#but. one of my big obsessions is how 'valid' i am in wanting to convert and this is SOOO embarrassing to admit

[scoutpologist]

realizing i have religious obsessions and intrusive thoughts/fears is very much a harrowing experience. unfortunate vibes!

[levucky]

al horford sleeper agent

—————

anyway by now ive told basically everyone i care about but i had a life changing experience over the weekend. n it sounds dumb as shit but i met a real life dude who was basically a clone of nick from franz. weird hours. guess this is a thread

before we start i want to say i havent thought about franz in weeks. theyve gone away on their own finally but really i think my old obsessions just get replaced every few years and maybe it was my hard work in therapy or my new obsession with rap or

maybe it was just a realization or me growing up and maturing or something but i dont even want to work on my favorite fanfics anymore or anything. it’s just odd. i think im changing

and i don’t think about how my former favorite band members are doing or worry about them or check their socials n it feels really good. but i know there probably is or probably will be a replacement

ok that was a tangent. if they were replaced by anything they were replaced by new friends and the NBA. so there’s the exposition of this story sorted

anyway back to the weekend. the sleeper agent invited me to lunch. and that was the catalyst. god people are being so loud in here let me go to the art library

anyway i just kind of realized "huh i guess there's more out there." i went to lunch n shit. WE went to lunch n shit. stopped caring so much about my math homework. let myself be dumb and in love

that’s a very human thing. lunch. he spilled his stupid chipotle burrito all over his stupid bright green celtics jacket

he’s from italy. never even stepped foot in a chipotle. immediately clowned himself. some world we live in

we hung out all weekend. we went to lunch like two more times and we went to dinner. there was this big threat of leaving looming over my head the whole time. i made him walk like a mile on crutches and i feel very bad about it

i don’t know what’s wrong with him. it’s somewhere between a basketball injury and a chronic disability. either way that just made me feel even more emotionally attached to him. i never saw him without the celtics jacket

it was so cold that weekend. or maybe i just didn’t bring the right jacket. if he were a gentleman he would have offered me the celtics jacket. i didnt even hug him goodbye

and then of course he went back home. theres a million girls all over his instagram comments all the time. theres nothing special about me. he doesn't want to talk. i wrote my ap psych notes in green yesterday bc i was so in love with that stupid celtics jacket

im a sixers fan. the sixers and the celtics have been rivals forever. it was about to be war, except i want to move to boston. but really i want to move to dc. i wish the whole world was philly. things would be less complicated

im in love with a celtics jacket. a celtics jacket. of all teams. and i cant even talk to my basketball friends about it because they think im dumb shit for falling for some celtics fan with a million girls all over his instagram comments all the time

im not like those girls. i don’t think im like those girls. but i definitely exactly am

i have an economics test in fifteen minutes. i think one day ill drown in the atlantic ocean.

the test wasnt that bad. i thought about writing this the entire time. i would just zone out and stare and think about the phrase ‘al horford sleeper agent’

because he has to be. why else would someone put a diehard sixers fan right in front of a diehard celtics fan who looks exactly like the guitarist of their middle school favorite band

in reality i should be calling him a celtics sleeper agent because the whole point is that al horford is a sleeper agent for the celtics. but i hate al horford so i guess it’s more funny to include him in the title

i mean how can one player change so drastically like that? al horford was benched for the first time since his rookie season, like, two weeks ago after being traded to the sixers. how does that happen? why *wouldn’t* he be playing badly so his old friends win the title?

al horford’s gotta be retiring in like, three years, tops. he’s working for the celtics, i know it. and my sleeper agent is trying to convert me to a celtics fan

i understand why people make jokes, though. it’s a very human thing to want to go home. al horford just wants to go home. he lived in boston for however many years let me look it up

god whatever it was only three years i thought it was like eleven that just ruined my point

back to the matter at hand though that’s all we’re trying to do. we all just want to feel at home. we’re all just these little things trying to connect somehow. sometimes we are more desperate than others

i think im pretty desperate right now. sometimes i sit in my bedroom and im like damn when do i get to go home? but im home

i didn’t even want to leave dc. it was all star break and there wasn’t even basketball on. so there i was, in basketball purgatory, wizards territory for some god forsaken reason, losing sleep over a celtics fan and not wanting to go home

and when i say i was losing sleep you better believe me. i was so excited to wake up in the morning that i didn’t want to fall asleep. i wanted to be awake forever, endless, running through the city

i’ll get there soon enough. it’ll be with different people. college, yknow. all that. but sometimes i feel like certain things can’t be replaced.

and im acting like a different person lately. im using my phone at red lights just so i can check for a message from the sleeper agent. it’s always one word responses

yes. ok. maybe. some shit like that. a haha every once in a while. he’s not interested and i should stop trying

and then, INEVITABLY, i send something stupid back, a photo of my hand on the wheel or something, and i get left on read

and i know im stupid for it. everyone i know is screaming at me “disco, you’re dumb shit” but i just want to believe for a minute that im loved, im special

I want to feel like someone out there cares about me that isn’t obligated to, yknow? my mom can say she loves me all she wants but it doesn’t feel as good as some italian celtics fan saying it

some hot italian celtics fan mind you

even if he wasn’t hot or italian it would be nice. and actually it would be better if he liked like, ANY other basketball team

except maybe the knicks

but whatever. main point: i know im dumb shit and should stop trying. but it feels good to feel like if i keep trying maybe i’ll be wanted

sleeper agent is just one of those people tho. he’s magnetic and everyone always wants to be around him. dumb as hell in the most charming way ever. my friends are still all making fun of me

i started crying in a pizza place the other night because even the CONCEPT of italy sent me over the edge. i need to stop before i

wait what’s the word

i need to stop before i immortalize him? no, no

i need to stop before i deify him. soon enough he’s going to be a new canonical character in my head and i’ll start making up legends and stories to myself

we barely knew each other. if i deify him i’ll start telling people he offered me the celtics jacket when it was cold out. he’ll become a perfect gentleman. and he wasnt. he was just some stupid hot italian boy in a bright green jacket

im not going to deify him. it won’t happen. but i love the color green. i always say i love yellow more but i think that’s passed. i wear a green ring on my right ring finger every day. im not going to deify him and i still hate the celtics

overall, the celtics are winning the rivalry. i don’t think the sixers have ever truly been “great,” at least outside of philly. maybe allen iverson. wilt chamberlain. dr j? theyve never had like, a dynasty. idk. i don’t think you’d be able to get a sixers jacket in italy.

it’s his birthday today. i should probably text him. i should probably stop thinking about him. that’s just dumb shit, disco youre better than this what happened to a little self confidence every now and again

sure lets say external validation isnt necessary but also i think that’s something the mindfulness crowd made up to sell more planners and tote bags in 2011. it feels good to be wanted

never waste all your time on it sure. know youre still worth it even when you have no friends and there are a million girls all over his instagram comments. but it does feel good to hear “goodness disco i like how much you like the philadelphia 76ers”

my friends are all making fun of me for being on some romeo and juliet shit because he’s literally from verona and he’s a celtics fan and im a sixers fan god damn it disco why does this always happen

i never even read romeo and juliet but i saw the dreamworks adaptation so i guess ive got the story relatively right i know they die in the end. the gnomes shatter into little pieces i think

anyway tangents aside the sixers won tonight. philly is lit up green. why the hell is philly lit up green? the eagles were done like three months ago and the flyers are orange. why is philly lit up green

oh god, he just snapped me. a zoomed in photo of himself with caption that says “76ers” with like five exclamation points

here we go again, everybody

wish me luck

[letithappeneverafter]

Freo Groove - Musicians of Fremantle

Kevin Parker is pounding along the coast, between the sea and the great shattered ruin of the old South Freo Power Station, his mind buzzing with musical possibilities. He's always said you can make great music from anywhere - that place isn't a big deal. But the front man of successful psychedelic band Tame Impala recognises that Fremantle has shaped his musical journey: from his first exploratory jams with future band-mates to the modest weatherboard in South Fremantle that he's converted into a recording studio. 

`I used to say that I could be anywhere in the world, and I still like to believe that, because I don't believe that the quality or the style of the music that someone makes is dependent on where they are. However, there are many things that seep into your music and one of them is where you live. 

`Making the last album, Currents, I was stuck, sitting in the studio and my four walls. I got to a spot where I just wasn't feeling it and the music wasn't very evocative. I got my iPhone and headphones and walked along the beach down to the power station in Coogee. I couldn't believe how much the music opened up and spoke to me, made me feel all kinds of things again. 'A lot of the songs on Currents have passages that were directly inspired by the power house and doing laps of it. It is scary and confronting, but such a beautiful thing. I had one of the songs I was working on at the time on repeat and I wrote a lot of the lyrics down on South Beach. I suddenly remembered the value of being somewhere serene and beautiful and getting inspired in that way. I don't like to think of it as a necessity because music can be written for the purposes of escape. But so much of Currents was mentally conceived between here and the power station all along the coast.'

Gravity

He grew up in Perth, got drum lessons while in high school, and played rhythm guitar with his father, Jerry, playing lead. He went on to play music with Dom Simper, whom he met in high school. The two formed The Dee Dee Dums, the precursor to Tame Impala. Somewhere around the age of twelve, he began fooling around with cassette recorders; bouncing tracks and layering sounds, building a creative methodology that still endures, although the technology is worlds apart. His Fremantle musical story began when he was about twenty and he met the guys from the band Mink Mussel Creek. 

`I was in a different band at the time, but I started hanging out and jamming with them. I was living in Subiaco then. I would leave Subiaco on Friday evening and go back on Sunday night. It was like a time warp, like another world. We would have a lot of fun and get up to mischief and make music. I thought it was amazing because it was like being in a parallel universe. It was just this black hole of the weekend when I'd be around Freo. 'It was just such an intoxicating environment, the absolute tunnel vision of the music. It was the centre of how we lived our lives. Everything was based around that. Going out for them was going out and playing a show, and we would start drinking and getting stoned in the afternoon. At some point in the night the show would happen. The show was just part of the evening. That was kind of what our lives revolved around and I just felt such a sense of belonging. A newfound identity.' 

It was an intense period of short-lived bands thrown together as fluid musical experiments, with several bands running at once comprising different line-ups of the same core set of musicians. Often, he'd play two gigs a night - one with his old band, The Dee Dee Dums, and then just stay on stage for Mink Mussel Creek. There were gigs at The Swan Basement, The Railway Hotel, Mojos, and the Newport, but the Norfolk Basement - and its bar manager -provided the opportunity for Kevin to take his work to a new level.

'The Norfolk became our second home, because we met Jodie [Regan] and she fell in love with Mink Mussel Creek. She was the bar manager downstairs, and we just thought she was great. She was enchanted by us young, scruffy stoners, who were obsessed with music and didn't have any kind of ego about it. She was like, "Hey, I'll manage you" and we thought, Hey, we've got a manager! We'd go down there during the day and rehearse. The bar wouldn't open until later and I ended up doing a lot of recording down there. They had microphones and mic stands. So I could just go down there for as long as I wanted, which was a dream because up to then I had nowhere to record drums. `The first gig we ever played under the name Tame Impala was at Mojos. It was like a new and exciting time for me because it was just another step of me consolidating what I wanted musically. `There weren't a lot of people, but that didn't matter. Until I first started hanging out with those guys - hanging out in Fremantle - would care a lot more about the audience: how many and how much they were into it. After, it was, well, "they are there or they are not". Our attitude was, we are doing what we are doing because we love doing it. We're not out for approval or validation.' 

A Fremantle share house provided a base for a while. Then as Tame Impala enjoyed wider success, Kevin was based in Paris before moving back to South Fremantle. 

'I think it was a no-brainer. I had a lot of friends here. I bought a house and lived there for a while and then tore all the walls down and turned the entire thing into a studio and then I bought another house and moved there.'

Complexity

Kevin Parker's approach to making his own music is intense and solitary, although he has had long-standing working relationships with different local musicians. He composes in isolation and works with others to create the live performance. 

'Tame Impala on the albums is just one person. It is just me multi-tracking; so basically, me recording wherever I am. 'Because I make music alone and it has got so many different parts to it, there is never a verbal conversation about it. When a band plays music, they are constantly having to talk about it to communicate it. So just from that process, just talking about it out loud, you work out what you like and you don't like. When that entire conversation stays in your head, it is just a thinking process, and you never really work out what you like and don't like and what strategies you like. It just happens. I don't have a framework. I have been doing it for that long it is something that kind of comes naturally. 'I potter in the studio even when I have other things to do. I might record a song or I just go around going, "hullo, what is this?" Unplug this...plug this in. Find a better way to record - kind of like a mad scientist. A cross between a mad scientist and an old lady in the garden pottering around. Somehow songs come out of that. `I make things more complex than they need to be. I would love my music to be simpler. I call my music "kitchen sink music". I just throw everything at it. I will think of a keyboard line - put it in. Think of a guitar line - put it in. Two different vocal melodies - put them in. As I get older I am trying to develop a musical discipline.' 

Following the phenomenal commercial success of Tame Impala, Kevin's instincts and production skills, honed over countless hours and through endless musical experiments, are in high demand. As well as working with local bands, including Koi Child and Pond, he's been approached to produce a number of American artists in Los Angeles. 

‘I like that I have two lives as a producer. One is doing my friends' stuff in Freo, the other is iconic artists that I've always dreamed of working with. I am suddenly in the same room. It's kind of two extremes.' 

As for another Tame Impala album, Kevin will only say that there's some paint on the canvas, but he doesn't know what the final result will be. 

‘The change in styles is one of the only things you can bet on. I don't think I would bother doing the same thing again. That is one of the only rules I put on myself. It has to be different and has to have evolved in some way.'

- Freo Groove - Musicians of Fremantle by Bill Lawrie & Claire Moodie. 

Photo by Jeff Atkinson. 

Published by UWA Publishing.

