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whitehotharlots · 4 years

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Andrea Long Chu is the sad embodiment of the contemporary left

Andrea Long Chu’s Females was published about a year ago. It was heavily hyped but landed with mostly not-so-great reviews, and while I was going to try and pitch my own review I figured there was no need. Going through my notes from that period, however, I see how much Chu’s work—and its pre-release hype—presaged the sad state of the post-Bernie, post-hope, COVID-era left. I figured they’d be worth expanding upon here, even if I’m not getting paid to do so.

Chu isn’t even 30 years old, and Females is her debut book, and yet critics were already providing her with the sort of charitable soft-handedness typically reserved for literary masters or failed female political candidates. This is striking due to the purported intensity of the book: a love letter to would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, the thesis of which is that all humans are female, and that such is true because female-ness is a sort of terminal disease stemming not from biology but from one’s inevitable subjugation in larger social contexts. Everyone is a woman because everyone suffers. Big brain shit.

But, of course, not everyone is a female. Of course. Females are females only some of the time. But, also, everyone is a female. Femaleness is just a title, see. Which means it can be selectively applied whenever and however the author chooses to apply it. The concept of “female” lies outside the realm of verifiability. Suggesting to subject it to any form of logic or other means of adjudication means you’re missing the point. Femaleness simply exists, but only sometimes, and those sometimes just so happen to be identifiable only to someone possessed with as a large a brain as Ms. Chu. We are past the need for coherence, let alone truth or honesty. And if you don’t agree that’s a sign that you are broken—fragile, illiterate, hateful, humorless.

Chu’s writing—most famously, her breakthrough essay “On Liking Women”—establishes her prose style: long, schizophrenic paragraphs crammed with unsustainable metaphors meant to prove various fuzzy theses simultaneously. Her prose seems kinda sorta provocative but only when read on a sentence-by-sentence level, with the reader disregarding any usual expectations of cohesion or connection.

This emancipation from typical writerly expectations allows Chu to wallow proudly in self-contradiction and meaninglessness. As she notes herself, explicitly, meaning isn’t the point. Meaning doesn’t even exist. It’s just, like, a feeling:

I mean, I don’t like pissing people off per se. Yes, there is a pleasure to that sometimes, sure. I think that my biggest takeaway from graduate school is that people don’t say things or believe things—they say them because it makes them feel a particular way or believing them makes them feel a particular way. I’ve become hyper aware of that, and the sense in which I’m pissing people off is more about bringing that to consciousness for the reader. The reason you’re reacting against this is not because it contradicts what you think is true, it’s because it prevents you from having the feeling that the thing you think is the truth lets you feel.

And so she can get away with saying that of course she doesn’t actually believe that everyone is a female, the same as her idol Valerie Solanas didn’t actually want to kill all men. The writers, Chu and Valerie, are just sketching out a dumb idea as a fun little larf, to see how far they can push a manifestly absurd thought. If they just so happen to shoot a gay man at point blank range and/or make broader left movements so repulsive that decent people get driven away, so be it. And if any snowflakes complain about their tactics, well that’s just proof of how right they are. Provocation is justification—the ends and the means. The fact that this makes for disastrous and harmful politics is beside the point. All that matters is that Chu gets to say what she wants to say.

This blunt rhetorical move—which is difficult to describe without sounding like I’m exaggerating or making stuff up, since it’s so insane—papers over Chu’s revanchist and violent beliefs. Her work is soaked with approving portrayals of Solanas’ eliminationist rhetoric—of course, Chu doesn’t’ actually mean it, even though she does. Men are evil, even as they don’t really fully exist since everyone is a woman, ergo eliminating men improves the world. Chu goes so far as to suggest that being a trans woman makes her a bigger feminist than Solanas or any actual woman could ever be, because the act of her transitioning led to the world containing fewer men. Again: big brain shit.

I’ll leave it to a woman to comment on the imperiousness of a trans woman insisting that she is bestest and realest kind of woman, that biological women are somehow flawed imposters. I will stress, however, that such a claim comes as a means of justifying a politically disastrous assertion that more or less fully justifies the most reactionary gender critical arguments, which regard all trans women as simply mentally ill men (this line of reasoning is so incredibly stupid that even a dullard like Rod Drehar can rebut it with ease). Trans activists have spent years establishing an understanding of transsexualism as a matter of inherent identity—whether or not you agree with that assertion, you have to admit that it has political propriety and has gone a long way in normalizing transness. Chu rejects this out of hand, embracing instead the revanchist belief that transness is attributable to taking sexual joy in finding oneself embarrassed and/or feminized—an understanding of womanhood that is simultaneously essentialist and tokenizing. When asked about the materially negative potential in expressing such a belief, Chu reacts with a usual word salad of smug self-contradiction:

EN: You say in the book that sissy porn was formative of your coming to consciousness as a trans woman. If you hadn’t found sissy porn, do you think it’s possible that you might have just continued to suffer in the not-knowing?

ALC: That’s a really good question. It’s plausible to me that I never would have figured it out, that it would have taken longer.

EN: How does that make you feel? Is that idea scary?

ALC: It isn’t really. Maybe it should be a little bit more, but it isn’t really. One of the things about desire is that you can not want something for the first 30 years of your life and wake up one day and suddenly want it—want it as if you might as well have always wanted it. That’s the tricky thing about how desire works. When you want something, there’s a way in which you engage in a kind of revisionism, the inability to believe that you could have ever wanted anything else.

EN: People often talk about the ubiquity of online porn as a bad thing—I’ve heard from lots of girlfriends that men getting educated about sex by watching porn leads to bad sex—but there seems to me a way in which this ubiquity is helping people to understand themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity.

ALC: While I don’t have the research to back this up, I would certainly anecdotally say that sissy porn has done something in terms of modern trans identity, culture, and awareness. Of course, it’s in the long line of sexual practices like crossdressing in which cross-gender identification becomes a key factor. It’s not that all of the sudden, in 2013, there was this thing and now there are trans people. However, it is undoubted that the Internet has done something in terms of either the sudden existence of more trans people or the sudden revelation that there are more trans people than anyone knew there were. Whether it’s creation or revelation, I think everyone would agree that the internet has had an enormous impact there.

One of the things I find so fascinating about sissy porn is that it’s not just that I can hear about these trans people who live 20 states away from me and that their experiences sound like mine. There is a component of it that’s just sheer mass communication and its transformative effect, but another part of it is that the internet itself can exert a feminizing force. That is the implicit claim of sissy porn, the idea that sissy porn made me trans is also the idea that Tumblr made me trans. So, the question there is whether or not the erotic experience that became possible with the Internet actually could exert an historically unique feminizing force. I like, at least as a speculative claim, to think about how the Internet itself is feminizing.

Politics, like, don’t matter. So, like, okay, nothing I say matters? So it’s okay if I say dumb and harmful shit because, like, they’re just words, man.

Chu can’t fully embrace this sort of gradeschool nihilism, though, because if communication was truly as meaningless as she claims then any old critic could come along and tell her to shut the fuck up. Even as she claims to eschew all previously existing means of adjudicating morality and coherence, she nonetheless relies on the cheapest means of making sure she maintains a platform: validation via accreditation. This is all simple victimhood hierarchy. Anyone who does not defer all of their own perceptions to someone higher up the hierarchy is inherently incorrect, their trepidations serving to validate the beliefs of the oppressed:

I like to joke that, as someone who is always right, the last thing I want is to be agreed with. [Laughs] I think the true narcissist probably wants to be hated in order to know that she’s superior. I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.

Chu has summoned the most cynical possible interpretation of Walter Ong’s suggestion that “Writing is an act of violence disguised as an act of charity.” Of course, any effective piece of communication requires some degree of persuasion, convincing a reader, listener, viewer, or user to subjugate their perceptions to those of the communicator. Chu creates—not just leans on or benefits from, but actively posits and demands fealty to—the suggestion that her voice is the only one deserving of attention by virtue of it being her own. That’s it. That’s what all her blathering and bluster amount to. Political outcomes do not matter. Honesty does not matter. What matters is her, because she is her.

This is the inevitable result of a discourse that prizes a communicator’s embodied identity markers more than anything those communicators are attempting to communicate, and in which a statement is rendered moral or true based only upon the presence or absence of certain identity markers. Lived experience trumps all else. A large, non-passing trans woman is therefore more correct than pretty much anyone else, no matter how harmful or absurd her statements may be. She is also better than them. And smarter. And gooder.

Designating lived experience and subjective feelings of safety as the only acceptable forms of adjudication has caused the left to prize individualism to a degree that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. And this may explain the lukewarm reception of Chu’s book.

While they heaped praise upon her before the books’ release, critics backed off once they realized that Females is an embarrassingly apt reflection of intersectional leftism—a muddling, incoherent mess, utterly disconnected from any attempt toward persuasion or consensus, the product of a movement that has come to regard neurosis as insight. The deranged mewlings of a grotesque halfwit are only digestable a few pages at a time. Any more than that, and we begin to see within them far too much of the things that define our awful movement and our terrifying moment.

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hermesserpent-stuff · 4 years

Photo

I wanted to share an OC that I’ve had around in my head for over 2 years but I have never published an image of him before… So this is Geisterfahrer! For those who have watched freakazoid, you might recall an episode where Guitierrez made a clone. My idea is that after it failed to trick the city, Guitierrez tossed the clone. At some point soon after, lightning wacks this clone, and boom baby Geisterfahrer is born. A quick rundown of my baby boi under the cut.

Not connected to the internet like Freakazoid.

He can plugin, but it’s like reading through it and memorizing rather than embodying it like the original blue boi. (When he first connected, he chose his name.)

Geisterfahrer means ghost driver or somebody who drives a car in the opposite lane than prescribed

Eats electricity.

When he has not eaten in a while his hair no longer stands up and he wears it in a bun. The second image (lowkey like drawing it that way)

Is constantly dealing with an overbearing sense of emptiness that never seems to be soothed. He has tried eating a ton of electricity, but that only locked up his muscles, leaving him immobile. Is now trying to soothe the ache by stealing things that make him happy. And it works, very very briefly, like the adrenalin you might get from falling but then being fine. I’ve dealt with a similar feeling on and off, but his does not turn off.

This ache leads him to be a bit of a butt. Like doesn’t regard others’ feelings, has actually killed someone in a thing I wrote. Also is rude and laughs loudly.

Makes electric gear to help him with his robberies.

When he realizes that Guitierrez had made and tossed him out, Geisterfahrer starts hating the man. He refers to him as old fart, old man, and some impolite language.

Is the only character I draw giving the middle finger due to his personality and using lots of foul language. So I can’t post most art with him, but also means I draw him a lot when I’m frustrated.

There is a mark on his hands, a serial number due to his status as a clone, he keeps it covered with his gloves at all times.

likes wearing more formal wear

Uhh, I think that might be it for now? I know this fandom is small, so making an OC for this show feels, uh scary? Yep. scary.

#freakazoid #oc #oc art #digital art #fanart #does this count as fanart?#suite #hair bun #hermes art

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lastsonlost · 5 years

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So I was half-right.

Instead of misogyny it's Nazis because of course it is.

If you spend a lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet ecosystem, you’ve likely stumbled onto #NoNutNovember, or just #NNN for short. An annual challenge encouraging men to refrain from masturbating (or even, for many, having any sex) for the month, No Nut November was initially created as a parody of internet-borne phenomena such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or Movember, skewering the silliness of viral internet challenges along with the more extreme claims made by proponents of NoFap, an anti-porn subreddit with half a million members. (According to one of the moderators of the NoNutNovember subreddit, /u/yeeval, the subreddit has no connection to NoFap, though the two are often conflated.)

For most participants, the challenge is essentially an excuse to shitpost, as well as tweet memes skewering some of the more exaggerated purported benefits of abstaining from masturbation. But there are many who take it seriously, with at least 52,000 people as of this writing diligently documenting their day-by-day progress (and setbacks) on the subreddit r/NoNutNovember. Per /u/yeeval, “I’d say 90% of the posts are from people actively participating and also there’s the occasional fallen member who stays on the subreddit for the community and laughs.”

On its surface, No Nut November is a fairly innocuous challenge: while it may seem silly to abstain from masturbation for virtually no reason, some of the memes are pretty funny, and a month of abstinence (whether it be from sex or masturbation) certainly isn’t going to kill anyone. u/yeeval says the goal isn’t to demonize porn or masturbation per se, but to prompt men to examine their own masturbation habits and whether or not they’re healthy. “In my opinion, most originally participate in NNN for the meme aspect of the challenge but as the days go on people begin to see how big their porn or masturbation dependency is,” he says.

"Neither of those things are bad or immoral in themselves but just like any outlet can become excessive in times of depression and loneliness.” Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general anti-porn ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the movement. (NoFap’s website states that, with the exception of a small number of users who may abstain for religious or moral reasons, they do not have an anti-masturbation stance.)

Because the challenge is associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”

A new meme brings these implications into sharp relief. Coomer is a reference to a meme of an unkempt, skeezy-looking bearded man in a white tank top with vaguely Semitic features, accompanied by descriptive text like “doesn’t even know anything about politics,” “extremely aesthetic right arm (huge muscle),” and “has never heard of NoFap"

It’s been circulating on 4chan for the past year, but Alex Hawkins, the vice president of the porn tube site xHamster, says he started seeing it in the replies on his company’s Twitter feed back in September, when presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted about limiting access to pornography. At first, “we didn’t really know what it meant and thought it was funny,” he tells Rolling Stone. Then, in late October, the coomer resurfaced thanks to a Twitter campaign led by a user named TeapotLad, in which users vowed to change their avatars to the coomer should they fail No Nut November. PewDiePie shouted out the campaign in a recent YouTube video, as did far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, who is perhaps best known for being one of the many extremist figures, including Milo Yiannopolous and Alex Jones, to be banned from Facebook. “No Nut November and the Coomer meme represent a deeper meaning,” he said in a tweet. “Porn is evil. It literally re-wires your brain and causes erectile dysfunction. Take the pledge. Don’t be a Coomer.”

