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bakugou-tm · 5 years

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Bakugou-tm Masterlist (Updated)

Reader

Headcannons

Lazy (s/o)

Butt pinching (s/o)

Alpha Baku & Omega s/o that steals his clothes for her nest

Bakugou seeing s/o in swimsuit (NSFW)

Angelic s/o that is crazy strong in battle

S/o that messes with Bakugou in public (slight NSFW)

Short s/o

Dragon King Bakugou traveling to island of amazons

Bakugou making friends with his strong rival

*Updated*

Bakugou getting paired up with crush who can manipulate quirks

GIF Headcannons pt. 1

GIF Headcannons pt. 2

Bakugou-tm Headcannons

Headcannon #1

Headcannon #2

Headcannon #3

Headcannon #4

Headcannon #5

Scenarios

Exploring haunted mansion

Mineta sneaking into girl’s dorms (inspired by @sup-poki post)

Bakugou meeting (s/o) & child he left from high school (slight domestic)

Easter scavenger hunt (slight nsfw)

(S/o) and kids cleaning Bakugou’s cuts (domestic)

Building collapses on (s/o) that saves people

Bakugou doing something nice for Izuku’s sister

Bakugou seeing s/o in swimsuit (NSFW)

Bakugou’s European (s/o) being made fun of for forgetting Japanese words

Villains attack Ground Zero’s wife and kids at his house (domestic)

(S/o) crying and hugging family after fight (domestic)

Fantasy AU Bakugou and Dragon Trainer (NSFW)

Bakugou hurts (s/o)’s feelings so he makes it up to her

Boys try to hit on (s/o) and Bakusquad protects her

Bakugou saving you and colleagues from villain

Jealous Bakugou at beach

Bakugou taking (s/o) to water spring

Comforting angry/sad Bakugou

Bakugou and colleague having to go as undercover couple

Bakugou and (s/o) watching fireworks

Bakugou’s crush having same birthday but not telling him

Bakugou’s birthday with family (domestic)

Artsy (s/o) makes Bakugou birthday gift but is nervous to give to him

Bakugou has party but leaves with s/o (slight nsfw)

Bakugou showing up to class with surprise cake from s/o

Bakugou finds out wife is pregnant (domestic)

Bakugou and s/o finding baby on mission (slight domestic)

S/o falling on Bakugou with quirk that puts thoughts on skin

Bakugou’s kids hang out with his parents (domestic)

Bakugou family meets up with Bakusquad (domestic)

S/o praising Bakugou when he feels down

Super soft s/o that’s a medic

Reader kissing stranger to learn language

S/o is former delinquent and child of mafia

Bakugou’s s/o meets parents for first time

Bakugou with super sweet yet clumsy s/o

Bakugou has nightmare and accidentally hurts s/o

Bakugou having a hot moment until realizing s/o is on period (NSFW)

Bakugou finding tired and stressed s/o on floor crying

Bakugou and s/o painting new baby’s nursery

Dying kiss

Jealous kiss

Goofy kiss

Angry kiss

Bakugou wanting alone time with s/o but kids interrupted (part 1) (domestic & slight nsfw)

I thought I lost you kiss

In the dark kiss

S/o snapping on Mineta after making inappropriate comment

Crush getting hit by quirk that makes heroes seem like villains

Pirate Bakugou and s/o AU

Father’s Day surprise (domestic)

S/o getting trapped under rubble during fight

S/o getting a dog that ends up liking Bakugou

S/o breaking up with Bakugou since he only focused on being a hero

S/o being proud of Bakugou after sports festival

S/o being put into coma from being kidnapped then waking up

Bakugou wanting alone time with s/o but kids interrupted (part 2) (domestic & nsfw)

Shy s/o sneaking to Bakugou’s dorm

Pizza delivery boy Bakugou

Bakugou gets called from police on anniversary finding out s/o is dead

Why (song fic)

S/o showing up to Bakugou’s dorm angrily after being forced into quirk marriage

S/o reuniting with Bakugou after being captured

Esta Noche (song fic)

Bakugou and s/o switching hero costumes

S/o that can deliver illnesses to others finding villain that killed their parents

Bakugou takes family on vacation (domestic)

S/o constantly being tired from school & training

*Updated*

Bakugou meeting (s/o) & child he left from high school pt. 2

(S/o) comes home w/ wound & exhausted (domestic)

Bakugou embarasses chill (s/o) and she gets rageful

Anti-Hero Bakugou #1

Anti-Hero Bakugou #2

Anti-Hero Bakugou #3

Bakugou catching (s/o) dancing to KPOP

(S/o) is busy at college so Bakugou surprises them

(S/o) teasing Bakugou while he plays video games (NSFW)

(S/o) tags along with Bakugou to photoshoot

Class reacting to Bakugou & (S/o) photoshoot

Bakugou finds (S/o) tied up after being MIA

Pumpkin carving

Bakugou and (S/o) doing black face mask

Bakugou finding out shy crush is kinky (barely NSFW)

Jealous Bakugou with (S/o)’s secret admirer

Bakugou seeing (S/o) without a shirt (slight NSFW)

Bakugou vs Monoma x Reader

Bakugou proposing to cheerful (S/o)

Bakugou jealous of (S/o) that’s “one of the guys”

Fiesty Omega (S/o) that’s from America (Omegaverse)

Pro-Hero Bakugou reuniting with ex-crush who’s fashion designer

Bakugou wanting alone time with (S/o) but kids interrupt pt. 3 (NSFW)

Bakugou crushing on Izuku’s protective cousin

Bakugou x Quirkless Reader

(S/o)’s dog that initially hates Bakugou, but then teams up with him to hate Deku

Bakugou’s crush gets hit with memory loss quirk and Kaminari says he’s her boyfriend

Perfect (song fic)

Bakugou and crush versing one another in sports festival and crush teases him in front of everyone

Victorian Era Villain Bakugou x Reader

Bakugou and (S/o) meeting up on rooftop in between hectic schedules

Ruin My Life (song fic)

Stuck in detention with Bakugou (slight NSFW)

Anti Hero Bakugou #4

Anti Hero Bakugou #4 pt. 2 (slight NSFW)

Suit and Tie (song fic)

Spring Break Hormones

Crack Pineapple Pizza Oneshot

Reader modeling for Bakugou’s parents then finding how who their son was

Bakugou’s shy (S/o) wear tight jeans for first time (slight NSFW)

Bakusquad goes to pumpkin patch until it starts pouring

Jealous Bakugou because Shindou flirts with (S/o) at costume party (NSFW)

Fics

Twisted Fates Prologue

Twisted Fates Chapter 1

Twisted Fates Chapter 2

Twisted Fates Chapter 3

Scarlet Night Chapter 1

Scarlet Night Chapter 2

Scarlet Night Chapter 3

Updated

The Chosen Prologue Chapter 1

The Chosen Chapter 2

The Chosen Chapter 3

NSFW Alphabet

Aftercare

Quickie & No

Oral, Risk, Unfair

Jack Off

Cum, Dirty Secret, Favorite Position, Kink

Body Part, Unfair

Original Characters

Headcannons

Scenarios

Bakugou x @technicallyflamey OC

*Updated*

Bakugou x @artistvicky OC

Fics

My Other Half Chapter 1

My Other Half Chapter 2

My Other Half Chapter 3

My Other Half Chapter 4

Rare Limited Edition Karma Akabane Content *gasp*

Karma with Artist (S/o)

Karma x Reader Purge AU (NSFW)

#bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou-tm #bakugou-tm masterlist #bakugou-tm headcannons #bakugou-tm scenarios #slight karma akabane x reader #karma akabane x reader #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #wowzers this took a minute #THANK YOU @BOXWEL FOR HELPING ME ORGANIZE THIS

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brujoenlafrontera · 4 years

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hi!!! I’m a puertorriqueño/nicaragüense enby looking into resources for learning bruja stuff, any good place you know to start?

I’ve gotten a couple of asks about this lately, and i’m so happy to know there are more latinos finding their way to the practice, tumblr’s brujeria tag often gives the impression that theres so little of us out there reclaiming our practices but getting asks like these brings me a lot of faith that thats not true :) first and foremost:

GETTING INTO BRUJERIA IS HARD.

it really is. baby brujos like us know that better than anyone- getting started, is often the hardest part of doing anything, and its no different with brujeria. it can feel so overwhelming and feeling lost is natural. from my experience, although i am still a newbie ive been able to find a lot of information out there, here are the best places to find info, sorted by priority:

FAMILY! a little self explanatory, but brujeria at its best is truly is an inherited, familial practice. If you can, before delving into internet resources, definitely connect w your family if you’re able to and ask them for guidance and about their experiences!

Your family is always the best resource over anything you can find online; theres so much misinformation out there or information not relevant to your region and if someone in your family already has established practices, always trust them first

Do some thinking back to all your cultural traditions, quirks, stories, and superstitions that you’ve learned from your family across time and never thought too much about- and rediscover them under a new light

KEEP IN MIND: brujeria is NOT a singular , concrete practice w concrete rules in itself, the term blankets a lot of traditions across latam, the caribbean, mexico, but imo its always best to stick with brujeria related to your heritage and where your connection is.

this can be hard for people (like me!) with huge family taboos toward brujeria that make it unsafe to ask around about, and/or limitations in family connections (also like me unfortunately). I personally can really only get the tidbits and stories that my family accidentally slips out when I occasionally see them. i try to write them down as much as possible, but the info i can get is limited... and thats where the following comes in.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES. i.e, youtube, tumblr, instagram brujx communities. notice I haven’t said “internet” in general- the reason why i trust community based social media more than random individual websites you find on google is because, in the case of brujeria and honestly any non-european craft, you’re often gonna find a LOT of white people writing blogs, books, etc about their “spiritual experiences” in latam countries and wrongly/incorrectly taking ATR or indigenous traditions (like with smudging). I know, with social media, although those same white people are also on insta and tumblr, it’s a LOT easier to see the face behind the accounts and differentiate who to trust, who’s legit and has real experience to share, rather than a nameless, faceless, website that is actually some colonizer sharing colonized ideas who thinks theyre on a spiritual journey taking traditions all willy nilly. And the fact that in social media, its much easier to find a lot of good brujas at once bc they tend to follow each other lmao.what ive personally done to find information tho is essentially SCOUR tumblrs, insta accs, and watching tons of youtube videos for posts, accounts, videos, etc, and narrowing down good info from there through , namely:

CHECKING WHO YOUR SOURCE IS!!!

ASKING YOURSELF FROM WHAT EXPERIENCE THEYRE SPEAKING FROM

ALWAYS TAKING EVERYTHING WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

AND STICKING TO INFO FROM CULTURES OPEN AND RELEVANT TO ME.

again, brujería is different depending on where your family is from in latam, and if you have an established connection to indigenous and/or black roots, so it’s useful to use keywords relating to that when searching (like if ur black, you can look into ATRs(african traditional religions) which tend to mix deeply with brujeria, if ur indigenous, finding other people from your tribe is great, and if youre not pursuing your already learned traditions you can think about connecting to them more deeply(altho indigenous traditions are their own thing, sometimes they do mix with brujeria too), and apart from familial roots, if ur catholic/christian and/or want to explore it, saint work/catholic brujeria might be a good fit for you!)

tumblr: there are a couple of fantastic brujxs on this site with great blogs and resources who have sadly left the site, but i still go through their posts heavily for spells, rituals, scraps of info! etting started w brujería is hard bc there’s really not that much info out there right now, but i compile as many good brujeria posts i find on my acc.

@brujeria-n-bongs great for catholic brujeria, now at @Upliftherbs on instagram

@brujeria-lost @barberwitch @reina-morada @highbrujita

@naomi121406 is by far the most active and informative tumblr resource ive found, shes an afro-indigenous diaguita curandera from argentina so shes also really helpful if ATRs are in your path!

