#you have no idea the bricks i was shitting when he said it was invalid bc the signatures don't match

[strongermonster]

very pleased to announce that ♥ and =) are a legally required part of my name now apparently

i had to do a bunch of legal updates today to things like my banking and will and insurance and house, and it was all Very Serious Stuff, so when i signed it, i just put my name and signature with no funny business.

half an hour later i get a call from my financial advisor saying there's an issue and he has to come back bc the signatures don't match, and i'm immediately thinking "that's impossible unless something really bad is happening, oh god, oh no"

but it turns out bc i regularly sign my name as a lowercase j with a little heart dot + using the flourish off the 'o' to be a =) face, but didn't this time bc i was trying to be ~mature~, that they don't technically match up, and the lawyer or bank or whoever wouldn't approve of it lmao

so he had to come all the way back just so i could add a tiny little heart and a smiley face to my name to send off to The Powers That Be

[exceptionally-stupid]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: vampire fuckers are class traitors AND have shit taste.

One: the lore of monsters, or: why the werewolf is the everyman’s sexual partner

Werewolves are part of the monsterfucker catalog because they are demonized on the grounds that they are werewolves, something they often have no control over. That gets demonized because of their perceived nature, that it is essential to the being of a werewolf that they are inherently bloodthirsty, savage, dangerous, and animalistic in a way that taints and renders any of the “were” (human) part of their being invalid in all ways that matters. Those that fear them are unwilling to either see or accept the beast within, and so express their fear to control it, and if not, destroy it. A werewolf is feared in a form of oppression. There is a beast within, and it is capable of ripping and tearing, and that is scary, but that you don’t see immediately what else is there is why werewolves are made monsters.

Vampires are made monsters because they prey, both literally and figuratively, on the lower class from mansions bought with slave money. What, you think becoming a vampire comes with riches? All of it’s blood money. And the victim? A thrall to their sire, unable to express their own will, long dead and now just an extension to their cruel master, who gave up love for this perverse power.

Then there is the symbolism. Werewolves in folklore come, in part, from the long-standing fear of wolves, and the werewolf hunter as a hero comes from the noble wolf-hunter who culled wolf populations in times past. Now, am I going to have to tell you why the wolf-hunter was, ultimately, a bad idea? Do I have to explain the vital role apex predators play in our ecosystem? Better question, are you going to miss this opportunity to express gratitude for wolves’ service? Wolves are also social creature, and so in most lore in which werewolves are not forcefully hunted into solitude, werewolves are too. They would treat you like family.

And vampires are based, once again, on the rich. Don’t tell me you’re going to fuck somebody who’s planning to tear down a homeless camp so he can build a house he’s inevitably going to use as a vrbo because you think that’s hot. If you want to have a vampire boyfriend, you have to come to terms with the fact that they will be much richer than you, but that by no means implies that they will be your sugar daddy, and will instead take the Swedish approach to sharing.

Two: the mechanics of sex

When it comes down actually getting down and dirty with your choice of sexual partner as listed above, the fact is that werewolves have things to offer that are simply better than what a vampire has.

Let’s start with what both have to offer, which in common lore is two things: strength and fangs. In both of these, I am of the firm belief that werewolves do both of them better. A vampire is guaranteed at least two fangs, but for argument’s sake, we can assume all of a vampire’s teeth are sharp. This will still be marred by the fact that they have to fit in a human mouth, so most of that becomes “human teeth, but sharper.” There werewolf’s maw is much more conducive to sharp teeth, allowing for bigger teeth across the board. When it comes to strength, a vampire will most likely be stronger than a werewolf, but what’s more important is the build to go with it. Vampire strength in lore is often magical in nature, whereas most of werewolves’ strength comes from actual muscle. In terms of build alone, a vampire will almost never be built like a brick shithouse in favor of just some guy, and so is limited in the ways they can use that strength on you in ways that would be comfortable. Werewolves in most lore, however, ARE build huge, so even if they were to hold you with just one arm, you could still feel as if you were lying in a bed that has the ability to crush you if it wanted.

