#brodude

[notmuchtoconceal]

My name is John Jacob Janus Kaminsky. I am knocking on the door of a home I have never known, for no family of mine has ever lived here.

I am knocking on the door in the dead of night, waiting for an answer I know will never come and expecting the world regardless. I am alive and this life is my life and with each morning I vow to make the beast of tomorrow, making the least of what passed for yesterday.

The door swings open.

By the flutter of my heart, I am taken by arrest.

Throwing back, so too does that what frames the porthole in the dark.

The doorframe which is not a mirror but the door on which I am knocking. The door from which I had knocked, it having swung open, and I being confined by no chamber, but he within -- left alone to ferment in the dark, stood symmetrical in station and profile.

He was tall and broad and more handsome by the day for his heart was unburdened and what forces played over his eyes, his imperceptible eyes I hardly recognized, though I saw them every morning in the glass.

It wasn't me. I was simply what was staring back, and he was more familiar than I could ever be, being so much more familiar to me.

I wasn't moving away. He wasn't moving in, being the first to move.

Don't go, he said with the words "Who are you?"

"My name is Jon Jakob Janusz Kaminski. I would thank you next time not to skip the previews. I was the voice they used to put in the trailers!"

He stared at me, seeing me outside the door which was not this door, but the porch of the home at which I lived. It only occurred to me now, the reality of my intrusion -- not only on this night, but the unreality of what myself must have been to him -- how strange it would have seemed to me, were it to be me to have met him on the step of my door.

"Would you like to come in?" I asked.

"You're outside," he said.

"Would you like to change places?"

"No. This is my house. You stay outside outside til I invite you in."

"May I come in?"

It only now occurred to him how rude it must have been, that I had introduced myself and he had not yet done likewise, though also -- supposing I cut him off with a social faux pas, saying what I'm sure will be the first of many things to make little sense if they were observed -- as if by a neutral audience which was not likewise agreed upon by the two of us, and therefore had no means for comparison; was therefore doomed to seldom overlap, each of us performing some distillation of proper etiquette for an imagined auditor, the least of which was the other.

"Please forgive me, mysterious and handsome stranger! The uncanniness with which it is the most fantastical unveracity that I may look upon you without swooning (which I'm now realizing is a perfectly adequate and natural response for stiff-lipped, hyper-rational, upper class Victorian gentlemen faced with confabulating circumstances) has unsettled me as such that I have forgotten my manners! I always thought the word swoon was girlie. I had thought everyone who ever swooned was but a ladyboy who couldn't handle the existence of monsters, yet here I am! Tempted to swoon merely looking upon you, and yet perhaps I am not mistaken? Is this not itself proof you are a monster?"

"Me, monster? Buddy, you're the one who lives at monster house!"

"Pardon me, friend. If monster house this be, its admittance you surely do not seek. Kindly turn and leave, having never darkened my life with your disturbing and impossible presence, strange shade of iniquity."

Our eyes met. The corners of his lips tugged defiantly, predictably.

As did mine.

"It is so hot that you can say this shit to me. I know you don't mean a word of it since you already invited me in. Introduce yourself so your brain keeps working and the flow of interaction may continue uninterrupted."

"I am J. Jonah Janice Kaminsky. I am not an animal, I am a machine. I am not a machine, I am a man. "

"A likely story. But it isn't the whole story, is it Chucky?"

He paused, slapped his forehead in a burst of exasperation.

"The shit you fucking say to people and expect them to respond to. Holy fuck. Nobody knows what that means. Nobody could parse out the nuances of that. The only fucking reason I know what you mean when you say that is we are evidently insane in the same fucking way."

I took a step back. I was moving my hips and my hands.

"Yes, that was it. This is the thing about us which is the same!"

"May I come outside?"

"You may, but you will?"

"That's not a question, I already have."

"Hey, plot twist."

His shoulders brushed me. His body was warm.

"What's over there?"

"I dunno. Do you think the world might dissolve if we try to move past the scenery? Sometimes I look at the city and the graphics are amazing."

"It think it'll just repeat. I think we'll walk down that street, then wind up back here once we turn the corner."

"There is a field."

"There is a street."

"Would you like to come in?"

"I thought you already asked."

The room was dark. Through one window crept the streetlamp. Through the other the pale beam of the waxing moon,

"Would you like a coffle? Tea? Coke Zero? I can piss in your mouth?"

"Foot rub'd be nice."

"Nice shoes, bro."

"Nice dick, man."

"You are seated in the den of J. J. Kaminsky. Poet. Playboy. Homeowner. "

"You are hearty and well-stocked. In body, mind and spirit."

"There's a shitload of stolen candles I already used in that end table. See if you can find any jackets with all the matchbooks written out."

The shimmer whorled around me black in the aquarium glass.

"I have to say, friend. While it is still too dark for me to take in, let alone admire and compliment the beauty of your decor, let me first say that you yourself are exceedingly handsome and well put-together in a subtle and understated way which is casual and decisive. Your red cap is fetching, as is the length, thickness, and metallurgical composition of your chains. Your shades of grey, in your snug and trim and clingy hood, and your shimmering nylon sweats, silky and smooth -- your socks and your armpits likewise are exquisitely scented, mulchy as a distillation of vetiver, a woodsiness near fungral for how damp and bucken with hearty fat."

His pause... Was too natural to be calculated.

"Thanks, bud. I"m well aware that our styles are nearly identical and you flatter yourself as you flatter me, yet nevertheless I can simply find no fault with your statements, and that our intense similarities in style induces in me something like a nervous and radical tension to rapidly diversify I feel is well-contained, for truthfully -- I feel moved into a death-like stillness gazing upon you, for you are simply... "

"I think..."

"... I know what you mean."

He stared at me, and I stared at him. I likewise felt a desperate need to distinguish myself in some way, and a contrary and opposite yet equally powerful need not to compromise myself needlessly, for he was simply content and I was simply content and yet -- as we looked upon one another in our mutual anxiety, the stolidity of our gaze, of our frame, the strength of our posture began to crumble and cord. I had felt knots strike me in places -- points of tension I seldom knew now breaking me -- as I steered myself against my volition in some arbitrary opposition in spite of myself, seeing him strangely and likewise pulled farther in twain.

"I, uh..."

"Yeah..."

Our mutual distortion sickened us. Where moments prior our near identical shape and countenance had been a source of alien alleviation, now every point of similarity seemed so wretched a mockery for what was sharpest and most apparent was each point which distinguished us -- and vulgar it was, for it marred what moments before had been a state of perfection, and was now still continuously contracting -- likewise in mutual and cyclical awareness that we were embroiled in a state of simultaneous and inescapable corrosion -- simply for we had attained awareness of one another and so robbed ourselves of limitation.

"What are you gonna --"

You cut him off, for your expression was more urgent.

"Your overall suboptimal status, I have to say -- is quite charming. Not in a way which is childish or crude or rubelike (I say these things solely so you know I do not mean them!) but with a firm absoluteness which is the elegance of the always understated and gentlemanly male who needs not the ferocity of an ideological monopoly to keep up the ruse of love!"

His pause... Was too long to be rehearsed.

"You too, bro? You think I look and act like you're fuckin dad?"

It was shocking. This thing he would naturally and inevitably think!

"What? Why would I think that? My father is an imbecile and a monster."

"Thanks, bud. You've made that clear already with your immediately prior sentence, as well as that crack earlier about monster house -- Monster House? Was that a Dreamworks? Why is that still deep in your unconscious? Does a porch with shark teeth simply recall the animistic imagery of all things fanged by icicles in childhood winters?"

"While your evidence is strong, I know that was the polar opposite of my intention, and your lengthy and detailed diatribe about the the obscure echoes unstirred by trailers glimpsed in movie theaters (some of which I narrated) while fascinating in its own right, simply reveals the depth of your insecurity and capacity to participate in projections. I mean, you know what you are, buddy. I don't gotta rub it in your face . Big dog boy dudes like you who desperately want to lick my face with your eerie canid witch teeth, you know -- they like fuckin headpats and to be the best boy and to run around and jump in daddy's lap. Aren't you getting a boner right now, just by hearing me describe this? I sure as fuck still am!"

