Grimm's Voicebox!

So much has happened between this blog and the last even though it's only been just a bit over two months!

Mostly Spider-sona related because whenever I get one of these wretched Marvel obsessions [fixation? Hyperfixation? Special interest?], I lose my shit and all of a sudden I am an omniscient being who will make turbojet-powered tank-bus-train hybrids powered by the sun and strangle you until you despise Rob Liefeld's art style as much as I do.
Other things have also changed, too. Like, I've finally accepted that I may or may not have autism, I decided to actually read some comics for once and found out that I despise John Romita Jr. and The Amazing Spider-Man 2022 series but I do like the original 1963 series with Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, finally started liking other characters like Cable and Taskmaster [he and Black Ant are best buds!], worked on the software of a miniature LED version of a neutrino observer, stressed out over school, bottled up my feelings, got told by friends that I might have PTSD, there's also no snow anymore and it's fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit [12.22 degrees Celsius] at the time of writing; it's strange, I feel like it shouldn't be this warm during this time of year, this should be late March weather where I live. I wouldn't be surprised if it was global warming though...

Speaking of global warming, my physics teacher played a documentary called Nuclear Now and I weirdly enjoyed it a lot despite being filled with capitalism-induced dread and rage while I was watching it. But isn't something manmade evoking an emotion within you a good thing? Or perhaps that only applies to art. Or does Nuclear Now qualify as art? Art in the form of watchable and digestible science? I will never know...
I digress, Nuclear Now is a pro-nuclear documentary; it explains why it's not as bad as people believe, where the negative connotations surrounding anything nuclear originated from [spoiler alert: it was the oil and coal industry in the name of capitialism], how it compares to other sources of energy, etc. I think it's genuinely one of my favorite documentaries; it's up there in the high ranks with High Score and Coded Bias, which sounds like a nerdy thing to say -- MIT white boy nerdy, even though I'm not white nor am I 'smart enough' for MIT -- but it's true.
It's a great documentary, once you get past the spinal shock of a TikTok influencer you've probably never heard of in a documentary, and more people should watch it.

And now for something completely different! It's the Spider-sona character I mentioned earlier, because I never talk to anyone besides six people about him and even then, it's me rambling in a Discord channel [basically this but worse]. I also like talking sometimes; verbally speaking to a human who is in close proximity to the vessel that harbors my dissociated existence is preferable but this also works. I just remembered there's an Original Characters tab that renders this redundant but shush, shush. It's a work in progress and classified, anyway, who cares?

Okay, okay.

Thirteen-year-old Virgil Voltspun wishes upon a star, for liberation from his sins; to be held in someone's arms; to be a better person; to love and to be loved; happiness; safety. He isn't quite sure of how to formulate his endless thoughts to whatever divine being sat on the receiving end of the bright shimmering star he confided in.
He yanked the straps on the side of his oversized aviator hat and groaned as a breeze kicked up, the grass around him shuddered. What a fool he was. In Virgil's eyes, divine beings were practically synonymous with bad customer service, never responding to messages, secretly laying a curse on some poor individual who existed incorrectly for a fraction of a second, being little shits who add fine print in some forbidden and dead language to their contracts pulled from Mephisto's hairy asshole in which failure to comply results in eternal torment in the name of megalomaniacal and sex-driven gods.

He breathed; in and out.
If this celestial being doesn't at least give him some sort of nudge in his desired direction and/or he gets tortured forever, he could shrug and say, "Ah, I tried."

Virgil peered at the star swimming in the murky bed of a sky above him, he wasn't sure of what to do now. He wasn't religious in any way, shape, or form.
He decided on, "Thank you?"

It wasn't great. His voice was too squeaky and it cracked as if it was some disgraceful clay sculpture that got smitten in the kiln. However, everything else he thought of seemed too desperate. He was desperate, but he would prefer to not be submissive and humiliated by a foreign concept until it proved its existence.

"Alright, uhm..." His face scrunched up in repulsion at his wavering voice and wretched words. "...Goodbye?"

Virgil stood up and nearly tripped on untied shoelaces. He spun on his heel and skittered back to the city. He was totally not getting his wish granted.

He wandered about the bright lights and bustling streets of "La Pomme Grosse", or whatever corny ass nickname people used to avoid saying Nouvelle Yorke, and traipsed through the waves of small cleaner robots and other 'fellow teens' on Latency Street gossiping and giggling with hair reflecting every bounce twirl they made while clutching their tiny little phones with stubby antennae adorned with charms and keychains which reminded Virgil too much of a calculator mixed with a TV remote; Clamshell Phones or something. He dissolved into the crowd as he concluded: they sucked.

He jolted abruptly as pain exploded across his neck.

Perhaps the gods disliked Virgil's verdict on Clamshell Phones being stupid, or perhaps this is at least one of his wishes being granted. Doing his best to appear normal and keep walking, his hand slapped the sudden sore spot. A mix of a whimper and a choke involuntarily escaped his throat as something met its demise and squished its guts onto him.

His tentative hand peeled away to reveal an unwelcome friend, a large grey spider.
A searing pain exploded on Virgil's chest, slicing through him and spreading onto his back as if he had been stabbed with a newborn sword, still burning from being hammered and scorched into existence. The whimper-choke hybrid slipped through his lips again as he turned a sharp right onto the narrow street of Bandwidth Boulevard. The apartments that loomed above him suddenly seemed claustrophobic as his hands became sticky and clammy and tears stung in the corners of his wide eyes.

He picked up the pace as he fought the urge to vomit.