There is one more way vampires and werewolves are similar, and that’s that I’m assuming that whatever monster we’re choosing to fuck (given that we are not ourselves a monster in this scenario) is going to be a dom. Both monsters would, by nature, excel at domming, but do so in different ways. The werewolf achieves this by virtue of animalism; they will be savage and instinctual with it, and actually use their body to dominate. That’s excite their partner with adrenaline, like a monster is supposed to. Vampires, on the other hand, while having the raw strength to do so by force, rely on vampiric charm to dominate. That either comes in the form of hypnosis (to which I say two things: 1- there is a difference between domming and taking advantage of someone, and 2- you would black out for the duration of sex, rendering the entire escapade pointless to anyone but the vampire), or the rich people method of domming, and if you are of the mind that vampires are good at this, I am about to ask you a question that you will dislike me for:

Is this sexier with the knowledge that a vampire is doing it?

With that out of the way, we can get into the differences. A werewolf has a small yet enticing set of assets. As I’ve already mentioned, they most often boast an impressive size, but have something else to go with it: compared to vampires, a werewolf’s fur would be very soft and comfortable to the touch. Werewolves also possess claws in all lore. And last but not least, they have an irregularly shaped penis, which can be used like normal, or for knotting, an act more intimate than what you would do with a vampire’s standard human-y penis.

What does a vampire have? Magic powers, which on the surface, admittedly sound good. That said, the main one for use in sexual intercourse would be telekinesis, which would in practice be more disorienting than pleasing without sufficient experience. Even bdsm torture machines don’t give you 0g nausea.

And what do vampires have aside from that? The body of a corpse. No body heat. No pulse. No breath. No cum. You could shove an ice cube up your ass and achieve much the same feeling as fucking a vampire. Is that it? Is that what you want? Anna frozen voice do you wanna fuck a snowman?

Everything a vampire lacks in that regard, a werewolf makes up for just by virtue of having a warm, living body.

Now, as I write this, vampire is winning. Please remember everything I taught you now and fix this.

RB for the largest sample size this site has ever seen. it's time to put an end to this.

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! You've talked about Brother Blood a lot so I was hoping you'd know. I saw a post where some people were saying that Dick being brainwashed was a retcon done just to make him look less jerky. Is that true?

Eh, yes and no?

Like it depends on what you consider a retcon to be, I guess. If you view any story moment that contradicts or alters a previous one to be a retcon, then yeah, I suppose you could call it that. Personally though, I consider retcons to be later additions to a story or continuity that create a REPLACEMENT for an earlier story moment, that people are meant to refer back to from then on. Dick's brainwashing, to me, was simply a reveal. It altered the way his previous behavior was viewed, but it was deliberately led up to, like that WAS the story.

Now, to be fair, the specific way the brainwashing was explained, it made things ambiguous enough that you could make USE of the brainwashing to excuse or explain away pretty much anything you didn't like about his behavior between the first Church of Blood story (when Dick was still Robin) and this one. So I suppose in that respect, it is a retcon.

But what makes me scrunchy faced when most people write off or ignore the brainwashing as a retcon (and why is it that people are so willing to accept SOME retcons but not others, I would really like to know, like 'but it was a retcon' seems to come up ANNOYINGLY often in Dick's narratives in particular, with that line being used to try and invalidate Dick being fired, Robin being his mother's name for him, that he was brainwashed in the Church of Blood stories, etc. Yeah they were retcons, but so were eighty million other things people just accept. Like.....I'm just saying).

BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, what makes me go eh about people going 'oh the brainwashing was just a retcon to make him seem like less of a jerk' because yes, I have heard that argument too.....is that the things people cite as what they feel are examples of the behavior they think this was a retcon FOR, like.....just do not work as such.

Because the big ones are the ways Dick behaved on Tamaran and with Kory's political marriage, and then his fight with Donna upon his return to Earth.

And I just want to point out the timeline involved here:

Dick's big blowup with Kory over her political marriage? Was in New Teen Titans #18. His fight with Donna, was in #19. The reveal of his brainwashing, which led him to lash out due to the mental and emotional turmoil he was in fighting against the conditioning, as Mother Mayhem termed it, was in #22.

