#but my god the vast majority of its shit

[onemillionfurries]

I think everyone needs to make a "peace and love on planet earth" tag for their blog. A tag where videos, images, memes, and stories can be compiled of humanity showing kindness, empathy, joy, beauty, and love. A respite from the horrors that are shoved in our faces on a daily basis. A reminder that no matter what, we are all human, we are all one, and that we are all capable of being kind to each other and bringing beauty to this world.

[magnoliamyrrh]

times u rly notice u have adhd tho is in class. always been this way too. it blows my mind to see ppl in class for the most part..... standing still... i cant do that shit. im changing positions constantly im rocking back and forth im fiddling w my hands im chewing on something im drawing im looking everywhere just like. anything. and unless a class is either something im rly rly interested in, or its difficult enough to actually use my full brain capacity, even if i care and i find it mostly interesting actually listening 100% is damn near impossible for me

[alastors-wife]

jesus christ

[lemon-natalia]

Harrow the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 52

Augustine & Mercy are having a very intense convo about how they just murdered GOD and are dooming themselves, and Gideon 1.0, Gideon 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Ianthe are just … standing there

oh shit and Dominicus is gonna die and become a black hole? i mean given there’s a whole other book not sure where this is gonna go, maybe he was lying to everyone about that as well?

when Ianthe of all people is the one advocating to try and save people out of the goodness of her heart, you know you’re fucked

‘Well, Augustine, there’s something you should know’ could someone please say something in this series that isn’t ridiculously cryptic. also i totally forgot this guy was wearing Gid’s sunglasses the whole time lol

OH WAIT THE BITCH IS BACK. i knew it was too good to be true 

also YIKES poor Mercy, she was not my favourite character but god she did not deserve that

also ah. hm. the above comment did not age well

oh this guys whole persona has just shifted. He’s still got that kinda irreverent jokiness & affability but he’s also evidently very pissed off, a lot less ‘lets have tea’ and more ‘do what i say or get fucked’

'then he looked at us, gave a crooked half smile’ ohhhh he has the same. fucking. crooked smile. that Gideon has in the BARI-star dream what the fuck

and he WAS the one who ordered Gideon-Part-1 to kill Harrow, for fucks sake. at least Harrow had Ortus be nice to her briefly cuz she’s three for three on her other parental figures trying to kill her at some point 

Gideon found out her bio dad is GOD, saw him die, saw him come back to live naked, and now found out he tried to kill her (kinda maybe its complicated) girlfriend. thats just ... so many different levels of traumatising

also i keep forgetting Gideon is literally looking like Harrow for all of this

GIDEON 1.0 ISN’T GIDEON, ITS PYRRHA DVE HIS CAV?!?!? yknow what so much else is going on rn i barely have the capacity to process that

and she was also sleeping with Commander Wake, was everyone just fucking eachother????? and i thought the love quadrangle in the last book was complicated. i’m guessing she shot Wake to stop her from potentially revealing the whole ‘i’m actually alive’ thing to the Emperor then?

also wow there’s a lot of consent issues being raised in the last couple chapters and this one, not just with dios apate major, but also like … you’re having sex with someone while possessing someone else’s body without their knowledge, but also also its the only body you have because they (presumably) killed you to absorb your soul. like what.

the drama and vast existential horror of this scene is only mildly undercut by the fact that the Emperor is having this crazy fight wearing only what is essentially an opalescent bathrobe

also why are there fucking TEETH at the bottom of the River? and Tongues?? and it thinks he’s a Resurrection Beast? i feel like there’s so much more to the River that we haven’t uncovered yet

and Augustine wasn’t wrong with what he said wayy before, the Emperor really did grant him more leniency than he did Mercy, at least he gave him a chance before murdering him

also cmon Ianthe you’re really gonna save that guy, really?

'Hands pressed. We died’ AGAIN?? i mean at least this time there’s a chance for her to come back given she’s done it once before?? also i do not know what to make of her seeing Alecto before she dies at all

[onesidedradiostatic]

"if he had the same power level as an overlord he WOULD STILL BE AN OVERLORD we see from alastor that selling your soul does not negate overlord status therefore husk likely lost his status from losing power"

Exactly! Overlord STATUS, its really more of a societal title!! Overlords WOULD take away that status, regardless of power, if the Overlord's soul was taken! Alastor still being an Overlord isn't much of an argument when no one knows his soul has been sold. (With the exception of Husk, who's likely under orders not to mention anyway.) MOST LIKELY, Husk lost his status because he sold his soul, not lack of power.

"idc if he saved some power through his deal, he still lost enough to lose overlord status"

(See above for latter argument)

This is me being picky with words and lyrics but if Husk had only saved SOME power through his deal, I feel like the lyric wouldve been "to save some power" and it wouldn't change the beat too much. So, it would seem like Husk did manage to hold onto all of it or at least a vast majority, not a small quantity!

