you don't wanna be me when it all goes wrong

I'll stick around, see how bad it gets
I'll settle down and deal with old regrets
You know I, I adore you

The adoring? It's not the problem. I adore a lot of people. I even, not to put too fine a point on it, love a lot of people, though in all fairness, there's vastly more kinds of love than most understand.



I can't let you go
can't let you go
you're part of my soul
you're all that I know
I can't let you go

And that is proving to be the hitch.



is it better now
do you feel like all is fair
can we work it out
so that it's easier for me to bare
because life, it can blind you

Do I feel like it's fair? No. Do I feel it was necessary? I'm working on that. Signs are leading towards yes, but...with reservations.



down from the edge I can see you where we end
and I'd give up all of my days to go back

You can't go home again, right? Because the second you do, you realize, you're not the same as you were when you were there, and neither is there. So visits are nice, if you're prepared for the shock, but don't go expecting everything to be unchanged.

And, to change the outlook slightly:

"Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away."
~Thomas Wolfe

there was all this wonder
and all this magic
has all this wonder, over and done

Maybe. Probably. Is there wonder yet? Maybe. I need to pull away from the shadows long enough to check.



if love were a whisper
what could I give you to speak
maybe you're out of my reach

Ah, but that's not the problem either, is it? That, in fact, is the crux of the dilemma, being very, very within reach. And oh, what to do about that...Close the distance? Keep the distance? What's safe? What's necessary?

Remember, 'fair' isn't a consideration here. Life isn't fair, after all. Life is pain; anyone who tells you different is selling something.



I can't let you go
can't let you go
can't let you go

Does it ever get easier? Don't answer that--I already know.

(Pictures taken at the House of Paine. Lyrics from Matchbox Twenty's "Can't Let You Go".)

but somewhere here in between the city walls of dying dreams

Ooof. There's a disturbing list of sexual predators making the rounds, being collated by Josh Simons, and it seems to feature an incredibly high number of streamers and gamers.

This is extremely painful to read through, but it goes into more of the accusations. We're just at the forefront of this, so more information will be coming, but it's already a daunting amount of names to winnow through. I highly recommend if anyone finds a name of a Twitch streamer or a YouTube lets-player that they follow, at the least, Google them. Find out if there's any basis. Find out if it's become a he-said-she-said issue--not that that changes the accusations, exactly, but there is a difference between someone contesting something that's been said, and someone apologizing for something.

There's at least one name on the list that's causing some mild personal pain, but it does explain this video. At the time I first saw that, I was watching YouTube through Chromecast in the living room, where I have very little access to any video's description. So I really had no idea why Cryaotic was suddenly part of the call and response of abusers.

Now I know. It's very disheartening.

One of the things he says in the description is that nothing "physical" happened between him and anyone under-aged--and, I mean, okay, that's good, but that's also him acknowledging virtual involvement. Which rings some dire bells for me personally--I've never interacted with him, that's not what I mean, but one of my loves in the past...I'd been involved with him for two years, and one day one of his friends ported in with a breezy "Hey, dude, happy 18th!", and my heart hit the floor.

Because I can count. I knew when we became a couple. And I knew we became a couple before his birthday two years back, significantly before. So I was dating someone that effectively, in my mind, I considered a child. That was not a good day.

But. As scarring as that incident was, as paranoid as it made me, I was unaware. Cry, from everything I've been able to discover, was aware. That's an important difference.

I'm now unsubscribed from him on YouTube, but that entire situation is playing large on Twitter also, because there are a great many people who knew abusers on the list, and they're getting attacked because how could they not have known? Why didn't they warn anyone? Why didn't they care about the damage their friends were causing?

And I think the best answer to that comes from writer Seanan McGuire in a thread of tweets. She's speaking mainly of writers, but this also applies to any serial abuser. I'll be reprinting some of them here:

As we're discussing harassers in SF/F yet again, we're getting the aftershock wave of "how did SHE not KNOW?!" which always follows on, usually aimed at women who are shaped like me. (June 21, 2020)

And part of the answer is that all abusers have a type. Maybe that type is someone you consider hot, maybe not. Maybe it's a point in their career, an emotional state, whatever. And for whatever reason, some of us missed the mark.

(This is neither a mark we were aiming at nor anything to be ashamed of. It's just that some people--most often men, but some people--walk around painting targets on anyone they find attractive, and they skipped over us. We were fat, or mouthy, or too well-connected.)

And no, not every abuser is a secret genius. But the ones who last long enough to trigger whisper networks, who can build a career before they fuck up in public or on camera...they're canny, even if they're not clever. They know how to not get caught.

Several abusers have used me and @infamousfiddler as cover, because if the mouthy bisexual feminists like them, they can't be bad men, right? And we're fat frumpy girls with weird hair, so clearly they're not shallow predators! Right? Right?

...wrong.

We didn't know because they never indulged in those behaviors while we were around. They were clever enough to be careful. And because we were known to be friends of theirs, no one came to us when the whispers were brewing. We only get looped in AFTER the explosion.