That's a span of less than five months from the biggest jerk moment people cite as what was being retconned with the brainwashing....til the brainwashing moment itself. And there's a couple of things to keep in mind here.....first, that comics - especially back in the eighties - take TIME to produce. Even if there had been a huge reader backlash at the time of #18's publication, with readers calling for Dick's head, the idea that this could lead to inserting the entire brainwashing plot setup as a fix-it retcon is dubious if not outright impossible. Issue #22 was on the SHELVES not even five full months after #18's publication. In the 80s, the way comics were produced and published, they needed to be completely finished and shipped off to retailers a couple months before their on-shelf date, and it took weeks to print everything, and the lettering and inking and every step of the creation of each issue was done by hand.....

How exactly, do people propose that DC even had TIME to note any sizable need to correct or fix Dick's behavior in something like #18....and actually DO so by #22?

Not to mention, every issue in between them lays another brick into place on the road to REVEALING that Dick was brainwashed this whole time.....because in #19, when he had that big fight with Donna, he was actively shown questioning himself on his OWN behavior after the fight was over. Asking himself why he said the things he did, like....he was second-guessing his own behavior, which I don't see how that could have possibly been put in to lay groundwork for a retcon AFTER #18 was published....because #19 and #20 likely should have been already completed and off to the printers by the time #18 even hit stands.

And then AFTER #19, in #20 and #21, we saw Dick actively infiltrating the Church, or THINKING that was what he was doing, even though the Church was on to him the whole time, because his conditioning was actually just....directing him to basically walk right back into their clutches. Again, works as set up for the REVEAL that he was brainwashed, but impossible to have put into place to enable a RETCON.

So no matter how you look at it, even IF the decision to introduce a brainwashing retcon to 'fix' some of Dick's behavior had been made due to story elements from BEFORE #18.....

The events of #18 themselves, as well as #19-#22......still do not work as things that are just conveniently retconned by the brainwashing.....they have to have been written with the specific intention in mind of laying groundwork for the idea that Dick was 'lashing out due to his mental struggle against his conditioning.'

The timing just does not work for them to be anything else.

So it doesn't work for me at all, to cite those issues as things retconned by the brainwashing reveal, when HOW Dick acted on Tamaran, plus his fight with Donna, were very clearly written as DELIBERATE moments where he was behaving in a way that can literally be described as out of character, because they were meant to post-reveal, be viewed as examples of how he wasn't himself, how his mental and emotional state themselves were being impacted by external influences. (Not just in terms of external events but like, external mental conditioning).

And I just don't think it works to use moments that are written WITHIN a narrative to be DELIBERATELY out of character.....as examples of his characterization or proof of the necessity of a retcon for his character, lol. That makes no sense to me.

And lastly, I also have to point to the fact that like......good old Marv is not actually the most aware guy out there? And I question the idea that just because people TODAY may look at various things Dick said or did in stories leading up to the reveal and think oh yeah, of course they'd want to course correct that.....I don't exactly think that means that back in the 80s, Wolfman viewed those same things as even NEEDING a retcon to correct. Especially when you consider things the other characters around Dick were doing, without any kind of retcon for their worst behavior? Why would it be only Dick that he saw a need to retcon his behavior or actions, especially when Dick's worst ones literally ONLY happen in the actual narrative buildup to the brainwashing reveal, mere months before the issue revealing it hit the stands?

*Shrugs* Anyway, YMMV, but to me its always clearly read as all of that was just a story where writing Dick acting increasingly out of character in ways that isolated him from his closest friends and allies so there was no one around TO stop him from walking himself right back into the Church's grasp....like, that was pretty clearly the POINT of that entire narrative, and the literal reason those fights he had even happened.

Writing it off as a retcon just to me seems an unnecessary tangle that doesn't serve any real purpose and complicates things needlessly. All it accomplishes is more of the usual 'oh Dick's not so great, look at THIS stuff he did, and how DC did this and this to make all that go away.'

Like.....DC doesn't even see a need to retcon away BRUCE'S worst behavior - then as much as now - and if they don't do it for BATMAN why are people so sure they're invested in doing it for Dick Grayson?

Sometimes a story reveal is just a story reveal, if you ask me. Which you did. So yeah. That's my answer. Nah, it wasn't actually a retcon, it was a planned plot twist.

