A Small Infodump About Spider Venom

A Dream About A Moose

I would like preface before we begin with the details of exactly what I dreamt the other night, that I am uncertain if this is in fact a memory or if it was simply a stress dream brought on by my anticipation of finals, and the steady balance of the different aspects of my life that all come to a head around the holidays. This is going to be a fairly dark read. It taps into the very real horrors of the waking world and yet it was abstract, and so odd in the way these concepts presented themselves. So if you're easily disheartened by themes of body horror, hunting, and losing your sense of self, it's best you turn away from this particular post. Last of all–

I'm aware how bad this looks for me if it is a memory. I'm aware I may lose some friends I've made online, but after talking it over with someone who gave me a new perspective to look at it from, I've decided I'm going to share anyway.

 I remember it started off with me feeling dazed, like when you're lost in thought for a while and suddenly your focus is violently broken. The room was so dark that the shadows stretched and overlapped with each other, making ominous pulling figures that looked like they could snatch you at a moment’s notice. 

The ceiling fan is nothing more than a dark star, churning the heavy, high tension that's in the room, a tension I almost don't understand…almost, until I saw her. She looked to be in her thirties, a mousey little thing with beige brown hair in messy curls around her crown. Her gaze is locked on me, and she is terrified. I mean it makes sense that this dream person would be scared; a random person showed up in her room, but even stranger is that she doesn't make a single move to get up and confront me, make a run for it, or show any self preservation. She just lays there, head propped up by an almost absurd amount of silken pillows, her eyes wide and nearly unblinking– like she's afraid if she does, something awful will happen.

It's then that I realize with a start that she should be scared. I'm here for a reason, and I'm only delaying the natural progression of this dream. I read a study once that said you cannot create a new face in a dream. Every face that appears in a dream is one you once seen and retained in the subconscious parts of your mind. Yet she seemed so real, and so distant in my memories. So I move closer. I don't know why, but I'm waiting for some sort of revelation. Like she’ll suddenly remember me, or maybe she'll tell me how she found herself in such a predicament in the first place. Most of all, I'm holding on for her words. I need it, like a damn second wind. I feel it like an ache in the pit of my stomach, and only she can make it right, if she just tells me why I'm here. 

Why am I here, Cassandra? 

Why am I here? 

Instead, she just sucks in a sharp breath, in that way that makes the collarbone have more depth and prominence. I can see it in her eyes, she knows why I'm here. She stares up at me, her pupils trembling in the brown iris, the pallor of her face. I reach up my hand to her face- and really it's a wonder how I'm so calm during all this. I look at my hands.. I don't know if they're my hands. They look wrong. They don't look human, but of course I don't even have time to panic over such trivial things, when more important things are right in the room with me. So I gently wipe the stray tear that's running down her face, and then, I jam my finger right into the pupil of her eye, and watch my fingers melt down into the dark space, far off into fragmented realities we dare not revisit, for fear that history could repeat itself.

And then just like that, I'm in the woods. Have you ever heard of Golden hour? It's around the time when the sun is level with your eyes and everything is awash in yellow. It's actually one of the better times to hunt deer because deer often use the sun's position to their advantage. Deer will move into the setting/rising sun so any potential danger that could be dangerous ahead of them is silhouetted. I knew this because I was a deer hunter, and in fact I took so much pride in being a female hunter that I had several bumper stickers on my car referring to this fact.

..But that wasn't right… I am not a deer hunter, and I'm certainly not… but I look at my shaking slender hands, with chipped nude nail polish, and a wedding ring, and it's all true. More importantly, I am without my hunting rifle, and I'm running from something, farther and farther into unfamiliar territory. The woods are quiet, so deafeningly quiet, but somehow I was certain that I had not lost whatever was chasing me. My heart racing, I look around for somewhere to hide, and am only greeted by a vast sea of thin pines, with sparse branches. There is nowhere to hide. This is the last gasp of breath I give, while looking down the barrel of a shotgun. 

