#Things Anti-Monster Politicians Could Do

[maidenvault]

During my last rewatch of the prequels I was actually shocked by how much I've misremembered or decontextualized certain moments in my mind because of how they're often talked about in fandom as showing the Jedi as too arrogant, too bureaucratic, generally just burying their heads in the sand while everything goes bad etc. So I'm gonna try to address every individual scene that typically gets brought up to argue that this is an actual theme in Lucas's portrayal of the Order.

The Council doesn't take Qui-Gon's account of meeting a Sith seriously.

Mace and Ki Adi Mundi do both express doubt this guy could be a Sith. (Understandably! Historically they've never known Sith to be able to hide their existence, and for them to have survived totally in secret for a thousand years is a pretty wild thing for Qui-Gon to be so sure of.)

BUT Yoda admits that the dark side is hard to see, and Mace assures Qui-Gon they'll do everything to find out the identity of the attacker. Later he's ordered to go back to Naboo and try to draw out Maul to discover more. Qui-Gon accepts this and doesn't ask for backup. Why should he? He held his own against Maul before, and Maul's probably not gonna show himself again to face a ton of Jedi. They end up missing the chance to learn who trained Maul because of how things go down, but Qui-Gon's death isn't the result of the Council mishandling the situation.

At the funeral, Yoda says the presence of one Sith means there's another out there. They know they've got to be on guard now and will be, but they've got no more leads for now.

2. Qui-Gon's not here to free slaves.

There's this idea that slavery existing on Tatooine shows the Order is apparently too tied up doing shady things for self-interested politicians (footage not found) to help the people who really need it. But Padme's shocked to know the Skywalkers are slaves for a reason. The truth is there isn't a lot of slavery in the galaxy at this time because the Jedi have helped keep it that way for centuries only by working with the Republic. In TCW we see that Zygerrian slavers have a particular hatred of Jedi because they're literally The Anti Slavery People and did so much of the work to crack down on their trade. But Tatooine is controlled by the Hutts and they simply don't have the resources to start a war with them.

(And honestly, it's crazy how people talk like Qui-Gon's a monster for honestly and apologetically telling Anakin no, that's not why he's here. This is a child he's already indebted to and who has a hero-worshipping idea of Jedi, it would be fucked up for him not to be clear about how he can't help him and his mom.)

3. They doubt Dooku could be behind the assassination attempt.

This I understand shows the Jedi to be a little naive. But they knew Dooku as a good man, and at this point he and his followers are still putting on a show of wanting to secede for idealistic reasons (and a few of them, manipulated by Dooku, actually do have good intentions). Only later do the Jedi learn they're illegally building an army before they've even officially left the Republic and clearly have no interest in the peaceful resolution Padme's been advocating for. And they only find this out because they have Obi-Wan investigate the assassin and this very quickly leads him to Dooku.

4. "Arrogance, yes. A trait more and more common among Jedi. Even the older, more experienced ones."

In context, this line from Yoda is clearly not meant to be taken so seriously. Obi-Wan says he fears Anakin is too arrogant, and this is Yoda's light-hearted way of telling him not to be so hard on him. Part of training a Padawan is learning to trust them so they can grow, and Obi-Wan perhaps needs the reminder that he isn't done learning himself.

Of course Yoda saying this could be partly motivated by them having been caught off guard before by the existence of Darth Maul and the dark side clouding their awareness, as we're told repeatedly throughout the PT they know is a problem. But it's kind of contradictory to take this as confirmation that this is a serious fatal flaw of theirs. If someone acknowledges their own arrogance then they're aware of their ability to be wrong, which means they can't actually be that arrogant. If truly meant in a general sense and not just as a gentle reproof of Obi-Wan, it's a pretty self-deprecating comment coming from Yoda.

5. "If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist."

Chief Librarian Jocasta Nu gives this haughty response to Obi-Wan looking for Kamino, a system that's not in the Jedi Archives. So being so overly confident in the infallible knowledge of the Jedi, he takes her word for it and totally drops this lead.

Except no, he goes to someone older and wiser to figure out what this actually means. And he and Yoda are forced to conclude that the unthinkable - a trusted person among them somehow had reason to erase information from the archive - must nonetheless be what happened. This is honestly an exception that proves the rule: Kamino, and we can assume only Kamino, is missing from the archive only because it was removed, which is so suspicious it just shows he must be on the right track to discovering something. Jocasta is kind of snooty about it but theirs obviously is supposed to be one of the most accurate and complete databases in the galaxy.

6. Obi-Wan doesn't believe what Dooku tells him about the Senate.

For one thing, in this conversation Dooku's lying about basically everything but this. And I can't ever stress enough that Palpatine is a threat unlike anything the Jedi have ever dealt with before, who's already taken control of so much before they even know they're fighting anything, so the idea that a Sith is controlling the Senate would be really hard for anyone to believe.

Still, we know Obi-Wan reports this to the Council anyway. But it's a vague statement and they still don't have any information to act on. Palpatine soon has them very busy putting out fires in the war, and naturally fighting the Separatists who are led by Sith seems the best way for them to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on with the dark side. And they do finally turn their attention to how power-hungry Palpatine is getting once the war is nearly over and they've got the bandwidth for it, and think about what they might have to do if he's the threat to their democracy they fear, but of course he's too many steps ahead of them all the time.

---

So basically, what we see the Jedi being so guilty of in these examples are thought crimes. When confronted with the crazy explanation that happens to be true, their instinctive reaction is "No, I don't think that's possible." And then they do their due diligence to uncover as much of the truth as they can anyway. And Yoda, the Grand Master of them all, is often the first to admit that their first assumptions could be wrong. But Palpatine wouldn't be a good villain if his moves were predictable and he couldn't get an advantage over the good guys - that's just how storytelling works sometimes and it's not that deep.

It honestly felt stupid typing so much of this out because it's 90% just describing what actually happens in these scenes. But I guess it's a lot to ask that people actually carefully watch the films they discuss. 😒

[iamthekaijuking]

Gigabash Character Overview

Almost 2 years ago I made a review of all the revealed Gigabash kaiju in the lead up to the game’s release and what they were homages to, but the game is now almost 2 years old and its third dlc pack of guest fighters has just released. So I thought now’s as good a time as any to revisit Gigabash’s ten original kaiju and provide much more commentary as someone who’s played the game extensively, starting with…

Gorogong!

Gorogong is essentially the “starter” or brawler character on the roster, an agile character with reliable attack and defense and movement options, but with a surprisingly high skill ceiling. Do not underestimate a Gorogong player! A truly skilled one can wipe the floor with you.

Design

Gorogong is pretty much the poster child of Gigabash and showcases the main design inspiration for most of the original kaiju in the game. Passion Republic Games is a Malaysian company, and Ultraman is really popular there. With this information in mind it becomes clear that Gorogong was designed using traits from a few monsters in Ultraman’s extensive roster. Off the top of my head I can see some silhouette inspiration from Red King EX, and the face reminds me of Bemular (which apparently was the main facial inspiration) and Guigass. Miclas was probably a bigger inspiration than those latter two though.

Overall he wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Ultraman. But despite being a grab bag of traits, his design process was actually quite extensive! And you can see concept art showing the multiple different iterations he went through before PRG finally settled on what we got.

Gorogong is also pretty obviously a volcanic monster, with his stony hide and lava leaking from its cracks. Gorogong burst into the modern world of Gigabash after being disturbed from his hibernation in a volcano after humans stole something from him. But why was he in the volcano, and what was the important thing humans stole?

Lore

Gorogong’s home turf is Luana Island of the Kahu’a Republic, a Polynesian island smack dab in the center of the Pacific Ocean. How long he was there isn’t known, but what is known is that when Polynesian settlers came to the island many centuries ago he was far from happy. Actually that’s an understatement, because Gorogong’s rage is his primary character trait.

He nearly eradicated the settlers and chased the stragglers for hours around the island before cornering them. But right before he could finish them off, Princess Luana, daughter of king Kahu’a and namesake of the island, began singing to crying children to soothe them. Her voice was so beautiful that it calmed Gorogong and pacified him.

In an effort to save her people she led him into the volcano on the island, and in the art showing this backstory in Gorogong’s story mode, Giga energy (what exactly it is or might be is something I’ll further elaborate as these overviews go on) is seen flowing out from the volcano as it then sealed the kaiju inside.

It was only through Princess Luana’s sacrifice that people were able to settle down on the island, and apparently they remained isolated from the rest of the world until the 1940s. Soon after, travel agencies and fast food companies flocked to the island and now it’s a tourist destination flocked with tourists and companies. Much to the frustration of the natives.

The entire time, Gorogong was sleeping in the volcano undisturbed. Of course word of Gorogong’s legend eventually reached the Global Titan Defense Initiative, an anti-kaiju international military organization created during the first kaiju crisis in the 70’s, nowadays though the organization is filled with corruption and uses its military power and resources to rig elections in favor of politicians who’ll throw more money at them, and many governments around the world are dependent on them. They cause more problems than they solve in their efforts to eradicate kaiju. They set up a base on the volcano to investigate if the legends were true, and it quickly became apparent that the volcano was filled with Giga energy and that a kaiju was indeed inside it. There was also a massive Giga Crystal inside (which admittedly looks kinda like a purple turd) and some point they were commissioned by OtamaTEC to remove and retrieve it for a project (which will be covered in another post). Taking away this artifact woke up Gorogong though, and it seems that he’ll follow anyone who takes it from him to the ends of the earth in order to retrieve it, and there’s some implication that the Giga turd is what became of princess Luana.

Overall, Gorogong is a great poster child for the game and was painstakingly designed by PRG to be loving homage to classic Ultraman monsters. He’s also very fun to play and draw.

