIBANAAAAA”

“THAT’S A DIET I CAN GET BEHIND”

I wasn’t joking when I said she’s not fucking around anymore. Did you think I was joking? I can see how you can get the impression given the first few episodes, but I really can’t emphasize the thoroughness of the ass kicking she is going to be capable of.

“MY FATHERLY ENERGIES ARE WORKING! ADOPTERS ANONYMOUS WAS WRONG AFTER ALL!”

That’s totally not ominous in the slightest.

Meanwhile, in the middle of an unnamed McMansion in the middle of who knows where...

Gratuitously spoken English is heard. To be fair, it’s actually really impressive pronunciation coming from people whose native language are systemically different to ours. Most shows would just settle for “this dude is actually speaking english but everything is said in japanese for better interpretation” but not Symphogear! No siree!

Relic business is afoot.

We have a random blonde lady shooting random Noise from the thing The Gremlin had in her hands.

She’s really trying her best with her accent. She’s also casually shooting Noise because let’s face it, would we not do the same if it were in our hands?

“i do whatever i want with my big stiff rod pal”

Also, she’s a nudist. To also be fair, if you lived in a fuckoff rich McMansion with weapons beyond your comprehension, you likely couldn’t help but walk around naked doing whatever the fuck you want.

The people she’s talking to are the Americans, which we explained before are portrayed strictly in an antagonistic light. They want some relics, and this lady clearly deals them like like some sort of glorified drug dealer.

Suffice it to say, she’s not a very nice person.

Also, the subs don’t match what they’re saying in English in the slightest.

The name of this woman... is Fine (pronounced fi-neh). And she is the main antagonist of this series.

Fucking identical.

And here is the most unpleasant scene in the entire season.

The person we’ve repeatedly alluded to as The Gremlin is called Yukine Chris. She serves Fine in whatever the hell they’re up to right now. In this case, it’s using the Nehushtan armor to run around with Solomon’s Cane to throw Noise around the city.

“shits gonna get real abusive, pal”

Fine is a narcissistic sociopath. She’s manipulated Chris into servitude by believing she is the only one that can pave humanity into salvation.

“i dont like that smile”

Chris thinks Fine can secure her deepest wish. Ironically? It’s world peace.

“yeah! yeah yeah, world peace, yeah, totally. just treat me like jesus and we’re gucci”

Anyway, she proceeds to thoroughly shock Chris.

The lore behind this is that this is helping her resistance with dealing with the physical demands of the Nehushtan armor, as well as deal with the pieces of Nehushtan that may be still inside. Let’s be real, though. Fine’s a sadist, and just likes hurting people willy nilly.

“fuck... that hurt like shit... hey wait... wouldnt some of the electrical arcs hit you and shock you too, given you’re so naked and close to all this...?”

“ya nevermind that food looks real nice and i want a piece of that fuckin turkey”

It’s a real creepy scene, and it cements Fine’s horribleness really well. One of the most pivotal things to take note is that Fine says that people can only communicate with each other universally through pain. Strong, terrible BDSM overtones notwithstanding, this will be a common (though varying in quality) motif of the entire series.

“BITCH YOU THOUGHT WE WAS GUNNA EAT AFTER THAT FUCKIN’ WISECRACK ABOUT GETTING SHOCKED LIKE YOU’RE EVEN FUCKIN’ NIKOLAI TESLA ALL UP IN HERE WE’RE GONNA ELECTRIC SLIDE YOUR ASS TO NEXT WEEK”

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK”

“WHERE THE FUUUUUUUCK IS HIBIKI?!”

“i was gonna invite her to the circus with the rest of the class ‘cause i felt bad about how i treated her but i guess she’s not here”

“the only clown im interested in is hibiki, in the carnival tent of my own bedroom”

“isn’t being a part of /fit/ great, hibiki? can you just feel the gains?”

“yeah who needs doting wife based significant others when you have your gym bros, right newly acquired father figure?”

Hibiki, having acquired a new brain cell during her training, asks the million dollar question:

“Why the fuck are we relying on schoolgirls to deal with all this stuff?”

“anime just be that way, hibiki. i’m just the wrong protagonist in the wrong show.”

Japan is super big on keeping the Symphogear a secret because they are strong and the world really, really wants a slice of the Symphogear pie. These people are basically walking super-weapons. Tsubasa literally dropped a sword the size of a skyscraper. It’s like the premise of the series of Iron Man films.