[jodellejournals]

confessions of a basurera at heart

okay, i admit it. i am a basurera at heart. yes, you can say i am a hoarder of all things sentimental. i collect food wrappers, letters, notes, concert tickets, handmade (and not) bracelets, bookmarks, trinkets, rosaries, lucky charms, and almost anything that there is a memory to me. i started doing it since i was around ten and about the same time i started a journal. i remember it was a spring notebook with blue stars on its front and back covers and i would paste or use scotch tape to stick those so-called basuras inside. if they were big enough, i would store them inside my first converse shoe box which i painted and decorated with stickers. during that december of 2006, our school had a huge christmas tree which beautifully stood in the quadrangle and we had to make paper stars and write something on it — a wish or special message since all forms of kind expressions are valid on christmastime. we had to be creative in crafting it and on the deadline of passing, we hung it on the tree. finally. time to put out to the universe my feelings and wishes. i wrote there a number that was special to me back then with a brief message and hung it on the side part. back story, i had a mistake in my first try of designing so i had to make another one. the obsessive-compulsive girl in me at ten had to redo it to meet my very own standards. so the first paper star which did not make its debut to the tree, i pasted in my journal and each time i looked at it, i remember its story. what a memorable basura, i thought. and so that became my earliest memory of being a basurera at heart.

that habit of collecting basuras continued in the years that came along. i kept pistachio shells (don’t judge me) that were shared between me and special people which i have already forgotten when, both hand-written and computer-typed retreat and birthday letters, chocolate wrappers (of flat tops; the only ones i can remember), rosary bracelets that were given to me, and most of all, piattos roadhouse barbecue chips wrapper, if i can remember correctly, because it was given to me by my crush. my bestfriend laughed and looked at me wide-eyed like i was some crazy girl when i kept it inside my clearbook. but who cares? my crush shared to me his precious merienda and i have to cherish it. so there — it was neatfully sealed with few crumbs because i cleaned it. safe and preserved. i internally laugh when i look back at it now but i honestly don’t regret it. i still want to do it again, in fact, for it makes a very amusing story. storing those things is like holding concrete memories. anyway, i kept that clearbook away from any food so the ants would not feast on my “hidden treasure”.

in the more recent years, i kept concert tickets, receipts, and cards in my wallet (the new safe haven of my basuras). upon holding it, you would immediately feel its heftiness and it’s because of the coins. no, i don’t collect coins in particular. i just have this mindset of “saving them for future use” until they were already converted into paper bills by my mother because according to her, carrying my wallet is like “carrying a bag of stones”. so that explains its weight. the papers aside from the bills are notes of important things i have to remember and receipts from restaurants where i had the heartiest of meals. the cards aside from atms are of prayer and loyalty cards. there used to be some calling cards there too but they make me feel like an adult from the early 2000’s so i let go of them eventually. not my kind of basura. sometimes, i also insert earrings in the coin purse area because i believe that statement earrings instantly give you a put-together look. i had dangling ones and pearls there from time to time. quick trivia: do you know that pearl earrings make a woman look even more beautiful than she already is? if yes, then good for you. that’s a magic trick to appear blooming. if not, then good for you now because you finally know. try it. you will feel and look more radiant than ever.

back to my basuras, i take my precious time in using products that i can’t keep forever. for example, i received this pocket-sized bath and body works eucalyptus tea hand gel as my christmas present from a workmate way back in december 2018. although i enjoyed its scent so much that i want to slather generous amounts of it on my hands every chance that i can get, i only take small amounts so it can stay longer with me. i don’t know if that sounds normal and if you guys do it too if faced with the same situation, but that’s just the way i roll. so occasionally, i would share it with friends and workmates because it just lives in my wallet together with my other treasures (and yes, it’s that palm-sized small that i can easily insert it in any pocket). its oh-so-good scent can make someone’s day brighter and it wouldn’t cost me much to bring some brightness on a person’s day. at least, that’s how it is for me. i would ask them then and there if it was indeed pleasant and expectedly, their euphoric eyes would give them away before they can admit it to me. and they even ask for more! so i’d share more but in a teeny-tiny amount since the rest are for me to enjoy. i can’t blame them. it really smells that good. i even want a perfume version of it. maybe i’d search it some time. ‘til now, almost two years after it was gifted to me, it’s still half full and safely residing in my kikay kit — its new home from my wallet.

you see, not all basuras stink. some have stories or maybe that’s just how i look at them. maybe i’d buy myself a pretty bin for my upcoming golden treasures. the only one i have, the converse shoebox which i have mentioned, is still sturdy up to this day and is buried inside an antique cabinet in our ancestral house where i grew up. it sits beside a vintage radio owned by my lola that i used to turn on and listen to djs and songs at night when inwas fifteen. why? because taylor swift told me to keep listening to the radio no matter what. so i did, right after listening to her fearless album in a cd player from another corner of the room. anyway, i didn’t bring that box here with me in manila and i don’t have plans to. i want it there in its original habitat because i like flying back to my hometown every december, a year older and wiser, and finding that old treasure box, as if i’m in a movie, but already knowing what basuras are inside and the stories they each tell.

[lightdark18-blog]

Fairy Tail: Non In-Universe Questions

Was Anna?Was Zervis planned? Was Zeref always planned to be completely evil?So @ac-fairytail posted some Fairy Tail non in-universe questions (all credit goes to her) and I figured: “Maybe I could attempt to honestly answer these questions and reverse-engineer Mashima’s thought process!” Of course, no sane person would ever attempt this, but here I am, so...

WARNING: Spoilers for the entire Fairy Tail manga.

Did Mashima base Stardresses off of Bravely Default’s Conjurerclass? Or was it Dresspheres? Or both?

Never played Bravely Default or Final Fantasy X-2 (even though they’re on my list of games to play), but if I had to guess after a quick wiki search, it would be Dresspheres. Problem is that the Stardresses are far less interesting, balanced, or explained. Oh well; Mashima trying to replicate a franchise with the writing quality of Final Fantasy is like an ant poking a dinosaur with a stick.

Was he always planning the time travel plot? If so, why did Erik refer to second gen dragon slayers as a “new” generation? There haven’t been dragons for centuries.

Considering that the “dragons vanished seven years ago” plot-point was established at the beginning of the series and further cemented by Natsu meeting Gajeel, I’m guessing he was planning to include time travel once he decided to continue the series past Tower of Heaven. 

As for Erik, I’m guessing that he just declared himself as second-gen because a) he heard about Natsu and Gajeel as traditional dragon slayers from the Fairy Tail-Phantom Lord war (which caused ripples across Fiore) and assumed himself to be superior because dragon lacrima were invented after the age of dragons, and b) he never heard of Sting or Rogue.

If Irene was always planned to be Queen of the Dragons, why did he barely integrate Dragnof Kingdom into anything? And why didn’t Acno realize?

I think that once Mashima created Irene’s concept, he tried to integrate her into the stories of the Dragon King Festival, but failed to create anything even remotely interesting or new, so he just quickly scrapped together a kingdom and called it a day. Yes, it’s infuriating.

As for Acno, well...he’s Acno. He don’t give two flying fucks about anything.

Was Natsu always planned to be END? Why is there no foreshadowing for it prior to the Tartaros arc?

When Zeref mentioned that Natsu specifically couldn’t kill him back in Tenrou, he was alluding to an ability that Natsu would gain in the future to beat Zeref. However, when Mashima realized that nakama bullshit wasn’t a valid ability (yeah, he went back on that in Alvarez, whatever), he solidified this ability in the form of END around Tartaros. So yeah, I would refer to Zeref’s line in Tenrou as “shot-in-the-dark” foreshadowing.

Was Zeref always planned to be completely evil? If so, why was he established as sympathetic in his introductory arc? Was this bad writing on Mashima’s end?

See, this is what really intrigued me about Zeref in Tenrou. He was established as sympathetic, but he couldn’t remain passive because that would kill people. He was FORCED to be malicious and completely evil if he ever came into contact with people until he could find someone that could kill him because that is the nature of his curse. For him, it was better to intentionally than unintentionally kill if the person or life were to die anyway. It’s why I really fell in love with him as an antagonist.

However, what is bad writing on Mashima’s end is how completely Zeref flipped to Ruthless Big Bad in Alvarez. Him being “excited” about his battle with Natsu is inexcusably inconsistent writing, and him gaining Fairy Heart just to rewrite time for his own selfish reasons should’ve activated his Death Magic on the spot because of his optimism towards a life where he won’t kill. Plus, his loss due to nakama bullshit.

Was Zervis planned?

As much as I hate to admit it, probably. The light and dark love relationship is about as cliche as you can get, and Mashima is certainly not one to dodge cliches or subvert tropes in his writing.

Was Anna?

Hell no. However, I did think that Layla was planned. When Hades was ranting about primordial magic to Team Natsu during Tenrou, Lucy, in thought, said, “I think I’ve heard of this primordial magic somewhere. Mom?” Even though Zeref had no interest in primordial magic (as proven in him killing Hades in anger), Eclipse and the Heartfilias did. Hence, I assumed that Layla would play a huge role in the final arc of the series. Boy, was I naive and optimistic.

Was Clear Heart made so OP because Mashima knew he’d fucked up managing Requip?

No. Because fanservice. Duh. Although, I did think that Clear Heart was perfectly balanced in her fight against Azuma, with her magic power bring directly converted to her Crimson Sakura blade. Any other use just feels unnecessary.

Why did Erza never use Nakagami Armour again? Too OP?

Mashima’s reason: huge audience backlash from its magic-breaking abilities and pulled-out-of-its-ass reveal. Erza’s reason: she..doesn’t want to use it because of its magic draining properties???

Why introduce the bunny armour?

The bunny armor isn’t the armor Mashima introduced that made me mad. The Seduction Armor is. Seriously, isn’t the whole point of seducing a man to take off clothes? Does that even make it armor? At least the bunny armor is cute and cosplay-ish, which fits with Erza’s happier, more playful side we see of her outside of fights; the Seduction Armor is just flat-out nonsensical.

Why did Mashima specifically want 12 Spriggans? There was apparently a reason for this, but Mashima never revealed what it was.

Originally, he wanted six and Zeref to be the seventh member, since Mashima is obsessed with the number seven. However, I think that he wanted to get a few character concepts out before he copped out of the series, and he had too many to just have six. Thus, he probably got up to nine or ten, but then he remembered that Tartaros and Avatar had the same amount of members, so he just said “fuck it” and moved the number to twelve. This would explain why Invel and Bloodman were shoehorned in with no original magic whatsoever; Mashima just threw them in to get the number to twelve.

Were Lisanna and Loke sidelined because they were threats to NaLu, or because Mashima couldn’t be bothered writing them?

Both. The first goes without explaining. However, I have theories on why Mashima didn’t bother to write either of them.

Lisanna: Mashima’s absurd obsession with redemption arcs, nakama bullshit, and fake-out deaths prove to me that he follows by the “heroes can’t die” code of writing, something which I hope no mature, aspiring writer follows. Thus, he brought Lisanna back into the story to follow this code and thought, “Maybe I could do something with her later.” Turns out he couldn’t think of anything when he was developing each new arc. The closest we ever came to Lisanna getting in the spotlight (besides that god-awful scene from Tartaros) was when Azuma “killed” Mira. Originally, as much as I like Mira, I would’ve loved to Lisanna fill in Mira’s shoes and dedicate herself to become a stronger person because of the death of her sister. But no, Mashima didn’t have the balls to really kill Mira and the Nalu shippers were clawing at his door, so she ended up as a void of nothingness.

Loke: Once his arc was done, Mashima wanted to develop the rest of the Zodiac Spirits. Not that he really did, but he didn’t want to single out Loke too much, as much as I like Lolu. However, Loke being the key that Lucy sacrificed rather than Aquarius would have worked a lot better in the grand sense of the narrative, and would’ve really hammered in a new dimension to Lucy’s potential character arc in Alvarez. So much failed potential, Mashima. So much.

Why did Mashima skip to having Mira being fine using her Satan Souls all of a sudden in the Tenrou arc?

Because since the cause of Mira’s initial stress and reluctance has been completely retconned by the narrative, she’s perfectly able to go all out again, guys! I mean, it’s not like real-life victims of PTSD still suffer for years and years on end even with achieving social and financial success, getting married, and having children, right? RIGHT!?

Seriously, fuck Mashima.

If Key of the Starry Skies and Eclipse Celestial Spirits are canon, why weren’t they just written into the manga?

Because Mashima didn’t care enough about these arcs; A-1 just pitched the filler arcs to him and said, “this is what we’re gonna do, kay?” and he was like, “Oh, these are cool. Canon.” He couldn’t be bothered to write them because he was ready to launch into GMG and Tartaros, respectively. Also, while Eclipse Celestial Spirits works well into the show’s canon, Key of the Starry Skies doesn’t. GMG was effective in setting up the future of the series after the timeskip and NEEDED to happen right after it (doesn’t make the arc necessarily good, though). Plus, the Neo Oracion Seis feels unnecessary since they canonically are released from prison in Tartaros.

Why completely change what Wendy’s capable of in the last arc? Possession? Really?

Problem is, though, her arc was finished the moment Doranbolt saved her and Carla from Face. Her facing Sherria proved that she is willing to fight for her guild regardless of her moral issues with fighting, her going Dragon Force proved that she has gained the experience to become a tactical and efficient fighter, and her resolve to be with Carla and protect the people she loves by choosing to die when Face is about to self-destruct solidifies her developing outgoingness with the new people that she loves. As a character, her arc was concluded before Alvarez began. In my opinion, she wasn’t capable of anything more in Alvarez.

As for the possession, it’s infuriating because of the pedophilia implications, not ruining Wendy as a character. I see possession as a tool for character growth only if the possessed person is able to grow in strength and become a stronger person to overcome the weakness that allowed them to become possessed. Take Aoi Zaizen from Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS. I really hope that her upcoming character arc will be based around the possession that corrupted her in her very first on-screen duel and how she can overcome the weakness that the Knights of Hanoi exposed from her. Wendy’s possession...did not have that potential. Once Irene left her body, Wendy went right back to her fighting as usual and didn’t seem bothered by the possession. Why? Because her arc was finished and the show was nearing its end anyway. You can be mad about that, and I won’t blame you, but any further growth from Wendy would feel redundant in my opinion.

Was he planning on doing an arc about gods?

Yep. I have a theory that Avatar was supposed to be his “god” arc, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Was it really Ankhseram that cursed Zeref?

I...guess? Mashima never introduced him as a character, but I guess he can still exist. Makes Mashima a bad writer, but it doesn’t make Ankhseram invalid.

Why bring Rogue’s shadow back as a minor plot point in Avatar? He had no intention of addressing it in Alvarez.

Okay, in Mashima’s hardly-deserved defense, Alvarez would not have been the best time to discuss Rogue’s shadow; to me, Avatar was a good point to address it because it was our first full arc with Devil Slayer Gray. To me, it makes sense that Rogue’s shadow would possess him after the dragons emerge through the Eclipse Gate and Gray would become easily corrupted by Devil Slayer Magic without his friends for support (since they’re dead in the alternate timeline, though that raises the question of does Tartaros still exist there). There was really no better time to address it.

Did he give up after Tartaros?