[inkyself]

I think we sometimes tend to dehumanize people who did horrible things to remove ourselves from even considering we could be capable of evil, at the expense of understanding our reality as humans beings and how we live as a society. I was reading some takes on a character on a show that slept with a nazi soldier and I was surprised to see that there was no compassion at all for her actions. We think all nazis and all fascists were some kind of monsters from the start without individual differences, and that is so dangerous. It’s what’s happening in Europe right now: people vote for far right parties because they underestimate the ties said parties have with that part of history. Because they have individual differences and these politicians aren’t violent. But do you think Hitler started out burning people alive? Do you think Fascism’s first action was Matteotti’s murder? To quote an italian writer who recently passed away, Michela Murgia: “Do you think fascism comes knocking at your door with truncheons and a black shirt?” It doesn’t. Nazis and fascists were just soldiers and neighbors and parents and friends. We all let slide an homophobic or sexist comment at some point in our life. We heard an uncle say that we should let immigrants die in the Mediterranean Sea if they chose to take that chance. How many of our grandparents are anti-abortion? Maybe some of us slept with a fascist (insert obligatory Calcutta quote here). We are underestimating the current political situation because we think history like that was done by monsters. It wasn’t. Just like it isn’t now. The people who voted en mass for the far right in these elections, they grew up in our same cities and witnessed the same problems we have. They are people inhabiting and living in our same spaces.

[silverarmed]

hi! i’m sophie (she/they, 24) and sooo excited to finally be here! on the menu today we have a heavily revamped muse of mine, seo miyun or as she prefers to be called, yun. she’s a 28 yo maintenance worker with cyborg physiology, currently not on her second, third, but fourth chance at a better life. further info and links can be found under the cut. to avoid me ending up in jail, feel free to message me first to plot + i'm also available on d*sc*rd! <3

links stats / story / powers / trivia

summary tws: child abandonment, child abuse, drug abuse

her first chance at a better life was given to her shortly after her birth. her single mother dropped her off at the steps of an orphanage, hoping a caring family would adopt her. instead, she was taken in by one of eden’s most radical anti-metahuman politicians. the moment her ability manifested at the age of nine, her adoptive parents locked her away from the outside world, ashamed of the monster that infiltrated their home.

her second chance was given to her at the age of fifteen. her extended family found out that she was a metahuman and told the press. she became somewhat of a political symbol, especially that she was surrendered again. instead of letting someone else adopt her again or going to the aeternal academy at eighteen, she decided to reconnect with her biological mother instead.

her third chance was given to her at the age of twenty-one. after finding out that her unemployed mother had been spending her hard earned money on alcohol and drugs instead of paying the bills, yun moved out and got affiliated with daemon. she was a fighter with a decent winning streak for about four years before she was caught taking kickers and sent to seongdong correctional facility.

her fourth chance is given to her now, at the age of twenty-eight. thanks to her good behavior, she’s out a few years earlier than she should be, keeping a low profile as one of the maintenance workers in the apartment complex.

because of her primary ability (cyborg physiology), her brain is half biological and half technological. this means she's pretty sharp-witted, but also not as in tune with her emotions as other people are. also has a monotone, borderline robotic voice that can be pretty distressing to deal with at first. infamously hates literature and modern art because she just doesn't understand it.

yes, the blog name did not lie, she does have a silver arm — her right one, in fact! it's her only visible technological part for now. (fun fact: her daemon fighter alias used to be silver for this reason... but she hated it, please don't call her that.)

^ shoutout johnny silverhand

likes fixing things for tenants free of charge (she just wants to feel useful and capable) and playing video games in her spare time. uses her minor ability (electricity manipulation) to cheat when someone is mean to her in vc. 🤷‍♀️

veeery basic connection ideas

event #2 related: someone who dragged her along to the trip! she wouldn't go on her own (doesn't want to get her silver arm rusty + it heats up in the sun and it's just ew) but if someone begged her, she'd probably say yes!

yun has never had romantic feelings for anyone (surprise, surprise) so maybe someone who has a little crush on her and makes her question how anyone could even like her. (she’s questioning so anyone around her age is welcome!)

someone who regularly breaks the electronics in their unit and has her on speed dial. (she came to silver line about four months ago.)

a daemon regular or secret admirer who misses seeing her fight. (she started about seven years ago and retired three years ago.)

i was not here for the first event HOWEVER! it is safe to assume she was just down there working on the generator the whole time. maybe someone who brought her a snack or two as a way of saying thanks?

people who hate her and think she’s a bitch because she’s so cold and blunt all the time. little do they know, it’s just the cogs in her brain.

an angsty “two people trying to heal together but they keep treating each other like shit” connection, anyone? (bonus points if they have similar problems/backgrounds.)

[turtlethon]

The other one is much later in the show's run, in "Dirk Savage: Mutant Hunter", when we learn that Shredder continued to experiment on innocent people, over a period of years, to the point where there were so many mutants running around town that a politician could run on an anti-mutant campaign platform.

Do you remember exact dialogue on that? I watched that episode recently and the only thing I remember was that Tokka & Rahzar were stated to be the result of the Shredder experimenting on Zoo Animals, which I assume to be a reference to the Groundchuck and Dirtbag episodes.

As for the other mutants like the Giraffe lady and mutant bird, I assumed they weren't Shredder experiments but just people or animals that got hit by carelessly placed mutagen during the show's shenanigans rather than deliberate experiments.

Also I feel Baxter Stockman's harsh treatment from Shredder and Krang may have been because he was something of an outsider; being coerced into working for them and once trying to betray the Shredder. Rocksteady and Bebop's gangs were thugs that had been working for them to begin with, so I feel they'd get better treatment.

Upon reflection (and going back and watching the opening of the Dirk Savage ep again) I think you're right: the intent seems to be that the events in the zoo during the Turtleoids special have led to the creation of subsequent mutants over a period of a few years. I'm many months removed from watching the show at this point, so I was basing that on what I wrote at the time and my already potentially fuzzy recollections.

Regarding Shredder and the gang (and by extension, Krang/Baxter) I think where you stand on Shredder's willingness to undo their mutations probably depends on how evil you interpret him to be...

This Shredder is presented as a credible ninja master and criminal mastermind, and is the one who mutated the gang members...

This Shredder is considerably less capable, to put it mildly, and if we're being honest more in-line with how he's presented for the bulk of the series. Outside of his feud with Splinter and the Turtles, his desire for world domination seems to be entirely rooted in his own vanity and self-aggrandizement.

His villainy/competence isn't a binary thing IMO, I think it can be charted on a spectrum depending on the era of the show and who's writing, but as a trend it keeps nudging into ineffectual goofball gradually up to the beginning of season eight, when it dramatically swings back in the opposite direction.

On that basis, I think the likelihood of Shredder undoing the mutations of the gang and letting them go depends on which point in the show it actually happens. If we're assuming it's in the window between S1 and S2 then maybe not, but after the S2 opener the way he's presented changes considerably and he seems to be borderline subservient to Krang rather than the two of them being in a fifty-fifty partnership. At that point I could see him just releasing the gang on the basis that he has enough to deal with, and doesn't need them hanging around.

In regards to Krang (and his attempted vaporizing of Baxter), I've long been of the opinion that as an alien warlord he likely places little value on human life, but I kind of like the idea that the presence of Shredder, Rocksteady & Bebop in the Technodrome softens him a bit and prevents him from being a total monster, in part because their incompetence invariably scuppers all of his plans and stops him doing any significant harm in the end. It's notable that he ordered Baxter's execution while Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop were all on Earth, and there was no-one around to reason with him; I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they serve as his conscience, but, y'know... something like that!

[kendrixtermina]

Points against Zionism: Moral vs Pragmatic Arguments

The Israeli framing of their atrocities is often as a sort of tough pragmatic decision: Maybe it's ugly, but they have no choice. It needs to be done

From that starting position, some ppl then work themselves into sadism & dehumanization to ease the cognitive dissonance of hurting people to do so, telling themselves they are not hurting people, but monsters who deserve it, but not everyone goes so far. There's enough people who say they don't like the pictures, they don't like Netanyahu, but it's needed to protect their people.

Often the counterargument is done in a kantian, moralistic fashion: (No end could possibly justify these means) coulpled with moral shaming (if you support these evil means, you're a bad person)

However, this is useless.

Zionists are indoctrinated to be paranoid & think all non-jews intrinsically want to kill them.

They're in self-preservation mode:If someone is coming at you with a knife and it's you or them, and you kill them in self-defense, most ppl will say that was justified: It was you or them, you are not obligated to die. From the zionists' pov, they are being asked to just die or at least take a big risk.

Let's notice that this isn't unique to them: Many ppl say that they would kill to protect their family. Few would say that if it's between their family or a stranger they pick the stranger.

So the moral shaming doesn't work: It sounds like being shamed for not obediently dying.

The survival instinct is one of the most powerful drives in the human psyche, which is why politicians love to trigger it & condition ppl so as to make it more easy to trigger.

It's kind of evil genius.

This belief is often planted at toddler age so it's pre-rational and triggers an indistnct child-like emotional response that can be hard to dislodge... at least by discourse.

There are so many videos of ppl who instantly quit zionism after just witnessing a Palestinian being normal & nice. Though even those mention having a conditioned fear response - just that when they did, the murder they expected did not occur, proving the falsehood at once.

This is also probably also where you get these "everything is antisemitic" discourse things that, idk, get bent out of shape over goblincore aesthetic, cosplays or cartoon witches, rather resembling a conspiracy theorist looking for evidence of illuminati in a music video or otherwise seeming to look for confirmation of a pre-determined, feared outcome, than any other anti-discrimination awareness that would be concerned with manifest, statistically measurable unfair treatment, harassment or stereotypic portrayal of real people. (which of course does without doubt actually happen to jewish ppl at times)

It's not a rational fear, & it's infuriating to see the faction with the bombs talking of being scared, but while they are scared they can't rly absorb information, neither empathy or nor logic based arguments. Scared ppl get worse at both.

Now, on the other hand the response cannot be to coddle the fear or treat is as rational, because that gives it leverage, plays along with bullshit & concedes their assumptions

What to do instead:

Counter pragmatic arguments on a pragmatic level.

To see what I mean, look no further than this recently publicized discussion with Biden, where he is telling them to "maybe be nice pretty please", & Netanyahu responded that the USA used carpet bombing of German cities and nuclear bombs to win WWII.

On the american side this really shows the absurdity of the foreign policy blob & the US playing world police when it's the biggest rulebreaker. If they don't follow the rules, why should weaker countries?

But on the Israeli side, it's a pragmatic argument: "Ugly acts solve uglier problems. Why don't you let us do what needs to be done? YOU did." this is why biden's weaksauce beseechments do nothing (that, & his refusal to use actual leverage), from their pov he's asking them to forgo the thing that works to look good, even though biden's country didn't in the same situation, he looks like a hypocrite.

