lupi

cow of tailed snake (gay)

avatar by @citriccenobite

you can say "chimoora" instead of "cow of tailed snake" if you want. its a good pun.​


i ramble about aerospace sometimes
I take rocket photos and you can see them @aWildLupi


I have a terminal case of bovine pungiform encephalopathy, the bovine puns are cowmpulsory


they/them/moo where "moo" stands in for "you" or where it's funny, like "how are moo today, Lupi?" or "dancing with mooself"



Bovigender (click flag for more info!)
bovigender pride flag, by @arina-artemis (click for more info)



victoria-scott
@victoria-scott

September 3, 2022

With my proofs arriving and my book finally in the final stretch, I might as well explain why I came up with it. This is a longer-than-normal photo story, so I will put it beneath the fold.


I had a long, stressful 2022. I was a full-time staff writer for The Drive and it was a cool job, but any form of daily newswriting is necessarily high-intensity. I moved to Reno, NV and had so many bad experiences in a row, entirely due to my transness being ill-received, that I developed what I now believe to be PTSD. I was very lonely for six months; people would come visit me here and there, but I never woke up next to anyone, and the solitude and the stress began to break me down. Having to stay constantly plugged-in looking for news leads and reading the ever-more-dire headlines about trans rights in America ground me down to nothing. By June, I could barely write features, I cried most nights, and I was considering hospitalization just to stop the spiral before it killed me.

Then in June, I met my partner. We began living together in July (lesbians, uhauling, things of that nature, I know), and by September, I'd begun to re-evaluate what, exactly, I was putting myself through so much for, and I was coming up empty.

The day I took this photograph is one of the best days I've ever had. My partner made us a picnic and we drove out to a lake in northern California, and we did nothing all day long. We snacked, we cuddled, we napped on the beach, I read two books, they kayaked, I played in the water (feeling safe at last to wear a swimsuit in public with my butch knight in shining armor nearby). I didn't even smoke a cigarette, because my mind was so calm I didn't need to prop myself up with nicotine. It was the most relaxing day of my entire year and probably the most relaxed I've been since I transitioned.

I brought my camera, but I only took a handful of pictures, and most of them were meant to remember the day rather than to Make Art. The photo above is the one exception. I took it as we drove home on a beat-up access road that cut directly through a burn scar. I was so enamored with the entire world that day that I knew it could be beautiful despite the grim nature of it, and I believe I was right - I feel it's one of my stronger photos from last year.

I posted this shot with the caption "Postcards From the End of the World - wish you were here!" because it captured my internal state so well. I was still in a weird place mentally and I had very much reached the limits of my sanity just a few months before, and yet here I was, standing in an annihilated, horror-movie forest with the person I loved and I just felt amazing. I wanted everyone to feel like this. I wished everyone could be here.

Shortly thereafter, a massive wave of fire smoke - AQI in the 600s - came through Reno, and I knew I could build a series of images that felt like this. With the haze of wildfires as my starting point, I took four or five more expeditions to places I needed for the book - a small-plane flight over the Frank Church "River of No Return" Wilderness, a drive to the ocean at Point Reyes National Seashore, stopping for caches of abandoned buildings on US-95 in the heart of the Sierras - and then the rest of the book, which is a love story as much as it's a horror/apocalypse story, all assembled itself.

I have spent my whole life with my foot on the mat, and then the one day I took a breather, divine inspiration struck. The fires are never going to stop, but we can still feel joy.


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