Edit: Actually one last thing to point out -

Wolfman wrote brainwashing and possession storylines all the time. ALL THE TIME. Like, he LOVES that shit. 99% of those other ones don’t seem to have ‘need to retcon this character’s behavior’ as a reason for them being written, so why does this particular storyline need a reason for existing beyond ‘Wolfman wanted to write a brainwashing story. Again.’

[windlion]

Transmigrator Pile-Up

Was this a hallucination?  Or something a whole lot weirder?

There were giant eagles.  Oh, fuck, please let him be in Middle Earth.  He could deal with living in Tolkien.

(It probably wasn't.)

Jay wasn't expecting to wake up.  He was definitely positively not expecting to wake up to small hands pawing at his face.  He flinched, eyes flickering open just enough to catch a small child's eyes going wide in their round face as they fell backwards away from him.  The kid squeaked, slapped a hand over their mouth guiltily, then abruptly spun and ran away.  

The flap of the door behind them wasn't enough to block the ear-piercing cry of "Grandma! Grandma, he's awake!"

He already felt like shit, but the sheer volume made his ears ring. Good lungs on that kid.

Jay squinted against the bright light coming through the doorway before slumping back, eyes closing.  He felt horrible.  Time for a rousing game of Hangover or Concussion?  He remembered . . . falling?  Falling.  That horrible moment when his foot slipped and all his hands caught was air.  When he didn't even have a safety line on because he wasn't supposed to be near the edge yet.  Stupid stupid stupid.  

And then there was the exciting hallucination that followed.  

Yeah, he wasn't ready to go near that deep dive into his subconscious yet. Concussion was sounding about right.  Except.  As much as his head hurt, the rest of him hurt more.  Even tipping his head stabbed pain through his chest and sides.  Concussion and broken ribs, maybe?  He did fall off a mountain.  That usually involved hitting things on the way down.  Object in motion, etc.

Currently he was at rest, so that was something.  He was laid out on his back on a pallet of sorts not far from a cooking hearth of bricks.  The floor was either dusty concrete or hard-packed earth, hard to tell.  Barely tilting his head gave him a great view of wooden rafters and ramshackle one-story construction that could be pretty much anything anywhere in the mountains that wasn't a ski lodge or some Airbnb chalet.  While it felt like he'd rather be in a hospital, not dead or alone on a mountainside was a pretty good start, so he'd take it.

The bright light from the door was interrupted by a shadow as Tiny Loud came back dragging an older woman- grandmother, he presumed.  She pushed the small child behind her with a business-like motion as she strode up to the hearth, leaning over to inspect some things he couldn't see from this angle.  Evidently satisfied, she turned to take his measure next and met his eyes directly. "So you're awake, Hielang-ge."

"What?" Jay's voice came out rough, gravelly and dry and deeper than he was expecting.  Had he been gargling rocks?  

"Black wolf. What else could we call you?"  The old woman shrugged like she was the practical sort of woman who called a spade a spade.  Thank fuck because he didn't have any idea what name he should have offered if they asked.  She gestured at his head with a spoon as she stirred the pot by the fire.  "A-mei has been taken with your hair.  If you didn't make it, we said we might save your pelt for her."

He could either take that as a joke or a threat, but fuck, it was kind of funny.  And explained the grubby little paws.  He grinned wryly and rasped, "Thanks for waiting."

"Your type are hard to kill.  Always best to be sure."  Grandma stirred again, then fetched a bowl, ladling some of the contents of the pot into it. She carried it over to him, then seized his shoulders preemptively when he tried to move, breath catching in pain.  "But hard doesn't mean impossible.  Don't push it."

Yes, ma'am!  Jay did his best to cooperate as she levered him up with skinny iron arms, propping a firm roll of something under his shoulders.  Tiny lady or not, she was impressive.  And that was a way better thing to focus on than not passing out.  First on the agenda was water, followed closely by painkillers.  Ow.  Ow ow ow ow son of a motherfucker.

Strangely, even though it sucked, it felt like he reached some sort of equilibrium. Jay curled his right arm tight around his ribs, bracing against the pain, and caught his breath slowly.  Grandma tipped the bowl to his lips and slowly dribbled something that turned out to be broth into his mouth.  It ran into his beard; he raised his left hand to brush weakly at it.  That was. . . a lot of beard, how long had he been out?