“do i get like a superhero name too or”

Something to wrap your head around. This was released around 2012, and while the setting seems to be slightly more futuristic, the world it was made in at the time had not been through the era of social media/smartphones we have right now. It was on the cusp of doing so, which means the idea of decent (yet vertical) amateur footage of things happening wasn’t something in the mainstream yet. Why do I say this?

Because in Symphogear, the fact that Symphogear exist is the biggest open secret in this unidentified city ever. NDAs are passed like hotcakes to keep people’s mouths shut on seeing monster-fighting singing superheroes. And they sing, too! Symphogears as an entity are the most high-profile fighting agents out there. Bright colors, no masks, constant singing, fighting in broad daylight in populated areas. Everybody knows, but no one says a word.

Which means every politician on the face of Japan hates these idiots, but they’re stuck with them out of sheer necessity.

“i swear to god if you bring up sam reimi’s spiderman one more goddamned time”

“look it’s the truth, all anime comes back to sam reimi’s spiderman. fate zero did it. uhhh, fucking...baccano, probably? now us. face it. its pretty much the bible.”

It’s also pointed out that the very concept of a Symphogear is born from a science that didn’t exist, and it probably contributes to political frustration as well.

“im going to microwave all your sam reimi spiderman dvds. im gonna do it. you try me, motherfucker. i didnt go into acting and get into this position to hear lectures about a decades old film franchise nobody cares about anymore.”

“can we stop fighting about the validity of sam reimi’s spiderman for five seconds and get back to helping me thing of a dope as hell superhero name? now, lemme lay one on you: Mister Fister”

Hibiki asks where Code Ryoko is.

“any answer besides Not Here works”

“oh, she left to talk to the americans, why?”

“huh, shes sorta late, actually”

“WHY A BAD BITCH LIKE ME GOTTA GET STUCK IN TRAFFIC LIKE THIS”

In the mother of all Mom Vans, no less.

MEANWHILE... IN METAPHOR LIMBO...

Tsubasa has reached the sea floor of the water metaphor dimension surrounded by water, which is her feelings, which are very gay. Imagine the Mariana Trench but like, deeper. Way deeper. That’s where Tsubasa is.

Leave it to Kazanari “I am literally a sword” Tsubasa to successfully spin the very act of surviving a suicidal move during combat as a failure. That’s a special kind of self loathing right there.

“the sheer force of my love for big ladies is keeping me alive”

Tsubasa asks about the point of Kanade’s sacrifice. Why’d she do it? Why was she so hungry at the end?

She personally shows up to answer that question, because that’s Kanade for you.

“being badass is cool, but you know whats cooler? caring.”

“sharing the sauce... you... you shared the sauce...”

“thats right, tsubasa. i wanted to protect the sauce, but... ultimately... sharing it was better. it wasn’t my sauce, tsubasa. it was everyone’s...”

“im gonna suck on a ketchup packet in your memory, tsubasa”

Kanade’s spirit pulls her out of the dimension of water metaphors as she is slowly undrowning from her emotions.

Tsubasa, like Kanade, was lost in the sauce. But now, after Kanade’s touching peptalk, Tsubasa is lost no longer.

“will i ever see you again in my dreams, kanade...?”

“where there’s a sauce. i’ll be there.”

“ill eat taco bell every day just to see you again kanade”

“and i dont even like taco bell... im more of a chipotle girl...”

After accepting Taco Bell as her lord and savior, she is immediately pulled out of the metaphor zone.

And wakes the fuck up.

“b..... b..... b............”

“Baja Blast....”

[antibadnik-a]

— answer these questions then tag 20 blogs you’d like to know better!

tagged by: @babylonbrains and @heroquills !!  thank you!

tagging:  @chaoslent and anyone else who wants to i feel like everyone i’m mutuals with have been tagged already i just have 2 be EXTRA SURE with aura

nicknames: rain, mostly!  

zodiac: sagittarius.  i’m flighty, baby!

height: 5′7″

time: 12:14

favorite band / artist: limbo, mxmtoon, mountain goats, linkin park, britney spears, daughter. gregory and the hawk, rilo kiley ------ there’s a lot.

song stuck in my head:  'CAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES TO BE INFINITEEEEEEEE

last movie i saw: twilight with my housemate and i loved every second of it!  CINEMATIC GENIUS!  TRUE ROMANCE!

