not language but a map

dee-lirious: someone please carve this post on my gravestone...

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:56:11 -0400

dee-lirious:

someone please carve this post on my gravestone thank

and in that moment i swear we were helga

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:50:21 -0400

an ode to chris pine:

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:52:07 -0400

why
why why
why why why
why why why why.
why! why. whyyyyyyy
why why
why

WHY.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:25:00 -0400

itslarsyouguys: YOU’RE a baby I’M a baby WE CAN BE BABIES...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:55:15 -0400

itslarsyouguys:

YOU’RE a baby

I’M a baby

WE CAN BE BABIES TOGETHER

to touch what was no longer tangible

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:56:48 -0400

A Daisy Buchanan ficlet, written in the aftermath of seeing the latest Gatsby adaptation, for chayya. Can be read as a continuation of this piece, or as a standalone.

“A beautiful little fool,” Daisy whispers in Pammy’s ear, on the train away from East Egg, her (new) old life. It is a blessing and a curse. It is a benediction.

—

She doesn’t see poor Nicky again until after the crash. He looks like she feels, like the whole country’s acting; five o’clock shadowed and liquor-breathed, he leans too close to her in tatters of his old realities. Nicky didn’t have so much to lose as Tom did, which is why he looks so much worse than Tom does; this what they really meant, the people who used to talk about old money like it meant something. The bare bones of Tom, brought low, at their worst, are worth more than Nicky’s whole body was on its best day.

Tears sting at Daisy’s eyes to think of it, but she blinks them back, says nothing. It’s what she’s good at, after all: biting her tongue. Swallowing.

“Careless,” Nick says — spits, really — after a long and trying day. It’s a will-reading they’ve come together for, a dead aunt that Daisy never liked, and she wouldn’t have come if Tom hadn’t insisted. Everything’s about money for Tom, these days. Perhaps it always was.

Joke’s on him, anyway; the mad old thing left her a filigree hand mirror and nothing. It’s terribly pointed, for a message from beyond the grave. Daisy never did like her.

Anyway, it was never about money for Nick, which is the only reason Daisy asks after his meaning, the only reason she indulges him at all. He says it again, that word, “Careless,” but this time he carries on: “You careless people, with your careless lives. It sickened me. It still does.”

In the next room, Pammy’s laughter sounds, high and bright over the miasma of the day. She is a golden child, all light and air in the darkest of places, and Daisy loves her to the point of exquisite agony, to the point where she aches to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s not really what she means, because he’s wrong — she’s never been careless, only brittle and frightened, commodified — but she’s found, over the years, that this is the path of least resistance. That this is what is sought. “Oh, I’m so sorry, really I am.”

Some days she feels like she’s spend her whole life apologizing — to her mother; to her husband; to poor Jay, who wanted so badly to forgive her all along. She’s saying it for Nicky, but she’s looking at her daughter. She’s wondering if, until today, she’s every really meant it before.

—

One of Jay’s shirts hangs in the back of her closet, hidden carefully behind her dresses and coat. It is cobalt blue with thin white pinstripes, stuffed into her handbag one golden afternoon while he wasn’t looking, and she doubts he ever noticed it was missing. He had so much, after all, and spent so little time looking after it. She could have taken a hundred shirts. He would have given them to her, if she’d ask.

It is the ugliest thing she has ever seen, and sometimes, when no one is around, Daisy strips down to her barest self and puts it on. The fabric slides easily over her skin, worn from her touch, not his, and she allows herself an old vice — to indulge in the comfort of imagining what Jay could have been, instead of what he was.

—

Tom puts the pistol in his mouth in September of ‘31. It’s Daisy who finds him, on the floor of their city apartment while Pammy is away at school, and she spends a long time walking around the body, toeing at it occasionally with one foot. There is a pool of blood blooming out from the right side of Tom’s head, and his left arm is flung wide across the floor. She wonders how she can be so cool. She wonders whether she should feel something.