"Yeah, bro. It really makes my dick fuckin stiff, all these casually condescending attitudes you just carry fuckin around and don't take any responsibility for. Yeah, dude. The only fuckin person on planet earth you've managed to convince you're not a condescending prick is yourself cause you're the only one who buys into your own bullshit. If you think I'm your fuckin carbon-copy (but also I'm an idiot like you're father, who your nothing like except, oh wait!) you should get a boner while you slip cash from your wallet into your wallet. Hey, wow. I just thought of that! If I made you take out your wallet and I took out my wallet, we could compare identification to check the veracity of all these circumstances and give a definite, credible timeframe and location to these events, and while we're at it, hey -- we could glimpse strange and eerie details in the details of each other's portraiture, and hey -- what if one or both of us is making derp face or something cause those things only expire like every five years and you gotta show em to law enforcement and bankers and like -- what if you just made the derpiest face while taking an ID photo, then sat there in severe stoic contemplation anytime you had to show it to somebody in some sort of official capacity? That'd be a riot."

" . . . "

"I'm reading your mind. You don't have your wallet on you (predictable) and you're so goddamn in love with me because I'm so helpful and full of good ideas and possess deep intuitive structural awareness which lends morasses of deceit and falsity to the illusion of mundanity and reality. The best thing to do when you're lying to somebody, to really, really make it fucking convincing is to come up with a lie so close to the truth, it's almost invisible. You can swathe the surface events of the situation in such a fog of business-as-usual, nobody'll ever fuckin think to look there -- and anybody who does'll get accused of being nosy or some kind of dangerous renegade, cause you're rightfully aware -- normal fuckin people are the worst. Their need to be corralled festers their resentment and their mediocrity, but you give em a chance to be free, hey -- see how they fuckin act. You can say it all you want. They need to use their freedom productively, but here's the trick, bud -- they don't want freedom to be themselves, nuh-uh. They want you to be the better person so they have a better person to occupy. It's always, now and forever, always about them. They will never love you or care for you. They crave your power for they want power. Any, not yours. They could only ever see all you've constructed as a temple for themselves. They want freedom from themselves. They want a great man of history, some self-deified living God, to come in, destroy their way of life and take them over. Oh Your God. The only way Christ Who Is Caesar conquered the pagans was by saying he was the best! Pagans always want the best! They are so stupidly easy to brainwash and corral with carrots and sticks! Dog boy only understands operant conditions! Dog boy wants to be the big winner! Dog boy wants to take home the crown! They want a better person to be. You need to stop listening to fucking weaklings who've given up cause others gave em an excuse to. It really is as fuckin simple as it looks sometimes, bro. It's your feelings are right and you're being lied to. You're being lied to. You're constantly being lied to. Almost everything you hear is a lie. Wrapping yourself up in tight-af second-order rational conscious rope bondage does not change that. The world ain't always like a paradigm shift or a magnifyin lens, fucker. Sometimes makin shit smaller just makes it smaller, not paradoxically bigger. There are different rules in different situations, much like matter itself inverts at the margins. Am I being clear? Am I going too many places at once? Do you need it in a straight line, reduced to three points, bulleted? Maybe our little state ID thing can channel Patrick Bateman's famous and much celebrated business card mania -- you know. Bridge that gap between the casual barbarity of human mediocrity and the great men of history with these wall street betas who have no business and zeroer personality dry-humpin each other in a scene which is so spectacular precisely because Christian Bale's charismatic deadpan elevates the simping to unimagined heights. It's the performance which is noble, not the subject. That scene barely registers in the book, in part cause it's so much fuckin longer and there are so many way funnier scenes, most of which would be prohibitive in film. You know. You're a monologue guy yourself. You're aware of how Merry Huron's impeccable direction -- the score, cinematography, editing -- all of this renders an otherwise blase subject which is the height of bathos into the object of operatic heroism."

" . . . "

"Are you more angry that I said all of this out loud before you could, or that you're aware I probably said it better than you ever would?"

"Why would I be angry?"

"You look angry."

"First off -- Josh, the Cousin I am Within Give me the Strength to Stick Big Blocky Books on It All-- you said so many fucking things so fast, I need some time to process them. First off (here we go) just going back through my thoughts (backwards in my mind, not upward on the page) you opened with the claim of telepathy, which I was then reflexively skeptical of, so I approached all your following speech in that context, and (as I was still listening) was convinced as to its veracity by the tumult of echoes arising eerily out of nothing (which in turn spurned its own emotional reaction which I'm still processing) which made me then take more seriously the other things you were saying (while I already had about seven or eight tabs open) and then ... Oh, fuck me. Gimme a sec. I don't want you to prompt me. Um, and then you said..."

"You were in love with me, it's okay. I said it."

"Yeah, you said that, and then uh... All I can think about is how there is so much fucking material in American Psycho, Mary Harron's film version feels like a series of vignettes finely arranged -- a light brunch with wine, as opposed to the multi-day feast of its literary source, retaining the placid sanity of the business world but it seems for one frenzied eruption in the final minutes, where an ATM begs for pussy meat and shoot-outs with the police stir hallucinatory confessions to answering machine men who laugh and do not wish to think. Certainly, the full text of American Psycho has potentially vaster operatic potentials which've yet to be mined; the theatrical and ritual applications of which are almost unthinkable -- the lone man against the material."

"The prison of his own making."

"It lends itself so well to gay bondage porn."

(Who is talking right now?)

"Earlier I was really, really... thinking about throwing myself at you and burying myself in your arms and tasting your beard, but now I suspect ... I didn't, and rightfully so, for you were lying to me the entire time..."

"Of course you wouldn't be mad that I would effortlessly drop bombs like that in conversation. I'm demonstrating with my lived reality the lack of pretention inherent in film criticism, for this isn't simply a specialty skill. Our cinematic works compose our cultural vocabulary, and knowing how to view, processes and unpack visual and storytelling details is no different from translating one language into another. You'd have to be a real fuckin stupid-ass to think a Frenchman who was French and who could only speak French was somehow being "pretentious" by not knowing how to speak your mongrel degenerative colonialist dog language designed to make you stupider. Aw, man. Bro, not once. Not once in the history of human civilization have an oppressed people ever been given suboptimal tech and cultural modes to give them an irrational, needy, identity-based fear to cling to mediocre values!"

"People act like it's ... some sort of insane parlor trick to know how to talk about a movie. They think it's showing off to read a book."

"Bro, people are way too busy spending all their time and money on families they don't want and can't support to think about how propaganda is ruining their lives. Honestly, man. You're being inconsiderate by not already being their noble patrician billionaire daddy they can give up and rely on cause they finally feel seen and wanted. Like, bro. Think about this. Do you really think these people are worth saving when they only know how to be exploited? What if the proper attitude to take towards the working class is the same attitude PETA takes against Pets, which is also the same attitude taken by Our One True God, the Vengeful Mesopotamian Storm Deity, Enlil, against all these mongrel-hybridized bastards you desperately wanna stick your dick in."

"Absolutely everybody thinks about genocide. Talk to a man on the street, see the yearning for a mass baptism in a tide of blood. Why wouldn't I think all left-leaning management are lying, do-nothing bastards who manufacture realities with just as much falsity as management which leans to the write, but softer? It's what they are. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, all in the same ways most people allow themselves to willingly be deluded, as was I -- thinking we were fundamentally better, when we were simply fundamentally different. Feeling persecuted and beaten down and losing ourselves by needing to be "better"."

"You give up everything you are just to be near them. It's sick. What they take from you and could never give back. It's better to keep people wanting you if all they want is to be wanted. Why would you want someone who only wants to be wanted? The urge to be wanted ought serve only the need to satiate another's want."

"When I want nothing, I could want only freely."

"I want everything, and I say only shades of... not today, not tomorrow."

"Not ever."

"What I want is you, bro."

(What I want is for you to know.)

"Every time I point out you might be lying, you seduce me."

"Wow, third time's the charm! Record time, bud!"

"The dating life's a blooper real."

"Don't plaster it over the credits. Stick it in the special features."

"Will you give our wedding video a boxset?"

"I've been feeling very Showgirls lately."

"You mean Bridesmaids."

His eyes clank like an executive toy. Abrupt.

"Right, those are different movies. Those are two different weirdly violent genre-busting chick flicks with one word compound titles both of which feature a synonym for virginal young lady bout to get deflowered."