last thing i googled:  'denver resources for illiterate adults’ which is a lot less fun and quirky than i wish it was

other blogs: @godcontained / @ahvir / @lightmimic are sorta the ones i’m active on / trying to be active on.  the sonic hyperfixation is thick atm tho,

do i get asks: and i never answer them because im gay and that means i dont have to ---

why did i choose this username: all my girls fight badniks!!

following: 143 

average amount of sleep: i’m usually pretty good at getting 7-8, though lately it’s been closer to 6.

what i’m wearing: im at work so some slacks and a nice ish shirt.

dream job: Wealthy Widow

dream trip: disney land, especially one in a foreign country!  visiting tokyo and osaka.  a trip to london.  i have a lot!

favorite food: god have i been craving some good mozzarella sticks lately.

play any instruments: not a one

eye color: greyish blue

hair color: dark brown??  light brown?? auburn?? who knows.

languages you speak: just english, though i can like...sort of vaguely follow some german.

most iconic song: lately it’s been either airplane mode by limbo or better son/daughter by rilo kiley.

random fact: i was reported to twitter once by roseanne barr

describe yourself as aesthetic things: pastel colour / old teddy bears / flowers bunched in overall pockets / ruffles and lace / a sunrise in spring / holographic patterns / pink lips / false eyelashes / soft blankets / the smell of freshly mowed grass / a cheek kiss and soft hands

[obiternihili]

I think I'm going full crank here. I'm an atheist so uh salt grains. Map of a Christian Heaven.

The Jewish concept of the afterlife is She'ol, which like a lot of early Mediterranean afterlifes was characterized as a dark afterlife both the wicked and the just go. Basically, meditate on the grave - the crushing weight, the peace and quiet, the lack of light, the filth, and the universalism - that very well is She'ol.

Jesus came around preaching about a glorious place, the Kingdom. A paradise for the just and believing, or rather for those with faith in God, which might needn't be belief in God literally but the willingness to rely upon God and willingness to serve God, but that Jesu also intended for the charitable, forgiving, or perhaps those who could pass through the eye of the needle. This was translated, maybe analogously to Hades used for She'ol as that's how Hellenic Jews spoke of it, to Caelum in Latin. Caelum was Heaven, the sky, that is, the abode of Juppiter, King of the Gods, but I don't think the sky qualities were there in the minds of the Aramaic speakers of the first century per se. Might be very wrong, since Sky Deity cults had been in the region forever by that point. But this part of heaven is just ha-mamlikah the way I labeled it.

When Jesus spoke of Hell, though, he mostly spoke of Gehenna, basically the trash heap outside Jerusalem. But like this was the bronze age, family tombs were expensive there was no infrastructure and everyone was poor, so what do you do with travelers, beggars, the homeless, criminals, and the like when they die? Hardly anyone could read, no one had IDs, there was no rule of law outside cities and there wasn't a network of embassies or anything to id people. Can't let bodies rot in the streets because disease. So where do they go? To be cremated in the trash heap. And if you were a citizen of Jerusalem at the time, it was clear what Gehenna meant - a kind of humiliation, a kind of wasted life, a kind of lonely, tragic, unsightly, filthy, low-class, rotten sort of thing.

The Lake of Fire is mentioned in Revelation, and may be conceptually an extension of Gehenna. But this is explicitly a place where the wicked go to suffer, whereas the garbage heap could plausibly be interpreted as a place of purgation (that is, purging the soul of filth), this is apocalyptically eternal if read exoterically. But Revelation might be extracanonical and esoteric likely, especially since it spells out it's own symbolism sometimes (e.g. "a human number"). Nevertheless, it's become synonymous with hell for most denominations. It might not be a distinct region but maybe people feel it's needed to contextualize and cope with the wickedness of the world and so on.

So it's biblical, if maybe a bit tortured or esoteric or thought up by some atheist dumbass, to say that the afterlife has three or four regions: The Kingdom, paradise; She'ol, hades; Gehenna, perhaps annihilition; and the Lake of Fire, fire-and-brimstone get-tortured-forever hell. So perhaps if both faith and works are important, there's different locations for both axes; the faithful, that is, those with the will to live (which is to serve God or maybe it isn't but that would be nice parallelistic/metaphoric reading), go to the Kingdom if they believe or if they wish to live apart from God She'ol (or perhaps cleansed in Gehinnom and placed in a limbo), while the tired and willless who wish to be apart from God are allowed to rest (whether that's silently moving through She'ol or annihilated through Gehenna). Whereas, the wicked are punished in the Lake of Fire.