But the big problem here, on a pragmatic level, is that it assumes carpet bombing & nukes are why WWII was won (and not because the fascists picked fights with all their neighbors at once, which was just never gonna work)

That is not true. The idea of "strategic bombing" is based on faulty psychology. Surveys done after the war show that carpet bombing did NOT lower axis morale (but rather gave the Nazis fuel for propaganda, in which they claimed the allies were the genocidal ones. they kinda pioneered that DARVO thing that Israel is also fond of) & the nuke was dropped when Japan had already pretty much lost the war.

The allies really should've known that seeing has Hitler's attack on civilians in London did not lower British morale either, they just kept-calm-&-carry-on'd right through it. Though they attributed it to their superior Britishness & thought the enemy would be different.

Wether or not carpet bombing civilians is moral doesn't matter here, because it's INEFFECTIVE.

the means will NOT archieve the ends, justified or otherwise.

It's the same thing as with torture. It doesn't make ppl divulge infor or change their allegiance, ppl end up making shit up to tell the torturers what they wanna hear

(Though, as in all these things, the most efficient ppl at convincing are gonna be the in-group. If an outsider speaks, they're easily dismissed as "just another one of THEM" but an "us" is seen as a person & given the benefit of the doubt, their opinion is seen as mattering.

The best way to fight sexism is men not laughing at sexist jokes, the best way to fight racism is white ppl acting embarassed of racist relatives (that, and systemic reforms, but I'm talking the individual layer here. The systemic remedy to zionism is probably international pressure. I think systemic & individual measures are best combined because you can't neglect either half, but that's a different essay)

In that sense I'm grateful to all those Jewish protesters.)

[oh-the-horror-reviews]

FILM REVIEW: Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

As a FNAF fan, this film finally getting released made my year. A comfy night me and my little brother spent using the movie tickets I won at a coffee cart raffle, eating candy and popcorn and then having Thai takeout to wrap the night up. A nostalgia trip for both of us.

WARNINGS FOR: heavy plot spoilers for the film and original games, mentions and descriptions of gore, child death, child abuse (physical) and blood

POSITIVES

And that's really what this movie is, a nostalgia trip. Because I want to make one thing clear. If you haven't seen anything about FNAF, especially the silver eyes trilogy of novels, you probably aren't going to enjoy the film. If you only know fanon information and nothing about the canonical lore you probably aren't going to enjoy this film either... that's two things (/ref).

The final 'twist' isn't well set up because that's not what they were trying to do. From the very start a FNAF fan knows that 'Steve Raglan' (played by THE Matthew Lillard! One of two original Ghostface killers!) is absolutely William Afton. The final fight is just fan service for us fans and not a well plotted, set up reveal. What's the point of it? Acting as if we don't already know?

The choice to make the characters like Mike, Abby, Garrett, the missing children, Vanessa, etc parallels of existing characters in the FNAF universe instead of new people or exact adaptations is something I actually liked as well. I've heard some people are confused about it or just don't like it but a lot of that comes from expectations before the film released.

A LOT of people had it in their heads that the movie was going to be some hardcore jumpscare and gore-fest because "FNAF is so dark!" when... let's be real here. The darkness of FNAF has always come from lore behind the games and not visual representations of it. The closest we've ever really gotten to gore is some red pixels during one of the FNAF 3 minigames depicting William Afton's death in the springlock suit.

It's 2023 we can like kids horror either out of nostalgia or genuinely thinking it's good. Plenty of adults like Goosebumps and whatever. This movie was never going to be an R16-R18 horror. Imagine cutting off a good 3 years of your fanbase for 'accuracy' that isn't even accurate! Knowing how trapped and lost the missing children are after having their lives cut so short by such a selfish monster is already dark and way more accurate to how the games handled the lore.

It probably doesn't help that Scott helped work on the film and considering he's a devout anti-abortion, donating to homophobic politicians in secret Christian I doubt he would've been okay pushing the gore too far.

If anything, the lighthearted tone touching on the missing children still being actual children and not just murder machines makes the few gore and blood scenes even more shocking. The aunt's team of vandals getting attacked, the babysitter getting CUT IN HALF and the springlock scene at the end of the film are all good at raising the tension in such a colourful environment focusing on a family focused story.

CRITICISMS

The only two things I could criticize are:

1) Elizabeth Lail's acting. As Vanessa, she's noticeably more... exaggerated than her other cast members who all try to come off as realistic as they can for their characters. And not in a Renfield or Jack Griffin type of way where they're just purposefully odd or straight up nuts compared to everyone else. Just some of her line deliveries are a bit 'off' or even a little cringy? It's not that big of an issue and you don't notice it most of the time but I thought I'd mention it.

2) The lack of context for Vanessa and William's father-daughter relationship. It's heavily implied that William abused Vanessa as a child. Seeing how he behaves around her even as an adult, treating her less like a person and more of a tool or a verbal punching bag and with his track record with his kids in other universes (slapping daughters and gassing sons with hallucinogenic gas really doesn't get you father of the year) and the fact he gave a dead kids toy to his own kid as some fucked up 'trophy', it's pretty obvious.

But we really don't get any deeper context for her behaviour during the film specifically. Vanessa constantly lies and hides information in the film and it comes off as very, very annoying for a while. We can see by the end that William put that behaviour in her as a child so he wouldn't be caught murdering kids because his daughter told people what he was doing. But we never get to see much of this other than the brief confrontation at the final fight so it's harder to sympathize with her almost getting Abby killed. The movie's pacing is good so I think they could've pushed a few extra scenes in with her and William without slowing anything down. We all knew who he was anyway and they didn't have to reveal she was his daughter before the end because in the games she's already a brainwashed follower of his ideals.

WOULD I RECOMMEND THIS MOVIE?

Yes! It's fun, colourful and good for people who don't like non-stop nasties for a movie night but are still interested in something tense. Just don't expect to love it nearly as much if you know nothing about FNAF or the canon lore ("why is Cassidy not a girl?" "why is Cassidy blonde?" tiktok comments are starting to get to me)

A fun watch for fans and light horror fans :)

[paradoxcase]

Continuing the convo here. OK confession time. Project 2025 is very scary and the anti-choice movement is very scary. I don't like feeling out of step with my friends, but some of them are opposed to voting; one person described fear of Trump as "cynical hand-wringing", and other said "there's always going to be a scary guy." But I just don't see the point in, for one, protesting a war by allowing the election of a guy who's going to make the war worse. And secondly, I have always been scared shitless of pregnancy, and even as a kid I thought it was an insult to us kids to treat fetuses like real babies, and so the right's attacks on abortion are just the most cruel terrifying inhumane thing imaginable to me. And I heard that Project 2025 wants to restrict abortion everywhere, not just in the USA. Deep in my gut, all the left-wing cries that I'd be getting blood on my hands by voting mean jack shit in the face of the overwhelming existential dysphoric terror at the thought of forced birth. More than anyone else, I want someone to understand this.

And I do honestly believe the path to fighting global warming involves rapid and extreme action against monopoly capitalism. But I also want the short term benefit of not having people in power that spit at my gender and see my body as nothing but baby food. And it is incredibly shitty that the dems are threatening us to vote for them by saying "they'll take away your rights" when they could have done more in the first place to codify those rights. But why blame me for it? Leftblr is making me feel like a hideous class traitor for something that I am being effectively forced into!

Oh also, people are really mad about a bad post someone made where they used hitler apology to explain why we should vote blue. So now I worry that I'll be seen even more as a monster for voting. That what if I AM a monster who doesn't care enough about foreigners being killed. But like, the alternative is imagining SA victims being bodyhorrorred and I didn't do the one small thing that could try to protect them.

I mean, I think it's a reasonable point that you shouldn't do things or make decisions purely based on a knee-jerk fear reaction, and I feel like our society has done a lot to try to make us viscerally afraid of pregnancy, kind of regardless of the bodily autonomy issues around restriction of birth control and abortion, or at least I think it does when you grow up in an abstinence-only education state, that kind of "education" is very much focused on controlling you through fear. But just because society tries to control you through fear and the alt-right is very much driven by fear and being controlled and motivated by fear by politicians and pundits doesn't mean that it's not sensible to be afraid of anything, or that there aren't logical reasons to fear something, or even that pregnancy isn't something you should fear. If you're afraid of something, you can look up the the actual facts about it, and decide based on the facts whether it makes sense to fear it, and then if you still do, your reasons for fearing it are more based on actual reality and not just on a knee-jerk feeling you have about it, and knowing the facts about it will also help you be more effective at avoiding it. And, even if you are afraid, when trying to convince other people about political issues, it's much better to be able to say, these are the facts of this issue, and this is why this outcome will be bad, not just for me, but also for you and lots of other people, rather than just saying, I'm afraid for myself, even if your fear is a stronger motivator for you personally. No matter how sensible your fear is, not everyone is going to be able to empathize with it, because fear is fundamentally not based on actual facts. The only way to make someone else afraid of the same things you are afraid of is to use the manipulative fear tactics they tried to use to make us afraid of sex before marriage, and that's not ethical. I know it feels like your fear is the strongest and best argument and the most important reason to oppose Trump, but a lot of other people are not going to feel that way, and that doesn't make them like, inhuman or lacking empathy or anything, it's just because fear is kind of illogical, both in that people will fear things that aren't dangerous/scary and also in that they won't fear things that are dangerous.

But honestly, I would personally just stop listening to those types of people and stop following them. They are not really "leftblr". There is not always a "scary guy" who is the president trying to take away reproductive rights, if Harris is elected, there won't be. I don't know what the Hitler post was about, but there will always be people making dumb arguments for every side of any issue, and that doesn't mean that every political position is dumb.

[medicinemane]

You know I’ll say it again, we shouldn’t have let russia host the olympics

I’m not saying it caused this, but it certainly gave them a green light to keep going

So many people were saying it at the time, though they were more talking about the anti lgbt laws that had recently passed, but they still were pointing to this and pointing back to when hitler hosted the olympics and were saying don’t do this, don’t make putin feel like the international community is accepting what he’s doing

Of course the olympics is a corrupt as fifa, so they don’t care, they don’t care about anyone or anything

Still... here we are, and I’m not saying it’s as simple as they hosted the olympics and then said let’s go butcher people, but I’m saying the west over and over and over gave signs that they wouldn’t do anything about this including literally not doing anything about this when russia did the exact same things in the past

Western politicians and businesses just kind of left it at ruefully shaking their heads and saying “they shouldn’t have done that” and so what else would russia expect would happen if they attacked Ukraine?

