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skyedestiny · 1 year

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Quoth the Author: Our Next Book

Hello, everyone! I know I haven’t been here very much lately. Well, in an effort to change that, I wanted to talk about a stream I’ve been running on Twitch (more recently live on my youtube channel) lately, called Quoth The Author. I run it on Sundays at 5 PM EST, and it’s sort of a book club.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to get back to reading books, but it was always so hard to find the time and motivation. In talking to some friends, I found out that we were in a very similar place in regards to that. And if there are some of us like this there are actually bound to be a lot of us.

In Quoth the Author, I let the audience know about a book we’ll be starting in advance so that you can procure your own copy, if you’d like. But it isn’t necessary as, during the stream, I will read a section of the story aloud. From there, the goal is to discuss, together, about what we’ve read.

If this interests you, please stop in, using the link above! And if you’d like to catch up on the progress of our current book (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King), you can check out my youtube channel, where all previous episodes are posted.

But that’s not exactly what this post is about. This post is about enlisting your help to pick the next book that we’ll cover! Below the cut, you’ll find the covers and blurbs of the four books we’re considering moving on to. Please check them out and let me know in the replies (or the poll on facebook or twitter, depending on where you guys are coming from) which sounds the most intriguing to you.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher:

“Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment. Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a—well, whatever. There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get interesting. Magic - it can get a guy killed.”

Lightning by Dean Koontz:

“A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy. Was he the guardian angel he seemed? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond time and space?”

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson:

“Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible—assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.”

Stardust by Neil Gaiman:

“Young Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria—even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. Beyond that old stone wall, Tristran learns, lies Faerie—where nothing not even a fallen star, is what he imagined.“

Please make your selections, friends! I’m excited to be heading off on another literary journey with you!

#Quoth the Author #literature #book club #vote #poll #Dresden Files #Storm Front #Jim Butcher #Lightning #Dean Koontz #Skyward #Brandon Sanderson #Stardust #Neil Gaiman

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corvidacryptida · 3 months

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Happy birthday to the madman himself, Edgar Allan Poe!

#i need a poe funko to match my bram stoker one #and mary shelley #dark academia #gothic academia #darkest academia #chaotic academia #academia #vampire academia #light academia #goth #gothic #victorian gothic #poe #edgar allen poe #edgar allan poe #quoth the raven #gothic literature #gothic lit #gothic author

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haikumaven · 3 months

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Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!! 🐦‍⬛🕯🖤📜🐈‍⬛️

I did this Raven inspired makeup look a few years ago 😊 still one of the best makeups I've ever done

#edgar allan poe #poe #poet #poetry #poems #writer #author #stories #macabre #morose #makeup #mua #raven #nevermore #quoth the raven #black cat #happy birthday #horror #horror stories

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asymmetryestablished · 1 year

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~Fanfic Introduction Post~ #3

Sanji Bi Panic™!

you want comedy? I can do comedy! here’s some comedy. it’s 2.5k of Sanji having a bisexual crisis over Ace’s freckly tits, and Zolo bullying him for it. (yes, I spell Zolo with an L. I’m a manga reader & I use the VIZ translation for spelling things. I am not accepting complaints about this, thanks.)

listen. do you like ZoSan friendship content? do you like Sanji Bisexual Disaster behaviour? do you like Ace being a whore? do you like comedy? this fic has all of that. give it a read. it’s a good time. it’s rated M because there is talk of horny things but no actual sex, and I think it’s pretty funny, even if nobody else does.

(also I am still working on the sequel and motivation is difficult so if you want to read more AceSan I could use the encouragement ok thank u)

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silveryinkystar · 1 year

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i fucking love being an editor sometimes. like here you've got a bunch of grammar edits, and then there's someone calling a plant a part of the animal kingdom

#quoth silver #no shade to that author writing their article #it just took me out so much lmao

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ravensilversea · 3 months

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Somehow returning two books to the library ended up as five books coming home from the library. [Insert Detective Pikachu: These are just choices and I can stop whenever I want gif]

#quoth the raven #bookish musings #i had TWO holds in that WERENT IN when I left the house this afternoon so that was a fun surprise #and then I picked up two books that have caught my eye in the past plus a book from an author i've been enjoying #and this ONLY brings my total library books up to 8... 12 if you include Libby...#but I GOT PALADINS FAITH YALL

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addamsghoul · 1 year

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Tag dump

#Addamsghoul #✕: Quoth the Raven Nevermore (memes;)#✕: Once upon a midnight dreary (ooc;)#✕: I Prefer To Be Vilified (Wednesday;)#✕: Wednesday’s child is full of woe (main;)#✕: If You Hear Me Screaming Bloody Murder. There’s A Good Chance I’m Enjoying Myself (Private Investigator;)#✕: I Read Serial Killer Diaries With Better Punctuation. (Published Author;)#✕: I Don’t Believe In Heaven Or Hell But I Do Believe In Revenge! (portraits;)

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btk-lyrics · 1 year

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Quoth, the Raven - #raven #quoth #edgarallanpoe #horror #poems #poem #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #poet #poetry #poetrycommunity #poets #poetsofinstagram #writer #writing #author #authorsofinstagram #writingcommunity #monster #love #goth #gothgoth #emo #poemsofinstagram #horrorfan #zombie #art #artist #arts #monday https://www.instagram.com/p/CnyMWCnr7Hm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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powderblueblood · 5 months

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The level of detail and thought you've put into hai is incredible!

I have a question. I love how you've described Eddie as a rizzless loverboy (my favorrite kind) so I need to know how he managed to get with an ice queen like Nicole. Not to mention some stuff with Chrissy later and even Cass but I'm most curious about Nicole, especially since she's a former friend of lacy's and he describes her as the one person who's meaner than lacy. I need details. How did it all go down? i like to imagine that she approached him. What makes me sad is that I think she probably did it just to say she lost her virginity but I also like to think that they all find him hot but they just wont say it because he's the town freak

NONNY COME THROUGH I LOVE THIS QUESTION!!!!!! hard agree on nicole approaching him because she's nasty as fuck in all the wrong era-typical ways and he's scared as hell of her (like, she really could bite and not in a cute way). but i also agree about these girls secretly being endeared to him. i mean, we saw it with chrissy-- he has a knack for making people feel safe in vulnerable little moments. but unfortunately, people (teenagers) are also diiiiiiicks

so fuck it, let's blurb it out! or

EDDIE MUNSON STAMPS NICOLE SUMMERS' V-CARD (NOT A BOARD WAXER, NOT IN MAUI)

content warning: swearing, wildly unsexy implication of sex, nicole summers sucks dude, teenagers scare the living shit out of me, me attempting to incorporate dnd terminology, GRANNY ECKER KLAXON, there's also an easter egg in this for the rest of the story if you know where to look word count: 2.6k (lol what)

part of the hellfire & ice universe (duh!)