Extrabiblically, drawing this up makes for four axes or limbs - with a limbus (>limbo in Spanish, Italian, and some related languages) bordering a land of the faithful (or strong willed if you wish to interpret faith that way) and a limbus bordering the land of the faithless (or weak willed). The patriarchs were obviously strong willed and faithful; I suppose children might be characterized as weak-willed or faithless through their ignorance. So the Catholic limb and the heresy held by many Catholics despite the Church's teachings may be logical implications of this model of the afterlife, even if, say, you choose to interpret all of this symbolically or something.

If you pick a metaphor to run with like "the afterlife is how someone is remembered" than those locations still have analogues: the Kingdom is fame and glory, like I guess what we think of heroes and such interesting people like Washington, Jesu, Hildegard von Bingen, Caesar, and so on; She'ol is a weak persistence, like what happens to the average person after death; eventually they and the countless masses find their memories consigned to the fire, the forgotten realms of mu, while the especially wicked persist in memory in infamy, the Lake, like Hitler does. And perhaps, in a utilitarian way, this is related to the impact one has in life - the truly great like the guy who invented that method to put nitrates back in soil enter the Kingdom because what they did has good long term effects, most people have a very limited but persistent effect on the world, some may have well never existed, and we're still cleaning up after the wicked folk who died already.

I probably know nothing about what I'm talking about actually sorry this is what happened after reading a patheos article

im' sorry

[jinglyjangly]

hey a genuine question. i dont call arcade my husband (or veronica my wife), but as a nb person, would that be ok or not ok? because. im not a girl OR a guy.

this is a VERY long answer so short answer: i dont know shit my anon. i dont know FUCK.

long answer: if you mean “not okay” as in homophobic, since well, thats what i was getting at with the ask about women calling arcade their husband, i wouldnt really know and im not sure if anyone actually knows. homophobia is rooted in the binary genders, theres not really a word for specifically phobia against Nonbinary people, if you think about it. i actually have issues with my own gender and use they/them or he/him when i can, and i know some gay men or lesbians are fine dating NB….BUT some NB use non-gendered pronouns like they/them or xe/xem, while others do use gendered pronouns like he/him or she/her. and i know some gays/lesbians dont date NB people at all because they see it as bisexuality/pansexuality!

ive thought about this before lol, trust me, but shipping NB characters or being NB attracted to more then one gender, its like a limbo of confusion. Being NB is pretty much the definition of ambiguity because of our language. (english) language is trying to catch up for centuries of binaries, sometimes there isnt definite answers for these gray areas. a LOT of bi people ive met (and myself) are actually pan, but you know, because of our language its kinda been stunted and the terms are being used interchangeably. same with bi/pan people who use the word “gay” for endearment towards someone whos the same gender (ie i am so gay for joshua), because there isnt really a specific term for that special feeling of coming to terms with your own attraction towards the same gender and accepting it, and loving that feeling, and being HAPPY about it, so people use it as an umbrella term.

man sorry for a totally fucking mini lesson on words here, but language is cool though. there may be a word for people who are attracted to men+NB and women+NB, people who are attracted to all, ect ect but its just not english! some languages might not even have a word for gay or lesbian or bi, they just have one word for attraction that isnt f/m! a real linguist would do better, and im only 23 so take what i with a grain of salt.

i think its, kind of a case-by-case thing. im just worried about people creating like… for example, a NB courier who uses she/her gendered pronounce and ships her with arcade because its cornering people into either discrediting NB who use gendered pronouns and claiming its homophobic or, well, not, and letting this sort of pseudo-homophobia pass. this is what happens with gray areas and “spectrums”, you get loopholes!!! i personally think that the “spectrum” is useful but can overcomplicate things. if youre using gendered pronouns as a NB, you need to understand that you will be associated as that gender because thats why non-gendered pronouns exist, to NOT be associated with gender. so like, you know? if you use pronouns that are gendered as female and call a gay male character your husband, maybe dont, if youre trying to be respectful to gay men anyway, and if you use non-gendered pronounce… well idk, i dont really feel like its “bad”, but i cant say its “okay” either. its just a “maybe?” dont feel bad or scared about not having an answer or being ambiguous though, there are other people who feel the same way.

[thinktwice222]

It’s been a while

And you haven’t changed.  Just kidding, I don’t know who you are, so who knows if you have changed or not.  Is nothing still nothing, some might presume, yes, in fact it is. Climbing down from my podium now.