But I'm not- Cassandra’s not ready to die. She watched her husband die to that thing, that stalks the treeline, that may have once called itself a moose. She wasn't going to let it kill her too, not without a fight…but the hunting rifle was gone, and I was greatly outmatched in terms of strength. Have you ever seen a normal, average moose angry? Do you even know how much they weigh? I feel my breath hitch in the back of my throat in a sort of frenzied crescendo, when my eyes finally lock on a smattering of large, jagged rocks there hidden amongst the trees, on the incline of the mountain. Cassandra was definitely small enough to squeeze between the rocks. All she needed was to arm herself. So that's what she did, she frantically did a once over the forest floor before finally grabbing a sturdy enough fallen branch, and wedged herself in between the rocks, sitting low with her knees up, her back pressed against the rocks as she tried to control her breathing.

Somehow she knew the moose was watching her, she could feel its sour breath on her soul, hunting her, ready to take back from her what she had taken from the forest’s precious ecosystem. As dusk settled into a burning red in the last dying light, the malnourished outline of the moose took form. The moose was malnourished, yes. That much is true, but it was large, and it's limbs seem to bend in ways a moose’s legs should not be able to, the knees going back farther and farther as it drunkenly stumbled amongst the trees, eyes glowing in it's feverish search for Cassandra, who was now holding up her stick in a position to strike. 

The blood of her husband still stained the moose, the matted coat clotted in dark red and made a macabre crown around his head. The beast’s lips curled into a snarl revealing the sharp teeth of a carnivore, much like a big cat’s or even a bear. The moose began to circle the boulders, nose snuffling as it took in the bursting embers of Cassandra's mounting dead, and as the moose slipped out of her line of vision between the gap in the rocks, time seemed to stop. Every second seemed an eternity, as twilight slipped slowly into night like a forming bruise. I watch the sun set, as the eye of our tormenter eclipses our view, having finally found us-

And then Cassandra is screaming me awake, screaming as if she was right back in that moment of being prey to something bigger than she could ever dream of being. She knows screaming is her only chance of being rid of me, and she's apparently right because that's when I woke up from the dream, having felt like she was so very real. Maybe it was bit naive, but I actually had to sit up and look to make sure I was in my room and not that dream. There was this sour acid taste in the back of my mouth too- and I downed about three glasses of water right there at the kitchen sink that night. 

This dream has left me shaken and lost. That's not the right word though, lost. I know exactly where I am, but I'm so fragmented, so stretched thin that it can hardly count that I am here, right now. All I have is my words, and I hope that's enough for you.

I am ahmed from Gaza I hope you are well, my dear. Please help me. Our tent was flooded while we were sleeping in the streets. We have no shelter. I cannot provide winter clothes for me and my mother to protect us from the cold that has begun, and I cannot provide basic needs. Please help me. $50 is enough to buy a new tent and winter clothes. Please help me my dear. We live in very harsh conditions.conditions.https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ahmed-and-his-family-survive-in-gaza-crisis

ahmed-gaza033's donation page is available on gofundme.com

Do You Remember The Time You Got Lost In The Supermarket?

You were a child then, so your memories are muddled. Your perception is warped- of course it is. It starts off simple, with you wandering off. Or maybe you looked away for just a moment, and when your concentration was broken from what you were looking at, you suddenly found yourself alone. 

However you got yourself in this position, the outcome is the same; You've been condemned to an eternity of wandering aisles in hopes of finding familiarity where there is none, as the crowds of tall faceless- nameless strangers rush by, making you feel more and more claustrophobic by the second. You have no hope, it's been crushed into tiny pieces under the abstract concept of setting and its permanence. 