The term has also been used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on the “OK boomer” meme, in response to tweets critical of No Nut November or masturbation abstinence in general. “It’s positioned as this epic battle between the weak beta masturbators and the strong, alpha NoFappers,” says Hawkins.

Like most memes, “coomer” carries with it more than a tinge of irony, and it’s not always easy to determine whether it’s being used flippantly or to actually deride men who masturbate. But the implication is clear: masturbating is an urge that should be resisted at all costs. David Ley, PhD, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist who studies pornography and mental health, saw the meme after he tweeted his criticism of No Nut November, referring to it as “a creepy little smorgasbord of insecurity-driven hate with anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia all rolled up in one,” he tells Rolling Stone. (Ley has partnered with the cam website Stripchat to do AMAs about sexual health, and plans to appear in one debunking some of the myths associated with No Nut November.)

The idea that there are significant health benefits from abstaining from masturbation is partially based on the (primarily internet-propagated) theory that semen retention is linked to an increase in testosterone and male virility, an idea that has been widely debunked. For the most part, however, the idea that masturbation is somehow feminizing is “rooted in extremely antiquated ideas of masculinity,” many of which are also promoted by far-right groups, says Ley. The Proud Boys, for instance, a far-right extremist group known for its propensity toward violence, has long advocated for its members to abstain from masturbation on the grounds that it boosts testosterone and makes them more appealing to women; indeed, founder Gavin McInnes gave a shoutout to NoFap in a 2015 article for the far-right publication Taki’s Magazine. (The organizers of NoFap have strongly refuted any connection to the Proud Boys.)

An even more extremist version of this far-right anti-masturbation philosophy has been promoted by David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, who has propagated the conspiracy theory that Jews dominate the porn industry and use pornography as a way to control white men. On far-right threads on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, this sentiment is fairly widespread. “Jews not only control most of the pornography industry, they also rely on the goyim to maintain a routine of ejaculation in order to stay docile and non-violent,” one comment reads. Another shared a viral Pornhub tweet poking fun at viewers who’d failed No Nut November, writing, “the Jew mocks you as they poison the minds of millions.” (Pornhub is owned by the Canadian company MindGeek, the CEO of which, Feras Antoon, does not appear to be Jewish, even though there are numerous 4chan /pol/ threads speculating as such.)

This anti -Semitism is also often accompanied by healthy doses of homophobia and racism as well: on these threads, you’ll frequently see users deriding men who masturbate to heterosexual porn, on the grounds that being aroused by another man’s penis makes you gay (even if said penis is depicted going into a vagina). And because mainstream porn often features white women paired with black men, there’s also a virulently racist element to much of this discourse, such as the suggestion that interracial porn is intended to steer white women away from procreating with white men and toward men of color.

The irony of this strain of the anti-masturbation movement is that, while it’s ostensibly intended to fight the larger porn industry’s attempts to brainwash and emasculate white men, anti-masturbation ideology has historically been used as a tool by fascist figures to gain social control. Cultural stigma associated with masturbation, combined with the fact that pretty much everyone masturbates, invariably leads to a lot of men “developing a lot of internal shame,” says Ley. “And that makes them open to manipulation and social control.” As an example, he cited the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany, which strongly discouraged Hitler Youth members from engaging in masturbation. Because anti-porn and anti-masturbation movements tend to be comprised of young heterosexual males, they could potentially be viewed by some on the far right as ideal recruitment grounds. The fact that something like No Nut November appears to be a joke on its face “appears to serve as this interesting front door recruiting kind of strategy to bring folks into this deeper, much more insidious and shaming movement,” says Ley.

Of course, it goes without saying that not everyone who participates in No Nut November or NoFap is a white supremacist or religious fundamentalist, and that the founders of these groups explicitly reject any suggestions of overlap between the two communities. u/yeeval says he has seen no hint of any anti-Semitic or misogynistic commentary on the subreddit, chalking any suggestions of Jewish porn conspiracy theories to “someone trying to make a bad / overtly offensive joke.” “NoNutNovember isn’t a political movement. We are not anti-porn. We are not anti-woman. We are not anti-masturbation or anti-sex,” he says. “In its most simple form NoNutNovember just a fun internet challenge that has grown in popularity due to many memes that circulate the internet…However, I also think that the reason that it has become so widespread is that it has given many the opportunity to look within themselves and realize that they might be relying on masturbation and porn for comfort.”

The coomer meme is also, at least inherently, apolitical, says Alice Vaughn, host of Two Girls One Mic, a podcast about porn tropes. “The concept surrounding ‘Coomer’ is neither right nor left politically. The urge to shame those with higher sex drives is nothing new, and is a subject many are uncomfortable with, especially adolescents (which is predominately 4Chan’s user base),” she says. But the rise of “coomer,” with its distinctly conservative implications about male sexuality, would seem to refute that the anti-masturbation movement is totally innocent or entirely intended in jest. The fact that it’s often used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on a meme intended to skewer boomers’ criticism of Gen Z, also indicates that this is primarily a youth-driven phenomenon. When you consider how younger generations have typically adopted a more healthy, progressive view of sexuality than previous ones, this doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense — but it actually tracks with current data, which indicates that younger generations are having less sex, Ley says.

Usually, this phenomenon is attributed to male millennials and zoomers (members of Gen Z) spending more time watching porn, and to an extent this may be true; when it comes to determining the effects of pornography viewing on male sex lives, research is somewhat mixed. But it’s also just as likely that sociocultural factors like economic unrest and fear-mongering abstinence-only education have also played a role in these declining sexual activity rates. “We’ve spent decades telling these young kids be afraid of sex, and that only hereto monogamous sex is OK and moral,” says Ley. “Now all of a sudden they are really conflicted about sex and their own sexuality.”

That said, there’s also an awful lot of men who are not participating in No Nut November in earnest, and many more who aren’t participating at all. In an email to Rolling Stone, Pornhub vice president Corey Price said that traffic is virtually unaffected by No Nut November, and few of the adult performers Rolling Stone spoke with said that they hadn’t seen their engagement go down considerably during the month either. Considering that annual Pornhub traffic numbers are in the tens of billions, if there is indeed a wider porn conspiracy to sap men of their virility, that conspiracy appears to be working pretty well. But for those who are participating in the challenge, and may have stumbled along the way, Calvert has a comforting message: “I personally think No Nut November is very silly,” she says. “Not masturbating for a month does not make you a better man or a stronger man.”

............

Let me see if I got this straight.

Porn is evil

And not fapping makes you a racist homophobic Nazi

Did I... Did I fucking miss something?

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doberbutts · 5 years

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can you talk about your experiences as a poc in the dog world? do you think you've been treated differently?

The sender of this ask messaged me privately to explain what they meant, which was a little different than how I took it, so I’ll answer both;

How I took the question:

In completely honesty, either because I’m already fairly choosey about the people I willingly spend my time around or because I’ve been fairly lucky... or both, existing as a PoC in the dog world hasn’t been overly hard for me on a surface level. Basically what that means is that I’ve yet to be denied a dog, access to training or an event, mentorships, whatever due to my race(s) as a factor. Additionally, in person, there’s very little outward aggression and surprisingly little microaggression happening within earshot or to my face. I’m not saying things are or are not said behind closed doors- I’ll never know. But when it comes to face-to-face interactions, since the crowd I run with is already fairly socially aware, racially charged problems have been relatively minimal. Once again, I’m very choosey on who I choose to interact with on a regular basis, so definitely do not take this as me saying doberman people or IGP people or service dog people or whatever are all living in liberal woke paradise because that is definitely the furthest thing from the truth. I just don’t interact with those people on purpose, and keep whatever I have to do with them fairly minimal.

However... online is very different. I remember at one point I had made a negative comment on a political thread, on a forum where most people (myself included) only show photos of their dogs, not themselves or any other identifying information. I was given a long spiel about them blacks and back in my day and we used to call em negros but now that’s offensive I guess in reply, to which I simply responded saying that I was black and perhaps if the user had known that they wouldn’t have responded that way. The user then switched gears, said something about my inability to handle a working dog (note: Creed had been home with me all of a single week and I had not once complained about anything to do with him) and hoping to see me fail so they could laugh in my face... and I found out later went so far as to email both my breeder and the owner of the sire to tell them to repo my dog because they’d clearly made a mistake placing him with me. This was very eye-opening for me because prior to that exchange, that user and I had known we were on different political sides but had been fairly cordial with each other regardless.

Most people who’ve been around this blog since the beginning will remember the time I was called a card-carrying member of the KKK because I had a slave, my service dog Creed. Many will remember various interactions where my race has been used against me in an argument that had nothing to do with race. And I delete almost all of the racially insensitive to outright inflammatory asks I get on a daily basis from trolls and known problem-starters. So I can’t say everything is golden in my experience, but I would say that the anonymous nature of the internet emboldens those who would otherwise keep their racism to themselves.

And, of course, the very fact that I have to navigate life in such a way that I have to carefully curate my experience or else risk someone spewing shit out of the wrong hole, but that is less a “dog world” thing and more a “life as a PoC” thing.

How they meant it: regarding the problem of high euthanasia rates in the south-eastern US and the phenomenon of PoC commonly being afraid of dogs, as well as possible socioeconomic issues

Being that I don’t live in the South and also refuse to for a wide myriad of reasons, Maryland was close enough and it was hell tyvm, I can only answer some of this issue.

First- the assumption that it’s mostly a socioeconomic issue is absolutely there. The south-eastern US is populated mostly by farmers and the descendants of the people who worked the land in the past. Loose, roaming dogs are a common thing there, as are dogs kept intact due to either lack of funds (also why heartworm and rabies continues to be a problem) or the lucrative ability to simply make more dogs for cheap instead of going out and buying one (also where the densest overpopulation and highest euthanasia happens in this country). Add on to that the fact that to many people, dogs are a tool for a job and not a living breathing animal that actually needs care or fall under this pervasive idea that they must live out all of their natural instincts including roaming freely, breeding indiscriminately, and hunting/killing whatever’s in their path, and you have a recipe for a lot of unwanted dogs and not a lot of places to put them.

Second- I wouldn’t say that PoC being afraid of dogs is necessarily tied to high euthanasia rates in the South. Many Southern PoC have dogs, of all shapes and sizes. Many Southern PoC also fall into that socioeconomic niche in the above paragraph. I would say high euth rates are more tied to a lack of funding (you can thank governments for that), a lack of willing adopters (which is cheaper- finding a litter of puppies on the side of the road and taking one home, or paying 50-400$ for a dog at a shelter), way too many dogs being taken in vs actual space to put them (and low cost clinics only solve the "funds for neuter” problem, not the "hey I can make 8 free dogs in only 2 months and maybe sell the ones I don’t want for some extra money” problem), and broad-brush breed restrictions (even in areas without BSL, if you’re poor you might not own your own property, which means you’re renting, which is harder to do with pit bulls and far easier to do with yorkies).

Then you add the non-dog-related problems these people face (of course exacerbated for PoC)- if they can’t feed themselves, if they can’t afford their own doctors, if they can’t afford housing, if their car breaks down... all of these things cost money, and if you’re operating on limited funds, you have to make a hard choice between yourself, your family, and your dog. The dog frequently loses. Note that the highest intake and euth rates happen in already very poor communities in the South, and the more wealthy the area, the less of a problem this is. This is not accidental. I have personally gone hungry to make sure the dogs are fed and vetted when I was at my poorest. Not everyone can make that choice. There’s this hope that if you give the dog up, the shelter will find someone who will take care of it better. Things don’t always work out that way.

Then you have your regular irresponsible dog owners- the people who’s dogs are untrained, aggressive, heartworm positive, on their 8th litter, constantly loose, etc. (obviously I have no problem with accidents, responsible management of aggressive and intact dogs, ethical breeding, etc) These people exist everywhere- proof of that is that I’m in New England, in a fairly wealthy area, and I still adopted a Chihuahua from someone who couldn’t afford/be bothered to feed, vet, or care for their animal. However, in my area, loose roaming dogs are very minimal. Even in our poorest nearby cities, the ACOs find maybe 5-10 dogs per week and most are adopted out the second their stray hold and health checks are up. Someone’s irresponsible with their animals and causes a problem that rescues need to clean up? There’s plenty of space for them. Compare that to an area that gets 50 loose dogs in per day and then try to add more dogs from these irresponsible owners. You run out of space, eventually. This is where the 3-day turnaround and dogs that get euthed the second they come in the door is most common, because they frankly don’t have enough room to spare.

I talk a little about the phenomenon of PoC (predominantly black PoC) being afraid of dogs here. Personally, I don’t think it’s connected, but I could be wrong.

#Anonymous #asks

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freedommapk · 5 years

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Download Freedom APK Latest v2.0.9 (Official Website) – 2019

There is no doubt that you can do a hell lot of interesting stuff by rooting your Android device from overclocking the processor to cracking games and apps. Now, if you have rooted your Android phone and want to do some crazy stuff like cracking games or free In-App purchases, then it’s time to install the Latest Freedom Apk on your phone. Do you play games like Subway Surfers or Temple run? Well, the chances are that you want to buy all the things available in the game, but due to lack of coins, you cannot do that.

