Zhao Zhao (Chinese, b. 1982)

Constellations, 2021-2022

Embroidery on silk

ok so i’ve seen some of you aren’t that sure that this is actually embroidery (i was suspicious too bc damn!!!!) so here you is another embroidery of his with some close ups♥ :

Constellations, 2017 (300 x 980 cm)

embroidery on silk

embroidery on silk-

Embroidery on Silk???

Embroidery?????? On silk???????

more windows should be stained glass. Just in general

get a glass cutter, copper tape, and a soldering iron and be the change you want to see in the world

Oh you misunderstand. I have all that. Getting into making stained glass art and decorating my own house this way is what made me passionate about this opinion!

you have also misunderstood, replace random glass panes you see in the world with stained glass in the dead of night

Can’t deny this would be a fun and unique hobby!

get out there and stain their glass

while I’m on the subject of conspiracy theories: I will freely admit it’s really hard to avoid conspiracy thinking when there are actual literal conspiracies in the world. “your basic point about Evil Human Trafficking Elites is correct in that they do exist and there is a cover up happening, but you got the particulars wrong” is kinda weak tea. “no, there’s no boardroom full of rich people planning a fascist takeover… except the heritage foundation and project 2025. that one is real.” “bush/cheney did not do 9/11 to invade iraq for oil. yes, we just invaded venezuela on a pretext specifically and explicitly for oil, but 9/11 is different!”

however, we can use these actual conspiracies to compare to conspiracy theories and note some key differences.

are the people involved in this shit evil geniuses masterminding elaborate schemes? no. they keep doing dumb shit like adding journalists to signal chats. they’re not staging fake terror attacks with tons of manufactured evidence; they’re just like, “those boats totes had drugs on them, trust me, bro” and then just going in and invading. they’re literally talking right now about invading greenland just because they want it.

are they communicating their plans in a secret code or through subliminal messaging in movies and music? no. they are talking about shit like blackmailing the president-elect in plain english on their personal gmail accounts. they are posting videos of themselves violating international law on twitter. they are publishing their plans on the internet for everyone to read.

are they so cunning and subtle that we have no idea what they’re doing, or only know about it from a few select whistleblowers? no. the whole institution leaks like a sieve. seven different people spoke to reporters about hegseth ordering that the boats be sunk (it’s less clear if he specifically gave an order to “double tap,” as the sources diverge about that). they can’t redact their own documents properly because they don’t have adobe pro, despite months of fbi agents working around the clock to redact the documents for months (something we also know from leaks). they are saying stuff like “it’s about oil” out loud with their mouths.

in some ways a conspiracy theory is comforting, because it means that the people “behind the curtain” are so much more cunning than you (and may or may not have literal magic powers) that there’s nothing you can really do about it except complain. it also means that they have a plan and are not just running by the seat of their pants all the time. it is much harder to accept that the people with the most money and power right now are fucking morons who can’t even convincingly lie and there’s a nonzero percentage of the population that goes along with whatever they say anyway.

This is all true, but also we cannot neglect that ultimately I'd venture to say most conspiracy theories come down to "and this is a plan by the Jews". Like we cannot neglect that conspiratorial thinking is largely motivated by active or at least societal antisemitism.

I definitely agree that essentially all conspiracy theories eventually boil down to “the Jews did it,” either obliquely (“globalists,” “bankers,” “the cabal,” “the Annunaki,” “Reptilians,” etc.) or explicitly, and I definitely should have included that.

However, this might be a distinction without a difference, but I don’t know if it’s necessarily the motivator of conspiratorial thinking in the sense of being the starting point, but it is in the sense of being the thing that pushes it along once it gets going, if that makes sense. It’s the funnel that sucks everything in, so even if you start out with a non-antisemitic conspiracy (e.g. sincerely believing in actual literal space aliens whose existence is hidden), it will end up there simply because of how deeply antisemitism is embedded in the culture and how worn that track is. Eventually someone’s going to start regurgitating The Protocols of the Elders of Zion because that’s just How Conspiracies Work according to our culture.

The only reason I’m quibbling on this point is that I believe that conspiracies are a manner/way of thinking, so you can have someone who has that particular thought pattern even if they’re from a culture that doesn’t have widespread antisemitism (increasingly less common, but still). Like, I can believe there were people in medieval China or pre-Colombian Peru who believed in conspiracies about something without necessarily believing the people behind it were the Jews, if that makes sense. (Though now I’m actually curious what Jewish and/or Israeli conspiracy theorists fixate on, because the only one I known of is Bobby Fischer and he also became a virulent antisemite and racist)

And I don’t want to let people off the hook for that manner of thinking even if they haven’t reached the P.E.Z. Event Horizon yet. That way lies, “No, I’m not saying it’s the Jews, I’m talking about actual literal lizard aliens,” sincere or not. Like, even if that’s 100% true and you genuinely think it’s aliens and Jews aren’t involved at all, even if you create a conspiratorial cosmos that somehow avoids every antisemitic trope and canard, it’s still not how you should be thinking and analyzing situations.