Im not black myself and dont follow ATRs so i don’t really know many good blogs for afrolatine brujxs out there but if anyone would like to tag some in the replies thatd be awesome!

instagram: Ive found that instagram #brujeria tags has a pretty healthy active stream of posts. You’re gonna have to sift through a lot of them to get to the good stuff though- imo a lot of hispanics use the brujería tag not to mean “latine brujería” but just the spanish word for witchcraft, so a lot of white hispanics will put wicca/neo witchcraft in the tag. imo that’s really not something i’m personally interested in bc it’s not true to brujeria’s traditional nature, is very white/eruropean , and that wicca shit basically just got here. its a relatively a recent thing😭 so i try to stick to bruja accounts that aren’t influenced by that.

youtube: The youtube brujería tag is hit or miss? and again, contains a lot of wicca. But there are some good practitioners on there like The Mexican Witch! You just gonna look around, and dont be afraid to click on videos by really really small youtubers; they often are the ones with the most informative and legit things to say!

Everyone’s path as a bruja/o/x (sjdf trying to be inclusive w gendered language is difficult) is different but here are some topics i think are great to look into as a beginner!

ancestors: start at the bottom and figure out who they are, where theyre from, and set up an altar. it’ll help you a lot with figuring out your identity and path as a bruja later on.

setting up a grimoire

divination: tarot is actually what got me into brujeria at first! tarot isnt strictly traditional and is european in itself but its a wonderful tool for connecting to dieties, saints, etc as well as super fun and helps a lot with introspection

ritual abrecaminos, aka road opening spells!

amarres (love spells... proceed with caution)

limpias, mal de ojo

saint work: even if you’re not catholic (im ex catholic), a growing number of us (especially lgbt latines like @/upliftherbs on instagram) are starting to take back and decolonize our view of saints like La Virgen Maria and removing her from the rigid european/colonized interpretation thats been forced into us

candle spells in general (i fucking love candles tbh, cheap, easy, fun, and WORKS)

spiritual colognes, how to cleanse

finally, here are some helpful posts yall should definitely read and think about moving forward!

about using tumblr as a resource

about looking into brujeria as a part-white part latine

bruja psa + about reclaiming lost indiginety

honestly naomi’s entire brujeria tag is great and super informative for beginners and basically holds answers for almost anything at this point

hope this post helps yall out!

EDIT: oh lord now that this is posted the outline format i tried to use is all kinds of fucked up please dont mind the odd numbering lmfao tumbr hates organized formats

#brujeria #witchblr #POC Witches #witchcraft #baby witch #mine #basics

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crookedbigbang · 4 years

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ARTIST CLAIMS ARE HERE!

TIMELINE:

Artist Sign-Ups: May 22-August 7

Artist Claims Open: August 6

Final Check-In: August 30

Final Drafts Due: Sept 18

Posting Begins: September 21

THE BASICS:

One of the unique aspects of a big bang challenge is the combination of fic and fanart. Artists are welcome to create art in any medium they choose, including but not limited to: mixes, videos, podfics, gifs, drawings, paintings, graphics, edits, comics, physical crafts. Art is impossible to quantify, but we do ask that artists put in a significant effort in recognition of the work that the writers are doing on the fics. Authors will be writing their fics all summer and will be expending significant time on the project. A good benchmark for artists is about 15-20 hours of work, including brainstorming and planning.

The final product should be a collaboration between author and artist. What that collaboration looks like is a highly individual process: if you get a clear artistic vision, run with it; but you should also feel free to ask your author any questions you have along the journey. Artists and authors should share drafts with each other as they go so that when the final products are posted, they complement each other well.

We have 5 wonderful Big Bang fics. Click the Read More for their summaries!

Fic 1: Take Me Out to the Ballgame Tentative Title: (not the title) take me out to the ballgame Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor Ao3 Rating: E Warnings: No archive warnings apply Additional Tags: Baseball AU ; Coming Out ; Bisexual Characters ; Dating ; Alternate Universe - Different Meeting Summary: Jon and Tommy meet playing baseball in high school and start to fall for each other, then Tommy moves away. Their epic love story continues when they end up on the same Minor League baseball team. The big question is, will they end up with a World Series ring or an engagement ring? Fic 2: Spirits that I’ve Cited Tentative Title: Spirits that I've cited Pairing(s): Tommy/Lovett; background Emily/Jon, Alyssa/Erin Characters: Tommy, Lovett, Favs, Emily, Alyssa, Erin, Dan Ao3 Rating: tentative M (for psychological horror and possible sex) Warnings: a non-consensual kiss under the influence of possession might happen, this scene is not yet written Additional Tags: paranormal investigators, slow burn, reluctant colleagues to friends to lovers, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, accidental internet stars, bed-sharing, coming-out, road trips, witches getting married, demonic possession, ghosts, mythical creatures, Monster of the Week, psychological but non-graphical horror, slightly unreliable narrator, intoxication, magical mind control, themes of bodily and mental autonomy, (past) abusive relationships (not between main characters), possession induced mental health problems, worldbuilding, happy ending Summary: It’s a cold day in November when Tommy meets Lovett and his life turns upside down. Which shouldn’t be the worst thing, looking at it objectively.

Because, objectively, Tommy’s life already sucks. He is lonely, depressed, and Crooked Medium, the agency for paranormal investigations he co-owns with his ex-boyfriend Jared, is falling apart. Besides the shitty fact that he and Jared broke up, they constantly operate in the red, despite their best efforts. And it’s just the garbage cherry on top of the dumpster sundae that Jared and their only other core member, Jon, hate each other’s guts. Jon is Tommy's friend, but more importantly, he is Crooked Medium's exorcist par excellence, and for a former priest Tommy thought he might be better at the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing. He supposes that probably explains the 'former' part. So of course he panics when Jon unexpectedly buys out Jared’s shares in the company and offers Lovett a one-year apprenticeship as a medium and buys Jared shares of the agency. Suddenly Tommy’s faced with training a person who is not familiar with magic in one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, instead of relying on the experience Jared had. Despite the help from magical professors Alyssa and Dan, witch and shop-owner Erin, and their whole team—to Tommy it feels like Lovett’s credentialing next November is ages away. However, after a bonding experience involving ghost mice, Tommy slowly but surely discovers that Lovett isn’t an inconvenience at all. He is charming, attractive, hilarious, and way more talented than Tommy originally anticipated. Even their business improves, especially when they become an overnight internet sensation due to a malfunction. Instead of operating only in Boston, people across the country are now booking them to handle their mystical and paranormal problems. With each new case, Lovett learns more—and Tommy learns more about Lovett. This is unfortunate, given that Lovett is technically Tommy's intern, and the last thing Tommy needs is a harassment scandal. Tommy, naturally good at ignoring things, decides to ignore it. Which works out fine, thank you very much. At least up until Alyssa and Erin’s magical wedding in the woods. Or up until Lovett has a life-changing experience with a mirror. Or maybe even up until Lovett (plus Lovett's friend/household spirit Spencer) moves in. And just when Tommy thinks falling in love with his employee is his biggest problem, it turns out much more nefarious forces are at work. Fic #3: The gentle outline of the country we are building Tentative Title: The gentle outline of the country we are building Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett, Jon Favreau/Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Cody Keenan, Michael O' Neill, Spencer Wong, Andy Favreau, Tanya Somanader, Travis Helwig Ao3 Rating: E Warnings: No archive warnings apply Additional Tags: DC era, LA era, pining, wrong number AU, polyamory, threesomes, jealousy, slow burn, friends with benefits, angst with a happy ending, getting together, smut, fluff, blowjobs, anal sex, rimming, dirty talk, sexting, drinking, marijuana, sex under mild influence of alcohol, friends to lovers. AO3 (working) Summary: It takes spending the night in one room with a king-sized bed for Jon, Lovett, and Tommy to finally get it right after nearly a decade of trying. AKA A story about Jon, Tommy, and Lovett getting together, aided and abetted by Jon’s technological ineptitude, misunderstandings, love, friendship, and longing. Expanded summary: Jon and Lovett embark on a charged, text-based flirtation without knowing the other after Jon texts the wrong number during the 2008 general election campaign. It feels like a summer fling that wouldn’t end, just like those times Jon had slept with Tommy back in Chicago. But both of them do end, but at least Jon’s going to the White House with a new speechwriter and his best friend in tow. Jon thinks, not the right time then with Tommy, not the right time now with you, Lovett. They write speeches and policies and learn lessons on how to build a country and a friendship. The first summer at the White House, Tommy starts taking Lovett to bed almost every night. Two years later, he stops, because Lovett knocks on his door one day and says, “I am leaving.” Not quite the right time for you and me. Lovett spends his days in LA writing things very different from what he used to but thinking thoughts about Jon and Tommy that aren’t all that different. Jon and Tommy skype him from Chicago when his show gets canceled, and Lovett thinks about how right they look together on the screen, like they belong to each other. Jon comes to LA and doesn’t leave. Tommy moves closer, but not close enough. They lose everything when November 2016 dawns and then build an empire from the ruins, and over the next few months, they think, maybe it wasn’t the right time then, and maybe we did not do this before because we were always meant to do this together. All of us. Fic 4: Loving Him was Red - Azure Title: loving him was red - azure Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Dan Pfeiffer, background Michael/Elijah Characters: Jon, Dan, Tommy, Lovett, Alyssa, Michael, Elijah Rating: E Warnings: No major warnings apply Additional tags: alternate universe, actors, hollywood, tabloids, love at first sight, BDSM, like lots of BDSM, spanking, flogging, humiliation, painplay, safeword use, failed scene, alcohol, alcohol abuse, drug use and abuse, divorce, bad at communication Summary: Rising star Dan Pfeiffer meets grown-up child actor Jon Favreau on the set of the movie that just might be their big break. It's a good old-fashioned Hollywood story. Boy meets Boy. Boy falls head over heels at first sight. Boy marries Boy. Boy ties Boy up and fucks him til he screams. But the Hollywood lights hit every dark shadow too and as the tabloids stir up gossip; as Jon spends more and more time at the club; and as Dan starts to wonder what comes next, the faultlines widen and their marriage falls into the abyss This is the first of a three fic arc chronicling the beginning, end, and re-beginning of an epic love story. Fic 5: Invisible String

Tentative Title: Invisible String Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor Ao3 Rating: Explicit Warnings: NO WARNINGS Additional Tags: affection, holding hands, chase sequence, shaving (face), mention of pod sponsors, wills & estates, cartoon villains, clothes sharing, Boston, plane flights, current day/LA era,Summary: Human boatshoe Tommy Vietor discovers he can claim a huge inheritance if he can prove he is married. If he does not, the $40 million fortune will go to the National Rifle Association. Best friend Jon Favreau steps up to help Tommy out. The NRA hires investigators to find information in order to break the will, chasing our boys all over Boston at one point.

#come create art for these amazing fic!#crooked big bang

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It. https://nyti.ms/2PiTeFr

This piece by former InfoWars "video reporter" (?) Josh Owens reveals all the insanity you'd expect but also the pathetic sadness of those who continue to enable, peddle, and profit from his malicious lies.

Confession is good for the soul, but I'm trying to get my head around the fact that the author continued to work for Alex Jones for several YEARS after the latter made his vile claims about Sandy Hook.

Josh Owens was drawn to #InfoWars while "vulnerable, angry & searching for direction"; after 4 years w/Alex Jones, he saw "virulent nature of his world." Read if you can stomach Jones' deeply disturbing behavior. This model has infected right-wing media.

Josh Owens is a seriously good writer. Too bad he didn't make the subject of this piece himself. Why was he angry, why did he stay with Jones so long, how did he feel as he did his work? These unexamined questions are the heart of the story, not how disturbed a plainly disturbed man Jones is.

"Owens admits that his personal mental and emotional issues led him to Jones. We should be glad for him, that he found the strength to recognize it, address it, and walk away from a bad situation. Owens shouldn't be vilified for his past mistakes, but celebrated for his return. Prodigal son, no? But forgiveness does not imply absolution."

