Grooveless Plorn

then I looked in the notes and y’know.

some people seems confused.

Why a shopping cart with stained glass? 

or This would be cool to shop with

or something about religion and NO

NO

THIS. Is about HOMES.

That style stained glass? Those diamonds? They speak to me, and they say “Townhouse”. and FANCY townhouse, at that. They say “City home, old home, a home that is RICH, a shelter from the storm and a safe place for a family”.

But on! a! shopping cart!

That evokes - to me - Homelessness.

The person on the street who had no other choice but to steal the best cart they could from a store’s corral just to have a way to transport the meager belongings that are all they fucking have in this world. And it’s NOT a home or a safe place or a shelter but it’s all you fucking have!

And this piece goes and puts them fucking together! AND NAMES IT.

Bluminarmour Project Update (sorry for the croaky voice)

Hey folks, it is with great sadness that I need to let you know that it looks like the Bluminarmour Project on Kickstarter is going to have to take a backwards step. Due to some communication issues with one of the people I was working with on the project, there has been a copyright dispute that has resulted in its suspension.

Unfortunately after several days of communication with Kickstarter and the affected parties, it seems like the best way to proceed will be to first ensure that Kickstarter refunds all backers, and then cancel the project and begin again. Obviously I will update you all if anything changes but for now this seems to be the best option.

I do have an armourer that I’m very excited to work with moving forward, and I still want to do this the best way that I can, but that means I need to take a different approach for now.

Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.

Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.

Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.

Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.

Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.

These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.

Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:

See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.

This is one of my favorite tricks, picked up from E.M. Forester and filtered through my own domestic-homebody lens.  Forester says that you should never ever tell us how a character feels; instead, show us what those emotions are doing to a character’s posture and tone and expression.  This makes “I felt sadness” into “my shoulders hunched and I sighed heavily, staring at the ground as my eyes filled with tears.”  Those emotions-as-motions are called objective correlatives.  Honestly, fic writers have gotten the memo on objective correlatives, but sometimes struggle with how to use them.

Objective correlatives can quickly become a) repetitive or b) melodramatic.  On the repetitive end, long scenes of dialogue can quickly turn into “he sighed” and “she nodded” so many times that he starts to feel like a window fan and she like a bobblehead.  On the melodramatic end, a debate about where to eat dinner can start to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer because “he shrieked” while “she clenched her fists” and they both “ground their teeth.”  If you leave the objective correlatives out entirely, then you have what’s known as “floating” dialogue — we get the words themselves but no idea how they’re being said, and feel completely disconnected from the scene.  If you try to get meaning across by telling us the characters’ thoughts instead, this quickly drifts into purple prose.

Instead, have them wash the dishes while they talk.

To be clear: it doesn’t have to be dishes.  They could be folding laundry or sweeping the floor or cooking a meal or making a bed or changing a lightbulb.  The point is to engage your characters in some meaningless, everyday household task that does not directly relate to the subject of the conversation.

This trick gives you a whole wealth of objective correlatives.  If your character is angry, then the way they scrub a bowl will be very different from how they’ll be scrubbing while happy.  If your character is taking a moment to think, then they might splash suds around for a few seconds.  A character who is not that invested in the conversation will be looking at the sink not paying much attention.  A character moderately invested will be looking at the speaker while continuing to scrub a pot.  If the character is suddenly very invested in the conversation, you can convey this by having them set the pot down entirely and give their full attention to the speaker.

A demonstration:

1

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella continued dropping forks into the dishwasher.

2

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella paused midway through slotting a fork into the dishwasher.  “What?”

3

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella laughed, not looking up from where she was arranging forks in the dishwasher.  “What?”

4

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

The forks slipped out of Drizella’s hand and clattered onto the floor of the dishwasher.  “What?”

5

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella shoved several forks into the dishwasher with unnecessary force, not seeming to notice when several bounced back out of the silverware rack.