No one deserves to be harassed or treated like a vending machine for sex, ever, for any reason. I have a good friend who is smart--brilliant, even--and gorgeous enough to be a little annoying. She dances pole. She glues googly eyes to her butt and spins them to amuse people.

Her Instagram is a wasteland of [a**holes] assuming that because her butt can see them, they have the right to demand she post pictures with less clothing, or send nudes, or sit on their faces. And they don't.

No one has a right to demand anything of her that she doesn't freely give. She's lucky in that she's not in a genre-adjacent job, so when she does cosplay at things like SDCC, she doesn't have to worry that telling a creep to fuck off will hurt her job.

For predatory dudes seeking camouflage, surrounding yourself with women where you know that the snap judgement of anyone who sees you will be "see? He has female friends he doesn't want to [f*ck]!" is a cheap and easy way to get it.

So I guess I don't have a conclusion here, beyond "he can be predatory when you're not in the room; him being good to you doesn't make him good" and "some predators don't [sh*t] where they eat, we really don't always know."

And a pertinent reply from zuyadragon:

how did she not know? easy. she wasn't his preferred type of target so he treated her well.

And, uh...there's this.

See, I know, I know, with absolute surety, there are good men out there. I've met many of them. I know several. They exist. But I think that's why episodes like this are so disheartening--when we think it's been long enough that culture would have caught a clue as to why using this sort of influence is so very wrong...only to be proven wrong again. And again.

Because while it's still wrong, it's one thing to point to a Weinstein and say, well, that's bad, but that was his generation. It was wrong, but they were raised that way. But--pointing at a 30-something gamer? A 20-something gamer? Who we think at least was raised to believe women were people if nothing else?

It's hard to take. And it's harder not to say things like "No man can be trusted", or "they're all like this", because...that's no more true than that all women want is a stern hand and babies. People are people, individual, distinct, different.

And, very often, disappointing.

but I opened up my wound, now my force depends on you

This is amazing, and, even though many of the models are in bodysuits to imitate the paintings more perfectly, I'd say they'd still qualify as NSFW. (Some people apparently are being asked to join that site, so this site doesn't ask people to join, and also has another couple of shots of the artwork.

"If you don't heal what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you".

I wish I could track down who said this; I found it on a random profile, and wanted to find who said it, and Google search just shrugged.

It did find me some other good quotes, though.

"The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars."
~Bertolt Brecht

"You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them."
~Iyanla Vanzant, from Yesterday, I Cried

"Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person."
~Han Kang, from Human Acts

"Hold her a little tighter, she's an introvert, she needs strength to open her wounds."
~Nitya Prakash

"We have to outgrow history. History is what keeps all the old wounds and grievances alive."
<~Marty Rubin

"She couldn't believe she had told him. Now she would forever be a broken pot in his eyes. And yet, speaking those words last night had been like digging shrapnel out of her flesh. She was sore, but the piercing weight of the deeply lodged shards was gone. The relief was indescribable."
~Sonali Dev, from A Change of Heart

"Every person is driven to self-deceive, simply to get out of the discomfort of the truth. The best relationships are with people who will not let you be blind. They reveal your hidden strengths and your concealed wounds."
~Vironika Tugaleva

"She wondered which wounds went deeper: the jagged wounds of reality, or the profound invisible bruises of the imagination?"
~Vita Sackville-West

"There's some wounds that run too deep to be seen. They're the most dangerous."
~Moira Young, from Rebel Heart

"Nothing supernatural has ever harmed me. My wounds and losses have all be at the hands of human beings..."
Dean Koontz, from Brother Odd

"If you keep picking at that scab on your heart, it won't heal."
~Antonia Perdu

"Stop holding on to the broken pieces of that mirror even after you are bleeding so badly, I agree that the reflections you had imagined or saw once before were beautiful but sometimes holding on to them with a hope will just continue to hurt you even more and it will never get any better."
~Akshay Vasu

"Art is the magical act of one bleeding heart healing another."
~Akash Mandal


~Akshay Vasu, from The Abandoned Paradise: Unraveling the beauty of untouched thoughts and dreams

"We're not getting out of this unscathed. You play with blades, somebody's gonna get cut. Sometimes, everybody bleeds."
~Bunn Cullen

"In the middle of the night, I saw chaos bleeding out of darkness and peace. Everything that was said and seen before seemed like a paradox. I saw the graves of lies breaking open and the truth crawling out silently into the cold hearts."
~Akshay Vasu

Obviously I need to track down Akshay Vasu.

"Writing has always been therapy for me. When life cuts me, I bleed on paper."
~Steve Maraboli
This has been a life motto for some time.

take a look around you, it's easy not to see

Clearing out email this morning, and I find I still cannot get over this one, so...I'm putting it on the blog.

Out of the blue on November 16th, I got this:

Hey there,

My Name is Jack Foster and I blog over at VPN Geeks (we review and compare VPN providers).

I really like your blog and noticed that you accept guest posts and wondered if you’d be open to accepting one from me.