CHECK OUT: [WORKING] How To Install Freedom App For PC – Freedom APK Latest Version

Also, you don’t want to spend any money on buying things in a game so what to do? Well, it’s time to try Freedom app and do absolutely *Free* In-App purchases. There are more than 2 Million apps and games available to download right now but have you ever wondered how the developers make money from them? You might think of ads. No! Most of the apps and games have In-App Purchases meaning you have to spend some real cash to enjoy all the features of that particular app or game.

download freedom app

Freedom App lets you make free In-App purchases, and the only requirement is that your phone needs to be rooted which is not a big thing as everyone knows how to root a phone. Now, since this app lets you do cracking or patching kinda stuff, it is pretty obvious that this app is not available to download from the official Google Play Store. But, we are here to help you out. We are providing the latest Freedom App to download, and there are no surveys or whatsoever. Just click on the download button, and that’s it. The apk file will start downloading.

So, time to say No to those annoying ads or surveys. We know that these surveys suck as they waste your precious time and also, sometimes there is no file and you are only making money for that website owner.

WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF FREEDOM APK? Freedom Apk Features

As mentioned above, Freedom App lets you do the amazing thing from your rooted device so you should know about all the things that you can do with it. Here are the amazing features of Freedom App –

Want to get free gems or coins? Try Freedom and there you have them. Freedom lets you bypass the In-App Purchases, and so, it will let you make free purchases of things in the game. You don’t need to buy the full version of any app. Just use Freedom, and you are all set to go. The app is regularly updated by the developers so that it is compatible with every new app or game. Also, we regularly update the download link so that you get the latest apk file. Want to remove ads from any app or game? Download Freedom Apk Directly. The App uses many mods and patches to exploit apps and games. Aren’t the features offered by the Latest Freedom App amazing? Well, what is more, surprising that the fact that this app is available to download Free.

App Name Freedom Main Purpose Free In-App-Purchases Latest Version 2.0.6+ Last Updated On 20 April, 2017 APK Size 1.7MB Minimum Android Version Required Android 2.3+ Root Required Yes Downloads 5,00,000+ Quick Infographics freedom-apk-infographdsfsdic CAN I INSTALL FREEDOM APK ON MY PHONE? Now, for every App, there are some minimum requirements. So, here are the requirements for the Freedom app –

Android 2.3 Gingerbread or Above – For the Freedom App to work on your smartphone, it is necessary that you should have atleast Android 2.3 Gingerbread running on your phone. If you are running on any android version below it, this app won’t work. It is hard that it fails to work on Nougat so better if you try it on Lollipop or marshmallow or earlier versions. 512MB RAM or Above – RAM is one of the main things that are considered when we run any app. The more the RAM, the better the performance (But this doesn’t mean we will add 8GB RAM to phones). To run the Freedom APpp on your phone, make sure that you have atleast 512MP RAM and above. Your Phone should be ROOTED, or this app won’t work – A rooted phone allows you to do things that you cannot even imagine doing with the non-rooted phone. Freedom App is a root app so it will require Root. Make sure your phone is rooted before trying this app. At least 100MB free space should be there in your phone – RAM is not the only thing that is the reason for a better performance. There should be some minimum space also so that an app runs without any hassle. So, to run the Freedom APK without any hassle, make sure you have at least 100MB free space on your phone. PERMISSIONS THAT ARE REQUIRED Well, this is something that you surely need to read. If you are one of the thsoe guys who are concerned about the privacy of their phone, then it is better to check the permissions that are required by Freedom App for Android. Here are the permissions –

INTERNET ACCESS – Ok, this is pretty simple one. Freedom APK can work without the internet too but sometimes, when it needs the internet, you have to provide access to it MODIFY SYSTEM SETTINGS – Since freedom apk works only on rooted phones and we know why, it is necessary to keep in mind that this app can modify the system settings in order to make it easy to do free In-App Purchases. KILL BACKGROUND TASKS – Might sound weird but this app requires permission to kill the background tasks. GET ACCOUNTS – It can access the accounts you have on your phone. WRITE EXTERNAL STORAGE – The Freedom app can write external storage. REBOOT DEVICE – Sometimes, it asks for the user to reboot the phone so to reboot the phone from inside the app itself, you have to provide it the permission. INSTALL, FORCE STOP PACKAGES – If you are installing something, this app can force stop that or install any package. HOW TO INSTALL & DOWNLOAD FREEDOM APK ON YOUR ANDROID DEVICE (LATEST VERSION) | FREEDOM APK DOWNLOAD Download Freedom Apk for Android

Now, since you are aware of what Freedom app for android does and what should be the minimum specifications of your phone to install this app, let us talk about how to install the Latest Freedom App on your Android phone. The installation steps are damn easy, and you don’t need to do any extra stuff. Just make some little changes in your Android phone’s settings, and that’s it. You can then easily install the application. So, are you ready to get free gems, coins and everything from your favourite game or app without spending any real cash? Well, let’s see how to install the app –

First of all, go to the Settings of your phone and then go to Security. There, the first thing you need to do is to turn on ‘Unknown Sources’ option. No, there won’t be any virus or something like that in the app that we are providing. You have to turn this option on only because you are installing an app from outside of the Play Store. Now, once you are done with this, download Freedom Apk file from the Download button given below. As mentioned above, there are no surveys or ads, and this is the direct download link to the file. Download Freedom APK

Assuming that you have downloaded the file, next thing you need to do is to head to that file and install it as you do for the other apps. In a few seconds, the Freedom app will be there on your Android device, and you are all set to do some crazy stuff. HOW TO MAKE FREE IN-APP PURCHASES WITH THE FREEDOM APP | FREEDOM APK DOWNLOAD

Now, since you have the Freedom app installed on your phone, you must be figuring out how to use it and make free In-App purchases. Well, here are the steps –

1. First of all, open the Freedom App by tapping on its icon.

Freedom APK Free In-App Purchases Freedom APK Free In-App Purchases 2. Then, a popup will be shown to you that will ask you to grant Root permissions. This is very important steps so don’t try to skip it. Just grant the root permissions and the app’s interface will open.

3. You will see all the installed apps that you have on your phone at the moment.

4. Select any app or game from which you want to make free In-App purchases and then click on the app name and wait for a few seconds.

5. Once that app launches, just go to the store of that app or game from where you can buy coins or gems. just click on Buy Now button and you will see that the payment will be done for free.

FIX PLAY STORE NO CONNECTION ERROR

Wasn’t that super easy? Well, many users say that they get the ‘No Connection’ error in the Play Store when they try to make in-App Purchase to here is what you need to do –

Download a file explorer that let you edit the system files. We will recommend Es File Explorer as it is the best in this task. Now, go to the Root Directory of your Phone and there will be a folder named ‘System’. Open it and then open the folder ‘etc’. There, you will find Hosts file. You need to edit that file and add the code below to it – 127.0.0.1 localhost

Save the file. Once done, go to Settings > Apps > Google Play Store and then Clear the Cache and Clear the Data as well.

Lastly, just reboot your phone and the error will be no more. Download Freedom APK

SOME GENERAL FAQ Now, this is an obvious thing that if you are downloading an app that is not there even on the Play Store, then there are some questions that arise in your mind. For Example, you might get a file infected with virus etc. So, here are some of the questions that we will answer. You Can ask more via the comments section as we will always help you.

DOES THIS APP WORK FOR NON-ROOTED DEVICES? Sadly, no! This app requires a rooted Android device and rooting your phone isn’t a tough task actually. There are a ton of guides on how to root android online that you can follow. So, a rooted phone is one of the requirements for this app.

ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES TO THE FREEDOM APK? Of course there are. Some of these include apps like Lucky Patcher, Game Killer, XModgames, Gamer Hacker and much more.

IS THIS APP HARMFUL FOR MY PHONE? Now, there are two answers for this – Yes and No. This app is surely harmful if you download it from an untrusted source as they might give you a file infected with dangerous malware or virus. But no, this is not harmful if you are downloading it from a trusted source like our site which provides the file directly from the developers.

IS THIS APP FREE OF COST? Yes, freedom app lets you make free in-app purchases and it is completely free of cost. There are no In-App Purchases in the app itself.

CONCLUSION Well, that was all about the Freedom App & How to Download Freedom Apk ( Freedom APK Download), its requirements, how to install it and how to make Free In-App purchases. We also covered how to fix the annoying Play Store error. If you are still finding difficulties, then just refer to the video that we have attached below. Make sure to let us know if you face any problems while using the app in the comments section. We will try to fix that if we can. And yes, everything has its cons so this app might have some bugs. We will be updating the post regularly with the latest app file so stay tuned.

VIDEO CREDITS – THE ANDROID GUY

Here in the video below, it is thoroughly showed how you can make Unlimited Free In-App Purchases by using the Freedom App for Android. Make sure that you like this video and subscribe to the channel as this guy makes some amazing stuff. Also, don’t forget to share this on social networks. This will help us. Have a Good Day.

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seuzz · 6 years

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Mary Sues: What You Should Really Be Worrying About

So, a couple of weeks ago, the Writers Write blog posted an article: Mary Sues and Why They Make the Best Protagonists. As it happens, I've been thinking a lot about Mary Sues recently, so the article’s appearance in my Tumblr feed gives me an excuse to put my own thoughts down.

1. What is a Mary Sue?

Yeah, good luck answering that question. A visit to TV Tropes (No link! It's the Sargasso Sea of the internet!) confirms that there's no widely agreed definition of the term, let alone a commonly agreed analysis of what makes the Mary Sue obnoxious. But Christopher Dean (the author of the above article) lists five traits of the Mary Sue:

- is an idealized version of the author themself - outshines everyone - can solve any problem - has flaws that are actually virtues - has some kind of secret

To these I would add:

- receives constant emotional validation - is given unearned victories

I include the last because it’s the trait I've heard most often mentioned in connection with characters like Rey and Carol Danvers in the Star Wars sequels and Captain Marvel—and no, I'm not going to talk about those characters or movies!—and the trait that is hit most heavily by those characters’ critics.

But is it a bad thing to give a character these traits? Dean argues that they aren’t, and that many respected and beloved characters have them: Tarzan, James Bond, Peter Parker, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker ... You can go read his article to see if you agree.

2. What's the Problem with Mary Sues? Dean's Answer So if Mary Sues are a perfectly acceptable character type—

Or, better, if their traits are not flaws of characterization—

—then why do readers so often dislike characters who have these traits?

Dean pins the blame on writing skill. Skilled writers know how to write characters with these traits. Unskilled writers—don’t look now, fanfic authors, but I suspect he's thinking of you—don't.

Well, that may be. But if an author goes in dread of writing a “Mary Sue”, it’s no help to advise them to “Write better.”

I've got a different take on the issue. Here's the tl;dr:

A "Mary Sue" is not a mistake of characterization or of character creation. It's the result of bad plotting.

If a Mary Sue is a character type, and if non-Mary Sues have many of the same traits, then no wonder it's impossible to define what a Mary Sue is.

But there is one trait that is not commonly found in non-Mary Sues:

- is given unearned victories

Even if you agree that Luke Skywalker, James Bond, Tarzan, and Harry Potter are “Mary Sues” by some common definitions, it is hard to argue that their victories are unearned. On the contrary, these characters tend to lose a lot of blood in the course of their stories.

But “is given unearned victories” is not a character trait. It is an attribute of the plot.

3. Plot Structure Here I have to make a digression to talk about what a plot is, how it is structured, and what it is supposed to do. [These points are not original to myself; I learned them from David Mamet, among others.] Basic points:

a. A story describes a protagonist who jumps into action to achieve a goal whose stakes justify the expenditure, overcoming significant opposition in the process. These elements (Who wants what? What is stopping them? What happens if they don't get what they want?) define the shape of the story. They give the beginning (the who stung into action to achieve the what), the end (the who getting the what, or definitively losing it), and the boundaries within which the story will move (the stuff connected to the who, the what, and the struggle to get it).

b. A plot is the machinery that carries the protagonist to their goal. It is the set of actions performed by the protagonist (and the antagonist) while trying to get from A to Z.

c. A plot is constructed of scenes, where each scene is a micro-story. That is, each scene is defined by a protagonist, a goal, a plan by the protagonist to achieve the goal, opposition to the protagonist, and stakes associated with achieving the goal.

d. Every scene ends with the protagonist failing to achieve their immediate goal.

4. Wait, What Was That Last Bit? Yes, that last point is probably a surprise to hear. In each scene, the protagonist is trying to get something; and each scene ends with the protagonist failing to get it.

So let me try to explain why this is the way you want to write your scenes.

a. Failure decisively ends a scene by forcing the protagonist to set a new goal and come up with a new plan. This leads to variety.

b. Failure (provided it has been justified in a way the reader can accept; plot-induced stupidity in the protagonist doesn't count) frustrates the protagonist; it also frustrates the reader, which forces the reader into greater sympathy with the protagonist and strengthens the emotional connection.

c. Failure (again, provided the author is good) forces the protagonist into difficult choices that cause them to evolve. Failure is what causes character development.

d. Failure that results in renewed resolution in the protagonist will (all other things being equal) elevate the protagonist in the estimation of the reader.

By contrast, stories in which the protagonist achieves each goal they set will be boring, the way a one-sided ball game will be boring. (No one, not even fans of the winning team, enjoys a 151-0 blowout.) Instead of sympathizing with an underdog, the reader may come to feel contempt for a character who can never fail. The successful protagonist will have no reason to change, and will be the same person at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. And though the constant victories may feel earned in the sense that competence has been rewarded, they will not feel morally merited as a result of grit.