Well, the anime gave up after GMG, that’s for sure. For Mashima, I’d say it was in the middle of writing Avatar. I think that he was planning on fleshing out Avatar as a cult, since their existence was the whole reason that Hades formed Grimoire Heart and “awakened” Zeref’s malicious heart. In addition, since they had enough influence to convince countless wizards that Zeref could be revived with keys and/or Towers of Heaven, they would have the influence to interact with gods and God Slayers. As a writer, Mashima could’ve killed two birds with one stone and be ready to tackle Zeref’s big final arc. What probably actually happened was him waking up after a drunken tirade and realizing that his series was being more and more ridiculed for its poor writing decisions, his fanbase was becoming one of the most toxic in all of anime, and he was just running out of ideas. He questioned every life choice he ever made, decided to trash the remainder of Fairy Tail just to start over with a new work, burned through the rest of Avatar, and threw Alvarez together haphazardly just to prevent himself thinking about potential endgames any longer.

Thank you again to @ac-fairytail for these questions. The channel’s all about Fairy Tail critique, analysis, and salt; go there if you’re interested in that stuff. It really pains me to see Fairy Tail crashing and burning towards the end, but for what it was worth, I enjoyed it. It’ll be harder for me to go back and enjoy it because of my investment in much better shonen manga, such as HxH, JoJo, and YYH, but it holds a lot of memories for teenage me, and I’ll certainly treasure them. 

Also thanks to Mashima for teaching me what NOT to do as a screenwriter. Helps a lot.

[snowqueenlou]

TW: abuse One of the questions I have is if I “remember” my mother being a “good mother” until I was 5-6 or so, what happened then, OR am I remembering it wrong? She used to have this story that I was “so happy” as a baby, and “never cried.” But I remember crying ALL THE TIME when I was 4-5-6-7-8, it was the #1 reason I got spanked by her during that stretch of time, for “crying for no reason.” #2 reason was “antagonizing” my brother. From my dad it was the other way around, fighting, then crying. 

When we got spanked, if we cried too loud or too long, we got spanked again. 

So clearly, neither one of them could tolerate crying. 

But babies and toddlers cry. Babies cry a lot, even happy babies and toddlers. So what happened then? If I were looking in at any other family, where kids got beat at 6 years old for crying, it would take a lot to convince me that it had just started. 

So why, all of these years, have I assumed that MY abuse didn’t start until I was older? 

I know, according to the family narrative, that I never got my first “spanking” until I was 3 years old. My parents had both just converted to christian fundamentalism, and were at church, and I became “defiant” at my father, when he wanted me to sit quietly in my chair. (Services were 2 hours long, with NO breaks and NO childcare or Sunday School for littles.) He says “You jerked your arm away, gave me a look, and shouted ‘NO!’ and that’s how I knew that they were right about spanking." 

In retrospect, I realize he was either waiting for permission or validation. I’ve just had the epiphany that you don’t suddenly start abusive action from nothing. You may start a NEW action, but you were probably already using other tactics. 

So what was happening when they reached their frustration level with me as an infant? By the time my brother came along, they started right in on the corporal punishment. He probably got his first hard swats by 6 months. That was the "advice” in my church. I remember one of the mothers telling a new mother: “By six months old, they should know how to be quiet. If they aren’t, it’s on purpose, and you should give them a spanking." 

But if I got my "first spanking” at 3, what were they doing before? Shouting? Restraint? Shaking? 

My uncle used to cry until he passed out. They would strip him naked and put him in the front yard. Sometimes they’d blast him with the hose. 

My mom liked to throw glasses of ice water on me. 

Did she do that when I was a baby? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. But I think the bookends I’ve placed around my childhood abuse are probably not true. My mother was pretty irrational about kids (or anybody) making noise, and I suspect that didn’t start with me, so I’m finding it harder and harder to hold on to this idea that she didn’t abuse me until I was older. 

I’m just trying to figure this out. My body anxiety (twitching, restless legs, biting cuticles, fidgeting, that elephant sitting on chest feeling,) has been off the charts the last several weeks. I think I’ve been cycling through emotional flashbacks. I get all the body feels, but they aren’t fully associated with anything specific. 

I did have a pretty big triggered reaction a few nights ago when my husband pulled his leather belt out of the belt-loops very fast. I didn’t see him do it, but I heard that leather zip-snap, and my whole entire body jolted. My heart rate shot up so hard I felt like I got kicked in the chest. Took me hours to go to sleep and then I had nightmares. 

I’m writing this all here because not many of my IRLpeople read here, and the ones that do, they get it. But all of the writing snippets I keep saving on my hard drive, they feel like they don’t exist. Like I write them, and then hide them on my brain storage locker. I feel like I only ever make headway with this when my words exist out there in the world. 

I feel like a human-being failure. How can I help make the world better for anybody else? I’m 46 years old and obsessing about things that happened over 4 decades ago. Fail. 

[freshmilko]

Okay so I can actually tell you exactly why the whole killing stalking shitshow went down. And why Yuri on Ice is related when it’s such a completely different genre. It didn’t come out of nowhere, it was just a bizarre series of events that has led to… This.. Disaster.

So basically what started it all was the godsend that is Yuri on Ice. Now I’m pretty critical about the fiction I consume and while I do have some issues with the show, I think they did an amazing job and its a huge step in the right direction for queer representation in media! And people recognized that.

So now you’ve got this show attracting all kinds of different people! Everyone loves an exciting, well balanced show, no matter their usual preferred genre. YOI had excitement, beauty, tragedy, and queer romance all wrapped up in one little single season anime. It attracted a Very Big and Very Diverse fan base Very Quickly.

There was so much love for this anime that EVERYONE felt inspired to create fan works for it! There was a huge influx of art, comics, fics, etc etc. And all of this was loved by the other fans who like and reblogged all these great fan works; so much so that a huge number of blogs basically converted to YOI blogs. And you have all these different types of blogs all becoming relevant to each other because of YOI, so people follow one another and there are all these new connections on blogs, which previously would never have interacted.

And then Yuri on Ice ends. It was still loved, don’t get me wrong, but naturally obsession faded and blogs returned to posting about what they used to post about. And in these post-YOI phase blogs there are also, of course, guro blogs.

Now guro is a pretty controversial subject, so guro blogs tend to keep to themselves and other guro blogs. It’s a pretty closed off and tight knit group on tumblr, for good reason. I’m an outlier, since I don’t reblog any hardcore guro and barely any of the soft stuff, but I follow a lot of these blogs. I personally saw the YOI phase in a lot of them! And I saw them return to previous interests. You know, guro.

But suddenly these blogs have a lot of new followers(many of whom are self identifying fujoshi ((which is a whole other rant))) who came for the YOI, and obviously don’t /mind/ the guro but these new followers don’t know the general philosophy guro blogs follow. Things like always having warnings and tagging potential triggers. Also warning off minors from R18 blogs. And a lot of the time these new followers ARE minors. Hell, I’ve been following porn blogs on tumblr since I was 13. I may be an adult now but I remember being that age and desperately searching for some validation for what I experienced. As an adult, I agree with blocking minors from R18 content for legal reasons, but sneaky kids will be sneaky kids. Especially on tumblr, it’s very easy for immature minors to lie about age for the sake of following this content. And usually that’s harmless, let girls read some josei or yaoi and become comfortable with their sexuality.

But now they have found guro. And all the interests that often go with it. Horror, abuse, psychological horror, you name it. Extremely triggering material for a lot of people. Extremely cathartic material for some (like me). Often kept to the sides of fandom by the use of warnings and tags. And killing stalking is gaining popularity in this little pocket of tumblr. It’s a good horror manga. It’s gross, terrifying, and full of horror. It’s good. But it’s good /horror/. That means it’s not a healthy happy story. Any decent guro blogger will tell you that yes, it’s a good horror, and yes, it’s gross and terrible. But that brings us back to the immature YOI fujoshi!!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all minors. There are definitely many adults who are doing this, too. Because many adults are immature, just like kids. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t hit a magic age that changes you. And you don’t suddenly learn what a healthy relationship is either!! Especially fujoshi and fudanshi who drown themselves in fetishized and romanticized yaoi. It’s these fans that are being exposed to killing stalking, and taking it as another cute yaoi couple that just maybe has a few issues they need to sort out. Such as breaking each others legs and poisoning each other. But they love each other right!!!!!!!!!

Wrong. It’s abuse. It’s horror. Horror loving fans know this, accept it, and when we recommend killing stalking to anyone else? We warn them. We tell it how it is. And we only recommend it to people we know are into this kind of media. The story and relationship are horrible. Horrifying. It’s horror.

BUT!!! It’s not just our little pocket of self aware weirdos anymore. Now there are immature people who “came for the YOI, stayed for the weird porn!!” And they don’t know or don’t care about warnings. They enjoyed killing stalking so why won’t everyone else? They also are so desensitized to abusive relationships in yaoi they think it’s normal. And because of this mindset they have, I see a lot of my favorite non-horror or even nsfw fandom artists and bloggers getting asks that just say “have you read killing stalking? It’s so good!!” And I just cringe so hard because A:this blogger doesn’t read horror and B:this anon did not give any warnings of potentially triggering material.

So now, killing stalking is being romanticized and spread as a “yaoi” to people who are expecting something different and in the first place do not want to read something so gross. And they hate it. And I feel for them. They should never have read something they aren’t comfortable with, and that’s on the anon that sent them the message and gave them false expectations.

But now it’s become a witch hunt. Just like everything else on tumblr lmao. People on tumblr have trouble recognizing the different between reality and fiction, and I have a whole other long rant as to why that is, but I’ll let it slide for now. The point is that these antis equate a person to the fiction they like, which is ridiculous. And so they condemn the people who like killing stalking. Regardless of whether or not the individual actually romanticizes it.

Basically what happened is that whereas before the “morally correct” side of tumblr could just ignore the “less morally correct” sides interests, now ignorant and immature fans are forcing “less morally correct” media to be consumed by people who Don’t Want It. So they blame all of us. And it sucks. But mob mentality is what it is and the only thing we can do now is hope idiots stop recommending the goddamn manhwa to random people and the antis get bored.

Ok so I hope this is coherent at all idk why I decided to type this at 6 am. I just find this whole thing super annoying but also strange and interesting. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Tldr: probably that fujoshi culture is the worst sorry also children are terrible

Real tldr:WARN FOR ABUSE AND POTENTIAL TRIGGERS ASSHOLES

[aridara]

So back in September I exchanged some messages with a complete imbecile called “lala-slave-labor”; then they made a post where they published the conversation, framing it as “crazy person tried to convert me”. Even though all I did was pointing out that their idea of “free speech” was completely impossible, because...

They initially claimed that limiting the speech of bigots is not “freedom”.

However, I pointed out that, when bigots are left free to spread hate speech, this INEVITABLY results in bigots limiting the speech of their victims.

Therefore, Lala’s solution was that bigots and marginalized people should “compromise”.

...Which is against Lala’s definition of “freedom” (see point 1).

Anyway, Lala deactivated, but SYABM was one of the few people who reblogged it, uncritically siding with Lala (because of COURSE he is). Anyway, post under the cut.

For easier reading, Lala’s messages are bolded, while mine are not.

lala-slave-labor + aridara

lala-slave-labor I have seen your posts. Do you honestly believe everything you post? Do you honestly believe everyone else that is sane is with you on this?

09/03/2020 aridara Be more vague.

09/03/2020 lala-slave-labor The shit you post a lot about

09/03/2020 aridara MORE.

lala-slave-labor Shit you were postin’ yesterday, you dense mother fucker.

aridara M O R E

lala-slave-labor Do you fight for racial justice? since you’re a daft cunt

aridara Yes.

lala-slave-labor ACAB?

aridara The system is completely fucked up, from how management completely fails to make cops take responsibility for pretty much anything, to how cops are trained. So more like “tear down everything and start over”.

lala-slave-labor Everything?

aridara Yep.

lala-slave-labor Even how America does elections?

aridara What does the USA electoral system have to do with the USA police system?

lala-slave-labor the politicians set how the cops do their job

aridara Hold on, you mean the USA presidential elections or… pretty much every other political election in the USA? Given that they use two very different systems?

lala-slave-labor The politicians make the policies.

Are you even American?

aridara No.

lala-slave-labor Yet America is a racist country?

aridara Maybe you should ask non-white people in America.

lala-slave-labor I am not-white

aridara With all due respect, you are one and they are legion.

lala-slave-labor non-whites are a hive mind? A collective? We all believe the same things?

aridara No.

lala-slave-labor “you’re the only one and they are legion” you so sure?

aridara It’s similar to your body: every cell has a different opinion, and yet you aren’t dissolving in a pile of molten flesh just because half your body wants to go in one direction and half in another.

lala-slave-labor Do all or 90+% black people hate cops? Are cops killing blacks because they’re black?

aridara 1) I don’t know. Probably.

2) They are much more harsh towards black people for no reason* other that they’re black. (*: Reasons that are directly contradicted by their actions are ignored.)

lala-slave-labor I haven’t been shot or arrested because I’m not white. None of the other non-whites here haven’t been shot. Where are you getting your information?

aridara ……Are you claiming that non-white Americans do NOT get shot? Because that’s wizardry.

lala-slave-labor Mostly by non-white people… Have you been to American big cities?

aridara Fun fact: most crimes involving white criminals affect white people. And yet, white people have literally never cared about white-on-white crime. To your question: no.

lala-slave-labor Because, at least where I live (a 90+% white state, with a sub-10% crime rate), no one gets shot or arrested. It’s big news when it happens, and that’s because it happens…ohhhh, maybe once a year, if not rarer.

lala-slave-labor Where are you getting your information?

09/03/2020 aridara God.

lala-slave-labor What? Straight up… Gee Oh Dee God?

aridara Also lots of people, for They are Her creation, and They are the Many to Her One.

lala-slave-labor How do you feel about gay people? Trans people?

aridara They face a lot of discrimination and should get the same rights as everyone else. Also, I don’t get why transphobes are literally obsessed with genitals - especially those of children. It’s super creepy.

lala-slave-labor God does not approve. And God is just and good. Soooooo

aridara Different God.

lala-slave-labor There’s only 1 God. But which God is this?

aridara In pretty much all monotheistic religions, the name of the god is literally the word for “god”.

lala-slave-labor “they’re all the same”

aridara No, they are not. Christianity is a lot different than Islam, for instance.

lala-slave-labor Islam always kills the gays based religion

aridara Nope. There’s tons of Islam currents that are pro-LGBT.

lala-slave-labor That’s a vast minority.

aridara Fun fact: there were quite a few major currents in the Middle Ages where forcibily converting other people into Islam was punished with exile at best, death penalty at worst. Also, “vast minority” is pretty inaccurate.

lala-slave-labor Have you spoken to many muslims?

aridara Yes.

lala-slave-labor More than 1000

aridara They treat people like ISIS in the same way I would treat, say, Mussolini. And yes. Have YOU?

lala-slave-labor You won’t believe me.

aridara I believe a lot of things.

lala-slave-labor like Social Justice?

aridara But, admittedly, not EVERYTHING. For example… Do you know someone in real life well enough that you know their tumblr username, and yet you have no idea what their name is?

lala-slave-labor No

aridara Exactly.

lala-slave-labor Nice deflection.

aridara I got someone claiming that ten people do that: they know me in real life well enough to know what’s my Tumblr blog, but not my name.