FOREST HILLS TRAILER PARK, 1982-ISH

She's gotta be doing community service.

It's Easter, right, so this has gotta be like... a Jesus thing. But she doesn't seem like a Jesus person.

It's the only precedent that would explain what Nicole Summers, jaw jutting out in an exaggerated scowl, is doing serving Meals on Wheels to the less fortunate dwellers of Hawkins' favorite trailer park. Her red hair blazes in the sunlight, searing into his retinas--

But that could also be the weed talking.

"Ma'am, like, I don't know what to tell you, you're signed up to receive these."

"And I don't know what to tell you, little girl," Veronica Ecker Sr., affectionately and fearsomely known as Granny to him, grits from the doorway, "but I'm perfectly capable of cooking my own darn food."

Eddie's been lingering around the Ecker trailer, see, waiting for Ronnie to be freed from yet another M*A*S*H appointment with her grandmother ("Ever since she stopped going to church, it's like, all Alan Alda all the time," quoth Ronnie) and run through his latest Hellfire campaign.

"I'm not saying that you don't, I'm just saying that--"

"You're making me miss my program."

"I'll eat it." Eddie doesn't know who said that or why it sounds like his voice, until he figures out that he said it, which is why it sounds like his voice. Jesus, that shit he lifted from his dad was strong.

Granny Ecker and Nicole Summers elicit almost identical reactions of annoyance once they clock that he's there, lingering in the outfield.

"Junior, if you don't--"

"Oh my God. Ew."

Eddie plants his hands on his hips, half in the hopes that this might look authoritative, half mirroring Granny. "Well, y'know. Waste not want not."

Granny considers him, then apparently considers that this might not be such a terrible idea. Her laser focus directs back to Nicole.

"I don't give a shit. I'm not eating that tripe."

"I'm not just-- authorized to pass off meals like that. There's a system."

"Wait, you need clearance for stuff like that? In Meals on Wheels?" That'd be Ronnie's voice, head popping over her grandmother's shoulder. "Oh, hey, Eddie."

"Hey, Ron. You ready to--"

"Veronica, get back inside. I need you to hit that thing back to record when M*A*S*H comes back on. I don't want any commercials on my darn tapes."

"Oh my God, forget it!" Nicole breaks, stalking towards him with a foil-wrapped tray. She stays a safe distance away and thrusts it towards them-- something something freak cooties, some new line of bullshit that her and her dumb little clique had come up with in middle school. "Here. I don't need the whole freak council weighing in on this."

Eddie takes the tray and considers the shiny foil wrapping. His reflection is all distorted in there, a funhouse mirror but way, way worse. This makes him compelled to be unwisely honest to Nicole, who's already making tracks away from him. He jogs to catch up, foil crinkling as he moves. "Well, now I feel bad."

"Don't."

"It's like robbing from old people. Maybe you should give this to another old person. Like a super skinny one. Who might need two."

"Fuck 'em."

"Gee, Nicole, you're really buildin' that stairway to heaven, huh?"

"Ugh. What?"

"The meals-- the Meals on Wheels. It's a nice thing to... do. Fuckin'... forget it." Eddie stops dead; he might be loaded right now, but he knows which side his bread is buttered on. And he hasn't got any bread. He thinks it might be mashed potatoes, green beans and some rubbery chicken. Anyway, he turns heel-- this conversation isn't going anywhere.

"Hey, freak." The derisive nickname comes calling from Nicole's end. Ring-ring. "Are you stoned right now?"

"De-pendsssss," Eddie murmurs, the 's' sound going on for like five minutes, "Are you... a cop right now?"

Nicole busts out a giggle. It's kind of a pretty noise, if a little grating. She's kind of pretty. Eddie remembers when she had braces in middle school and whenever she'd pick on him, she'd kind of spit on him too. Gross. But still kind of pretty.

"I know how you can make it up to me."

Jump-freaking-cut and Nicole Summers is sitting with Eddie in that creepy wooded area near Forest Hills, making a miserable job of rolling a joint out of a dusting of his dad's weed and a torn-open Pall Mall. His buzz has kind of come and gone, and in its wake the knotted, deadened trees are looking extra gnarly.

"God, I suck at this."

You don't suck. You just need practice, is what Eddie would say if it were anybody else sitting with him, but all he manages is, "Eugh."

Because she does suck. And he's too nervous to further verbalize himself. He holds his hand out and she drops the comically conical attempt at a joint into it.

Deftly, Eddie re-rolls it just like that. "Practice, baby. Only way to Carnegie Hall."

"Wait, what?" Nicole murmurs, brow furrowed.

Eddie wishes he didn't phrase it like that either. "Um. Nothing. How come you're doing Meals on Wheels?"

A guttural sigh comes right from the center of her chest, which Eddie can almost see, thanks to her super low-cut tank top. Her cleavage is all freckled and hiked up, thanks to the Wonderbra that he's been painstakingly avoiding tracing the outline of with his eyes. "My fucking aunt. She's like some do-gooder Christian nutso, she runs the whole thing."

"Oh--" but Nicole's not done. She kicks a toeful of dirt up just as Eddie ignites the end of the joint and takes a harsh pull.

"I'm stuck with her this whole break because my grades were shit. I'm supposed to be in Maui, y'know."

Eddie wordlessly passes the joint on. Knew it was a Jesus thing. And like, boo-hoo, he guesses? He doesn't have any real pity for Nicole Summers right now, because overall she fucking blows. She's mean as hell, for no good reason.