It's the last-mentioned consequence, the lack of moral merit, that causes victories to feel "unearned.” But the other consequences—boredom, lack of variety, lack of change in the protagonist—typically lead to reader resentments that fasten onto otherwise admirable character traits (hyper-competence, popularity with other characters) and make them obnoxious, even when the writing is otherwise adequate.

5. Can We Have an Example? Let's look at Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (1977). Here's a plot summary of that movie, emphasizing how Luke's scenes invariably end in disaster for him and others.

Luke, while cleaning some new droids, discovers a message from a beautiful princess. He wants to learn more about her, and lets one of the robots talk him into removing the restraining bolt that shackles the robot. The 'bot then shuts off the message; worse, the 'bot runs off the first chance it gets, which will land Luke in a heap of trouble with his uncle if he finds out.

Luke sets off the next morning to retrieve the robot. He catches up to it, but instead of returning home he pauses to spy on some hostile natives. He is ambushed and saved from death only by the intervention of a friendly hermit.

The hermit tells Luke of his heritage and asks Luke to leave home on an adventure. This is test of character, and Luke (who has said he wants to leave his home world) flunks it by inventing transparent excuses to remain behind.

Luke learns that enemy soldiers are on their way to his home. He rushes back to warn or defend his aunt and uncle, but arrives too late and only finds their corpses.

Luke and the hermit want to get a planet where they can deliver the fugitive robots and the secrets they are carrying. They succeed in booking passage on a freighter, but they arrive to find their destination blown to rubble. Worse, they are captured by an enemy space station—the fearsome Death Star.

Luke discovers that the princess is aboard the station, and talks his companions into trying to rescue her. They do get her out of her cell, but have alerted the station, and are trapped by enemy units.

The company (minus the hermit) successfully escape the Death Star and return to the princess to her people. But their ship has been tracked, and their escape tells the enemy where the rebel base is located. The Death Star approaches with the intention of destroying it and ending the rebellion.

Luke and friends mount a desperate sally against the Death Star. Even here Luke only succeeds due to the timely intervention of an unexpected ally. Without that ally, he would have been killed before he had a chance to get off the winning shot. (Go back and look: Vader locks his targeting computer onto Luke, and has even started to fire, before Han swoops in.)

Every time Luke sets a goal for himself, he fails to achieve it and typically winds up in even worse trouble. Yet his perseverance makes his final victory all the sweeter, and we get to watch him grow and evolve under pressure.

For contrast, here's the exact same story, with the exact same character, but in which he achieves each goal.

Luke, while cleaning some new droids purchased by his uncle, discovers a message from a beautiful princess. He wants to learn more about her, but he's too smart to fall for the robot's sly suggestion that he remove a restraining bolt. Instead, he reprograms the 'bot and forces it to play the rest of the message.

Knowing now that he has to get the 'bot to a nearby hermit, Luke sets off with the 'bot the next morning. He runs into some hostile natives, but quickly dispatches them with his blaster and quarter-staff, rescuing the hermit.

The hermit tells Luke of his heritage and asks Luke to leave home on an adventure. Luke exclaims that this is the chance he's been waiting for, and rushes home to pack a toothbrush.

Luke arrives at home in the middle of a firefight. With his blaster and quarter-staff again, he saves his aunt and uncle and kills all the enemy soldiers.

Luke and the hermit buy an old space freighter and Luke pilots it himself to the planet where the robots need to go.

They arrive in time to learn that the Death Star is approaching, and that the princess is a prisoner aboard it. Luke, after delivering the robots, races off to the Death Star. He successfully infiltrates it and gets out with the princess without setting off any alarms.

The Death Star, while still approaching the planet, is intercepted by a fleet led by Luke. He succeeds in firing the killing shot that destroys it before it can blow up the princess and her planet.

Of course, it's impossible to judge without seeing the alternative story dramatized, but I think Luke in this story would be denounced as a Mary Sue, and would be so denounced even if all of his original character traits were unchanged. The only difference is that he would succeed in each scene instead of failing.

6. Keeping Things in Perspective Having your protagonist constantly fail sounds like a risk—they may come across as a loser or a bumbler. There’s a couple of things to keep in mind that will help protect your protagonist.

First, success or failure is often a matter of perspective. Think of the escape from the Death Star. In one sense it's an absolute success—our heroes (minus one) get away. But in another way it's a terrible failure, for in escaping they are leading the Death Star to the one place in the galaxy that they want to keep it far away from, the Rebel base. So it is possible to partially resolve the tensions that drove the just-ended scene while still throwing your hero into even worse trouble.

There are two ways to do this.

The first is playing a kind of “Monkey’s Paw” game with them: Give them what they were fighting for, but withhold the benefits they thought would come with it. This happens in Star Wars when Luke and Obi-Wan reach Alderaan, only to find it has been obliterated. They got to where they wanted to go, but they didn’t get what they wanted out of the trip.

The second is by giving the protagonist what they want with all the benefits, but giving it to them in a way that leaves them worse off then they were before. This happens when Luke and Han pull Leia from her cell. That's what they wanted to do; unfortunately, they've alerted the security forces, and now she and they are likely to die a lot more quickly than they would have if they hadn't tried to rescue her.

By resolving some of the tensions while keeping other tensions in play or introducing new ones, you can keep constant failures from being demoralizing, to the readers or to the characters.

Also keep in mind that the failures need to be failures of the protagonist's own, conscious plans to achieve a predetermined goal. However, the protagonist can, unwittingly or an accidental byproduct, be making substantial progress toward ultimate success. In his talk with Obi-Wan, for instance, Luke fails to embrace his destiny. But he learns many elements of that destiny, which prepares him for that destiny when he finds it thrust upon him.

Meanwhile, save the unequivocal and absolute failures—as when Luke fails to save his family from the stormtroopers—for moments when the protagonist needs to undergo a massive reappraisal of their lives.

7. Summing Up There are a lot of reasons not to employ the concept of a "Mary Sue" when critiquing stories or when writing them. The term itself (as TV Tropes notes) long ago became flame bait. And no one agrees on which traits of a Mary Sue are the obnoxious ones.

But if I am right, then the real problem is not that a "Mary Sue" is a bad character type. The problem lies in a plot that has failed to challenge the protagonist by setting them up for the kind of failures that lead to character development and audience sympathy.

It is often said that an author needs to be his protagonist's worst enemy: Once you introduce your hero, your job is to make their life sheerest hell.

Instead of worrying that you have created a Mary Sue, then, concentrate on making sure that you're doing everything you can to kill your hero. If you can pull that off, then you will have gone a long way toward protecting your character from the charge that they are a “Mary Sue.”

#writing advice #writingblr #mary sue

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widgenstain · 5 years

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Black Mirror Season 5

Just like Dark Phoenix this has been panned by the critics and cheeto-dusted neckbeards alike and I just don’t get it. Black Mirror always has had some weaker episodes, a lot of good ones and a few stellar moments that raised the standards of TV. This season doesn't feature any of the latter, but it’s only 3 episodes and they all fall into the “good” category imho.

Spoiler-y thoughts after the cut:

Striking Viper:

- Love it when Black Mirror does “love stories”, as in the technology facilitates relationship that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

- I liked the tenderness between the two guys in rl, I know, a lot of it was based in reluctance and 'men don't show their feelings' but it contrasted so well with how physical and violent everything got in the game's reality.

- When they did hit each other, it was beautifully complicated and I felt like, “yeah, it’s not a good way to address your feelings, but at least they’re doing it somehow”.

- Also loved that Mackie played the character who wanted to discuss it, in my mind he’s slated as this macho man and it was refreshing to see this. Generally I loved that two black dudes played these parts, because A: there weren't really any white people in this episode, were there? And B: it’s wonderful to see black masculinity shown like this.

- What I've seen people praise was the ending, but tbh, I thought it was the weakest part. It was supposed to be happy? But I don’t really see this working out for long-time? I dunno.

- Nicole Beharie is a beautiful gazelle of a woman and hasn’t aged in the last 8 years.

Smithereens:

- Yes, I’m biased but this was my fave episode. Also the one that frustrated me the most, due to the reactions it got.

- NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS A TWIST, and no, the theme of Black Mirror isn’t “super sci-fi tech”.

- This episode was so good exactly because it could happen today. And there was a twist! Just one that way too many seemed to have missed. It’s not about Chris Gillhaney, nor Jaden, nor Billy Bauer. It’s about how it’s not about them. There’s a tragedy unfolding, Chris has been through hell and lashes out, he takes Jaden under, who is a wonderful, innocent boy. They form a connection, they both show true humanity, pain and understanding. They are the only two people in this really talking to each other, Bauer shows moments of this too, but he’s completely powerless and he can’t stop what’s unfolding. The two men in the car most likely die, or one dies, or neither does. But it doesn't matter, they’re nothing more than blip on the net, a police statistic, a timeline that’s busy for a moment, a message that pops up on a newsfeed and is forgotten the next second. Maybe someone else will die/kill someone reading the news, but that’s just another tragedy that will be ignored. And the fact that so many didn't get the subtlety of this, tells me just how on point the episode was.

- Does Andrew Scott’s contract have a clause in it which says he has to have a scene where he frantically gestures and swears? I’m not complaining, au contraire, it was super touching and relateable but we have noticed. :D

- This featured a bad bad kink of mine, one I’m actually ashamed of: I love when men who were previously shown to be violent or dangerous show tenderness and kindness to someone else. It’s what made me appreciate Thanos way more than I should have, and in here I can’t get over how gently Chris wipes Jaden’s face after he puked. I know, I know, unhealthy, but I like it, kay?

Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too:

- That was the most sci-fi one and the one that gets most flack, probably because everyone on the internet hates Miley. And you know what? She was fine!

- They were not subtle about the Disney references and this is who this was really made for: The tween and teens who watch all those Disney shows. But this time with “No, you can’t always do what you set your mind to, sometimes -you will just fail!” I love that!!

- The story of the older sister was absolutely lovely too, how she feels responsible and loves her naive baby sister but is a damned teenager herself still and not a parent.

- The extraction technology was scary af, since you know they would absolutely do that.

- I left this episode giddy and ready to hate Disney just a bit more. I also know I wasn’t the target audience, so this is definitely a win I’d say. And if people pulled their heads out of their arses and saw past Miley covering NIN, they’d probably appreciate it too.

I felt the whole series suffered from people trying to be cool on the internet, and that includes not contradicting reviews from popular outlets. They know best, if you disagree you clearly know nothing about film, AMATEUR. Urgh.

Anyway, I enjoyed this, it didn’t really shake my top 3 episodes out of their positions, but it was a good season.

#black mirror #striking vipers #smithereens #rachel jack and ashley too

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simon-newman · 5 years

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Ants

So...

In my previous post about my new Praying Mantis Athena I mentioned that I’d love to try keeping a few other Arthropods.

Ants in particular.

I am going to try and do so this year.

There are total of six species in my country that I’d love to keep at some point and I’m going to outline my plans for them in here.

So, here they are:

1. Manica Rubida

Common name - Wścieklica Dorodna (Literally - Greater Fury Ant)

This is my favorite native ant and one I grew up familiar with as I had a nest of those in my backyard.

As a kid I used to feed them regularly as they were the biggest, baddest ants I knew.

Indeed - the workers can be up to 9mm long. Those ants are BIG.

They’re also hated by most people because they will defend their nest and do have a potent sting some compare to the wasp’s.

Personally - I’ve been stung by those ants before and while painful it’s far from being as painful as the wasp’s sting.

Anyway - the species is not recommended for beginners due to the sting and the fact that the queen requires some special care (she requires feeding during the founding stages).

Still. I am familiar with them and willing to try keeping them. They are my choice species and seeing as they have their nuptial flight in May I’ll try to get a hold of the queen or two.

I’ve also managed to confirm that those are still present in my area. So far I’ve discovered two sites with nests of this species.

Another interesting note - while those ants don’t have a proper soldier caste there ARE some noticeable differences between workers.

Some of them do have a sturdier build and larger mandibles. I’ll try to provide some pictures when I get the chance to compare a regular and large worker.

This coupled with the fact that there’s surprisingly little information available about this species makes me want to do some research myself.

Document their behavior, preserve different specimen to compare the large and small workers and finally...

When the colony grows to 200-300 workers I’ll try attaching them to a classic ant-farm unit and observe the architecture of their nest construction.

FYI - this is the only Manica species in Europe. There are four species in the US and one in Japan. I am curious if all of them have similar nest architecture.

However - comparing those would require me to cooperate with someone in those countries...

2. Camponotus Ligniperda

Common Name - Gmachówka Drzewotoczna (Literally - Mansion Treecarrier? Ant)

A carpenter ant.

The largest in my country.

The largest ant in general present in my country.

You’d think Manica Rubida above was big with their 9mm worker.

Camponotus workers are just as big in general.

That is... Regular ones.

This species produces actual soldier ants that can be up to 16mm long!

Those are huge. And the queen could be even bigger than that!

Those ants are just enormous and I’d love to keep them.

They’re also good for beginners and have their nuptial flight in late May and June - I’ll try to get one of those if I fail to get Manica Queen first.

The downside is that those ants take a long time to build their numbers.

They take their time to grow and the famous soldiers don’t appear earlier than on year 3 of the colony.

Still - I am a patient man. I can wait.

I also have an interesting setup in mind already.

You see - those ants like to travel far from their nest while foraging.

I’d just love to set up a tubing pass from one room to another so that I could feed the ants in another room (or the kitchen) and watch them bring the food back to the nest all the way from there.

3. Formica Cinerea

Common Name - Pierwomrówka Żwirowa (Literally - Gravel Feral Ant)

A common species and one I think is very, very common in the area I live in.