It’s whack.

lala-slave-labor Do you believe in that social justice?

aridara But enough venting.

Yes, I DO believe in Social Justice.

lala-slave-labor Yikes you have a lot of mental illnesses, don’t you?

aridara No. But I have scoliosis.

aridara …You’re searching “scoliosis” on Wikipedia, aren’t you.

lala-slave-labor Crooked spine no I know a chick with that condition But I digress, do people who don’t believe in social justice have mental illnesses?

aridara No?!? That’s like saying that people who prefer Star Trek to Star Wars have mental illnesses. It’s nonsense.

lala-slave-labor Didn’t you recently post “Trump supporters are racist”?

aridara I’m pretty sure that I did. And I stand by it.

That, or they’re ACCIDENTALLY racist.

And honestly, I don’t know which is worse.

lala-slave-labor I guess I, a non-white, is racist somehow

aridara By supporting a massive racist, which fucks over non-white people in general you included? Yes.

lala-slave-labor And an immigrant

aridara Look, if you voted for a guy so racist that frikkin NIXON told him to cut it off, maybe you should pause and think about what you’re doing.

lala-slave-labor He’s better than Biden, by miles.

aridara In terms of bigotry or in terms of competence?

lala-slave-labor Both

aridara Because we’re talking about the guy who managed to bankrupt a casino. Multiple times. How the FUCK do you manage to bankrupt a casino.

lala-slave-labor That’s retarded, bro

aridara I guess if you get bombed, or if there’s some kind of natural disaster… But neither of these applies to Trumpadilladilladome, house of the Drumpatilladimmsdimmatrumbadillampadome. ™

lala-slave-labor “he ain’t competent, he let a business go bankrupt hurr hurr” My people, my neighbors matter. The rest of world can burn for all I care.

aridara MULTIPLE businesses go bankrupt. Including ones that, if you start up with some capital (like him), they’re pretty much impossible to bankrupt. Hold on, let me Google it.

lala-slave-labor Trump has been good for my community. We also don’t have many dead by cop black people here

aridara Six bankruptcies (is that the plural for “bankruptcy”?) between hotels and casinos.

lala-slave-labor Outta how many?

aridara I don’t know about the hotels, but casinos have a 100% bankruptcy rate.

lala-slave-labor Yet our economy, pre-covid, was amazing.

aridara 5 casinos. Until he decided to intervene personally, instead of changing the directives of Obama and Bush. Trump Steaks evaporated.

lala-slave-labor I support racism, bro. Nothin’ wrong with that.

aridara As for Trump University [pre-registered laughter] Racism is pseudoscience.

lala-slave-labor “we’re all the same”

aridara In big numbers? Yes.

lala-slave-labor If racism is fake pseudoscience, how come we gotta end racism? It ain’t real.

aridara Because a lot of people still believe that it’s not only true, but a valid science.

lala-slave-labor Where are you getting these sources?

aridara “Oh, look, I proved that black people have a much lower IQ than white ones! I compared poor black people that couldn’t finish school because they had to work to support their own families, and white college students that studied how to solve IQ tests for years!” That was from Stormfront, by the way. Not an exact quote - obviously - but the sentiment was there.

lala-slave-labor And yet I put in less work but got better grades than my white peers. It benefit me, so not a problem.

aridara With all the due respect, you have a Spider Georg situation.

lala-slave-labor what?

lala-slave-labor Is it because I’m not white?!

lala-slave-labor But I don’t eat spiders.

lala-slave-labor Why are you commenting in American politics?

aridara Spite. Also, America influences the rest of the world, for better or for worse. For example, Trump’s election significantly increased the amount of right-winf extremists in my country, followed by a sharp increase in the suicide rate of said extremists.

lala-slave-labor Sorry you live in a country that is so weak that other nations can mess with it. I don’t go around saying “hey, guys and gals from (your country), don’t vote for that guy”. You don’t have that PRIVILEGE.

lala-slave-labor Your country affects America, too. But I don’t go around tellin’ your people who to vote for.

lala-slave-labor Why are you so spiteful? What’d Trump (and/or America) do to you?

aridara Do I have to list all the waya Trump messed up with international politics and encouraged the rise of right-wing extremists in pretty much all of Europe? Not to mention the fact that he is Putin’s ally, to the point of repeatedly breaking the law for free just to save hostile Russian agents?

lala-slave-labor Right-wing bad, huh? You’re the good guys, on the right side of history, yeah?

lala-slave-labor Freedom is absolute. Everyone can say what they want, and it’s not a crime. Someone said a slur? So what, they have that damn freedom.

lala-slave-labor From what my aunt and grand mother said, in Germany, Merkle invited them in herself. Did it to themselves.

lala-slave-labor They orchestrated the fall of the EU. No one liked the EU. There was never any good reason to stick with that fascist hell state.

lala-slave-labor humans yearn, nay DEMAND freedom!

aridara Funny, because hate crimes - including murder - significantly increased. By the way: absolute free speech is impossible. You either limit bigotry, or you end up with bigotry’s victims being silenced.

lala-slave-labor And we have a moral mandate to stop discrimination and hate speech?

aridara I mean, if you don’t want people like us advocating in favor of sending people like you + your families + your friends death and rape threats every single day for the rest of your life. Especially the children.

lala-slave-labor What’re you proposing we do to ensure all is safe and welcome? We can’t just let everyone do as they please, right? I mean, words kill, right?

09/04/2020 lala-slave-labor What do you think of…Yuri Besmenov?

09/04/2020 aridara The idea is pretty simple: if you advocate in favor of discriminating against, deporting and/or harming entire groups of people for no reason other that said groups exist, you go fuck yourself, and people have the right to take you at face value. And I never heard of Besmenov.

lala-slave-labor Freedom is absolute. He called this social justice stuff back in the 80’s, to a T but everyone is pissed at him because he made them (rightly) look like inhuman monsters who hate freedom.

lala-slave-labor Do you want to ban freedom or let people be discriminated against?

09/04/2020 aridara Do you want to ban the freedom of bigots, or the freedom of the bigots’ victims?

lala-slave-labor why do we have to ban either?

aridara Because here’s the thing: every single time “advocating in favor of discriminating / deporting / harming an entire groups of people for no reason other that said groups exist” was freely allowed, EVERY single time it got worse to the point that said groups of people were threatened and harmed into silence.

So, we can’t have both. It’s one or the other. So, what do you pick? The bigota? Or their victims?

lala-slave-labor For no good reason, huh? Is it really because racism?

aridara In absence of any other reason*, yes. (*: Claiming that your reason is X doesn’t count if it is demonstrated that your reason is NOT X.)

lala-slave-labor So what the native populace wants isn’t a valid reason? We should just try to accommodate everyone from all cultures in the same neighborhood?

aridara Did you actually read what I wrote?

lala-slave-labor Yes. Different cultures cannot coexist.

aridara They have. Throughout history. I mean, random example: the UNITED States of America.

lala-slave-labor It’s mostly white, Christians

aridara So are Italy, Spain and Germany, and yet they’re very different cultures. Like the USA. The USA are 50 different cultures in a trench coat.

lala-slave-labor Most of America is white people. Most of America is Judeo-Christian.

aridara So are Italy, Spain and Germany. And yet they are extremely different cultures.

lala-slave-labor They don’t have freedom. Freedom or bust

aridara You don’t know that “culture” means more than race and religion, do you?

lala-slave-labor Do you, as an Non-American, know what freedom is?

aridara Do you? Is it “I can do whatever the fuck I want, and fuck everyone else”?

lala-slave-labor I can cause offense without having the government all up on my ass.

lala-slave-labor I can legally own guns.

lala-slave-labor As long as it’s not a threat or you’ve been asked to leave, you can generally do what you want. Wanna spray slurs on the road? GO FOR IT wanna call entire groups of people names? GO FOR IT The government literally can’t stop you unless you start affecting other people. and no, calling say, gays, mean things isn’t “government gonna stop you” worthy. Can you do ANY OF THAT where you come from? without getting arrested or “given a talking to by the local cops”

lala-slave-labor all you’re saying is “I don’t like x, if you do x, you’re a shit person and I’m better” and “You’re X. I don’t care if I’m wrong, you’re X.”

lala-slave-labor That basically shuts down all conversation. It’s proving you’ve got nothing of value to say. It’s why you and others like you with your points pull that.

lala-slave-labor There is a third option to your question. Don’t get the government involved, and let the people themselves solve the issue. Don’t want foreigners around? Kicked out. And they aren’t wrong for it. Foreigners might radically change the neighborhood to something the locals find offensive and obscene.

lala-slave-labor Unless you can grasp that “let people solve their problems” by taking a third option to your query, stay the fuck out of American politics.

lala-slave-labor Last point: the victim can use freedom of speech to get the bigot thrown in jail. They aren’t helpless…usually. Though, that usually is just the mentally ill ones.

aridara Nope. As I said, either you defend bigotry; or you defend the victims of bigotry. Can’t defend both.

For example, in your scenario, bigots are allowed to call for the deportation of gay and “foreign” (read: anyone of the “wrong” race) people, for absolutely no reason besides “those people dare to exist”. This inevitably escalates into harassment, threats and crimes, until gay and foreign people are silenced and kicked out. Voilà: total freedom of speech is lost, because entire groups of people are now unjustly silenced. We saw this happen literally every time bigotry was freely allowed. Every. Single. Time. But it’s clear that you would pick the bigots. “Don’t want foreigners around? Kick them out.”

09/04/2020 lala-slave-labor Fine, you fucking retard. Yes, I’ll defend the bigots. Now fuck off with that “they might silence people” moralistic bullshit. Yes, it is as you say, people will get treated like shit because they aren’t locals. You’re so fuckin’ hung up on it. “b-but the victims they bsbdoifjweoij” “you can’t defend both” why not? Because I HAVE TO PICK A SIDE Is that how this works?

lala-slave-labor I don’t have to pick a side. People are dying daily in America, but guess fucking what, I don’t have to give a fuck, you European cunt. You’re basically saying “we should protect everyone”. You realize what happens when we strip away freedom right?

lala-slave-labor No one in America genuinely likes you Europeans. We all openly mock you.

lala-slave-labor “but they might kill themselves” yeah and? That’s not my problem. They’re free to do that. So long as they aren’t taking other people with them, far be it from me or anyone else to stop them.

lala-slave-labor If you place the safety of the people above all else, you get tyranny. And if I see any tyranny, it’s my duty as a patriotic American to kill it.

lala-slave-labor Freedom is absolute. It allows people to be harmed by assholes, but if it goes away, everyone will have 0 rights, not just those stupid foreigners you so love to “care” for. But hey, I’m not a tyrant-in-the-making, like some people. Because, newsflash, asshole, everyone is equal in America. It’s literally illegal to be treated like shit by government and jobs because of what or who you are, within reason.

lala-slave-labor You are going to have to restrict someone’s rights. Who, then, will be on the receiving end? The bigots? That rapes their rights. The victims? Again, rapes their rights. Not only that, but it kills the rights.

lala-slave-labor You’re being a moral guardian-type busy body. No sane, rational American liked you assholes in the 90’s with that Satanic Panic bullshit, and we sure as shit don’t fucking like it now with this puritan, social justice bullshit. So yes, I’m gonna defend the bigots. But I’m also gonna defend the victims you say you care for. Because it’s my duty to protect the rights of all within my country. Sure, people might kill themselves, but the alternative is a dystopian “utopia”.

lala-slave-labor So, until you, a collectivist prick, gets it through your thick fucking skull that you don’t have to side with either bigots or their victims, that you can defend both, stay the fuck out American politics.

lala-slave-labor I am not taking your shit. Speak plainly, you wanna make a world where all are safe from being emotionally harmed.

09/04/2020 aridara Are you done? The fact is that you cannot defend the speech of both bigots and their victims. Is one or the other.

aridara Literally every single time I asked people to find me ONE place where 1) “Advocating in favor of discriminating/deporting/harming entire groups of people for no reason other that said groups exist” was freely allowed; AND 2) Where that decision did NOT result into the bigotry becoming way wider-spread and worse, and the bigotry’s victims getting silenced,

- nobody answwred. Because it’s utterly impossible. You can’t defend both. You defend bigotry, you give up the rights of the victims of bigotry. You are not American.

aridara You said it yourself: unless you defend EVERYONE’s rights, you aren’t American.

09/04/2020 lala-slave-labor I don’t have to live by people from Syria, Nigeria, Algeria, Greece, Japan, China, Peru, Mexico, let alone anyone else. You won’t be honest about what you’re trying to say. If they immigrate LEGALLY, they won’t get deported. I’ve been here for 28 years. I came in legally. I don’t fear deportation. Comes with citizenship.

lala-slave-labor If you’re a citizen, you won’t be treated like shit by the government.

lala-slave-labor My father’s family has been here for 200 or so years, if not longer. But we have to share HIS LAND with people who weren’t even born here, that no one has ever met?

lala-slave-labor His side of my family has spent the first 200 years I know of booting foreigners. They don’t have a right to our land. They aren’t OUR people.

lala-slave-labor I’m not gonna stop the bigot from calling blacks niggers, calling trans people trannies, and all other manners of slurs. But I’m also not gonna stop the victim from contacting the proper authorities to deal with it. The issues doesn’t involve us. It’s between the two engaged. But hey, I’m debating a retard online what can’t even be honest about what he’s activisting about. I’m not about to rob the victim, as you keep pointing out, of their agency. They don’t NEED any help. But what can I say? I’m not on the right side of history, am I? Out with your intentions. Lying is a sin. You market your beliefs, removing the negative parts. Have you not thought of the consequences to these ideas? Or do you just not care?

aridara Not what you said. You said that, if the people don’t want to stay around “foreigners” (read: people of the wrong race), then they have the right to remove them from the country.

lala-slave-labor It’s not a race thing, you doofus.

aridara Also, again: there is NO space where freely allowing hate speech did NOT end up with the victims of bigotry being silenced. None. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Which means: you either defend hate speech, or you defend the victims of bigotry. Can’t defend both. In either case, according to you, you are against freedom.