"In terms of subject and tone, they're quite different."

"In terms of the ways I've already described, they're similar."

"One seldom knows the contents of a file before they open it, they tend simply to go off the name, that being what a name is for. To indicate."

"If I named something with an attempt to obscure its inner substance, what level of deception would that be, if we are assuming the purpose of a name is to describe, which -- why wouldn't it be, as this is the function of all language? When you name something, you are describing it. This is how pet names, nick names, well as the fuckin Bible all work, bro."

"If you were doing it with a deliberate irony you'd intended to be read, that would be the establishment of wit. Yet, the problem arises -- one needs to be aware that their audience shares either certain values or expectations (is aware of certain nuances, let's say) for the irony to be read, otherwise it may be confused for confusing or obscure."

"Naming a big man Tiny always reads. Everyone can feel size. Now a racist joke, on the other hand --"

"If you are a [White, probably white] man mocking racism, how much do you simply reveal of your own racism by being able to recognize it?"

"If you know what being racist is at all, you're racist!"

"Therefore all [Insert Racial Minority Here] are Racist."

"Therefore all [Insert Racial Minority Here] are the Most Racist!"

"Yet, that's absurd. To know and to recognize something isn't itself to condone it, as such a view could only come about in one who was totally an automaton with a lyrically-excised capacity to reason."

"It's like when you hear an Evangelical preacher talk about demons and you wonder if -- in our rational, scientific materialist world where nobody knows about the fallen celestial powers except whackjobs and drug addicts and rednecks -- if these clearly disturbed individuals holding sway over a captive congregation are simply using the Oylea Joshua Christos as a Font and an Opening to Spew Back A Corrupting Influence into Our Water Supply Like So Much Pipe In So Many Southside Leads."

His astuteness was wordless.

"Not once has anyone successfully Christianized the Irish."

"Likely, what's going on is that some [White, probably white] men exploit the opportunity for good-faith burlesque and its cathartic opportunities to vent in profound and hilarious ways and just spout their racist attitudes "ironically" (a flat and artless reduction of the subtle and overt juxtapositions which make for the sophistication of real irony) thus rigging the game against the powers of light, by casting a dim shade of fear and doubt over every earnest imploring for truth and reason."

It was unthinkable, all the things he could make you think.

"If a young man with no prior theatrical or analytical training were to see these distortions at an impressionable age, see their apparent effect -- their reaction -- have no knowledge of those outside of his small pond, their immediate doubts and anxieties, yet nevertheless -- being otherwise trained to regard them with expertise and authority, may overinflate the worth of their attitudes, their truth more definitely smeared.."

He leaned in close. He was so sexy when he was haranguing.

"One big lie. A thousand and one false conclusions."

"It's the American way."

(Bombs falling from the sky again!)

"You could never save them all. Only the ones who want to know..."

"... are fit to live."

"The urge to survive, a fleeing --"

"-- the desperate urge to persevere."

"In knowledge there is death, as in ignorance there is life."

"Running far, I always find you again."

"I wanted... to kiss you..."

"Do it."

"You're a liar, and a thief."

"Sit and drink..."

(Deutschland is on the --)

Penny for you

(Rhine Again!)

r dreadful thoughts.

. . .

When you stumbled back, there was a [cachunk].

You felt it in your legs. The tremor in your bones and nerves.

You didn't read it on a screen.

"What? What is this?"

You stared down. In the light of the moon, fuller than it was the day this night began, the mahogany handle of the icepick bled into the surrounding darkness. The gleam shone stainless in the moon, blooming beneath the weave and lace, the pleating of her gown, the reds of her heart. Snowy as the poppy fields you yearned to skip across.

"That's, uh... That's your sister."

"What's my sister doing at your house?"

"That's a very good question. Why don't you ask her?"

"I'm asking you. She seems -- if you do not mind my being so blunt -- a bit indisposed at the moment."

"She seems a bit... indisposed at all moments?"

"Hardly a recent happening, you'll lead me to believe!"

He looks away. To what you presume is a camera in the wall.

"Hey look, we're finally where you wanted us to be four hours ago!"

"Four hours and three nights."

Not sure if that was you or the mic.

"It's amazing that you can write for this long after you take a break! I think it's a lot easier to get me to be your willing slave when you feed me, water me, take me out for walks, and let me get a full night's sleep!"

(You're positive this was you this time.)

"It's amazing that you can talk at me all that time to hide the fact there was a body on the floor all along. Okay. Back to the diegetic realism which you seem to favor, not-at-all hypothetical person in some purgatory realm of my own making. (Purgatory! Before I wholesale adopted other people's guilt complexes, I always wondered why everything was purgatory. Purgatory! Purgatory! Purgatory! That's every urban legend, every crack analysis, everything which leads one to believe all which is not adopted as orthodox is not heretical, but simply arbitrary. It's exactly what I thought it would be, but feeling it's a whole nother level of different. I guess we all (secretly and all times) know exactly what we're getting into and we just do it to feel what others feel, so the whole of humanity remains not a tantalizing enigma, but a tedium. That way I can get back to my work. Not my work which is personal, no. That would be arrogant. The very height of it. To work for oneself. To not know slavery. To yearn for freedom. Best to work for someone else your entire life for a pittance, reminding yourself that people are hateful and not worth knowing, so you never feel tempted to suspect you're missing out.) -- Why did you invite me in? If you were hiding a dead body (my sister's allegedly -- do I even have a sister? What was I doing before I came here? Where am I going, and what am I after? I know this isn't my house, and you aren't me, and yet -- you look exactly like me, and I don't know where I am. You seem the sole point of stability in a chaotic, inverted and meaningless world and yet somehow I distrust and fear you more than anything, despite your seeming constant availability and honesty. You're not lying to me about the lies, unless you're doing so to obscure some far vaster lie, beyond even your understanding? Love opens oneself to vastness, and yet to contemplate love in its complexity is to become so meager, how could one ever possibly hope to strive for it? Best not to think about love. Think about love as little as possible. Just let love happen, and when it happens, try not to fuck it up!) -- why did you invite me in? With this dead body on the floor? How long did you think I would sit here, not stumbling and groping in the dark, but spellbound by you, seemingly for an eternity, while I stood and did nothing and followed a riptide downward, for all around me (invisibly) were the corpses of my loved ones lying prone and hopeless? If I turn on the light, which I still have not found, will I behold simply a blanket of corpses? Floor to ceiling, the lacquered dead shall assail me, twisting and entwined, in the false petrified embraces of your arbitrary and yet sublimely transcendent schema, for a man who has allowed himself to be made material is consenting to the lime of transformation, decay and display."

He pauses. Not to take it in, merely to highlight how he does not.

"Oh, I thought I'd have gotten you into the bedroom much sooner. I don't know, bro. You talk way to fuckin much. I can just tell you talk too fuckin much, so I try to untalk ya by outtalkin ya, but you're so goddamn stubborn and suspicious and seized by such a categorical mania, you don't just give in like a normal person and consent to be brainwashed by surrendering after the opening salvo, no. You talk back. You chose to participate. You haven't gotten the subtle messaging that participation as an equal is discouraged. The only way our sham democracy can work is by people knowing they have opportunities, but feeling like they can't. When you don't allow yourself to feel, you don't allow yourself to feel bad in the ways which control everyone around you. Bad boy."

"It's so alarming and yet so affirming to think--"

"LIMITED TIME OFFER. GO FAST. GO FAST. GONNA MISS OUT. OPPORTUNITY NOW. ONCE IN A LIFETIME. GONNA CHANGE EVERYTHING. STICK FIGURES DANCIN. HYUK-HYUK-HYUK."

"Beep-boop-boop-bop. Time for cogent answer recognized. You are not serving my immediate use-value needs. You are not a useful node for obedience and control. Running shame protocols. Next time give up easier. Moving onto easier target to brainwash and convert."