I am currently waiting for some equipment to arrive so I can proceed to properly identify the species but there’s AT LEAST 7 colonies of ants that look like this species in the area.

Unlike the above species this one has several similar species living in the same areas.

I still think it’s this one in particular as the ants I’ve observed are a bit grey and not black.

Why would I want an ant this common then?

Well. Because they’re crazy.

Those ants have two modes - stationary and TURBO.

Much like their sister species they’re just constantly running around as if it was an emergency.

So they’re very, very active ants and they don’t even sting!

They prefer to run away when disturbed.

They’re also of comparable size to Manica species - easier to prevent escapes.

This species is not a priority for me but I am 90% sure they are in the area and I WILL NEED THOSE if I ever am to keep the next species which is...

4. Formica Sanguinea

English Common Name - Blood-Red Ant

Polish Common Name - Zbójnica Krwista (Literally - Bloody Bandit Ant)

This is an interesting species of a slave-maker ant that requires some other Formica workers to start it’s own colony.

In nature a young queen would attempt to take over a young nest of another Formica species (Like Formica Cinerea above) and do so by killing their queen.

In captivity you just need to extract some pupae from the other ant colony and provide the queen with soon-to-be workers.

This already means the species is not suitable for beginners but this isn’t all.

The colony can easily reach several thousand in numbers. Possibly over 10,000 ants if they’re kept well.

They are aggressive and can spray Formic Acid so a good ventilation is required so they don’t poison themselves.

Luckily this is not such a problem as with Formica Rufa and the colony remains manageable even at the peak of it’s development (F.Rufa can reach few hundred thousand workers and requires A LOT of space so they can’t really be kept in captivity outside of a specialized insectarium or a zoo - not even mentioning they’re a protected species).

Still - I find the ant interesting and absolutely beautiful with their coloration.

They come in varying shapes and shades within the colony itself and can be given other formica pupae to include in their numbers (forming a kind of a mixed colony if one so desires).

I have no “dream setup” in mind for them as of yet and they are not the species I will try to find in the near future. On top of this I have no idea where to find them in my area (they should be present here but I never saw them or maybe mistook them for other forest ants).

5. Lasius Flavus

English Common Name - Yellow Meadow Ant

Polish Common Name - Podziemnica Zwyczajna (Literally - Common Underground Ant)

This is one of the smaller species in my country with the workers reaching the size of 2-4mm only.

The queen is much bigger than her daughters however.

This is both a species easy to handle and not considered “that interesting” due to staying mostly underground all the time.

In nature they don’t forage much and feed on insects and honeydew from root aphids - something which might be difficult to supplement.

I also don’t intend to keep them anytime soon due to the small size - I am quite afraid they’ll find a way out of the setup I make myself for them.

Pros: They don’t need much space as the short foraging range limits the distance you could setup the outworld.

They’re also beautiful with their yellow or even amber colors.

It’s also repeated everywhere that those ants are extremely common despite not being seen often.

Personally i have to admit to destroying a huge nest of those last year when I was rearranging the stones in my garden (I’ve uncovered an absurdly huge colony which moved out within few hours) - I know however those are definitely around.

Maybe one day a small compact setup for those, eh?

And by small I mean... Yes - their numbers can reach tens of thousands...

6. Dolichoderus Quadripunctatus

Common Name - Nadrzewnica czteroplamka (Literally - Four-dot Tree Ant)

This would be the apex of ant-keeping ability for me because this ant is often described as very difficult to keep and known to just die when slightly mishandled.

It’s a tree-dwelling species with characteristic dots on the gaster, it also has a beautiful shine.

TBH some people claim the ant is pretty much impossible to keep in captivity... Easily proven wrong as quick google search reveals people abroad manage to keep them long enough for the colony to grow into a thousand workers.

I blame my countrymen’s inability/unwillingness to do proper research using the Internet that’s not in our language (and I find Polish Internet to be lacking and misleading in a lot of cases).

Still - the species is definitely demanding and not suited for beginners.

They are very sensitive to temperature and humidity, live on trees and tend to simply dump their garbage down + they’re expert climbers that effortlessly pass fluon barriers which makes them the escape artists on top of all the other problems they cause.

Also - did I mention that their Queen requires the same treatment as Manica Rubida above (as in feeding during initial stages)? Because she totally does!

There’s also the detail about the queens being rarely found on the ground and looking almost identical to the workers... Yeah. So many difficulties with just one ant species.

My dream setup is thus a very farfetched project of a vertical formicarium that imitates the tree trunk the ants live in naturally.

The nest could be connected behind the artificial wall shaped in the likeness of a tree - with some small shelves to deposit food on.

I’d also make sure to include a temperature and humidity regulation to make sure they don’t die on me...

Now - I’d love to have the means to build something like this one day... One day...

Picture sources:

http://www.antwiki.org

https://en.wikipedia.org

https://pl.wikipedia.org

https://insektarium.net

https://ru.wikipedia.org/

#Ants #Manica Rubida #Camponotus Ligniperda #Formica Cinerea #Formica Sanguinea #Lasius Flavus #Dolichoderus Quadripunctatus #Yeah - I watched too much AntsCanada for my own good #Am I getting obsessive?

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artyrambles · 6 years

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"Year[s] of this game has made me realize that the vast overwhelming amount of the playerbase is so utterly garbage at it its mind boggling"

Long post incoming. I have a lot to say about this topic and had nothing else to do during my lunch break.

Is it really that mind-boggling, though?

If we talk about players being "garbage", we should first be clear on what that means. Is there an arbitrary requirement for average damage, kill/death ratio, minimum WN8, etc.? Who defines this? Is the requirement to be able to carry one's own weight, or the entire team? Always? Most of the time? Sometimes?

Let's assume "not being garbage" means to do at least as much damage as your tank has HP (ignoring arty there for a moment) on a regular basis. This doesn't seem to be an easy task - if you look at result screens, very few players are able to achieve it (especially regularly). In fact, it seems to be hard enough that WG made it a medal/achievement.

Let's ignore the fact that bad luck, bad days, stock tanks, and bad internet connections exist. What factors remain? How does one achieve "not garbage" damage?

Firstly, you need to be able to actually get to the enemy. This can already be difficult. Slow tanks are only one factor - you also need to know the map: the positions where the enemies will most likely show up, and where you should and shouldn't go with your respective tank.

The emphasised part already leads to the second difficulty: Knowing your own tank. There are hundreds of tanks in WoT, all with their own stats. This results in thousands of numbers one needs to memorize to "know the tanks". But more about that part later. For now, only focus on your own tank. That is a manageable amount of numbers, right? How many of them do you have to memorize and recalculate on the fly during a match? How many are actually shown to you during the match in case you don't have them memorized, and do you even have the time to check them?

Are you able to answer these questions about the tank you last played, without looking anything up: What is its view range? Where are the weakspots, and how much (effective) armour do they have? What is its maximum gun depression/elevation? How much penetration do its standard shells have if you get good RNG? Could you answer these questions? If you could, congratulations! You are either very gifted with numbers, or you've spent a significant amount of time playing this tank to get to know it this well.

Okay, now answer the above questions for the tank that is next to it in your garage. And then the tank next to it. Then, pick a random tank from the tech trees on the same tier or up to two tiers below/above it. Could you still answer the questions?

If you could, you have mastered the third difficulty: Knowing the other tanks. How many matches did it take you to amass meaningful knowledge about the tanks you face in random matches? How easy can you keep up with learning about new tanks that are added to the game? As I mentioned, there are literally hundreds of tanks by now, and even similar tanks may have very different characteristics.

With this amount of numbers, you might as well have memorized a town's phone book. Acquiring all this knowledge takes a lot of time and effort. But just knowing these things is not enough! Which leads us to ....

Fourth difficulty! Actually damaging the enemy tank, aka: Applying this knowledge. People panic or have slow reaction times. They may be distracted, mix up information, or even freeze up. In the middle of a match, players get tunnel vision or get too stressed out to act rationally. Sometimes they were just bored and didn't pay attention when things suddenly happen! There are tons of reasons why they may not be able to apply what they know, and therefore fail anyway at causing damage, despite getting to the enemy, knowing their own tank's abilities, and knowing the enemy tank's abilities.

So, removing all the "random" factors, there are still the factors of time, effort, and human error.

Time: It's not a secret that you have little chance to become "not garbage" at WoT if you don't spend a lot of time playing it. Learning the numbers and mechanics takes time, playing regularly to keep up with new developments and not forget your knowledge between sessions takes time. Not everyone has this time or wants to spend it.

Effort: Spending a lot of time playing WoT or playing a lot of matches doesn't mean you'll get good at it. We can observe this with terrifying examples of people with thousands of matches under their belt who still lack basic knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Learning the required knowledge is a conscious effort which needs an underlying drive to improve. A lot of people don't play to improve. They play to destress after work, or because they're looking for some variety between playing their other video games. They don't take a defeat seriously and just click "Battle" again until they get bored, no matter how they perform.

Human error: No matter how much time or effort you put into something, the human component can't be removed. Many people are just not good at video games, or have impairments/disabilities that cause them to perform poorly - either all the time, or seemingly randomly. A player with low stress-tolerance may perform exceptionally well ... until they are suddenly the last alive tank on their team and seemingly completely forget how to play, making everyone else pull out their hair and wonder what on earth is wrong with them. And let's not forget: even great players have bad days.

I was told that "you only get good after 5000 matches". I believe I have by now passed the magical 5k, and I'm still "garbage" a lot of the time. I expect to continue being "garbage" for a lot longer even after passing this mark, because despite putting a lot of effort into it, I do not dedicate a lot of time to the game, which is partly due to it stressing me out immensely in a variety of ways like no other game does.

Let's face it: Between casuals, kids, newbies, and those who don't care about improving, the players who are "not garbage" are few and far between, and given everything I discussed here, I don't find that surprising.

#world of tanks #wot #arty has opinions #garbage players #thanks for coming to my ted talk #long post

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/3368-2/

Taurus at the Speed of Sound ~ May Monthly Horoscope

by Eric Francis

Dear Friend and Reader:

Earlier this week, we experienced the first of seven Sun-Uranus conjunctions in Taurus (that was Monday, April 22). News events are moving at a dizzying pace, and defy comprehension. At the time I’m writing this article on April 25, it’s been just over a week since the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, and a week since the release of the redacted version of the Special Counsel’s report. It seems more like a month.

As of this writing, there are now 20 Democratic presidential candidates, with Joe Biden’s entry into the race. Also today, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin met Kim Jong-un, the Korean leader, for a summit meeting in China. Putin is moving in on a power vacuum abandoned by Trump’s failed attempts at courting diplomacy with Kim.

Texas executed John William King for the 1998 killing of James Byrd, the first time in modern Texas history that a Caucasian man was executed for the death of an African American man. This was the infamous dragging death by a white supremacist.

Pres. Trump denied that he ordered then-White House Counsel Dan McGahn to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller III. He said that McGahn had lied to the Special Counsel about this during the investigation.

McGahn, one of the star witnesses in the Special counsel’s investigation, has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress, but Trump brought a personal lawsuit to block his testimony. The president also vowed to fight any subpoena of documents or testimony by congressional oversight committees, in effect daring the House of Representatives to impeach him.

On that note, if he is impeached, Trump said he would fight it at the U.S. Supreme Court. He is clearly referencing his impression that he would get a 5-4 win on any case he brings, but there is no such course of action provided for under the Constitution. (What actually happens during an impeachment is that the chief justice presides over the trial, with the Senate serving as the jury.)

Contents of the report of the Special Counsel, 448 pages long, are gradually percolating through the news. The report details the astonishing extent of Russian meddling in the election, which came in the form of a social media propaganda campaign dating to 2014, and hack and dump operations of email and confidential documents stolen from formal Democratic Party offices and Hillary Clinton’s personal office.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, this week falsely summed up the operation Wednesday as consisting of “a couple of Facebook ads.”

On the Personal Side of the Equation

We live in a restless time. I keep reading articles about the impact of lack of sleep and sleep hygiene. Part of this impact is coming from being inundated by radio waves, which are invisible light waves; these burn melatonin. So too does exposure to blue light, which is a fact of looking into screens all day.

But there is something more, a sense of agitation, nervousness and fear, as if we’re heading toward an edge that we cannot see.

Despite all the discussion about global warming and climate change, collectively our societies are doing very little about it. Economic success is still measured in growth — corporate profits and the value of the stock market. Many people are struggling — really struggling — to make ends meet as everything gets more and more expensive.

Economic woes are always an issue; we hear about them in good times and bad. But we are living in the New Gilded Age, when there are more billionaires than ever before. Money is energy, and much of it is stagnant at the moment, as companies and individuals hang onto huge cash reserves. There is fear of loss and little imagination about what to do with vast sums of wealth that exist.

As I’ve written many times, my studied impression is that the internet is what is driving consciousness: the sensation of what it feels like to be alive right now. Inundation by internet is the primary factor behind the social crisis, the anxiety epidemic, the sexless relationships, and a general state of psychic chaos.

Reader Responses: Uranus in Taurus

I recently asked my readers how they were responding to Uranus in Taurus. Here is a sample of the responses:

“It’s quite an upheaval. My trust in God has increased and at times is still quite tested. Due to a lingering concussion that hasn’t healed I haven’t worked for several weeks. I am far out on a limb in completely new territory. I have a sense that I am learning many things that I’ve needed to learn for a while. I am also in brand new territory that’s missing some of the old markers.”

lived at ages 4-6, (big stir), all the moving from home to home before I was in 5th grade… my inner sense of personal sovereignty and authority has had its challenges as I feel that speaking in honesty and truth can fucking stir lots of pots. It seems to put people I care for in uncomfortable wonder about my authenticity in relationship to them, cause I’m challenging them.”