"This can't be the end of the road. As he is responsible for a lot of anguish and grief. Is he even an accessory to murder? The pain that he enabled will live on in families for decades and become part of our national fabric. How does he intend to make amends? This written catharsis is a good first step, but it's only a first step. Is he the little girl in the airplane, seeing the world for the first time? What does he intend to do with this revelation, and fix the damage he has done?"

"At 23, Josh Owens quit film school to work as a video editor for Alex Jones. This is his account of the years he spent within the Infowars empire." /1

"At first, he found it easy to brush off Alex Jones’s fever dreams as eccentricities and excesses. But he eventually found that he had his limits." /2

"Once, at a private ranch, Owens said, Alex Jones picked up an AR-15 and accidentally fired it in the writer’s direction. The bullet hit the ground about 10 feet away from him, he recalled. Jones claimed he had intentionally fired the gun as a joke, he said."/3

“Over time, I came to learn that keeping Jones from getting angry was a big part of the job, though it was impossible to predict his outbursts,” he writes."/4

“There was a time when I shared his anger. In fact, I was still angry. But this is where we differed: I wasn’t angry with others; I was angry with myself. And once I realized that, it was easier to walk away”/5

I WORKED FOR ALEX JONES. I REGRET IT.

I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people.

By Josh Owens | Published Dec. 5, 2019 | New York Times Magazine | Posted December 6, 2019 |

On Election Day 2016, I sat in the passenger seat of Alex Jones’s Dodge Hellcat as we swerved through traffic, making our way to a nearby polling place. As Jones punched the gas pedal to the floor, the smell of vodka, like paint thinner, wafted up from the white Dixie cup anchored in the console. My stomach churned as the phone I held streamed live video to Facebook: Jones rambling about voter fraud and rigged elections while I stared at the screen, holding the camera at an angle to hide his double chin. It rarely worked, but I didn’t want to be blamed when he watched the video later.

Four years earlier, Jones — wanting to expand his website, Infowars, into a full-blown guerrilla news operation and hoping to scout new hires from his growing fan base — held an online contest. At 23, I was vulnerable, angry and searching for direction, so I decided to give it a shot. Out of what Infowars said were hundreds of submissions, my video — a half-witted, conspiratorial glance at the creation and function of the Federal Reserve — made it to the final round.

Unconvinced I could cut it as a reporter, Jones offered me a full-time position as a video editor. I quit film school and moved nearly a thousand miles to Austin, Tex., fully invested in propagating his worldview. By the time I found myself seated next to Jones speeding down the highway, I had seen enough of the inner workings of Infowars to know better.

Before we left the office, Jones instructed me to title the video “Alex Jones Denied Right to Vote” when uploading to YouTube. He knew before we left that they wouldn’t let us walk into a polling location with our cameras rolling. I don’t think Jones even intended to vote. Rather, he hoped to turn this into a spectacle, an insult to him personally, another opportunity to play the self-aggrandizing victim.

“Look at this great city shot,” he said pointing out the window at Austin’s skyline. As soon as I pulled the camera off him, he reached for the white Dixie cup. Is this really how I’m going to die? I thought to myself, imagining the scene: Jones veering too close to the guardrail, ranting about George Soros and Hillary Clinton. Sirens echoing in the distance, flashing lights reflecting off oil-soaked pavement as he grabs the camera and utters his final words, “Hillary ... rigged ... the car.” His listeners would have believed it. Years earlier, I would have believed it.

Fortunately, there were no sirens or flashing lights, and I was relieved when “Vote Here” signs began to appear. A line stretched out the door of the polling place, in a local strip mall, by the time we arrived. As I expected, Jones was told multiple times that he couldn’t film at a polling place, and he decided to leave. Walking back to the car, still taking sips from his white cup, he began noticeably slurring his words. A friend of Jones’s who tagged along — for “security purposes” — offered to give me a ride back to the office. Jones revved his engine, tires squealing as he sped out of the parking lot.

I began listening to Jones’s radio show — the flagship program of what is now a conspiracist media empire with an audience that until recently surpassed a million people — in the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency. The American public had been sold a war through outright fabrications; the economy was in free fall thanks to Wall Street greed and the failure of Washington regulators. Most of the mainstream media was caught flat-footed by these developments, but Jones seemed to have an explanation for everything. He railed against government corruption and secrecy, the militarization of police. He confronted those in power, traipsed through the California redwoods to expose the secretive all-male meeting of elites at Bohemian Grove and even appeared in two Richard Linklater films as himself, screaming into a megaphone.

But it wasn’t the politics that initially drew me in. Jones had a way of imbuing the world with mystery, adding a layer of cinematic verisimilitude that caught my attention. Suddenly, I was no longer a bored kid attending an overpriced art school. I was Fox Mulder combing through the X-Files, Rod Serling opening a door to the Twilight Zone, even Rosemary Woodhouse convinced that the neighbors were members of a ritualistic cult. I believed that the world was strategically run by a shadowy, organized cabal, and that Jones was a hero for exposing it.

I had my limits. I can’t say I ever believed his avowed theory that Sandy Hook was a staged event to push for gun control; to Jones, everything was a “false flag.” I didn’t believe that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama smelled like sulfur because of their proximity to hell or that Planned Parenthood was run by “Nazi baby killers.” But it was easy to brush off these fever dreams as eccentricities and excesses — not the heart of the Alex Jones operation but mere diversions.

Once I started working there, however, it became obvious that one was impossible to separate one from the other. Soon after I was hired, Jones’s Infowars-branded store — which sells emergency-survival foods, water filters, body armor and much more — introduced an iodine supplement, initially marketed as a “shield” against nuclear fallout. Still learning the ropes, I was tasked with creating video advertisements for the supplement, which he ran on his online TV show. One of these ads started with a shot of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it exploded. I doubled the sound of the explosion, adding a glitch filter and sirens in the background for dramatic effect. Jones stood over my shoulder as I edited. “This is great,” he said. “See if you can find flyover footage of Chernobyl as well.”

Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing.

Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren’t finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn’t just stop, though; Jones demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had never seen him so angry.

We scrambled to find something, anything we could report on. We tested freshly caught crab from a dock in Crescent City, Calif., and traveled to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in Avila Beach, asking fishermen if we could test the small croakers they caught off a nearby pier. We even tried to locate a small nuclear-waste facility just so we could capture the Geiger counter displaying a high number. But we couldn’t find what Jones wanted, and after two weeks of traveling from San Diego to Portland, we flew back to Texas as failures, bracing for Jones’s rage. (Jones did not respond to detailed queries sent before publication by The Times Magazine.)

Over time, I came to learn that keeping Jones from getting angry was a big part of the job, though it was impossible to predict his outbursts. Stories abounded among my co-workers: The blinds stuck, so he ripped them off the wall. A water cooler had mold in it, so he grabbed a large knife, stabbed the plastic base wildly and smashed it on the ground. Headlines weren’t strong enough; the news wasn’t being covered the way he wanted; reporters didn’t know how to dress properly. Once a co-worker stopped by the office with a pet fish he was taking home to his niece. It swam in circles in a small, transparent bag. When Jones saw the bag balanced upright on a desk in the conference room, he emptied it into a garbage can. On one occasion, he threatened to send out a memo banning laughter in the office. “We’re in a war,” he said, and he wanted people to act accordingly.

I also saw Jones give an employee the Rolex off his own wrist, simply because he thought the employee was mad at him. “Now, would a bad guy do that?” Jones asked as he handed over the watch. Once, when I went to interview a frequent guest of Jones’s, I was sent with a check to cover a potentially lifesaving cancer treatment. A few times I came close to quitting, and like clockwork, just before I pulled the plug, I received a bonus or significant raise. I hadn’t discussed my discontent with Jones, but he seemed to sense it.

Jones often told his employees that working for him would leave a black mark on our records. To him, it was the price that must be paid for boldly confronting those in power — what he called the New World Order or, later, the deep state. Once my beliefs began to shift, I saw the virulent nature of his world, the emptiness and loathing in many of those impassioned claims. But I was certain that after four years working for Jones, I would never be able to get another job — banished into poverty as penance for my transgressions, and rightly so.

When Jones wanted to blow off steam, we would travel to a private ranch outside Austin to shoot guns. Among other firearms, we would bring the two Barrett .50-caliber rifles he kept stashed in the office. Because we never missed an opportunity to create more content, we also brought along cameras to turn whatever happened into a segment for his show.

I remember one trip in particular. It was the summer of 2014, and I rode to the ranch in the back of a co-worker’s truck, surrounded by semiautomatic rifles, boxes of ammunition and Tannerite, an explosive rifle target. A few of us left early in the morning, arriving before Jones to film B-roll and load magazines; he had no patience for preparation. When he came hours later, after eating a few handfuls of jalapeño chips, he picked up an AR-15 and accidentally fired it in my direction.

The bullet hit the ground about 10 feet away from me. One employee, who was already uncomfortable around firearms, lost it, accusing Jones of being careless and flippant. This was one of the few times I saw someone call Jones out and the only time he didn’t get angry in response. He claimed he had intentionally fired the gun as a joke — as if this were any better.

I stood by silently, considering what might have happened if the gun had been pointed a little to the right. After a while the upset employee let it go, and no one brought it up again. We cracked open a few more beers, filled an old television with Tannerite and blew it up.

One weekend, a few people from the office went hunting at a game reserve. On the following Monday, I was handed a hard drive full of video files and told to edit them for Jones to air on his show later in the week. “There are clips in here that are pretty bad, things we don’t want to get out, so let me take a look at this before we upload it,” one of my managers said.

The first video I clicked on came from a cellphone. The camera pans across a blood-covered floor in what looked like a garage. Dead animals were scattered about: eyes lifeless, tongues hanging from their mouths, crimson streaks splashed on their fur.

In another video, a bison grazed quietly in the shade of a large tree; it reminded me of a tableau at the American Museum of Natural History. Then the camera panned over to Jones, maybe 20 yards away, holding what looked like a handgun. Jones began firing at the bison, tufts of hair flying with every hit. The animal remained standing as Jones shot round after round. Finally, the hunting guide yelled at Jones to stop and handed him a high-caliber rifle. Jones took a moment to make sure the cameras were still recording and fired a few more rounds as the animal finally collapsed.

I shared a large room with three other employees, and Jones often walked into our office after he wrapped for the day. His first question was always “How was the show?” If anyone said it was great — someone, if not everyone, always said it was great — his response was the same. “Really?” he would say, moving over to their side of the room. “Did you really think it was great? What did you like about it?”

Working for Jones was a balancing act. You had to determine where he was emotionally and match his tone quickly. If he was angry, then you had better get angry. If he was joking around, then you could relax, sort of, always looking out of the corner of your eye for his mood to turn at any moment.

Late one night, after an extended live broadcast, Jones walked into my office shirtless. This was normal; he removed his shirt frequently around us. He pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose from a storage cabinet and filled his cup. He stumbled into his private restroom, changed into a clean black polo shirt and stepped back into our office. “Hit me,” he said to an employee in the room. When the employee refused, Jones got louder, his face redder. “Hit me!” He kept saying it, getting closer each time. Finally, knowing Jones would never relent, the employee gave him a weak tap on the shoulder.

“Oh, come on,” he said, “hit me harder!”

The employee punched him hard in the shoulder. Jones grunted on impact, seeming to enjoy the pain. Then, it was his turn. Smirking, he planted his feet, reared back and lunged his body weight forward as his fist connected with the man’s arm. I could hear the dull thud of impact, then a wincing sigh. They traded a few more punches, each time seeming less playful. Jones became wild-eyed, spit flying from his clenched teeth as he exhaled. On his last hit, the sound was different. Wet. I thought I could hear the meat split open in the employee’s arm. Jones roared as he punched a cabinet, denting the door in. A few weeks later, I heard that Jones had broken a video editor’s ribs after playing the same game in a downtown bar.