"and val has his smoke, cover the room in that shit and husk can TRY not to breathe that in."

BZZZT WRONG! See previous argument: environmental damage. WHAT ROOM? Husk can blow those walls WIIIIIIDE open and let alllll that smoke out. A great advantage bc Husk's got long range weapons and can still attack while airing the room out. Val would be shooting BLIND. Husk just has to aim at the center and not even need to be 100% accurate because EXPLOSIONS.

"bullets are also faster than cards. val wins."

With his EYESIGHT? With his smoke covering a hella lot of his vision? Even with four gattling guns he'd be lucky to be aiming in Husk's general direction.

as far as we know, overlord status is determined by the number of souls an overlord owns. we KNOW husk gambled his souls away and from that we KNOW he lost the power gained from those souls and as far as we know we haven't seen him with any and he himself definitely doesn't consider himself an overlord anymore. "Exactly! Overlord STATUS, its really more of a societal title!! Overlords WOULD take away that status, regardless of power, if the Overlord's soul was taken!" is an incredibly bold assumption. we do not know this. as far as we know overlords are demons that reach a certain number of souls owned.

no comment on the lyrics I genuinely don't think him not saying "some power" means anything it makes just as much sense to just say "my power", but this entire line is confusing to begin with. my impression was he sold his soul to save his power from being completely lost after he gambled all his souls

not if the smoke reaches him first and disorients him

and oh my god I'm too tired to debate all this I just think it's ridiculous to think husk, an ex-overlord who's hit rock bottom, can beat val, a current overlord with heavy power and influence, one on one. are we trying to diminish val as a threat here

[dimonds456]

Historians:

Hello. My name is Dims, and I am currently 21. It is 4:56 AM on May 10th, 2024.

Rafah is currently being bombed and invaded.

I don't know how much of a digital footprint we'll leave behind, if any, but if I can do one thing with my time here on this Earth, I want you all from the future to know that we tried.

Us, the citizens of the United States of America, are fighting so hard to stop the genocide happening in Palestine. We see their suffering, we hear their voices. A vast majority of the citizens of not just the US, but the entire world are on Palestine's side. But no matter how hard we fight to change the world, to give to the Palestinians and let them know they're not alone, it's not up to us.

The only people with the real power to ceasefire and help Palestine are our leaders and politicians. And none of them will help.

We're trying- don't you doubt that for a second- but we can protest as much as we want, and if they still hold any power over us, they won't bend unless they think it's financially beneficial to do so.

President Biden has said he's delivering aid to Palestine, but all he's really been doing is sending them expired food that tastes like shit, dumping it in the ocean, and making them swim for it while Israeli soldiers fire upon crowds of innocent, starving people.

President Biden has said that he will not allow Israel to invade Rafah, but here we are. He hasn't lifted a damn finger to stop them.

President Biden has said that all people deserve life insurance, all while allowing a LITERAL GENOCIDE to occur, with his blessing.

Genocide Joe does not speak for us.

Historians, if you are reading this, please don't let our voices be erased with time. I know about my country's habit of erasing it's own atrocities and painting itself as a shining bastion of freedom, and I have no doubt in my mind that it will do that once again after the dust of this conflict has settled. No matter what happens- a ceasefire, or total destruction, the United States will write in history books that it either helped to defeat a terrible foe, or it came down on Israel with an iron fist and stopped it dead in its tracks.

My country is responsible for the genocide of thousands of indigenous tribes.

My country is responsible for the war, violence, and massacre of many countries overseas, including Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, the Congo, and so, SO many more.

My country is responsible for the colonization of Hawaii, as well as the entire rest of the land we occupy.

My country WILL try to sweep this under the rug.

Don't let them. No matter what, PLEASE don't let them.

To any Palestinians that are reading this message right now, be it once this is posted or far into the future, we hear you. We see you. We will continue to fight for you. It's not over, and I refuse to stop raising awareness and talking about Palestine until you are free. And, if that doesn't come to pass, then by God we won't let them forget. We won't let you all get swept under the rug. This genocide is a stain on my country's already bloody past, and we can't let them pretend it's not there anymore.

We are failing you now. I am so, so sorry we can't do more. But we will continue to fight for as long as we can. I promise.

FREE PALESTINE!

[antimony-medusa]

honestly yeah u make a really good point in ur mcyt rpf post. i was Also the person bemoaning how mcyt defaults into vbrpf tags and that there isn't a separate set, but then i realized like. i spent Years writing fic about the roosterteeth crew, which all fell in a very similar gray area like mcyt. like looking at shit like fake ah crew fic, the characters written about there are very obviously separate from the real life people, but also they are intrinsically linked. the characters don't exist without the people. and even though we were all in fandom talking and writing about them like playing with dolls, it was still like... yeah okay this fits under the rpf umbrella still. i never questioned it then, or was bothered about it not being a separate tag set, because it didn't feel necessary. which is really the same situation with mcyt!! its just that for any number of reasons, mcyt fandom in particular tends to have a very loud and very vehement group that think rpf as a whole is abhorrent and doesn't even want to be clocked anywhere close to it. which like honestly thats a personal issue at that point, thats not on everyone else to deal with, and certainly not on ao3 to sort out.