Reading the questioning look on his face, Grandma shushed him, patting his shoulder gently.  "We found you in the woods to the west.  Three days ago."

That left him with a lot more questions than answers.  He waited until he'd finished off the serving of broth, then said as carefully as setting the last stone in a cairn, "I don't remember." Grandma smiled in a way that was and was not reassuring. "Best you don't. Rest, now."  

Shit.

As she helped lower him back to a full recline, flat on his back, resting was absolutely the last thing on his mind.  The longer he was awake, the more things nagged at him.  He wanted to scratch at his beard.  Draped over his shoulder, his long dark hair was in a rough plait that he could bet was the work of those small curious hands on Tiny Loud.  His own hands were big, callused, rough.  Not even remotely the right shade of brown to be a Jesus.  Shit shit shit.

Even laying prone, he had a sense of mass, of presence.  Jay was heavier than he was used to.  Bigger.  He didn't mind taller, but why was he a tank?!

Hielang-ge.  His mind had tripped over the words for a second.  What language was that, even?  Mandarin?  He didn't speak Mandarin, couldn't even ask where to find the bathroom.  But he was pretty sure that entire conversation was definitely not in English.

Hallucination?  Or something a whole lot weirder?

There were giant eagles.  Oh, fuck, please let him be in Middle Earth.  He could live with Tolkien.

(It probably wasn't.)

It definitely wasn't.  

Over his three day period as an invalid, the individual formerly known as Jesus Alvarez Cooper had nothing better to do than think between sleeping, eating, bandage changes, and being beautified by A-mei.   (Seriously: he woke up with tiny braids in his beard.   He'd spent a minute with his hand on his jaw trying to figure out what was up before Grandma Xu informed him of his new fashion choices.  And that they were new. He only nodded seriously and said he respected her eye for aesthetics.  He kinda regretted he never got a chance to see what it looked like; he bet it was sorta dwarven.)

So.  Not in Kansas any more, Toto.  Time for transmigration 101.  Jay was exactly the kind of nerd that knew the difference between isekai and transmigration and the fast transmigration genres and . . .  he knew what was up, okay?  

Good news: there wasn't a system.  Or if there was, he hadn't activated it yet.  No stats, no missions, no glowing HUD.  

Bad news:  he had no idea where the fuck he was and even a system would have helped him figure out where he was and what he was doing.

Who he was.

Because this was definitely not his original body, and he was fine with that because this was definitely not the right place for one scrawny little science geek.  Jay Cooper 1.0 would not have survived the shishka-crash, much less be healing this fast afterwards.  His own body was probably rotting at the bottom of the mountain, hopefully providing food for the local ecosystem.  Or maybe they'd retrieved it by now; he'd had his phone and tracker on him.  God he hoped they weren't still out looking for him.  

(Ah shit, Maria, he was so sorry.  She'd be in the front wave with search and rescue.  He wasn't going to be a pretty corpse.  And not to mention the state of his shithole apartment.  Please let Maria and Kaylee get to clean up before his family showed up.  His mom would flip at the mess, his sisters would roast him for the amount of merch.  He did not need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known from beyond the grave.  His dying young would already fuck them up enough as it was.)  

Right.  New digs.

New life, new name, no lingering on the past.  New world included giant birds you could fly on; Jay needed to get out there and see them.  The Xu family that was hosting him presently was being very gracious but even he could tell that they didn't have shit to spare for a freeloader.  If it wasn't mid-spring, they might not have had enough if they wanted to.

Goal number one: get up, get moving, figure out who the hell he was jaegering.

His new body cooperated with that goal admirably.  The flesh and bones knit back together at a rate that was both entirely bullshit and entirely welcome.  From what Jay could see of his arms and torso during the combination feeding-and-bandage changes, this wasn't anything new. He had scars, a lot of them, in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Original goods had spent a lot of time with things wanting to kill him.

That nothing else had succeeded until now was a bit of a mixed bag, really.  The second Jesus took the wheel, he crashed the car.  (It wouldn't be the first time.)  What he could put together of the damage tally was impressive.  Probably hairline fractures in his legs and arms, contusions galore.  Some scrapes and scratches from crashing through a tree at speed.  Definitely broken ribs.  General trauma and internal damage from being spitted for a luau.  If he was right that should have taken out some intestine, lungs, liver.  You know, things you usually need for a healthy sprightly life.  

