Lots Of Vent Art Today. I Drew This After Feeling Some Depression And The Affections That Come With It.

Life is a coloring book, and we have the markers.

Art by me

I drew this yesterday owo (6.19.2018)

It’s yet another self portrait as I experiment with my own self expression. People often ask what my gender is, or my preferred pronouns. Well, with that, I’m still not sure. Maybe one day I’ll figure that out.

But for now, I’m just rolling with it. 

-Ashe. <3

Hello! My name is Ashe and I’m a creator of photography, and drawing. :) I wanted to have a platform to post my content, and thus created this blog. I hope that at least some of them will bring you joy and happiness as my favorite works are the silly ones. I’m really into marine biology, and hope to pursue marine photography in the future! How cool would that be? Anyway, I wanted to also say that I am part of the LGBT community, being a nonbinary trans-masculine person. I prefer him/they, but I try not to hold myself to any clear-cut rules. Some days, this boy likes to wear flowers and paint their nails, and other days they like to look a little too hipster. #Clotheshavenogender ! So know that I support you wherever you are and however you identify. Additionally, I’m part of the furry community, and like to draw my characters from time to time doing cute things-- so you may know me as KawaiiFira on the Furry Amino and the LGBT Amino. ^///^ Anyways, nice to meet you. :) Please enjoy my blog and all of its randomocity. <3

Ashe~

I did a collage type of dealio today. It’s a self portrait-- at least, how I wish I could portray myself. Unfortunately I was a boy born with overly sized pecks. But hopefully one day I’ll have the courage to get top surgery-- the real only thing holding me back is the fact that I’m afraid I’ll spend my whole life lonely. I’ve transitioned twice, and detransitioned twice, and my main reasoning for that has always been that people liked me more when I was a girl. I was prettier, and people were more drawn to me. I don’t know, though. I was also stressed out because whenever I am “Vincent” I always act how people would expect me to, rather than how I’d like to be. So maybe I’m more nonbinary than anything? I just want to be my own thing-- an experience. A dialogue.  One that says, hey, I like to embrace myself without labels or expectations. Still though, I wish I didn’t have my chest.

Art by me, Ashe

Enderman!!!!! Aaaaa!

Art by me

Hooked Figure

design from scrapped book/zine project

I call this piece, “Space is Lorge”

Art by me c:

Art by me.

This drawing to me represents peace. Euphoria. Tranquility. I've suffered a lot. I've gone down a lot of wrong paths. I've been swallowed by anger and suffocated by depression. I've been chained by anxiety. I've been lashed by ptsd and starved by dysphoria.

A lot of me hates myself, conditioned by the very people in my life who were supposed to love me. I grew up believing I was never meant to be here, being born below the margin of impossible expectations because I could not be what everyone wanted. In a way, my birth to everyone was, “Well, this is it; this is what we ended up with.” It was as if I was some compromise, meant to make up for the loss of my siblings. Although they they and I never met, I was constantly in their shadow. It was as if I had poisoned the womb, begging god to kill them so that I could exist. My mother, obsessed with her loss, birthed a compromise and a replacement, naming me after my siblings in an attempt to reanimate what was lost.

A lot of my life has been misery. I was sexually abused from a very young age, by family members on both sides. I was home schooled until halfway through second grade, and I didn’t even know what music was. My family never spoke to me, and I was raised to never speak unless spoken to because I was insignificant compared to the three. Nobody wanted to get to know me because that was already predetermined.

Every holiday was a nightmare, filled with expectations to radiate perfection. As a child, all I wanted was to be loved. But everyone told me I was a demon child, and a dark child. I rarely smiled, and if I did, I covered my mouth. Everyone told me I was broken. That I was selfish for wanting attention or love. My entire life, nobody took the time to know me.

My household was chaotic; my parents hated each other. When my mother wasn’t screaming at me over my physical flaws, I was mocked for my shy nature. My youngest memory of my mother is her barging into my room to say, “You’re such a piece of shit,” as she obsessively cleaned the house. If I tried to spend time with her, she would tell me to go away as she hid behind reading books. In reality, she didn’t want me. Every day, she’d make phone calls to her mother and sister, complaining for hours about how I was a nuisance. Every single birthday, I asked for her to spend time with me.