I’m mad at people who never will even hear my anger because they’re in spheres I’m nowhere close to. I mean unless any of you are politicians who did photo shoots with lavrov doing the whole “reset button” bullshit, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case

So yeah, just kind of angry at the people in power who got us to this point, and I focus on Ukraine but like... whose fault do you think things in Iran is? I’m not deeply versed in the details but I know the US had a major role in ousting the previous Iranian government and now absolute monsters are in charge

I’m tired of the people at the top, and I don’t really know what to do about that, but I’m just pissed off because of all the choices that have been made leading up to now that even an idiot could see what was coming. They just didn’t care

[argentdandelion]

Things Anti-Monster Politicians Could Do (Extremely Angsty)

(Mild) → (Moderate) → (Severe)→ (Extremely Angsty)

The anti-monster politician would make coordinated attempts to intimidate, harass, trap, kill, or entirely exterminate monsters. Some options add so much angst the tone is unrecognizable as something Undertale-derived. Not recommended for fan works unless Frisk is very competent at going back in time, ruining anti-monster humans’ plans, and giving them their comeuppance.

This options cannot plausibly happen shortly after monsters leave Mt. Ebott. More likely, these options are the culmination of years of anti-monster propaganda establishing monsters as dangerous to humans or, worse, as irrevocably aggressive or uncontrollable.

Tactics

Tactic 1. Trap Towns

The easiest, most feasible Extremely Angsty option for anti-monster politicians is clandestinely designing certain towns as “trap towns” for monsters, similarly to the terrifying sundown towns of the U.S. in the 1960s.1 To separate them from human witnesses/defenders, the trap towns could be put in the middle of nowhere, and travelling monsters could be directed there through mis-printed maps, faulty GPS, sadistic gas station employees, or just unexpected blockades. Once there, official or de facto policies could specify monsters must be “repelled by all means necessary”. (and, of course, some would die, that being the law’s true purpose)

Anti-monster politicians could also establish a continuous set of states or provinces where monsters are entirely banned, isolating monsters within certain states through this new interstate/inter-province “Barrier”. However, a clandestine trap town system would be technically and politically easier to set up: they could get most of the monster-killing benefits by simply putting the trap towns on state borders.

Tactic 2. Manufactured Disasters

If magic-suppressing devices regulate magic rather than only hinder it, it might be possible to make them amplify magic, or even involuntarily summon a monster’s magic. Since the monsters are used to low levels or are out of practice, this could easily manufacture disasters, justifying even worse measures. Most plausibly, they could simply make the collars stop suppressing magic when the monsters are used to the effect. Thus, a small, harmless bullet display made under magic suppression could become suddenly much more powerful, and likely to hurt a human.

Taking this to the extreme, AMPs could classify all monsters as living weapons, based on their magical ability and alleged aggressive behavior.

Tactic 3. Painful Magic Modification

For even greater angst, rather than making it more difficult to emit bullets, the collars could outright shock monsters or briefly destabilize their bodies if they tried to use magic. If using magic is an instinctive activity or important for proper psychological development, instantly punishing them for using magic would raise them to be a bunch of wrecks.

Anti-monster politicians could, beyond amplifying or suppressing magic, deliberately change the devices’ settings remotely to kill all the monsters at once. Alternatively, they could leave easily exploited security problems in the Internet-connected bands so independent anti-monster hackers can kill monsters without politicians being to blame. Or, AMPs could design the hardware so it will predictably “malfunction” after a certain span of time, or make the software “glitch out” when responding to a new kind of signal getting installed in the area for non-suspicious reasons. Of course, if they were especially clever evil people, they could use an unpredictable combination of all the factors, so no one can figure out what’s causing it until it’s too late.

Tactic 4. Separation

Anti-monster politicians could separate monsters from humans entirely, supposedly for their own safety or for humans’ safety, and put them on faraway “reservations”. (If they’re allowed to stop using magic suppressors on the “reservations”, that would make it extra appealing.) The AMPs could even outright hire assassins to kill a few monsters first, making the reservations look safer.2 For maximum angst, AMPs could ensure the monsters are all slaughtered while they are far away from witnesses or the media.

In a ridiculously angsty setting, anti-monster humans would surely be willing to kill any humans who allied themselves with monsters, or just happened to be in the way during a monster-killing spree.3 They might even seal human allies underground, too. (But not if they know the power of a human-monster fusion)

The worst variant is sealing them Mt. Ebott again, but modifying the new barrier so humans can still get in. Anti-monster politicians could pluck monsters out for use in military weapons (e.g., extracting energy from monster SOULs to make weapons). For really, really angsty options (use sparingly even in high-angst works) they could occasionally brand them as “criminals” for breaking minor and arbitrary laws and invite people at high cost to execute them, a la “canned shoots” for wild animals.

Workarounds

Trap Town Workarounds

Workaround 1: Using blockades to redirect monsters would, obviously, affect human transit too, possibly angering humans who live close to the trap towns. Furthermore, unless there’s a very plausible reason for the blockades (e.g., earthquake damage to the road ahead) a road maintenance crew would figure out the ploy within a few weeks and remove the blockade.

Workaround 2: If there is only a road block, the monsters could simply go off-road (in sufficiently flat terrain) or magically make their vehicles fly to avoid unsuitable terrain and also the trap towns.

Workaround 3: Alternatively, if the anti-monster humans running the trap towns would prefer not to kill other humans, one monster on a cross-country trip could have multiple human passengers and a specific travelling plan. Short of killing the human passengers, there would be witnesses, and therefore big legal repercussions for killing the monsters in the trap towns.

Manufactured Disaster Workarounds

Workaround 1: Technologically-inclined monsters notice the collars can be hacked remotely, and either fix it themselves or force humans to fix it for selfishly-appealing reasons. (e.g., “What if people hacked the collars to suddenly turn them off? Humans could get hurt from magic bullets!” “Uh, thanks, definitely wouldn’t want that to happen.”)

Workaround 2: Monsters make magic-suppressing devices themselves/a quietly pro-monster human does, secretly advised by a monster. If not all manufacturers of magic-suppressing devices are chummy with AMPs, and most monsters use devices the AMPs don’t control, it would be impossible for the AMPs to kill many monsters in an instant.

Painful Magic Modifications

Workaround 1: Monsters “upgrade” the device software en masse....just to give it stronger security protocols and failsafes so suppression won’t become lethal. (If the bands can indeed be hacked through the Internet, they could probably manage security downloads, too.) Anti-monster humans would have a hard time arguing about that, authorized or not.

Workaround 2: Wealthy pro-monster humans dedicate some land to a particularly luxurious reservation, with as few anti-monster restrictions as they can get away with.

Workaround 3: Monsters upload professionally-edited videos of very elaborate magic displays from one of the few places where it’s legal to use magic. The videos became very popular; humans are interested in visiting reservations (even if it’s supposedly dangerous or out-of-the-way) specifically to see the magic shows.

Workaround 4: A travelling troupe of monster performers/cheap movie special-effects providers is allowed to have their collars off when practising or performing magic bullet shows. They show off their great levels of control.

Tactic 4. Separation

Workaround 1: A human interested in a “canned shoot” for a monster, or studying monster SOULs as energy sources, accidentally absorbs a monster SOUL. The monster partially controls their body and tries to use them as a way to free the other monsters. Alternatively, the human becomes sympathetic to the monster and monsters’ plight after living with their very SOUL inside them.

Workaround 2: A monster absorbs a human SOUL, but pretends the human SOUL has gained control over the body because the monster was weak-willed. The monster (pretending to be a human) suggests it’s not so bad to have a monster body, or the power of its (clearly superior) human SOUL within a monster body allows it to intimidate the monster population into submission. (Making it seem less sensible to pluck out and execute “criminals”)

General Workarounds

Workarounds 1: Unpredictable malfunctions (localized gas leaks, fires, viruses, software malfunctions, Internet outages, not having any pens in the whole building to sign a law) keep happening right before anti-monster politicians make horrific laws. (It’s all Frisk’s doing.)

Workarounds 2: All anti-monster politicians live in fear of getting food poisoning right before important meetings where something is signed into law. (And Frisk learns both stealth and the art of poison.)

If you enjoyed this post, you may be interested in the author's Patreon and Ko-Fi.

Even more terrifyingly...some still exist.  ↩︎

In Undertale: Long Road, a senator named Senator Crier recommends “reservations” for monsters, supposedly for their own safety because they are so fragile around humans. At the same time, three modern-day wizards are using an ancient artifact to extract monster SOULs, which kills monsters. The string of murders scares monsters, and probably motivates them to send their kids to Asgore’s summer camp at the last minute.  ↩︎

In a frightening GlitchTale prequel video, set in the first war between humans and monsters, a masked magic-user sealed a town in a magical dome and filled the dome with (presumably poisonous) gas, killing both human and monster residents. In GlitchTale itself, the supposedly pro-human, anti-monster Betty is quite willing to kill hundreds of humans to gain the power necessary to exterminate monsters. ↩︎

[utilitycaster]

I keep seeing people say Ashton is very loyal but I just don't see it? I don't have a very good read on Ashton's character though and it seems to be a pretty common thought so I could be wrong but I'd love some thoughts!

Yeah, a lot of people are wrong.

I covered some of this here after the first paragraph but it's worth going into more because I think people are really wrong about Ashton (and I like Ashton!)

I think a lot of people saw that Ashton is a punk and decided that Ashton is their idea of a punk: leftist politics, class struggle, DIY, tear down the system and rebuild it with mutual aid, marginalized identity, a sense of community. But they are full-on projecting something that does not exist within the text of the show. I will leave my further thoughts about this up to the readers of this post; know that they are very derisive, but also very funny.

Punk was made a widespread movement because a fashion designer wanted to use it to sell clothing and a band said "yeah, we'll do that." It was initially, if it was about anything, about pissing people off. At the height of the movement there were the same issues in punk as any rock movement had: drug abuse, sexism, anti-LGBT bigotry, racism. Straightedge, Riot grrrl, queercore, and "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" didn't come from nowhere - they came from people's actual bad experiences within the punk community. And the prototypical punk just wanted to fucking break shit.