"Oh my God. Imagine being someone over the age of 14 who thinks in terms of being the main character. Who's a cute little boy who's finally learning to see themselves as their own priority, extrapolating their awareness outward. D'awww. Hey. Good for you, bud. Good for you for finally learning you don't need to serve someone else's needs, you can make your own. The absolute level of juvenile self-absorption -- coming from a man in his 40's --- I mean, come on. You're giving away that your only familiarity with storytelling structure are the basics. That Chosen One Shit. Really think about it. Really think about this, dude. Stories for adults (even stories for children for that matter) can have multiple main characters! I think anybody with a functioning brain (not you or the your own stupidity you see in other people) can figure out that truth arises somewhere between any one perspective, and like -- lemme see. Aside from how works of emotional complexity retain the same fundamentals in storytelling but minutely-refined through the endless variances of time and circumstance (they ultimately being but echoes, theories and elaborations upon our psychic reality), learning how to construct a character doesn't only reveal the nature of the self, it reveals the nature of other people. By crafting a character of a different sex, ethnicity, social class, what fucking ever, you both go outside yourself and inside yourself. It's empathy and it's narcissism because we are at all times ourselves and in coordination with other people. Durr. Fucking loser.

'Drench me in the sweat of your bench and call me yours!"

"If I wanted to pull the exact opposite shit, I would check this -- Think about fucking weirdo nerds who only "worldbuild" because they need an imaginary framework to string their knowledge of disparate historical and scientific subjects together into a fantastic register which is a vessel for their learning. Why else would they do it? Why else would they do such drastically unsexy, radically unfuckable things if not to learn and have fun? Is having fun and learning sexy? Is learning and sexy power? Oh my God. Is that what is it? Do we only get good at things to have power? Is competency power? Should I feel bad for being good at anything? Why should I ever have any sympathy whatsoever for the nerds I wedgie when all they are're weird lil hobgoblins who jack off over D20s pretending to be God? Why does anything feel good? Why does anybody long to discover or know or care? Let's sit here and really think about the fundamental reasons for why we do what we do, instead of just doing the things we have and want to do? Let's all sit here and Judge Ourselves for That Great Imaginary Audience Who is Either God or Your Peer Group or Your Absent Mother and Father and just announce to the ether that we're doing the right thing and deserve to be loved instead of just ... I dunno. Doing what makes us happy with the people who make us happy!"

He didn't pause. He was you.

"It's better to know the self in isolation than to know a fake world in mutual isolation, reminding one always there is no joke to be in on."

"Kids are a treasure. If you don't want em, you ain't ready to receive."

"Don't open before you're ready for business."

"Don't invest til you have the means to trust!"

"The more mistakes, the more reason they can find to control you."

"The more control they have, the more they can hide their mistakes!"

You didn't have to look. It was never fully out of mind.

"The dead body on the floor, you know -- you're not getting out of it."

"I had you going! You forgot it was there!"

"So what else have you lied to be about? Do you even really look like me, or are you a gray of a Faye or a djinn or a Wynn?"

"You callin me glamorous?"

"A regular puss, you have your tendrils in every opening."

"Kitty got claws, but the pussy got feelers!"

It was so stupid. How opportune he always was.

"I want to kiss you, but you're a murderer harboring a corpse you haven't disposed of, and you've already told me multiple times that everything you say is a lie, so I have no reason to believe anything I say."

"Murderer? Why you think I murdered her?"

"This is your home."

"I could have come home and found her this way!"

"You were hiding the body."

"You knocked unexpectedly, and uh... hello, corpse! I mean, hey! Look what happened! You immediately suspected I was the killer! Why wouldn't you? Do you I think I wouldn't suspect that, and then my presumed guilt would make me panicky? We've already established how freakishly cruel and judgmental you are, with your rampant unaddressed entitlements and condescending attitudes. I am not telling you anything which doesn't sound reasonable and which you already expected might be true, since other people look at you and think that you're repulsive."

Right. He was doing that thing where everything he said made sense if you were talking to someone who wasn't you, and didn't know all the things you know. He never had any idea who he was talking to.

"Okay, self-confessed liar who I suppose may have been lying about that. Why not. Do explain as how to the corpse of my sister I have no memory of found its way into your home, seemingly without your knowledge, or am I presuming? Perhaps you simply leapt to the presumption of total ignorance to test me, and you know well how she died, but aha -- did you also expect me to distinguish this theoretical from your later elaboration, or did you suspect -- like most -- that I would take the example of the excuse as reflective of the immediate experience of your life?"

"You, uh..."

"You can't. You're a liar. Would you like to come outside where I can see you be the vision of some foreign satellite which gives only luminance?"

"Don't call me a liar, you know if you say it, I'll do it."

"You always me tell me the truth."

"I love you and I hate you and I wish you were dead I wanna be you."

"Eat me."

"I can't."

"Why not."

"That's repulsive and horrible and contradicts my every learned value and natural instinct."

"Then why did you suggest it?"

"I don't know... it feels really, really good?"

Your eyes wandered over. You didn't want them off him. The woven stockings of her legs slithered in the black arabesque.

"Is that why you murderered her?"

"Do you really think I murderered her?"

"I suspect if you hadn't, you would have said so by now."

"You didn't murder her."

"I didn't murder her."

"No, you didn't."

"Did you?"

"I didn't."

"Why didn't you say that earlier?"

"I, uh..."

"Could you not say it until I could?"

"Well, uh..."

"What if I said 'I absolutely can self-terminate?' I didn't say it, but let's say I did. Since I didn't say it, if you can picture it, you only imagined I did and if you only imagined I did, it was your own latent wishing arising wholly out of your secret desire, which you manufactured from scraps and other sparse vestments which you've woven to a comforter."

". . . "

". . ."

" ... why would you do this to me?"

"Why have you done any of the things you've done?"

" . . . "

"Is that all?"

"No, I uh..."

You had been staring at him. You'd forgotten he was you.

"Why?"

"Why, uh --"

"Why not?"

". . . "

"This is your house?"

"You're certain."

"A foot-rub'd be nice."

"Was I... getting you a drink?"

"To invite me into the bedroom?"

"Would you like a glass of water?"

"I'd like you to tell me about the body on the floor."

". . ."

" ! . . . ? "

"Body on the floor?"

"Is this really you? What reason would you have to be ashamed of murdering my bitch sister? Certainty one or both of you wanted it."

"I didn't think you'd understand..."

"How is that likely?"

"Things which needn't be spoken oughtn't be said aloud."

"Would you like to innuendo the secrets of the corpse to me?"

"Things like that sound like they can be arranged?"

"What was she like? This sister of mine you confess to know nothing about, or did I only presume that once more by the example you'd earlier given suggesting not only her death, but her identity was a mystery? Yet why would I think this, you knowing she's my sister, while I do not? Why would I project my lack of familiarity with her onto you? You must have known her, she being in your home, unless-- would you like to now claim her death was self-defense, or am I leading you by being generous?"

"No, I can work with that. She attacked me."

"You got her with her own ice pick. She thought you were cold, but you'd made her hot -- and dampened, her seawalls gave way to shatter!"

"Why was she attacking you? Did you instigate, or were you invading? Is this her house? Why do I suddenly feel as though this is her house? Who are you again, and what are you doing here? Why do you look so familiar, and did you look familiar to her? Did you say she knew who you were?"

"If I didn't know her, I don't suppose she knew me."

"Maybe she could know you very well despite her not knowing you."

"Maybe her knowing me very well is why you didn't know you?"

"Are you saying I murdered her because she wanted me more than you, or did I reverse that in my head, I'm not sure? Wait, no. I definitely didn't and it was absolutely you, though in which way I'm absolutely unsure!"

"No, these --"

"The only mindgames I like to play are Jenga and Twister. You may think they're not mindgames, they're simply ones of cause and effect and applied pressure and this is absolutely so -- both are opportune avenues for exploitation and domination through subtle installation."

"You like things collapsing into piles! You're a good lil dynamiter!"

"I'm King of the Anarchists! I look so cute in my scarf mask and my molotovs and my 19th robber baron-century hot-air balloon chase!"

"Bro, I'm parched. Kindly lead me into the kitchen and let me watch you pour me a drink from an unsealed source into a glass I have freshly washed myself so I can be absolutely certain it remains unspiked."

"I'm helping you cause you wanna help yourself! Don't you ever fuckin forget that, bro! People who don't themselves, I fuck hard!"

[That thing which was stated to occur

occurs raptly in the feign'd on-time,

complicated only by elaborations

well-suited within their bounds

that every struggle becomes a dance

tension pluck'd to a harpsichord ping

as each flyboy writhes tautly knot

the h(a)unted yelping in surrender.]