Yeah like I think RPF has a bad reputation because of some very obvious bad actors who've behaved badly in the past that the whole internet knows about, and especially because MCYT was kind of the butt of the joke and hatred for a lot of social media sites, a lot of people were eager to emphasize that they weren't behaving like that, it was fine, they were being totally normal (and they had the creator's permission, hence the boundaries discourse and the twitter cancellations for anything "weird"), and nobody should hate them cause they totally weren't like those weirdos.

And that's a really understandable reaction to try and do, I also have gone into the comments of bracket polls and seen hate, but that also ignores that the vast majority of RPF is a) not actually hurting anyone b) is not any more egregious in its content than any other fandom c) Is not inherently weirder to the creators than anyone who avidly follows their social media and shows up at their meet and greet and like— tts them stuff. We've all seen people TTS stuff that should NOT have been said in view of the creators, but the vast majority of it is perfectly fine. I very much think we shouldn't be showing RPF to the creators, and because the boundary is thin for MCYT I extend that to thinking that there's a WHOLE bunch of stuff that we shouldn't be showing to the creators— from gore to shipping to nsfw to aging down family dynamics to stuff about people they've lost— but I don't think that reacting with a horrified gasp to anyone saying "oh yeah rpf" is actually necessary. Or heck, if you were watching twitchcon vids and you want to straight up write tagged-as-RPF, go with god, I don't think that's inherently any weirder than people who go to twitchcon to meet streamers. You like them a lot and you want to rotate them mentally and get a picture with them, that's like, fine. As long as we keep it in fandom spaces and don't make the streamers feel weird cause we're showing them it, you're just doing what people who got really into polygon videos over the pandemic did, or historians who write historical RPF about their ancient blorbos, or whatever. it's fine.

Particularly cause what I write is mostly aus, I've had to wrestle with the question of if what I'm writing is RPF, and I think it's (usually) not, I can tell in my head when I'm thinking streamers or when I'm thinking characters, but like, we're talking *really* fine distinctions at points. If someone thinks that it's RPF it's not an insult to me, I can tell how they get there, and me reacting like it IS an insult is kind of rude to my fandom neighbours who are writing Gamechanger RPF where they design their own challenges cause they just have so much fun with the show, you know?

Some of this is just that I'm in my 30s and I'm tired of fandom policing, I can coexist with a lot of shit if you just tag it appropriately so I can filter it if I need to. For the holiday exchange last year we had no RPF as a rule not because I had an issue with it, but because the form to get the information for it would have been literally two hundred checkboxes long and I didn't want to do that to my spreadsheets.

I kind of drifted from your point there, but yeah, I think MCYT is legitimately in a blurry spot when it comes to if it's RPF or not, but that's not something I think we need to get all up in arms about, and we certainly don't need to, as I saw someone recommend we all do, file a ticket with Ao3 to remove MCYT tags from Video Blogging RPF.

[suffarustuffaru]

I think if Reinhard has a lover, he's a 'Christmas flag' guy to them? (being a red and green flag at the same time)

HAH the way you described that as "christmas flag" is so funny..... and yeah yeah reinhard would be that yeah. imo though like - i feel like everyone is gonna have red and green flags - and uh, ive heard the term beige flag lately too? HAH so like beige flags... as in like neutral stuff that is probablyyy neither good nor bad, it just depends.... at least that was my understanding of it lmao but yeah imo i think everyone is gonna have red and green flags it just. Depends. on how bad those red flags are gonna be bc either theyre blaring red alarms or oh that is like a normal flaw that you could try to work on. if that makes sense??

anyway reinhards perceived red and green flags i feel like would be different according to whoever is interested in him romantically HAH..... but like. given its reinhard the red flags are probably gonna range from reinhard having a habit of sounding or being a little insensitive... hes also oblivious a lot.... doesnt personally defend himself all that much.... may cross boundaries if he thinks is best.... but you know those are all things that he could work on and he genuinely has a lot of love and well intent in his heart so i think he would try his best for anyone he'd be romantically involved with!!

but also then theres the blaring red flag that im sure the vast majority of people in rezero would have for reinhard which is the part where PEOPLE THINK HES A MONSTER BC OF HIS POWERS WHICH T^T i mean. i kinda cant blame them (like dude can do some FREAKY shit fr) but im also terribly terribly sad about that. :<<<< poor reinhard :<<<<<< like can you imagine youre the person whos supposed to make the next sword saint with reinhard and he gets his dp of being good at sex and you realize with horror that this guy will just get new powers all the time or something. he cant do Anything without being forced to be Borderline God-like at Everything. ........ok well that and the specific horror of "does reinhard even want romance. does he even want sex. does he want kids. the kingdom will make him have a kid anyway. my god."