A week after Jay died, Daisy locked herself in the bathroom of their European hotel suite and wept, inconsolate, so violently she made herself ill. She pounded her fists against the porcelain tiles of the floor until they cracked in spiderwebs beneath her; she pulled at her own hair and curled into a ball in the corner, rocking back and forth in time with her soft, keening sounds. She scratches her nails along her arms and only quieted when she brought him to mind, the last time she saw him: frantic and desperate, wide-eyed, a stranger looking at her as though she were salvation itself.

She realized then that she was weeping for herself — for the child she’d been, for the woman she could have become, for the girl he met in Louisville; not for him. It was easier to pull herself together after that.

Daisy lays down next to Tom, now, in the crook of his arm on his bloodless side. She rests her head on his cold, immobile chest and thinks that he feels more like a statue than a man; then she has to bite her lips to keep her laughing, at the thought that maybe he always was.

“Oh, Tom,” she whispers. “I’m sorry for Pammy, I suppose. I’m sorry for your mother. I’m not sorry for myself at all — maybe Nicky was right. Maybe I am careless.” She runs her hand, palm flat, down his shirtfront. “You are the weakest man I’ve ever known; I imagine now’s the time to tell you. I’ve always known this was the apartment you kept for her. I hope, I really do hope, that you enjoy yourself in hell.”

It is the first honest thing she’s ever said to him, and, of course, the last one. It’s as much a goodbye as he deserves, the way she presses her warm lips to his cold ones.

—

Once I killed someone, Daisy tells herself, the though bold and sick and reckless, when things become too hard. Once I killed someone. Surely I can do this.

It’s not true. It’s never been true — Daisy is a beauty and a prize, and that’s all she’s ever been, all she’ll ever be good for. But she is a cynic, too, and skilled in swallowing lies; she can trick herself into capability, if only for awhile. She gets a job as a dancer, and manages to keep the apartment Tom bought for his whore. Pammy eats every day, and Daisy at least every other. Sometimes, like before, she cannot force herself out of bed, but usually she can. Usually she thinks of Tom, cold and still on the parlor floor, and the idea of sharing his fate is propulsion the likes of which she’s never known.

She’s not afraid of death; some days, she thinks it might even be a relief. She is simply determined, one way or another, never to share anything with Tom again. It’s long since been enough.

—

Life is not easy, but then, life never has been. There have been things, always — wild, magnificent things, beautiful things, things stacked from floor to ceiling and always worth so much — but never any meaning behind them. Always they have been used to confine and define Daisy. Always, Daisy has been one of them.

Now there is no one left but Pammy, but herself, but the hard-mouthed women she dances with at night. Their little apartment is in itself a palace of riches, a fortune in luxury, compared to the lots some people are living, and Daisy opens the front door to a dozen different dancers, their families, their friends. She never knows who she will come home to — other than Pammy, always Pammy, growing brighter and bolder by the day — and it’s better, things are better than they used to be. No more does Daisy open her mouth and choke on what to say. No more does Daisy force herself to dangerous extremes, one end or the other, because it’s that or feel nothing at all.

She laughs raucously with her daughter, whispers secrets with her friends, learns to fight, to swear, to spit in the faces of men who take but never ask. Her country goes to hell and then to war and Daisy goes to herself, or back to herself, or both. It’s hard to know. She’s not entirely certain, some days, that she ever knew herself, before.

—

1945, VE Day, and Times Square is a celebration to rival the most opulent of parties ; Daisy clutches her daughter’s hands in her own and thanks God, though she’s not sure for what. Pammy is nineteen now, studying a thousand things in school, as smart as Daisy once wished she wasn’t; she’s hatchet-faced and hawk-eyed and beautiful, so beautiful for it. It is enough, for Daisy, just to stand with her. Daisy’s whole life has been worth it just for this, to stand here holding the hands of this woman who would never have been without her.