I think you are correct in this, that it often doesn't START with antisemitism, just ends up there when you're in a little deeper. But I don't think you need to assume a culture without widespread antisemitism--you just need to assume one person who doesn't think they're an antisemite, and entirely misses being drawn in because they're not a bad person! Suck 'em in with 'hey isn't this weird', they go into it uncritically, they get their brain rewritten by Fox News--insert "you are not immune to propaganda" meme.

Also if you ever genuinely believe that Canadians are "nice" go into the comments section of any post talking about Tim Hortons or First Nations.

or immigrants (coming from white people in fucking canada)

Yes, thats actually what this post was about. In case anyone wasn't aware, White Canadians are suddenly pretending that Immigrants (South Asian immigrants especially) only started appearing like 5 years ago and are mad they see a brown Asian person working at timmies sometimes and to them, this has "ruined" Tim Hortons. This post is specifically about the insane racism directed towards South Asian immigrants and First Nations

imagination (1963) - harold ordway rugg

"chekhovs cat / schrödingers razor / occams gun"

Chekov's Cat: if you see a cat in the first act, it will probably be relevant later. (example: Alien)

Shrodinger's razor: an unopened box may or may not contain the solution to the story; there's no way to know without opening it. (example: Monk)

Occam's gun: the simplest way to kill off a character is to shoot them. (example: Bambi)

i have been cracking up at this for the past 3 minutes

Chekov's Box: If there is a container introduced in the opening act, it will be opened later.

Schrodinger's Gun: Treat every gun as if it's loaded unless you've checked it yourself.

Occam's Cat: If you hear strange noises at night, it's probably a cat.

(example: real life)

My boyfriend, again blending together fanfiction tropes: So what if when you finally find your soulmate, that’s when you discover if you’re alpha or omega, right?

Me, hands shaking as I frantically search for pen & paper: KEEP TALKING

Me: Seems hellish

Boyfriend: So does being an ant person

Me: Again, baby, they’re not ants

Boyfriend: YES THEY ARE. They communicate via pheromones— LIKE ANTS.

Me: So back to the soulmate thing….

Boyfriend: You could trick them into following orders and thinking they’re dead by spraying them with a spritz bottle. I think they need a queen.

Me: So back to the soulmate thing…. Seems hellish!

Boyfriend: Not really. If being around the other person is what triggers the changes, if you want to go back to normal… all you need to do is leave.

Me, writing: (You found your soulmate. It’s changing you in scary ways. All you need to do is leave… how difficult would it be to leave? What pressures exist to stay?)

Boyfriend: So these ant-people—

Me: OMEGAVERSE IS NOT ANTS!!!!!!

Similarly to how only a child can really reach the heights of defying literary convention bc they have not subconsciously accepted it, but do not have the learned skill to make the result enjoyable, so your boyfriend is out here coming up with the kind of ideas a fandom person never could and it is your duty to write it down for him (or put it on tumblr for the rest of us to do it)

There is a really frustrating thing where some kinds of speculative story are hard to write because they will be assumed to be bad (clumsy, harmful, regressive) metaphors for real-world events or people, rather than exploring completely speculative ideas. Like:

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

It almost feels like death of the author, like "Death of the most obvious metaphor" - If you couldn't reach for the (tormented) parallel between being an alien species and being stateless, what stories could someone tell? If your changeling-baby was neither disabled nor adopted, what would the story be about? Etc.

I was literally just thinking about this yesterday! It's a trend I've seen a LOT in recent years in lit crit, particularly when discussing fantasy.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

Anyway sorry I've rambled here, not sure how coherent I'm being. But yes, I was thinking about this just yesterday! Wild.

So, for context, my science fiction books got their start in my college creative writing class. I submitted the first few chapters as short stories, with the explicit knowledge of my professor and peers that the stories would be reworked into a larger novel project.

The very first chapter revolves around two Space Marines stationed on an asteroid in our solar system, complaining about how they'd been duped into military service with promises of altruism and adventure and fighting off space invaders, but nobody had seen a space invader in decades, so why were they even still out here? They are then attacked by some sort of horrific and hideous monstrosity that is decidedly outside the bounds of what their superiors told them they'd be dealing with, and they kill it, and are left grappling with the question "so what else isn't the army telling us?" For further context, one of the Marines is black and the other is Latina.

In the discussion group, people generally found it easy to follow— my writing style is designed to be accessible, smart but not overly challenging. I write adventure stories that I want people to read for fun. Most of the group was pretty much on board with the broader "the military lies" messaging.

But there was this one kid, decent guy, outspoken leftist type. I'd had multiple great conversations with him, we were on the same page about stuff generally. During the feedback session, he expressed surprise and disappointment at my Manifest Destiny narrative of two imperialist soldiers heroically slaying an alien in its indigenous homeland.

This baffled the class, generally speaking, because the story had been pretty clear that this monster was NOT native to that asteroid, it was presented as an invader bent on exterminating the indigenous population of our solar system— humans

The problem was that this dude had brought his own biases to the reading. He'd made an assumption that I was making Humans a metaphor for Imperialist White People and aliens a metaphor for The Colonized Peoplee, because he assumed that was the mandatory structure of the genre. The idea that the humans— who, again, were black and latina— were The Colonized Peoples, and that the invading and homicidal monster was The Imperialist had straight-up not occurred to him as a possibility.