anyway :(( i hope reinhard gets his happy ending eventually (no powers) (he is Normal) (and his family is happy again :<< )

[lettucedloophole]

that post reminds me of some insane takes ive seen on modesty lately. im pretty sex positive, actually, but the fact that "progressive" people will call women mormons or "amish" for "not showing enough skin" or "not dressing sexy" makes me want to kms. god forbid women try to escape sexualization because even if you're as "modest" as possible men will still harass you about your body. ive seen a tgirl get shit for covering up too even though she just preferred baggy clothing because she's dysphoric. its insane

i'm so fed up with it 🥹 "sex-positivity" as a term in the mouths of liberals means NOTHING... so at this point i just embrace being an Evil sex-negative radfem lol. like yep, i definitely hate sex because i want women & gender minorities to have good sexual experiences at their own pace! but it's a little true as, the only way #they can think of sex is as violent submission so, i guess "sex-negative" is fair enough

like truly i could go insane. a vast majority of people prefer to oversexualize publicly rather than privately (modesty) but there is so little the in between of just... seeing women as people that my brain could explode. bit of a tangent but it's so crazy how ppl find it so difficult to acknowledge women's agency while also acknowleging how ones choices can be affected by society, and this is so prevalent in this issue not only in feminist critique but when ppl in the Society try to criticize women for um. Living in this society essentially.

and the transmisogyny of that last one... Mother of God. they really said state-sanctioned oversexualization is tied to the Womanhood. i will abolish it and [redacted] these people with my bare hands

[subliminalbo]

Mind Control In the Wild #1: Ghostbusters

Hotness: 5 Context: 5 Creativity: 3 Final Score: 4.78

Watch some scenes here and here. Ghostbusters is currently streaming in the United States on Peacock.

To be honest, I wouldn't even consider Ghostbusters a favorite (a little too Reagan for me), but I always find myself coming back to it when I think of great mind control scenes. It's the standard by which I judge every other scene and, I'm assuming, likely the reason a lot of folks are even here. Ghostbusters was my first encounter with mind control and I haven't stopped thinking about it since like, 1999.

What immediately jumps out to me about the mind control in Ghostbusters is that it's one of the few uses in media that is explicitly sexy. Typically, outside of straight pornography, the subtext does most or all of the heavy lifting. But in Ghostbusters, Akroyd and Ramis use the aggressively sexual tension to play with our expectations of demon possession. A decade removed from The Exorcist, audiences are meant to expect twisting heads and projectile vomiting. Instead we get a supernaturally horny Sigourney Weaver playing off of a reluctantly chivalrous Bill Murray.

It's funny that it is sexy, but it's still sexy.

Let's talk context. Dana Barrett (Weaver) is the Ghostbusters' first client, contacting them after an incident in her kitchen involving cooking eggs on a countertop and a demonic dog in her refrigerator snarling the name, "Zuul." They learn that Zuul was a minion of Gozer the Gozerian, an ancient deity worshiped by the Sumerians and Mesopotamians. Shortly after, Zuul succeeds in possessing Dana, who then seeks out Vinz Clortho ("The Keymaster" to Zuul's "Gatekeeper"), another terror dog who has possessed Dana's neighbor, Louis. The two summon Gozer back to earth, transforming into their terror dog forms as the Ghostbusters confront the ancient god at the top of Dana's apartment building.

What makes the mind control here so special is how well Dana Barrett is established as a character. She's a cellist for a New York symphony, a skeptic who only contacts the Ghostbusters out of pure desperation, and a straight man to Venkman's (Murray) sarcastic personality (her description of Venkman as "like a game show host" is one of the best lines in the movie). It's important to know a character in the setup before seeing their transformation in the payoff. One of my favorite setups is the character who fights against the mind control conspiracy just to fall victim to it anyway, we know the mindless payoff is an inevitability but there's intrigue in watching a character fail anyway. While Dana isn't conscious of any mind control plot, she does know that she's in danger and takes appropriate measures to protect herself. But the intervention of the Ghostbusters fails and she still falls into Zuul's clutches.

Listen: I was raised in a Christian culture that didn't just believe that demon possession is common, but that it afflicted the vast majority of people on earth. So with that context, I hope you can imagine how terrifying the possession scene was for me when I was four years old. It was also profoundly impactful. As I got older, my fear of possession warped into a fascination with mind control, until one day I'm in high school searching "mind control in anime" on Google. I imagine a lot of fetishes start by reclaiming your own fears like this.

Watching the possession scene now, I think it holds its own as a genuine work of horror. I mean look at this shit:

Terrifying, but wouldn't be out of place in hentai.

When we see Dana next, she's transformed into a creature of pure lust who, to be blunt, seeks to fuck Vinz Clortho, their consummation being the key to summoning Gozer.

