NumbToNothing's gallery posts [hider=1: Want] I wish saying a place felt like home wasn’t an insult if I’m the one saying it, because I don’t know what else to call the Annwn Castle transhumanism gallery. There’s this thing they used to talk about with queer culture where people asked why a bunch of us seemed to immature for our ages and it’s cause none of us had a first childhood like they did, we never got it out of our systems. Trans people got hit with it the hardest because they just straight up went through the wrong puberty years and had to catch up on that. Like, one thing I had to think about a lot when I was going through the crowd today was makeup. Girls would practice makeup at all their sleepovers and parties, and guys didn’t. So if a guy transitioned then she had to be shit at makeup because nobody taught her. Looking at guys who are minotaurs and cyborgs now, it’s hard to remember how it was basically only a couple of years ago that guys wearing makeup got called slurs for it. My Dad did when I started to. Like as a joke, it was funny, I laughed, but there’s a reason he knew I’d get what the joke was. I think that’s kind of it, though. It’s about socialization, it’s about being taught how to be the right kind of person to fit in. And for some people it’s about trying to be an entirely different kind of person you weren't taught how to be, and for some people you just get taught wrong and you have to go through all the steps everyone else did when they were kids, when you’re too old to get being a kid as an excuse for it. If you want to get what that feels like, you come here. If you’ve already dealt with that, then this is a celebration of it. If you haven’t, if you were raised right and like how you turned out, this is where you come to wonder if you should be. If maybe there’s something past ‘adult’ and ‘normal’ that it’s worth thinking about being. Something that doesn’t take twenty years of practice or being born with better genes or you haven’t already spent years getting good at it so it’s already too late. You can be something entirely new, that nobody’s ever been before. If you did that, you start having to think about how you’d be all the time. Because it’s not just going to change who you are, it changes how people treat you. You have to write an entirely new social script where you’re acting the part of whatever new thing you are. You’ve got nobody you can learn it from, because you’re the first person trying to do it. It’s just that when you look at the people here you think that’s worth it. You think maybe that people not being able to treat you by their existing script could be the only way to be treated as you for once, because they have to learn who you are before they can put a label on you. They have nobody to compare you to that makes being how you are get seen as a failure to be something else. It might start to feel like the only way to get treated like a person is to move past being human. It’s why I love being here. Even when I don’t look like that, yet, that’s how the people here think, that’s how they treat you. Everyone who succeeded at being unique is someone who failed at being normal first, and I love them. I love them all, and this place is a celebration of everything about that, and why anyone who doesn’t like this because it’s weird is missing the fucking point. Because I can tell you this, whatever excuses they tell you for it, whatever bullshit they give you, that’s the whole thing to them. That’s what I worked out today, when I helped tear the head off a lion. The transhumanphobes hate me even though the transhumans love me and they hate us both because of the same thing; These are always going to be the people who judge you based on how close you fit their idea of normal, and even if we wanted it that’s always going to be impossible for some people. What’s at stake here is our right to be anything other than the most boring kind of asshole. The good thing is, even these assholes have totally different definitions of normal to them. It’s just that the weirder someone gets, the more of them you can get to agree it isn’t normal. Get weird enough and they can form a coalition. If all you’ve ever wanted is to be what you are, if you’ve managed to fit in, then you might not get why that’s such a big fucking deal. You might get that the assholes are wrong for pushing their values on other people trying to exist in theirs, but you might also think transhumans are just immature kids playing dress-up who just haven’t figured out yet how to fit in to the real world. And if that’s you, then come here tomorrow and learn what it’s like to want something. Where nothing’s stopping you from having it except people it doesn’t effect making it a problem for you. Learn what it’s like to feel like someone would want to kill you for being the person you wish you could be. You look at the sheer joy of a dancing snake girl playing tetris on her scales, or of a unicorn pouring her heart out over the love she has for every single one of us deviants and reprobates, and you tell me how anyone who’d want anything else for them isn’t a fucking monster. That’s the whole thing, right? None of that’s in here, right now, while I’m writing this. This place burns like a searchlight, it’s just that how bright it’s burning makes