Sucks to be you.

lala-slave-labor RIGHT… As if the victim can’t use their freedom of speech to bring the bigot to fucking justice. Or just fucking walk away! You’re assuming everyone is as weak as you! Insulting. That is not “silencing” you are FREE to make your fucking comments YOU ARE NOT ENTILTED FOR PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO THEM OR TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY it’s not SILENCE SILENCE IS TO STRIP YOUR RIGHT TO TALK them not wanting you to talk, is not silence Maybe them not wanting you to talk for a very good fucking reason It’s not silence, you retard. You know naught of freedom!

aridara Nope - they cannot. Again: if it was possible, then there should be at least ONE space where hate speech was freely allowed, but where the victims of bigots were still allowed to speak.

But there is not. No amount of religious fundamentalism will change that.

lala-slave-labor Then I should be dead. I face those bigots daily.

aridara Give it some time.

lala-slave-labor Give it time?

aridara Hate speech becomes harassment, which becomes discrimination, which becomes violence.

lala-slave-labor What, I’m so weak, I’ll kill myself?

aridara No. It means that the bigots escalate until they straight-up kill you. See for example what happened in America in recent years.

lala-slave-labor What do you speak of? The George Floyd thing?

aridara No, that was just one of the last steps. I’m talking about the progressive worsening of police racism, coupled with “law and order” politics that heavily disadvantaged black people and immigrants, coupled with multiple economic crises and an epidemic, coupled with one of the most patethic presidencies in USA history. Coupled with a president who blatantly aligns himself with white supremacists. Good job: you now are on the brink of a civil war. And your Dear Leader is doing PRECISELY what he shouldn’t be doing in this kind of situation - which ensures that the situation WILL escalate. Enjoy your next six years.

lala-slave-labor Then what is Antifa to you? And BLM? hell, what does Brexit mean to you, while we’re at it.

lala-slave-labor How has Trump allied with white supremacist

lala-slave-labor Where are you getting all this information?

lala-slave-labor ‘tis not the illusion of freedom, that which America prospers under. ‘twould appear as so you are jealous, to be frank.

09/05/2020 aridara Antifa and BLM are a decentralized movement without an actual leadership. Brexit is the result of extreme nationalism, which is notoriously short-sighted.

aridara Among other things, Trump repeatedly employs nationalist policies, and heavily prioritizes attacking non-white immigrants over attacking illegal immigrants.

aridara I get my information from various sources. But my knowledge of how the USA is going towards civil war? That comes rfrom FM 3-24.

lala-slave-labor What’s wrong with nationalism? Are borders bad, or something?

lala-slave-labor Plus, like, everyone who is in a place, regardless of if they’ve been allowed in said place, should just be allowed to like, do as they please, with the full rights of people who have lived there their entire lives, right?

lala-slave-labor So, tell me somethin’, will ya? What’s more important? Freedom or feelings? Because you refuse to answer simple questions, I must spell it out for you.

lala-slave-labor Are you just? Are you on the right side of history? I think I know the answer, but it’s best to get it straight from the horses mouth, as they say.

09/05/2020 aridara Extreme nationalism (like white nationalism - which must not be  confused with nationalism in mostly-white nations, they’re different things) is actively harmful, as demonstrated throughout history. No, I don’t think there should be borders. Again: your feelings on the matter are completely irrelevant. You either defend the speech of bigots, or you defend the speech of the victims of bigotry - there is no magic third option. And yes, I do think that I am on the right side of history.

lala-slave-labor Because people get killed, I have to pick a side?! Are you fucking crazy?!

aridara Yep. You either pick the side where bigotry escalates until people get killed; or you pick the side where you limit bigoted speech.

lala-slave-labor ahahahaha no You’re gonna have to kill me.

aridara Again: there’s no third option.

Literally every single time I’ve asked me to bring ONE example where they defended both bigotry and the victims, they failed. Whine all you want, die all you want; these are the facts. If that makes you die, then you are doomed to perish no matter what I or you do.

lala-slave-labor The just thing to do is to strip rights away from assholes you don’t like?

aridara Stripping the rights of others is not a right. Bigotry, unless opposed, inevitably strips others of their rights. Do the math.

aridara Let me put it this way: if someone unjustly attacks you, and the only way out is to kill them, you have the right to kill in self-defense, right?

lala-slave-labor Every psychopath in history thinks they’re in the right. That’s what having twisted principles will do to you.

aridara But if you are the one unjustly attacking someone with deadly force, and they have no other option except to kill you to survive… do you still have the right to kill in self-defense? After all, they ARE attacking you with deadly force…

lala-slave-labor yep You think this is proving your point?

lala-slave-labor We must be intolerant of intolerance, yeah? Even though we’re the tolerant ones, right? what if I think your words are harmful or bigoted? Do I get to just kill you? Why do you get to decide that? What gives you the right? crap, autocorrect I and me, not you and you. what if I think your words are harmful or bigoted? Do I get to just kill you? Why do I get to decide that? What gives me the right? there, better.

aridara So, basically, what you’re saying is that we should allow the victim to kill the murderer AND allow the murderer to kill the victim, right? You don’t see any problem with this?

lala-slave-labor You see a problem with that? Do you hate fascism? Is everyone on Trumps side a fascist by virtue of being on Trumps side?

aridara You have a problem.

lala-slave-labor yes I’m a retard lol

lala-slave-labor Now answer the question.

09/05/2020 aridara Yes and yes.

09/05/2020 lala-slave-labor Thank you for taking the time to out yourself.

lala-slave-labor If you respond, I’ll have to do something drastic.

09/05/2020 aridara You literally had two world wars where you decided that fascism was bad.

09/05/2020 lala-slave-labor You’re a good little idiot. They will kill you if you don’t keep up, if you aren’t useful to them.

lala-slave-labor And don’t go thinkin’ “I won’t be killed over this by my own party”. Hate to see it, but it happens. A lot. You don’t think BTLM? FUCKING FASCIST!

and then you’re getting death threats. Then they’re attacking you in the streets. You never said Black Trans Lives Mattered or not. But you never said they didn’t.

lala-slave-labor You’ll one day become a fascist to them. All because they keep changing the rules. Eventually, it gets to a point where…enough is enough.

lala-slave-labor You cannot accommodate every identity. Some identities want the rest dead. I’m not the judgemental, tyrannical fascist here. YOU ARE.

lala-slave-labor You have become the thing you hate. Because eventually, you will be branded a heretic.

aridara No, I won’t. Antifas haven’t killed anyone in the USA in the last 25 years. Meanwhile, Trumpers alone have killed multiple people. Same goes for BLM and white supremacists.

lala-slave-labor Is antifa not an organization? They have chapters like you would the Free Masons.

aridara You know how I’m 100% sure I won’t get branded as a fascist? Because I’m not a fascist.

And don’t give me any of that “Antifa calls EVERY innocent who disagrees with them 'Nazi’!” bullshit. It didn’t work with the neo-Nazis at the Unite The Right rally, it won’t work now.

lala-slave-labor Where are the neo-nazis?

aridara And yes, we CAN accommodate every identity. What we can’t accommodate is bigots. Can I replace your eyes? Because they clearly aren’t working.

lala-slave-labor So how do we get rid of bigots?

aridara We need to replace your ears, too. In fact, I think this is a “just throw away the whole suitcase” situation. Anyway, step one is to find a wall.

lala-slave-labor If you don’t accommodate bigots, are you really accommodating everyone? Find a wall? And what, pray tell, will happen once we find said wall?

aridara Get closer to it until your nose almost touches it.

lala-slave-labor And then?

aridara Then you stare at it for the next 30 years, without distracting yourself. Every 6 months, make some kind of noise so that we can know that you’re still alive.

It’s very easy. While you are at it, think about ONE single space where bigotry was freely allowed and you could accommodate for both bigots AND their victims.

lala-slave-labor Is that what you’re calling execution?

aridara No.

lala-slave-labor That’s the part where you shoot them in the head for being a bigot. I’ve seen videos of that happening. Hundreds.

aridara Nope.

lala-slave-labor Let me guess: fake news meant to make the good guys look bad.

aridara No, it means that’s not what I am doing. Of course, there’s always The Alternative. But you won’t like that.

lala-slave-labor The Alternative?

aridara Yep, The Alternative.

lala-slave-labor And that is?

aridara Are you sure that you want to know it?

lala-slave-labor I wanna be on the right side of history.

aridara Because it would require to sacrifice a fundamental part of what makes you “you”.

lala-slave-labor And that is?

aridara Your concept of “freedom”. Not freedom itself; just the way you are currently interpreting it.

lala-slave-labor Just toss it? Why? What’s wrong with it? Victims killing themselves?

aridara You can discover it only by taking The Alternative.

lala-slave-labor And do what, make America more like Europe?

aridara No. More like how America was supposed to be.

lala-slave-labor And how was that? A place where everyone is/was supposed to be safe from anything they dislike or were uncomfortable with?

aridara No. But you’ll have to take The Alternative to find out.

Are you sure that you want to know what it is?

lala-slave-labor You keep dancing around it. Just out with it.

aridara It’s pretty simple:

Just admit that you cannot accomodate both bigots and the victims of bigotry.

lala-slave-labor And then what? How do we solve that?

aridara The first step is to accept it. You still haven’t.

lala-slave-labor Why? Because it isn’t allowed where you live?

aridara Your concept of “freedom” requires you to find a way to accommodate them both. Your concept of “freedom” is based on the assumption that such a thing is possible.

lala-slave-labor Yes. It is. It happens here.

aridara This is what I meant by “you must throw away your concept of freedom”.

Because you must accept that it’s impossible.

lala-slave-labor Then what’s the correct definition of freedom then?

aridara You have black people killed for no reason other that they’re black. Gay and trans people tortured until they go insane and kill themselves. People being arrested for no charges. You don’t have freedom.

lala-slave-labor Right, that guy I nearly killed was for no fucking reason.

aridara And you sure as hell you aren’t accommodating both the bigots and their victims at the same time. Only the former.

lala-slave-labor Prick deserves a fate worse than death. Why can’t we be allowed to have bigots?

aridara You must accept that your concept of “freedom” is impossible. Only then you can heal. Until then, you are trapped in your delusions. Why you can’t have bigots?

lala-slave-labor Yeah. Why can’t we?

aridara Because if you have them, then their victims lose their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”. So, you must stop bigots.

lala-slave-labor Why do they lose rights? Because some prick is bein’ mean to them? They can’t fight back?

aridara But if you stop the bigots, then they lise their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”. So you must allow bigotry. But if you allow bigotry, then the victims of bigotry end up losing their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So, you must stop bigots.

lala-slave-labor Good. As intended.

aridara But if you stop the bigots, then they lose their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So you must allow bigotry. But if you allow bigotry, then the victims of bigotry end up losing their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So, you must stop bigots. But if you stop the bigots, then they lose their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So you must allow bigotry. But if you allow bigotry, then the victims of bigotry end up losing their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So, you must stop bigots.

lala-slave-labor No I don’t.

aridara But if you stop the bigots, then they lose their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So you must allow bigotry. But if you allow bigotry, then the victims of bigotry end up losing their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So, you must stop bigots. But if you stop the bigots, then they lose their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So you must allow bigotry.

lala-slave-labor I don’t have to stop the bigots, nor do I have to save the victims.

aridara Yes, you do. Your concept of “freedom” requires it.

lala-slave-labor Your concept of freedom is shit. It’s no wonder why both World Wars started in that shithole of a continent.

aridara No, it’s YOUR concept. You want to accommodate everyone’s rights: both those of bigots, and those of their victims So, if you limit bigotry, you are anti-freedom.

lala-slave-labor Why do we have to limit rights?

aridara And if you allow bigots to take away their victims’ rights, you’re also anti-freedom.

lala-slave-labor No.

aridara Yes. You said so. You wanted to accommodate both of them.

lala-slave-labor I don’t have to, nor am I compelled by emotion, save either.

aridara Well, go ahead. Do it. Or perish trying. And if you don’t want to do it…

…why do you hate freedom?

lala-slave-labor Do you even have freedom?

aridara Do you? I’m sure that you don’t.

lala-slave-labor I do.

aridara You either defend bigots, which means that their victims lose their rights, and freedom is lost…

lala-slave-labor I can go around screaming “nigger tranny faggot get the hose” and shit and nothing happens.

aridara …Or you stop bigots, which means that THEY lose their rights, and freedom is lost.

lala-slave-labor I can do that all day.

aridara You are encouraging bigotry to spread. And the more it spreads, the worse it gets. Until bigots kill people.

lala-slave-labor And?!

aridara Which is against freedom.

lala-slave-labor big fuckin’ whoop

aridara Why do you hate freedom?

lala-slave-labor that is what it means to be free.

aridara Hating freedom means being free? Not having freedom means being free? Preserving the freedom of some, but not others, is “protecting freedom”? Is that why they hated you?

lala-slave-labor Right, the victim of bigotry has no rights. The cops will totes just side with the bigot. Is that how this works?

aridara When bigotry spreads enough, yes.

lala-slave-labor Or are you projecting how your not-free hellhole handled shit?

aridara Because then the bigots enter in the police system.

Which is precisely what happened in the USA. It’s not random that 40% of cops are domestic abusers.

lala-slave-labor You’re right, not 40%. It’s not even 10%.

aridara Because they are bigots. And they have spread to the point that they have invaded the police system.

lala-slave-labor And I’m not about to rewrite the system over less than 10% of the cops being shit people.

aridara And nope, it’s 40%. At MINIMUM.

lala-slave-labor No cop where I live is like that. Everyone respects them.

aridara And that’s without going the open white supremacy of many cops. We’re talking “I want an ethnic cleansing” amount of bigotry.

lala-slave-labor It’s only like that in the big cities, which is a small minority of the nation. Good on them. They’re free to do it.

aridara Keep telling yourself that.

lala-slave-labor You can’t save everyone.

aridara Are you feeling this safe because you know that your cops are as bigoted as you?

lala-slave-labor Better the fascist than you subhuman communists!

aridara So it was never about freedom at all, eh? It was only about YOUR freedom - at the expense of everyone else. It was about POWER.

lala-slave-labor Americans first. Foreign scum never.

aridara I find it hilarious that you disbelieved my “40% of cops are domestic abusers, minimum”. You know, considering that you have the exact same mindset as an abuser.

lala-slave-labor Freedom is absolute. If I restrict the rights of one, freedom isn’t absolute. That means bigots get to stick around. But what’s so bad about bigotry?

aridara But by doing so, you are restricting the rights of the victims.

lala-slave-labor You seem hellbent on getting rid of it.

aridara Which means that freedom isn’t absolute. So are you.

lala-slave-labor Oh, it is. I don’t have to pick sides.

aridara Nope. You ARE picking a side, whether you want it or not.

lala-slave-labor “bigot is bein’ mean” okay have fun. “this foreign scum is musclin’ in on my turf” okay have fun.

aridara Letting bigotry spread is one side - one that harms the victims of bigotry and leads towards their rights being denied.