So, there's a lot going on here. There's horror in seeing someone totally transformed into a puppet of an ancient god, and Akroyd and Ramis are even playing with some old timey fear of promiscuity you might see in a Victorian horror novel like Dracula. But their message isn't really "sex bad" like Stoker's. Instead, the very loud sexual subtext is used for comedy. "The Gatekeeper" seeks "The Keymaster." Akroyd and Ramis are like thirteen year old boys giggling at the word "boobs" on a calculator.

Weaver's commitment to the transformation is really what puts this one over the top. We meet a completely new Dana, her wry, calculated way of speaking replaced with this sort of distant purr. She moves differently too, every breath creating dozens of other movements as she floats through a room. The effect is something like Dana so overwhelmed by her urges that she can't sit still, she's absolutely aching to be fucked.

So yeah, the context is really special here, but it's not like other mind control scenes where it's all plot and no sex. In Ghostbusters, the sex is the plot. Mind control in the wild doesn't really get much better than this.

[iwtvdramacd18]

No no it's fine. You have your right to be cagey and honestly I have witnessed so much fandom drama in my main fandom regarding this very discussion of race and the things that were said there...oof. I can 1000% understand the need to be cagey. I might have come on too strong and honestly, yeah, now that I am thinking about it all of my questions cannot truly be addressed in one ask. And if one does so, it would take a lot of energy. I really didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Hope you don't mind ❤

Thanks for coming back to clarify I appreciate it. As a whole I'm happy with how race is handled in the show however I as with most things I think they could have pushed it forward. Writers room could def use more black writers. (EDIT: man I shorted out I meant more writers of color in general) I'm honestly kinda burnt out on talking about stuff rn but in my meta tag are multiple posts about race in the show including my own/ stuff from others. It might be a good place to look for my ideas on it especially since I forget a lot of stuff on the spot.

The books handling of race is abysmal, Anne Rice was greatly influential in the genre and is also undoubtedly one of the reasons its historically still been such a white space. From the orientalism to other types of fetishization to her weird ass mixed race assimilation ass shit it's a nightmare. I guess luckily if you are reading it the vast majority of the characters are white in the books (including Akasha, which people seem to forget when drawing book only fanart which lmao. ok.) so you don't have to suffer seeing a character of color pop up on page and Armand listing off every exotic nut and fruit in the world to describe their skin tone. I think a lot of hardcore book readers tune it out but I can't lmao its so distracting and unnerving. For example no one brings up Gabrielle explicitly wanting to go into the "African jungles" and become god to the "tribes"

LIKE WHAT IS THIS

[poorlittleyaoyao]

I do love the book but it's harder to get through than the show if you don't care for wangxian just because the focus is that much narrower. The nature of adaptation and also CQL having objectively too many episodes(Guanyin temple did NOT need four eps lol) turns it into an ensemble show with something for everyone. Yanli takes fifty chapters to show up and Wen Qing doesn't make her entrance until chapter 60. I am one of those people who very much do enjoy wangxian both separately and together but I also consider them one of the less interesting storylines and there are relatively few scenes of theirs I reread compared to the rest of the cast.

AGREEEEEED. The show cares so much for the supporting characters and gives such life to them--as adaptations of works with such vast words SHOULD once they've been freed from the constraints of first-person or third-person-limited narration, honestly. Knowing that there's less WQ in the novel is particularly disappointing to me, bc I love her friendship with WWX, and had hoped All WWX All The Time would at least mean more mad scientist friendship time! Alas.

That said. I am going to go on a tangent because ohhhhhhhh my god, Guanyin Temple and its need for editing.

@maester-of-spreadsheets and I have compared Guanyin Temple to Act IV of a Shakespeare play. A lot of Act IVs includes a super intense scene where the characters are in a state of HIGH EMOTION as shit hits the fan and we hurtle towards the climactic action in Act V--Ophelia's mad scene, Richard II's deposition, Brutus and Cassius's breakup fight, Richard III's coercion of Elizabeth Woodville, etc. These scenes are all CERTIFIED BANGERS that hold their plays together.

However. The reason these scenes go so hard is that they're just ONE SCENE. One really long-ass scene, maybe, but "long" here is maybe 20 minutes, bc we can't chug along with the same exact level and type of intensity for much longer than and remain engaged... which is EXACTLY what happens in CQL's iteration of Guanyin Temple. Without Mingjue's corpse busting in like the Kool-Aid man to release the tension in explosive action (the blade spirit does NOT cut it unless "it" is JGY's arm) or Wangxian's confession to release tension with some levity, it's just tearful emotional reckoning after tearful emotional reckoning for THREE ENTIRE HOURS.

And like, I 100% find every plot being rehashed at Guanyin Temple more interesting than anything Wangxian have going, but it's weird to have our protagonists just sitting there spectating other people's emotional implosions for the equivalent of an entire feature-length film. Like, they tried with the curse mark thing and the Second Flautist, but all the plot permits WWX to do is scowl tearfully about these major revelations because JGY's gotta be killed by NHS via LXC.