the shadows outside the walls feel so much darker. I wish I never had to leave. I only have three days here and how bright everything is makes me realize how sick having to go back outside again is making me feel. This is the first place that’s ever felt like home and it has to go away soon. Eli. [/hider] [hider=The Lion, The Snitch and the Wardrobe] Isn’t it just the strangest thing? Remarkable. Here I was, all dressed up and ready to hang this man from a cross when I find all the heavy lifting has been done for me. What makes this so remarkable is that being there to see it happen only served to slow me down. I had to transition from the physical into the digital, if you’ll pardon my lateness for it, and it seems that by the time I’d kicked off my shoes to write… Well, now, how can I write an opinion piece when everyone already has an opinion that they’ve made up their mind on? If I am to say anything, then, it will have to be something I can only add from the experience of someone who was actually there. Do not mistake me for saying that I will contradict the evidence of so many eyewitness accounts and so many video recordings of the matter, for I cannot do that and will not attempt to try. There is nothing I can say that will teach you anything new about those moments you cannot better learn elsewhere, through their objective record. I can only add to the pool of collective knowledge by telling you more of what I know from before the cameras started recording, and of what happened later. To dispel some of the nastier rumours; No, I do not believe the Dragon was attempting to kidnap our man the Governor. I have it on good authority her taste lies instead in the taking of fair maidens, as befits any dragon of proper stature, and a fair maiden the Governor most certainly is not. I think he would find any insinuation to be libelous to say the least. The statements put out by the Governor’s press office paint a terrifying picture of a frogmarch through the darkness and away from his embattled security service. While such may be true from the perspective of the Governor and I would dare not call him a liar for this account, I will tell you now that his escort never once left the confines of a crowd of witnesses. Missing from his version of events is that he was brought to heel not by a fear of his safety, but for the fear he had been recognized. The simple fact of the matter is that the Governor was caught acting suspiciously in a crowd he sought to belong in, and told on himself when he couldn’t. He, or at least his press office, claims at once he was prejudicially targeted and that he was outed by a random act of violence from the crowd. These two things cannot be simultaneously true. It is agreed that before the events the Governor’s disguise was not known, and we find no other accounts of violence at the event. The unflattering truth of the matter is that the Governor’s disguise was thwarted by his overt hatred, something the fabric of his costume was incapable of hiding, and such was the basis to target him regardless of his identity. If the Governor himself was the only source that needed clarification on this matter I would find it understandable as he is the one who benefits from people lacking a clear record of events. The most to lose from people having a genuinely clear understanding of what happened. What I find most disappointing is that I am also compelled to dispel the accounts of liberal allies who would otherwise condemn the Governor and everything he stands for, but will instead stand with him to defend him from the very people he endangers. To them I have to ask; What good are your principles if they would bring you into an alliance with Joseon? Did you not think it odd that, surrounded by witnesses, not one stood up to the physical defense of Governor Joseon against only a single aggressor, a young-seeming girl at that? A crowd with at least several wonderful and empathetic people I can personally account for. I should hope so, I was one of those people who made no motion in the Governor’s defense. I will drop my glib facade a moment and I pray that you will help me pick it back up in a moment, because I will need it back again. Thank you for allowing me to be so blunt as this; This man came into my house. This man brought his filth and his hatred and his evil into my home. How could you dare wring your hands about how he was told he would kill himself when this man has demonstrably, provably and gleefully created law that has led dozens to that end? Why? Because one is something tangible you can see, and the other so intellectually abstracted? That’s not a principled position, that’s moral incoherence. For many it is justified by how scared they are of violence and vigilantism, scared that this will lead to worse. I find this fascinating, because that remit, that order, must have been backdated months. The police have already been acting as if this were the case, and the withdrawal of legitimate state protection is what necessitates such vigilante protectionism in our spaces. If that is the nature of your fear then it is Governor Joseon and others like him that lit the petard that hoisted him today. We tried it another way, we tried an exercise of community and safety today, we had something that was truly ours. And at