Ronnie came up with a good analogy for it one time; like, put up against that chick Lacy that she hangs out with, Nicole is mean like a bad dog. She just keeps barking and barking and barking and barking and it is relentless and it's busting open your eardrums and she's snarling and you're too scared to get in her way so you just tolerate it. Even if it fucks up your whole day.

That Lacy girl, though, she's mean like a guillotine. One sharp drop and you're done. Dead. Headless horseman.

"I know which one is worse-- Nicole, obviously, because it chips away at you and it's so freakin' loud. But I know which one I'd prefer," Ronnie had said, "I feel like if Lacy comes for you, you've really earned it. Like, you possibly deserve to perish."

But ultimately, curiosity will be the death of Eddie Munson. And so will girls. And so will boring Spring break Sundays.

Nicole half-chokes on a lungful of smoke and Eddie's got to pat her on the back so he doesn't get nailed for her murder or whatever.

"God. Gross," Nicole gripes on recovery. "Ugh. My whole family is in Maui, but I'm stuck here and like-- I even told people I was going to Maui and it's like-- so fucked."

"Totally." Eddie makes pincer fingers towards the joint. "Don't bogart that."

But Nicole is holding it aloft, totally off on her own journey, and Eddie wonders if the weed has hit her that fast or if she's just completely self-involved.

"I even sent postcards to people, pretending I was in Maui. If you wanna know something really pathetic."

It takes a second for Eddie to decipher it, but it seems like she's saying that she's been sneaking around Hawkins incognito all break because she told all of her sucker friends she was in the Central Pacific.

"You completely said that sentence backwards."

He notes that down to tell Ronnie about later.

"Shuddup, freak."

"Man, it is so completely uncool of you to keep calling me a freak when you're literally smoking my weed."

"You took my Meal on Wheel."

"Meal on Wheel for a well-rolled joint does not an even trade make, Summers!"

"So why did you say okay?!" Nicole barks, and Eddie finally gets a grasp of that joint. He's up, he's off the log they were occupying. There is a buzz to be had here, a good time rolled tight up in these flammable papers and he is not about to waste it by letting Nicole Summers verbally wail on him.

"Because I am obviously a veritable moron of the highest knight's order and I had time to kill before M*A*S*H was over!"

That rhymed.

Nicole looks up at him with her green eyes narrowed, this horrible, puggy grimace wrinkling her face. And then she says something so beyond the realm of Eddie's comprehension that he's sure the weed is turning on him.

"Do you wanna, like, hook up?" Nicole says-- scratch that, Nicole snarls.

"What?!" So this level of fuckery doesn't make sense to Eddie because nobody's around. Like, if Nicole takes a shot at the freak and Hagan and Carol and Tina and Lacy and Cass aren't around to hear it, did it even happen?

"I'm serious," Nicole deadpans. "I kind of... look, so I kind of wrote to some people that I hooked up with someone on vacation and, like... I could make that not a whole lie."

"Nicole," Eddie says, in a tone about as measured as he can manage, which is not very because his balls seem to have vacuumed themselves back into his body, "Are you asking me to aid and abet your elaborate scam in which you're currently pretending you're in Maui getting, what... railed by like, a surfer?"

"Wow. That's actually kinda close to what I've been telling people."

He would later find out that she said her premiere paramour was a board waxer.

Eddie inhales a lungful of smoke so deep and so urgent that it makes him feel like Hunter S Thompson-- that is, to say, certifiably insane. Because Eddie's never been... Like, he's made out, or whatever, and grazed a boob like once, but...

In an ideal world, he would not be in the woods. In an ideal world, there might be some perfect declaration beforehand, and he might be indoors, and he might be wearing cleaner underwear. In an ideal world, it would not be Nicole Summers.

Roll Perception. Is this really how it happens? Maybe she secretly... likes me?

The D20 in his brain lands a nat one.

Yeah, maybe. But you've been wrong about that before.

Nicole gets up, and he can just about see the cogs turning in her head, trying to intimate an expression of sultriness. It's such a thin mask that he can basically see her rolling her eyes behind it.

"C'mon. You can't tell me you haven't... thought about it," she tries, dropping her voice in volume and pouting her lips.

And Christ, Eddie hates to be such a guy about it, but... you hate to look a gift horse in the formerly-braces-clad mouth.

I haven't thought about it. I think you suck. But I also think this might be my one shot at something for a long, long, long, long, long--

"God, quit thinking about it and kiss me, freak."

It's almost hot, it's like lukewarm at the very best, which is good enough for Eddie so he goes for it. Lips on lips, but Nicole apparently doesn't follow rhythm very well. There's a lot of dry macking, not a lot of... sensual action. He's almost starting to feel sorry for her.

But then-- well, let's just cut to the chase since that's the flavor du jour, then her hand is on his dick. Through the jeans, obviously, she's not a belt ninja but it's very much there. Flesh and tendons, palming at him.

In this situation, Eddie's not a hard sell. Badum-tsssss.

He uses one hand to hook around the back of her neck, tilting her head toward him-- using this opportunity to kiss her right, or what he assumes is right, while she's distracted. Nicole cannot focus on two things-bad kissing and dick handling-at once, unlike Eddie, who uses his free hand to feel her boobs.

"Siddown on the log," she breathes. Just what you want to hear in the heat of passion.

"Uh-- okay," and he does what he is told. Because she's still a pitbull, at the end of the day.

"Do you, like, have anything?"

"Like... the clap?" Eddie sorta-squeaks as Nicole positions herself over him, one knee either side of his thighs. She's got good balance. Is she in cheerleading? Or is that the other mean one?

"No, you fuckin'-- like a condom."

"Oh." His heart sinks. There's a box of Trojans that Ronnie jokingly bought him after he tried to lay a smacker on her-majorly misguided move, by the way!-but he doesn't--

Wait, shut up. They were literally having this argument the other day, he and Ronnie, about that tiny pocket on pairs of jeans. You know the one. Ronnie was trying to explain that it was for cowboys to keep their watches in, whereas Eddie was arguing that there's no way that cowboys need a watch, dude. They go by the sun in the sky. Like men, so the pocket obviously had to be for emergency prophylactics.

He'd even demonstrated, slipping a good ol' Troj into the tiny fold!