Having aligned himself with Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, Jones might now be considered a version of a conservative, but his perspective is much more complicated than that. Infowars was like a lot of digital-media outlets, in that we reported on the things our top editor thought would go viral. But because our boss was Alex Jones, this was a peculiar process. Assignments were often handed down live on the air during his show. We were to have it playing throughout the office, always listening for directives. Ideas for stories mostly came from what other news outlets reported. Jones wanted us to “hijack” the mainstream media’s coverage and use it to our advantage. If it fit into the Infowars narrative, it played.

When I wasn’t at the office, I spent much of my time traveling for Jones. I inhaled the tear gas in Ferguson, Mo., during the Black Lives Matter protests, retching as I hid with protesters, corralled by cops in riot gear. I stood next to armed cowboys and ranch hands as they faced off against the Bureau of Land Management to retrieve Cliven Bundy’s cattle in Nevada. I had dinner with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, at his home in Phoenix and spent a weekend at the compound of Jim Bakker, the televangelist who spent time in prison for fraud. Jones’s instinctual desire to distance himself from the mainstream led us to unusual and sometimes dark places.

In December 2015, the day before Jones interviewed Donald Trump, still a candidate at the time, on his radio show, I made my way to upstate New York on assignment, along with a reporter and second cameraman. We were sent to visit Muslim-majority communities throughout the United States to investigate what Jones instructed us to call “the American Caliphate.” After the California Geiger-counter debacle, we had meetings with Jones before trips in order to ascertain exactly what he wanted. If we “hit some home runs,” he said, we would get significant bonuses.

We landed in Newark at 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2015. The first stop was Islamberg, a Muslim community three hours north of Manhattan. It was founded in the 1980s by mostly African-American followers of a Pakistani cleric named Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, who encouraged devotees of his conservative brand of Sufi Islam to establish small settlements across the rural United States. Gilani was suspected of association with the organization Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which was briefly designated as a terrorist group by the State Department in the 1990s; Gilani has denied any connection to the group. His followers in Islamberg had no record of violence, and some of them had denounced the Islamic State in an interview with Reuters earlier that year, saying they didn’t believe Islamic State members to be real Muslims. But unfounded rumors circulated around far-right corners of the internet that this community was a potential terrorist-training center. Jones, who thought the media consistently ingratiated themselves with Islamic extremists, believed them.

We pulled in, unannounced, to a dirt drive leading to the community, stopping at a flimsy cattle gate guarded by two men. The reporter, wearing a hidden camera, approached the entrance as we filmed the interaction from the vehicle. The men were calm and polite, if a little suspicious — reasonable given the circumstances. They denied our entry into Islamberg but took our number and told us we could return after they verified who we were.

It was only later, after listening to the audio from the reporter’s hidden camera, that I heard what he told the two men guarding the gate. “Basically, what we do is, we go around, and we do videos debunking claims of stuff,” the reporter said. “The word is, people say this is some kind of training camp, so we wanted to come in and get some footage and kind of put that whole rumor to rest.”

He gave them his real name — a name that, with a quick Google search, would lead back to Infowars, with its headlines like “Inside Sources: Bin Laden’s Corpse Has Been on Ice for Nearly a Decade,” “Special Report: Why Obama Brought Ebola to U.S. Exposed” and “VIDEO: ‘Demon’ Caught on Camera During Obama Visit?” Those headlines could be described by many words, but none of them would be “debunking.”

Because of the conspiracy theories about the place, Islamberg was a constant target of right-wing extremists. That April, a Tennessee man was arrested and later convicted of plotting to raise a militia to burn Islamberg’s mosque to the ground. Only days before we arrived, the F.B.I. issued an alert to law enforcement to be on the lookout for a man named Jon Ritzheimer, the leader of an anti-Muslim movement in Arizona who posted a video threatening violence against Muslims less than two weeks earlier. In the video, he brandished a handgun, saying: “I’m urging all Americans across the U.S. everywhere in public, start carrying a slung rifle with you, everywhere. Don’t be a victim in your own country.”

So the phone call we received later that night from a law-enforcement agent shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The officer who contacted us said he simply wanted to verify who we were after receiving a concerned call from someone in Islamberg. We told Jones about it, and he chose to believe the call was a veiled threat, an attempt to intimidate us into silence. To him, this verified that we were onto something. He even went so far as to include Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, in the purported conspiracy, claiming he wanted to abolish the Second Amendment — and that somehow intimidating us would achieve that.

Jones told us to file a story that accused the police of harassment, lending credence to the theory that this community contained dangerous, potential terrorists. I knew this wasn’t the case according to the information we had. We all did. Days before, we spoke to the sheriff and the mayor of Deposit, N.Y., a nearby municipality. They both told us the people in Islamberg were kind, generous neighbors who welcomed the surrounding community into their homes, even celebrating holidays together.

The information did not meet our expectations, so we made it up, preying on the vulnerable and feeding the prejudices and fears of Jones’s audience. We ignored certain facts, fabricated others and took situations out of context to fit our narrative, posting headlines like:

Drone Investigates Islamic Training Center

Shariah Law Zones Confirmed in America

Infowars Reporters Stalked by Terrorism Task Force

Report: Obama’s Terror Cells in the U.S.

The Rumors Are True: Shariah Law Is Here!

Our next stop was Hamtramck, a Muslim-majority city embedded within Detroit that alarmists in neighboring communities called Shariahville. As we headed west, my phone vibrated, and a news alert appeared on the screen. There were reports that a mass shooting that week in San Bernardino, Calif., had been perpetrated by Islamic extremists, making it at the time the deadliest Islamic attack in the United States since Sept. 11.

I knew that when the details emerged, they would substantiate the lies we pushed to Jones’s audience. It didn’t matter if the attack took place on the other side of the country or if the people in Islamberg had no connection to the perpetrators in San Bernardino. Jones’s listeners would draw imaginary lines between the two, and we were helping them do it.

I quit working for Jones on April 7, 2017. When offered another job, an introductory position with a 75 percent pay cut, I jumped at the opportunity. Instead of giving two weeks’ notice, I left in three hours. Jones had gone home for the day, so I didn’t speak with him in person. I said goodbye to co-workers and managers, handed over my company credit card and hoped that would be the end of it. Two nights later, I received a call from Jones: “Let me tell you a little secret,” he said in his gravelly voice. “I don’t like it anymore, either.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” he said, “and I got all these people working for me, and you know, then I feel guilty. I don’t want to do it. You think I want to keep doing this? I haven’t wanted to do this for five years, man.” I sensed that he was pandering, but I couldn’t help thinking that for the first time since I started this job, Jones and I finally had something in common. Sure, there was a time when I shared his anger. In fact, I was still angry. But this is where we differed: I wasn’t angry with others; I was angry with myself. And once I realized that, it was easier to walk away. When I left, I tried to put myself in his shoes, to figure out why he said and did the things he did. At times I saw a different side to Jones, one that was vulnerable, desiring validation and acceptance. Then he would say something so vile and callous it became impossible to look past it.

Even though I was no longer beholden to Jones for financial security, I couldn’t be honest about how I felt. I was to blame for my actions, unequivocally, and yet I resented Jones for creating an environment of rage, fear and confusion that diminished discernment, increased self-doubt and left me feeling as if my brain had short-circuited. I wanted to say these things to Jones, but I didn’t.

He offered to double my pay, suggested I work remotely and even proposed funding a feature-length film of my own. I said it wasn’t about money and turned him down. To this day, I still don’t know why he wanted to keep me around. He said it was because he cared about me, but if I had to guess, I would say his main concern was losing control.

The next morning, he called numerous times, and then again that evening. I let the calls go to voice mail.

There wasn’t a single moment that persuaded me to leave, but there was a turning point: a moment that stuck with me long after it happened. I thought of it as I sat next to Jones speeding recklessly down the highway on Election Day, when I walked out of the office for the last time and when I decided to sit down and write this article.

It was early morning, and we were headed back to Austin after the trip that began in Islamberg. As we boarded our flight, I took my window seat close to the rear of the plane. An older woman wearing a hijab sat next to me. With her was a young girl, giddy with excitement, who bounced in the middle seat, holding a bag of pretzels. The woman leaned over and asked if I would let the girl sit by the window. “This is her first time on a plane,” she said. I agreed and moved my bag from under the seat.

I thought of the children who lived in Islamberg: how afraid their families must have felt when their communities were threatened and strangers appeared asking questions; how we chose to look past these people as individuals and impose on them more of the same unfair suspicions they already had to endure. And for what? Clickbait headlines, YouTube views?

As I sat on the aisle, the plane now lifting up into the pale blue sky, I glanced over at the little girl staring out the window in wonder, her face glowing from the light reflecting off the clouds. She was amazed, joyful, innocent, carefree and completely unaware of the world beneath her.

Josh Owens is a writer living in Texas. This is his first article for the magazine.

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puroresu-musings · 6 years

Photo

NJPW DOMINION 6.9 in Osaka-Jo Hall Review (June 9th 2018)

IWGP Jr. Tag Title Match: Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado (c) vs. Roppongi 3K ***1/4

Juice Robinson & David Finlay vs. Jay White & YOSHI-HASHI ***

Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano vs. Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr. ***1/4

NEVER Openweight Title Match: Hirooki Goto (c) vs. Michael Elgin vs. Taichi ***1/2

IWGP Tag Title Match: EVIL & SANADA (C) vs. The Young Bucks ****1/4

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Jushin Thunder Liger & Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Cody, Marty Scurll & Hangman Page ***1/4

IWGP Jr. Heavywheight Title Match: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Hiromu Takahashi ****1/2

IWGP Intercontinental Title Match: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. Chris Jericho ****1/4

IWGP Heavyweight Title Match - 2/3 Falls ~ No Time Limit: Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Kenny Omega *****+

Photos.

Well this was quite the supershow. Capped off by one of the greatest matches you’re ever likley to see, the 2018 edition of Dominion from a sold out Osaka-Jo Hall was a show to remember. It started with a good, but unspectacular undercard (which they absolutely sprinted through) but built to a completely blow-away climax, this (along with WK12) is going to be hard to top as far as best card of the year goes. Things started in glorious fashion with new company president, Harold Meij, being revealed to the world, and him doing the Young Lion sprint to the ring. The matches began nicely with the Suzuki-gunners defending the Junior tag straps against CHAOS’ own SHO and YOH of Roppongi 3K. The main problem I have with this one is that it was over in 9:29, which meant even though it was all-action, no doubt, it was probably a little too short to form anything meaningful. The finish saw Kanemaru accidentally blow the whiskey into Desperado’s face, after the masked man missed a low blow, then SHO hit that Last Ride powerbomb into the lung blower for a great near fall. SHO then went for Shock Arrow, but Desperado escapes, bumps the ref, Kanemaru nails SHO with the whiskey bottle, then Desperado locks on a cradle and the champions retain. Juice Robinson pinned Jay White with Pulp Friction to end another good 7 minute doubles outing. The win undoubtedly sets Juice up as the next challenger to White’s US Title, which should happen at the Cow Palace on July 7th. ZSJ caught a Yano low blow between his thighs and turned it into the Breaks Special to win via submission in another really fun (but once again, incredibly short) tag contest in 8:42. The main point of interest here was Ishii and Suzuki’s exchanges, which were just incredibly hard-hitting. These guys haven’t faced each other since the 2013 Kizuna Road show, so hopefully that is on the horizon.