If so please let me know and I will send you several suggested topics that you may like. (If you have a topic you'd really like me to cover just let me know)

You can see an example of the type of content I publish at https://www.vpngeeks.com/21-terrifying-cyber-crime-statistics-in-2018

We'd also share it across our social channels :)

Regards,

Jack

At the time, for reasons I go into in my answer, I didn't reply. I don't always respond to completely unsolicited offers that seem to have no relation to my blog. Life moved on. Then I got this November 20th:

Hey there,

One week ago I sent you an email regarding guest post opportunity (copy of email below) and I haven’t yet heard back from anyone.

I would still love to write a guest article for your website.

You can see an example of the type of content I publish at https://www.vpngeeks.com/21-terrifying-cyber-crime-statistics-in-2018

Regards,

Jack

By my account that's four days, not a week, but that may be me being overly picky? I'm not sure. But I decided to respond:

Jack, it's been kind of a rough week. Our bathroom is being remodeled, because we could not longer use it in its current state, and considering it's management deciding what to do and not us, it's gone about as well as you might expect. Compound that with the fact that on both emails to me, you seemed to acknowledge that I do guest posts, and in the second one, said you hadn't heard back from 'anyone'.

I'm the anyone. It's just me. I'm the only writer on my blog. I do not allow guest posts.

But, because you asked, I did look. The article you linked is about 50% graphics only, and mostly easily findable, recyclable information. Your name wasn't linked at the top of the article, so, after I finished reading it, and found it at the bottom, I checked out the other posts you'd written for VPN. I found...three other articles.

Since sending that, he's apparently now written more than those three, which is good, but still doesn't break him out of that very narrow scope of writing only about data privacy and VPNs in general.

Dude, I get you're hungry, but have you read *anything* on my blog? At all? Anything. One article, even. For the past year (because I don't think you have), I've mostly covered conversations from Second Life, which is pretty much my MMO of choice. I do cover a little bit on emergent technology, some on virtual fashon, and every October, I do huge coverage on virtual haunts in SL.

So, while I do have a slight interest in cybercrime, bitchain technology, and electronic privacy and freedoms...which blog entry gave you the idea that this is my sole focus?

Just to tie this up, in case you're thinking along these lines, I do not allow advertising either. The few square banners I carry in the sidebar *I* choose to put there. I don't get paid a dime. I do have my Ko-Fi banner up on the blog, and on my Twitter--that hasn't netted me a single dime, either. Would I love to be paid for what I do? Sure, because I'm disabled and unemployed. But *do* I get paid? No, and I don't solicit for ads, either.

So, after reading through *this*, if you still think a guest post from you would fit on my blog, I'll be tolerant towards considering it, but it would be the *only* guest post for probably the *next* ten years, because...it's my blog. I do the writing.

Cheers,

Em

I don't think it's necessary to mention that Jack hasn't written back, but just for completion's sake, he hasn't written back. Guess he figured out my blog is not really keyed in to his limited and narrow scope. I mean, good luck to him, but it was just a strange exchange to begin with. And I still don't know what gave him the idea that I'm VPN and bitchain central. I think I've mentioned VIPNs all of twice, and bitchain tech, in particular Bitcoin, maybe...once? So it's just completely baffling.

I wish him the best, but I won't be at all surprised if I never hear from him again.

go make some new disaster

Several months ago...

Yeah. It's been a while. I got to the point where I realized that the longer I put it off, the longer it would be before I said anything. So...I made plans to write an entry, even if it was a short fluff piece.

And...a week later, I realized I still hadn't written that short entry, so I spent part of last night, and part of today, off and on, changing things a bit. I'm still not sold on how big most of the charity link banners are now, and the colors still seem somewhat...off...but for now, it's enough. I can stop here and work on writing later and we'll see where we are when that happens.

And...that's about it for now. Cheers, I guess. The writing drought is over, at least for now.

eyes blindfolded, gathering pieces

I dropped out of blogging again. I am bad.

So we'll just make this march and get one out and I can work on things with more actual content later!

There's a plus-size superhero now; her name is Faith, and her superhero name is Zephyr. Amusingly, she can make herself lighter than air, and can fly. Well, why not?

Seanan McGuire learned that to write disturbing things, you have to learn disturbing things...and for writers, that's okay, that fuels the process.

And wau, the military is really specific on their brownie recipes.

More later!

it's the little things

Lemmy Kilmister, singer, songwriter, musician, member of Motörhead and former member of Hawkwind, has passed away at the age of 70 from cancer. He will most sincerely and ardently be missed, and he leaves a hole in the music world that will not soon be filled.



In the meantime...

Morning comes slow today
Memories push through from yesterday
Where will I be tomorrow?
What do I have to show?

I still don't know. Each step I've taken to lead me here has moved me, and sometimes I leave flowers in my wake, sometimes burning wreckage. Sometimes I don't know until the blooming, or the feeling of good soil going dead beneath my feet.

From my life...

There's no life without pain, because pain is the easiest of lessons. Don't do this, it hurts. As children we grasp this instinctively, but many of us still push, wanting to know why, when the point of the lesson is not why it hurts, but that it hurts at all.