its shining moment, during the beautiful speech of the organizer who made this possible, I had my reverie interrupted by this man’s hateful, evil garbage spewing into my ear from the darkness. My one consolation was knowing that it was that very hatred in that place that would destroy him, and here instead I find some of you trying to make a martyr of him, as if he is entitled to the political power that he uses to persecute these very people. What defense do they have from him, outside these walls? The truth was what truly wounded him, and must be allowed to destroy him. That truth I do not need to elaborate on, because the Dragon herself said it so well, of which there is already an objective account. I can only say that her truth cannot be invalidated because it was delivered with a blow to the stomach or a hand held to the stuff of the neck. I will not mince my words: Get this man the fuck out of my house. Every suicide and murder due to this stochastic terrorism is the burning of a photo album that now never was. There is no money nor compensation that can ever make that whole, the only protection we are afforded is eviction. Eviction from a space he would see razed, even as he longs to be a part of it. The coward would commit arson upon my home, a home he is scared to share in, and the man who must live in the fire has no sympathy for the man who is afraid of it. I apologize for that. If you will forgive me for getting so heated around the fire metaphors, and help me pick my glib facade back up again? I think it’s more comfortable for us both if I am to mantle myself in it for what I am about to say. I won’t overstay my welcome further than this. I share in your fears of escalating violence and understand why you would condemn this, I promise you that. I wish such a matter were as simple as refuting violence altogether before it can escalate. But you cannot prevent an explosion of pressure by plugging the holes from which it vents. You cannot condemn the leaks. You must instead shut off the boiling. Anyone who condemns the violence against the Governor today misses the point. No, it is not enough to condemn the Governor in the same breath and call for order on both sides. One side holds one of the most powerful men in public office with a professional security team, on the other was an angry girl with costume wings. There is no equivalency here. To condemn the girl is to condemn the whistle of a kettle without removing the kettle from the heat. It is to fail to understand that the heat is the source of the noise since the heat itself is silent until it creates a symptom we find unpleasant. We must address the cause of this unpleasant symptom, to silence it is to fail to be warned. It is to fail to understand that for the kettle to start whistling, it has to have already been boiling in silence for a long time. We must ask how we remove the vessel of Aevum from the heat before there is a far worse spillover. To stand with the Governor is to stand with the explosion I fear may be coming. [/hider] [hider=Night 2: Eulogy for the Living Dead] I don’t want to write tonight but it’s the only thing that makes everything stop hurting. So I’m probably going to make this way too long just so I have an excuse not to stop. It feels like I’m writing a eulogy for someone who I have to pretend isn’t already dead just because he’s still alive. The fact he’s still alive right now just makes it hurt more because I have to have to have hope until it’s gone again. Adrian Liddell would have preferred to be known as Junta, and he was one of the smartest people I know. I talk like everything’s just leaking out of me, it’s like mashing random article on wikipedia over and over and I’m just kind of vomiting words all over you, and Junta could just talk like that back and he’d think about what I’m saying and then go back to something I said fifteen minutes ago because he was still thinking about it the whole time I was saying new shit to him because he was doing both, and also the thing to talk about next. Can talk like that, fuck. Will talk like that, if he’s not brain damaged from this again. You know he helped me when nobody else thought I deserved it. He thought I deserved it before I did, and he reached out and he just kept talking to me about stuff nobody else would let me say. Like I was angry, I did that thing where I wanted to kill myself but I didn’t want to hurt anyone by doing it so I tried to push anyone away so there’d be nobody in the splash zone and he didn’t. I did everything I could to make sure everyone would be happy I was dead and when I did it to him, he asked me why I hurt so bad I was trying to do that. I didn’t deserve to live. Just- Fuck I’m making this about me now, but shut up, this is really about him I don’t know how else to say this. I didn’t, but he thought I could, and he tried to make sure I’d get there, and he never stopped telling me. Him and friends he introduced me to, some of my best friends now I only know because of him. Like I don’t want to say I’m only alive because of that because it’s not fair to put that much pressure on someone and like, he’d tell me I should take most of the credit because I did all the work. So okay, maybe it’s me. But it was like holding on to a cat long enough to cut its claws and it’s slicing