Goto defended the NEVER Title against Big Mike Elgin and Taichi in a 3-way next. This would have worked much better as a straight singles match between Goto and Elgin, who’s hard-hitting exchanges carried this thing. Highlights included Big Mike, who’s dropped a lot of weight, hitting a tope con hilo onto everyone, and Manami Toyota’s Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex on the champion for a great near fall. There was a sunset flip/superplex tower of doom spot. The finish saw Elgin powerbomb Taichi into Goto in the corner, then hit the Spiral Bomb for the win and the title in 13:46 of very good action. The decision to give the belt to Elgin is... interesting, to say the least, but as long as he has it, I imagine he’ll have some great defenses, regardless of what you think of him personally. The LIJ duo of EVIL and SANADA defended the Heavyweight Tag Titles against 7 time Jr. Tag champions, The Young Bucks, in the first excellent match of the show (it was also the first not to feel completely rushed through). This was another of those ‘old school’ style tag bouts the Bucks have been doing the past couple of years, and featured some great work revolving around Nick Jackson missing a kick and hitting the ringpost, and the ensuing sell-job of the foot throughout the rest of the contest, which was just great. Matt did more great, subtle back selling here too. The finish saw everything break down. SANADA applied Skull End to Matt, then did the big swing with him still in the hold, then went up top for the Moonsault, but Matt moved and Cold Skull landed on his feet. Matt hit a big spear on SANADA as he landed, then the Jackson nail both champions with double superkicks, before hitting More Bang For Your Buck on SANADA to win their first Hevyweight belts in 15:03. With the Jacksons now the champions, this very much freshens up a fairly dead-in-the-water division at this point. Then it was the Legends Dream Team 6 man encounter as Liger and Tanahashi teamed with a man making his NJPW debut, Rey Mysterio Jr, to take on Bullet Club’s most nefarious trio; Cody, Marty and Page. This was all good, but again it felt very rushed. Everyone looked good in this thing, hitting all their signature spots, but it was really the Rey Mysterio Show as he looked smooth as ever out there. The finish saw Cody pin Liger with Cross Rhodes at the 11:35 mark. It seems as though Mysterio will potentially face Scurll in San Fran.

With both men coming off amazing performances in the BOSJ, including Hiromu being in what might very well be the best match of 2018 so far in the Final against Ishimori, expectations for the Jr. Title match were sky high. Some very famous pundits thought it might even usurp the main event. Well, suffice it to say, it didn’t and in those respects, despite being a fantastic match, was maybe a bit of a disappointment. I thought that, whilst a lot safer, it maybe wasn’t even as good as their bout together in February. This was still incredible stuff however, they started at a thousand MPH, with Hiromu hitting that overhead throw into the turnbuckles about 10 seconds in, then once outside, Ospreay hit a massive running Senton Atomico off the ramp. Ospreay also hit two reverse ranas in a row. They sensibly slowed down from here, and had a fairly safe high flying match... until Takahashi hit a Canadian Destroyer, and locked in his Triangle Choke 9which I believe he’s calling “D”) that was so well protected in the BOSJ, which Ospreay escaped by lifting him up and dropping him right on his head, which was terrifying. Ospreay with the Robinson Special, and goes for Oscutter, but its countered and Hiromu hits the sunset flip bomb out of the ring and to the floor, which had been exposed earlier when Takahashi lifted the mats. Hiromu hits the Dynamite Plunger for a great near fall, then tries Time Bomb, but its countered, and Will hits a series of superkicks. A Storm Breaker is turned into the triangle choke, Ospreay tries to power out and Takahashi drops him on his head with that devastating Butterfly Piledriver, hits the Death Valley Bomb into the corner, and connects with the Time Bomb win the belt at the 20:20 mark to a big pop, in the exact same fashion he won the BOSJ. Great stuff.

Then it was I.C. Title time, as Naito defended against Chris Jericho, who was sporting a new look to go with the reinvented personality. This too had a lot of hype, which it too maybe didn’t entirely live up to, but it suceeded in being a wild, intense and believable brawl that was quite unlike anything else on the show. Like a modern day Brody, Jericho attacked Naito before the bell, powerbombing him through a table, then DDTing him onto another, all before the match had started. After a Lionsault and Naito had made the ropes whilst locked in the Walls Of Jericho, Chris pummeled Naito with some stiff shots that left him bleeding from the eye, then Naito fights back, blugeoning the old Lion Heart with the remnance of the broken table, which earned him some boos from the Osaka faithful, whom Naito has a long, storied history with. Naito then hits a piledriver on the time keepers table. Back in the ring, Jericho turns a middle rope Frankensteiner into the Walls, in a very dramatic spot, which saw Naito make the ropes again. There was a moment of miscommunication where a Destino spot was botched, but they finally pulled it off after an slightly awkward pause. After Naito escaped a third Walls, they traded hard slaps to the face like they were Vader and Hansen, which resulted in Naito bleeding fairly heavily from the left cheek, as well as potentially from the ear. Naito wins the exchange, then goes for his patented flying forearm, but Jericho catches him in a Code Breaker for 2. They exchange again and Naito hits Gloria, which looked nasty, and goes for Destino. Jericho escapes by pushing Naito into Red Shoes, hitting a dastardly low blow, then a Code Breaker to win the Intercontinental belt after a 17:16 war. This was something of a surprise, I thought Jericho would probably win, given the Cow Palace on the horizon, but his priority appears to be music these days, so it was up in the air. I’m pleased he won, it shakes things up and really, Naito doesn’t need the belt. Jericho continued the beating in the post-match, but was ran off by EVIL. I can’t lie, a match between Jericho and EVIL doesn’t exactly fill me with great excitement. Of all the guys in New Japan I would pair Jericho with at this point, I realy wouldn’t be going with EVIL, but what do I know?

And then it was main event time. Lets get this out of the way now, this was one of the greatest, most dramatic pro-wrestling matches I’ve ever seen. Is it worthy of more than 5 stars? Undoubtedly, but I still rate things out of five, so thats the max for me, and trust me, this was an easy five in the first fall alone! Many seemed to think these guys had an uphill battle with the 2 out of 3 stipulation, as they theorised no one would buy it ending before the third fall, but honestly the drama writes itself here; The first fall is the most important as whoever wins the first has the advantage, and that makes the second dramatic as it could feasibly end in two straight, then if it does go to three falls, its all back up in the air again. Anyway, I digress. This was nothing short of a wrestling masterpiece. Everything about it was pretty much perfect. The story, the drama, the callbacks, the award worthy selling, it all just worked as these two just click together perfectly. Theres too many layers to even try to get into here, but everything from Omega selling his ribs throughout after a nasty bump into the guardrail, to drama around Ibushi, who cornered Omega, weilding a towel, potentially ready to throw it in at any time, just made this a flawless experience. The first fall alone could have been the WK main event as it was quite the nerve-wracking experience. Okada escapes an attempt at a top rope Dragon Suplex, then kills Kenny with a Tombstone on the apron and hits a great missile dropkick for a near fall. Okada with the top rope elbow, then does the Rainmaker pose, but Kenny takes him out with a Snap Dargon. Okada rolls to the floor where he eats a Terminator Con Hilo as Osaka-Jo Hall goes crazy. Omega tries One Winged Angel but Okada escapes, only to take a V-Trigger and a German for another great near fall. Another V-Trigger connects, but the champion escapes another OWA, and hits the big dropkick. Omega counters the Rainmaker with another V-Trigger and that gets another amazing near fall. Okada hits a tombstone, but the Rainmaker is countered again, this time with a sunset flip, only for Okada to grab the legs and cradle him, Bret/Davey style, for the first fall at the 28:47 mark.

After a 2 minute rest period, action in the second fall commenced at a much faster pace with them brawling around ringside, Omega draped a table over Okada and hit a double stomp off the apron onto it. He then set up the table at ringside for later use seemingly. Kenny hits a reverse rana on the floor for a close 19 count. Another V-Trigger stuns the champion, but he turns an OWA attempt into another Tombstone, then goes for the Rainmaker, only for Omega to turn it into that massive uranage in a callback to their G1 match. Omega starts hitting hard knee strikes, but Okada fights back, he goes for another dropkick, but Omega hits one of his own. Honestly, this was an incredibly stiff dropkick, Kenny hit Kazu so hard, he left a boot print in his chin! Okada again with the dropkick, but Kenny catches him in a sitout powerbomb. Another V-Tigger stuns Okada, but the champ tries the cradle again, but scores a ridiculously close near fall. Another big V-Trigger leaves Okada open for Kenny to hit a Jay Driller, then even the score up after scoring a three count with the One Winged Angel at 19:10 of the second fall.

After wrestling for around 50 minutes, they went into the third fall. Both guys sold exhaustion here perfectly, and Okada needs somekind of acting award for his sells of the V-Triggers. There was no suspension of disbelief here, you bought everything they were doing. Omega with another V-Trigger, but Okada battles back, using all his energy to hit a massive Rainmaker, which Kenny did a wonderful sell for. However, both guys are exhausted and we get the double down. Okada tries a Frankensteiner, but Omega turns it into a Styles Clash for a believable near fall. V-Trigger by Omega, who then hoists Okada up in the OWA, but collapses with exhaustion. Ibushi on the apron trying to fire Kenny up, convinces him to hit the Phoenix Splash, which he goes for, however, the champion moves and Kenny hits nothing but canvas. Kazuchika tries a Tombstone again, but Kenny escapes and hits three more V-Triggers, goes for a fourth, and Okada battles back with two big dropkicks as the white hot Osaka crowd were beside themselves and the announcement of being at the 60 minute mark. The two exchange on their knees, then Kenny changes tact by throwing a big headbutt. As he raises Okada up, the Rainmaker manages to hit the Rainmaker, then another, but as he goes for a third, Omega turns it into a German and holds on, just like Okada does with the Rainmaker, he rolls through and hits another German, but a third is countered into a German by Okada, who holds the wrist and goes for the Rainmaker, but Kenny finally hits another German as Osaka goes bonkers. Kenny with a reverse rana, but when he goes for a V-Trigger, he’s dropkicked out of the air. Okada with the Rainmaker, but Kenny ducks and turns it into the One Winged Angel! Both men are exhausted and try to pull themselves up with the ropes. Kenny gets up first and as Okada is lying prone across the bottom rope, hits a big V-Trigger, then hoists Okada up into the third fall winning OWA to win the match and end the greatest title reign ever at 16:53 of the third fall. Holy shit, what a match!

As Kenny was awarded his belt, The Young Bucks came out and they, Kenny and Ibushi all embraced as streamers filled the ring. Omega cut a promo, saying he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, proclaimed himself ‘the future of wrestling’, and annpounced the formation of The Golden Elite. Cody appeared on the ramp, but thought better of it and slinked off, letting TGE celebrate in the ring. There’s your potential Cow Palace main event. Its impossible to do this bout justice, it was just insanely good wrestling. Beyond the action, the story it told was just superb. In total, they were out there for 64:50 (or 69:30 if you include the rest periods) and it flew by in what felt like less than thirty. As I say, there was just so much going on here, it was like The Godfather of wrestling matches. Okada won the first fall, so he has the hypothetical bragging rights of saying if it were a regular match, he’d still be champion, and Okada still never once kicked out of the One Winged Angel. I even loved the fact that they set up a table, which is a surefire sign that its going to get used right? Well it didn’t. It just made it feel like everything wasn’t completely planned out.

But what more can be said about Okada’s title reign? I was in attendance at Osaka-Jo Hall at the 2016 Dominion event in which he began his fourth reign by beating Naito in an exceptional match. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was actually witnessing history, as he went on to hold the belt for two straight years, break the all time record for days as champion, set a new record for defences, and produce two years of some of the greatest matches ever seen. Honestly, I find it hard to believe this reign can be topped by anyone. It’s an albitross around the neck that you’d dethrone such a champion, as having to follow that is nigh on impossible (as poor Takeshi Rikio discovered when he ended Kenta Kobashi’s superb two year GHC reign in 2005) and in many respects, theres no where to go but down. However, if Kenny Omega has proved anything in the last 30 months, its that he’s more than up to the challenge (and lets be fair, he is a million times better worker than Rikio ever was). Even this series with Okada, once you think the zenith has been reached, they would just blow past it again. As much as I loved Okada’s reign, putting the belt on Kenny is 100% the right call in my opinion. It completely freshens things up, offering us completely new feuds and programmes, and it can give Okada a much needed breather, as its been a hell of a two years. Just check this show this out, and specifically the main event, as it was just something else.