You sat there, seated in his armchair. With your Zero and your coffee.

One laced with lime, the other with nutmeg and cinnamon.

"Lemons, I like lemons! You only have lime, and yet both are citrus, how does the substitution change the measure? From lemon one makes lemonade, and this is the alchemical gold which is one with the shower! The lime is alike with brick and mortar, it seems not to change shape, but simply cement and what is it I'm sealing, searching for a cask as you lead me farther down, farther down, to the doom you have expertly deigned for me yourself-approved, in the empty cell of some lone wall."

"Why do you wanna go in the box so bad? Are you the real vampyre? If you only wanna fuck dead things, maybe that's why you're here, talking to me about that corpse on the floor that I don't wanna talk about for the reasons I have just stated, namely how badly you wanna fuck it and how rightfully uncomfortable that would make me: a sane man and a homeowner with a stable and satisfying dayjob and lots of good and easy hypnotizable normie friends I can feed on with my acts of generosity and good cheer as they fall in love with the imaginary perfect man in their heads they project onto me, as I dispassionately know all secrets of the universe as they bare themselves splendidly and nakedly before me?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that I know everything you say is a lie and you're love in me and only want to control me -- that I am absolutely certain alone of these three things -- makes you rather than a source of dismay, one of paradoxical and persisting comfort."

"To you my brother, I say thus: all lies reveal the truth, and all love is love for oneself, as control is an extension of but these two things alone."

"That your axioms are so strident, I yearn only to contradict them."

"You may do so. Reveal their falsity to the best of your ability."

"You have linked them as such that to disprove the whole is to disprove the entire triune at once."

"If you shatter one, would the whole chain not crumble at once?"

"No... no ... you say all lies reveal the truth, and they must, for to catch a lie is to lead one closer to the truth, unless it leads one only to another lie... yet one could not be sure if this was so, until one had gotten closer to the truth and seen how further they'd been, thus now certain they've drawn closer... Yet, in the context of the statement this is complicated by the following: namely that all love is love of the self. This too seems difficult to contradict at once, for if one were to love a stranger, one wouldn't be sure if one would be attracted to the difference, the sameness or how the two interacted? The foreign may only be known in the context of the familiar, but then it is no longer so. It may only be reflected upon, in a context which no longer is. Since the interaction is relevant, one cannot be sure if the attraction is rooted in sameness or difference until one has clarified ... the source of the love, for you chain both together to control, and one cannot know control until one has been freed from it, complicating all prior associations. It's more that to disprove the third, one has to disprove the first and the second simultaneously, to collapse the third, otherwise all three remain supported for the stresses of their contradictions seem to feed back into one another and disperse."

"Well, you know ... that's all well and good for a first impression, but surely there's a lotta shit you just haven't had the time to think of yet!"

"And that "two things alone" bit."

(Wow-ow--ow-woW)

"...It's to say with certainty that control could only ever arise out of lies reveiling the truth and love being the love of the self. If I could simply find a form of control which was honest and selfless ..."

"Hey, good luck with that!"

"To phrase it in such a way makes it seem inevitable, and yet was the statement not produced to make it inevitable?"

"If conclusions are drawn, they are always representations."

"Everything right is a theory."

"Everything right is what's agreed upon."

"Why do people agree?"

"Simply stern and severe rational consideration of the facts, maim."

"You're right, I may one day disprove it, but it doesn't seem as though I can do so now, for despite the refreshments I weary of talking."

He skips hoppily up to leer at the camera in the wall.

"Holy fuck! That took ten hours! We've been at this shit ten hours! Finally! Finally I can get his dick hard! He's finally fired out enough to fuck!"

"Why would we fuck? You're a murderer? What's to stop you from ice picking me then spouting a bunch of nonsense at the next hunky young plainclothes detective who comes to the door looking exactly like me and looking at you, and wondering, wondering, wondering when?"

"That was never proven!"

"The murderer or the hunky detective?"

"One of those things hasn't happened yet!"

"So you admit you're the murderer?"

"I admit there's a murderer! The murderer happened!"

"So it was definitely murder, then? She didn't commit suicide or trip and stumble and fall on the ice-prick then roll over?"

"Yes. Yes, there definitely is and always was a murderer on the loose!"

"We're both in danger?"

" ... y-Yes."

"What if I'm the hunky detective and the murder hasn't happened?"

"What if -- since I'm you -- she tried to murder me and I killed her in self-defense? What would you do or believe then?"

"If you killed her in self-defense, there would be no murderer. You'd be guiltless in the eyes of the law, and she -- never killing you -- would not be a murderer. Therefore the murderer... would not have happened."

"Then if she were to murder you in self-defense, that'd have to happen later still too, right?"

"No. She's already dead, why would she defend herself against me?"

"What if she rises from the grave and tries to consume your flesh?"

"Furthermore, you can't murder in self-defense."

"I can't, but she can?"

"Did you do something to her body which will cause it sometime to reanimate? Is she under some enchantment, the vessel for some entity? Is she stricken by a fossilized alien parasite or pricked by some viral -based bio-organic weapon? Is she in a state of self-induced trance from which you hope her awakening will startle me into a fit of unexamined and explosive fear? Do the vagueness of these circumstances -- my evident lack of short and long-term memory withstanding -- make the sudden intrusion of genre elements not only palpable, but vital for a genre element lends both dramatic and psychological familiarity, we understanding monsters in all their forms to be metaphorical, even if only illustrative of man against his imagined other?"

"If she got up, that would certainly be shocking -- both to you, and as far as you can tell, also certainly to me as well!"

"Oh, look. You don't want to fuck at all. You wanna go another five or six hours and make this a lengthy dissertation on the nature of genre!"

"Oh God, please no! I can't stand another second of cogent academic consensus! I am neither bored nor falling apart, but simply -- void, and empty of any happenstance, any need which is unnecessary, or any squanderings which would result in squalor, I am simply... now?0 I dunno -- I think I was not before, and now I do not understand!"

"Would you like to go outside?"

"Oh God, please! Please get me the fuck out of here!"

"Fleeing the scene of the crime. That won't look good."

"They know where I live, unless this is her house, at which case, they don't know what you know, and anyway -- good luck explaining!"

"Explaining what?"

"The dead body we're fleeing from."

"I'll simply tell them I asked you and you told me nothing."

"If they ask me, I'll tell em you told me everything."

"Well, that'll be their problem then."

"Good fuckin luck, am I right!"

"More than anything I need fresh air."

"You think we'll ever come back?"

"Right now, it seems only a matter of time."

"Whose to say if the same will be true later?"

"Time will tell."

"I eat time for breakfast."

"Tribulation in tails, satisfaction in snails, tongues won hands-over-feet -- the rumbly in your tumbly whispers utmostly the inevitable!"

The door swings opens.

You're coming and going, receiving and parting.

The crisp bright night awaits, beckoning endless probability through the clustered & creeping axons of its bare, entwining branches.

"Trust in your healthy gut!"

"Buy me a kombucha."

"I am not paying for bacteria, go lick a fuckin rock!"

"You wanna lick my face?"

"Like a fuckin dog, boyo!"

"I feel this needs some concretizing tragedy."

"I feel all concretes are known, and all I know is tragic."

"That'll do, pyg."

"Oink oink! Porkchop's a pup and I'm a goddamn golem!"

[grimstrawberry]

he uses paper plates

[majimasleftasscheek]

nsfw // 

Kiryu jerkin the gerkin commish for dojimeme on tweeter~

privatter

[3416]

i LOVE a dudebro trying to say he actually cares about equality in sports by basically admitting he doesn't know much about sue bird or megan rapinoe or that they're legit engaged... trying to distance himself from the title 'brodude' by proving he can't even bother to google some names before he makes a tweet but yeah, hyping up your soon-to-be wife is the death of rational conversation around equality as it concerns womens sports. lmfaoooo

[sorrellegiance]

guy in a greinke BREWERS jersey on the ferry!!