By all right he ought to have a concussion, be in a coma or a full body cast, and pissing blood, and nope, here he was, actually standing up on the afternoon of the fourth day to lean on the shoulder Grandma Xu's son in law, Jing.  

Jing-ge staggered a little under his arm, "You're sure you want to move, Hielang-ge?"

"Yeah," Jay grunted, trying to support his own weight better as they got him vertical, then took the first careful steps towards the door.  Jing was a full-time farmer in the prime of his thirties, and he was still a head shorter and probably half the mass.  If the OG was built like an ox, he ought to be study as one.  And he was, damnit.  "I can smell myself.  I can't stand sitting in my own filth any more."

Grandma Xu had judged his wounds to be closed enough to the point that he could bathe, and he very much wanted to not stink like blood and sweat and death any more.  Mid-spring meant warm weather and plentiful water, so he was absolutely on board with hygiene.  

With Xu Jing's help, he figured out how to get his own feet under him and ducked out through the door.  Jay paused outside to take in the view: the mountains shone reddish in the sunlight, not unlike parts of the Rockies.  Except it was rougher, sharper, younger?  The Xu steading itself didn't really qualify as a village or a farm; it was three low dark buildings clustered together at the top of a valley that was more a pinch where peaks met.  The sprouting fields showed a sharp green against the dark of the red-brown stone.  Two of the women were out tending the fenced gardens where the green was darker and thicker.  A few white and brown shapes grazed higher up the slopes; goats or sheep, maybe?

None of this was telling him where the hell he was.

Jay glanced back at Xu Jing, realizing the man was watching his reaction closely. "You're up high-- above the treeline, aren't you?"

"Almost." Xu Jing gestured with his free hand towards the two ridges that ran like bony spines in what he'd guess was north-south direction. "Walls block the wind, keep us warmer."

"Ah, microclimate, smart."  Jay nodded. "Bet it's quiet up here, too."

"We don't usually get much trouble from the neighbors."  Xu Jing nodded up towards where the two peaks met.  "There's a small lake, same that feeds our stream.  They water the birds there, sometimes.  We leave it alone, they leave us alone."

Birds, huh.  As in more than one.  Xu Jing was fishing; he'd bet anything that would have meant something to the OG, but fuck if he knew what.  When he didn't react, Xu Jing tugged him along towards the back of the neighboring building.  On closer inspection, the buildings were constructed of a mix of timber, stone and reclaimed material--a sheet of plastic covered in faded advertising provided a waterproof lining on the roof.  He couldn't quite make out what the product was: someone must have not paid their licensing fees.

Xu Jing led him behind what proved to be their goat stable/storehouse and to where bamboo pipes directed stream water to a concrete trough.  A plastic 4 gallon paint bucket sat beside it.  Jay sized it up judgingly.  So there's plastic, concrete, bricks, and . . . no electricity.  And now he was going to have to bathe in glacier-melt water.  He called bullshit.

Xu Jing gingerly let him go to stand under his own power, pulling what looked like a bamboo milking stool over beside the trough.  There was a sliver of soap and a rag already resting on the concrete edge, and a pile of faded fabric waiting.  Xu Jing was keeping a judicious eye on him, like he was waiting for something.  "Normally in the summer we'd bathe in the lake. . ."

Jay sighed and started figuring out how the robes tied together.  Locker room protocols it was.  He could deal with any of the Xus rubbernecking, really; they couldn't possibly be as bad as that field camp in grad school.  "This is fine.  I just want to get clean."

There was a stone and gravel funnel off to one side, directing water away from the yard and down hill.  He checked with Xu Jing, "Waste water goes there?"

Xu Jing seemed surprised he'd asked. "Yes."

"Great." No blood, gore, or other biological materials contaminating the animal water, he approved of that.  On to the next problem: what the hell was he wearing, robes and trousers?  At least as an invalid it wasn't anything complicated.  By the way they cut off at his forearms and calves he could guess he was wearing Xu Jing or the grandfather's cast offs.  No judging, they'd given him something to wear that he was probably wrecking, and the old material was worn soft.  He folded the clothes as he took them off, setting them on the edge of the trough before filling a bucket.  Fuck, that water was exactly as cold as he thought it would be.