NDT

#njpw #dominion 6.9 in osaka-jo hall #review #njdominion #kazuchika okada #kenny omega #chris jericho #tetsuya naito #hiromu takahashi #will ospreay #new japan pro wrestling #puroresu #wwe

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hereitalkonandon · 5 years

Text

I always write something here because at this point it would look naked if I didn’t.

Yeah, of course I can tell you why I blocked you, I just thought that it would make sense coming from me because I've a lot of weird behaviors, and then I clearly don't dislike you so I didn't feel like you would even be curious and the story was long.

So I have two accounts and both have the same amount of posts more or less, but one is my personal account, it's one year older than the other, no one cares about it but that's the one that I love the most, I use it daily to post whatever I want but I also talk about my life sometimes, I never like anything with it. Then the other account, no one cares about it either but that's the one I use to like things and to follow a lot of people, sometimes I ignore it for months, as in I don't reblog anything, but I often like things. So I was obviously following you with that one.

I would often check your blog and steal a post or two to reblog with the account that I actually love, (I love the other one too but not as much) so I couldn't just reblog them from you because I don't approve of reblogging and reblogging from someone for months but somehow not following them. I don't actually care and I don’t mind if others do it, but I'm aware it might be odd, so I didn't do that with you because I knew I was checking on you.

With other people it doesn't matter, since I know I'm not checking on them, so who cares if I keep mysteriously reblogging and reblogging from them and never actually following them. So, both you and someone else could think the same thing, it would be the same action, but the difference is I didn't care with other people. I was also well aware that you wouldn't notice a thing even if I randomly made those reblogs, but that's how my brain works and it made me uncomfortable.

Then one day when I remembered it was Revenge of the Sith’s anniversary because I had seen it on your blog earlier, for whatever reason I thought I might as well follow you with that account too. But then I realized it was giving me a lot of anxiety, my follows are public, there are dark people out there, you are an attractive woman, you are interesting, cultured, smart, angry, I didn't want the dark people to get the wrong idea, and you wouldn't even notice if I clicked unfollow, it was as easy as that, so why not do it, so I did it.

Back then I loved to go through the Jaime and Cersei tags, you were often there, I actually found you years ago because of it as I've already told you. And I would use my other account to surf the tags, because I would mostly like posts, I don't use my favorite account to like things so it's pointless to surf tags with that one, I only copy the posts I really like and take them to my other account, well, that's now, when I first started I would reblog things nonstop, I still do now sometimes, but I feel them in my soul or something.

There are a lot of posts in both of my Tumblrs that now make me embarrassed or with thoughts that I don't even have anymore, but I refuse to delete them, so I can see how much I've changed even if I've always been the same person, and how I've changed my mind about some things.

You were not going to notice a thing, but I still knew what I was doing and it gave me anxiety, since I unfollowed you with my other account, I felt odd about liking one of your posts with my other account, you had no way to tell I owned both accounts, but I didn't care, that's not how my anxiety works, so I unfollowed you and blocked you, because I didn't want to accidentally like one of your posts while searching the Jaime and Cersei tags, I didn't have to block you with my favorite account because I never looked through the tags with that one so I obviously couldn't accidentally like any of your posts. And yeah it's just that simple and that stupid.

The whole letter was already written but I’m editing it and deleting things were I repeat myself and such, but I actually accidentally fell asleep for some hours right now after editing this part, so this letter will probably have a lot of dumb things that I won’t notice because I am so tired so I understand what you meant at the end of your letter.

At one point I even followed Victor because even if I didn't care for him I often found posts about trees and dumb stuff on his blog that I would steal and reblog from someone else, I was already checking on him because of you anyway. We were so different and I found him so boring, but I think I always found way more posts from him than from you, since I find you interesting as a person but I rarely personally like a post from you by itself, I do, but not as often as with his blog.

Of course he reblogged a lot of tacky things like Justin Bieber and dumb comedies. In this case, I wasn't reblogging them from someone else because I cared about Victor's opinion, it was precisely because I didn't want him to somehow think that I cared about what he was up to. Sort of, but only when it involved you.

Even if I didn't have anything against him either other than finding him dull as a person. I'm sure that even straight men have approached him because of his looks even if they obviously aren't attracted to him, his looks meant nothing to me, it offended me that he could think I found him interesting, what was there to find interesting other than that.

But once I followed him it didn't matter, I obviously kept reblogging from him because I was following him, and that would make sense to him. Maybe it didn't, because this one time he tagged me in some thing with some questions for people you would like to know better, since I had been reblogging a lot of trees and whatever from him I guess, he didn't say so, but I could imagine that was the reason.

I think one time I even reblogged this picture of a bowl of cereal that he was about to have in the bathtub or something, felt like something I would do, probably most people would eat like that. Perhaps he got the wrong idea because I reblogged a lot from him and he thought I was socializing, whatever it was I answered him because I hate being rude. I never ignore people when they talk to me, even if someone is insulting me I answer their insult, not because I care about being polite once they were rude, but because I’m just not into ignoring people, they are talking to me, why shouldn’t I answer.

I sent it as a personal message instead of as an ask because it was too long, and for some reason I also didn’t want to post the questions on my blog. You know how I love to talk and talk and talk so it was a single message but I hit the limit. He didn't never even bothered to tell me he read it, I was glad, I didn't actually want to talk to him. I probably didn't even want to talk to you back then, I found you interesting, but I'm never lonely and I didn't feel like I had anything to say that could interest you.

Ever since I joined Tumblr I would sometimes spend days reblogging a lot of things from someone, a lot of old posts and stuff, and they never thought anything of it, I was obviously just interested in their random pictures. Not that I know what he actually thought when I did it to him, but he is the only person to ever tag me or send me anything at all after doing something like that, other than a really nice woman from three years ago or so.

She just said hi and such and I talked a lot like I always do and overshared, she seemed to have a lot of anxiety too from stuff I saw on her blog and she told me she had been extremely depressed for years and for no reason I think, a mental illness probably even if she didn’t tell. She actually managed to talk like a normal person and was likely used to talking to everyone, so I think she either found me boring or was uncomfortable too and didn’t know how to handle me because I was uncomfortable myself and I kept justifying the way that I talked and clearly had no social skills.

So we exchanged some words for a day or two but she didn’t keep talking, then she sort of said hi once again months after that because I reblogged Halloween pictures nonstop and it was nowhere near Halloween, not from her but she was following me so she saw, 18 pages of Halloween pictures in a row I think, just like the first time we didn’t keep talking. And then she sent me some ask a year or so after that after being wrong about one of my posts about some stuff happening in real life and she thought it was online and was trying to be helpful and telling me I could report people on Tumblr, so I just told her that it wasn’t like that but thanked her and stuff.

You are the only case where I took the time because of the person and not the random pictures. But I unfollowed him after a month or three (by then I had already unfollowed you or maybe I hadn’t followed you with that account yet, I just remember I wasn’t following you at the same time) because he reblogged a picture of a white shirt that said "Killer", written with a Sharpie, it was from this one idiot that murdered a lot of teenagers and said, at his trial, while wearing it, something like "this hand that killed your children now masturbates at the memory of their deaths" in front of the parents of course.

I obviously hated that murderer, it somehow made me angry that Victor would be stupid enough to just reblog something like that without researching, I don't think he would have had reblogged it if he had known, so whatever, I clicked unfollow.

I kept checking on him sometimes, but because of you. Then you broke up and I kept checking for a while, but by then I actually had something against him, I don't care if he is a good person, I know he is, but I have contempt for all men that wish that stuff to women they claimed to love at some point. So I was so angry whenever I visited him and once I realized it was really over and that you didn't have anything to do with him, or that maybe you did elsewhere even if not romantically but it wouldn't show on his blog, I stopped visiting.

He is nothing to me so I'm obviously not carrying some grudge still, but I dislike him because of the way he spoke of you, as I would dislike any man that does that, as I've said. And I repeat that yes I did insult my ex-girlfriend but that was also the way that we talked to each other when we were together, and not like he did, I never wished her ill, that was the last thing I wanted for her.

This reminds me that another thing I hate is when a man was always respectful of his girlfriend and never used bad words with her but as soon as they break up he starts treating her differently and being extremely disrespectful. I was also disrespectful towards her during our relationship and she was like that towards me too. But I mean when men do that exclusively after the break up, to me it says “I don’t bother to respect you because I can no longer gain anything from you, I don’t make any effort because I won’t get anything out of it.”

So yeah, while he no longer makes me angry, my idea of him has been tarnished forever, but it doesn't matter if I’m being unfair because I never think of him if I'm not writing to you, and he doesn't need me, so it's okay if that's the idea I want to keep. But I truly hope he grows up anyway, I have no reason to wish he keeps behaving like that towards women when he breaks up with them, both for him and for the women. So, may he rest in peace. Also, I saw some anon you received at some point asking if you still thought of your ex, and they probably meant Victor, but I didn't send it.

No, I didn't find the poem because of my ex-girlfriend, I would love to read poetry if I didn't find most of it cheesy, but I always do, so I'm too lazy to look for poetry hoping that I will enjoy a poem or two, just as I’m lazy with movies when it comes to characters not having enough depth because of the duration of the average movie.

I found it because I had seen the quote "I see you in colors that don't exist" plenty of times, so when it started to remind me of you I wanted to see where it came from, if it was just a single quote, and sadly it was from a love poem (I was surprised when I saw that it barely had any comments since the quote was already so famous), so I felt that I couldn't send that line to you, I felt like sending an explanation along with the quote would be dumb, I ended up doing that eventually anyway.

That's probably why I memorized a fictional meaning, so much, that yesterday I thought that was actually what the poem was about even when I didn’t remember a thing about it, now I remember that back then I thought that from a stranger's point of view, if you sent her that quote, the poem was about your imaginary relationship with her and how painful it was even if I already knew that it was probably about a relationship that had actually happened but now the other person had moved on, it likely reminded me of my ex-girlfriend but I was also mostly convinced that she still loved me so I didn't relate to it. I found some parts of the poem cheesy, that's why I didn't care for it and forgot all about it but that one quote. I don't care about most poems. I love the idea of them but there's always something cheesy. I find most things cheesy too.

I was embarrassed, I am embarrassed when it comes to sharing good feelings, I can talk about romantic love forever and my positive feelings when it comes to that, it doesn't make me embarrassed, but most positive feelings that have nothing to do with romance or animals do.

The thing about the wall sound so like me, I didn't remember it but I do now that you have mentioned it. It was good then, there was violence. I don't use violence for that though, it's just a part of who I am and I'm angry most of the time, I was already like that before I met my ex-girlfriend and it never made me unhappy, it felt natural, I was comfortable with my anger, I don't think it will ever go away, it’s probably because of something hormonal and doesn’t have an actual reason.

I don’t have any problem that I am aware of, when I was about 20 my testosterone was extremely high. That was also the time when I kept pressuring my ex-girlfriend for sex after she was the one that finally started all the sexual stuff by herself probably tired that I never tried anything, but I stopped soon when she told me how it made her feel, I felt like I was going crazy and couldn’t think of anything else, only with her though, it never made me find other women attractive, so men that use that as an excuse to cheat are stupid.

And I would have trouble breathing when I was enraged and my chest would feel way too heavy, but the doctor said it happened sometimes and that it would probably fix itself and wasn’t too dangerous since I was young, and it did after a year, so I know for sure there’s nothing wrong anymore because even if I have trouble breathing I’ve never felt like I literally have to keep gasping nonstop, and I also only feel like I’ve trouble breathing when I’ve been pushed way too far, like with my neighbors but that’s because they make me so anxious too and they keep doing it all day long, anger isn’t normally physically painful anymore. I was also often angry since I was about 5, before any of that happened, that’s why I think it’s just there for no reason, like how some people have always been too lazy because it’s just who they are.