In short: people desperately despite want Ashton to be a punk in the mold of Billie Joe Armstrong or Ian MacKaye (or worse, but unfortunately more accurately, in the mold of some ahistorical Tumblr post that says thing like "punk is about loving animals" and ignores the existence of like, skinheads, or the fact that words have meanings) and conveniently forgets that the Sex Pistols were largely just nihilists and Johnny Ramone fucking loved Ronald Reagan. And I think Ashton is modeled off that dissatisfied nihilism.

Ashton lives in a semblance of a co-op or punk house, and even has some friends there (well, Milo, and kind of Anni), but you get the sense he'll leave once he's got the chance. As I said, they gave up FCG - and Krook House - to the Corsairs in a heartbeat as collateral.

Ashton isn't loyal to Jiana. They're loyal to the existing agreement, that she won't turn them in and they'll work off the debt, but that's the limit.

Ashton mistrusts people who use vague terms like "greater good" and "loyalty". There is no sentiment or desire for the right thing or moral compass here. As they say to the Green Seekers when they explain their philosophy, "No, I always prefer working with people who are in it for the money. Then you know what they want. The 'right thing' can mean fucking anything." No loyalty to a cause, because they don't trust causes.

Ashton isn't loyal to Jrusar, or frankly, to Bells Hells yet, and seriously considers Ratanish's offer. Because Ratanish makes sense. Ratanish works for the highest bidder, even if that bidder is a power-hungry politician working with a slug monster and the Nightmare King. Ashton is, in the end, immensely self-interested.

Now: because the other pillar of his personal philosophy is "follow the fucking rules of whatever you're doing" (not the law - the rules, like "if something blows up you say you have no idea what's going on") he doesn't want The Verdict to die, because Evon Hytroga is an asshole and broke those rules of engagement, but he has no loyalty to them either - it was just that the rules were "get the earring as best you can, and there will be some security" and Ashton's furious that the "security" was way more fatal than indicated. It's not loyalty, it's a common enemy.

One could argue that Ashton's point of view is the result of being left behind by the Nobodies. They're living the result of that "everyone for themselves" philosophy and you know what, it sucks, but they have doubled down on it.

If I may (it's my blog, I always may): this isn't new. People love to project a morality onto Taliesin's characters that flat-out doesn't exist. Like, the idea that Molly was the moral compass is outright laughable. Molly treated Kiri, in Taliesin's own words, "like an animal you were going to butcher" [much like Ashton treated the horses], tried to enthrall two party members when he simply could have asked, and was unwilling to do anything other than give a bit of money or food to the Schusters, only joining in to an actual attempt to materially help them when other party members pushed for it. In the Talks episode after Molly's death, the philosophy outlined (other than "Life's short, do something to a bagel," which does to be fair outline a certain lazy hedonism that is generous when convenient) was "Make people have to deal with you but making dealing with you as pleasant an experience as possible" and the thing about that is, you still have to fucking deal with him, and the pleasantness of being treated as disposable or worthy of mind control is debatable.

So for Ashton, the philosophy is more like "trust only the most concrete of motivations, follow the code, it is what it is, and everyone's looking out for themselves". They're not building bridges out here. And I think that's great and interesting to explore! But fuck, is Ashton not loyal.

[snalsupremacy]

2022 events (complete!)

- Disclaimer: These are not all of the events that happened in 2022, just the ones I happen to come across.

-Circus band plays megalovania to the Pope -Tumbrl/IOS mega ban causes tumbrl to create a new language -Tumbrl has become too profitable, unlike CW who hasn't been profitable since 2006 -Italian senate zoom bombed with r34 of Tifa from Final Fantasy -Microsoft bought Activation Blizzard for 70 billion -10th Capybara long bath championship (this isnt much of an notable event but I just found out it exists and now so do you) -Netflix stocks plummet -TOTALLY SPIES REBOOT??? -Green M&M drama GUYS ITS NOT EVEN FEB CAN U CALL DOWN - GREEN M&M DRAMA WAS A DISTRACTION TO CHILD LABOR LAWSUIT??!? -Percy Jackson Disney+ series -Did the cryptoland thing happen this year?

-Maus school ban in Tennessee -The yassification of Pinocchio -Everybody is into Wordle -TikToker getting rejected by prestigious college? Scandalous! -Famous Brazilian podcaster publicly supports the foundation of a Nazi political party - Kirby car. Carby. - Palmeiras ainda não tem mundial :( -super bowl or whatever. Palmeiras was so close I could feel it. -Mitski's Laurell Hell on top 5 bill board??? -Incredibly I made it this far without even mentioning that Russia is trying to invade Ukraine -Petrópolis (RJ, Brazil) flods for the second time, killing hundreds -New yuri on ice official art in 2022, I don't even know what to say -Ukraine is getting evacuated -Kanye West insta breakdown -Arthur ends -Monster High reboot Draculaura's design slaps!! -Russia invades Ukraine -Texas anti-trans law now investigating trans kids' families for child abuse -ITS ME BOY IM THE PS5 SPEAKING TO YOU INSIDE YOUR BRAIN -Cheese belly weed cat started pokemon gen 9 or smth

-Live Slug reaction - THEY ADDED VIKTOR'S RING SHAKING PISSING CRYING -Florida's don't say gay bill - Disney supports don't say gay bill but Disney workers protest and now Disney doesn't -Parents mad at turning red for showing teenage girls periods, which they have, and twitter mad at them showing cringe drawings, which they also have -Purim and Patrick's Day coincidence which leads to a lot of drunks -DROP THE CAR BATTERY -Everybody watching the 8 hour victorius video (??) -Situation in Ukraine keeps getting worse - Gas price skyrocket now that countries is refusing to import russian gasoline -Jaiden animations comes out as aroace -Evergiven anniversary celebration by having the same ship cross the canal -US politician died? -WILL SMITH SLAPS THE SHIT OUT OF CHRIS ROCK ON THE OSCARS also many outfits slapped I am looking (respecfully) at zendaya and timothee chalamet

-Happy april fool's day! Tumbrl did a hole ass click-a-thon with bunch of crabs and even an small text rpg, cool! Also Brick head tumbrl sexymen?? -what happens in April 3rd??? Why is danny phantom everywhere??? Also grammys -R/Place becomes the first virtual active warzone between fandoms. fun! -Sonic 2 hell..... yes (also sonic 3? cant wait!) - LAPD sending in like 100 police men for literally 4 environmental scientists peacefully protesting -Namona re-newed by netflix me thinks - Scart finally gets his accorn as a goodbye to BlueSky studios - Elon Musk tries to buy twitter -Ramadan Easter Pessach combo -Rihanna's boyfrend arrested -Tumbrl blaze drops -MISHA COLLINS COMES OUT AS BISEXUAL -Johnny Depp and Amber Heard lawsuit -Netflix reveals that they lost like 200,00 + 700,00 (from russia) subscribers and expect to lose more -OMG IT WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING MISHA COMES OUT AS STR8 💀💀 -Elon Musk BUYS TWITTER - Oh yeah Morbius - James Corden leaves late late show lets goooo

- GOP draft leak of trying to overrule roe v wade drops while Met Gala is happening -Everyone into Dracula daily -Eurovision week! Veggies and Pussy will be for ever in my heart. - NEW MCR SONG NEW MCR SONG NEW MCR SONG NEW MCR SON -UK GETS SECOND PLACE??? WTF???? Ukraine wins, NOT LATVIA???? WTF???? - Finland joins NATO - holy shit. Avatar 2. its out, its finally out -Still not fully convinced but hxh might return?? -OH OH OH ITS NOT FAKE ITS NOT FAKE HXH WILL RETURN HOLY SHIT SHAKING AND CRYING RN HXH IS COMING BACK GAHSGSAJ -Happy 3rd anniversary to Promare, best t4t anime couple i will not elaborate -Texas elementary school shooting, 21 dead -Guy throws cake at mona lisa - BTS meets with Joe Biden at the White House??? -Pokemon V&S legendary drop

-Back by unpopular demand: morbius in theaters -Berserk is back -Gravity Falls 10 year anniversary! as a present we got the full we'll meet again song and SO MUCH shade from talks alex had about censorship issues -California ruled that in some situations bees can be considered fish so that it can be protected under the endangered species law -That AI machine that can generate images (DALL-E) -Internet Explorer shuts down -Pikachu man ad nightmare fuel - 3 NEW ATLA MOVIES COMING OUT LETS GO -Elon Musk getting sued or smth -Overruled Roe v Wade - Oslo shooting at LGBT club kills 2 and harms 21 more - Technoblade dies of cancer at 23

- Tributes to Technoblade continue such as other streamers and Minecraft itself - Shooting at 4th of July parade at Chicago, 6 dead - Boris Johnson +50-ish ministers resign in like 48 hours - Kazuki Takahashi, creator of Yu Gi Oh, found dead at a beach - Shinzo Abe, Japan's previous prime minister is assassinated during public speech -Argentinian Economy Minister resigns - Luis Echeverria, Mexican ex-president, dies at 100 - Elon Musk pulls out on Twitter deal and Twitter sues him for that -Georgia Guidestones destroyed - José Eduardo dos Santos, Angolan ex-president, dies at 79 - Sri Lanka's economy collapses, protester storm Gotabaya Rajapaksa's (President) house, as well as setting fire to Ranil Wickremesinghe's (PM) house - Finally good news! The James Webb telescope released some images and they are absolutely BEAUTIFUL! - Ivana Trump (Trump's ex wife) dies of yet unknown causes (Update: I think she fell off stairs?) - The Looney Tunes social media managers just confirmed Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are a couple???? - Stray is a cat simulator is think? kinda like the goose thing back in like 2018? -Pink sauce that actually kills people -Start Trek actress nichelle nichols dies at 89

- Shakira may be going to prison for Tax Evasion???? - Jo Soares dies at 84 - One of Trump's houses gets raided by the FBI - Bridget from guilty gear confirmed trans! big w! - Serena Williams retires - Olivia Newton-John  dies at 73 - Fan fiction AO3 OTW tiffany election something along those lines idk i dont read - HBO Max Cartoon Network purge