My own body was a warzone. My father was accepting of me, and let me be a boy. I liked sports, my hero was Han Solo, and I wanted to be Steven Speilburg when I grew up. I liked the boy clothes and the boy toys. My mother hated us for it. My only memories of her before the divorce was a battleground-- fighting. My hair wasn’t girly. I was growing facial hair and was happy about it. I didn’t want to wear makeup. She called me ugly, and fat. She’d tell me I didn’t have any friends because everyone saw how worthless and lazy I was. 

I became withdrawn, as every day when she came home, she sat down in front of my father and screamed for hours-- sometimes 4 hours at a time-- complaining about her day before locking herself away in her room. Once we had to delay a day trip to the renaissance festival, and mom blew a casket. I hid in my room, my dad holding her back as she pointed up at me screaming, “FUCK YOU.”

School was no sanctuary except for within my teachers and my studies. School was a warzone as I was the gay trans boy. I got beaten senselessly. I got sick from stress and no matter how often I transferred schools, the cruelty never ended. Summer camps were no different. Once was so bad, I began to cry, going mute for a while after the incident. I was beaten very badly, and left for dead in a ditch filled with briars and rocks. I was bleeding everywhere.

I began wondering if this was what I deserved-- after all, I was the replacement child. I was only here because 3 people died. That made me selfish. That made me a monster.

I began having belligerent black outs. I would write in journals as if someone else had taken over me, and the writing was barely legible. If I was speaking to someone at the time, and they called me by “Sienna” I would get very very aggressive. I would scream that that wasn’t my name. I had begun rejecting myself, so afraid of other people that my own thought process was an insult to myself. I began disassociating. I stopped recognizing my face and eventually fell into bad habits such as self harm and abusing drugs. 

Once I OD’d back in freshman year, unable to walk after taking a lot of anti-depressants. I laid on the floor for hours. I don’t remember what happened. I began keeping myself as drugged as possible, and have almost no recollection of my freshman year. Not many know this about me; not even my parents know.  I wanted to vanish, someway, somehow. 

In sophomore year, I stopped abusing drugs and became clean. I had met some friends who were kind to me. They didn’t beat me, or belittle me. We just... played, making films and enjoying life. They were my first real taste of youth and friendship.

But then my parents divorced. And it was messy. Both of my parents tried to kill themselves, their mental instability causing the world to end. Each pit me against the other, using me as a sword for their own gain. The family on both sides grew to hate me for not protecting my parents. For not saving their relationship. For trying to protect both.

One day, my dad got a shotgun, and went out to the backyard, placing it to his head. He texted my mom that he was going to kill himself. She came in my room, and apathetically told me it was up to me if we called the police or not. She told me it would make her life easier if he died. With his life in my 14 year old hands, I begged her call 911. A lovely officer saved his life. Afterwards, my mother ransacked his place, stealing everything she could.

Eventually, she went to court, claiming lies to make my dad unable to keep me overnight. Then, she dropped custody of me due to not wanting the responsibility of a child, making me emancipated. My family called me selfish and a brat for being upset. They told me they hated me, and wished I had been “thrown away to the foster care system” so my mother could try again for a child worthy of love.

As this went on, I was being sexually abused by 3 of my friends, one of which was my abusive boyfriend (who forced me into a relationship for 3 long...long years). I was touched against my will, and pressured constantly for sex until I gave up, and lost my virginity. Being pinned against a wall and touched became normal for me, and I stopped fighting. I assumed no one wanted me unless it was for sex, even in the anime club. As I was below 16 at the time, losing my virginity wasn’t even consensual because I didn’t have the capacity. But I didn’t value myself enough to care. I was conditioned to obey because I had no worth.

In junior year, I realized I was trans. It had been there all along-- the one part of me that was my own volition and wasn’t cast upon me. It was the one thing that I knew was my own, and genuine, free will. I was a boy, and wanted to transition. 

I didn’t come out to my parents until the end of the year, though. Dad was not accepting, but didn’t reject me. Mom accepted me, for reasons nobody really knows. At least, at the time nobody knew. She took me to transgender meetings, and support groups. She began to beg for affirmation to my counselors that she was “a good mother.” She began bragging to everyone she could that she was a great mother. It almost felt....like I was being used to boost her own ego. The maternal side of the family stopped supporting the lgbt community when I came out. Utmost rejection.

People started having expectations of me, such as not feeling as much. Dressing a certain way. Transitioning a certain way. I became depressed, and de-transitioned. I got scared because I was being what EVERYONE ELSE wanted me to be. I tried becoming female again, hoping to rekindle my friendships that I had lost, and gain love again. But no one wanted me. I became lonely. I played the best act I could-- wearing makeup, wearing dresses, growing my hair out. I became what everyone else wanted me to be.