Eddie, in his over-excited state, almost knocks Nicole off the log trying to dig the rubber out. "Voilà."

"Whut," Nicole mumbles.

"Do you take Spanish?"

"No, French."

"... okay."

Here it is. This is it. He's about to get his dick out in the scary wooded part by the trailer park where he once tried to dig a hole to China. Fuck.

But all of a sudden, Nicole is fumbling. Her movements are suddenly weird and unsure and reserved and tight. Badum-- fuck off.

"Hey, y--y'alright?" Eddie murmurs, almost brushing her hair off her face. But that feels too intimate. Even considering the circumstances.

"Have you... done this before?" she says, lips pursed and small as she fiddles with his belt.

"Um." To truth, or not to truth? That is to lose any and all hope of losing one's virginity. "I--"

"I haven't."

A little moment of silence hangs between them. That's not a bark. That's a real girl in there.

Eddie swallows, despite the precipice of opportunity. He finds his throat is very dry, sandpaper going down. That feeling-- it's a distinct sensory recall. A favor someone once did him at a birthday party.

Because Nicole's a dick, but she's still a person.

Not that she'd give him the same grace.

Oh well. Building his stairway to heaven, and all that shit.

"We don't... have to." He nods, resolutely. Partially for himself. He even puts a hand over Nicole's, where it lingers on his undone fly. "Seriously."

Nicole's eyelashes flicker and she stares at him for a drawn out beat. As if she's considering him. Really considering him. Outside of the bullshit dichotomy in which they live. A crease eventually settles in her brow, looking at him like, are you serious, loser?

"No, I obviously want to."

Want to with me? he nearly chances.

"Just don't be, like... weird about this after," she instructs. "It never happened."

"I'm not gonna. It didn't." That sounds too soft, so he snorts a little at the end.

Eddie barely has time to ask her if she's okay before it's lights out for him.

The most unforgettable thirty seconds of Eddie Munson's pubescent life up to that point begins with a scoff (his) and ends in a scoff (hers).

But that dog ceases barking for at least three weeks following. No biting in the hallway, no harassment in the parking lot. Even when Hagan sniffs around him, Nicole doesn't jeer on. She averts her eyes.

It's no declaration of love, but at least he got a free dinner out of it.

#powder room talk #Anonymous #hai brainrot #blurbs #e. munson by powder #eddie munson fic #i GENUINELY dont know what to tag this as it was so unexpected #but thank you for the ask nonny ily!!!!!!#another theory? nicole denial is a river in egypt. you and robin dykely as you so call her Are Gay #r. ecker by powder

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morrak · 1 year

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Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 112

So that's what the first half of a master's degree feels like, huh? Hmm.

What with the schedule and the health and a whole bounty of etceteras, I fear I've developed a minor case of the yips. Is this a readership that is knowing the yips? Whether or not I can still write these posts well feels like a question mark, but I'll make you a deal: I'll try and you'll be polite. Thank you for your cooperation.

I have, despite it all, still been reading. A few weeks ago I strolled through The Jewelry Engravers Manual [sic], which lists as co-authors R. Allen Hardy and John J. Bowman. The exact split of their contributions is a little fuzzy — Bowman doesn't show up on the earliest editions but doesn't seem to have been an editor, exactly — and I frankly don't have time to dig much further.

Thus quoth the frontmatter: ‘The Dover edition, first published in 1994, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the revised edition of the work as published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, in 1976 (original edition, 1954).’ Van Nostrand Reinhold, mostly a marketer of professional material like this, was bought out by Wiley in ‘97 and Dover has nothing to do with them, but given the title’s age it’s no surprise the publication vector is wonky.

The How

It’s a trade paperback printed two years ago, so: bought it new. Move along.

The Text

While the title is accurate, it’s not precise: this is really about designing and cutting script using hand-pushed tools. Small script, yes, and mostly on soft metals, which, sure, 'jewelry engraving', I guess. There’s a chapter on monograms and circa two and a half about tooling, but only as support for the script stuff. Given the vintage and audience — mid-20th century American commercial jewelers weren’t exactly cutting signets; all the business was in personalizing rings and plaques for, like, Rotary clubs and the Lions — it’s hard to imagine anything else seeming very urgent.

This tries its best to be a curriculum. At that think it’s probably successful: the logic of the chapter order is crystal clear, the goal and intended skill level of each section is transparent, and the scope is tight. The prose is tight and descriptive without feeling very technical at all, which is pretty marvelous. Genuinely very pleasant material to read.

The pleasantness is a trick. The trade being written about is stupendously difficult; getting halfway decent by the standards of this booklet would be the work of something like a thousand hours of regular effort. The fundamentals are simple, but the alphabets and flourishes and design thinking asked of the reader are eye-wateringly hard to get right even in the view of a casual observer. Talking about it like it's possible to learn this is an achievement, I think; even I was almost fooled.

Incidentally there’s a little Q&A-shaped section at the back, which serves to collect all the little tidbits they couldn’t include in the chapters proper. You might recognize this technique from that book on watchmaker’s gravers a while back.

The Object

Again, this is a recent trade paperback. How good could it be? Quite, actually.

With maybe two exceptions, the drawings serve their purposes perfectly. Reference alphabets are communicated beautifully. Formatting is clean, if a bit of its vintage (though I am an admitted sucker for ye olde start-of-chapter topic lists). Good typesetting; passable paper. An adequate little thing, doomed though it is to fall apart eventually.

The Why, Though?

I am not a jewelry engraver. I never will be, thank goodness, and with any luck the couple of them I know will keep on keeping their distance. That said, I appreciate the trade's toolmaking ecosystem. It's changed a lot since this was first written — vanishingly few people cut with simple tool steels anymore; script styling has evolved a lot — but some core considerations have held out and I'll take every crumb of advice I can get. It’s healthy for my drafting, and nothing’s more satisfying than having just the right technique in your back pocket for shop-made tools.

More importantly, the authors agree with me completely on the subjects of oilstone selection and shop pencils. This is tremendously validating, even from dead guys who I would have hated to have a real conversation with.

