Don't Be Meta You Sponge

I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.

In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.

In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.

And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.

When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.

But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.

Okay, anyone willing to pay this amount will be enough to convince to make something this...outrageous. it'll close commissions for a year or two, and require frequent breaks so I don't burnout.

$23,800 USD.

$27× 900 hours + cost of materials (batting alone will be $200, 25 yards of fabric will be about what i need, i'll kill several rotary blades with all the cutting, and likely go through at least two spools of thread) = final cost

That amount of money will be what it takes to convince me to make this. If you're willing to pay for one of these now, hmu. I'll make the listing.

If you want just a king size quilt top, that's still $6150 USD. I'll need around 25 yards of fabric, a couple spools of thread (or a cone), and two to three rotary blades. This will take around 200 hours for traditional piecing. Foundation paper piecing will add another 100-200 hours easily because I have to print each section of each block, cut them out, fold along the seam lines, cut all the fabric, sew the fabric to the paper, press each seam, trim, rinse and repeat many times, sew the blocks together, remove the paper (sooooo many pieces), make the rows, and sew the rows together. So foundation paper piecing will bring the top to $11,650. For just the quilt top.

If you're 100% certain you want a king size quilt, and you're able to pay, let me know. I'll put the commission listing up for you, and promptly close commissions until further notice.

The prices you see on Etsy? The $200 king size quilts and $150 queen size quilts? That's sweatshop pricing. Some of those quilt postings aren't even real. I've seen my own work listed there, priced absurdly low, and have had to file reports and claims about those listings.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"Censorship of some topics in fiction and art is good and I would be happy if it were to be enacted in a way I approved of"

and

"some things should be banned from ever being written or read about in fiction"

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.

If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.

Either you’re for it or you aren’t.

The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.

Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?

When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.

Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?

When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.

Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.

Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.

Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??

The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.

The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.

This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.

In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."

Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".

The true most ordinary object is beautiful, horrible sounding, very smelly, intangible, and delicious.

i think the second one works well for our hypothetical object. so we can use that.

therefore, the Default Object is:

beautiful

makes a horrendous sound

smells absolutely awful

is very fragile

tastes delicious

I figured as much. And it’s really not your fault, that’s what everybody thinks, because that is very specifically the narrative that Stewart simple propagated to the media, which worked because it launched his career. We all hate the idea of an elitist asshole gatekeeping something, especially in the name of art. But as I’m about to explain, nothing is further from the truth than that narrative.

So in order for me to explain this to people who’ve only ever heard the Stewart simple version of the story. I need to reset the narrative around Vantablack so let’s discuss the following framework.:

What Vantablack is: Vantablack is a substance made out of carbon nano tubes, originally grown in a lab and functions as the darkest synthetic material on earth. Under a microscope Vanta black looks more like shards of glass, sticking out as tubes. The original version of Vanta Black was so difficult to work with that there was no possible way it could be used outside of its original intent.

What Vantablack is not: a pigment. A paint. Vantablack is not something that you were supposed to use to paint with.

Who creates and distributes Vantablack: an engineering company named Surrey NanoSystems.

Who does not do those things: an art house. A distribution company. Any kind of company that creates and distributes pigments on a massive, artistic scale.

Who was Vantablack made for: Vanta Black was made by aerospace engineers for aerospace engineers, looking for something to coat the insides of massive NASA telescopes.

Who it was not made for: artists.

———————————-——————————————

Hopefully already just by understanding what Vantablack is, what it was made for, and who it’s made by you and other people are beginning to see what the problem is with Stuart simples narrative around Vanta black. 

But you may be wondering if Vanta black is a highly toxic unstable substance made out of carbon nano tubes by aerospace engineers for aerospace engineers, working in space, then how did we get here? well, Vanta, black 2.0, if you will was created in such a way that it could be sprayed onto substances in a certain way meaning that theoretically it could be used artistically. Surround nanosystems held an exhibition where they displayed Vanta black and when artist saw this, they were inundated with calls from artist, wanting to use it in their work. But as we’ve already established surrey nanosystems is not a distribution company. They’re an engineering company. And they made the decision that they could only work with one artist, because they simply did not have the physical ability to produce Vantablack at a scale that allowed them to work with more than one person. (To this day, vanta Black has to be distributed by a specialized robotic arm that creates it in painfully small amounts in an enclosed box that can then be given to someone in a lab. )

Enter Anish Kapoor: Anish Kapoor, at this time was already a world, renowned artist, and the creator of many public facing pieces, such as cloud gate, a.k.a. the Chicago Bean. His entire life‘s work was dedicated to how light is refracted and interplays with the void, making him not only the perfect person to be chosen because of prestige but also because his life‘s work spoke to the engineers who created Vanta black.