A bit of breeze going by made him shiver.  Xu Jing seemed to be watching and waiting for him to wimp out.  Like hell he would; Jay had dealt with worse in the name of getting clean while camping.  Best to just get it over with.

By the time he was done he was shivering and he had a whole new appreciation for a) the full geographical distribution and variety of scars on his person, b) were those tattoos?! and c) how much of a pain long hair was. Washing that took longer than scrubbing the rest of himself three times over.  Wet, his hair hung to his ass, and he did not trust the way it was trying to go into ringlet curls.  Oh hell no, he did not sign up for this.  

Xu Jing had to help him get dressed again, and once he was decent and shuffled back in front of the fire, A-mei gleefully descended to take care of his hair.  Jay sighed and resigned himself to being a six year old girl's plaything.  Xu Jing left him to her tender mercies and headed back out to the fields, evidently satisfied but still looking confused.

Jay had the bad feeling that Xu Jing knew a hell of a lot more about the Original Goods than he did.  Shit.  He needed to put this together.  

[verdancy-hime]

I don't think we need to eliminate them I think just not doing what they want is okay. Mostly that's about women not getting hurt. An individual woman might feel rage. You can if you want. Specifically against really shitty men who have done things to you or your friends or your relatives or like

Specifically it's the dog pile guys for me.

The ones who jump on and in to invalidate whatever you went through and blame you for whatever happened

There was this woman on tiktok who got hit in the head with a brick.

She refused to give some guy her number so he hit her in the head with a brick. She had to go to the er.

She was yelling with a hole in her head at the men outside the club who just stood there watching her get hit and did nothing and it went viral.

This guy who never fucking met her went on tiktok claiming that because she did some skit on tiktok that she was a troublemaker who everyone knew and who had it coming.

He claimed to be from her neighborhood and know her and said he was there.

Another person proved that was 100% untrue.

That guy.

Whatever makes men do that because they know it will benefit them?

I hate that a lot.

If I were designing a punishment I would make those men literally invisible to women.

Like

You cannot in real life or online interact with women.

But really? It's not a punishment cuz those guys hate women so much they drive women away from them on purpose.

It does serve the purpose of keeping women from getting hurt by their shit though.

Like I decided to be 4b other than my job. I can't quit my job for reasons.

One of them is unfortunately women have always hated me even before the men turned on me.

I have a terrible personality and only people who want to pay me for sex can stand me but I need to eat and be away from people so they don't get hurt so we do what we have to do.

But like

4b is about accepting that romantic love isn't real, men will literally take over the government and take away your legal rights even when the science exists for them to completely replace you in their own lives because they hate you so much that the idea that you could be happy even with them makes them so angry that any time you are happy they have to fuck things up so that you are angry and yell at them.

It's about accepting that the pay gap is real and it's designed specifically to try to force women to choose between a "bear" market and poverty and a man who hates them.

It's about accepting that feminism never really happened it's just some kind of weird play they do to gaslight younger women into thinking they chose their cage of their own free will.

It's about accepting that most men see women as sources of labor and not as people or even sexual objects and they mostly have sex with women to punish them or keep them in line.

It's about accepting that you were lied to about the world and nothing will ever happen to you when you believe love is real but agony.

Sex is real.

Sex work is real.

Labor trafficking is real.

Men who want women only to have a baby are real.

The rest is just fake.

Why would you not be 4b if it turns out the bs are in a giant conspiracy to hurt you on purpose so they can publicize the instructions and they don't have to pay money to try to punish you for being happy around them?

The only rational response to the world I personally live in, at least is to become a pornosexual and never date kiss or have sex again.

If I wasn't being stalked by weird assholes I would have stayed a sex worker because the only sane response to living in a world where romantic love is labor trafficking and they won't let you get and keep a stable job unless your income is going to a man's benefit is to be a sex worker so at least you can charge and no man wants you.

You get all the good stuff that way and none of the bad stuff.

But they came along and shat on that, too. And tortured me for four years. Which is proof that no matter what you do, someone will force you to be miserable doing it.

But that's not really because of men. I know because a lot of the people torturing me over the years have been women. They did it for patriarchal reasons but they were women.