As I've told you though, I never use my fists against other men, I always try to solve my problems with words, and I've been lucky enough to never have someone try to punch me, because then I would have had to defend myself, because of my pride, of course. Lucky because that’s not the kind of person I want to be. I also know that if someone that I am sure is so much stronger than me, probably everyone since I’m too skinny, punched me, I would feel the need to keep punching him back while being fully aware that I will likely lose, yeah because of my pride. So I'm not really hurting anyone by being this way.

Oh I also asked you not to publish it because I thought that maybe you would rather not spam your blog, but that you would obviously answer me because you felt that you had to. And when I saw you mention the anon, also, I sent another anon because I felt that if I didn't perhaps it would look like that person wasn't checking on you anymore, not that it was an awful thing, but I was still doing it so I mentioned it.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave this city, sadly. But I'm planning on moving out, because I'm really desperate about the noises, as soon as I can, I don't know how soon, though, but if I could I would leave this week, it just doesn't sound that likely since I'm looking for a very specific place, somewhere I can be sure that I won't be annoyed by any noises again.

I just thought that maybe you had heard about Tijuana because of its reputation, but I'm glad that the situation isn't terrible enough to have reached most people, I think that's a good way of measuring, if something is that bad most people in the world have heard about it.

If it's water and it has waves then it's just as a good, I think. I like the night and the stars better, and forests and snow too, but I still love the sea. I used to go to the beach when I was a young boy, now I don't and I haven't been for many years, but I enjoy looking at beaches on the internet. Which is crazy because I have one here. Even if I don't visit it, to me it's always weird when I actually think of how some countries don't have beaches and people have to travel just to go to one.

I like my city enough if I ignore the criminals, but I like the look of U.S.A better, that's the only country I've visited, I don't think I know which place I would rather if both countries were just as safe. It has better buildings and better streets of course since they have way more money. I used to visit California a lot as a teenager and ever since I was a 3 or 4, I feel like Target was a friend of mine, I felt like crying when I wrote that, it's funny, I just really liked it, it's just some supermarket, but I always felt good when I was there. And Disneyland. I also saw snow in that country, the only time I've ever seen snow, I felt like crying once again. We once even visited a police station until 3 AM or so because my mom's car was stolen. They ended up finding it on that night because for some reason they just stole some stuff like my iPod and moved the car to the next parking lot. My passport expired years ago and I was too lazy to get one so I can’t visit anymore. They make such a big deal out of it and often deny you a visa even if you have had already been visiting for years.

I love that country but if I could leave Mexico, since that would require a lot of effort anyway, I wouldn't strive for U.S.A, Americans think everyone would love to live there but I wouldn't because of the random shootings at restaurants and supermarkets by crazy people. I would be leaving because I want a safer city, and of course anywhere else is safer, but I would try to pick something from the top twenty safest countries list, or fifty, any place that would have me but that wasn't as dangerous. I know that you can have something happen to you anywhere, some people have been murdered in Sweden and Germany, I know, and I haven't been murdered yet and I live here. But yeah my odds of being murdered would be lower elsewhere, that's what I want.

I love this place called Sanborns, chain stores from Mexico, it's a dumb place where you can buy books and things like watches, glasses, candy, things for adults mostly, toys, but it also has a restaurant. I always felt good there. And we have Costco and Office Depot like in U.S.A, I love those places too. I also enjoyed being outside of any school building, for some reason.

I don't love places in particular, but I liked looking at the stars and at the moon from different streets and houses, and to be in the car at night and all the things I saw. I also loved certain rooms or parts from different houses that I've been to. Then these huge buildings (huge when compared to a person), two towers with a lot of stores and offices, my mom would take me there and I would walk through one of the buildings by myself while she was exercising, I would also buy magazines because I've always loved them. And then I love life and most of what I have experienced has been here. So in a way I love this place even if I wouldn't care to ever visit again if I manage to leave.

This city is where I realized I want to live forever, it's just that I know I can have the same experiences somewhere else. If I ever leave this country I know that then I could think fondly about most things from it, since I wouldn't feel at risk because of it. The funny think is I can understand what you are saying when you talk about your city, I can't claim that I know what you actually feel, but some places from Europe make me feel like that, not any place in specific, some pictures. And I can imagine what it would be like to grow up surrounded by art and culture, all that sort of stuff. When I look at those kind of pictures I feel like I am living someone else's life even if I’ve never wished for that because I love being who I am, and that I have been there and have many memories of doing things in those places.

I've been answering your letter as I am reading it, sometimes I read the whole letter before I answer and sometimes I do this, it depends on my mood, but not that I do one thing when I am sad and one when I am happy, I just do whatever I feel like doing at the time, for no reason.

So I've just realized that you asked me about traveling and I've already sort of answered. Before talking to you I didn't care about traveling that much, but now I do even if I wouldn't spend my money on it, I would save it to leave this country eventually. I didn't see it as something bad but I also wasn't drawn to it, and for some reason this month or so I've been able to see why most people really enjoy it. If I had all the money in the world and knew the plane couldn't crash, or if I were immortal, I can see myself loving to move from one city to the other every month or so, I don't see why I wouldn't rather do that than staying in the same place, though I would also like to have a home where I would keep all my stuff and favorite furniture. Before, I couldn't understand.

I'm not afraid to die, it just makes me extremely angry, I love myself, why wouldn't I be angry at the thought of disappearing. That's why I'm ridiculously careful, and some would say that's not living, but to me it is, like what I said about traveling, if I could I still wouldn't do it often anyway, because I can't know that the plane won't crash and as far as I know I am not immortal. I hope we are, we have never died. And I can still do everything I truly enjoy doing even if I never travel, that's why I wouldn't risk it, since I don't truly need to see the rest of the world in person to feel that I am living a complete life. But what I said it's also true, I can now see why everyone wants to do it.

If I traveled I would like to see U.K out of all the places that you mentioned, I love Victorian stuff and old books written by English people. I've also always loved knights and things like that. And I didn't care that much for Egypt before but now it makes me think of you and I would like to see the pyramids, but I feel more drawn to a museum full of things from Egypt, I have never been into deserts but I love being inside of buildings, nice buildings make me feel the same way that looking at the stars does.

I'm not rich but I've never been poor or unable to buy the things that I want, but since I'm from a sort of poor country I've always been attracted to cultures that feel like they are from rich people, white people usually. If I had been born in a country that I didn't think of as poor I feel like I would be drawn to exotic places. This doesn’t happen with looks because I only like dark brown eyes and white people from that sort of cultures normally have blue or green eyes.

I've always told you that I like everything you have to say and that includes rambling, it's good when you talk more about yourself. About an hour ago or so, I had to get up, and I thought of how I often feel like crying when I am talking to you which also made me feel like crying, it was already almost 9 PM and looking at the night sky makes me emotional by itself. You are a good writer but it's not because of that, good writers don't automatically make me feel like crying. I just thought that it's nice that you want to be a writer, whether you try to sell books or not, but that you are doing it, even if it were just a private journal, it would be a waste if you didn't write.

I think the reason you aren't drawn to U.S.A is that you already have really nice buildings and that you have been to similar places but with more culture, so to me it makes sense that you wouldn't find anything special about it. I would also like to see Canada. You are lucky in the sense that most people want to visit places from Europe anyway, some spend their whole lives saving for it. You get to live in Europe and also visit it. I feel like I would also rather visit places from Europe better than all the other countries, Oceania too, first I would visit cities from U.S.A, because of what I told you before in my letter, that I also grew up there, spent some nights there, so I care for it even if I wouldn't enjoy living there, but just because of the shootings, otherwise I would love to, since I already feel a connection because of the TV Shows, books, music, brands, internet, language, and the time I spent there, it's so much safer than Mexico too.

I think Mexico City is a nice place, the actual capital of the country, it's also dangerous though, depending on the streets, but nothing like Tijuana. Their accent is terrible and funny, but not that foreigners could tell, and the air is bad for you because there's a lot of contamination, it's a really big place. But they actually live like people there, they have this university called UNAM, many museums, and great things.

I never thought you were into bondage and rape fantasies, though, I only said I wasn't into it, I was specifying because I said I was really into humiliation and that sort of stuff, so I didn't explain what I liked about it, that would have been too graphic and disgusting, but I felt like saying what I wasn't into which was easier to write without it being dirty, it doesn't make me uncomfortable but I feel like it's inappropriate for us to talk about it too graphically, somehow.

I know you are into choking because I have seen you say that on your blog and that thing about the knife from Victor, but I never saw anything about rape or bondage on your blog and didn't know you had any experience when it came to that, even if you didn't enjoy it that much. I would actually love to do sexual stuff often and I think about it daily just not all day long, but I'm not into casual sex so it's really complicated. But it's not something that I need, like when people claim is a basic need, not really, you can take care of your sexual needs by yourself for the rest of your life, you can't do that with food.

Maybe it's just your own version of sexuality too, there are no rules about how you should feel, and it would also be normal if you felt differently about it all the time. Ideally, I think you should only do something sexual if you feel like it, even if it's once a year, but I know you probably feel like that would be unfair to your boyfriend, of course it wouldn't, and I'm not saying it's some sacrifice to sleep with him, just that in an ideal world you would only have sex if you felt the urge to do it.

And you also wouldn't be wondering if there's something wrong with it. I think there's only something wrong with it if you really wish you could want it all the time but can't, and even then maybe it would still be normal. Like someone saying he wishes he could be hungry all the time but couldn't, it doesn't work like that. But you also say that it could be because you were traumatized and if so then you could need some therapy or treatment if you want to fix it, assuming there's anything to fix.

When it comes to asexuality I personally think that if someone is in love he wouldn't care about giving sex up, and that if a man cares enough about it to break up with his partner then he isn't that much in love. But I'm talking about true love since it's the only sort of love I think lasts for long, I can understand someone caring a lot for their partner but still feeling he can't give sex up and deciding it's best to leave even if I couldn't picture myself doing that, but I would call him a liar if he claimed it was true love but he had to walk away, I’d buy that he believed that, but I would think he is an idiot for believing such a thing is possible.

I don't know if I found out a year ago or two, I've known about him since I was 14 or so, and I never suspected he was gay or anything, just never thought of it, but I wasn't shocked when I read that he was, only thought it was a shame that he felt that he had to hide that part about himself for years when I read that he had struggled with that.

I don't think that here in Mexico anyone would be judged for being asexual, some ignorant people would probably say it's weird and that they aren't truly living, maybe most people, say stupid things like that, but some people would probably find it appealing, some sexist men, I think, feel that they would always be virgins and fantasize about sleeping with them. I feel some wouldn't understand and would make dumb jokes about it but that they wouldn't automatically assume it's a bad thing, maybe a lot of people over 40 and young people that think they are smart would say asexuals are just being stupid and that they need to stop using the internet so much, the worst kind of people, I can’t stand them, I would never be around them because they make me feel like I’m having a heart attack. I really love old people though, probably so much better than the young, it’s just ignorant old people that frustrate me.

And when it comes to gay people, they are accepted if they come out, mostly, some minor celebrities have and it didn’t hurt them, but of course that a lot of men still use gay as an insult and think it's the worst thing that a straight man could be called, I don’t know how their brains work in order to think there’s anything offensive about the word other than mistakenly stating someone’s sexuality.

Then some religious people are against it like religious people from most countries. Or some make this stupid protests sometimes about gay people adopting, saying they are okay with them but that they shouldn’t do that to children which makes my brain hurt because it doesn’t make any sense, saying that they do anything to children at all, it doesn’t happen often though.

I was shocked when I read this list two years ago or so about how accepting countries were of gay people and Italy was lower than Mexico (because Italy has better education and Europeans are so much cultured) but then I thought of the church and it immediately made sense. Many people are catholic here but very passive about it, they think god and Jesus are out there but don’t think about them, most people from this continent probably, except U.S.A and Canada, but nothing like in Italy, of course. There are some very catholic people too, and enough catholic private schools (religion is forbidden in public schools because they can’t force it on you) but nothing different actually happens, they just pray once a month or something and have a religion class some days. I know because I went to two religious high schools but only because my mom thought they were nice, she never really cared about it and she is actually agnostic too since I explained it to her and she thought it really made sense.