But the insane thing with that is, in his effort to call out Colonialist Messaging in the novel, he had accidentally revealed an Unexamined bias of his own: that he'd seen "sympathetic and dimensional human beings" and thought "white people" and he'd seen mindless, hideous, subhuman monsters and thought "the natives." He'd assumed (incorrectly) that these were racist things I believed, but in so doing he'd accidentally revealed some unexamined assumptions HE held about native groups.

Just a fun little fable of the dangers of assuming the Most Cliche Metaphor!

When you try to talk about enshittification, it sounds like conspiracy theories. (I'm not crazy)

Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.

Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)

I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)

YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)

The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)

The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)

The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)

It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)

Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???

To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)

So I talk about enshittification (it sounds crazy), so people don't forget that things have been made worse on purpose (it's true), even though I sound crazy. (maybe I am)

We also need more people willing to fucking vote.

Making friends is really hard when you're really into complex esoteric topics because you can't talk about 90% of what you're thinking about with them.

Like I can't just sit down with someone and start talking about whether or not cellular memory could be related to reincarnation. Like if the point of reincarnation is that the matter you're composed of gets repurposed into another form, which also has some sort of soul transfer process, then do you retain past life memories via cellular memory? If your body holds memories in its own way, then when it breaks down and the material that once made up you gets repurposed for something else, is that how memories and emotional reactions are passed on between lives? But if that's the case, then does that mean animals, plants and other forms of life also have cellular memory? Presuming that humans can reincarnate into different things, that is? What does that say about their unique intelligence or consciousness?

I'll be sitting across from my date talking about this and they're just having an existential crisis like

I think you may be dating the wrong people bc if you sat down next to me and said this exact thing I'd be immediately like "have you looked into the claims that plants can feel pain and mushrooms talk to each other? does it affect your hypothesis at all that matter changes shape at the atomic level rather than the cellular? have you read Jung at all? don't start with him, google panpsychism and see if you want to go deeper with it."

i was talking to my mom about cardassians and said something along the lines of ‘what must it be like to be a cardassian civilian. like abstractly knowing the rest of the galaxy thinks of your species as ‘the evil ones’ and kinda sorta knowing your government runs labor camps and torture prisons and is a military empire, and it’s a huge deal for everyone else in the galaxy, but you just like run a restaurant so it’s not a big part of your daily life, so you just like, go about your day and make soup and don’t think about it’ and then halfway through my sentence i actually heard myself and then had to go sit down for like ten minutes. like sat down in a chair and stared at the floor for ten minutes

ill spend my twenties investigating the healing properties of salt i dont know about you guys

excuse me

Sorry op. That's my friend the Salt Vampire from the Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" which first aired in 1966. Blessings be upon you.

its just i dont feel blessed by its presence is all. sending love your way

I went to a Star Trek convention a few months ago and the lady who played the salt vampire was there and I was SO CLOSE to printing this post out for her to sign, but I worried she would be saddened by OP not feeling blessed by its presence.

colorshow glassworks

Harvesting my wheat

Hehehehehe

Can I fucking help you?

my senior english teacher told me that any scene with a woman in a cornfield in every piece of literature ever is about her journey to womanhood/pleasuring herself in the field and i just.... believed her

What

What

senior english teacher who has only read As I Lay Dying, whose woman-in-cornfield scene is unambiguously about sex: getting a lot of sexual vibes from this cornfield

Autumn Premonition & Hypnotized by Beauty by Erwin Buske

Lovebrush Chronicles : Bejeweled Heart Event 【 EN / JP / TW 】

❤️ Ayn CV : KENN

"I need a partner, a kindred spirit... to vanish with me where the horizon ends."

SSR - Unceasing Fervor

💚 Alkaid CV : Tachibana Shinnosuke

"I won't make a move. After all, I've already yielded to you, Ms. Thief."

SSR - To Paradise

💛 Lars CV : Suwabe Junichi

"Those who truly love gemstones cherish the way they catch the light, not the price tags others stick on them."

SSR - The Twelfth Night

💙 Clarence CV : Toriumi Kohsuke

"Stay calm and keep your strengths hidden. Right now, even the slightest wrong move could cost you your return to the surface."

SSR - Antinomy

💜 Cael CV : Hirakawa Daisuke

"I always knew we'd part ways, so I kept you at arm's length all along."

SSR - Shrouded in Secrecy

★ Game : Lovebrush Chronicles (For All Time)

★ Event : Bejeweled Heart

★ Time : January 8 - January 27

━━━━━━━━━━━━

Title: Lovebrush Chronicles

By: NetEase

Platform: iOS, Android

━━━━━━━━━━━━

※ female protagonist

OFFICIAL SITE

🌏 EN: https://www.lovebrushchronicles.com

🇨🇳 CN: http://hlr.163.com

🇯🇵 JP: http://www.foralltime.jp

🇹🇼 TW: https://www.foralltime.com.tw