See how cheaply and easily we can get across Drizella’s five different emotions about Anastasia leaving, all by telling the reader how she’s doing the dishes?  And all the while no heads were nodded, no teeth were clenched.

The reason I recommend having it be one of these boring domestic chores instead of, say, scaling a building or picking a lock, is that chores add a sense of realism and are low-stakes enough not to be distracting.  If you add a concurrent task that’s high-stakes, then potentially your readers are going to be so focused on the question of whether your characters will pick the lock in time that they don’t catch the dialogue.  But no one’s going to be on the edge of their seat wondering whether Drizella’s going to have enough clean forks for tomorrow.

And chores are a cheap-n-easy way to add a lot of realism to your story.  So much of the appeal of contemporary superhero stories comes from Spider-Man having to wash his costume in a Queens laundromat or Green Arrow cheating at darts, because those details are fun and interesting and make a story feel “real.”  Actually ask the question of what dishes or clothing or furniture your character owns and how often that stuff gets washed.  That’s how you avoid reality-breaking continuity errors like stating in Chapter 3 that all of your character’s worldly possessions fit in a single backpack and in Chapter 7 having your character find a pair of pants he forgot he owns.  You don’t have to tell the reader what dishes your character owns (please don’t; it’s already bad enough when Tolkien does it) but you should ideally know for yourself.

"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."

Also these:

"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."

As did the ending:

On April 18, 1972, they locked him in a six-by-nine-foot box. It became the longest solitary confinement in US history.

Albert Woodfox was twenty-five years old. The facility was the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. It sat on the grounds of a former plantation.

The warden’s order was twenty-three hours a day behind solid steel. One hour in a fenced concrete yard. No unmonitored communication.

The stated reason was his conviction for the death of a guard. The unstated reason was his organizing. He had recently started a chapter of the Black Panther Party inside the walls to protest the living conditions.

The first year usually broke a man's mind. The walls seemed to move inward. Woodfox found himself pacing the four steps from the toilet to the door until his feet went numb.

He filed appeals. They were denied. The administration’s policy was explicit: he would remain in "Closed Cell Restricted" indefinitely.

At the time, the United Nations considered any period of solitary confinement exceeding fifteen days to be a form of psychological torture. The Angola prison review board evaluated Woodfox's status every ninety days. For over four decades, the board checked the same box on the evaluation form, citing "original reason for lockdown" as the sole justification for his continued isolation.

The 1970s bled into the 1980s. Woodfox realized the state did not have to execute him to kill him. The isolation was an administrative mechanism designed to dissolve human identity.

So he built a mental architecture. He read math textbooks. He copied out legal codes. When they took his books away, he taught himself to read the shifting shadows on the wall to calculate the exact time of day.

He communicated through the air vents. He taught the men in the adjacent cells how to read. They shouted historical facts and legal precedents through the iron grates.

He wasn't always calm. In 1993, after a guard confiscated a meager stack of his letters, Woodfox lost control. He threw a cup of bodily waste at the cell bars. They revoked his yard time for a month.

In 1998, a judge overturned his conviction. The state immediately appealed and kept him in the cell. In 2008, another judge overturned it again. The state appealed again. He remained in the box.

On February 19, 2016, a federal judge ordered his immediate release. The state was barred from trying him a third time.

He was sixty-nine years old. He walked out of the prison gates on his own feet.

He had spent 43 years, 10 months, and one day in solitary. His mother had died while he was inside. His sister had died.

The state built a room to erase his mind. He used it to educate the men next door.

Albert Woodfox died in August 2022. He spent his final six years speaking to lawmakers about the psychology of isolation. The six-by-nine-foot cells at Angola are still there. The review board still meets every ninety days. They still use the same forms.

Albert Woodfox: the man who outlived the silence.

Source: Albert Woodfox, "Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement."

Verified via: The National Archives, NPR Legal Records.

You see so many young birds at this time of the year, but in winter, in winter you won't see any, my friend. It's so bewildering. There must be some conspiracy theory that explains it well.