#images #untitled wednesday library series

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skyedestiny · 2 years

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Quoth the Author: Our Next Book

Hello, everyone! I know I haven’t been here very much lately. Well, in an effort to change that, I wanted to talk about a stream I’ve been running on Twitch lately, called Quoth The Author. I run it on Sundays at 5 PM EST, and it’s sort of a book club.

If this interests you, please stop in, using the link above! And if you’d like to catch up on the progress of our current book (The Midnight Library by Matt Haig), you can check out my youtube channel, where all previous episodes are posted.

But that’s not exactly what this post is about. This post is about enlisting your help to pick the next book that we’ll cover! Below the cut, you’ll find the covers and blurbs of the five books we’re considering moving on to. Please check them out and let me know in the replies (or the poll on facebook or twitter, depending on where you guys are coming from) which sounds the most intriguing to you.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King:

“Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland strays from the path while she and her recently divorced mother and brother take a hike along a branch of the Appalachian Trail. Lost for days, wandering farther and farther astray, Trisha has only her portable radio for comfort. A huge fan of Tom Gordon, a Boston Red Sox relief pitcher, she listens to baseball games and fantasizes that her hero will save her. Nature isn't her only adversary, though - something dangerous may be tracking Trisha through the dark woods.”

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones:

“Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.”

Lightning by Dean Koontz:

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman:

“Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.”

Please make your selections, friends! I’m excited to be heading off on another literary journey with you!

#books #literature #writing #Quoth the Author #stream #twitch #book club #The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon #Stephen King #Howl's Moving Castle #Diana Wynne Jones #Lightning #Dean Koontz #Skyward #Brandon Sanderson #The Graveyard Book #Neil Gaiman

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metalhead-brainrot · 2 months

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[Album of the day] Various Artists - HDK 151 † Hell Night

Milan, ITA // 2023 // Heimat Der Katastrophe (HDK)

[Genres] dungeon synth, synth rock, prog rock, doom metal

[Themes] Hell's generals have escaped onto the material plane and you're a biker who has to track them down and drag them back, one by one

[FFO] indie RPGs, liturgical metal, Lingua Ignota

[Thoughts] This is the first album I've picked from the label HDK, an independent group of synth-loving Italians. Quoth their Bandcamp page: "DIY label focused on ambient punk, minimal-synth, dungeon-drone, wartime music and post-nuclear wave. Managed by a creative punx collective from Milano city."

As a fan of dungeon synth, I think HDK is grand. Most of their releases can be split into about three categories:

Old-school, fantasy dungeon synth (e.g. Kobold, Gnoll). Great music for classic TTRPGs. If you purchase the cassette release, you'll typically get a mini dungeon map and a scenario for any old-school RPG.

Cinematic synth music in the Italian tradition. Think Claudio Simonetti's Goblin, films like The Long Good Friday and Tenebre, bands like Zombi. Check out TEETH OF GLASS and A. RALLA.

Cold-War synth/signalwave, typically with a focus on the atomic era (i.e. sovietwave).* Conceptually interesting and a little underrated. I'd recommend RNLT and TSAR-BOMB.

Other frequent features in the HDK catalogue are proggy synth rock (e.g. POLONIUS), space rock (e.g. LOGIC GATE), and synthwave (e.g. MAX ROGUISH). HDK also has several official soundtracks to indie RPGs, most famously GNOLL's soundtrack to MÖRK BORG and CASIOTOMB's soundtrack to ALTNYC88.

Today's album is an official soundtrack to the indie RPG of the same name, Hell Night by Gavriel Quiroga (link to the DriveThru RPG page below). I haven't played the game,** but I have listened to this soundtrack about a dozen times. I love it. It's a compilation album but feels very proggy; all the tracks are from different artists and different musical styles, but they fit together really well.

Give the album a listen, try out the game, and check out HDK's other releases. I subscribed to their label on Bandcamp a while back, and I haven't regretted it.

o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::>

* These tend to remind me of the menu screen for CoD: Black Ops.

** But I would like to, it looks like a lot of fun.

o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::>

[From the band/label]

"As these last words were spoken, an explosion of blinding white light filled the black palace, cowing even the grim death lords. The angelic messenger was gone, the message delivered, and outrage soon broke among the ranks of the defiled, cacophony of blasphemy and cursing that announced the arrival of dusk and the beginning of a... HELL NIGHT".

Here is the official soundtrack of the Role-Playing Game HELL NIGHT, by the author Gavriel Quiroga that you may have already known for NEUROCITY and WARPLAND. For now only in digital, the cassette will be available later! Info about Hell Night: * www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/hell-night-pdf * www.kickstarter.com/projects/gavrielquiroga/hell-night * www.drivethrurpg.com/product/399162/HELL-NIGHT

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Wilfred Reilly

Published: Mar 19, 2023

Once more, for the people in the back.

It isn’t hard at all to define “wokeness.” I did it two years ago. The definition, widely shared online after an exchange with left-wing activist Nina Turner, became a meme.

This canard (“It can’t be done!”) is back in the public eye because one of the more likeable people on the political right, Bethany Mandel, just had a rare bad interview on The Rising, Briahna Joy Gray’s program. Apparently following some harsh off-camera comments about motherhood, Gray asked Mandel — a mother of six — to define the W-word. Mandel, after what were actually a few solid remarks about “hierarchies of oppression,” froze up for perhaps 20 seconds. This led to the usual internet feeding frenzy: Touré, to pick just one pundit at this level, argued that conservatives complaining about wokeness are doing nothing more than engaging in racist “dog-whistling.”

Quoth he: “The right has no real beef with ‘wokeness’ beyond a fear that it could make people change how they behave, and possibly overturn white male supremacy. [Using the word is] their new culture war tactic to stoke white fear.” Touché, Touré. In another tweet — one of something like 60 on this topic, by the by — he went on to argue that “woke” is a vague term meaning only “marginalized people saying we demand respect — anti-woke is white people saying no.” In response to all of this, even some mainstream right-wingers and centrists began edging away from the “contested” word, with my good buddy Angel Eduardo re-running a famous Quillette column titled “Don’t Use the W-Word,” and arguing that it has “lost all utility.”