“Quite a lot has shifted for me but the one that really stands out is as a 57 year old man who is pretty conservative in physical expression and exercise, I started going to a weekly free form dance and have progressed from slow soulful movement to full on dance machine!”

“Everything about personal awakening resonates, though that started about 3 years ago. Building on that theme now, Uranus seems to be about burning through convention to see what remains, like the alchemical calcination phase, and using what’s left to (re)build something new. This is showing up in my career, which is being guided towards creating a new, spiritually-based business model from what survives the fire.”

“On the 15th my shelf of greenware fell over and every piece broke. My shelf of essential oils came out of the wall; luckily only one bottle broke. I found myself reading about broken vessels, specifically oil bottles and the shards with drops of oil representing light and the connection to everything. But the break through this week, and I think that is what Uranus in Taurus is offering, is that these material things do not matter except for what they represent. Throwing pots is a meditation for me. It is the process that is important, not the creation of the material, but the creation of the spiritual body. Part of my path, it seems, is renunciation or detachment to the material plane. Creation of the spiritual body is most important. I also learned that you cannot have a loving connection to others without a loving connection with God/creator.”

Beltane New Moon Coming May 4

The Beltane New Moon on May 4 is an intriguing chart. I’ll have more to say about it in Monday morning’s edition, and in the upcoming Planet Waves FM (where I will continue my coverage of the Special Counsel’s report, and ignoring the presidential race). The horoscope below is based on the Beltane chart — shown in the graphic below.

With love, Eriv

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phroyd · 6 years

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A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn’t focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta’s emails. It’s much, much bigger than that.

As most terrible things do, this story begins with a post on /pol/, a sub-board of the more-or-less-anonymous, anything-goes website 4chan. Over the last few years, /pol/ — which technically stands for “politically incorrect” — has slowly but surely become a top contender for the ever-coveted title of the most upsetting community online. It’s the sort of place where neo-Nazis and people who believe women shouldn’t have basic human rights used to meet before we started verifying them on Twitter and electing them to public office. And as of late, it’s expanded its ranks to include fringe members of all shapes and sizes.

On October 28, someone calling themselves Q began posting a series of cryptic messages in a /pol/ thread titled “Calm Before the Storm” (assumedly in reference to that creepy Trump quote from early October). Q claimed to be a high-level government insider with Q clearance (hence the name) tasked with posting intel drops — which he, for some reason, called “crumbs” — straight to 4chan in order to covertly inform the public about POTUS’s master plan to stage a countercoup against members of the deep state. It was, in short, absolutely insane. However, thanks to some rather forced coincidences — like Q kind of, sort of guessing that Trump would tweet the word “small” on Small Business Saturday, and this one time the internet decided that Q was “totally on Air Force One” because he posted a blurry picture of some islands while Trump was on his trip to Asia — and a whole heck of a lot of wishful thinking, people believed he was the real deal.

So he kept talking.

According to Q, Trump was never really involved with Russia, and isn’t actually under investigation by Mueller & Co. On the contrary, Q insists thatit’s actually Clinton and Obama who were corrupted by Putin (and are nowactually under investigation by Mueller) because they’re obviously just evil, money-hungry globalists who’ll do anything for the highest bidder. (Oh, yeah, and they’re also apparently into raping and killing children, though the crowd is split over whether this is because they’re satanists or just part of some weird blackmail scheme involving the CIA.) Q also claims that Trump, the genius that he is, figured all of this out way back when he was just a measly presidential candidate, and has been pretending to love Putin and/or be involved with Russia ever since as a way to force a third party to investigate these horrors — without drawing the attention of those evil Dems-who-must-not-be-named, of course — because he’s just that selfless of a leader.

In this fantasy world, all of the far right’s wildest dreams come true: Q promises that Clinton, Obama, Podesta, Abedin, and even McCain are all either arrested and wearing secret police-issued ankle monitors, or justabout to be indicted; that the Steele dossier is a total fabrication personally paid for by Clinton and Obama; and that the Las Vegas massacre was most definitely an inside job connected to the Saudi-Clinton cabal.

They believe all of this will be coming to a head any day now. That “The Storm” — of arrests, political turmoil, and Republican vindication — is coming. Though there have been some, uh, miscalculations as for exactly when.

For example, take this “crumb” left by Q on November 1:

Q Clearance Patriot

My fellow Americans, over the course of the next several days you will undoubtedly realize that we are taking back our great country (the land of the free) from the evil tyrants that wish to do us harm and destroy the last remaining refuge of shining light. On POTUS’ order, we have initiated certain fail-safes that shall safeguard the public from the primary fallout which is slated to occur 11.3 upon the arrest announcement of Mr. Podesta (actionable 11.4). Confirmation (to the public) of what is occurring will then be revealed and will not be openly accepted. Public riots are being organized in serious numbers in an effort to prevent the arrest and capture of more senior public officials. On POTUS’ order, a state of temporary military control will be actioned and special ops carried out. False leaks have been made to retain several within the confines of the United States to prevent extradition and special operator necessity. Rest assured, the safety and well-being of every man, woman, and child of this country is being exhausted in full. However, the atmosphere within the country will unfortunately be divided as so many have fallen for the corrupt and evil narrative that has long been broadcast. We will be initiating the Emergency Broadcast System (EMS) during this time in an effort to provide a direct message (avoiding the fake news) to all citizens. Organizations and/or people that wish to do us harm during this time will be met with swift fury – certain laws have been pre-lifted to provide our great military the necessary authority to handle and conduct these operations (at home and abroad).

POTUS will be well insulated/protected on AF1 and abroad (specific locations classified) while these operations are conducted due to the nature of the entrenchment. It is time to take back our country and make America great again. Let us salute and pray for the brave men and women in uniform who will undertake this assignment to bring forth peace, unity, and return power to the people.

It is our hope that this message reaches enough people to make a meaningful impact. We cannot yet telegraph this message through normal methods for reasons I’m sure everyone here can understand. Follow the questions from the previous thread(s) and remain calm, the primary targets are within DC and remain at the top (on both sides). The spill over in the streets will be quickly shut down. Look for more false flags — stay alert, be vigilant, and above all, please pray.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Love is patient, love is kind.”

God bless my fellow Americans.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but November has come and gone without the slightest hint of a Q-style military-backed Armageddon. Yet, this pretty glaring mistake doesn’t seem to have weakened anyone’s faith in Q. If anything, it’s brought more followers into the fold.

Over the last month and a half, the Storm has spread from the depths of 4chan and 8chan to Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter, where it’s found hundreds of thousands of devout followers. Some of the most popular explainer videos boast nearly 200,000 views, and the QAnon hashtag has gotten so popular, it’s honestly difficult to track. (I signed up for one of those freebie “Track Your Hashtag Now!” services and #QAnon hit the 2,000-post limit within four hours.) Some poor soul even took the time to write a 117-page book charting Q’s rise to power, which I’m guessing has been seen at least as many times as this very aggressive Imgur guide, which was at 137,000 views as of Sunday night.

It’s been a little over a year since Edgar Welch, military-style assault rifle in hand, walked into a D.C. pizza parlor, convinced it was part of a child sex-trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton, and the internet hasn’t gotten better. If anything, it’s worse.

Sure, in the wake of Pizzagate’s brief encounter with reality, a lot of changes were made: Reddit shut down the conspiracy’s designated sub, Twitter suspended some of the movement’s most vocal supporters, and the whole thing was debunked time and time again by the press. But it’s more evident now than ever that this was merely a Band-Aid, not a cure. And now, here we are a year later with the same thing. Sure, it’s a bit bigger and a whole lot less focused, but at its core, it’s the same. What is there even left to try? We know that stopping the conversation doesn’t work. Neither do the facts. How can we even begin to argue with hundreds of thousands of people who choose to believe that a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan, that Trump has been playing a game of 4-D mind chess this whole time, and that the Las Vegas massacre was an inside job? Is the next Edgar Welch already out there, scrolling through the Calm Before the Storm thread, and if so, is it even possible to stop him?

Phroyd

#conspiracy theories #pizzagate #the storm #4chan #alt-right #qanon

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 6 years

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Michael in the Mainstream: The Last Jedi review

It has been a year since I first saw this, and it has given me plenty of time to sort out my thoughts on it. This film was very divisive in my mind, as it has been to filmgoers at large; no two people seem to have the same take on it. Alex of IHE liked it and thought it got better with each viewing; Schaffrillas Productions thinks the movie is really stupid and fails at what it set out to do; and Doug Walker, AKA the Nostalgia Critic, is somewhere in the middle, saying it has some of the best Star Wars has to offer as well as some of the worst. And that isn’t even getting into fan response, with the ever-hyperbolic Star Wars fandom screaming for ages about how this is an utter travesty of filmmaking, and how the whole movie should be retconned, and so on.

Frankly, such hyperbole should just be dismissed entirely out of hand. If you honestly think this film is the worst Star Wars film, or even an objectively bad film in general, you either have lived a very sheltered life or do not know a thing about films or filmmaking. Now, does that mean I think this is a GOOD film? Well… no. I think I most agree with Doug Walker on this; the film has a lot of great stuff, a lot of stuff done better than every other Star Wars movie; but for every great thing, there is an unbelievably awful thing too, balancing out the movie into being a literal divisive work, with half the film being a great Star Wars entry and the other half being a stream of idiocy, fluff, and filler. And the most baffling part is it isn’t even hard to tell which parts are good and which aren’t the awful parts stick out uncomfortably. Say what you will about something like Jar Jar, he at least seemed somewhat plausible within the universe of Star Wars. But the casino on Canto Bright, and the weird space horses? It just feels too weird, too whimsical, too Harry Potter-esque for Star Wars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As far as story goes, we have this: Rey is off trying to convince the cranky hermit Luke Skywalker to train her, though this is easier said than done, as Luke seems rather content with milking alien walruses and just in general being a hermit to want to help her out. Meanwhile, the rebels are being chased down by the First Order, with Poe desperately trying to take command of the situation and his commanding officer not having any of it, which leads Poe to send Finn on a mission to find a way to sabotage the ships. This leads to Canto Bright as they search for a skilled hacker. Meanwhile, Rey is finding out she has a very interesting connection to Kylo Ren. There’s a lot going on this time in the galaxy far, far away, and it becomes unclear if things will come out on top for the rebels this time around.

So, let’s talk about what works first. The movie’s greatest strength is certainly the cinematography; this is hands down, indisputably, the best-looking Star Wars film to day. There are so many gorgeous, beautiful shots, so many scenes made better by the fantastic camera work. The presentation in this film is just top notch, and so much in this film is just a treat for the eyes. And the beauty isn’t just the shots, the actual lightsaber duels we get are easily some of the finest in the history of the franchise, with Rey and Kylo’s fight against the Praetorian Guards, as well as the final duel between Kylo and Luke on the salt field, moments like this deserve to be held up among the best in all of Star Wars history.

Then we have basically everything involving Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren in this movie. The scenes revolving around these characters are the most engaging and interesting in the entire film. Luke especially is a fascinating character, Mark Hamill giving his all to the performance and showcasing the natural progression from a well-meaning but hotheaded young hero to a jaded, cynical hermit who has, like his master before him, put himself into self-imposed exile due to his failures. Rey and Kylo have an intriguing dynamic, and they get so much focus and development. A lot of the film focuses on Kylo, giving much-needed development, though unfortunately it does jettison a lot of what made him interesting in the precious film. Gone are his tantrums, struggle with the light side of the Force, and emulation of his grandfather… but in comes a performance from Adam Driver that I felt at some points emulated Javier Bardem’s from No Country for Old Men. Yes, Kylo Ren managed to be as terrifying and ruthless as Anton Chigurh.

But of course, there are a great deal of problems, namely anything in he film that doesn’t focus around the three aforementioned characters. Outside of the opening space battle, just about everything with the rebels is a tedious slog of a chase scene, with the First Order apparently never once considering speeding up a little bit to catch up with the rebel ships slowly running out of gas. Despite what some very sad, strange people on the internet might convince you, there’s no overtly political messaging in the dynamic between Poe and Holdo; the only thing there is just really poor writing, where two characters who should be smarter act ridiculously stupid for poorly defined reasons. It’s pretty telling when Leia, probably the only person in the rebellion with a cool head on her shoulders, gets taken out of commission for a large chunk of the film early on.

The film also wastes a lot of characters that were built up to be more important than they ended up being. Phasma is unceremoniously killed (or maybe not) after an extremely brief battle, to the point where reading this sentence will probably take more time than her appearance onscreen in this film. The hacker that Finn and his new partner rose find on Canto Bright, portrayed by Benicio Del Toro, seems like he might end up an interesting morally ambiguous figure, and up until his final appearance he offers some interesting characterization, but then he stabs Finn and Rose in the back and vanishes from the film. Still, neither of the previous examples are anything compared to what happened to Snoke, the mysterious evil emperor figure who corrupted Ben Solo into becoming Kylo Ren. Some have said they didn’t find Snoke interesting to begin with, and that his death wasn’t too bad of a move, but on the same token there is so little revealed about him despite the fact that he is integral to a major character’s backstory that he ends up feeling like a missed opportunity. The fact that he is played by Andy Serkis only compounds my irritation; why get such a fantastic actor to play a wasted character like this? I have much the same feeling towards the disrespectful usage of Max Von Sydow in The Force Awakens; pointlessly tossing great actors into minor, throwaway roles is utterly depressing when you think of what their talents could have added to the story.

