NSFW

The Most I’ve Ever Been Hurt

Alyssa Gonzalez, , 5 Comments

I learned something this week.

I learned that I can beg and plead, at the brink of tears, more emotional than you have heard or seen me in more than ten years, for over an hour, and you’ll be unmoved.

I learned that I can pour my soul out for you on the page, in the form of communication in which I’m most comfortable, and you won’t bother reading it for comprehension.

I learned that you’ll always default to trying to be my emotional inverse, calm and collected when I am urgently emotional, shrieking and yelling when I’m quiet, because you never had any higher end than trying to make me doubt my own feelings and replace them with yours.

I learned that I can make a tiny request, that means more to me than anything, and the measure of your response will be how inconvenient it is for you.

Continue reading “The Most I’ve Ever Been Hurt” →

The Most I’ve Ever Been Hurt
{advertisement}

Crack in the Womb

Alyssa Gonzalez, , , 3 Comments

[Spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Steven Universe follow.]

The moment that sealed Steven Universe into richly-deserved fame and a place in future discussions of the evolution of pop culture was the 52nd episode, ”Jail Break.”  In addition to pointedly and thoroughly burnishing the show’s credentials as queer-inclusive and emotionally complex, it provided viewers with a beautifully-composed song-and-fight sequence, from the only one of the four main characters to have avoided a musical number until then:

The words of “Stronger Than You” are poetic and poignant, particularly these:

I am a conversation.

I am made

O-o-o-o-of

Lo-o-o-o-ove o-o-o-o-of

And it’s stronger than you.

Continue reading “Crack in the Womb” →

Crack in the Womb

Lovecraft Letters 1: The Beautiful Disaster of Your Eyes

Alyssa Gonzalez, ,

Men.  What are they even?  So many of them are so, SO bad at sending OkCupid and similar missives that one wonders if they aren’t any of various Lovecraftian monsters pretending at typewritten humanity in order to seduce lovely victims.

In this ongoing project, I take examples of dating-profile ridiculousness and weave it into the all-caps messages such eldritch abominations might send.  Our first example is a little too solicitous of a contact’s eyes.

Continue reading “Lovecraft Letters 1: The Beautiful Disaster of Your Eyes” →

Lovecraft Letters 1: The Beautiful Disaster of Your Eyes

Apocalypse of the Week 12: Thrust In Thy Sharp Sickle

Alyssa Gonzalez, , , , 1 Comment

Tribulation.  The Rapture.  The Second Coming.  For many, these terms are synonymous with the end of the world.  Indeed, the terms “apocalypse” and “Armageddon” both entered the public consciousness because of their appearances in the Bible, and have since become synonymous with the more general term “eschaton.”  But what’s actually involved in the Christian vision of the end of the world?  One could be forgiven for forgetting that the original story bears little resemblance to the modern-day, politics-themed reimagining lampooned in a previous installment.  Rather, here be dragons.  And enough gruesome torture to make Mortal Kombat cutscenes feel like Sesame Street.

Continue reading “Apocalypse of the Week 12: Thrust In Thy Sharp Sickle” →

Apocalypse of the Week 12: Thrust In Thy Sharp Sickle

Apocalypse of the Week 8: Your Mother Smelt of Subroutines

Alyssa Gonzalez, , , , 1 Comment

Those of us born in the 1980s came of age in an interesting time, as the Communist governments of eastern and central Europe fell, one country turned into 15 and somehow stayed the largest in the world, and computers learned how to handle four-digit years.

And you’d better believe it was a big deal.

Continue reading “Apocalypse of the Week 8: Your Mother Smelt of Subroutines” →

Apocalypse of the Week 8: Your Mother Smelt of Subroutines

Apocalypse of the Week 4: Hot, Sticky Justice

Alyssa Gonzalez, , ,

Veterans of the atheosphere might recognize Zoroastrianism as the ancient Persian religion whose Mithraic component is the best-attested antecedent for many Christian traditions, such as celebrating the birth of Jesus on 25 December.  What I didn’t know is that Zoroastrianism is a living religion, with active fire temples singing the praises of the god Ahura Mazda and a world membership of over 200,000, a surprising fraction of which live in Canada.  I can only imagine how they feel about freethinkers using their history as one of many disproofs of Christianity.  My guess?  Weirdly flattered.

Continue reading “Apocalypse of the Week 4: Hot, Sticky Justice” →

Apocalypse of the Week 4: Hot, Sticky Justice