Stay, I need you here for a new day to break
Stay, I want you near, like a shadow in my wake

So I stand on another precipice, looking down, down, down. If I jump, will I fall, or fly? It disturbs me that I don't know. And I'm examining everything for meaning, for where it fits, or if it doesn't, and maybe that's part of the problem. One love told me tonight that I'm spending too much time analyzing the life I'm living, and not enough time living it. Is that true? If that is true, how do I stop doing it?

Flow with life down the drain
Memories and force of will sustain
Where will I be tomorrow?
What will be left to show?

Maybe, yet again, it's too many unshared thoughts, not too many thoughts, period. I live largely in my head, and it's always been difficult to let others in, to let them see who I am, where I am. A lot of the recent changes in my life on the grid are designed to push me past my comfort zones, break me out of the old, dysfunctional patterning I've managed to create. And to a certain extent, it is working, but is it causing instability in other areas?

From my life...

Overthinking, also, is just part of my core makeup. I'm not saying it's inevitable, and I'm not saying it can't be changed, but it's been an ingrained thing since I was old enough to think, so changing that is akin to a Philosopher's Stone that works.

Stay..

And there is still part of me reaching out, yet again. After November, after the main push of writing was done, everything I'd reread and reacted to was still echoing, frozen in those moments of transition. This, too, I need to come to terms with, yet again...and, yet again, stop reaching out for the hand that will never again be there.

It's the little things, little things, little things, that make the world
The little things, little things, little things that make the world

So perhaps it's a case of small movements. I am allowing winter to seep in, but I am not going dormant, I am not waiting for spring. Perhaps I need to. After all, seasons change, people change, and who we are now is not always who we will remain. I've been treating it as the winter that sears through me, but perhaps I should instead see it as the winter that brings sleep, surcease and healing, and stillness.

It's the little things, little things, little things, that make the world
It’s the little things, little things, little things

Spring will come. There is a small part of me that believes that now. At some point the snow will leave, and the refuge I've made will go away, no longer needed. I will create a new space, a new home, and bring the things that matter from the heart of winter. Everything else can stay there; if it will not help with the thaw, I have no need to carry it further.

Stay…

And when the thaw comes, I may finally be ready to stop asking the question, and waiting for the answer which will not come. Or perhaps, I will finally be ready to acknowledge that the question no longer needs to be asked at all.

(Lyrics are taken from Poets of the Fall's song, Stay.)

you sent me no letter, don't think I could forgive you

Google has proven its quantum computer works?

Also, this is the bestest holiday tree and I want one for SL.

Which reminds me--I have recently discovered that apparently, I own all the holiday trees. I own more holiday trees than I could put out with a 1,000 prim allowance. No one needs this many holiday trees. Makers of holiday trees don't need this many trees. What was I thinking?!?

[Posted 7:13 PM PST, 11 December 2015] We are aware that some residents may be experiencing some issues with leaving, inviting, and rejecting from groups inworld. This situation is being investigated. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

Well, it's about damned time,, since we've all been having this issue for months now...what finally happened, some upper-level Linden tried to leave a group and couldn't without a relog? But they've been ignoring all the complaints on blogs, all the bug reports filed with them, all the mentions at in-world office hours? Sure. Well, you work on that, guys. Hope you can fix it before 2017.

The Washington Post Style Guide has finally approved the use of 'they' as a correct singular usage. This is good in many, many ways, not that many of us weren't already using 'they' as a singular along with a plural, but it's still a solid step forward.



Why not? (Retails for L$150 in case you want it, at Fetch.)

and I gunned for your love right through the sun

137,627 words into the epic unpublishable mess. I "won" NaNoWriMo on November 10th and just kept going. I don't know how long it will take to finish. I don't know how much of myself I'm going to have left at the end.

I expected depression. I expected pain. I expected random flashes of anger, I expected hopelessness, I expected inchoate loss as I remembered days of love and days of grieving. I expected all of these things, I thought I was prepared.

I didn't expect to miss you this much.



After all, you've been gone from my life long enough that I'd forgotten many of our conversations. Oh, the general feelings, the general mood, I've retained, but the actual words said, the moments shared, those had slipped my mind. I'm finding memory's razor is sharp, sharp as winter sea air, sharp as scalpel sin.



What I'm saying is that I expected it to hurt, but I didn't expect to feel you so keenly once more. Simultaneously present and missing, close and impossibly distant, and it's striking me as profoundly unfair all over again.



I am broken. I know that. I have spent too long, especially of late, surviving in the interstitial spaces of my own head. I know I need those around me who not only see my good points, but see and accept my broken places. You did that.

You once told me that there was nothing I could not share with you, no secret, no urge, no memory, no nightmare, that you would not accept. That I could tell you anything, absolutely anything, and you would love me still.

I relied on that.

Then you left.



And it's been years. Years of healing, years of processing, years of seclusion, years of putting myself together after I tore my life apart for you. There are things I lost that I will never get back, and I had made my peace with it...until this.