That isn’t “having fun”. That isn’t freedom. That’s AGAINST fredom. So, you must stop bigots.

But if you stop the bigots, then they lose their right to be bigots. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”.

So you must allow bigotry.

But if you allow bigotry, then the victims of bigotry end up losing their rights. And that goes against your concept of “freedom”. An infinite paradox, one that has only two solutions.

lala-slave-labor The victim needs to grow up. Compromise. As does the bigot.

aridara Nope. Compromise is not freedom, according to you.

lala-slave-labor I have no right to interfere in the affairs of others. Not like some godless heathen like you’d know about that.

aridara And letting bigotry spread directly leads to bigotry interfering with the affair of its victims. Not like some godless heathen like you would know about that. You only have two solutions. One is to give up your flawed ideal of “freedom”.

lala-slave-labor So what’s your real answer? Kill the bigots? They won’t stop being bigots. aridara Don’t change the argument.

lala-slave-labor That’d infringe on their right to life.

aridara Don’t change the argument. You only have two solutions. One is to give up your flawed ideal of “freedom”.

lala-slave-labor I don’t bend to the will of a terrorist.

aridara The other is to give up this existence.

lala-slave-labor Every coin has an edge. There’s a third path!

aridara It is not my will, nor the terrorist’s will. It simlpy IS. There is not.

lala-slave-labor If you loved freedom enough to even consider dyin’ for freedom, you’d know that!

aridara And yet, despite the fact that you loved freedom so much that you considered dying for it, not even you managed to find this “third path”. Because it doesn’t exist.

lala-slave-labor Because of a few assholes kill niggers? Or that trannies get bullied to death?

aridara Because letting bigotry spread leads to a LOT of assholes killing black people.

lala-slave-labor Life isn’t perfect. And it shouldn’t ever be.

aridara Then your idea of “freedom” is impossible.

lala-slave-labor The only solution that will please you is to genocide the bigots.

aridara No, it is not.

lala-slave-labor They won’t stop being bigots.

aridara And?

lala-slave-labor Bigots have no place in this world, right? Hell, not even in this universe, no?

aridara That’s what YOU think.

lala-slave-labor It’s the logical conclusion to your extremist ideology.

aridara Nope.

lala-slave-labor Said it so yourself. Bigots must be removed.

aridara Nope again.

lala-slave-labor Putting people into a corner gonna change them?

aridara Who said anything about change?

lala-slave-labor That violates their right to speech, of free expression.

aridara And their bigotry violates their victims’ right to speech. Your point?

lala-slave-labor How?

aridara Just like your ideal of “freedom” cannot exist,

lala-slave-labor Why? Because of a few assholes?

aridara your idea of what MY beliefs are… doesn’t actually exist. You just delude yourself into rejecting reality.

lala-slave-labor What does Karl Marx mean to you?

aridara That is how you manage to claim that you are defending freedom for everyone, while simultaneously admitting that your beliefs cause entire groups of people to lose THEIR freedom.

lala-slave-labor Who says they’ve lost their freedom? Someone with 0?

aridara Because you delude yourself into ignoring reality and how it contradicts your beliefs. See, you aren’t even responding to my words anymore. You just rant about whatever you wanted to rant before.

lala-slave-labor No.

aridara Because you ignore anything that hurts your feelings.

lala-slave-labor I was in middle of something else that required my attention.

aridara This conversation is pointless. Farewell.

lala-slave-labor  could not send It’s pointless? Because you can’t convince a wet paper bag?

[alyinargentina-blog]

The Insurance Battle Continues

This week has been sort of a rough one so far. I’m hoping it gets better over the weekend: tonight we’re going to a cajun restaurant with chicken nuggets and tomorrow there are tentative brunch and market plans, both of which are sure to improve my mood. But as of right now, I’m vaguely sick, have a lot of homework, am sans-phone for the third time since being here, and am embroiled in a weird passive-aggressive relationship with Claudia that is aggressively taking a toll on me. 

Tuesday I decided I was not mentally equipped to be the only person in my history class, so I slept in and headed to IFSA for the human rights class, which turned out to be one of the better lectures we’ve had. Lucas’ letter that we thought had been lost was also magically recovered in the second basement of some building on corrientes that honestly looked like an abandoned garage. Now I’m one letter and one pair of socks closer to being convinced that Minnesota is one of the best states. Also found out that Minnesota has cafes with portraits of Obama hanging on the walls so honestly it’s not going to take much more than that to convert me to a fan. Tuesday was also the day that my host mom’s sister Gisela went to the hospital because she was having stomach pain. I’m not sure entirely when Natalia got home, but it was not until Wednesday at some point. 

I was very out of the loop as to what was happening for most of the first like three days Gisela was in the hospital, which is obviously fine, they have way bigger things to worry about than whether or not their American exchange students knows what’s going on, but I don’t think I saw Natalia until Thursday morning maybe. I eventually was informed that Gisela had emergency surgery that cut out a part of her intestine, because it had twisted and part of it was literally dead. So it was pretty serious. Wednesday morning I woke up not having slept much, I think I was subconsciously very stressed about this whole not knowing where anyone is/when they’re going to be home thing, and then had to go to castellano at 9 in the morning. To my surprise (I guess I wasn’t too surprised considering how often this happens) and horror, I woke up to a message from Katie that the subte lines A and B were down for the day because of strikes, shocker, and that we would need take a colectivo to line D and go to IFSA from there. Needless to say, we were going to be egregiously late to this class. Thankfully, almost half of the class had problems getting to class because so many people rely on all of those subtes so our teacher was very understanding, and we ended up just watching a documentary anyways. It could’ve been a lot worse honestly, but the entire process was exhausting and so frustrating: with the amount of strikes the subte workers go on people here have just become accustomed to finding alternative routes to work to the point where the strikes don’t actually achieve anything other than mildly inconveniencing people. 

Wednesday night Katie and I went out to a bar by our house (for once!!) with Harry, who we thought was the worst but actually is like mildly okay minus a few bouts of mansplaining, and Nick, and it was actually super nice. There’s a street very close with a ton of nice-looking bars with fairy lights and good papas fritas, which is basically all I need out of a bar. 

Thursday was a day. We had our international human rights class and the professor actually gave a real lecture for once, which was refreshing and like much needed considering we have a parcial in two weeks and have learned a grand total of nothing. But afterwards was a disaster. I can’t really explain entirely why the rest of the day was such a disaster because nothing super big happened, it was just little things that made me want to not be anywhere close to Claudia for like at least two months. Prior to Thursday, there had already been some issues because the case we had originally picked was like 300 pages long. Considering we only have to write a maximum of a 10 page paper, we probably didn’t need to read the entire thing, but Claudia insisted that we did. So then we had to switch cases, but I had already read like 40 pages of the original one, so I was a bit salty that no one had responded earlier so I could’ve saved myself an hour and a half of work. But we switched, that was settled. 

On Thursday, first and foremost, no one wanted to decide on a meeting time, so we finally did: Bote Cafe 4:30 after Katie’s last class. Fine, cool, I stayed at the cafe for the time in between and did homework, finished reading our case, and was doing some other homework when Claudia showed up. She like vaguely says something to me and then asks where we should sit, because I’m at a two person table. I said we could move to the big table and claim the end, to which she responded “I’ll just sit here” and proceeded to sit with her back to me at the table in front of me, and then like sort of try to ask me what she should order. When Katie got there we moved to the big table, and she started basically ignoring me and only talking to Katie, which like fine whatever, but also like why is this even happening? Alex is late, as usual, and when she finally gets there and orders and like calms down, we start trying to work. Except NO ONE else has read the case, knows anything about it, or has done like anything at all to prepare themselves for this meeting. Which is super ironic because Claudia was the one who not only said that everyone should have the case read by the time we met, but also complained that the other case would be too much to read and made us switch. And then to show up without knowing anything about the case? You can’t try to organize and lead a group project if you’re not going to put in any effort yourself to be prepared. 

So I had to explain the breakdown of the case, the background, and basically make everyone’s decisions for them because no one else could have an opinion about a case that they knew nothing about. And the entire time I was the one who felt shitty about it because I felt like I was being patronized or seemed like I was trying to hard or whatever else because I was actually prepared and had done my part of the work. And that’s completely unfair, I shouldn’t be the one who feels bad, I’m the only one who actually held up their end of the bargain. This was just sort of a side issue though, like I expected something along those lines to happen, and I expect moving forward that things aren’t going to be done on time which is going to be stressful but also as long as I’m doing my part I can’t really control what they’re all doing. The real issue was just in how the interaction went I suppose: Claudia barely talked to me and when she did it was low-key very hostile, I can’t even explain it but she just always tries to undermine what I’m saying or tries to assert herself as knowing more about something that she knows actually NOTHING about. Her and Alex were also making plans for their night right in front of us without any shame or any like “hey you guys could come if you want!” offer, which I think is rude no matter who does it. 

And then to top it all off, the end of the group meeting was filled with “I just really need a drink/to get drunk” statements, or “let’s come to the cafe before our presentation and get coffee and put my liquor in it” type deal, followed closely by lots of comments about how people are bored and want/need to hook up with someone random. First off, not into the whole “I need to get drunk” rhetoric at all because realistically it’s becoming a mechanism to cope with issue that should maybe be dealt with sober, and also if you’re only spending time with friends when you’re drunk you’re not really friends with them, I’m sorry but like in order to have an actual friendship with someone you need to like them sober or be able to do things that don’t involve intoxicants. And this whole obsession with hooking up with people is exhausting to listen to because it’s another way of coping and validating their self worth and it’s also not something I’m interested in talking about all the time because that’s not how I feel at all, so it’s just another barrier between resolving any of these underlying issues. The icing on the cake was that the subte wasn’t working again and Katie and I had to walk an hour home. 

Friday was also not a great day, but for very different reasons. I woke up thinking that it was the day I was going to finally be able to get this cellphone that I bought like the second week here with insurance, because I wanted to be safe and prepared in case it got stolen which, lo and behold, did happen. The insurance lady had told Natalia on Tuesday that, after 72 hours I would be on the list in the system and could go to whichever Fravega I wanted and get the voucher for the rebate and new phone. So I go to the Fravega on corrientes close to my apartment, and nothing: am not on the list, they don’t have any record of the purchase, and I’m told that sometimes insurance “takes a long time”. Well, sir, it’s been 2 1/2 months, I’ve sent them all the documents they need multiple times, have called twice, have been told everything should be settled, and it’s not. At the end of the day it’s just a phone, and I should be able to get it sometime next week. I was more frustrated about the fact that nothing seems to work the way I’m told it’s going to work here, and no one who’s from here seems bothered by it. Subtes/all modes of public transportation shouldn’t just stop working numerous times a week. Professors at the universities should give real lectures, answer their emails, make the homework actually available to all of their students. Insurance shouldn’t take 2 1/2 months to put a name on a list. I hesitate to criticize the general way of life in other places because I know that I only am observing it this way because I’m foreign and the things that I perceive are different are only different because I was raised in a different way of life. People come to America and thing we do so many things in a strange way: our toilets have an excessive amount of water in them, all of our food portions are about three times too big, we don’t use public transportation hardly at all. But I also get incredibly frustrated with the perceived lack of organization here sometimes, and with how blasé people seem to be about it. I by no means want to imply that the US has everything figured out because we certainly do not, but I do think that things are more organized and there is an expectation by Americans, whether good or bad, that things be ready when they’re supposed to be and that there’s a certain degree of routine to daily life. 

Friday night I went to this palace that definitely wasn’t a palace but that had a super nice view of the city. I went with Katie and her host mom Beatriz at sunset, and the pictures we got were amazing. Beatriz is actually insane though, hands down couldn’t live with her but feel like she’s very amusing in small bursts. The first thing she said to me when she met me was that she hates La Izquierda Diario, so off to a good start. 

[junker-town]

NFL Dad, Week 3: Protests, naps, and guacamole

One father of two young children attempts to watch the RedZone channel while parenting. Along the way: reflections on serving your country and the reliable success of guacamole.

Parents often talk about “seeing the world through a child’s eyes,” a cliché that should come with a $500 fine or a punch in the nose from someone without kids. What they mean, in plainer terms, is that they noticed something they had previously taken for granted because their dumb kids saw it for the first time.

Seasons changing is a great example of this. If you’re an adult with no kids, the shift to fall is automatic: you slide into your football-watching habits, dig your hoodies out of storage, maybe post some foliage on your Instagram. This ain’t your first rodeo.

My daughter is almost 3, and her preschool’s ENTIRE CURRICULUM is season-based: apples in the fall, snowflakes in the winter, seeds in the spring. She’s obsessed with books about autumn and Halloween. Instead of going to bed when it’s light out, her bedtime now happens at sunset; we look out the window and try to spot leaves that have started to change color. The farmer’s market we walk through on Saturdays now has pumpkins and squash, and when I take the kids to Trader Joe’s on Sunday morning, 70 percent of the items are pumpkin-flavored. I swear to God there’s pumpkin-flavored almond milk and a sign that says “All pumpkin everything!” It is 87 degrees outside.

But the equinox doesn’t lie: it’s officially fall. At least there’s football.

EARLY GAMES, FIRST HALF

— The dominant story line before the games, and even throughout them, is how players and teams react to President Trump excoriating the “sons of bitches” who kneel during the national anthem, tough words indeed from a patriot who loves America so much he wouldn’t leave her soil during the Vietnam war.

Maybe you voted for Donald Trump, and maybe you didn’t, but there’s no way around those five draft deferments. And, speaking as someone who’s actually been to war, avoiding war is genuinely a very good idea! It’s just a shame that the president abandoned that stance when it wasn’t his jiggling ass on the line.

Anyway, I wrestled with most of this a year ago when Colin Kaepernick first started his protest, and the video I made then still captures my feelings now:

Long story short: My father went to the Air Force Academy and served 22 years as a pilot. I served as a Marine tank commander in Iraq. Because of my time in the Corps, I have some friends who still wear the uniform, some who now work as FBI agents, and some who are underground, God rest their souls. The flag means a LOT to me. I love the anthem. But that doesn’t mean the anthem protests are ABOUT me, or what I feel.

A protest during the national anthem may be offensive to you. Your feelings are valid. But placing them ahead racial injustice in this country — or even a person’s peaceful execution of his First Amendment rights — demonstrates a woeful lack of empathy, or at least a willful ignorance of racism in America. If this isn’t self-evident already, I’ll just point out that the president responded to a white supremacist march that killed a woman by saying that SOME WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE VERY FINE PEOPLE. I’m so tired of being gaslit about this shit. It’s exhausting.

— I don’t see most of the anthem stuff because I’m putting son down for a nap. When I come back, Rob Gronkowski scores a touchdown on third-and-goal. Save me, Gronk. Save me from the stupidity. Whisk me away to an island of frosty light beers and laughing at “69” jokes. I yearn for the intellectual upgrade.