-Florence Pugh arrives at venice film festival while the rest of the cast for Don't Worry Darling does a press interview (?) -Supernatural trending, 3 dead 11 injured - Chris Pine exposed for being and erotica writer and like 5 other things - Dan and Phil posted a video where multiple things are said but mainly notable female celebrity suggested a threesome which is just so funny - Reigen vs Sans finale of the ultimate tumbrl sexyman election interrupted by the death of Queen Elizabeth II - Sans wins bc of he does. Was there even a questions? How tf did reigen even get that high up?? -TRISHA PAYTAS GIVES BIRTH RIGHT AFTER THE QUEEN DIES - TOBY FOX WRITES REIGEN VS SANS FANFICTION WHAT IS GOING ON - Reigen istg he won babygirl awards, anime twink, sexiest anime girl, the nobel peace prize, Dilf, Milf, -Meghan Markle wears the exact same fit as Diana's for the funeral - Harry Styles may or may not spit in Chris Pine's face - SPAMTON SWEEPSTAKES! DONATE AND MAYBE YOU TOO CAN BE A [BIG SHOT] -Iranian police kills woman (Mahsa Amini) over not properly wearing compulsory hijab, causes street riots -New James Webb picture of Saturn! Those pics re-awakening my love for space - 50 twitch dramas one in a row for like 5 days i don't even have the energy to name them all - Huge drama chess involving alleged cheating via anal beads and playing naked to prove wrong what is going on - Brazilian presidential election is like trying to decide between drowning and being on fire - Adam Levine exposed not only for cheating but being catastrophically bad at flirting - Ghost Files! The ghoul boys are back! - Ned from Try Guys cheats on his wife and is consequently gets kicked out of the team - Tumbrl lifts porn ban

- Sacheen Littlefeather dies - Dream face reveal - Bolsonaro and Lula for 2nd term election - Velma canonically lesbian for new Scooby Doo movie - Smth ab She-Hulk I dont have the energy to understand - Mario movie traler release went just as expected: Jack Black sold it and Chris Pratt... is trying his best - SNL parodies the Try Guys video where they announce Ned's leaving by making fun of everyone but ned :/// -Robbie Coltrane (who plays Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies) dies - Minecraft Mob voting! -SNIFFER WINS WHOOO -AO3 reaches 10M works - Markiplier will start an OnlyFans if he beats Joe Rogan in podcasts - Climate activists throw tomatoe soup in Van Gogh's Sunflower - UK PM resigns in 45 days -Elon Musk buys twitter

-Kit Connor forced to come out as Bisexual - Ryan Reynalds joins tumblr on... -The 2 year anniversary of canon destiel - Dracula Daily ends - I think Tommyinnit os on Tumbrl? The poor soul - Chris Evans chosen by People's magazine as the sexiest man alive, good for him! - American midterm elections -Ash from Pokemon finally becomes the very best that no one ever was - Kevin Conroy, famous va for Batman, dies at 66 - Trump announces he will run for 2024 presidential election - Two missiles (allegedly) from Russia hit Polish borders and kills 2 civilians, may cause call for article 5 of NATO - SpaceX launches another rockets i think? - Shane reveals he's a raylo shipper - Pokemon scarlet and violet releases and surprised! Its full of bugs bc its rushes -Breaking news: Sonic frontiers does NOT suck, its not perfect but MAN that means so much to sonic fans - AO3 down - AO3 back up -Jason David Frank, the original green Power Ranger, dies at 49 -Gerar putting their whole he/they pussy into those concert outfits he's been trending for a week now! - I'm so glad more people are talking about Goncharov (1973) is gaining more popularity its literally my favorite mafia film - Colorado shooting at LGBTQ+ club, 5 dead, suspect had already sent bomb threats a year prior and has charges for kidnapping but no one thought that maybe a guy like that should not own a gun :D -The walking dead just ended but most importantly IT WAS RUNNING THIS ENTIRE TIME??? -ARGENTINA LOST TO SAUDI ARABIA LETS GO BRAZIL WE GOT A CHANCE WE GOT THIS VAI BRASIL 100% JESUS VAMO HEXA - VAI BRASIL VAI RICHARLISON FUCK NEYMAR 2 A 0 2 A 0 VAMO HEXA - Argentina won against Mexico i guess :/ - Martin Scorcese acknowledges Goncharov, ending this crazy week of blogging with a bang -Christine McVie, Singer/songwriter of Fleetwood Mac, dies at 79 -Argentina wins again 🙄

-Ye (Kanye West) ruining his career interview by interview - Smth important politically happened in the US Destiel is trending again -US basketball player released from Russian prison in exchange of arms dealer -BRAZIL SPEAK TO ME -Argentina won AGAIN👹 - Elon Musk booed off stage a comedy show - Markiplied drops the OnlyFans and so many people join the site literally broke - Warrior Nun cancelled -JOJOLANDS RELEASE DATE FEB 17TH CANT COME SOON ENOUGH FEB 17TH CANT COME SOON ENOUGH -Argentina wins the world cup :/// I mean better than frnace ig -Messi pic on insta with the trophy beats the egg in most liked image -IM NOT OK ASH AND PIKACHU ARE LEAVING POKEANIME OMG HE MET WITH BUTTERFREE HE'S SAYING GOODBYE TO HIS OLD PALS OMG NO ONE TALK TO ME -BARBIE MOVIE TRAILER YESSS -The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery out on netflix, and it's good! also Blanc canonically gay and is dating hugh grant in the movies? - Greta Thunberg twet burned andrew tate so hard, he made a comeback video which revealed his location, leading to his arrest!! ANDREW TATE ARRESTED!! -Last OOTT of the year ToT -Pelé, greatest soccer player of all time, died at 82 -This is not nearly as big as anything else on this list but this is my list and I get to put out whatever I want. SZIN POSTED NEW HYBRID HEROES EPISODE WOOOOOOOOO -Former pope died -Bolsonaro escapes to US i bet he won't come back to Brazil -Oof! what a year! see you all in 2023!

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it’s a fucking metaphor!

Titans 3.08

i’ve finally gathered the mental and emotional resources to do this thing, so let’s go! as always, i’m typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. on watching this opening scene, i was thinking back to how gar was in s1, or even the early bits of s2. the way he idolised the others, particularly dick, and his readiness to go along with whatever they said, and the way he practically bled the need for acceptance. and here he is now, openly defying dick, fully open to and aware of the flaws of the people he loves and admires, knowing he is accepted no matter what and extending that generosity elsewhere. it’s a remarkable bit of character growth that’s... sort of blossomed in the background and so rewarding to see and acknowledge. 

1.25. i guess what i really love about this conflict over how to respond to jason--as clumsily as it is sometimes written--is how their histories and individual traumas inform each character’s reaction. dick is torn between his guilt over what’s become of jason and his drive to do what batman had essentially given up on doing: he is motivated to track down red hood at all costs but there’s a sense that he’s not completely sold on the idea that the only way to stop him is to kill him. (he might go the comics route and try to put him in arkham? god, imagine if the season ended with jason in arkham.) kory’s never had much of a connection with jason in the first place, and jason has done one of the worst things he could do in her book: track and kill a member of her newfound family and is threatening to kill more. 

and gar... sure. look. the idea of jason and red hood as separate entities appeals to him; that red hood emerged when jason was drugged to the gills by scarecrow and lost his usual inhibitions. gar’s struggled with what he becomes when he’s pushed to his limits, too--he did rip open that experimenting scientist with his teeth way back in 1.07, after all, and he was brainwashed by cadmus in s2 into becoming a literal monster. he needs to think, to know, there’s a dichotomy, a line that can only be crossed under extreme duress or by outside influence. 

and he says--and we say--that he was accepted back into the titans in spite of what he’d done, but was he really? gar’s always struggled with his footing in this group; relegated to the caretaker, the tech guy, the gatekeeper, and sometimes punching bag even though everybody’s paying lip service to how much of a family they all are. perhaps gar reaching out to jason and offering acceptance is aspirational on his part: perhaps this is the effort he hoped the titans put/or will put into getting gar back, even when it would seem like he’s too far gone.

1.5. anyway my point is that i don’t think it’s worth discussing this in terms of right/wrong decisions because all of their reactions make a lot of sense given their backgrounds/personalities. gar is doing a fine job here of tracking down jason’s friends and trying to find him that way, but we the audience know that jason is ultimately going to end up an anti-hero/eventually-hero character, so with that knowledge in mind we know that gar’s reaction is the right one. it’s knowledge that the other characters don’t have, so to judge them on it is... uh, unfair.

1.8. also, molly is awesome, yay!

2. dick and barbara flirting over the phone is so cute! i love to see this side of dick: lighter, peppier, willing (even if somewhat reluctantly) to put his mission aside to go out on a date with his girlfriend. and i love how easy this makes his dynamic with kory too: it’s all very domestic and utterly delightful. 

(also, re: the water leak in barbara’s office--you’re saying GCPD could afford fancy-schmancy table-wide touch screen computers and evil-lair lighting but needs its frickin’ commissioner to catch leaking water from above her desk with mugs and fishbowls????)

2.2225. this is probably a teeny tiny thing and i’m not sure i want to bring it up at all BUT. the fact that dick feels compelled to lie to barbara about not liking fancy gala food and eating something more substantial before the date? not a terribly great sign, though i wouldn’t call it a red flag per se. 

“this from a man who forced his students to eat cauliflower crust pizza...”

3. so.... conner and kom are a Thing. huh.

in theory i really like the idea of them bonding over an innate alien-ness and longing for a place they could really belong. both of them are alien twice-over: conner a mix of kryptonian and human, practically generated in a test tube, and kom being somebody that was born different and rejected by her own people, now stuck on a planet dominated by an entirely different species. i even like them exploring this bond physically. i guess it’s the sense of... uneasiness around what we do and don’t know about kom that makes this scene land slightly left of centre to me. i think titans, especially through s2, has cultivated in its audience a sense of distrust even until the final episode, just in case somebody vital to the season is suddenly revealed to have had ulterior motives (i’m even low-key suspicious of leslie). i really want to see this kom-conner dynamic play out but the anticipation of watching the other shoe drop is sucking out the enjoyment.

4. for fuck’s sake dick, gar’s not your gatekeeper.

TIIIIIIIIMMMMM \O/

4.5. i love this nod to tim’s origins in the comics, the way he just comes in and lays out all his evidence and makes it clear to dick that he needs tim’s help as robin. the fact that he was there at the flying graysons’ last performance, he was obsessed with their acrobatic moves, and was observant enough to connect those moves with that of robin and later nightwing... all of this came together to put him where he is right now.