In the crowd, she sees a familiar face — she thinks with a start that it’s Jay, and then Tom, before she realizes it must be Nicky. He has gotten old just like she has, just like her men didn’t, and it would be nothing at all to go to him, to say hello.

But oh, she’d have to let go of her daughter’s hands, and what does she owe him, anyway? A filigree mirror, she thinks giddily, and nothing; if she was careless, then so was he, so were all of them. She is not careless today, with Pammy’s enthusiasm reverberating through the both of them loud enough to be heard over the entire crowd.

So she waves, just for herself, at his turned back. When a laugh bubbles up in her chest, she closes her eyes and lets it go.

That review seemed incredibly one sided to me. Did you really not like the movie? (I know you didn't write it, I'm just trying to find out why people are disliking the movie as much as they are.)

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:01:00 -0400

I really did not like the movie.

Or, well, I guess I shouldn’t say that without a caveat; I did like a lot of individual things about the movie, most of which were character moments/exchanges, most of which I discussed here. It was fun to see characters I loved doing things together! It was fun to see Chris Pine’s face existing! But I don’t think the plot made sense; I found myself angry and honestly embarrassed by lot (a lot) of the decisions production made; many, if not most, of their narrative choices struck me as underdeveloped, nonsensical, out of character, or all three; the only reason I found it engaging was because I went in caring about the characters, and even with that advantage, it was sometimes a struggle to stay invested. I laughed during moments that were supposed to be serious because it just felt so forced to me. It reminded me a lot, actually, of seeing Iron Man 2 in theaters: I cared about the people involved, but I couldn’t wait to watch it on my computer, where I could fast forward through all the badly done/boring parts.

Having said that, I don’t think one-sided is the right word for that review. Aside from the fact that it’s an opinion piece — a strong opinion piece, sure, but an opinion piece nonetheless, and thus making no claim of/having no need to display an objective (two-sided) viewpoint — most of what it’s doing is pointing out plot holes (also, being hilarious). Yeah, no doubt it’s negative, but using cold fusion to stop a volcano really doesn’t make sense. Drawing on a Eugenics War that happened in the 1990s for an audience that lived through, and knows that didn’t happen in, the ’90s really is a strange choice. Spock Prime really does follow up a “I can’t tell your future I promised I wouldn’t!” with a “Well, but okay, this one time.”

I mean, look, there are plenty of people who watched STID and loved it, and good for them, I’m really glad! I’ve got nothing but love in my heart for people who enjoyed the film, no judgement, no objections, no desire at all to tell them they were wrong. My opinion of the film overall was negative, but that’s all it is: my opinion. And while a portion of the stuff I’ll be reblogging on STID will probably be things that I, with my negative opinion, agree with, my overall position here is one of enthusiasm! The film didn’t work for me as a whole, but I loved a bunch of individual things about it, and I’m sure I’ll see it again, and I’m SUPER excited to see what comes out of the fandom! So my advice on finding out why people are disliking it so much is to either read these critical posts with an eye towards their main points — in what I’ve seen so far, those are objections to the plot holes, the whitewashing, the sexism, the overall flow/pacing/story arc problems, and what many feel is a departure in tone from the source material — or don’t worry about it, and enjoy your opinion knowing that others’ feelings on something don’t make your own less valid. I hope that helps? :D ?

Star Trek Into Darkness: the spoiler review (At io9)

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:43:00 -0400

fuck-it-fire-everything:

After making a mere $84 million at the U.S. box office, Star Trek Into Darkness is considered by some to be a disappointment. Perhaps the problem is that it was a touch confusing. To help our readers better understand it, we’ve complied and answered these Frequently Asked Questions about the movie.

Maximum spoilers ahead…

How does the movie start?

Well, with Kirk and Bones fucking with a planet of primitive aliens. They steal some kind of holy scroll, and then get chased through a red jungle.

Seems like kind of a dick move.

Well, it’s not very clear, but ostensibly they’ve stolen the scroll to get chased, in order to draw the aliens away from a volcano that’s about to explode.