It had me by the throat when I first watched it because all the information was BRAND NEW and I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen, but on rewatches I just get tired. Individual bits are great on their own, but as one long slog? Noooooo thank you. And the abrupt mood whiplash and confused pacing once the focus returns to Wangxian for good leaves a weird taste in my mouth.

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I'm a bit delirious now but regarding the lumber incident, is that the one last 2017? I read that Canada placed tariffs on US gypsum exports in retaliation, and even planned to impose tariffs on coal and other products made in Oregon (the hometown of that senator who advocated for tariffs against Canada but I can't remember the name). but I remember that the book I read about this was by Thomas Oatley

anyway, NA bros pettiness 😭

So preface: This is one of those topics where I am blatantly a Canadian. Like violently angry about the US bullshit on this. Like you want a topic that instantly makes me a blue-flannel, blowing-up-busts-of-queen-victoria Quebecois stereotype, this is it. My family has been seasonal loggers for literally centuries and my ancestral plot of old growth trees was obliterated in a fire this past summer so this is an emotional topic for me. That said, its BC that gets fucked more in the ass every time this happens nowadays but still.

The Canadian side is absolutely as petty about it but the consequences on the Canadian side are profound. The lumber industry beef goes back to.... fuck. The Conquest really. It's older than the US or Canada as independent states but where it really came to a head was back in 1982. But tbh, on a civics level, what it comes down too is a difference in how two nations exercise sovereignty over undisputed, internationally recognized territory. In Canada, the government, represented by the crown has automatic ownership over the vast majority of land where softwood lumber farms exist, rather than being in private hands like the US. It's an inherent aspect of Canadian democracy that often moderates our politics. And the Canadian lumber industry is a fucked up thing, I might call it evil, and GOD knows there's labour exploitation but there are usually more and better unions, labour negotiation and working conditions on the Canadian side of this argument that get shaken everytime this shitshow resurges. And it fucks over indigenous peoples and people of colour especially.

In the US, the lumber industry has a powerful lobby that takes what has often been a series of difficult but more or less even handed agreements between two governments at least pretending to operate on a more or less respectful level by using institutions like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization to negotiate. Instead of moving forward, these people turn it into a nationalist shit show that takes US economic power and says "oh you want to be a fully recognized neighbor? fuck you. take your beating and say thank you or you'll get another."

Like tbh save the Northwest Passage which in practical military terms Canada likely won't have choice but to cooperate with the US and its giant defense budget this is one of the issues where the US really allows capitalism to fuck us up in the face of American law and international trade standards. And honestly in the grand scheme of things, God knows we've got it better than pretty much anyone else who lives next to a large superpower but its really sad to see that a majority of Americans in the last few years would rather take a nationalist stance, blame Canada for being 'communist' than take their own corporations to task. Its yank consumers getting fucked over here too. It should be a fucking solidarity issue on both sides, with workers and unions demanding the adoption of more and better legislation but instead its devolved into a nationalist shit show. On both sides, honestly but its kind of hard not to feel a lot resentment when people I've known for years as kind, cooperative, pro-labour people start parroting fuck Canada over they're dirty foreign communists like its 1924 all over again.

I generally try to shy away from headcanons about specific and more current stuff like this but considering its been a major contributer to Canadian economic woes and global inflation, its a topic where Matt vomits blood and Alfred says "have you tried not being a socialist?" and gets a mug thrown at his head. They're both fucking assholes but Alfred is still driving a tank to a knife fight.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Hard Rock Essentials 2000 Hard Rock / Blues-Rock / Arena Rock / Hair Metal / Pop-Metal / Heavy Metal / Adult-Oriented Rock / Progressive Rock / Pop-Rock

God, classic rock really has to be the most over-entitled and over-represented type of music in America, man. I mean, can you think of any other non-contemporary stuff that has a radio station solely dedicated to it in virtually every nook and cranny of this country? It's pretty obvious why it's managed to own so much radio real estate over the years, though—because it's pure catnip for nostalgic white boomers—but if you zoom all the way out and think about all of the music that's come and gone since the 50s, there's really no justifiable reason for this stuff to get so much more airtime than any other type of music from the past. I mean, classic rock is fine for what it is, but it's definitely not leaps and bounds better than everything else.

Take a song like Foreigner's "Hot Blooded," for instance, which is just one of multiple tracks to appear on this triple-disc compilation of so-called Hard Rock Essentials here that happens to deal with the complex subject matter of, *checks notes*, being extremely horny. "Hot Blooded" was a hit in its day, sure, but so were literally tens of thousands of other songs too. And I guess, at the end of the day, I just don't really understand why this song, and so many other ones that are featured on this comp as well, has earned its keep as a fixture of constant classic rock radio rotation. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, is "Hot Blooded" really all that remarkable of a song, so much so, that we need to keep continuously hearing it on our radios year after year? No way!