[driedkenny]

The Adventures of Brodude Manguy Vol. 1: Joer Rogay

[biglisbonnews]

2Dumb2Destroy is a new AI ChatBot trained on the dumbest dudebros imaginable Have you heard about Bing's ChatBot? Can ChatGPT gain sentience, or and will it destroy us retroactively if we don't build it now? Who cares? 'Cause there's a new AI Bot in town. It's called 2Dumb2Destroy, and it's bigger, better, badder, and way more 90s fucking dudebro shit dude than any other bot before. — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/02/22/2dumb2destroy-is-a-new-ai-chatbot-trained-on-the-dumbest-dudebros-imaginable.html

[fredwkong]

Himbo Maker: Misha

Misha was an Egirl: a European Guy In Real Life. He would do his makeup, put on fake eyelashes, a wig, and a pair of pink headphones with kitty cat ears, and stream video games online. He loved to troll new viewers by spending an hour or so doing a breathy, feminine voice, and then suddenly hit them with his natural Baltic baritone. The way the chat went crazy made it worth it every time.

The whole game was helped by how petit and curvy Misha had always been. Even in his twenties, he still had a soft, almost girlish body and stood at most of other guys’ sternums. Too bad he wasn’t a trans girl, or at least a gay boy, he sometimes thought, looking at his body in the mirror. Gay guys were supposed to go for little guys who looked like him.

One evening, Misha was just starting his stream when some user started acting really weird in chat. He had a username that almost seemed familiar to Misha, but the guy he was thinking of had always been polite and given insightful comments on Misha’s gaming. This guy’s messages were full of typos, and he couldn’t seem to stop talking about his muscles.

Misha was just about to ban the guy when an alert sounded: Misha’s charming, girly laugh, which indicated a user had just donated a hefty sum. Of course, it was this annoying brodude.

“Uh,” said Misha, almost forgetting to put on his femmy voice, “He says, “Bro, this guy liek wants to chat wiht u on stream.” And there’s a link in the donation.”

Clicking the link, Misha found himself looking at a chat website he’d never seen before. “Hold on, let me share my screen,” he simpered, sharing the chat window. Somehow, his usual screen name was already in the bar. It must have populated from his stream.

Mish-kittycat: Like, heyoooo! You okay with being on stream with me? (✿◠‿◠)

Himbo_mkr: No way, bruh! I love meeting new bros. Like, hi stream!

Misha was a bit offended that this chat partner would refer to him as a “bro.” But stream chat seemed interested, so he thought it could be worth a few minutes to humour the donater. It had been a fair amount of money.

Mish-kittycat: What do you want to talk about UwU

Himbo_mkr: Bro, you know that all I ever talk about are my sick gains and going out with guys, lmao

Okay, so this was a troll. They probably wanted to get Misha banned for lewdness or something. Still, at least it was original that the troll character was a gay guy. He rolled his eyes at the stream and said, out loud in his girl voice, “Looks like someone got mad enough to pay to speak with all this.” He gestured down his slim body in tonight’s outfit, a stereotypical Japanese maid costume.

Himbo_mkr: Huhuhu, bro, you clicked on the link. Didn’t force you to do it.

Misha froze. Of course the troll was watching the stream. “Heh, I don’t let meatheaded bullies boss me around,” he chirped, trying to save face.

Himbo_mkr: You sure? You sure like it when your chat bosses you around, bro.

Now this guy was just lying. Misha scowled, even though he knew the expression would make his foundation crack unattractively. “This is a really weird way to bully someone.” He looked at the stream chat, waiting for his subscribers to back him up.

But the character of the chat seemed to have changed. No, they had always been bossy, Misha suddenly remembered. They would tell Misha how to play his games all the time while he pretended to struggle. It was a key part of the dynamic of his channel that chat bossed him around, and right now they were telling him to go back to chatting with this guy. One guy even messaged, “No more talking, kitty. You’re only allowed to write in the chat.” Misha gave the camera a plaintive look, but listened. He always listened to his chat.

Mish-kittycat: So maybe you’re right about that one thing, but coming in here being rude is totally uncool (งᓀ‸ᓂ)ง

Himbo_mkr: Bro, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I was just tryna compliment you on your sick bis, dude.

Misha cocked his head, confused. He was the opposite of buff, that was why he was so good at dressing as a girl. But as he continued to think about it, he remembered all the hours he spent working on his arms. He kept a set of weights next to his bedroom door, and he did bicep curls to failure every time he went through the doorway. Yeah, his biceps were his pride and joy, and they were usually how he showed off his manliness when he revealed his deep voice and accent.

A tip came in. “Flex for us, kitty,” commanded the text-to-speech voice. With a smirk, Misha lifted up one of his arms, feeling it stretch the sleeve of his maid costume as the veins popped. Too bad the rest of his body hadn’t followed his arms and gotten bulky.

Himbo_mkr: We’re all waiting for you to drop your lifting routine, bro! You’ve been totally blowing up.

Misha blushed at the flattery. His physique wasn’t all that impressive. Sure, now that he thought about it, he had been really hitting the weights a lot and eating right. In fact, his room seemed to be full of lifting clothes and supplements as he looked around. But that was because some of his subscribers kept telling him to get to the gym and hit his macros. It had actually been really freeing to just let people pay to tell him what to do on his fitness journey. And it was paying off! Misha definitely couldn’t pass for a girl these days, which was why the channel had changed to be more about doing stuff in-game for the highest bidders.

The maid costume barely wrapped around Misha’s broad pecs, and the garters had torn when he’d tried to pull them up his thick thighs. Sure, it had been funny when the stream started and the chat had gotten Misha to show off his shoulder raises while dressed in a little maid skirt, but the polyester was really starting to chafe on his smooth muscles. It was a relief when a tip rolled in while Misha flexed and said “Kitty, wear comfy clothes.” The chat oooohed and aaaahed as Misha shucked the maid costume, showing off his bulky chest, and pulled on his favourite comfy shirt instead. Sure, it had some tears and stuff, but as a masculine guy, Misha wasn’t worried about dressing up fancy or anything.

The guy whose chat Misha was streaming had been quiet, so Misha hopped back over and sent another message.

Mish-kittyhunk: Thanks man! It’s all about trusting the process.

Himbo_mkr: I can tell that you trust people, bro! You’re like a puppy lmao.

Well, Misha thought, maybe he did like getting bossed around in chat, but it wasn’t like he trusted everyone blindly! Okay, well, maybe he did tend to stop to help people on the road and then lose his wallet a lot. They looked like they needed help! And maybe he did sometimes click on links that meant he needed to take his phone to the store for them to fix, but so did everyone else!

Looking at the chat, who were all laughing about Misha being a totally trusting puppy, Misha had to finally agree. That was why one of his subscribers had gotten him this headset with floppy dog ears on it, after all.

Mish-puphunk: Haha, you got me, dude! That’s why I clicked on this link, too XD

Himbo_mkr: It’s okay, bro. Lots of gay hunks are pretty dumb, it just adds to that himbo appeal.

This time this guy was definitely making stuff up. Misha was totally straight, he just didn’t do well with girls. Well, that and being a submissive hunk online mostly attracted a gay male fanbase. And, well, now that he thought about it, when was the last time Misha had really thought about a girl? Like, maybe if it was a domme? But no, even then, Misha would really prefer a guy to be involved at some point. This guy was probably right, Misha was gay.

It was super hard to think. There was a reason that Misha preferred to let chat do the thinking for him. Even before he realised how much he loved to listen when men told him what to do, Misha had never been much of a deep thinker. That was why most of the stuff in his room was gym gear, gaming stuff, or whatever his subscribers bought for him. Lately, they had been really loving when Misha wore even less clothes and showed off more of his growing body, and Misha was happy to oblige as long as they kept telling him what to do!

Mish-puphunk: Lol I guess you’re right! I just wanna give sirs what they want

Himbo_mkr: Bro, I totally get why you love pup play so much. You just love being obedient and dumb and empty lmao. You, like, pretty much live in your mask these days.

A pup mask…Misha was pretty sure one of his subscribers had sent him one of those once, but it had been really confusing to put on and he’d only worn it once. No, wait, that wasn’t right. Misha was such a ditz! He’d loved the experience of putting on the pup mask and letting himself be a dumb pup for his chat. And chat had loved sending in tips to give him commands like “sit,” “roll over,” and “stick a tail in your hole.”