Okay, that seems reasonable.

Except that 1) when the volcano erupts, it’s going to kill everybody on the planet, so it hardly matters where they are, and 2) Spock is getting dropped down into the volcano to set off a cold fusion bomb.

Wait, what?

Yeah, he sets off the cold fusion bomb and all the lava freezes.

You know cold fusion isn’t actually cold, right? It’s only “cold” in the sense that opposed to regular fusion it’s not a bazillion degrees hot.

Huh.

And did you say Spock was in the volcano? Why the hell didn’t they just beam the bomb in there?

Um, something about the planet’s magnetic field. Although they do beam Spock out of the volcano just a few minutes later, so…

And why did Spock have to go with the bomb to set it off? Are you telling me in the 23^rd century that people don’t have a way to detonate bombs remotely? That’s stupid.

Well —

And why the fuck is the Enterprise just carrying around a cold fusion suitcase bomb anyways?

Look, you’re getting very upset, and this is just the first scene of the movie.

READ MORE

(I was going to make a post about how mad Star Trek made me, but this does it better, with bonus tears of laughter. )

oh my god this is actually the best thing

NINETY-FIVE GRIEVANCES TO GOD: ABRIDGED

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:55:00 -0400

After Martin Luther

1. Children are capable of feeling
both shame and abandonment.

14. My father lives alone. Also,
a hawk killed his dog and you
expect me to believe in mercy.

20. Good things happen to bad people.

47. One day, every person I have ever
loved will die and the only option
you have given me is to just sit by
and watch it happen or hope
I am the first to go.

48. Speaking of love,

86. The list of artists who have
committed suicide only includes
the ones who were well known
enough to be found.

95. As a child, I prayed every night.
It felt important. Mature. Powerful.
I wish someone had told me that
it was me, that I was the powerful one.
Imagine it: fleets of six-year-olds
believing that strongly in themselves.

- Sierra DeMulder

treksfromlastnight: ungyo: (x) all hail the choverlord!

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:52:59 -0400

treksfromlastnight:

ungyo:

(x)

all hail the choverlord!

but what if christine chapel and jim kirk meant to have no-strings-attached wild barnburner type...

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:46:15 -0400

but what if christine chapel and jim kirk meant to have no-strings-attached wild barnburner type sex, only then something super embarrassing happened — like christine caught jim giving his dick a pep talk in the bathroom, or sloppy mantears occurred for an unjustified reason, or jim accidentally shouted his own name when he came — and christine had to request a transfer because she couldn’t look at him or even hear his voice on the shipwide broadcasts without cracking the fuck up and it was starting to freak patients out

jim says he ~doesn’t remember~ but that’s aspirational, he only wishes he didn’t; the truth is he relives it in the stunningly vivid technicolor of abject mortification pretty much whenever he closes his eyes

that’s my new headcanon, that makes this better for me

(x)

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:10:12 -0400

(x)

tavrosofnitram: “let me like that post so i can look at it again sometime!”

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:46:09 -0400

tavrosofnitram:

“let me like that post so i can look at it again sometime!”

empresssamantha: negressive: John Cho looking outstanding in...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:45:25 -0400

empresssamantha:

negressive:

John Cho looking outstanding in suits

OMG he is so yummmy!!!!!

jellybeing: someone read this sign and then took a picture of...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:29:51 -0400

jellybeing:

someone read this sign and then took a picture of it

“yeah! yeah! just for once in your life just chill out and observe the beautiful nature! i can really get behind that!” *takes picture*

i love how much i hate this picture

all i can think about when i see this is how much better...

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:41:07 -0400

all i can think about when i see this is how much better baby!spock’s childhood would’ve been if he’d gone to school with wee!scotty instead of those asshole vulcan kids from the first movie

“i assume you have prepared new insults for today?”