— The Saints sack Cam Newton on third-and-three inside the 10. A goal-line stand? From the Saints? Something is amiss.

— Weird NFL continues: after the Steelers muff a punt, the Bears go up 7-0 with a Jordan Howard TD. Not long after, Ben Roethlisberger gets sacked and fumbles, with the Bears recovering. I took the Steelers -7 today, and I’m already sick with regret.

— AHAHAHAHAHA, I just saw Joe Flacco’s numbers against Jacksonville on the ticker: 8-18 for 28 yards with 2 interceptions. Holy shit, 1.6 yards per attempt! I hope they quarantined the stadium before Flacco could spread the plague any further. London suffered enough in the 17th century.

— At 1:34 p.m., everyone but me is napping: my daughter in her bedroom, my son in ours (the kids sleep in the same room at night but nap separately), and my wife on the couch as I watch RedZone. The shades are drawn and the TV is muted. Could I nap? Nothing about this column prevents me from napping. The Eagles convert a fourth-and-inches near midfield. The Jets punt.

— On third-and-goal in Indy, Jacoby Brissett fakes a pass and takes it on a designed keeper. Nice play design. Am I tired enough to nap? I had a cold brew a little before the games began; I don’t want to miss out on football for a failed nap.

— DeShaun Watson hits Bruce Ellington with a beautiful throw over the middle for a score, and the Texans have a surprising 10-7 lead over the Pats. I managed to get a nap in yesterday afternoon. After my son’s swim lesson, my wife took the kids so I could stay at the pool and swim laps. I came home with that all-over muscle fatigue you only get from swimming, made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and crashed on the couch while the kids slept.

— Duke Johnson leaps into the end zone for a 19-yard touchdown to tie the game at 7.

CBS broadcast

See, this is why I’m hesitant to nap. Because even though the Browns-Colts game is the LAST game I’d want to watch this week, it has already produced two touchdowns I thought merited inclusion in this collection of notable plays.

— So much for the Texans’ lead: after a Watson INT sets the Pats up in the red zone, Tom Brady finds Chris Hogan wide open in the end zone for a TD. In Indy, Jacoby Brissett scores another TD on the ground, while the Saints and Falcons -- both on the road — build commanding early leads. If I napped now, I’d probably be awake by the third quarter of the early games. I’d miss nothing of note. I should just do it.

— On second-and-goal, Ben Roethlisberger goes to Antonio Brown 1-on-1 on a quick screen, and that’s a TD every time. It ties the game at 7-7, and while rooting for the Steelers feels gross, I have gambling interests to protect. Or maybe I’m just too tired to think straight? I should nap.

— It is 2:05, 31 minutes after I first started contemplating a nap. My heart is beating a little fast from the cold brew, but the exhaustion of parenting is resolute. I lie down next to my wife and throw my arm over my eyes to shade them from the flicker of the television.

EARLY GAMES, SECOND HALF

— At 2:38, I open my eyes, and Drew Brees is hitting Tedd Ginn over the top for a 40-yard touchdown. The safety help arrived too late.

— I scroll back through Twitter just a few minutes to see if I’ve missed anything big, and BOY HOWDY are people tweeting about the Bears.

Wow. #PITvsCHI http://pic.twitter.com/gG6Ry6Uylr

— NFL (@NFL) September 24, 2017

In the Twitter era, this is the perfect thing to experience AFTER it’s happened. I don’t have to wade through dumb exclamations or the confusion of the moment, and I don’t have to wait for the Bears’ false start on their untimed play. I just wake up to a brief, handy explainer. Naps are the best. Always nap.

— Stefon Diggs is going OFF. A long touchdown, his second for the game, makes it 28-3 in favor of the Vikings early in 3rd quarter. I picked the Bucs to win because Case Keenum is sun-bleached highway trash, but apparently Diggs, the Vikings’ defense, and home turf are more than enough to handle Tampa Bay.

— A flurry of touchdowns as my wife makes chorizo bean dip: Tom Brady to Brandin Cooks on a deep crossing route puts the Pats up 28-20; Golden Tate’s first TD of the season cuts the Falcons’ lead to 23-20; and Zach Ertz scores on a short pass for the Eagles. The Giants now trail by five* scores, 14-0 (*adjusted for Giants’ offense).

— My daughter is awake, but we’re not getting her out of bed yet. My wife is putting the finishing touches on the chorizo dip, and I’m making guacamole.

This is all I'm eating the rest of the day (thank u @celebrityhottub for the chorizo dip recipe)

A post shared by Matt Ufford (@mattufford) on Sep 24, 2017 at 1:06pm PDT

Guacamole take: guacamole has a huge range of success. My ideal guac has salt, lime, garlic, cilantro, red onion, and tomato, but I still enjoy it with fewer or more ingredients. Whatever you like is fine.

— Down two touchdowns, the Giants fail on fourth down in red zone, but the resulting Manningface minimized by RedZone’s double-box. I NEED FULLSCREEN ANGUISH, YOU HEATHENS. I realize only now that I’ve seen both of Manning’s interceptions today, but none of his reactions to them.

— DeShaun Watson still makes rookie mistakes, but his ceiling looks an awful lot like Russell Wilson at his best:

DeShaun Watson out here stealing Patrick Mahomes plays. http://pic.twitter.com/0e2VXqNOKS

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) September 24, 2017

Watson caps that drive with a TD to his tight end, cutting the Texans’s deficit to 28-27. A few minutes later, they’ll kick a field goal to go up 30-27.

— Jameis Winston hits DeSean Jackson down the sideline for a TD as the third quarter ends; the Bucs now trail 31-17. Can Dirk Koetter wear his glasses any further down his nose? He’s like a disapproving librarian in a children’s movie.

— The Dolphins are losing to Jets 20-0. Living in the New York broadcast area guarantees me the Jets and Giants every damn week, but a small part of me wishes I were watching this game on local TV so I could see Cutler’s face.

— In a shocking turn of events, the Giants score an offensive touchdown! Less shocking, it’s Odell Beckham who scores it. For his celebration, he crawls on all fours and lifts his leg like a dog pissing, earning a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.

And whatever, that’s part of the cost of doing business with a physical genius, but when Beckham scores again a few minutes later on an incredible one-handed catch, he raises a solitary fist in protest. And y’all, I don’t want to be Grumpy Old Columnist, but Beckham’s messaging priority is perhaps less than ideal here. “Okay, pretend to be a dog taking a piss — check. Up next: racial equality!”

The only explanation that makes any sense is that the first celebration was a reference to Trump’s “son of a bitch” comment. Regardless, the world was so much better when he was making out with a kicking net.

— Deshaun Watson does it again:

Deshaun Watson is just insane, man. @battleredblog http://pic.twitter.com/Po9IPRdBgf

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) September 24, 2017

The Texans are running the ball with the lead in Pats territory with only 2:30 remaining in the game. Could the Pats lose this? The telecast cuts to Bob Kraft up in his suite, his mouth agape and forehead scrunched, like a billionaire trying to understand what starving people could be mad about.

But no, the Texans are stoned on third-and-one, and kick a field to go up 33-28. They are 100 percent about to lose this game.

— With 55 seconds remaining, the Bears punt on fourth-and-two just short of midfield with the score tied at 17. On the one hand, I respect the decision to remove the responsibility for victory from Mike Glennon’s hands. On the other: COWARDS.

A WILD FLURRY TO END THE GAMES

— The Patriots get the ball back with about 2:30 to play. Tom Brady converts the following into first downs: second-and-20, third-and-12, third-and-18. On the next play after the third-and-18 conversion, Brady finds Brandin Cooks for a toe-tap touchdown with 23 seconds remaining.

— Trailing by four, the Lions have entered the red zone, then exited it on penalties. Matt Stafford is incomplete on 1st and 30, but defensive holding on second-and-30 gives the Lions a first down and new life. Pass interference a few plays later gives them first-and-goal on the 1. Golden Tate scores a touchdown with 8 seconds left! The Lions are gonna win!

— In overtime, Tarik Cohen scores on a long run to seal the game for the Bears. Both my kids are up now, and my daughter is going around the apartment yelling, “DING-DONG! TRICK OR TREAT!” A few minutes later, Jordan Howard scores from 19 yards out to re-seal the game for the Bears, and whatever context there was for Cohen NOT scoring a touchdown is lost. Could I look up the box score to see what happened? Sure, but it’s more fun to have it LOST TO HISTORY.

— The Texans’ final prayer goes unanswered, as Watson’s Hail Mary is intercepted in the end zone.

— Wait, what?!? The Lions LOST? Tate’s TD is overturned, and the game is over. Just a BRUTAL blow for my fantasy team, and also the Lions.

Kevin Seifert of ESPN explained why it was the right call, but to me it doesn’t look like there was enough evidence to overturn the call. As swings of luck go, this should even things out for Tate, who caught the Fail Mary for the Seahawks ... wait a second ... FIVE YEARS AGO TO THE DAY. SpoOOOoOoOooOOookyyyyyy!

Sorry, I’ve been reading lots of Halloween books to my daughter.

— Eagles attempt a 61-yarder in a vain attempt to avoid overtime. Odell Beckham is back to catch a potential miss and … IT’S GOOD! HOLY MAMULA! MANNINGFACE FOR EVERYONE.

LATE GAMES, FIRST HALF

— After the hypodermic of adrenaline that ended the early games, the late slate has a whopping three contests: Chiefs-Chargers, Seahawks-Titans, and Bengals-Packers. If the NFL can push Seahawks-Titans to a late start, why not do it with two other games that start in the Central Time Zone? Push Bucs-Vikings and Browns-Colts to the second slate of games, and they won’t get lost in the early shuffle. “America’s Game of the Week” notwithstanding, I will never understand why the NFL doesn’t try to balance this more. It’s bad and I hate it.

— Kids change SO FAST when they’re young. Physical and linguistic milestones whiz past seemingly every week; go a month without seeing someone’s toddler, and you’re bound to meet an entirely new kid.

That said, this was my son’s favorite game in June, when he was just over a year old:

Fatherhood: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A post shared by Matt Ufford (@mattufford) on Jun 18, 2017 at 5:38pm PDT

It is more than three months later, and he’s STILL doing this. Just smashing his face into the couch or any soft chair like it’s the best thing in the world. (*slowly crosses off “engineer” on list titled FUTURE CAREERS*)

— Tyreke Hill has already scored a TD, on a great pass by Alex Smith. It’s still super-weird to see Smith throw deep with confidence, or at all.

— Davante Adams fumbles just short of the end zone, and Aaron Rodgers does a nice job of preventing a Bengals touchdown on the return. After review, though, Adams is ruled down and the Packers have first-and-goal inside the 1. Lance Kendricks gets wide open on play-action and catches the touchdown, tying the game at 7 in Green Bay.

— Our neighbors have come over because we made too much dip and guacamole, and there are now four kids under three years old in my two-bedroom apartment. The math sounds bad, but it’s not: their kids are younger than ours — a 2-year-old daughter and a newborn — and anyway, they’re a delight. In 13 years of living in New York City (in six different apartments), I’ve never had good neighbors before. When we eventually move, I’m bringing them with us.

— On a Titans third-and-10, Marcus Mariota sails a pass that gets picked off by Kam Chancellor. Richard Sherman, though, gets flagged for pass interference (ticky-tack in my opinion, but I’m not an objective viewer). He also gets flagged for holding on the return (also ticky-tack), then tears off his helmet to argue with the refs, earning a misconduct foul (definitely warranted). The penalties cost the Seahawks possession and 30-40 yards of field position. After several more penalties, Tennessee kicks a field goal to go up 3-0.

This is fine. Everything’s fine. This column will not be me yelling about the Seahawks every week. (*jaws clench so hard my head vibrates*)

— Y’all, we need to talk about the most nonchalant human being on the planet:

To make matters worse for the #lions. The food is on fire at Ford Field by the locker room. http://pic.twitter.com/aLFNDj4kc3

— Evan Jankens (@KINGoftheKC) September 24, 2017

That lady has straight-up ICE WATER in her veins. “Oh, a fire as tall as I am? (yawn) Not really much I can do here. Let’s just close the— yep, open this other door to get that closed. Anyway, let me know if it’s still there after my break.” She’s the Daenerys Targaryen of concession workers.

— Philip Rivers has thrown his THIRD interception, and it’s barely the second quarter. Every time I look at him, I just think, “Eight kids, man. EIGHT. KIDS.” That HAS to define his entire life. Like, when was the last time he took his family to a restaurant? Never, right? I have two kids that are relatively well-behaved; my wife and I have taken them to restaurants three times this year: brunch twice (one disaster, one white-knuckle balancing act), and dinner once (only a success because the pizza place had just opened and there was no one else there). We have no desire to take them out again. Maybe in another year or so.

I guarantee you the youngest Rivers children are being raised by their siblings. Nobody parents that well past three kids.

— The Bengals have dominated offensively so far. They’re up 14-7 on Gio Bernard’s short catch for a TD ... No, make that 21-7. Rodgers throws a pick-six — only the second of his career — to William Jackson.

That’s mind-blowing. This is Rodgers’ TENTH season as a starter, and that’s only his second career pick-six? Matt Schaub once doubled that in a month.

— Richard Sherman, who has apparently lost his damn mind, earns a flag for a late-ish hit on Mariota.

FWIW here is when Sherman hit Mariota http://pic.twitter.com/WTeBy9IrHC

— Ben Baldwin (@guga31bb) September 24, 2017

Taylor Lewan immediately gets up in Sherman’s face, and I think he gets flagged too, but my daughter has come up to me saying, “I want to be an animal. I want to see a jellyfish.” Is Richard Sherman ejected? What’s happening? “I want to see a jellyfish.”

Goddammit. Okay, sweetie. Let’s watch some f**king jellyfish.

“What’s that?” she says, pointing at my laptop screen.

“It’s a jellyfish, sweetie. These are all jellyfish.” Richard Sherman is still in the game. The Titans kick a field goal, 6-0.

— My son’s other obsession tonight — besides smashing his face into the couch — is the hokey-pokey. He’s no good at putting his hand in and shaking it all about, but he DOMINATES at turning around. He spins around in circles until he careens left and crashes into the credenza. He thinks it’s hilarious. He is correct.

— Stop me if you’ve heard this one: the Seahawks have a third-and-long, leading to a Russell Wilson sack. With the Seahawks missing their top two special teamers, Adoree’ Jackson takes the ensuing punt back for a score ... but it gets called back on a block in the back, yet another ticky-tack call. LET ‘EM PLAY, REFS.