And I'm still writing. And I'm still discovering. And now I'm wondering how close my memories of you are going to get before I can leave you behind, once again, where you should be, as you are nowhere to be found.

"You drove me to the fire
and left me there to burn..."

Now I just wait for the fire to burn down, and it's going to take some time, because all I have in memory's spaces are accelerants and tinder. Gods help us all.

But I get through this, my lost love. I survive. More symbols carved into my bones, into my flesh, more scars, more pain behind my eyes...but you didn't kill me when you left, and your memory won't kill me now. I'll get through this. But it's going to hurt like a wicked bitch until I do.

And I'm wondering how many words it's going to take before I'm done.

I made you now, I erase you now

'Can I play with madness?'
The prophet stared at his crystal ball
'Can I play with madness?'
There's no vision there at all

While the official winning validations do not begin until November 20th, for all intents and purposes, I have "won" another year of NaNoWriMo. My verified word count stands, as of half past two this afternoon, at 104,233 words.

I'm not truly considering it a win.

it can't always be
what you want it to be
it can't always be
what you want it to be

In terms of word count, I definitely made it, and more besides. By the 20th, I may have added on even more words, because this tide seems unstoppable. So many years I spent hiding, trying not to think, trying not to feel, and this project has brought everything back in spades. I do mean that literally--I'm as much grave-digging as I am perusing the past, disinterring at least the corpses of the memories of old loves if not their literal bones, from living ground.

Shout when you wanna get off the ride
Shout when you wanna get off the ride
'Cause you crossed my mind, you crossed my mind
I'm a penny in a diamond mine

At this point, having excavated what I've excavated so far, alone, some things are becoming quite clear. Beyond my basic tendency not to learn from mistakes, I'm discovering facets of my personality I did a great deal to erase, that I'm finding I want back. Will reclaiming them make my life more difficult? Probably, but they're bits of me that have left me feeling, not inaccurately, hollow, and I don't have to live that way.

More, though, the bigger questions I'm thinking over are of the nature of love itself. Or my love life, which may be a vastly different thing. I'm now looking at everyone I've fallen for in world, and doing my best--after the abandonment of time, parity, and relationship--to ask myself one simple question: If I had that relationship to do over again, knowing what I do now...would I?

so let it fly by
let's say it loves you
let it slide, slide
is that how I met you?

My answer prior to this has always been yes. Regrets, absolutely, I have them; sometimes I pile them up with old quilts and tuck myself in at night. But, case by case, would I do the same thing now?

you had a warning
you didn't want it
you can't come crawling back now

And...maybe I am learning, maybe I'm not, but I'm finding there are definitely people I would avoid, had I had foreknowledge. No indication of who, so don't ask--I've also learned by reading through the early days of the blog that either I'm obscure to the point of total mystery, or practically stamping name and location on my forehead. It's enough that I know who they are, and I would have made both our lives easier if I had just never gotten involved.

Which leaves me...well, with a great many ghosts to exorcise. Not to the point yet where I can do that, so it's starting to feel crowded in here, but I'm not afraid of my own ghosts. There's nothing the past can do to me now that it hasn't done already.

["Can I Play With Madness?" is from Iron Maiden, still good after all these years. "(It Could Be) Love" was recorded by Camouflage Nights. The third stanza was from an unreleased Phender song, Slide. The fourth is "The Warning" by Neverending White Lights.]

a mouthful of bees couldn't stop me

"If this will be
anything
then let it be
over."

There's something very curious about saved conversations. If I hold a letter, I can tell (reasonably speaking) how old it is. The feel of the paper will tell me, the look of the paper, the shade of the ink. Even the smell it holds may tell me things. All of these are possible with a physical object--a letter, a book, a scroll.

But data is different. Data is, to a certain extent, frozen in time. It's always fresh and always new for the most part. So opening up a saved conversation is much like having it again for the first time.

As a friend--relevant to the conversation, as it happens--once said, the wound bleeds anew when exposed again to the blade. And so it is with saved digital discussions.

"If this will be
anything
then let it be a
disaster."

So...why am I bringing this up? Because this year I had the bright idea to gather up all the remaining threads of an abandoned relationship, and analyze them through saved conversations. For NaNoWriMo.

Absolutely unpublishable, for a variety of reasons, but the chief one is that--at least right now--it feels like I'm digging into different parts of me, digging through skin and muscle to meat, seeking out anything that might have healed wrong, broken badly, or infected, and hoping to stop before I hit bone.

I know that's graphic, but that's really what it feels like. I already know that the pressure of editing whatever this is going to be is going to be too much for me. And at this point, I'm wondering if this was actually a good idea, that may lead to good things for me, or if it's just another way to sabotage myself under the guise of recovery.

At this point, I honestly couldn't say which it might be. Maybe it's both.

"A mouthful of bees
couldn't stop me
from whispering,
I don't know you."

So that's where I am. My brain dragged me out of bed only a few hours after I'd retired, and I ended up writing at a fever pace well into the afternoon. After starting, finally, on November 5th, I'm now at 15,841 words.

In two days. I'm not kidding.