“OH, WELL, GOOD GUESS, MR. AWESOME SHIRT”

isanyofthisforreal-ornot: mymindpalaceisatardis: OH MY...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:15:39 -0400

isanyofthisforreal-ornot:

mymindpalaceisatardis:

OH MY GOSH

THAT IS A TURTLE

AND HE IS CRAWLING TOWARDS ME

AND HE HAS BIG SHINY EYES

SADFHASDKJFAHDSJFA

HAVE I MENTIONED I LOVE THIS TURTLE

I think this turtle can cause world peace

same watson time, same watson channel:

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 -0400

gyzym: you know who i think should have all the sex bee tee dubs

is jude law watson and lucy liu watson

like.

postcard: hahahahHAHAHAHAh

gyzym: that would be the best watsoncest ever.

postcard: yes

yes it would

gyzym: it would be so

practical

and

AMAZING

and

probably violent

but in a good way

postcard: and their holmes wouldn’t even notice

they would be too busy

causing explosions

with their shirts off

gyzym: oh my god not for the first three hours though

because for the first three hours

rdj! holmes would be

pointedly staring

at jlm!holmes

while jlm!holmes

pretended not to stare at

and then not so subtly

stole stares at

rdj!holmes

postcard: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gyzym: NOT EVEN BECAUSE THEY WANT TO HAVE SEX

JUST BECAUSE OF HOW

THEM

THEY BOTH ARE

IN SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT WAYS

postcard: they can discuss their tactics for ignoring sound together

how much sleep a person can run on

that sort of thing

HAVE YOU TRIED TEA SAYS JLM!HOLMES

HAVE YOU TRIED OPIUM SAYS RDJ!HOLMES

D: says jlm!holmes

gyzym: rdj!holmes can show jlm!holmes his tube full of flies that fly in a pattern when he plays certain violin notes

watson would not let me keep this in the house, jlm!holmes would say

D: says rdj!holmes

mine keeps letting them free D:

postcard: then

somehow

they talk about how amazing their watsons are

for hours

and agree

to never tell their watsons

because FEELINGS

ICKY

FEELINGS

gyzym: meanwhile john and joan

in between rounds of sex

firmly agree

to not discuss their holmeses at all

because really

not everything needs to be about them

postcard: even if their holmeses do not know that

ever.

gyzym: they discuss medicine

and literature

and fighting

and fucking

john teaches joan a bunch of hand-to-hand he learned in the army

and a bunch of OTHER stuff he learned on three continents

after joan patiently explains to him the science

behind why his concept of modern medicine is bullshit wrong

postcard: lmao oh god he’d be so happy

until he realised

HOW HARD it will be

to make holmes do all this WASHING

gyzym: but then joan covers his mouth

because they agreed: no holmeses

the bedroom is not a place

for holmes.

HOWEVER MARY MORSTAN IS ALWAYS WELCOME

postcard: sdfjskfhjskfhksdhfkshfkshf

gyzym: because lbr

joan would be totally into that

some things are just intrinsic

to watsonhood

postcard: dfhsjkfhsdf yes

gyzym: (jlm!holmes and rdj!holmes have put on some of rdj!holmes’s various disguises and gone out)

(they visit holmes’s favorite tobacco shop and then harass random citizens)

(cackling to each other)

postcard: sdhfjkshfjskfhksjhfkshfskhfsf

so basically

watsons are sex gods

holmeses are children

THE USHE

hc-svnt-dracones: I feel like they could remake that whole movie from Chekov’s point of view. The...

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:13:36 -0400

hc-svnt-dracones:

I feel like they could remake that whole movie from Chekov’s point of view.

The title would be THIS IS NOT MY JOB! and it would just be two hours of Chekov running around the warp core with his little goggles as everything goes to shit all around him.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury: I AM HUGGING YOU BECAUSE I LOVE...

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:30:25 -0400

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

I AM HUGGING YOU BECAUSE I LOVE YOU

ALSO SOMEONE ATE ONE OF YOUR SHOES BUT THIS IS NOT ABOUT THAT