But, folks, I have to admit that it is actually far too late for me on this front. I am by no means a boomer, but I was, at one point, part of another segment that, like clockwork, fell prey to classic rock radio too: the insufferable tweenage boy subset who grew exasperated with the mindlessness of his own generation's contemporary top 40 fare and decided that "Smoke On the Water" and other songs of its ilk were actually the best shit in the world. Little did we know at the time, and some of us still refuse to see it, that a lot of this shit was actually every bit just as dumb as the stuff that we were trying to so actively avoid. God, how embarrassing.

But I really just cannot help it at this point. As much sense as I've tried to make at the top of this post, I really did have a substantial classic rock phase, and now that shit is just hard-coded into my own DNA. Quiet Riot's "Cum On the Feel the Noize" is not a song that deserves to ever be heard by anyone ever again—it's so fucking bad!—but God damnit, I can't stifle the smile that starts to plant itself on my face whenever that stupid thing comes on. And it's much the same for the vast majority of the other tracks that are on this comp too.

So, while Hard Rock Essentials might be revered as a biblical classic rock sampling for both a certain type of tweenage boy and white boomer alike, for me, personally, it's nothing but security blanket rock. This is music that served me well years ago, and I've clearly outgrown it too, but there are also times when I just love to go back and swaddle myself in it as well 😊. And if I'm with someone who swears by this kinda stuff, I'm obviously gonna fully rock out to it with them too, but then maybe, afterwards, I can make their heads explode with a piece of Philadelphia shoegaze from 1996 that only has 26 YouTube views 🤯.

And I'm not gonna really get too much into it here, but we also really need to have some kind of deep reckoning with this whole propped-up and closed-looped classic rock industry that serves itself with all these nearly identical radio station playlists, cheaply produced TV countdown shows, and countless 'greatest of all time' lists on tons of different websites. I'm not trying to do conspiratorial tin foil hattery, but this whole apparatus really needs to have a stick thrown into its spokes, because it's been dominant as an unchallenged authority on classic rock for far too long. Rather than yet another spin of "Rock You Like a Hurricane," a much more thorough exploration of this vast expanse is indeed possible; I can promise you that.

Highlights:

CD1:

Ted Nugent - "Cat Scratch Fever" Great White - "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son" Quiet Riot - "Cum On Feel the Noise" Warrant - "Heaven" Judas Priest - "You've Got Another Thing Coming" Loverboy - "Lovin' Every Minute of It" Blue Öyster Cult - "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" Scandal - "The Warrior" Living Colour - "Cult of Personality" Mountain - "Mississippi Queen" Argent - "Hold Your Head Up"

CD2:

Foreigner - "Hot Blooded" Bad Company - "Feel Like Makin' Love" INXS - "Need You Tonight" Damn Yankees - "High Enough" Ratt - "Round and Round" Skid Row - "I Remember You" Black Sabbath - "Heaven and Hell" The Doobie Brothers - "China Grove" White Lion - "Wait" April Wine - "Just Between You and Me" Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It"

CD3:

Whitesnake - "Is This Love" Golden Earring - "Radar Love" Joe Walsh - "Rocky Mountain Way" Scorpions - "Rock You Like a Hurricane" The Allman Brothers Band - "Whipping Post" Uriah Heep - "Easy Livin'"

[fixfoxnox]

I have no problem with dead roach fics, but for the love of GOD be original with his death and have it actually mean something, most of the time fics are “that’s one less loose end” esque and just have Ghost survive bc reasons, or his death doesn’t actually contribute to the story long term, like it impacts the first 3 chapters and then dissapears

Activision come on, bring our big boy, GIVE US SOME FOOD

I have many problems with dead Roach fics, but my two biggest one are:

1. They are almost always tagged wrong.

If Roach is dead the entire fic and only mentioned or in like a brief flashback, he should not be tagged as a character. I'm sorry, but if he's dead, he isn't a character in your fic! He's not there! Tagging him as a character just means that you're clogging up his tag with fics that don't actually have him in them!

A lot of authors also tag their dead Roach fics with GhostRoach when, again, Roach is dead! There is not going to be any GhostRoach outside of like mentioning it. The ship should not be tagged! If I'm in the GhostRoach tag, I'm there to read GhostRoach, not stupid SoapGhost bullshit that kills my favorite character and uses his death as a shitty plot device. Don't tag GhostRoach if the fic isn't about them!!

2. A vast majority of dead Roach fics use him just to create drama in the SoapGhost relationship.

His death serves no meaning beyond being an obstacle to GhostSoap. They treat Roach like a villain who is somehow at fault for Soap dating a man who is very clearly still grieving and Ghost dating despite the fact that he clearly isn't ready. Its stupid, the relationship is never healthy, and Roach is always somehow a bad guy for being dead!