"But if scars could sing
about the permanent things
they'd say it's damaged
but it was something."

But, I can already feel cracks in the foundation. Though maybe they're needed, this next time around. Because obviously, I didn't heal right the last time--if the years of isolation and hermitage have taught me nothing else, it's taught me that pulling back from the world was the wrong thing to do. Now, I need to figure out what the right thing to do will be. If there is one, single, "right" thing.

"If this will be anything
Then let it be over..."

I still plan to cover the Sinners' hunt. I've been given access to the Sinister Goth blog, and I'm contemplating what they need my voice for, over there. I'm working on writing more, interacting more, both on and off the screen. We'll see where all this goes.

But if anyone talks to me during this month, and I'm a little crazed around the edges...well, that's why. In case anyone wonders.

It's not too late to get involved in NaNoWriMo, if you're also feeling masochistic. There's a participation banner on the left side of the blog that links to their site. Get involved, if you wish. They eagerly accept donations--and they're a very good cause to donate to--but what they most desire is people who will write. That's all. They just want you to spend a month, and invent 50,000 words within it.

They just happened to pick November to do it in.

Good luck, whether you join in or not. Meanwhile, I'm back to excavating the past, and trying to understand why.

(The lyrics are taken from "Lament" from the group Mount Moriah. I'm finding them very interesting of late--all the musicians have backgrounds in heavier sounds, the jagged notes of punk, the heavy chrome of metal and hard rock. But when they create music together, they're drawn to American roots folk. So they turn out these lyrical pieces that are heavy on symbolism and acoustics, with an electronic edge.)

I know the world's a broken bone

George Orwell once wrote eleven ways to brew a perfect cup of tea. There are indeed some very controversial points--one I particularly disagree with is that tea should be bitter, though I will agree that for some teas, strong is preferred over weak.

In the meantime, why aren't more women employed in the gaming industry? This article goes a fair way towards explaining why.

In a bizarre turn of events, in hunting down various online avatar generators (having net access only on a wee netbook, as the fans on my main comp are still dead), I discovered Linkin Park has a generator online. Yes, that Linkin Park. It's kind of cute, actually, though there aren't a ton of options. Still, it stands out from most of the other generators, due to its utter simplicity.

So what exactly is "clickbait"? It's pretty much the online equivalent of Fox News (only less malicious and political, for the most part). It's essentially any online headline designed to draw people in to a link that will generate ad revenue; not coincidentally, they're largely written by staff writers hired by the ad companies in question. They're anything from video links to cute cat photos to top ten lists to presumably "shocking" things, right or wrong, they're going to make you think you need to know.

Sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy are the best examples of this trend, mostly because they've hired writers and researchers who do their best to surf for interesting content to pass on, for the most part. But there are far more unscrupulous sites out there, who toss an attention-grabbing photo and some chosen words of hype into a pre-generated template in the hopes that it will fool people long enough to get those ad revenue coins into the site owner's pockets.

The creators of Headlines Against Humanity are beyond fed up with this practice, so--based on the popular game Cards Against Humanity--they've created an online web site to address this growing issue. Can you identify the real clickbait headlines from the fakes? (Sadly, there are many, many occasions where both choices are true.)

coffee laced intoxicating on her lips

I have had a very busy week behind the screen, most of which is not germane to these writings. However, some interesting links have cropped up that I think are worth sharing.

First up: apparently there are genetic sequencing hobbyists. Now, while that story is fascinating, and I fully acknowledge that the father, in that case, started out being a clinical geneticist, there's still a great wonder for me in that we have advanced medical technology so far that individuals can make these kinds of leaps. To be sure, he collaborated with other geneticists, and did a substantial amount of work in genetic labs; nevertheless, we have mapped out enough of the human genome that we can now identify separate mutations within familial structures.

Similar research in Australia--though done by more official researchers and labs--discovered an ability to rewire the HIV virus. If this technique proves viable, then doctors could, in theory, cure AIDS and other immunodeficiencies; perhaps so far as curing cancer. It's a long way to go from this discovery to official human trials, but the initial work looks very promising indeed.

Viruses are not the only interesting research going on in the HIV research circles, though. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have come up with an alternately creepy, and cool, way to "vaccinate" against HIV...by using modified bee venom. Now, me personally, the first thing that comes to mind is the number of people who have bee venom allergies. But barring that, the theories they're operating from seem logical. The nanoparticulate melittin is the protein being isolated. While it seems to me to be a spyrochete, and would thus be almost infinitely able to drill through cells of the proper size, it may simply be a small protein able to infiltrate other cells through the corkscrew method, which also creates holes in those cells. Either way, it has potential to cure many diseases, from HIV infection all the way over to Lyme disease. I'm very intrigued with where this research will go.

Another class action lawsuit has been settled against the Lindens. But--at least as far as I'm able to ascertain--it looks like they didn't lose that much, and it seems like the settlement was reached out of court, so did not result in binding decisions on the rights of virtual landholders. Which is rather sad--with so many virtual spaces like Second Life, and in larger MMO games (I'm thinking primarily of gold farmers in WoW, and of gains and losses in EVE Online), there is a fair amount of real money that's being tossed around. I'd really like a solid legal understanding of what that buys for individuals, and how binding those purchases are.