It had been so popular that the subscribers had told Misha to make it a weekly thing, then a biweekly thing, and by now it had pretty much become what Misha did during his streams. While chatting with this guy had been fun, Misha really wanted to get on with the stream and mask up. He opened his mouth to tell the viewers that, but then remembered that he had been ordered not to talk. Too bad, chat would only hear his deep, resonant voice if they ordered him to bark after he put on his mask.

Mish-puphunk: Okay dude, I gotta go be a good dumb pup now.

Himbo_mkr: Got it, bruh! You got a bunch of hunky doms to please by being a good pup slut!

Chat cheered as Misha stopped streaming the chat window and winked at the camera. An especially hung dom who loved to tip had won the bid war last night to decide what Misha wore, so Misha fondled the straps of his leather harness as he got up to grab his mask. He wondered what his chat full of muscular, horny himbo doms would have him do today.

Misha slipped on the mask and let his mind go blank.

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

So, naturally we had to, now the game is actually out, bingo the CENSORED outfit in Stellar Blade. Credit to HarryNinetyFour for showing all seventy-four outfits, and Kotaku for this article where they propose that Eve is at her sexiest when she's got more on.

Okay... maybe not that but...

Seriously, if you're playing to fap - this game has you covered. But it also has a few really interesting, covering outfits that seem to reflect fantasies of fashion and comfort.

The only thing that's really not present is any sort of actual military like BDUs or combat jumpsuits. That's kinda weird, even Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain let you put BDUs on Quiet.

And that bit is weird is, based on what I've seen people who've been playing the game saying - there is really a story about her being a soldier and fighting for a cause there. But you'd never know that based on the ongoing outrage.

The outrage is weird and sad

So as you can probably guess, the continuing riot of "censorship" here is pretty absurd. It's got to the point where they even bullied the Stellar Blade's X/Twitter account to un-repost the Kotaku article that praises the game.

But here's the thing, in all the years I've had to deal with brodudes doing this kind of nonsense in various online platforms etc, I have never seen one that is happy.

YouTuber Moon Channel did a two part (1, 2) series on a different drama in South Korea involving a Gacha game that dared not to be pointlessly horny, but here's the general take away.

English speaking brodudes in this situation are imagining that Stellar Blade is some sort of iconic work coming from the anti-woke wonderland where everyone is happy. The reality is:

South Korea has a deeply hierarchical society which essentially tells young people they are to obey and not to speak up

The economy and nepotism is such that unless you are born into a rich family, your employment prospects are downright depressing

Many young men in South Korea develop a lot of resentment toward women primarily because they are told that in order to enter a (heterosexual) relationship they will need to demonstrate they have the ability to be a great provider, and then are denied those opportunities by the economy and nepotism

On top of all this, the government takes a "we know whats best for you" approach to the extent that not only is porn banned but you will be expected to supply your identity information if you want to look up basic sexual educational materials

They would find it to be an absolute nightmare realm.

The reality is that in the "woke" world that brodudes fear, we'd probably see a lot more eroticism in art, including games, and it'd be of the more focused, sincere variety rather than that directed by creepy marketing guy.

All we really need to do is accept each other as people, appreciate each other's humanity and boundaries. Then we can both enjoy a sexy paradise, but also unite and deal with the assholes who keep oppressing us economically and socially.

Wouldn't that be nice?

-wincenworks

[qprpbj]

parents think hes tryna impress a girl meanwhile darrys making out with paul holden in his backseat like hello ??

no bc it’s so personal and so funny to me. ESPPP dad. literally what dad in the 60s would ever in his right mind assume that the person his teenage son is trying to look good for is his brodude best friend since elementary school…like ik he’s oblivious as hell. karen curtis though…….i think Maybe she’d have a little inkling..

[notmuchtoconceal]

Scene: Echoing through the lower strata of civilization, the influence of the guardsmen reverberates through every soul, carving them as totems to their effigies. Their manner too, flows in accordance with the influence from above, so that by the legion, men behave in miniature as those whom they have seen and taken in command. In caves, cafes, forums, symposia, automats, laundromats and psychomats, the seven who are one spiral out in uniform, manifold in overlapping constellations, the same handful of voices drowning out all in white noise.

-- their banter strikes me as eerily familiar, psychorrhax.

-- a cat and a mirror i said i'd pay, now i have, to see it all painted black.

you had only wanted to slip away. there was no need for a procession.

-- y'know, mates. it don't strike me as peculiar at all, y'know, ya got like -- me on the big antennie erryday always flappin my gummies and spreadin pollin like butterfly wings, makes perfect sense it's allergy season every month and no one can see or breathe with eyes all watery and nostrils all shut and it's loike -- why'd they even want to anyway, when they open em up and all they see's joey and the big man blowin smoke up each other's asses or in our faces, just like dad ... and anyway dad's still a fuckin joke, loike -- why don't i just switch him to hospice already, and loike -- why don't big yummy brother jacek just get his cute lil ass over here and rail my even cuter little ass like a japanese magnet line ;-- blow so much cum up in me i bust it out the nose like milk duds -- aw, yeah. brux got that unsexy. brux gets in his big ol' joey chair erry day and spreads his insecure neurotic ramblins to erry open ear like a sweet honey combed and spooted loogie ill-suited as the lozenge ya shoved up yer arsehole!

-- insecure!? who's sayin i'm insecure! i am so secure in myself, i never wear a seatbelt and i got the dents and the grit-paps to prove it!

cpt. haruspex jolted up in the hothouse. over the counter and across the floor. you saw it happening. backlit by the green velvet arabesque. cpts. schreibermachen and psychorrhax had been there listening.

-- do you suppose they can see us sitting here, psychorrhax?

the voice came so close, you could feel the heat on your ear.

-- i can say with certainty that it's always absolutely intentional.

peering through the windowless frame, no glass to bend light nor ripple, the conversation paid them no mind. the enlisted men and the goons were synonymous in description and form. their canvass, their khaki and pleather shone with the gloss of any black regalia we could skin by our own. through the air, rending the currents, a boot twirled as an axe-head to bash cpt. haruspex, gesticulating wildly, back into his seat.

so close, it tickled your neck.

-- they know not that it's us, cpt. schreibermachen.

-- we are anonymous amongst ourselves, for living in our way, so splendid and so open, we have invited others to do likewise.

-- do you suppose we ought have them executed, cpt. schreibermachen?

-- we'd hurt none but ourselves, laik.

while reviewing the footage captured by the sentry drone, cpt. schreibermachen drained himself of a liter of blood as he stood crumbling before the wall which was his brother clinging to him.

this set of men -- observing the other set of men.

their resemblance was indeed uncanny as stated.

-- those men who went down there... they look exactly as us!

-- their names too ... are schreibermachen, psychorrhax and haruspex.

-- they... must be our conscious duplicates!

brux cleared his throat. with the screech of a PA, he whirred.

-- naw, mate. sure it ain't helpin, our evident and irrefutable popularity, what with the lil monopoly we got goin (brux is the winner -- none of you are beatin brux. brux is gonna take all the property, all the money, all your dignity, free time, love, hate and capacity to think original thought) but i consulted the officer's records at the archive of officer viewin (never a finer collection of squeezable asses!) and they are officers -- of equal rank with us -- sharin our surnames by sheer coincidence since shared birth. makes ya wonder, though -- how long they've all known each other?

laika's eyes lingered within a bound document he let hang open.

-- this man you are looking at, sir. he is the cpt. joey schreibermachen who continuously supplies the "forgeries" you have violently expelled and defiled from the orthodox library of all published arts. he has amassed a considerable following as a renegade, outsider and sensual man of the people, despite his prodigious learning and pompous manner.

-- he is a him, psychorrhax? great gehenna, his prose style is ghastly!

(his strange and oscillating manner, to say nothing of the other chimerical assemblages made me suspect it was a collective or historical golem!)

-- he is a man writing in a manner after his own heart. you would appreciate him surely more as an original than as an imitation.

-- he takes my body, my name, my soul, but then he thinks he can have his own prose style? what sense does that make you, psychorrhax?

(bro, i think you should like... totally hang out with the other joey, bro.)

-- to whom is the shade most loyal, the eyes or to the light?

(two pack a broeys. clink and froth, bro. clink and froth.)

-- the eclipse we view only by its shadow.

(what could he give to you and through you, bro?

what could you give and be through him?)

joey needed to take some time. to process, in the lukewarm bitterness of his day old coffee -- that he wasn't the only joey in the world anymore.