All of this is frankly pretty silly. Many political terms (“fascism”) are as slippery as greased lobbyists, and this one is hardly the toughest to figure out. What is woke, then? The definition from the meme is actually rock-solid: a “woke” person, or “social-justice warrior,” is someone who believes that (1) the institutions of American society are currently and intentionally set up to oppress (minorities, women, the poor, fat people, etc.), (2) virtually all gaps in performance between large groups prove that this oppression exists, and (3) the solution to this is equity — which means proportional representation regardless of performance or qualifications.

Most other popular, coherent definitions are quite similar. To James Lindsay, a “woke” person is someone afflicted (infected?) with modern critical consciousness — which is itself the belief that society is set up to oppress you, and the only way out of the Matrix is critical theory. These summaries aren’t witty trolls from the center-Right, but instead reflect canonical statements from woke leftists themselves.

The claim that racism is “everyday,” “everywhere,” and that apparently neutral systems like standardized testing are actually structured primarily to benefit dominant groups, comes from Richard Delgado — one of the founders of critical race theory. The claim that virtually all group performance gaps indicate racist policy or subtle bias is the cornerstone argument of Ibram X. Kendi, probably the most famous “crit” alive today. Kendi has baldly stated, on several occasions, that the only two possible explanations for, say, an income or tested-IQ gap between major populations are actual inferiority on the part of one group or some form of bias — no matter how well-hidden and impossible to winkle out.

These authors and many others almost universally propose “equity” — in the sense I outline — as the solution to such gaps. Kendi himself favors a federal-level Department of Anti-racism, which would use government might to ensure proportional representation across every single field of American enterprise. Other prevalent, modern-day left-wing concepts such as “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “intersectionality,” “environmental racism,” and even the Black Lives Matter take on the “disproportionate” policing of slum neighborhoods almost invariably spring from this tripartite trunk of assumptions.

It is worth pointing out that the core assumptions of what I sometimes call wokeism are wrong, and often stupid. To put this mildly, most important systems that exist in 2023 America — college admissions, prep-school admissions and lotteries, Fortune 500 hiring processes — are not designed to keep out qualified black people. Taking current mean-score differences on the exam as a guide, the affirmative-action edge for black and Latino scholars at any selective institution would logically be on the order of 150 SAT points. More broadly, most group gaps in performance have nothing to do with modern racism.

Simply put, large groups of people, which vary in terms of big important traits such as race and faith, also tend to vary in terms of literally dozens of cultural and situational and civilizational characteristics. Taking these into account generally eliminates the large first-order differences that are invariably attributed to prejudice by leftist partisans (and not infrequently attributed to genetics by the dissident Right). The much-vaunted black/white income gap, for example, nearly vanishes when we control for several basic traits such as age — the modal average age is 27 for blacks and 58 for Caucasians — test scores, and simply where people happen or choose to live (Mississippi or Manhattan?).

Much the same, incidentally, is true for men and women: PayScale recently pointed out that the gender wage gap falls to 1 percent (!) when adjustments are made for whether women are working at all, the jobs men and women freely choose, and the number of hours each employee spends daily at the ol’ desk. The same is true for gaps that disadvantage the white majority: In an empirical paper a few years back, the Brookings Institution hit upon my favorite statistical finding of all time — Asians destroy both whites and blacks on the standardized boards not because of genes or magic, but because they literally study twice as much. Who knew? Who dared to guess?

Woke ideology crumbles under scrutiny, which is why its adherents prefer it not even be defined (equity doesn’t work either — imagine it as the primary tool for selecting airline pilots). And, while we’re criticizing this stuff, the canard that labels like “woke” secretly refer to blacks or other people of color — giving conservatives a chance to “dog-whistle” — is empirically wrong. As I once noted for Commentary magazine, by far the wokest group of contemporary Americans is college-educated, upper-middle-class white women.

Even among Democrats, 55 percent of blacks and almost 50 percent of Hispanics, versus just 25 percent of whites, state that a person’s gender “is always determined by their sex at birth.” Fifty-eight percent of black Democrats and 52 percent of Hispanic Democrats favor charter schools, versus only 26 percent of their white peers. On the issue of free speech, “only” 79 percent of whites — here without Dems broken out — say they dislike political correctness, in contrast to 88 percent of Native Americans, 87 percent of all Hispanics, 82 percent of Asian Americans, and 75 percent of a small black sample. When most Americans think of annoyingly woke people, as many a Twitter follower told me the other day, they picture college gender-studies majors with multicolored hair, not black Marines.

“Woke” policies can be complex to discuss — and are almost invariably dangerous to implement — but they aren’t at all hard to define. We should keep calling them out, using the proper word.

[ Via: https://archive.vn/e275w ]

The people who tell you that it just means "awake to injustice"/"demand respect" also want to tell you that it's a "racist dogwhistle."

A few days ago, a Xian replied to one of my posts with a meme saying that atheists only wish god doesn't exist because they want to sin. That the only objection atheists have to the intrusion of Xian dogma into their lives is that they might have to stop "exalt[ing] one's ego."

Toure's post is the same kind of dishonest strawman/Motte & Bailey.

#Wilfred Reilly #definition of woke #woke #wokeness #wokeism #wokeness as religion #cult of woke #antiracism #antiracism as religion #equity #diversity equity and inclusion #critical race theory #critical consciousness #religion is a mental illness

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asymmetryestablished · 7 months

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if anyone asks, the reason I’m making the vampire physiology so horny is because the vampirism is a metaphor

#writing talk #quoth nsd #vampires #fanfic authors #vampire au

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coupleofdays · 4 months

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The (psyber)-Raven

A classic of the Warhammer 40,000 fandom, written by Pat Marshall, originally from here (where you can read some additional funny comments by the author):

Once upon a battlefield dreary, where I cowered, spent and bleary,

Within an Imperial bunker, darkly stained with dust and gore -

As I cowered, nearly shuttering, suddenly there came a sputtering

As some weapon quickly stuttering - firing at my bunker door.

"`Tis some bolter", I murmmered, "firing at my bunker door -

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,

And the brightly burning bastions lit the horizion by the score.

Eagerly, on freedom drunker; - vainly had I sought to hunker

In this heavy Imperial bunker - with perhaps a tunnel in the floor -

A safe and empty fortress with perhaps a tiny tunnel in the floor -

Only this and nothing more.