Another bit from NWN interested me, and led me from Iris Ophelia's rant (which really wasn't, based on Botgirl Questi's entry (which still wasn't a rant) on a new (at least to me) artistic endeavor called Single Frame Stories.

In short, the blog lists a theme. It is then our job to take one single photograph that we feel best applies to the theme. From their "About" page:

Each Saturday we'll offer a new word or phrase for a prompt. Participants will each create a Single Frame Story based on the prompt of the week, consisting of a single image with up to 140 optional characters of text. The image can be a photo, screen shot, drawing or painting. The text can be integrated into the image or used as a caption or title.

We don't have to include text in the image; if we're more called to use text (AKA typography)over words, we can do that too--with a 140-character limit. Personally, having been on Twitter as long as I have been now, I'm comfortable with the 140-character limitation, but even if you're not, it's still a structure to put in place to outline your thoughts.

There is an odd freedom in working within set limitations--as NaNoWriMo shows us year after year, it can be quite the creative spur to our energies to work within external limits. It forces us not only to think outside our internal self-limitations, but can as well inspire us to redefine what that theme means to us when examined from all sides.

At the Kennedy Space Center, Atlantis, the last Space Shuttle to fly before the shuttles were retired, is now open for public view, where it will remain as a tribute to this chapter of our space program. Things have been so stagnant for space exploration in the last few decades, so I am hoping the slow-rising enthusiasm I see among my friends is also carried outside our social groups. Space travel brings with it many scientific, educational, and inspirational benefits, and we need to find more ways to get out there. The dream of life in space is not just a search for aliens that may or may not exist; it is the sure knowledge that when we look up from this small planet, we know there are beings working, beyond the horizon, and that they are part of us.

And I can't help feeling very sad at this NWN story about ex-Lindens gathering at SL10B. I truly think the Lab did all of their ex-Lindens a great disservice when the cuts came down. They went from a company many of us wanted to interact with. with Lindens we felt listened to us and heeded our concerns, to a company who was actively resentful of customer interaction, who rarely if ever bothered to listen to customer concerns. This was not a good shift, regardless of how much in resources they saved at the time.

you're an urge that can never be cured

It's that time again: too many tabs open with things I wanted to share. So here goes, in no particular order.

Michael Zoellner spent an evening tracing--by hand--the PSR B1919+21 waveforms from the cover of a Joy Division album, then 3D-printed them. That's all kinds of cool.

Anyone besides me like to go camping? BuzzFeed posted a semi-brilliant list of camping hacks, some of which I'd never heard of before.

(Oh, and there's a real easy dodge that entry didn't think of--one can also buy two one-person sleeping bags, and zip them together for a two-person bag. If both of them are rectangular, and not the 'mummy' style, it works like a dream.)

For other hacks, wander over to LifeHacker for a brief history of mechanical keyboards, and why you want one. I know I want one, because at less than six months in on the new comp, I've already typed off the L, the >, and the ? from the keyboard I'm using.

If you make machinima, or just need background music for a project, do consider Incompetech. Everything Mr. MacLeod releases is royalty-free; he only asks that you credit him back for any project usage. He also recommends AudioMicro.com, as another excellent resource for royalty-free music. (Both sites offer low prices for commercial use, no prices for personal use, and exist solely to help folks out. I do like to encourage this, as it makes everyone happy in the end.

An avatar known as Brilliant Scientist (great name!) refitted Maestro Linden's linkset script, with some assistance from Ann O'Toole, and launched it on the wiki. If you need one of those, try that one--it creates far less lag than its predecessor.

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
Vladimir Nabokov, cited in A Field Guide to Melancholy by Jacky Bowring

Some days, everything has tentacles.

There's a bit of controversy raging around the Hawkeye Initiative currently. Blogger Natalie Reed explains it further. I get what everyone's saying, but I also think that several of these women are missing the point of both the Hawkeye Initiative, and the Escher Girls blog in the first place.

(Though I'd also single out this post, because it makes a damned good point.)

Also, at least according to one Jewish paper, women didn't exist during the Holocaust. This is a nigh-perfect case of good motivation leading to bad outcome. We know why they're trying to erase women from these photographs; but many of us are not comfortable with that conclusion. In addition, it's too closely kin to censorship, so it's disturbing on that level as well.

Moving in another direction entirely, go peruse the Rag & Bone blog. Much tasty literary eye candy--and paper-based art--there.

Finally, if you're like me, you have far more anti-skills than you have skills. But even if you're not, it's good to read through, because that article provides an excellent working understanding of the difference between life skills/coping skills and anti-skills. (Just an FYI: anti-skills are the bad ones. Anti-skills are the ones we have that are habitually responsible for holding us back, keeping us trapped, and keeping us wary and fearful. It's not easy to ditch them, either, but accepting that we have them is a great first step.)

well, up and out and away with ye

Hi there. :)

It's been almost 6 years since I made my first dress. In fact, June 28th will be the exact date that I'd hit the six year mark. It's been a long, wonderful journey, this role as seamstress of what have been mostly formal and role play themed gowns in Second Life.