After doing little on offense for 28 minutes, the Seahawks and Titans come alive inside the two-minute drill, with the Seahawks engineering a quick touchdown drive before the Titans kick another field goal to go into the locker room up 9-7.

— Rodgers is sacked again near the end of the half, and the Bengals call timeout to force the Packers to punt ... but the punt is muffed! The Packers recover, but the clock runs out during the scramble for the ball. Y’know, looking back on this play, I probably didn’t need to write this paragraph.

LATE GAMES, SECOND HALF

— On Sundays, the kids are supposed to take a bath together, but they’ve got their own ideas about that; my son refuses to sit down, and my daughter screams “I’m not ready yet!” any time we pick her up. So, separate baths.

At one point, as both kids cry, I see the referees signal TDs for Seahawks and Packers, but not the touchdowns themselves.

— The Seahawks defense looks tired. The tackling on Rishard Matthews’ 55-yard TD is pitiful (and, ahem, aided by the tight end tackling Kam Chancellor from behind, I REGRET ASKING FOR LESS OFFICIATING), and they’re similarly flat-footed on Jonnu Smith’s 24-yard score that puts the Titans up 23-14.

— Following a sack on third-and-seven, the Bengals miss a field goal. They still lead 21-14, but now it looks tenuous.

— The Seahawks never look close to completing a third-and-11; they are now 2/10 on third downs. Before they punt, RedZone clicks back to Bengals-Packers.

I see it on Twitter first: DeMarco Murray has scored on a 75-yard run. It’s a little after 6:30; my kids will be going to bed in the next half-hour. I pause the TV. “Actually,” I say to my wife, then turn the TV and cable box off completely as a way of finishing the sentence. “But can you still pick up where you paused?” my wife asks. “Nope,” I say, and that’s the point, because I’m a dumb baby who hates watching his stupid football team.

— My daughter, who refused to eat dinner at the prescribed hour, is finally eating her spaghetti as long as I’m reading the same four godforsaken Halloween books I’ve been reading to her for the last two days. My wife got those books out of the closet when she was in there to get something else and she “just happened to see them.” There are five weeks until Halloween. In a month, this column might be about divorce.

— I put the kids to bed at 7:00, and turn the TV back on. The Seahawks have the ball and trail 33-20 with about 8:30 left, which means this will be just stupid enough to keep me watching as the Seahawks lose by one score. Almost immediately, Seattle’s dangerous-looking drive gets blown up by intentional grounding, setting up third-and-29, then fourth-and-22.

They go for it. It’s a ... Hail Mary into the end zone?

Seahawks just whiffed on a three-man rush on 4th and 22. Wilson had about .7 seconds to throw. Embarrassing.

— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) September 24, 2017

The half-moon of regret that is the Seahawks offensive line. Couldn't protect for four seconds against a three-man rush on fourth-and-22. http://pic.twitter.com/kSVeZGLUjh

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 24, 2017

That Barnwell tweet is all I need this season. Finally, a nickname for an utterly unworthy unit. The Half-Moon of Regret. Might not be as catchy as Legion of Boom, but I’m determined to make it stick.

— TV back on, Seahawks have the ball and trail 33-20 with 8:30 left. With just under 8:00 remaining, RW intentional grounding, 3rd and 29.

— KC still up 17-10. What the shit? Have they just been playing backgammon for the second half?

— Some good endings brewing: the Packers are in the two-minute drill down seven; Chargers down seven with the ball and four minutes remaining. The Seahawks have just scored to cut the lead to six, but need an onside kick for any realistic hope.

— Rivers sacked on third-and-10 by Justin Houston, and Kansas City easily recovers the onside kick. But hey! We still have excitement in Green Bay: first-and-goal for the Packers with 30 seconds.

— Jordy Nelson scores his second touchdown of the game. Big ups to Jordy for being questionable all week after last week’s zero-catch scratch. That way he could produce zero points for my fantasy team last week and make me gun-shy enough to bench him this week. THANKS FOR TWO KINDS OF NOTHING.

Green Bay kicks the PAT to go to overtime, even though Mike McCarthy ALWAYS loses the toss, then watches as the game ends without Aaron Rodgers ever touching the ball in OT. It’s so good to see a coach refuse to adapt or take chances or learn from his mistakes in any way. I think it’s great that he’s singe-handedly prevented the best quarterback of all time from winning more than one championship. Give him a lifetime contract, I say, so he can be mediocre forever.

Whatever, I’m all for Cincinnati-Green Bay going to overtime, because I always want more of any game called by Tony Romo. No one this new to a job should be THIS good at it.

Tony Romo is so good, I'm glad CBS finally gave Jim Nantz a broadcast partner who wasn't a talking block of marzipan

— BUM CHILLIPS (@edsbs) September 24, 2017

— The Packers, after losing the coin toss (of course) miraculously force the Bengals to punt. Facing third-and-10 from his own 22, Rodgers hits Geronimo Allison deep on a free play, because that’s what Aaron Rodgers does: murder you on free plays. Allison winds his way inside the Bengals 10-yard-line, and this one’s over.

[lunatheranter]

Luna Takes on The Vegan(ist)s

Let's be honest, I was going to pop up on one side of this at some point. You might be surprised to learn that Luna the Ranter is actually fairly neutral when it comes to the vegan/non-vegan argument; I don't have any strong opinions on whether or not one should or should not consume animal products. There are fair points on both sides. Back in the day, my mum used to say she'd never met a healthy vegan – but back in the 80s, the kind of nutritious alternatives we have now didn't exist and vegans pretty much had lettuce. On the other hand, animal products provide important sources of vitamins and minerals which we, as omnivorous predators, need to survive and it is somewhat ingrained into our nature. Give a lion a salad, I dare you.

What I do have strong opinions about, however, is the aggressive, we're-right-and-you're-immoral vegan uprising that's been steadily heading over the past year or so. To kick off, let me state outright the problems with this approach:

1. It's aggressive. Aggression is not positive, it is not fair, it is not necessary, and it does not work. It's more likely to force people to agree with you externally and then go somewhere else and do the polar opposite of what you've told them to do. And yes, it's not asking. It's telling. Guilt-tripping, yelling, forcing disturbing images in people's faces – these things are not only going to make people walk away, but also cast a shadow on any positivity in your movement. It is totally counter-productive and in the meantime you just make other people feel like shit. 2. It's obsessive. It nitpicks. It delves into the darkest, dankest corners and generalises its findings. It hunts through lists of ingredients to find a vitamin which may be derived from an animal product's second cousin twice removed. It demonises people who use animal products. Do you like being called an evil, immoral, heartless demon with no humanity on your way to feed homeless orphans because there's eggs on the menu? No. Does it even make sense? No. 3. It is immoral in itself to try to force another person to think the way you do, to believe the same things you do. That is called indoctrination, and that constitutes harm. By forcing your opinions on somebody else, you are harming them. This is part of my own moral code and belief system, so feel free to draw your own conclusions on this point.* 4. It is unrealistic. I am not a vegan. I am not ever going to be a vegan. I had a dream where I got water on my vintage suede trousers and I woke up in cold sweats so the idea of me getting rid of them is ludicrous. There are thousands of people like me who are not and will not be vegan, no matter how many statistics you yell at them. Trying to straight-up convert people who do not want to be converted is a fool's game. More on this later.

*Secondly, I feel I have to make a statement about morality before I continue; when addressing such a topic, it is important to note that we are born with humanity (that is, the ability to love, to care, to nurture etc (with the exclusion of sociopaths)) but morality is not inate. Morality is something we build for ourselves. It doesn't come from some mystical far-off cloud land, and nobody's moral code is exactly the same (if yours matches somebody else's without discrepancy, I'm afraid you've been indoctrinated; refer to point 3 above). It's based on our experiences, opinions, ideas, and formation of the way we individually understand the world. We are not born moral beings. If we were, history and society would look very, very different.

But enough of the support act, let's get the headliner on stage. I'm obviously aware that this does not apply to ALL vegans (the same way it's not ALL men and not ALL white people; that's not the point we're addressing here) and I am specifically addressing the aggressive, obsessive, narrow-minded veganist (can we call it veganist? I like veganist) movement that's been spreading of late. The video which was the final straw in my shall-I-shan't-I internal debate on whether to post something was shared by a good friend of mine who is a vegetarian and animal rights activist, and who agreed with... the meat-eating man. Because she, like myself, does not like to see people aggressively ramming their opinions down somebody else's throat.

In this video, they quote a conversion statistic which cannot be verified. This is one of my bug-bares with these people. Are they calculating based on people who said they would convert on the day? More than likely. Did they conduct 6 to 12 month follow up interviews to find out whether those people actually made those changes? I highly doubt it. Therefore, the statistic is completely null. I see this time and time again with this type of movement. They take the most extreme, raw statistic and blast it out there like it's the word of a deity. Why do I know that this happens? Because I've done it. For my dissertation, I went to WHO and quoted the raw suicide rate instead of the age standardised rate. Why? Because it's higher. Because I want to make people think “oh my god, that's horrible!” (I then went back and corrected the statistic because that’s not ethical practice). I'm going to rest my case on stats and facts right here and let you mull it over while we have a paragraph break.

Silly, silly veganists (I'm using this term now). Did you really think that screaming “You're a bad person!” in my face as I walk down the street was going to change my mind? No. You've just ruined my day. So what I'm going to do is sit in front of your protest and eat this steak, because I no longer believe that your opinions are valid. You've successfully invalidated your own movement. Applause. Spamming social networks with disturbing pictures of mutilated animals is only going to get you blocked. This approach not only doesn't work, it can be dangerous. You could cause somebody serious mental harm by doing this. I've seen clearly anxious people forced to engage in arguments by these people. I've seen people crying because they're being spammed with traumatic images. This is nothing short of pure aggression. The desire to upset people. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people jump on the bandwagon purely because they want to hurt others in this way, and not because they genuinely support the cause. It's extraordinary the lengths people will go to. It's unethical, it's unfair, and it's totally unnecessary.

 Let me exemplify with an analogy or two: I used to eat a lot of meat. I'm talking seven days a week, at least twice a day. My family have always been big meaties. Meat in everything. Meat with a side of meat garnished with meat. It was like meat > water. I didn't notice it for a while, but I was getting sick of eating so much meat. It actually made me quite ill. Don't get me wrong, I've always had a very healthy diet, but I started to meat overload. I needed to cut down. Then I went to Bermondsey Market, where I encountered RAW. The woman was super friendly, answering all my questions about how the vegan cakes were made, what's in everything, what kind of extra nutrients I can get from this food. I loved how varied the ingredients were. I bought some food to try, and I loved it. I now eat consequently vegetarian or vegan meals about 4~6 days a week. It's not even a conscious effort; I was shown an alternative, and I liked it, so I ended up cutting down. A lot. But wait! There's more! SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is known for it's... um... alternative? societies and events, so naturally we have a vegan soc. They like to do bakesales. I like it when they do bakesales, because my first ever taste of vegan cake was THE BEST lemon drizzle cake I've EVER had. I bought a few things to try, and I loved all of them. Not one of them was a different consistency than regular cake, not one of them tasted a bit weird. This year, I made myself a vegan birthday cake (mostly because we were having a dinner party, and one of my housemates is vegan, but I had wanted to try vegan baking since the bakesale) and when I discovered how easy it was, I switched to vegan baking. I'm not strict with it, but it's there (plus, if I want my housemate to try my cookies........) Why am I telling you this? I want you to notice how it was achieved. There were no placards or disturbing videos of people taking bites out of live cows. There was no demonising, no guilt-tripping, no force-feeding somebody else's moral code. I was simply offered the opportunity to try an alternative, with the hope that it might result in me making changes. Nobody told me that I'm evil for not being a vegan, immoral for my lifestyle choices. They just said “hey, would you like to try this? It's healthy and sustainable” so I said “yeah, let's give that a go”, and when I liked it, viola! It resulted in change. This just in! Being nice to people makes them want to listen to you more than being shitty and aggressive! Oh, that's not just in? What do you mean, that's been around for centuries?! Moving on...

I want to talk (briefly, because this is getting tl;dr) about the idealism of the veganist (I've coined the term now, it can't be revoked) movement, because it's not realistic. These people want everyone to stop using animal products overnight. Though I detest to do so, I must inform you that that's not going to happen. First of all, we need to remember that being vegan isn't just about diet – a vegan can't wear, wash in, eat or otherwise use ANYTHING which contains substances derived from animals. That means checking your fabrics, toiletries, appliances (because polymer and some other plastics (rather unecessarily, to be completely honest) use animal fat in the manufacturing process) for vegan friendly status before buying. Expecting everyone to suddenly commit to this change is just ludicrous. What we can ask people to do is to cut down. To reduce. To aim for things which are kinder and more sustainable. In mass production, even the “good” things aren't as great as we want them to be. We can encourage people to switch from supermarket to local marketplace buying as the animal products usually come from local, sustainable, well-structured farms which don't operate on a large scale and therefore rear their animals to a much better standard. We can ask for people to use less. To petition and rally for better farming practices. To be willing to pay a little more for better treatment of farm animals. In year 9 biology, we watched a video from a battery egg farm. I went home so disturbed that I point blank refused to eat anything other than free-range eggs. My mum said they were too expensive. She spent years saying they're too expensive. I still refused to eat eggs from caged hens. I went without eggs. Now that I'm an adult and I control what I buy, I was picking up free-range eggs every time I went home, because I knew my mum would have caged. One day, my brother ate one of my eggs (I was mad). When he noticed that the quality was much, much better than the ones he's used to eating, guess what? He refused to eat caged hen eggs. So then there were two of us. My brother pestered my mum relentlessly, insisting that free-range was much better. She now buys free-range eggs, and we all agree. It's better. My point is, it took me years to get one person to make this change. Some people will change their lifestyle at the drop of a hat. Others won't. Some will never come completely to your side, but telling them they're bad people isn't going to change their mind. I'm not ever going to be vegan. I can state that outright. But I've made dietary changes: all of the meat I buy is locally and sustainably sourced, I often opt for meat-free options purely of my own free will, I only buy free-range animal products and my milk consumption has dropped from 4 pints a week (hella milk) to 2 pints a fortnight (not so much milk). I know that I'm not willing to commit to a fully vegan lifestyle, (I eat A LOT of eggs and I love my purple suede trousers waaaaaay too much) but I have been encouraged to make changes by people who have approachably and enthusiastically offered me alternatives that I've enjoyed.

My problem is not and never has been with the movement. Your lifestyle choices are yours to make. It's not my place to tell people what they should or should not eat. My problem is with the methods, because aggression is NEVER the answer, and calmly offering an alternative always works much better than trying to force people to agree with you – and if it's not my place to tell you what to eat, it's not your place to do so either.

Luna out on vegan(ist)s.