I still wasn’t happy. I had no identity, and I couldn’t even remember if I ever had one. I wanted to be loved, but didn’t want to be a girl when I wasn’t. I wanted to be a boy, but didn’t want to be alone.

I OD’d again in my dorm, flunking out of college. I had been in an abusive relationship, being used entirely for my body. 

Mom, not wanting me back home after flunking out, put me up in an apartment since I was not able to get an apartment on my own. After a year, my lease was up, and mom didn’t want to cosign anymore. I became homeless. That was a year ago.

I began couch hopping, trading sexual favors and whatever I could to have a roof over my head. In January of this year, I was raped while unconscious. The sexual harassment only worsened by my friends. My mom stopped allowing me to come back, and my grandparents made it clear I wasn’t wanted there (in sophomore year, we lost the house and dad moved in with my grandparents). I became desperate. At one point, I even got physically assaulted, thrown across the room so hard that the bed slid across the floor. I put up a good fight. I started staying with my ex from highschool-- the abusive one-- and slept on a dirty blanket in the floor as cockroaches crawled around me. The ex would grab my face with both of his hands, and sexually harass me until I would submit. 

I feel unwanted by this world. I don’t even feel human-- like I’m just some monster who was accidentally forced into this world, spreading darkness wherever I go. I was born a mistake, a disappointment, and evil. My family to this day still refers to me as “The demon child.” 

I started struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, breaking into my mom’s house and trying to make her mad so that she would give me the time of day, even if it was bad attention. I started shoplifting in hopes that someone would stop me, because it was the only way I could bring myself to spread my wrath to other people. “I’m starving because the world hates me, so I’m going to take your bread.”

But I have to ask, what did I ever do? 

Did I kill the triplets? No, I never even met them.

Did I cause my parents’ divorce? No, they hated themselves and used me as the scapegoat reasoning.

Did I love and try to protect my parents the best that I could? Yes, more than anyone I was there to parent them.

Was I born into a family of mental illness? Yes. Absolutely.

I had no control over anything, thrown into fire. When I started to burn, everyone noticed the fire, and assumed it was me. I was vulnerable. I was different. I was the perfect weapon for everyone’s gain. It was easier for everyone to point at me than themselves.

I am a person. My name is not Sienna. I am not the triplets. 

The greatest thing I’ve learned from my life experiences is that sometimes, we have to give ourselves what others are incapable of giving. For me, that’s love from my mother. I have to give myself love, and welcome love from the good people who want to be in my life.

For me that’s reassurance. I have to reassure myself that I’m not a monster. 

For me, I’ve wanted human compassion. But I have to have compassion for myself, and that doesn’t involve abusing drugs, or self harming. The best compassion I can do is get counseling, and forgive myself for all the hate that I’ve given myself. I have to allow myself to trust other people because I can’t get out of this alone anymore.

One day, I hope to walk with unapologetic acceptance of myself, like in my drawing. I hope to be free of everything I have lost and suffered, and forgive the past. That I can re-associate myself and learn to become my own person again who loves writing, filmmaking, science, and the kind people around him.

Here’s hoping.

~Ashe.

A sad piece, but one of my favorites. Maybe one day I’ll redraw it as a beautiful sakura tree. who knows?

Art by me

10 Things: Mars Helicopter

When our next Mars rover lands on the Red Planet in 2021, it will deliver a groundbreaking technology demonstration: the first helicopter to ever fly on a planetary body other than Earth. This Mars Helicopter will demonstrate the first controlled, powered, sustained flight on another world. It could also pave the way for future missions that guide rovers and gather science data and images at locations previously inaccessible on Mars. This exciting new technology could change the way we explore Mars.

1. Its body is small, but its blades are mighty.

One of the biggest engineering challenges is getting the Mars Helicopter’s blades just right. They need to push enough air downward to receive an upward force that allows for thrust and controlled flight — a big concern on a planet where the atmosphere is only one percent as dense as Earth’s. “No helicopter has flown in those flight conditions – equivalent to 100,000 feet (30,000 meters) on Earth,” said Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the project at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

2. It has to fly in really thin Martian air.

To compensate for Mars’ thin atmosphere, the blades must spin much faster than on an Earth helicopter, and the blade size relative to the weight of the helicopter has to be larger too. The Mars Helicopter’s rotors measure 4 feet wide (about 1.2 meters) long, tip to tip. At 2,800 rotations per minute, it will spin about 10 times faster than an Earth helicopter. At the same time, the blades shouldn’t flap around too much, as the helicopter’s design team discovered during testing. Their solution: make the blades more rigid. “Our blades are much stiffer than any terrestrial helicopter’s would need to be,” Balaram said.   The body, meanwhile, is tiny — about the size of a softball. In total, the helicopter will weigh just under 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms).