The people who write these clearly don't give a shit about Roach and only want to use him to create drama rather than just making an oc or some shit. And these are the same mfers who will claim that Roach is one of their favs, the fucking bullshit he is. Its frustrating and its only made more prevalent by the first point!! THEY KEEP PUTTING IT IN THE WRONG TAGS!!

Ignoring all the other shit that I think is stupid about the trope such as Ghost somehow being alive despite a loose ends situation happening (yeah, sure, cause Ghost who was shot in the neck and fucking killed instantly would have survived instead of Roach who was alive at least long enough to see the fire burning AND to attempt to stop Shepherd from getting the DSM. All after being blown up AND shot. Sure, Ghost would have survived but not Roach) or the absolute damage that it does to the characterization of characters like Soap and the relationship that Soap had with Roach in the OG games or the absolute unoriginality of it or the fact that tagging the fic GhostRoach seems like a passive aggressive way to shit on the ship or the fact that these people somehow write the most toxic shit known to man then call it romance or the way that the rope has been so overdone its fucking burnt (if one of you tags some joke about Ghost and Roach?? Its a block /j)

Ignoring all that other shit plus some, my biggest problem with the trope is the improper tagging. Because it wouldn't be a big deal to me if I never had to see it because people would tag their fics correctly. But people never do, so I have to see their shitty dead Roach fics, so I will continue to complain about their shitty dead Roach fics.

BTW this is no hate to anything you said, I also agree with what you said I just wanted to use your ask to rant because I like to rant and I like to shit on this trope and its been a while since I've gotten to do either.

Now, as usual:

Activision bring Roach back, GhostRoachSoap best ship, fuck the dead Roach trope I hope it fucking burns, and Roach I'm your biggest fan

[wizardnuke]

im talking about the essay grade again and i got off topic and started talking about the lit analysis potential inthe vast majority of fanfictionbjust. Ignore

i feel like it's such a humblebrag for me to be like "i don't understand how i continually get really good grades in english" because i understand objectively that 1) i am very good at analysis and/or. finding quotes to support whatever the fuck thesis i decided would be easy to support (see: "good at analysis") (i think i honestly just randomly hit the jackpot on "good thesis" but on god i just looked at macbeth and gawain respectively and was like Ah. Women's Wrongs. Easy Peasy) and 2) i know from looking at other people's essays that i am just kind of. marginally-to-a-lot better at grammar and phrasing/understand the very specific madlibs-style layout i have to use and what vocabulary that i need to be putting out. it's madlibs. there's a really technical and specific layout that needs to be followed and i just kind of follow it. it's not hard. it is boring. if i could write academic papers on the shit i'm actually interested in they'd be worthless because it's niche and/or wild tumblr user conjecture. anyone who seriously writes on. hold on i need to generate a thesis. "the cyclic nature of abuse and its direct correlation to homoeroticism in cn's supernatural" could u fucking imagine. that's hilarious. that's some hackjob shit no matter how well i could keep a straight face on the matter because all that people care about is Old Shit. i have no real vested interest in actual literary works beyond "they're important and better than people think". i have extremely strong feelings on a lot of modern works, generally movies and shows and niche dnd webshows, i cannot make a career in that shit, my english prof thinks fanfic is bullshit and i see where he's coming from! i don't think it's bullshit. but. the academic perspective on fanfiction is like "they're not making original work" because the setting/adjacent themes and characters r lifted from another work and there's no real originality in it except that the best fics i've read are like.. an alternate form of literary analysis that is so far from actual essay writing that it's unrecognizable. but people can see the themes and the motifs and rehash them in a way that is absolutely a kind of analysis of the original work, but with flourishes and new ideas and batshit choices that the og media either couldn't make/didn't feel like making/tentacle sex wasn't really thematically fitting but an author decided "hey what if i put themes into this consentacles fic" and like, i want to argue that that's legit. sometimes. but i am not going to do that bc i sound objectively insane and also sometimes it is just not that deep and that will be brought up as an argument and i just don't care enough to explain that it's still an art form even if it's not that deep. is "fun and funky fresh" not a common motivator. if "new interpretations" of works like shakespeare and shit where they plunk the characters into a modern setting and fuck with the phrasing is seen as a viable art form/type of analysis then fanfic is an art form/analysis adjacent to that. not all of it though. some of it is something else that is worse. not that i think that is in itself bad. fanfic is a hobby. can't make a career out of that. but people have made careers out of that by changing the names and setting and publishing books. and that's viable apparently. i just personally am insane and enjoy writing very serious and/or emotionally driven meta on dnd shows. i like themes and motifs and i think that while a quickly written meta post on the tragedy inherent in redemption arcs that hit 50k is absolutely not as academically sound as a cited paper on a similar subject, there's Something To It and there's got to be some kind of potential in it. i like stories. idk if i could make a living out of talking about stories especially from the insane angle that i tend to hit stories at. the possibility of making it a genuine career is driven down below ground after i take into consideration my insanity about modern stories vs my neutrality on older ones. what am i talking abt. bf is yelling for me bye