The time has come for a change, and the closing of this chapter of my life. I'll still be around, but I'll be focusing instead on my little jewelry shop.

Until June 28th, you can find all gowns at the main store on sale for only 75L each. After the 28th, the doors will close on Kouse's Sanctum in-world, permanently.

So if you have time, I hope you'll give me one last visit before the last pen stroke is made on this chapter, and maybe bring a friend. Enjoy the build, and maybe even enjoy one last moment on the log swing.

Thank you for six great years of Kouse's Sanctum. ♥ I'll always treasure the friends I've made along the way, my customers (which happen to be the loveliest bunch of ladies on the Grid), and the memories made.

-Kouse

(from the loss album)

I have always had a love for how Kouse Singh designs; notwithstanding the fact that most of my holiday gowns are made by her, most of my gowns, period, are either from her or from Evangeline Miles of Evie's Closet fame.

And already reeling from the death of Iain Banks, comes this news. So go while you can. Pick up the outfits you've wanted since whenever, wander the build, and mourn the passing of yet another beautiful, irreplaceable thing on the grid.

and I dream of the sky, my utopian lie

A friend passed me something I figured might be good to toss to a wider audience:

Rules and Guidelines for the Inkstained Clanks

Welcome to the fan fiction writing group for the brilliant Girl Genius universe. We are a collection of like-minded individuals who enjoy writing and gathering together in order to write and share original fan fiction stories, sonnets, haikus, and prose. We are currently working on creating a website to post the masterpieces that our members create. Each person will have their own log in and their own page, and that way they will be able to maintain their own collection of their talent. For now, however, we will be meeting once a week in order to share our stories, read them out loud if the members wish it, as well as to help each other by giving constructive criticism, praise, and whatever other help our members may need. In order to keep order and to stay on the same page, we have put together a few rules for our members.

Every Sunday a theme will be issued. A theme is sent out in order to motivate and challenge our members to write using a certain theme, be it a situation, topic, type of monster, etc. Suggestions for themes will be accepted but the ultimate decision will rest with the owners of the group.

Every week we will have a meeting where we can help each other write, give praise, constructive criticism, etc. These stories will be G, PG, and R rated, although there will be no explicit sexual or violent scenes. There can be vague or general sorts of situations but nothing offensive or explicit. Which leads us to rule number 3.

Once a month there will be meeting for Adult fan fiction, where we will be reading, writing, giving constructive criticism, praise, and any other comments to fan fiction that can be rated anywhere from G to XXX. We will let everyone know well in advance when the adult meeting will be, so that those who do not care to attend can steer well clear of it. When we get the website online, the adult writings will have their own section so it will be kept away from the rest of the creations.

No Drama. We are adults and surely we can pretend to get along with everyone. We are writers, creators, surely we can act civilized. If you are having problems with someone and cannot reconcile it with them by yourself, please contact Kira Vedrina (Kiralette Kelley). She is the ultimate power of Clank or Crush in the group and will be happy to try to find a way to create peacefulness. Peace enables people to be more creative, and we all want to let those creative juices flowing, right?

No maligning Girl Genius, the creators of Girl Genius, or anyone who is involved in the creative process that goes into the existence of Girl Genius. If it weren't for them, we would not be here making our own creations using theirs as an inspiration.

While it's also nice to know that Miss Kiralette is still alive and kicking, what I would mention to people is that no writing group, no matter the goal, is ever a waste of time. Fan writing in particular--while it can, and usually does, exist in a legal hinterland that occasionally becomes dangerous terrain indeed, what people tend to forget is that it's still writing. Anything that gets us writing, consistently; thinking of characterization and plot; and developing writing routines is never wasted time.

Just search for "Inkstained Clanks" under Groups; they pop right up, and they're a free group to join.

[10:21 PM] Geoffrey Xenobuilder: by the way who ever's Refrigerator is running laps thru Central Caledon Can you collect it before it eats one of the pepole looking at parcels

Never a bad idea.

Unfortunately, this one was:

[00:18] Cxxxx Nxxxxxxx: Well, the fundraiser to help Aeva/Heartsick owner Amesha get a new computer started-only problem is that the sim owner went to bed without opening the sim to the public.

Nrrrrrng.

As I wasn't on the "official" bloggers' list for the Heartsick event (they didn't turn me down, I didn't apply because my scattered brain is having a hard enough time keeping up with blogging just for me), I don't know whether or not the bloggers that were got early access. I'd suggest just keep trying until the event opens--hopefully, when the sim owner wakes up in the morning.

[Update before publishing: it's been fixed! It's now open, so go and support your brains out. There's a lot of great things donated for the event from a lot of great designers, so yay for simple fixes.]

[[Postscript: having now--very briefly--wandered the sim, I'm also amused that the unofficial theme of the affair seems to be Twi'leks. Hee.]]