3. It will make up to five flights on Mars.

Over a 30-day period on Mars, the helicopter will attempt up to five flights, each time going farther than the last. The helicopter will fly up to 90 seconds at a time, at heights of up to 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters). Engineers will learn a lot about flying a helicopter on Mars with each flight, since it’s never been done before!

4. The Mars Helicopter team has already completed groundbreaking tests.

Because a helicopter has never visited Mars before, the Mars Helicopter team has worked hard to figure out how to predict the helicopter’s performance on the Red Planet. “We had to invent how to do planetary helicopter testing on Earth,” said Joe Melko, deputy chief engineer of Mars Helicopter, based at JPL.

The team, led by JPL and including members from JPL, AeroVironment Inc.,  Ames Research Center, and Langley Research Center, has designed, built and tested a series of test vehicles.

In 2016, the team flew a full-scale prototype test model of the helicopter in the 25-foot (7.6-meter) space simulator at JPL. The chamber simulated the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere. More recently, in 2018, the team built a fully autonomous helicopter designed to operate on Mars, and successfully flew it in the 25-foot chamber in Mars-like atmospheric density.

Engineers have also exercised the rotors of a test helicopter in a cold chamber to simulate the low temperatures of Mars at night. In addition, they have taken design steps to deal with Mars-like radiation conditions. They have also tested the helicopter’s landing gear on Mars-like terrain. More tests are coming to see how it performs with Mars-like winds and other conditions.

5. The camera is as good as your cell phone camera.

The helicopter’s first priority is successfully flying on Mars, so engineering information takes priority. An added bonus is its camera. The Mars Helicopter has the ability to take color photos with a 13-megapixel camera — the same type commonly found in smart phones today. Engineers will attempt to take plenty of good pictures.

6. It’s battery-powered, but the battery is rechargeable.

The helicopter requires 360 watts of power for each second it hovers in the Martian atmosphere – equivalent to the power required by six regular lightbulbs. But it isn’t out of luck when its lithium-ion batteries run dry. A solar array on the helicopter will recharge the batteries, making it a self-sufficient system as long as there is adequate sunlight. Most of the energy will be used to keep the helicopter warm, since nighttime temperatures on Mars plummet to around minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 Celsius). During daytime flights, temperatures may rise to a much warmer minus 13 to minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit to (minus 25 to minus 50 degrees Celsius) — still chilly by Earth standards. The solar panel makes an average of 3 watts of power continuously during a 12-hour Martian day.

7. The helicopter will be carried to Mars under the belly of the rover.

Somewhere between 60 to 90 Martian days (or sols) after the Mars 2020 rover lands, the helicopter will be deployed from the underside of the rover. Mars Helicopter Delivery System on the rover will rotate the helicopter down from the rover and release it onto the ground. The rover will then drive away to a safe distance.

8. The helicopter will talk to the rover.

The Mars 2020 rover will act as a telecommunication relay, receiving commands from engineers back on Earth and relaying them to the helicopter. The helicopter will then send images and information about its own performance to the rover, which will send them back to Earth. The rover will also take measurements of wind and atmospheric data to help flight controllers on Earth.

9. It has to fly by itself, with some help.

Radio signals take time to travel to Mars — between four and 21 minutes, depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbits — so instantaneous communication with the helicopter will be impossible. That means flight controllers can’t use a joystick to fly it in real time, like a video game. Instead, they need to send commands to the helicopter in advance, and the little flying robot will follow through. Autonomous systems will allow the helicopter to look at the ground, analyze the terrain to look how fast it’s moving, and land on its own.

10. It could pave the way for future missions.

A future Mars helicopter could scout points of interest, help scientists and engineers select new locations and plan driving routes for a rover. Larger standalone helicopters could carry science payloads to investigate multiple sites at Mars. Future helicopters could also be used to fly to places on Mars that rovers cannot reach, such as cliffs or walls of craters. They could even assist with human exploration one day. Says Balaram: “Someday, if we send astronauts, these could be the eyes of the astronauts across Mars.”

Read the full version of this week’s ‘10 Things to Know’ article on the web HERE.

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