your arms the entire time you do it, he spent years holding me up while I did nothing but cut him for it. He used to tell me that we don’t have to be okay now, or soon, but that if we worked hard enough we could have more good days ahead of us than bad days behind us. And if I stick it out, if I make it long enough, I can live enough good days to have made all the bad days worth it. We can’t change what we’ve already done, the only chance we have at fixing that is by being better for long enough. If you’re already deep into the karmic red it’s hard to imagine any way most of your life could be good, so there’s no point trying. You get one chance and you already ruined this one beyond recovery so you know you’re just… continuing on a save file of a game where you’ve already missed all the chances for the good ending. Why keep playing just to get a bad one? Shit, I hate that’s the best analogy I could come up with. Sorry Junta. But you know where he was when he was holding me up through all this? Living in the bottom of a fucking elevator shaft. I think that’s what got me. He believes that, genuinely believes that when he’s had more reasons than anyone else to give up. You think the stuff he admits about himself in his articles is dark? I don’t think getting shot today was even the worst thing that’s happened to him. Maybe not even if it ends up being what kills him. You know what gets me, about the footage? I keep watching it. I know I shouldn’t so don’t tell me. Just, I keep watching it, and the thing that got me was like, why him right? Like out of everyone in that whole building why was it this dumb asshole and not someone I didn’t care about, some rich lawyer asshole or a real journalist (derogatory) or some bodyguard taking a bullet like they’re paid to. He doesn’t see it’s a gun when she draws it, but he’s watching her. But even though Junta’s a fucking agoraphobe, he’s the only one that doesn’t start to duck and cover when the shots start going off. You watch frame by frame, and this stupid idiot asshole dumbass fucking, he’s the only one that starts moving closer to her. I can’t tell if he’s going for her hand, or if he’s trying to hug her, but he looks more scared for her than by her. LIke, he’s realized how bad the situation is and the first person he wants to protect from it is the girl who got him shot. Story of his idiot life lmao. I’m probably reading too much into it, it’s like, it’s me going frame by frame over a two second reaction. He probably didn’t even have time to think about it, but that’s why I think I’m probably right. I think if Junta had a bit more time to think he’d have done something way smarter. But he didn’t, so he probably died trying to hug this girl just so he could say something like ‘you don’t have to do this’ or ‘I got you’ or something. I’m just guessing. I’ll ask him if he wakes up. He’d say the only mistake he made was not seeing the gun sooner. I know that much. And he wouldn’t say it like he thinks he’s a hero, he’d say it like he was a failure for missing it. Like anyone else in his position would have saved this, even though there were seven other people and every one of them ran away when he took the step closer. Anyone out there that paints him like an innocent bystander who this crazy mouse girl got killed misses the whole point of Junta, just makes him this stupid fucking angel who had so much potential in life when they wouldn’t have thrown a Snickers down an elevator shaft for him. Angels are boring, they’re flat, they’ve got no personality and even though they’re hot they think sex is impure like it’s a bad thing and not the best part. Sorry I swear so much, if you think that invalidates everything I’m saying go read Pope instead. But one of my favourite people just got shot so cope. This is also day 2 of my Transhumanism gallery exhibit series. I hate that this is relevant to all of it. It kind of overshadows the art a bit. Because today a bunch of OESN and NBN coverage breached the walls of this castle to bring word of it to the outside world, because they were allies before but now it’s a whole thing. Tomorrow the real siege is going to happen, and everyone inside is making their peace with that in their own ways. Me? I’m so wasted I can make a magic carpet ride out of empty absinthe bottles and this side table I flipped upside down, lmao. Tomorrow, a mob’s going to show up waving signs with pictures of my dead friend’s face on it as an excuse to bash the shit out of the kind of people he died trying to protect. I don’t think they can imagine how much he’d hate them. Someone’s probably going to throw a brick at my face with his name written on it, but they won’t even know him well enough to write the right one. I know he’s still alive. I just don’t believe he is. I ran out of words. I wish I had more words but I don’t know what to say. It’s just people actually need to read this, and the longer I keep writing it the worse it’ll be that I held onto it. The moment I stop though it’s all going to hit me because the feelings are going to stop being in the words and they’re going to go back to being in me again. Here’s to Junta S Thompson, a man m ade of paper who ran back into the burning building, who tried to give his place on the lifeboats to someone it was already too late to save. [/hider]