And the mad raving howling of each distant Space Wolf prowling

Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

So that now, to the beating of my heart, I stood entreating

"`Tis some Space Wolf there repeating, firing at my bunker door -

Some common Grey Hunter rapid-firing at my bunker door -

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer

"Marine," said I, "or Scout, your attention I implore;

The bunker walls are thick - they are made of tempered brick

And your bolters do not nick the slightest scratch or tiny score -

Not a dimple, dent, depression, dip, scratch or tiny score -

Away now, and fire no more."

Then in the bunker slumping, presently I heard a thumping

A pounding - rattling many times fiercer than before.

And soon I began to screech - the bunker wall grenades did breach;

The very gods I did beseech as the ceiling fell upon the floor -

Through the wounds poured light which danced upon the floor -

Danced amidst the sounds of war.

Then at once it stopped the violence - I was left alone with silence

Confused, I spied the reason why the shells did drop no more -

For as I began to shutter, then with many a flit and flutter

a psyber-Raven flew through the clutter to perch above the door -

Perched on the two-headed eagle just above the bunker door -

Perched and sat and nothing more.

At this I grew more craven, for the talons of the psyber-Raven

Were all over covered with bright red blood and crimson gore.

"Wretch!" I cried, "Njal hath lent thee - into this fortress has he sent thee

So that remotely may he here be - and this bunker then explore -

Scry out my exact location and this bunker then explore -"

Quoth the Raven, "Eversor"

Then, methought, the air grew darker, the bunker now a little starker

For the uttered word brought terror as I had never felt before.

As for weapons, I knew I had none - no bolter, sword or lasgun;

No arms to stop the war's son fated to break soon through the door -

The blood-mad crazed assassin fated to break soon through the door-

Quoth the Raven, "Eversor"

"Be that word our sign of parting, machine or bird!" I shrieked, upstarting -

"Get thee back into the fire-fight and here spy on me no more!

For as you came unbidden - I would otherwise be here hidden -

Leave my location in this midden - quit that icon above my door!

Take thy shining metal eye, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Eversor"

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting - still is sitting

On the pallid two-headed eagle just above the bunker door;

His metal eye has all the seeming of a psyker that is scheming,

To have my guts lie steaming in a pile upon the floor;

And now all hope has left me, crouched here upon the floor

I await the Eversor!

#warhammer 40k #Pat Marshall #Edgar Allan Poe #poetry #The Raven #psyber raven #Njal Stormcaller #Eversor Assassin #Space Marines #Space Wolves #Quoth the raven #Eversor #Every day I pray that Pat Marstall will survive his surgery

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jocrude · 4 months

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SKETCH FOR A BALLARDESQUE RE:DYSPHORIA

God, I can just see it. I can’t write it at the moment, but if Beat becomes En Vogue and has a revival in this Serpent-eating-its-tail we must for lack of a better meaning call Contemporary Culture…

(Author’s Note: First as tragedy, then as farce, then as farce, ad nauseum...The serpent of culture has been eating its tail until it has become sick, and irony/post-irony is our collective acid reflux, “as a dog returns to his vomit”[1] joyously hollow, exhaling from the nostrils with more oomph than usual, we do not holler with glee anymore but are now hollow with glee “like the bizarre euphoria after an hour’s vomiting”[2], but this too is a topic I must think on at an unspecified later…)

Anyways, the story I would’ve wrote went like this:

(Hang on, I should just note to you real quick that this sketch is, well, a sketch—as much for the artist’s future use as for the public’s consumption.)

Ahem. Anyways anyways, the story I would’ve wrote went like this:

You’ve read Deleuze, haven’t you? Postscript on Societies of Control?[3](If you haven’t I can’t blame you, he’s terminally French and not in the good way.) The whole inspiration for this thing was that a transgender mate of mine sent a link to a news article on a Discord server I (also transgender, and fresh from the Dandenong Mental Health Care Unit with Wellbutrin and a grudge,) was on. It was from Gamesradar, about an Autistic Savant for hacking being hospitalised for life after he leaked something or other related to Grand Theft Auto Six.[4] The text, unaltered, from my transgender mate, is as follows:

The autistic 18 year old responsible for the GTA 6 leaks will be locked away in a secure hospital for an indefinite period of time Because he wants to continually commit cybercrimes as soon as possible

He's an autistic savant of hacking and cybercrime

I reposted it to another Discord server, with the following commentary:

So apparently there's an 18 year old autistic savant for hacking who has hacked Nvidia and Microsoft in the past and he's being hospitalised for life after leaking GTA 6 stuff. This is so bizarre it's funny but it's also shit like this that perfectly outlined why I'm anti-psychiatry. It's a prison system for crimethink. Also, read Deleuze's "Postscript on Societies of Control", I know he has a reputation for being incomprehensible but this is a short and easy-to- understand read. Dividuals being punished in anticipation of crimes they may possibly commit related to unauthorised transmission of information. [Link to said text on The Anarchist Library.]

(Author’s note: We’re pretentious! Yes, haha! Young and irritating! I’m noting this with glee as I write.)

Now, enter a third transgender online mate:

he's friends with maia of hacking the no-fly-list fame[5]

i think i once joked that congress will put us all in mental hospitals if this keeps happening, so this tracks

And, Quoth I, like some fateful Cassandra: (the thought that started all this bother you’re now reading about, drumroll please…)

God I can see a dystopian future where the Republicans are like "trans people need to be killed" and the democrats are like "God that's too far, but look at the correlations between gender dysphoria and autism, depression, adhd, anxiety, etc.. Let's just hospitalise them." Trans people crowded into sanatoriums working on a shoestring budget, those few who wear the mask well enough to become outpatients too disillusioned to have hope of getting well and unsure if the answers they give are a mask or their real face, new neuroses springing from that... And a society of very concerned moderates debating to what extent the hospitalisation scheme could be improved.

I’ll need to develop that! That’s a very golden idea! I’m a good writer because I am developing this idea, and you’re not. But I’m not that good of a writer. So! I make sketches, so as to help me practice and that.[6] Our hero is a Transgender just like me. She’s the wrong type of transgender (unlike me), the cringey type, not so much Bigger Thomas as Blahaj Thomas[7], painful as the pun just there. She will be an outpatient in this stratified system of liberal compromise, one of the shining examples of the Utopian Solution to the Transgender Question.