I would like to propose the idea that maybe, not knowing your identity but still being plagued by memories is similar to being lost in the supermarket. You feel as though you'll be in an endless free fall. I know it seems impossible to stop all of this confusion and frustration–

But this downward spiral doesn't have to be forever. We have a beautiful community, of those just waiting to take your hand and guide you out. I think the alterhuman community is a second chance for us to find ourselves. We've just got to be brave enough to admit that we were lost in the first place.

I Feel I Should Address The Elephant In The Room

As someone named Julius, I'm looking forward to my first ‘Ides of March’ on Tumblr with you all.

hello !!!! mod blue here from the noncanon kin blog :))) i know mod star is going to/already has sent an ask to you as well but i wanted to extend my support as well :)

im big into Horror Media in general so if you Are set on trying to find a source, ill gladly help you out if i can :)) oc kin is Also a very interesting and probable Answer, but i know it can be hard to come to terms with things such as that, especially if you dont Already know people who experience it. ive been identifying and navigating my personal fictionkin experience since i was around 14-16, im 21 now. i understand how confusing and frustrating it can be. i wish you the Best of luck, my friend :) if you’d like to reach out at all, you can message me over at @galactic-inhabitants

much love, my guy <3 i hope you can find some answers <3

You both have been so very kind to me, I don't know how to compensate you for your time but it means a lot. I may just have some questions to ask you, sometime in the near future so consider yourself warned

Oh. My. God. That’s it. That’s the copypasta that haunted my childhood back when I was still naive and gullible. I remember when copypastas had hit the absolute peak of popularity in the early 2000’s, often posted in comment sections and on message board websites. I must’ve been about 10 years old when I’d first seen that block of text show up under a youtube video I should not have been watching (My parents often left me with my grandmother, who tried and failed to keep me from viewing unsuitable media). I remember reading it, and immediately saying to myself how stupid it was… And then, because I didn’t have an account to forward the message to, I lived my life under the impression that my days were numbered for 2 straight years. 

There were rituals, and bargaining involved- I would write long winded letters to the ghost from the story, arguing why I should live, and then leaving them on my bedside table. Of course when anyone asked what I was doing I’d lie and say I was working on a short story to save face and not admit 

1.) That I was viewing horror media I shouldn’t have, and

2.) That I was gullible enough to be scared of such things

And now when I read it back I can see why; This is utter nonsense! All that time, I could’ve washed my hair in peace without being afraid of being pulled down the drain as a child, gosh I feel like a chump.

yeah sorry if it's out of your style

Huh.

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

The Conversation

Explainer: what is citizen science?

Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

love as recognition

anna gavalda / friedrich nietzsche / clarice lispector / jandy nelson / rebecca perry / mhairi mcfarlane

Do you ever see a post that makes you feel sad, and you can't place your finger on why..?

Do you ever wish you could take the steam with you?

hi jules !!! i hope youre doing okay <3

i was just thinking about your Kin Search and a source or two popped into my head that felt like they could possibly be a match for you!! so if you’re still looking for sources to check out, i would Definitely recommend EverymanHYBRID + TribeTwelve and Marble Hornets!! I tried to check to see if these were mentioned on your blog somewhere to see if youve looked into them, but im at work so im a bit limited in my research abilities rn :’) theyre all actually YouTube ARG series!! theyre a bit funky and hard to follow tbh, so i have some really great analysis/explanation videos saved on hand if youd like to see those!!! feel free to message me if you wanna discuss them a bit <3

Thank you so much for reaching out to me. In truth, I’ve actually been looking into this source recently so it is a funny coincidence that you happened to send the ask at this moment. I appreciate it though, Everyman HYBRID definitely holds a special place in my heart, and the themes of a repeating timeline or script, along with the heavy themes of being watched in these sources stood out to me significantly. There are a few sources I have not yet added to my list yet because they have either been suggested since the date I posted, or I have not yet viewed and/or revised notes on said sources, so I am currently in the middle of a second viewing of Everyman HYBRID and Marble Hornets. I would absolutely love to discuss the series more in depth with you, at your earliest convenience, of course.