If you have to have a tribe of people who will torture you for sport for not begging them for approval but also won't give you approval and will still torture you it doesn't matter if it's men or women or one person or a group or a hivemind.

No matter what you do you will be miserable so it's best to just focus on making sure that you get killed by those people as soon as possible since they all hate you so much.

rich men succeeded at making the average man turn against the average women (which isn't that difficult because men are fucking stupid) so now regular working class men have been attacking women, bitching about feminism, and they want to end our rigjt to vote and work so we can be dependent on them and have all their chimp babies. it isn't just the wealthy men who are ruining society, regular men are too. they are all class traitors and must be eliminated

[blufontana]

Okay, lately I heard some weird shit about how Carlos is a parody of  irl scientists  - Because you know. All scientists are sad introverted nerds, who can’t talk to people and have absolute lack of sense of humor. It is popular to show scientists as loners or people who only treat science like it was a really big deal and they never ignore anything in it - don’t get me wrong here, though. Let me fix that image for you. 

As a kid I used to believe that all scientists are serious and when I faced the truth it was nothing like that. Of course I was surprised but soon after that I discovered I wasn’t serious myself. 

Fact #1: The more complicated field of science - the less serious scientist works in it. 

Why? Because if we were serious here we would lose our minds. That’s why. 

Fact #2: stating hypothesis

My friends and I, actually always say “hmmmm” before stating any scientific thesis. If there is no “hmmm”, your statement is invalid - sorry to say that. You need to prove you thought it through before saying it aloud, and “hmmm” seems a great expression of thinking - it is our inside joke from uni. We keep on doing that since 2 years now. 

Fact #3: Scientific jokes and memes are everyday’s life

There’s no day we don’t make a scientific reference or a scientific joke. Seriously! Any possiblility to do a scientific reference - there we go.

Fact #4 Trust us we are scientists

Basically that means: “we have no idea what we are doing” - even given instructions we are unsure and question ourselves and our lives. 

Fact 5# Why isn’t it working

My friend basically ran into my friend’s and mine room shouting “Why did this mountain teleported?” and she was looking pretty panicked and confused about that fact. She showed us the map and said: “there it is! It was not here when we were here to look at geological structures. I am sure it was in the other place  *here insert her pointing at the map where that mountain was supposed to be located*”.  We ofc were saying “hmmm” a lot and got confused too. It took us few hours to find out there were two mountains in Holy Cross Mountains that were named with the same name. 

Or you can make your measurements and get something absolutely weird. Things are not like they should be - they didn’t fit with what you know - you get confused - you don’t know what happened and why - you think you are wrong, or worse, you think physics is wrong. Next step you find yourself sobbing in the corner because what the actual fuck?

Fact 6# anything for science

You can die doing it? Let’s do that for science any way. Expose yourself for radiation? I think it’s a great idea. Some dangerous terrain work to do - sure, I am on my way atm. Is it a middle of the night when you should study for an exam? Go outside with a hammer to smash the rock on pieces then bring that rock to your friend’s house at 1 am and question it for about 3 hours drinking wine and ending saying: “I have no idea what this rock is except for the fact it is magnetic and probably have Fe3+ in it because it is red. And yeah, you are right there is probably some peridot in it”. Stay late hours at uni and end up explaining yourself to the security why you are still at uni - or better - fall asleep at your desk in the Institute and wake up in the morning. 

Fact 7# Mistakes everywhere

Are you wrong? Think about it. Think harder. You might be wrong. You probably are. You will never know the truth about the world but at least you take a chance to try to understand it. And it is okay if your hypothesis turns out not to be the best in years. You lay your bricks so crying about being wrong is not what a scientists do. We are prepared to be wrong and to make a lot of mistakes. That’s why we make so many jokes. It makes us feel better about the fact we will never actually be sure about something. We need to question everything. We need to question our results, the answers we find. Only time we get serious it is when second law of thermodynamics is being violated. 

So now. Do you still think scientists are serious? Because I don’t know. I am not so sure about it. That’s why I don’t really view Carlos as a parody of a scientist because he acts pretty alike like my friends and I, and for me what he is like seems pretty normal - just a regular person at faculty of physics or at faculty of geology. People are similar. Trust me.