(i also love how he can’t contain his giddy excitement when talking about the day dick grayson’s parents died... to dick grayson. even if dick weren’t nightwing, that would be a deeply uncomfortable thing! yet tim can’t help himself, and i love him for it.)

4.8. it’s a testament to how much dick’s caught off-guard that he can’t come up with a better response to tim’s allegations other than “uh... he stole my moves! as you know, no two gymnasts in the world are allowed to do the same moves. now, let me escort you out while pretending poorly that i’m not at all shaken by this...”

4.9. i’ve talked about this before, but i find the logic around secret identities in this universe utterly fascinating. the titans don’t make much effort in keeping their identities secret: everybody seems to know that kory is starfire for instance, or that gar is beast boy. dick grayson is seen hanging out with kory a lot, especially at crime scenes. it won’t take a lot of sleuthing to find out that the titans are currently camped out at wayne manor, and to put two and two together.

my theory was that superheroes and villains have become such an integral part of daily society that it’s almost not worth it to seek out their secret identities, or that it’s just not a big deal anymore. like politicians or diplomats, not everybody bothers to look into who exactly their local politician is, but the people who know just... know. it’s a sort of unspoken social contract.

tim’s broken this contract by confronting dick about his identity, and dick’s not ready to deal with it. not entirely.

look at him! *pinches his cheeks*

5. ngl, it was quite satisfying to see jason knock the scarecrow out like that. 

5.5. i guess... the question of jason’s culpability is always going to be a thorny one and would make for a great courtroom drama spinoff. there are a number of factors to consider: jason’s personality, the rough circumstances under which he grew up, his undoubtedly stressful transition to being robin, bruce wayne being... well, bruce wayne, never feeling accepted by the titans and having most of them turn on him, being roundly defeated and almost killed by deathstroke, alfred’s death, a fuckload of ptsd, his violent death, crane’s manipulations, coming back to life, crane plying him with a drug. but there is no easy line to draw between any of these factors to his actions. i think it would be a disservice to jason’s character to attribute his actions entirely to these things and rather irresponsible to do so. i think jason has to reckon with the fact that when he took crane’s drug, he wasn’t reckless and chaotic like the thugs he gave it to; the planning that went into hank’s death was meticulous and the way hank died--dawn essentially tricked into pulling the trigger that blew her lover into bits--is so drawn out and cruel. 

5.75. it’s occurring to me that crane might have given jason a placebo. maybe jason’s dependence is psychological, and he’s externalised his fears in such a way that he believes crane’s drugs literally wipe them out, however temporarily.

in any case, the boy needs (more) therapy.

6. “he walked like robin...” fuck, tim

“gait recognition sweep” god, this show. i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hey, once we’re done doing this gait recognition thingy, can we get a goddamn plumber in the house??? or move the commissioner’s desk so that sewage water isn’t dripping on her head or the million dollar touchscreen desk???????

6.5. oh no dick!!!!!! i am delighted that you got hurt but i feel ashamed about it! that looked like it really hurt!

he’s really not having a good time of it, is he. from being shot by a sniper to slamming at full speed into an suv, he’s got to be really fucking battered by now. and that’s just the physical side of it.

“can you believe that just over a week ago i was sitting in san francisco eating cauliflower crust pizza and feeling good about myself for the first time in five years...”

7. kory’s having visions again! now that she’s figured what they are, do you think the show’s just dropped justin? it’s curious that HPG hasn’t been brought up in a while after featuring relatively heavily in the beginning. hmmm.

8. dick’s in hospital but... he looks remarkably whole for someone who took a spill like that. you’d think he’d at least have a bruise to show for it. on the other hand, i love that the first thing he says is ‘i need to call home’. reminds me of season 1 dick and his clumsy attempts to explain away his found family as an ‘alliance of necessity’ or some bullshit. what a long way he’s come!

*gasp* dick’s hallucinating again!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m doing the dick’s hallucinating dance! can you believe that we’re carrying over these huge honking issues unearthed in season 2 onto season 3? can you believe?!!! all that time and effort i spent talking about dick’s mental health from last season has not gone in vain!!

... ahem. anyway. more on this later.

“hold on barbara, i think kory gave me the number to this therapist that she kept calling Hot Psychiatrist Guy...”

9. just an interlude to say that i’m barely halfway through the episode and i’ve already written 2k+ words... ugh. i’m going to try and be more concise.

10. man i fuckin love it when titans goes all out with its weird mindscapes and i’m extra glad that kory’s the focus this time. is that baby kom or maybe a secret sibling that neither of them knew about? was that lady luand’r? and is this place where kory was circling where the secret sibling is? it’s all very intriguing. 

(if justin turned out to be that sibling... we’ve a real luke/leia situation on our hands.)

11. aw, i knew that nice security guard was going to die, but it still hurt to see him go :(

12. this show is so bizarre. like i get the mindscape as a narrative device, but jason using sex workers to try and vocalise his guilt about killing hank was just weird. like. i have to use tamil, sorry: idhulaan yaaru pa room pottu yosikara??? some things just can’t be translated into a second language.

i guess one way to interpret jason’s reckoning with what he did to the titans as a sign of him coming off crane’s drug, but i think it’s more to do with the disillusionment of realising that he was a mere pawn in a more sinister plan, and not, as he thought, a player in control of his destiny, rising to the purpose of liberating gotham of its fears in a way batman never could. along the way, he’s done some truly irreversible damage. it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

13. another hallucination! it’s really intriguing that it’s a young dick(?), younger than we’ve ever seen him, wearing an early-era robin costume from way before he even became robin. (this is also interesting in that it gives credence to the idea that ‘robin’ is an identity that dick created entirely on his own, and as a possible homage to his family.)

“old road, old house... it’s all gone.” i wonder what it all means.

13.5. it’s entirely likely dick’s hallucinating because of a brain injury from the accident, though just hallucinations without any other focal neurological deficit is unusual. he might’ve been microdosed with fear toxin at some point, though i wonder when... did jason do so after dick’s accident? did he get dosed at the factory from last episode? 

it’s also possible it’s a continuing manifestation of dick’s issues from last season--which, if you remember, he never told anyone about and therefore never properly addressed. maybe he was hallucinating bruce wayne in a psychotic episode accompanying an acute stress reaction and maybe that’s what’s happening now. nobody’s denying that he’s under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. another way to look at it is that this is how he externalises conflict that he can’t bear to suppress anymore; if in s2 halluci!bruce manifested his insecurities and self-loathing, then these hallucinations... something to do with his fears, no doubt.

yet ANOTHER way to look at it might be: rachel is reaching out to him through their, well, psychic bond. after all, they were able to use that bond unconsciously last season to get the titans back together; maybe rachel has learned to gain a degree of control over it in themyscira and is sending across warnings? it’s all very intriguing.

anyway:

“i hear you skipped over the discowing suit in your evolution to nightwing... how could you??”

14. can you imagine, gar did all the work of reaching out to jason via molly and jason wants to meet dick? smh.

14.5. “i’m just a regular guy doing regular things” he says, standing at the opening of a secret old tunnel, like a secret person doing secret things, confronting someone who can now officially be called his stalker. neither of you guys are ‘regular’

14.8. ‘my dad was a cop and he taught me how to investigate’ - hmmm. i guess they’re trying to Explain Tim but i don’t think that’s really necessary. so he’s smart and he’s obsessed with batman and robin--that should be enough, imo. 

15. that scene with scarecrow and his mother was... wow. i’m just laughing here helplessly, because what the hell? for a while i thought it was an extended dream sequence and i’m still not entirely sure that it isn’t...

anyway. i still love that titans is happy to throw out its plot in favour of extended character-exploration sessions.

15.5. it seems to me that this scene with crane and his mother (i have no idea if there’s anything in the comics similar to this) serves to move forward this season’s theme of harmful legacies and how parents can damage their children in the name of their mission. in a way it’s been the underlying message of the entire show but we’re really seeing it being reinforced this season. the titans, serving as a foil to scarecrow, are using the damage to rebuild themselves and actually work through their issues together, instead of spiralling further and further into the morass of their issues.

other than that... god, that scene was painful to watch. i can’t say i like this version of scarecrow or how this actor plays him at all.

16. i wonder what’s jason’s play here. i think he’s smart enough to realise that the titans aren’t going to just forgive him and let him be a titan again after what he did, and that dick agreeing to it is just a bid to pin both him and crane down. maybe it’s a ploy to trap them, get back on scarecrow’s good books so that he can have the drug again. who knows.

17. i absolutely felt dick when he said “we’ll bring him in and then re-assess the situation.” what the fuck else is he going to say? the priority is to get him.

so kory and dick are both hallucinating while potentially trying to rehabilitate their murderous siblings. CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER ALREADY

18. TIM NOOOO! you beautiful, reckless fool!

18.25. just to quickly address it here because i know it’s been brought up before: i think it’s perfectly justified to not have conner take tim to the hospital via superspeed because a) i don’t think we’ve seen conner do that with anybody so far and b) it’s probably not a good idea to submit tim’s body to that kind of stress without knowing what it would do to him. the paramedics with actual equipment and experience would be there in a few minutes, so on a risk assessment, i would say dick and conner absolutely made the right call.

18.5. i guess we won’t know what jason really intended to when the titans came to the pump to see him, but this is definitely going to set a big wedge in his relationship with crane. then again, crane got what he wanted--using starfire’s powers to blast through to the underground pipes--so jason can argue that this is exactly what he was working towards, too. 

anyway, mortal peril, hallucinations, murderous family members, creepy visions and robins sprouting left and right. time to get rachel and donna on the scene, i think.

[firelord-frowny]

i saw some Dumb Shit where an atheist talked so vehemently about how the roe v wade reversal caused them to ~lose all respect for all christians~ because The Church Supports The Reversal and blah blah "where are all the so-called ~goood~ christians protesting against it?? Hmm? Hmmm? why aren't AAAAAAAAAANY CHRISTIANS protesting against abortion bans???"

and i'm like

??????????????????????? LMAO WHAT ARE YOU TALKING AABBOOOUUUUTTTTT! christians are protesting abortion bans all the fucking time! most of them just aren't wearing a Christian Hat while they do it! Literally almost everyone i know is a christian and literally almost everyone i know is DISGUSTED by attacks on reproductive rights and aren't afraid to say so and vote accordingly in elections!