What’s up with direct eye contact? Has it ever needed to be a thing?

So anyways, I have been extruding art lately.  I was thinking about drawing a little fun glyph.  Glyph is not the right word but it seems right. Glyph is representative of an action.  At least that’s what I think of in my mind.  Have you ever thought about how Egyptian glyphs , well not even, we don’t need to go that far back.  The chinese alphabet is much more complex.  You know why english sucks?  the same 26 letters you use to form all the emotions you can have in the world.  Now, you can be as smart as how many words you know to express that rainbow of a personality, or you can rely heavily on tonal changes. implications, sub context, subtext. Whatever it is.  You wanna know how to miscommunicate?  Speak the English language and have a small daily vocabulary. 

That was a weird topic, but on here I try not to limit myself to anything. especially weird rants.  I’m really self conscious about my point of view on things, because there is no where to express it or have a valid space to get your brain sorted or work through biased opinions.  

Someone the other day was struggling with spelling.  I knew where they were at, and still am sheepish when I go to right a word more times than not..  That didn’t stop me from projecting my voice of authority to spell out sandwich, which at one point I definitely had a uphill battle with.  I hope they cared more about the figuring of sandwich over my indirect communication of the spelling by spelling out over people.  It’s the answer to the question, lets just hope that it was not unacceptable.

I smoked a fair amount again today. Im not sure what a fair amount its, but its when I decide its too much.  The highs aren’t that great all the time, and some have made me more than ancy.  I’ll probably soon concider the implications of long term smoke and how to make it a viable interaction while I still can enjoy the experience.  Or get a bong, jk, I have been reading dan harmon’s saved myspace entries.  Its the mid 2000s for more than a few years.  He’s really brash, and I’m jealous of his aptness to put whatever he feels, just a straight up journal to people he knows.  I want to get there at one point, rip the bandaid off.  I don’t want secrets,  well, I don’t need them.  

Don’t you love when you realize that a shirt of yours has a distinctive smell?  like a smell that is super comforting?  my shirts like that right now.  It’s kind of a salty and sweet smell.  Makes me think that maybe if I just swam in the ocean more often (jk again cause I live in Baltimore) that it’d magically turn my anxiety b.o. into something wonderful.  I’ll still give it a try at one point.

I can’t wait till I can have an apartment of my own.  I would also like a 50 l. bag of salt next to my bath. I would have a tub.  

Everyone should write more, meaning I should right more.....write more... my spelling mistakes are funny, usually putting an extra voul, or tradeing some hard or soft concenents.  I’m leaving that sentence as is just to give my spelling a good bow.  Yes brain, we know that you see spelling as a social construct that encourages policing and gets rid of regional dialect with the over tones of being poor and uneducated.  I almost spellchecked my kudos sentence.  I should maybe read more, but maybe its tension headaches that keep me away.  Well my eyes never want to focus on much.  

to smoke or to not smoke. smoke. I got to pack some new stuff in there too.  Not sure How discrete I need to be in this day and age but I’m pretty sure I have been open about those habits, or will be at one point in the future. 

What else.  music session got pushed again.  Wednesday now, really I’m over caring and my brain has been able to decide i’d buy a new drum set if anything happen, no problem.  I’m glad I have been semi responsible with my money, even though I have been pretty reckless with it.  But money is for spending, and I think I have gotten to the point were I am going to have a good understanding of money and its value in my life.  but first art.  I hate all these big backspaces between the paragraphs, It makes my thoughts, although separate, way to separate.  Like English channel separate.  Each new paragraph, you get a new country.  And new spellings, I don’t like to look up from the keyboard while poking all my keys.  My muscle memory will at one point return and maybe Ill just end up typing with my eyes closed.  Now wouldn’t that be the absolute dream. communication without having to use your damn eyes, obviously I have a thing against them. I type weird anyways. kinda like some weird long tendrilled vermin. or demon. another sentence full of verbal disbelief, I mean I cant spell at all.  People say home keys help but I don’t think that’s the way, every way has the alternative, I need what ever the opposite of home key standard is.  The android to the apple. Give me that sweet sweet alternative culture. Is there a style thats good for soul? like you know the music, that style but in expressive dance or gesture...... or typewriting.  It’s like how to use a hammer to expediently and save energy, you use your whole arm in the swing, directing with the shoulder. Or how you paint with your whole arm.  

New space. new country. I love rambling, maybe this is where my rambles will live. somewhere in the limbo of total existence and lack there of