But of course, I have saved the worst for last: Rose Tico and Canto Bright. He two go hand in hand, as Canto Bright is where Rose gets much of her screentime and development with Finn. Canto Bright is a very odd locale, featuring a shiny casino and weird alien horses. The whole tone of the place is far too whimsical and jarring for the film it’s in, and it ends up badly clashing with the other scenes. It also ends up hogging a lot of screentime from the far more interesting and intriguing plot with Rey and Luke. The biggest issue, though, is how pointless the entire venture ends up being, as after all they go through, they end up failing miserably, which leads to a lot of the issues in the film’s final third. The whole thing ends up just being a pointless diversion from the more interesting plot and comes off as a way to pad out the runtime with hamfisted morals and glurge.

And then we have Rose, who, in this film anyway, is probably the least likable character in any Star Wars film. She is utterly bland and uninteresting as a character, which is a shame as her sister, a character with limited screentime who only appears in the opening before dying, was far more interesting in the few minutes she was onscreen than Rose is in her entirety. The biggest problem with Rose is that she almost feels like a fan insert character, with how she gushes over Finn at first and gets to kiss him at the end despite the two having rather mediocre chemistry. Said kiss also comes after a moment where she ruins a moment that could have been an excellent culmination of Finn’s character arc and been a hugely subversive and expectation-defying moment, and then utters the most vomit-inducingly bad line in Star Wars history: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." Nothing about this line works, makes sense, or does anything but make the viewer cringe hard. This is worse than Anakin’s comments about sand, worse than anything in the prequels really, and I don’t think this is hyperbolic in the slightest, since we have had over a decade and a lack of George Lucas involvement to fine-tune scripts and not deliver lines that sound like they belong in a Hallmark special.

Overall, the film absolutely fails to do what it sets out to do: deliver a subversive film that defies audience expectations. Nothing in the film really subverts or plays with audience expectations in a positive way; all of the big subversions come from characters acting as insanely stupid as possible, and they all come from a dull plotline that hogs the screentime from the far more intriguing plotline. The Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff in this movie is easily some of the best and most engaging Star Wars content to date, but it gets shoved aside far too often, and a lot of elements of it seem to be left hanging. Built up elements like Rey’s parents, Snoke, and Phasma are unceremoniously dropped in frankly insulting ways, and at the end of the movie everyone is basically at the spot they were at at the end of the first one.

And that, right there, is my true issue with the film: it all feels very pointless. The heroes accomplish next to nothing, and the overall effects on the franchise are utterly minor. This is a Star Wars film I could almost say you could skip when viewing them for how little it adds… but what little it does add is really good and essential. This is definitely a movie that home viewing will make better, since at home you can skip through the awful Canto Bright and rebel chase sequences to get to the good stuff. The lightspeed ram, the Praetorian duel, Luke and Kylo’s confrontation… all of that stuff is worth seeing.

Ultimately, the film is neither really good nor bad. It’s just a mixed bag that is not nearly as subversive or expectation-defying as a contemporary blockbuster film like Infinity War or even an older film like The Empire Strikes Back. What it does succeed at is delivering a visually stunning film with excellent character dynamics between the three big players. So, it is easy to see why the film is divisive, but it is impossible to see why people could possibly write the film off as the “Worst ever” or “a film so bad it should be retconned.” If you honestly believe this film is so utterly, irredeemably awful, I frankly don’t think your opinions on film are worth much. If you think the film isn’t so good but at least can find a few things to respect in it, well, I find that a far more respectable position than the blind, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred the film has gotten. It really doesn’t deserve it, though it also doesn’t deserve to be held up as the gold standard of Star Wars films either. It does contain some of the worst moments, if not exactly the absolute worst, in the history of the franchise, after all. But on the same token, it contains some of the absolute best, top ten or twenty best moments of the franchise as well. To write the film off or to praise it blindly as a masterpiece are equally foolhardy decisions.

The way this film wraps up leaves me wondering what could possibly be done for the next film; I have no idea where the series could possibly go, and it fills me with a sense of worry and of suspense. The future of Star Wars is uncertain, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned after being a lifelong fan of the franchise, it’s that Star Wars always finds a way to come out on top eventually.

#Michael in the Mainstream #Star Wars #The Last Jedi #Luke Skywalker #sci-fi #Disney #review #movie review

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taexual · 7 years

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GOT7 / Them being intimidated by you as their roommate

Request: Hi! Can you do a got7 scenario when you're their roommate and they think you're intimidating like they feel nervous around you. Please???? Thank you very much.xoxo

Thank you for requesting this, I hope you enjoy!

Mark

Both you and Mark were rarely home due to school, work, and other possible social activities. When both of you were home, though, you noticed a tendency of him sneaking into his room whenever he heard you open the front door. You thought he just wanted to be left alone, so you didn’t bother him.

Until you noticed that on top of trying to disappear when you were home, he also barely made eye-contact with you when you asked him something. It could be as easy of a question as, “how was your day?” and he’d get really uncomfortable in a matter of a few seconds.

After having decided that living like this was causing both of you stress, you decided to confront him one day after returning home from a long day at school. Like always, you heard him get up from the couch in the living room and make his way to his bedroom as soon as you walked through the door.

“Mark!” you called out and you could visibly see cold run through him as he stopped and turned around to look at you. “Can we talk?”

“Uh, sure,” he said, trying not to lose his balance.

He sat back down on the couch while you locked the door, took off your coat, and joined him in the living room.

You sat down next to him, not failing to notice that all through this, he was staring ahead and not blinking.

“Do you hate me?” you asked him right away.

Mark was so shocked by this question that he turned to look at you, but then looked away as soon as he made eye contact.

“I don’t hate you,” he said.

“Then what’s the deal?” you continued. “You’re literally avoiding me. I’m trying to get to know you because, I mean, we live together, but it’s hard when you act as if I’m a huge nuisance to you.”

He sighed and finally, after taking a deep breath, managed to look at you long enough to finish his speech. “You’re not a nuisance. I’m sorry if it seems that way, I’ve just never lived with a girl before. It’s… intimidating.”

“Intimidating?” you raised your eyebrows. “Come on, just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean you have to find me intimidating. I’m a total bro. I even watch football.”

You saw him cringe and smiled happily, knowing that your goal was achieved.

“Seriously,” you continued. “Let’s do something to get to know each other better, so you wouldn’t feel so creeped out by me.”

“I’m not—” he started but then sighed and waved his hand to dismiss the thought. “What do you want to do?”

“Anything. What do you usually do when you lock up in that room of yours?”

You thought you saw him blush but his bright red hair distracted the attention from his face. “I… I play games sometimes, I guess.”

“Fantastic!” you exclaimed, jumping up from the couch. “Let’s do that.”

“Wait, you play games?” his eyebrows shot up.

“If by games, you mean that dinosaur thing on Google Chrome that appears when you lose internet connection, then you bet your ass I play games!” you said, making him laugh and feeling even more accomplished. “But other than that, no, not really. So, come on. Get up. Teach me how to play something.”

“I’m not a good teacher,” he said, getting up from the couch.

“Let me be the judge of that,” you replied.

You continued to chatter all the way to his room, trying to get him to break out of his shell a little because you knew that once he got used to you, you’d see a whole different person.

You honestly thought Jaebum hated half of the planet. You included. You only saw him smile when he was on the phone with his friends, but other than that, he walked around the house with a poker face so bad that you wanted to hide away in your room.

One night, when he was supposed to be away visiting his parents, you decided to throw a solo-party. You took a shower while blasting the music loudly and jammed out to every song that played. After that, you wrapped a towel around your body and walked out of the bathroom, your hairbrush/microphone still in your hand, another song by The Weeknd playing in the background.

“Uh…”

Like a deer in the headlights, you froze, slowly turning your head to the source of the sound, until your eyes met Jaebum’s shocked ones.

For a loooong moment, both of you stayed quiet, just staring at each other in shock.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” you asked finally, wrapping the towel tighter around your body.

“My car broke down,” he said, looking down to avoid being caught staring at you. “Looks like I’ll be staying home after all.”

“Oh,” you said, turning back towards the bathroom. “Well, let me turn the music down, then.”

“You don’t have to,” he said quickly, forcing you to stop.

“I don’t?” you raised your eyebrows.

“No. I mean, I don’t mind it.”

“You don’t?” you asked again, feeling as if your extensive vocabulary just flew out the window.

He shook his head. “You can listen to whatever you want. Actually, I kind of enjoy your music taste.”

“How do you know what my music taste is?”

“You, uh, play the music pretty loudly when you’re studying,” he explained with an awkward smile and you almost wanted to pause the moment and rewind to the start.

Were you actually having a normal conversation with him? And he was smiling during it, too?

“I’m sorry,” you said. “It helps me focus.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. It’s okay, like I said.”

“Really?” you continued, still not being able to believe it. “I’m going to be honest with you, I seriously thought you hated everything that had to do with me.”

Jaebum was even more shocked than when he saw you strut across the living room in just a towel.

“What? Why would I hate you?” he questioned.

“Well, you just have this serious expression on all of the time,” you tried to explain, suddenly feeling very stupid.

“So do you,” he pointed out.

“Maybe. But I try to be nice to you.”

“And I’m not nice to you?”

“Uh,” you hesitated. “I wouldn’t know because I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’re actually talking.”

“Oh,” he said in realization. “Okay, I’m sorry if I made it seem like I hate you. Maybe I’m just a little uncomfortable living with you.”

You weren’t sure if that was supposed to be comforting, so you stayed quiet and just watched him.

“I mean, I don’t know much about girls,” he said. “So, for all I know, you just want me out of your way so you could carry on doing… girl stuff.”

“Girl stuff, huh?” you were interested now. “So, like, killing my ex-boyfriends and then performing rituals with blood to hail Satan?”

Jaebum wasn’t expecting this, you could tell that from the way his eyes got wide. “N-no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay, relax,” you said then. “I’m obviously just teasing you. Girls are human, too, you know. Just like you.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had a girl friend,” he said and then heard how it sounded. “I mean, a girl who’s a friend. A friend that is a girl.”

You’ve never seen him this flustered before. In fact, you didn’t think he was capable of getting flustered, and yet there he was, basically blushing.

“You want to watch a movie or something?” you suggested then, with a small smile. “I can be your first friend that is a girl.”

He laughed at this. “Sure. Let me just recover from my lack of smoothness. I swear I’m usually not much of a mess like this.”

“It’s fine,” you laughed. “I actually like this side of you.”

Jackson

You weren’t in a good place in your relationship when you first moved in with Jackson, which is why he often heard yelling from your room. Your asshole of a boyfriend seemed to think that you moving in with some guy would jeopardize your relationship. And when you offered him to move in with you, he started coming up with excuses why he couldn’t do that. So, naturally, even if his concern about you living with someone else made sense, you weren’t going to listen to it because you needed to live with someone since you couldn’t afford to live on your own yet.

Eventually, you decided to break up with him, having had enough of his shit already. You felt like you got rid of a huge burden when you broke up with him, and instead of feeling sad or regretting this decision, you felt free.

Jackson, on the other hand, was terrified of you. He heard you yell all types of profanities because the walls were thin and he was afraid to cross you. And in general, he thought that since some asshole guy managed to piss you off that badly, you were hateful to the entire male population now. Which is why he was careful with his words around you.

“Can I be honest with you?” you said to him suddenly, when one night both of you were studying in the living room.

“Uh, sure, if you have to,” Jackson answered awkwardly.

“I’m getting a weird vibe from you,” you said. “Like… like you don’t really like me that much, or something.”

“I’m afraid of you.”

The next few seconds both of you just looked at each other, both surprised by his confession.

“Afraid of me?” you repeated slowly, then. “May I ask why?”

“You’re scary when you’re angry,” Jackson tried to explain, feeling like he was digging his own grave by talking further about this. “And you’ve been angry a lot lately. It’s intimidating and, well, terrifying.”

You considered what the appropriate way to explain your situation to him was, but in the end, decided to just tell him how it is.

“My boyfriend was a dick,” you said. “I mean, ex-boyfriend. We broke up. That’s why I was angry. He just managed to bring out my bad side until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’m not usually angry all of the time.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” he said, visibly relaxing. “I guess I can take 911 off my speed dial then.”

You raised your eyebrows. “I was kind of hoping you exaggerated the terrifying part.”

“Nope,” Jackson shook his head. “It might not seem so because I look tough but I really don’t like being yelled at. It’s kind of my weakness.”

Jinyoung

With shaky hands, Jinyoung knocked on your bedroom door. You opened in a few seconds, holding a hairdryer in one hand and your phone in the other.

“Uhh,” Jinyoung completely forgot why he knocked after seeing how busy you were. “Am I disturbing you?”

“Not at all,” you answered and he spent the next few seconds trying to understand if you were being sarcastic or not.

“Would you mind if I practiced at home?” he asked, finally. “I can’t go to my piano practice because of the heavy rain. I mean, I could go, I do have an umbrella, I’m not a moron. It’s just that the wind is strong, too, and I’m afraid—”

“Jinyoung,” you interrupted his nervous chatter. “You can play the piano. I don’t care.”

“Oh. Okay. Good. Thank you!”

Not understanding why he felt the need to ask for your permission to practice, you closed the door and went back to your conversation on the phone and the drying of your hair.

A couple of hours later, you exited your bedroom to head to the kitchen in hopes of finding some food. You walked past Jinyoung who was leaning against one of the cupboards and texting someone.

“Hey,” you announced yourself. “How was your piano practice?”