(Author’s Note: As I’m writing this, I think back to how I told the psychiatrist at the Dandenong Mental Hospital that I couldn’t quite remember if I was diagnosed Schizoaffective. I think back to when I watched “Conspiracy”, a BBC docudrama made using the actual minutes from the Wannsee Conference[8]. I think of Croissants, another French invention with too many layers. I think of watching a video on my phone at Marie Bashir[9], another hospital, Plastic Pills (a youtuber) on Deleuze and Schizoanalysis[10]. Lines of flight between layers. I think of pretentiousness, using words and concepts you don’t have a right to know. I think of when I learned about Zen Koans, riddles you unravel to a solution you know but can’t explain because it just feels right.)

Anyways, anyways, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. In this dystopia our heroine will inhabit, the Republicans and Democrats have worked together rather like a Caduceus[11] to create a society of control, of prevention, of compromise, for the Transgender infection. The Transgender,(Capital T,) whom Nick Land rather astutely called the “jews of gender,” presents an exciting new problematic in the deaf-dumb-and-blind machine of Capital’s social controls. I vaguely remember Wallerstein talking about a “fuzzy border” theory.[12] Jews, in Wallerstein’s analysis of Antisemitism as-I-vaguely-remember-it, are capable of being absorbed into the “White” racial category when societally convenient. Yet there are signifiers remaining upon them that mark them as an “eternal outsider” ready to be scapegoated in times of social distress. I remember Wallerstein or Balibar or one of those bloody Continentals furthermore saying that the sociological function of bigotry is more or less to rank and stratify class society into a more modular, flexible, “fuzzy” collection of groups that can be ejected or absorbed; as ballast for the floating, headless, decomposing corpse of Capital and the blind and desperate ecosystem that feeds upon the corpse-wax. I might have added that last bit myself.

But Jews beget jews. There is a clear, unbroken line of matrilineal descent. The reason this problematic is so exciting is that nobody really knows what causes one to become transgender. It is abhorrent to say, but, in theory, “the jews” as an ethnic group could be wiped out. “Exterminate all the brutes”[13], the Nazis hoped, in theory if they were able to sever that line of matrilineal descent the jewish race would cease to be. (Reality interjects of course and says that genocide on such scale is so anti-human as to not be feasible, but genocidaires don’t really care much about what Reality says.) The Transgender cannot be wiped out permanently, pulled out at the root, it is an enemy/ally/thing-to-cry-over that has various manifestations and suppressions throughout the history of gender expression but always exists, at least as far as we know. A perfect enemy, a punching bag that always pops back up.

Anyways, anyways. The Republicans wanted to kill all Transgenders but this, like most genocides or genocide-adjacent-things, was unfeasible. The Democrats, concerned moderates that they are, saved the day and created a social welfare scheme. Recognising the correlation between Gender Dysphoria and things like Autism, Depression, Suicide Attempts (41%!), and maybe Schizo-spectrum disorders that the author is not quite sure she has, the Democrats set up a Bureau of Psychiatry that, in that typical strange American way, was instated for the good of the Gender-Diverse. I remember a fourth online transgender mate of mine sent me a copy of Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks, as a Christmas present, that I read while staying at Marie Bashir Hospital and sadly left behind when I moved to Melbourne. I think I remember Fanon talking about how re-education was a particularly nasty form of torture, because one would be left unsure whether what they were saying was what they needed to say to get out of the torture, or what they honestly believed.

We observe things from the point of view of a concerned moderate looking in. Like an odd ant in a terrarium, our heroine has been detected to be infected with gender dysphoria, and autism, and is funnelled into the Bureau Of Psychiatry. They talk in a despicable and cringeworthy way about bits of very online transgender culture that they have absorbed; they are a simulacrum of woman, not woman itself. But as they are funnelled through the Bureau of Psychiatry they learn to answer various questions in so accurate a manner as to move to the top levels of the sorting algorithm of mental deficiency, and learn to put on an act to be as close to an ideal functioning human being as someone who has been marked with a mental disorder can be. Along the way, they become more and more removed from the vague psychic-emotional signifiers of womanhood that implanted their dysphoria to begin with. They wear the mask; the mask wears them.

[1]Proverbs 26:11

[2]A quotation appropriated from the TV series “Brass Eye”(1997)

[3]Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control”(1990)

[4]https://www.gamesradar.com/hacker-behind-gta-6-leak-will-be-confined-to-a-secure-hospital-for-life-due-to-his-intent-to-return-to-cybercrime-as-soon-as-possible/

[5]Maia Arson Crimew, high-profile transgender hacker who was put on trial for cyber-crimes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_arson_crimew

[6]Pronounced “An’nat”, an affected Commonwealth vocal tic. Useless Information.

[7]Bigger Thomas, the thuggish, antisocial black protagonist of Richard Wright’s anti-racist novel “Native Son.” Blahaj, a blue plush shark sold by Ikea, stereotypically associated with “femboys” and a certain very online milieu of gender-diverse people that other transsexuals regard as “cringeworthy.”

[8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference

[9]The Professor Marie Bashir Centre, containing a mental health unit where the author was confined for a period of four months because they lacked a home to return to.

[10]Refer to the YouTube playlist Deleuze by Plastic Pills “All of the main Deleuze content from creator Plasticpills assembled in one place. Alongside the video intros, listen to some of the world's foremost experts in Deleuze studies advise how to approach these difficult texts. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx5jMl5-m5ZSyaYg7hTBynO6iDFlrDUtr

[11]Not to be confused with a Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of medicine. Quoth Wikipedia: “Although the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and no wings, is the traditional and more widely used symbol of medicine, the Caduceus is sometimes used by healthcare organizations. Given that the caduceus is primarily a symbol of commerce and other non-medical symbology, many healthcare professionals disapprove of this use.”

[12]Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous Identities”(1991)

[13]Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness.” The Unlucky number.

#poems on tumblr #original poem #avant garde #lgbtqia #neurodivergent #antipsychiatry #schizoposting #schizo spectrum #mental health #mental illness #mentally fucked

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