Obligatory Disclaimer that I'm an atheist on most days (and on the days that I'm not, I believe spacetime itself is a conscious entity that could be described as a deity) and i meeaaannn i despise the way the ~evangelical right~ uses their concept of religion as an Actual Instrument Of Pure Evil to bring suffering unto innocent people as much as the next existentially depressed nonbeliever,

but you literallyyyy can't act like there are No Christians who are in strong opposition to literally everything those monsters stand for. the reason why it might LOOK like all the ~good christians~ are silent is because the good christians aren't engaging with the issue on behalf of christianity. they're engaging with the issue on the behalf of the Actual Human Beings that are being hurt by abortion bans. They're not saying "as a christian, i'm going to fight for reproductive rights because it's the Right Thing To Do and jesus told me to be nice." they're just saying "i'm going to fight for reproductive rights." the issue itself has jack shit to do with religion, and ~good christians~ KNOW this. There's no need for them to bring religion into it because religion has no place in policy-making to begin with!! that's the whole fucking problem! If you engage with tyrannical evangelical anti-abortion asshole politicians as christians, you're validating the fact that they've brought religion into an arena where it doesn't belong. A person's interpretation of ~the bible,~ no matter WHAT that interpretation is, shouldn't even be MENTIONED in any discussions about what should be legal and what shouldn't.

like wooooooooow

SO MANY of the women who have spoken up about being able to have an abortion saved their life have been black women and I can guaranfuckintee you that almost every one of them proudly identifies as a christian.

i'm not eeevennnn saying that pro-choice activists who are christian are necessarily an enormous part of the christian demographic.

but they fucking exist, and they're not even hard to find omfg.

[1337wtfomgbbq]

Okay, let me talk about this book I wrote. (aka. 'World building', a story by junky, brought to you and fueled by monster energy)

First of all, it all started as a star wars fanfic. I just made a species to add into the star wars universe and wrote stories using them. Then my mom was like, „why don't you make an alone standing story with them,“ when I told her about it.

And I thought that sounded kinda cool, but it also meant that I had to put my species into its own universe, and make some more species so we can have wars and shit. I mean, you can't have a war with yourself (I mean you can, and they also do, but you know what I mean)

So that took me the better part of five years. Coming up with (quick tally) fourteen species, a whole ass universe with (doesn't bother to count all the planets, HERE ARE SOME PICTURES) a whole shitton of planets and a somewhat comprehensive history for those species.

Then I had to come up with a story because everything so far was too much like star wars, cause it was a star wars fanfic, duh 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Good thing I was into hetalia back then. So I basically assigned each species a country of the allies and axis and had them go at it.

But that wasn't enough drama. So I had the kashirm (the main species I worked with, which are basically space werecats) also have a bit of a civil unrest during that war.

Buuuuut, it was a star wars fanfic at first, so I had all this jedi shit in there too that I kinda wanted to still include, and I actually got really really fond of writing the kashirm and their allies as space nazi bitches, so I included the concept of species intermixing literally creating beings that could do x-men superpowered bullshit. Like, an atom bomb in a humanoid body.

Armed with all that stuff it finally took shape:

The kashirm had been fucked over after loosing the last big war, so when the talinka are having a civil war and the urani are bitching at the alliance to give them back the colonies there are parts in the kashirm government that are plotting to set something big into motions.

And with 'parts' I mean my lovely scheming, deranged all time favorite OC I've ever created: Mischa Nolvi. She and her gang of loyalists are starting to set a plan into motion, that was years in the making, has a shitton of cogs in it, that would break loose another conflict that would give the kashirm nation back their greatness.

And we have some people getting caught up into that scheme.

We have Zenri, who is one of them mixed kids, who is the nephew of a politician that Mischa and her gang are seeking to remove. (The A Plot)

We have Lep'gar, her brother and their crew of smugglers. Lep'gar and her bro are actually the children of another politician loyal to Mischa, who's like, „can you get rid of my kids while you're at it, they are family disappointments!“ (The B Plot)

Then we have a foreign faction of bounty hunters/ mercenaries (I never really thought about what they are) who are hired to kidnap Zenri, in order to give a 'logical reason' to remove his uncle from office, as he goes rogue to find him. And Mischa's loyalists are like, „he is obvioulsy working with the alliance and selling our military secrets!“ (The C Plot)

Bitch I wrote whole ass congress sessions for this book.

I wrote the kashirm basically removing all the anti-war opposition from their goverment from the inside. I wrote the alliance having a whole ass discussion over whether or not they should intervene in these new conflicts that are breaking loose.

Yes the kashirm are space nazi werecats, and the alliance is basically space USA, you saw through me.

And then, as if there wasn't enough shit going down (fyi: my working title for this was 'complete escalation'), you have the D and E Plot.

D Plot is Zenri's uncle and his buddy trying to find this dude, Falen, who they hope can help them cause he knows about Mischa's plot and has shit on literally EVERYBODY!

And the E Plot is basically following Mischa's sons and their people, who are tasked with killing Zenri, Lep'gar's crew, and Zenri's uncle (no pressure at all) and some random talinka soldiers we follow in their civil war.

Also also included is a sideplot with Rys, an ex alliance soldier, who is helping Mischa and her sons with their plot (who was Kix in the original star wars fanfic).

And did I mention that Mischa and her sons are actually mixed x-men superpowered bitches?? That's the tea Falen knows, but turns out at the end it's not really tea cause everybody basically already knows.

Yep, that's it, that's the whole ass book.

Space nazi werecats wanna have their empire back, and them and their allies are using the current conflicts to plunge the galaxy into another war (aka space USA has a no good very bad day)

That's how I ended up with this book I called, 'Galaxy at War: the first hunt'.

[whitehotharlots]

The weird gross goony world of cultural liberalism

I feel like my last post is being misunderstood so lemme dig into it a bit.

Biden’s pitch was, up until a week ago, that he was running a Null campaign. He didn’t stand for anything. No one cares about his platform other than a handful of centrists who tried briefly to convince leftists that he was actually going to be super progressive. Biden is running on the fact that he’s not Trump. Not anti-GOP or anti-conservatism--simply that he’s not Trump. He’s nowhere near as intentionally cruel, and there were times in the past where he had at least seemed more competent. 

Volunteering in Iowa and Virginia, this was the logic I heard repeatedly from Biden supporters. They viewed Biden as an anti-Hillary. Not in regards to policy, but in his means of presentation. Hillary ran a personality-based campaign. Democrat apologists repeatedly stated as much. Formal studies found that the 2016 campaign was the least-issues focused in history, with both major candidates selling themselves and ignoring policy. The older Biden supporters I spoke to reasoned that the safe bet was to move away from personality politics (the realm in which the believed, correctly, that Trump could not be beaten) and toward a sort of nothingness politics, selecting a blank slate candidate upon whom voters could project a sense of normalcy. 

This was a weak strategy to start. Trump’s base is still very enthusiastic; the Dems are very unenthusiastic. After Super Tuesday but before Covid, I gave Biden around a 35% chance of winning. 

The pandemic has of course changed things. America’s imperial collapse moved out of the slow burn phase and into an undeniable free fall. Nothingness all of a sudden seems much more appealing than Trump’s brand of pettiness and proud, sneering cruelty. Burning everything to the ground sounded fun in 2016 but now that we can smell the acrid flames we’ve gotten scared. Biden therefore became a heavy favorite. 

VP selections haven’t had much effect, if any, on Presidential races since the two parties each became ideologically monolithic. Kamala or any other candidate would not have effected the race in and of themselves. But the appointment of Kamala has unleashed the weird, gross personality politics that tanked Hillary’s 2016 campaign, effectively bringing the rhetorical presentation of the race back into the realm that Trump dominates.

This isn’t to say that a personality campaign can’t win. It’s to say that the people who run the Democratic party and its media apparatuses have incredibly weird and shitty taste that most Americans find alienating or even repulsive.

The main cultural touchstones of these people are the Harry Potter novels (now rendered problematic due to JK Rowling saying that biological sex exists) and NBC’s Parks and Recreation. (They use Beyonce as a touchstone, but few actually listen to her music). Hillary ran a Parks and Rec campaign. She was proudly goony and awkward like the show’s protagonist, Leslie Knope: a blinkered, condescending careerist who is nonetheless worthy of celebration because of her lovable foibles and positive attitude. The show’s understanding of masculinity as an ambivalent quirk--encapsulated by characters played by Chris Pratt and Nick Offerman--was incredibly appealing to the sort of DNC-affiliated dudes who believe they face a moral duty to denounce their gender and sexuality but haven’t quite fully absorbed whatever the white guilt equivalent of hating one’s masculinity might be called (bro remorse, maybe?). The show was, in short, catnip for cultural liberals.

Here’s the thing, though: the show wasn’t very popular with audiences, even while critics liked it. In all but its first, short season, it failed to place in the top 100. And this was with a talented cast and experienced production staff. Amy Pohler and Aziz Ansari are very funny comic actors. Nick Offerman and Rashida Jones have legitimate screen presence. Chris Pratt is a bonafide Hollywood star. Even then, and even with as much cache that the show managed to achieve within the narrow confines of cultural liberalism, it was never that popular within the broader culture/

Hillary’s campaign was an uncanny, disquieting parody of the Parks and Rec aesthetic. I liken it to a children’s play in which all the “actors” are decaying corpses whose movement is controlled by pulleys and wires, their prerecorded lines played over a loudspeaker. The first time I saw Hillary do the the whip and nay nay on Ellen, I felt the same sinking sense of psychological discomfort I got from watching Rotten.com decapitation videos as a teen, the realization that this is what other human beings are capable of, the horrible sense of complete disconnectedness from my fellow man. How--how could I be of the same species as these people? What can happen to turn large groups into such monsters?

Kamala is every bit as goony, condescending, oratorically untalented, and socially maladroit as Hillary. And, right on cue, the small segment of the population who loves culturally liberal treacle have begun referring to her as some kind of magic goddess--not a politician nor even a character, but a cultural event that they believe every decent person automatically adores as much as they do. 

This is what concerns me. Kamala’s shitty record won’t make any difference electorally. What can make a difference--what happened just four years ago--is the liberal embrace of hubristic grossness, their assumption that their own shitty tastes are all but universally shared, their belief that they’re just so hip and cool and lovable that they don’t even need to proffer any sort of alternative to Trump, that their own aesthetic superiority is so strong, so manifest that it will carry them to effortless victory.