Now this should’ve been seen as an incredible accomplishment and honor for this Indian artist to be chosen as the soul licensor of Vantablack as this company was only able to choose one person and people were really excited about this for him and that’s where the story ends, right? Right? Right? 

Enter Stuart Semple: Stuart simple was a 25-year-old man in the UK living with his mother when she came into his room and told him about Vantablack. As an artist himself, Stewart simple wanted to try Vanta Black, and was told by the company that he could not. It was then that he discovered the only person on earth licensed to use Vantablack was Anish Kapoor. Please keep in mind that Vantablack is not a paint, and it is so difficult to work with that Anish Kapoor has only ever produced one singular piece of art with Vantablack. So like a child who has just been told by their mom that they can’t use something, Stewart simple decided to throw a hissy fit. He created a pink pigment that he conditionally said everyone could use except Anish Kapoor and then launch this pigment with the hashtag #ShareTheBlack. 

This caught the attention of the news media, and when asked about this situation, that was previously relatively unheard of, Stuart simple, went onto describe Anish Kapoor as this tyrannical elitist who “banned“ the use of Vantablack to keep other artists from using it. But hopefully you can already see how that is Literally not true. Anish Kapoor does not make Vanta black. Anish Kapoor cannot sell Vanta black. Anish Kapoor cannot give you permission to use Vanta black. And Vanta black is not even a paint. 

But the narrative of some elitist asshole gatekeeping, a color, versus some poor, struggling artist, was so catching that tens of thousands of people on the Internet flooded Anish Kapoor‘s social media, pages to talk shit about him and to this day when Anish Kapoor is brought up, it’s always “fuck Anish Kapoor“ meanwhile Stuart has launched an entire very lucrative career around slandering and smearing Anish Kapoor when Anish Kapoor literally never did anything but be qualified enough to be the one person chosen by a company that is literally only able to work with one person at a time. 

The fact remains Stewart simple, very intentionally allows this narrative to continue because it makes him money. He has made a ton of money off of slandering Anish Kapoor as if Anish Kapoor is the reason he can’t use Vanta black when the reason he can’t use Vanta black is because no one can use Vanta black, and the only person who might be able to use it is Anish Kapoor and that is not Anish Kapoor‘s fault. 

If someone adds your fic to their collection, they can hide it! They can mark the collection as unrevealed and your fic will be unreadable to anyone other than them! If you're writing works for a surprise event, like a Secret Santa, this is really nice.

But if you're just writing and someone adds your fic to a collection for their own personal use and marks it as unrevealed, that. . . really sucks.

I bookmarked this fic in 2017, almost 5 years ago. Knowing me, the fic itself was probably at least a couple years old at the time I bookmarked it.

This is a 5+ year old fic that is completely inaccessible now because it was added to a collection that, as far as I can tell, is literally just for the collection owner's own reference. There's almost 30 fics in the collection, all of them unrevealed.

If you're the creator of the work:

1) Select the "Edit" button from the work's page and scroll down to the "Associations" section.

2) Select the red (×) beside the collection name you want to remove next to "Post to Collections / Challenges".

3) Select "Post" to apply the change. The work will be immediately removed from the collection.

I'm not sure if you get an alert if your fic is marked as unrevealed though, so keep an eye on the collections that your works are part of.

IT IS SPECIFICALL:Y NOT NATURAL

AGING IS YOUR BODY LITERALLY BREAKING DOWN AND FALLING APART YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT! IT CAN BE PREVENTED VIA TREATMENTS THAT YOUR BODY ALREADY DOES!!!!!

THIS IS AN AMAZING WAY TO THINK OF CHRONIC PAIN

Y’all this book is WEIRD.

It feels like this author was asked “how do I help my cat be happy inside?” And their response was “I think indoor cats live a miserable existence and would rather die than live with you but I GUESS I can tell you how to keep your cat from going insane in the prison you call a home.”

Like look at this. This is just the first chapter alone.

and a blank so you can make your own 😸