Goblincore

Recently on Reddit, my algorhithm has started suggesting posts from a place called /r/goblincore. At a glance, it appeared to be a place celebrating the less conventionally attractive aspects of nature. Lots of mushrooms, moss, snails, frogs, rats etc. I remember seeing an image of some roots tearing through concrete titled "I just love seeing nature destroy the works of man" and a piece of wood riddled with holes eaten through by insects. Lots of fashion with murky greens and browns, plenty of trinkets, things with spikes and jags, animal bones. 

I asked Lee-Anne if she'd heard of the concept but she hadn't. Most of my coworkers had. My mother and brother both said they were aware of it. Overall, I was slow to pick up on Goblincore. Makes sense, since my social group is mainly women, and most phrases that end in "core" are a form of aesthetic. Generally those attract primarily female audiences.

Wikipedia says that it's a type of "Maximalism" and that thrift shopping is a big part of it. It appears to have grown in recognition after Spotify was maybe a little liberal in its definition as a music genre.

Here is an example of Goblincore music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIyl9bCp6W4

"Come with me to the borogroves. Come with me and the slithy toves

Come come come along now,

Come with me to a place that is safe from,

Greed, anger, and boredom"

Those are maybe my three least favourite things!

I became intrigued with the community when I saw a post from someone saying that her boyfriend had told her that they'd gotten the concept all wrong. In The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons, Goblins were malevolent, violent creatures influenced by dark magic. Even before Tolkien's works, in ancient tales they were a type of dark fairy. Not some mischievious group of people that love nature.

A lot of people chimed in to say that her boyfriend and his fellow "Tolkienists" were misguided. In The Lord of the Rings, Goblins were driven to evil from being marginalized, and in modern Dungeons and Dragons, rarely are any of the "Goblinoid" races considered wholly irredeemable.

This is a perspective that I've held for a long time. As a child, I was always deeply uncomfortable with the idea of an "all evil race". There is a small mention in Return of the King, where Sam overhears two Orcs discussing their plans for when the war ends, and they wanted to set up a farm together. It's brief, but I really clung to it because they simply couldn't all be bad.

I've recently read The Silmarillion, basically a history of that world. The Orcs were originally Elves that were convinced by Melkor, a powerful and manipulative deity, to stay behind and work for him in Middle Earth instead of joining the Maya over the sea. They were then twisted by dark forces into the Orc race, known sometimes as Goblins.

So I've got issues with the Orcs being considered evil based on the fact they were manipulated and then tortured. Then it doesn't seem fair that all their descendants would be held accountable for their ancestors' actions. Mostly, The Silmarillion is about inherited sin.

I hadn't seen my perspective taken up by anyone until this thread in /r/goblincore.

As I was further exposed to the subreddit, I began to see comments like "At this point, if I see someone here saying that they're neurotypical, I'm like 'how did you find this place?'"

A while back, I made a post on an AI system called "Goblin Tools", marketed toward people that were capable of living on their own, but still struggled with day to day tasks. Many of the phrases used in the marketing for this resource resembled language I'd heard in neurodivergent communities. This included a pepper scale to determine how "spicy" a thought might be, and the simple premise of being a tool for its user base, the "Goblins".

I hadn't noticed it before, but on reflection, a shockingly large number of neurodivergent people that I've known have, in various ways, compared themselves to Goblins. For being born born wrong, for not being able to live up to social norms, for being wild, chaotic, and natural. For being beautiful in an unconventional way.

Since, as I mentioned, most communities attached to the suffix "core" are majority female, I might guess that the people who align with Goblincore are mostly part of the onrush of adults diagnosed with ADHD and autism. This is because until recently, testing largely disregarded many of the more female-specific expressions of neurodivergence.

That would explain why such a large portion of my social group is familiar with Goblincore.

Thundersnow Part Two

In recent posts, I mentioned the absurd amounts of snow that we had at the tail end of winter. I showed pictures of buried benches and fire hydrants. Kitchener needed to send truck loads of snow out of the city just to get by, and there were still areas where paths were tamped down over large drifts, that we had to scale in order to access regular areas.