“Did it disturb you?” he asked you, instead of answering your question.

“No,” you answered slowly, a little taken aback by his reaction. “And even if it did, would it matter? You have to practice. I understand.”

Jinyoung looked surprised. His surprise confused you even more.

“Is everything okay?” you finally asked. “I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“It’s as if you’re walking on your tippy-toes around me,” you said. “I’m not going to bite you, you know.”

Jinyoung sighed. “I know. It’s just… don’t take this the wrong way, please, but you’re a very intimidating person.”

This was the first time you hear someone call you that. All of this time, you had assumed you looked friendly and approachable to strangers.

“Why?” you asked, honestly surprised.

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung shrugged his shoulders. “You just have this… air around you. Like, I know you’re nice but I can’t help but feel nervous around you.”

“Is it just me, or every girl?” you asked hopefully.

“Just you,” he admitted, looking down. “Sorry.”

“Well, maybe it’s because you don’t know me,” you concluded. “Let’s hang out someday to change that. And in the meantime, please stop treating me as if I’m your superior. You make me just as nervous. I’m just better at hiding it.”

Youngjae

It was about 3am and you had just exited your bedroom and were on your way to the kitchen for a glass of water. Normally, you weren’t very thirsty at night but this time you just couldn’t fall asleep if you didn’t satisfy your thirst first.

You passed Youngjae’s room, stopping to shake your head at the fact that he slept with his door open. You quickly concluded that if a serial killer broke into your apartment, Youngjae would be the first one to go.

You started to walk towards the kitchen again when you heard a voice coming from Youngjae’s room. This forced you to stop and listen in confusion.

“I can’t,” Youngjae said in a tired voice.

You looked into the room and saw his sleeping face in the light of his night light. He sleep-talked? You didn’t know that. Obviously curious, you stayed a little while longer to listen.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said I can’t,” Youngjae repeated. “I will not ask her to listen. No.”

You got even more curious when he mentioned a girl. You knew listening to him talk in his sleep was an invasion of his privacy but you couldn’t help it. You knew so little about him, you had to know more.

“She’s nice, though,” Youngjae spoke again. “But I don’t talk to her. Although nice, Y/n makes me really nervous.”

You felt your stomach drop. The girl he mentioned before was you?

Deciding that you’ve heard enough, you headed back into the room, completely forgetting about the water.

The next morning, you woke up after Youngjae and when you left your bedroom, you found him in the kitchen, making cereal.

“Good morning,” you said, flashing back to what you overheard him say last night.

“Morning,” Youngjae said quickly.

“Can I, um… Can I ask you something?”

Youngjae looked at you with the same exact expression students make when teachers call on them in class.

He didn’t say anything, however, so you continued. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

He placed the bowl of cereal back on the counter after you asked the question and you saw that his hands shook a little. Did you really make him that nervous?

“Uh… a little,” he admitted after a few seconds. “I’m just not used to you.”

“Yeah. I kind of overheard you last night,” you chose to tell him. “You were talking in your sleep and you mentioned that. You also mentioned not wanting to ask me to listen to something.”

Youngjae looked like he would rather be anywhere but here and yet he couldn’t leave.

“It’s really stupid,” he said, trying to laugh to fight off the awkwardness. “I just have this song that I wrote and I need someone’s opinion, so my friends suggested I ask you to listen to it but it’s not like you and I are friends. I guess I was replaying the conversation I had in my sleep. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” you said right away. “And, actually, I would love to listen to your song if you’d like me to.”

Youngjae raised his eyes to meet yours for the first time since you entered the kitchen. “You would?”

You nodded, smiling. “I may not know that much about music but I’ve heard you play and I know you’re good.”

He smiled back and already you could tell that this was one (of many, hopefully) steady step towards a friendship and away from the awkwardness that seemed to surround him when he talked to you.

BamBam

You had just moved into a new apartment and were looking for a roommate. BamBam reached out to you and after meeting him for coffee, you decided he wasn’t dangerous enough to kill you and agreed to let him move in with you.

You had lived together for a couple of weeks, when one Friday night, you found him in the hallway, getting ready to leave. Once he saw you in the mirror, he straightened up immediately.

“You’re leaving?” you asked casually.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m meeting some friends. I won’t bring them over, though, so, don’t worry.”

You hadn’t realized you were worried. “Oh, it’s cool. I was just going to watch a movie in my room so you can bring whoever you want over.”

“Really?” he raised his eyebrows.

“Of course,” you shrugged. “It’s your apartment, too.”

“Huh,” BamBam looked very surprised. “For some reason, I thought you wouldn’t be as nice.”

You just looked at him in confusion.

“The last roommate I had was very… difficult. She kicked me out of the apartment in the end,” he explained. “So, I’m kind of nervous to do something wrong in case you decide you’re not a big fan of my actions, either.”

“Well, I don’t know you that well yet,” you told him. “But I can assure you, I’d talk to you about your actions if they bothered me.”

He exhaled in relief dramatically, forcing you to laugh.

“I’m a great guy,” BamBam said. “So, I hope you won’t find me annoying in the long run.”

“I hope so, too,” you teased, making him smile, and then turned around to walk back to your room.

“Y/n!” he called out then. You stopped and turned around. “Would you like to come with me to meet my friends? We could bond, become one of those inseparable roommates who do everything together. And maybe I’d finally stop being afraid to screw something up and make you hate me.”

You smiled, incredibly flattered by this invitation. “Are you sure I wouldn’t bother you?”

“Not at all,” BamBam replied. “I think it’d be nice for us to hang out.”

“I think so, too,” you agreed. “Let me just change quickly and then we can go.”

BamBam nodded and you walked back to your room, while he turned back to the mirror and winked at his reflection. He mentally complimented himself for not losing his charm despite being almost as nervous to talk to you as he was during his finals in high school.

Yugyeom

You and Yugyeom were roommates for almost three months now and yet you only ‘hung out’ when you passed each other in the hallway of your apartment. You tried to invite him to hang out or do something fun together but he always politely declined and you never understood why. He couldn’t have hated you because he didn’t even know you.

Finally, after inviting him to hang out again (and getting turned down again), you decided to ask him what was up. “How come you’ve been rejecting me for three months now?”

Yugyeom wasn’t expecting you to confront him about this, so he took a few minutes to gather himself together.

“I don’t know,” he ended up saying.

“I’ll understand if you say you don’t like me,” you said. “But tell me. I mean, I can move out of the apartment if there’s a problem.”

“No, there’s no problem,” Yugyeom said quickly and then took a deep breath. “I’m just a little intimidated by you and I don’t want to seem awkward.”

“Oh,” you said, simply. Somehow, you haven’t thought of that. “Okay. So, would you rather I left you alone, or would you prefer it if we got to know each other better so you wouldn’t feel awkward anymore?”

Yugyeom considered this. “Look, I’d love to get to know you better, but like I said… I’m awkward. And I’m most definitely not the most social person there is.”

“That’s totally fine,” you said. “We can stay in and hang out here if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“Okay,” he nodded, finally. “But if I’m quiet all of a sudden, then remember that it’s not because I hate you but because—”

“We’ll play a question game,” you interrupted him. “We’ll ask each other random questions and you won’t have time to be quiet.”

You saw Yugyeom smile at this but he turned his head away. “Should we order some food, too?”

“Oh, I like where your mind is going!” you exclaimed. “Let’s order a couple of pizzas and get this show on the road. I want to finally get to know the person that I’ve been living with for the past three months.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Yugyeom told you. “I’m pretty boring.”

“I beg to differ,” you said. “Everyone’s interesting in their own way.”

He smiled again, only this time he didn’t turn away, showing you that he was already more comfortable around you than he was just a few minutes ago.

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sheikah · 7 years

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whoa wtf someone faked their own death just to get you to lose followers? why??? like???

***This post is cutting off halfway through on mobile. You need the full explanation so please view on desktop***

Yeah dude… it was this summer. Basically, as it became clear that Jonerys was in fact canon, some of the antis that had been extremely sure of themselves sort of… snapped. And as a big Jonerys blog, I received a lot of their ensuing tantrums. I’ll tell the story under the cut, or you can see the whole crazy history of what happened here since I tagged it all lol.

So around that time, one person in particular sent me this ask from her fashion sideblog. It’s what started the whole mess. Ten days later, she got on that sideblog to see that I had answered it and gotten over 250 notes on it, and it really upset her that so many people agreed with me that Dany is not, in fact, the Mad Queen. She reblogged it from a sideblog cursing me out, so I blocked that sideblog, not at that moment realizing that the sideblog and the fashion blog were the same person since ten days had gone by since I received the ask. So then she started getting on other side blogs. At first it was just a handful. It was obvious they were all her, though, because they had almost identical content. Just enough posts to keep the URL safe from staff deletion due to inactivity, but nothing more. On these sideblogs she would reblog my content with hateful and harassing captions. Each time she did, I would block the blog, but she would reappear with another one. When I was blocking faster than she could log onto new blogs, she got frustrated and started spamming my notes by tagging me dozens and dozens of times in replies to her posts. She also made a bunch of callout posts about me and reblogged them on all these sideblogs. I also received an anon during this–presumably from her–telling me to kill myself. I blocked the anon (which blocks an IP address) and the attacks from her stopped for a few hours. I’m guessing she went to another internet connection or switched to phone data, and then started doing it all again, but without sending me inbox messages this time so I couldn’t block her other IP.

I was meanwhile sending her DMs on all these blogs begging her to leave me alone and warning her that I would report her and share her URLs with my followers (so they could also report) if she didn’t. After a day went by and she didn’t heed my warnings, I did those things. That’s what finally stopped it all. Most of her sideblogs were deactivated.

There was literally nothing I could do to make this stop and I counted over 25 blogs from her before I had reported her enough to make her stop. I shared her URLs for these blogs with my followers to get help reporting her.

About a week went by and I thought that it was finally over. But then she made a post on that original fashion side blog (the first time she had used this blog since the original ask was sent, so I didn’t connect the dots and hadn’t blocked the fashion blog). She made a post there telling a fake story in which I was apparently the one bullying her and sicking my followers on her, and she claimed we told her to kill herself. This is an outright lie. She tagged me in this post, citing me as the reason for her own apparent suicide, and then left the blog (that wasn’t very active anyway), trying to make the last post there look like a suicide note.

This got a lot of attention, because she reblogged it on her slew of sideblogs. Lots of people tagged staff and I’m guessing she got in trouble since I had also reported her before that for harassing me from all of her blogs. While this supposed suicide note got widespread attention, I got dozens and dozens of messages from people imploring me to reach out to her and save her life, or shaming me for “pushing her to suicide.” It’s the reason why to this day I have my IM function shut off for anyone I don’t follow. It was insane how many messages I got. I treated her suicide note as serious and half believed it at the time. I apologized to her (though I’d done nothing wrong) just in case and joined others in tagging staff and trying to talk her down on the post.

A day later I received the asks below from a blog with no content at all (hmmmm. suspicious, no?). These screenshots are actually from that sideblog that sent them because when I didn’t publish them, they just reposted what they sent me on the sideblog so it could still get out somehow.

You can connect the dots here–clearly this is the original person who was harassing me, posing as their own “friend” to try and guilt and manipulate me (I would ask anyone reading this not to contact this person and start shit again, please. I never want to talk to them again). Obviously I didn’t publish it, which is why she reposted them on the sideblog. I responded privately telling the person that I was the one who had been bullied and that I absolutely would not be making the post she requested guilting my own followers for something they didn’t do.

So at that point she had failed at chasing me off tumblr and getting me to post any more about her and give her any more attention or make myself look bad on her behalf. Two days went by and I’m guessing she regretted ruining her fashion blog over her random and inexplicable hatred of me and Daenerys Targaryen. A new post appeared on the fashion blog (the whole blog is deleted now, probably by staff and not of her own volition). This time she claimed to be her own cousin who had inherited her blog after her suicide. It was an obvious ruse and her own followers turned on her then and scolded her for faking her suicide. Many of the people who had messaged me asking me to help her or fussing at me before reached out to me to apologize, seeing her “cousin” post and realizing their mistake. When she saw that, she said (still pretending to be the cousin) that she would have to delete the blog because her parents found it. That was the last I heard from her for a little while. She thinks I don’t know her main blog, but I do. It’s only out of a strong aversion to confrontation that I don’t share her main. She slipped up and liked two of the posts she made on her obscure sideblogs that had no content or posts other than the hate she was posting at me. So for those random empty sideblogs to have any followers is very suspicious, and her “likes” were the only notes these posts got. And the likes came from a prominent (at that time) GoT blog that had a lot of the same views that she shared in her hate posts to me, and I quickly realized that GoT blog was her main blog, and the only one she didn’t outright attack me from–she just used it to “like” her deranged posts to make it look like someone was supporting what she was doing to me. The last time she contacted me was through about 50, yes 50, anons she sent me while the GoT s7 finale was airing a couple weeks later. She had gone through my personal tag and looked up everything about me she could find, and then sent me extremely personal and specific hate asks about everything. She knew I’d be watching the finale so I wouldn’t be able to block her quickly, giving her plenty time to send me a shitload of stuff. It’s my own fault for being open and honest on this blog and literally showing my face, but what can I say? I love my life and am happy to share it on my blog. Anyway, the stuff she said was pretty disturbing. I think if I had been an even slightly less stable person, such cruelty could have driven me off of tumblr altogether or maybe even to self-harm. But as it is I remembered that she’s an insignificant and hateful person and brushed it off. I just blocked her IP and it deleted them all at once. And that’s the whole crazy story .

#fandom wank #the great wtf of august 12 2017 #answered

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