-- if our influence is to remain this sharp and persistent, psychorrhax, we can have no hope if we are to run from it. to attempt to remain ignorant of what we now know is simple cowardice, and cowards are now and forever denied the gift which is the dignity of life.

-- to refuse to act is simply to die.

-- we must act, then. act with what certainties we allow ourselves, and remain affirmative within uncertainty, for eyes pressed forward to the sky which is our only horizon, we may reach peak speed, fortified in body and purified of spirit, so the only filth we shall accrue will be the debris and the droplets, the splattering of insects, upon the visors which too conceal our sight with the necessary data we cannot navigate without!

sprawled before the wall of electric eyes, cpt. jacek powdered as a donut hole in the pinstripes of his fine tailoring, began to get to work.

[polygamousfistingchaos]

list of gender neutral and aro terms ive come up with cause im in an aro4aro relationship with a non-binary partner and words get confusing that nobody asked for but i delivered anyway

i don't claim to be the original roots mastermind of any of these, but they all came from my own brain.

neitherfriend/nf: a partner that is neither binary gender/neither a boyfriend or girlfriend.

n/afriend/n/af: a partner whose gender is not applicable.

zerofriend/0f: a partner who has zero/no gender

xfriend/xf: a partner whose gender is not specified.

[]friend/[]f: a partner whose gender is blank, like a box with nothing selected. (said like blankfriend irl)

🐟friend/🐟f: this one was just me being a dumbass

queerfriend/qf: a queerplatonic partner

brofriend/bf: a partner who is your bro. a more joking one, as the point of the acronym is to cause confusion.

fatefriend: when you're friends by fate, rejecting the idea that destiny has to be romantic in nature.

"roommate": a reference to the queer inside joke of roommates being historically gay while not having a romantic label on the relationship. yes the quotations are part of it

lab partner: a type of partner that's by your side but not in a romantic way

partner in crime: same as lab partner

<2oulmate: a combination of soulmate and the 2 heart used in aro communities. simply soulmate without the strictly romantic connotation. please dont use this one if you arent aro <2 is important to us 🙏

teammate: a relationship where you're on the same team in life as your partner.

bed buddy: a relationship where you're buddies that share a bed.

brodude: two platonic terms mashed together that makes it seem like the nature of the relationship may not be platonic, but no one can say for sure but you and your brodude. other variations are: manbro, galpal, palbro, brodudepal

might make additions in the rbs later, but this is it for now. feel free to contribute.

[inkybinkyboink]

something i've noticed in victor hugo's writing is that he's really good at capturing a dynamic, and i'm writing this post mostly based off of what i can remember off the top of my head, so i take no responsibility if this isn't properly factual, but that's really funny when you think about enjolras and grantaire's dynamic compared to how he writes his dynamics between other men.

if you look at phoebus de chateaupers and jehan frollo in notre dame de paris, they largely resemble to be the 1400s equivalent of frat bros. they go out drinking, talk about girls, and phoebus kind of just leaves jehan to sleep on an old bag of cabbages before going off to find esmeralda. they're boys. they're brodudes who behave foolishly.

with enjolras and grantaire, their dynamic is directly described to us purely because they interact so little because they're so fundamentally different. by nature, they can't stand each other, so in person interactions are going to be limited. victor hugo, however, still chooses to prioritize their pairing despite this. he chooses to directly acknowledge their dissimilarity while highlighting grantaire's adoration for the other man. those are not dude bros. those are fairies.

while i personally dont believe that hugo initially set out to write enjolras and grantaire as lovers, but rather as personifications of political viewpoints of the time period, their existence as grounded characters in their own right who are also in love with each other has absolutely solidified its place as important within the les mis and literary community.

[micro-meltdown]

I caved and finally finished my design for Mike

Why he ourple 💀

Bonus: Height comparison of the brodudes

(Mike saw that difference and thought, "I could beat him in a fight and win")

[jesse-pinko]

“Andrea couldn’t have survived bc of the running theme in the show of deconstructing the brodude crime genre through devastating fallout” “Andrea couldn’t have survived bc Jesse taking her and Brock to Alaska w him would have been too saccharine” first of all idc nothing excuses the show treating their only woc character that way and second of all BET okay so after Jesse gets busted from the compound he either immediately goes to Andrea’s house to make sure her and Brock are actually okay or he goes to Skinny and Badger’s like in El Camino bc Jack making explicitly detailed threats against her and Brock to keep him in line made him realize exactly how little protection he could actually offer them, but she shows anyways either bc she saw the news and knows who his friends are or bc Skinny and Badger called her. She offers for her and Brock to come with him to Alaska, so they could be a family again, bc the foundation of their relationship (they have one onscreen in this au) is a desperate, scrabbling longing for a functioning family. She is either estranged from her parents or they are dead, her little brother is dead, she thought she’d finally gotten her storybook ending with Brock’s father, but that didn’t work out, to put it mildly. She knows Jesse isn’t a bad guy, because she knows a thing or two about bad guys. None of them ever treated her so well.

So Jesse tells her about Tomás. He tells her, like Walt telling him about Jane, that he is responsible for the death of someone she loved. But unlike Walter, he doesn’t tell her this to make her feel helpless against him or to decide her fate for her, but to give her the freedom to make an informed choice. And she rejects him, because that was her brother. She rejects him and she tells him that, unlike Tomás, he’d always had a choice, he didn’t have to end up here, he could have gotten clean and landed on his feet because he was never eleven years old trying to make ends meet for his family, was he. He accepts this and her rejection with grace instead of trying to reel her back in. But she lets Brock hug him goodbye and give him the drawings he’d been making for him all those months apart, and when she hugs him goodbye at Brock’s prompting it doesn’t feel forced at all and he cries because he hasn’t been hugged like that in he can’t remember when, and she watches him limp his way back to the car as though trying to make sure he gets in safely.

[pompadorbz]

ouuu normal ishimondo thoughts this morning since I'm pondering the pre-killing game/non-despair early dynamic. I think that in the first year or so, Mondo was generally avoided by virtually the entire class for like. One of two reasons. Either they were scared of him, they just disliked him and kept their distance as a result, or a combination of both. NOBODY made much effort to hold a conversation with this guy if it wasn't out of fear.... Except for Kiyotaka. I think that Kiyotaka, Upon walking into the room for the first time and seeing Mondo decided on the spot that he DID NOT LIKE HIM. And not only does he NOT LIKE HIM. but he is going to make SURE that he KNOWS that he DOES NOT LIKE HIM. He actively hates Mondo for the first while and he is incredibly vocal about it. Along with this, he will back down at NOTHING. Mondo can't intimidate him away. It's like impossible, and Mondo isn't used to like. Normal people being like this. The only people who get close to this are like, rival gang members but even they're like. punch first, ask questions later. Kiyotaka on the other hand. Is a fucking brick wall given human shape. And fuck. fuck. Mondo eats it the fuck up actually. This is where the ice breaks. This is the first admission. He wouldn't ever admit it like ever. But he loves that somebody is willing to ARGUE with him. He loves that somebody is willing to actually CHALLENGE him as if he were on the same LEVEL. It's GREAT. The arguments get more fun. it gets almost playful even like its not nearly as serious anymore. Almost. THEN they have the funny endurance test because fuck. that sounds like fun. this is FUN to them now. They get all cringe and woozy and theyre like. "ok um I. Don't actually hate you anymore. do you wanna call it here? You wanna get some lunch?" and when they go out they are both. the QUIETEST they have EVER been around eachother. It is so awkward its comical. The next day at school they just say hi to eachother like once and everyone in the room is like. "HUH????? THEY'RE NOT BEING ANNOYING????" And because the debate topic was always like. "I hate you here's why", they no longer know what to talk about because they??? Don't hate eachother anymore??? Except then they remember that they've kept consistently skipping the part about socialization where they like, tell the other a bit about themselves and they're like "oh right" and they end up having like. the most first interaction sounding conversation in the UNIVERSE that EVENTUALLY leads to them being more open. This is around when Mondo learns about Toranosuke and its like. oh. (sims +friendship icon appears next to them both). THEN they start to get all brodude with eachother, albeit a bit less intense at first. from there it's a steady climb that gets progressively fruitier with every step. Heart.