All of that melted away, almost overnight. Suddenly, the world was transformed into a normal, temperate Spring atmosphere.

Then, on April 2nd we left for Brampton so that Lee-Anne would be better positioned to go to Toronto for her surgery the next day. That evening it was snowing fiercely.

Here's a pic of our communal Neuron scooters. They had just been put out for April. You know, because it's Spring.

There was also consistent thundersnow. I had experienced this phenomenon for the first time a few years back, and blogged about it. The fact that we're having it again in a comparably short amount of time gives me pangs of climate anxiety, although I still don't really understand what causes it.

The weather matched the condition of our hearts. Namely, chaotic and unwanted.

In honour of the scenery, I chose to bring a book titled The Weather Detective with me for the trip. It's written by the same guy who did The Hidden Life of Trees, which I read last year when Lee-Anne was in the hospital for her intracranial observation. I guess it's a tradition that every time she goes in, I read a Peter Wohlleben book. So even though I love his stuff, let's hope I never have cause to read another of his works. I do have two more of his books on my shelf though, let's hope that isn't a premonition.

When she was in hospital, I returned to the park where we had our engagement photos and took pictures of some of the backdrops. Obviously I was limited by lack of skill, professional camera, and time of year. Here they are, with the professional versions for contrast.

The day before, Brampton had been accosted by thundersnow to nearly the same degree as Kitchener. As you can see, it left as soon as it came.

I also decided to do a one-card-draw from my Tarot deck for any potential insight into how things were going. I got the Judgement card. Not going to lie, that isn't one that you hope to see if you're looking to be comforted. It represents the end of a significant journey. It indicates reflection, and receiving the deserved results of how one's conducted themselves, whether that be good or bad.

Pretty ominous, but it doesn't specify that the judgment has to be bad. And it was in the upright position, which could mean a more positive outcome.

Now we're back in Kitchener and Lee-Anne is feeling okay. I've taken the day off to spend it with her, which is how I'm posting at this time. Hopefully the card meant reaching a positive outcome sooner than expected.

On the Other Side of the Treatment

Yesterday Lee-Anne went in for probably the most intensive treatment she'll need in her epilepsy journey. I've resisted going into detail about it, but I suppose its time.

A while back, we went to see a neurosurgeon to discuss the results of last year's intracranial examination and the available options. I think I've mentioned that the most surprising thing we learned was that her seizures weren't coming from the left temporal lobe, but rather from a place called the insula, just a bit beneath it.

Because the activity was ocurring somewhere deeper than expected, this meant that traditional surgery was not an option. Instead, they would have to use a laser, called LIT.

The machine for this is rare. I can't remember if it's the only one in the country, province, city, or hospital. But whatever the parameters, it was the only one within them.

For this reason, it only gets used once a month, and only by a very specialized professional. The positive side to this is that, due to the rarity of her epilepsy, she gets special access to this sophisticated procedure that is more precise and with less chance of side effects.

The negative side is that, unlike human fingers, lasers can only move in straight lines. This means that it doesn't have the same dexterity, causing a drop in chance of success. So its' more low risk but also low reward compared to traditional surgery.

 Experientially this procedure should be less uncomfortable than the intracranial examination. Most of the pain comes from the incisions in the skull. Last year they had to do 11, this time it was only one or two, and instead of being stuck in the hospital for 19 days, she should be out much sooner.

Existentially it's creepier, because the science is that the treatment works by heating up the effected part of the brain until it burns a little bit of it off. The laser sounds so elegant until you hear the details.

She will likely need another visit for the final operation after a waiting period, but there's a small chance that she will fully recover from her epilepsy without further intevention. However, regardless of the efficacy of the surgery, there's a chance that it will cause an uptick in seizures over the next two weeks. I hate when treatments cause an increase in the thing they're supposed to get rid of. Like every depression or anxiety med with a potential side effect of increasing stress and anxiety.

But I've seen Lee-Anne on the other side of the surgery now, awake and feeling well enough. I took a couple days off to stay in Brampton at her parents' place so that we could visit her.