There were gay students and they never tried to change their minds, they completely ignored the topic, I only heard a teacher or two made some stupid comment about it being wrong, not hatefully, but that because of the Bible, not to them but to the class, and there was only one time when they bought a nun to talk about some stuff, about life in general, but she decided it would be a brilliant idea to spend the whole time whining about Adam and Steve and everyone was so annoyed because yeah most people hate that sort of stuff and couldn’t care less.

It was also while doing my religion homework that I realized that the Bible was full of lies when I was about 15, and that its god was made up, so great job, school.

I also believe that even if most people wouldn't think it's a big deal, a lot of celebrities are still keeping their sexuality to themselves because they want to have as many fans as they can, and you obviously always lose some fans when you say that you are gay or something other than straight. I personally wouldn't lie about being gay to keep my fans, I would want the homophobic people to stay away from me at all costs anyway and wouldn’t want them to be my fans even if they wanted to “see past the fact that I was gay”, but I understand why they feel like they have to.

Since I'm not into socializing I have no idea about this, but I feel like they probably keep annoying asexual people with stupid questions all the time no matter the country.

I had something like what happened to you too, it was when I was 14 maybe, after I took a shower, I got a lot of red patches on my body, and I remember they were so itchy but not painful, a really annoying feeling anyway, but they started disappearing as soon as the towel touched them, it was odd. You will probably be fine when it comes to allergies, my mom has been allergic to dogs forever but she still loves them and she’s around them all the time, she only gets some red hives but never had any trouble breathing or any swelling.

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multiphandomunnies · 6 years

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Multiphandomunnies Year in Review||Happy New Year

Multiphandomunnies was created on July 20th 2017. It was created by Admins,Aria,Mirae and Jade. On July 29th Admin Aria left do to personal reasons. Later Admin Cupcake joined, but do to disagreements left. Today its Admins Jade and Mirae

Stats?

Total amount of Notes (As of when im writing this)

6,674

Follower Count

877

Followers gained in this last month

197

Admins

Ex:Aria and Cupcake

Current:Jade and Mirae

First Posts

The first imagine posted:Accidental Touches||Wendy

The first reaction posted:Exo Reacts:Idol!Gf having a stage malfunction

The first fake text posted:Yugyeom's birthday gift

The first moodboard posted:Chanyeol date moodboard

The first NSFW related thing posted:Red Velvet giving Oral

First to hit 100 notes

Jae texting Wonpil

Got7 Reacts:Their gf hugging them in her sleep

Wanna One Reacts:Fans shipping them with their crush

Wanna One Reacts:You calling them your ideal type

Exo Reacts:MC making fun of their idol gf

Seventeen as seen by Arias bf

Exo as seen by Arias bf

Bts as seen by Arias bf

Seventeen Reacts||Gf being jealous

Not Now||Jaebum NSFW

Our personal favorites

M I R A E~

The Coffeeshop Crush||Mina ~It was the first thing I wrote! Fun fact, I wrote it in a Las Vegas hotel while my mom was sleeping XD

Hush||Taeyeon ~It was out first request

Sooner||Nayoung ~I was the first 1k thing I wrote

Im a Mess||Joshua ~I had been on a hiatus because of my depression. When I finally decide to come back this was the first proper thing I wrote

Blushing and Candies||Jisoo ~Its the longest thing i've posted

Lisa College AU ~I have no specific reason, I just like it

Touch Me||Momo NSFW ~My first proper smut

Daddy||Changkyun NSFW ~Its the first smut I wrote that wasn't requested

Momo Sexy Edit ~my first video edit

Tic Attacks||Irene ~I wasnt so sure how to write this and I was kinda scared to post it. But when I did I felt proud

J A D E~

Fate||MIngyu ~ Longest story i've written

Chanyeol Food Fake Text ~It was cute and fun to write

Jae and Wonpil Fake Text ~It was the first thing i've posted

Mamamoo Stutter Reaction ~I can relate

Ikon Harry Potter Headcanons ~They were really fun to write

Girlfriend Wheein ~Because she has bias wrecked me

Barista Wendy ~It was fun to imagine

I want you here||Irene ~It was super cute and fluffy

I want to do these things||Jaebum ~It was also super cute to write and it biased wrecked me

Girlfriend SinB ~It made me check out GFriend

Groups we wrote most about

Red Velvet

Pristin

Twice

Mamamoo

SNSD

Got7

Blackpink

Seventeen

Gfriend

Bts

Groups we have started to stan because of the blog

Pristin

SNSD

Exid

Gfriend

Monsta X

Mamamoo

Red Velvet

BAP

Ikon

Stigmas we have written about

LGBT

Self harm

Panic Disorder

Generalized Anxiety

Stutters

Tourettes

Autism

Anorexia

OCD

Followers who are our “Biggest Fans”

@overrecycledtrash

@blinkreveluvarmysone

@ryo-xiii

@pinkplushie2

@4with-moon

@drumlover11

@http-twice-exe

@softbyulie ~It wont let me tag her?

Thank you

When Jade (Aria) and I(Mirae) first started this blog we didn't imagine it would get this far. We all didn't have much experience in writing or making anything, like fake texts and mood boards. We were basing everything off what we had read before and we didn't have our own writing styles. When we first got a follower, that wasn't one of us, we all freaked out! Now you should have seen us when we hit 50. Getting over 100 followers was something we didn't think would happen. I'm pretty sure we all thought this blog would fail and we would eventually leave. But that's not what happened, Jade and I went through some struggles to get here. You can even see them with the rants we would occasionally post. After only a few months we learned so much. Jade and I developed our own writing styles, we learned what kind of genres were our favorite and we started to push our limits and post things we werent so sure about at first (Smut, Stigmas). We have grown up so much with this blog.

Now I mean it when I say we are thankful. Writing helps me express myself and talking to you guys is one of the only forms of communication I really get with people, you know now being homeschooled and all. Jade has been able to turn to you guys and get advice about things she never dreamed of sharing, she has been able to express herself and her thoughts so much better. So thank you for helping us. Tthank you for a wonderful 2017, I hope in 2018 we will become a bigger blog and be able to give you guys more content! We love you all!!Happy New year

~Mirae and Jade

#multiphandomunnies #thank you so much #i really do love you all

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serendibidibidis · 6 years

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Rules: answer the 30 (it’s actually only 28*) questions and tag some more people

Tagged by the beautiful @forvictorymyeverything ♡

1. Nicknames: T, T-MONEY, T-Money Milk$hake, Bunny, shade queen, Bubbles. and then 90% of my friends all have their own nicknames for me as well but my first 3 are my most common.

2. Gender: female xx

3. Star sign: Sagittarius

4. Height: 5'7"??? (I don’t know honestly)

5. Time: 11:49am

6. Birthday: 2811

7. Favorite bands: (only kpop) so I think it be too long if I answered this. However I’ll summarize my taste for you. (It’s not only K-pop whoops)

8. Favorite solo artists: (only kpop) so I love artists who are still underrated. I love watching them grow. It’s so fucking great. I like people who don’t change when a light is casted on them. I like real authentic people. Even if they’re an asshole they’re showing their true self. I don’t care for a style of music. I like them all. I’m someone who loves unknown artists, but I clearly love the known ones as well. They have recognition for a reason. I like people who are original and challenge the thought of comfort. People who know my tv debut is important but I need to use that as much as I can. (Skip to 2:50 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing) or people who push censorship to the limit. Swearing isn’t the only way to be censored. Rules or qualifications are changed on just about every award show if anyone from yg is in said show. It’s very easy to do nothing about it. But I like those who have a habit of forgetting how to hold their tongue.

9. Song stuck in my head: 21 by DΞΔN (Its not really a song but I also have the part where svt. Says their name in their songs you know “sevente-ee-een” that part?? It’s odd)

10. Last movie I watched: when’s the last time I’ve even seen a movie let alone what it was. Uhh I think deadpool?!

11. Last tv show: I sit at home and watch crime documentaries does that count? (I did binge watch some Ask us anything yesterday though..)

12. When did I create my blog: 3 years ago now?

13. What do I post: what don’t I post?! Shade, sunshine, fics, facts, & low quality memes too.

14. Last thing I googled: I feel like no one will believe that any of my Google searches are real but I can assure that yes I really do live this way. “if i have batteries in my pocket and they get wet will i get electrocuted”

15. Do I have other blogs: yes I do

16. Do I get asks: not normally no.

17. Why I choose my url: I couldn’t think of anything else. I have a name I really want to change it too but idk if I should cause it doesn’t completely apply. I also kinda wanna change my name because I stumbled upon a blog that’s name is similarish to mine and I don’t agree with their opinions.. (not that they’re bad ones or mine are right and there’s are wrong. But it’s too close of a name and I could see people thinking we’re the same blog/owned by the same person and it just getting really messy)

18. Following: 420….

19. Followers: plenty 💕 honestly I hate sharing the number of followers I have.. not because I’m ashamed or lying by saying ‘oh this blog is superrrrr popular’ (granted I don’t say that lmao) but the minute you start talking numbers that’s when it goes to others heads. I run like 8 blogs including this one… I probably spend the most time on this one. And this is one of my smallest blogs. I’m so fucking okay with that though. Because I have great people who I’ve met who don’t care about numbers. Regardless of followers I enjoy the people I talk to and the content i post. Plus the followers I do have are pretty fucking amazing.

20-

21. Average hours of sleep: like 9-12 BUT BEFORE YOU EVEN GO TO THE WHOLE 'HOLY SHIT HOW’ PART OF HOW MANY HOURS I SLEEP I DEADASS ONLY HAVE A GOOD SLEEP SCHEDULE OUT OF SPITE AND THAT SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT ME. (lol I’m suffering this time last year I was living off 30 minutes of sleep and tbh I’d pick that over 12 hours any day)

22. Lucky number: 23 (I don’t have a lucky number 23 is just my favorite number)

23. Insterments: LMAO I used to kazoo (Is that even the proper grammar for it?)

24. What am I wearing: khakis (unoriginal joke I know) I’m in pajama pants and a sweatshirt. Lol..

25.-

26. Dream job: I don’t even know what I want to eat for dinner let alone what I want to do for the rest of my life.

27. Dream trip: I don’t really have an ideal trip.

28. Favorite food: it changes because i get sick of eating the same thing all the time. But right now it’s actually really weird. It’s just plain ol’ salad..

29. Nationality: uhh? I look like I’m white does that count?

30. Favorite song right now: resist - djfriz & Mrshll

Haha I hit post to early so now I'm editing to tag some folks but I'm not sure who to tag... so I'm gonna type a random letter & the first person that shows up is who I'm tagging. I'm sorry.

@ssamdominic , @eureka-its-zico , @8bityeol *I accidentally hit 8 instead of I but totally okay with it* , @thecoolmrsokamura15 ♡♡

Okay I'm done tagging people

#tag you're it

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 6 years

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The Complete Guide to Facebook Privacy

Facebook has never been particularly good at prioritizing your privacy. Your data powers its business, after all. But recent revelations that a firm called Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal information of 50 million unwitting Facebook users in 2015 has created new sense of urgency for those hoping for some modicum of control over their online life. If you ever needed a wake-up call, this is it.

The good news: Despite the repeated, public privacy lapses, Facebook does offer a fairly robust set of tools to control who knows what about you—both on the platform and around the web. The bad news: Facebook doesn't always make those settings easy to find, and they may not all offer the level of protection you want.

Fear not! Below, we'll walk you through the steps you need to take to keep advertisers, third-party apps, strangers, and Facebook itself at bay. And if after all that you still feel overly exposed? We'll show you how to walk away entirely.

Keep Apps in Check

Over the years you've used Facebook, you've probably given various apps permission to tap into its data trove. And why not? At the time it's a simple enough request, a way to share photos more easily, or find friends across the app diaspora.

In doing so, though, you're granting developers deep insight into your Facebook profile. And until Facebook tightened up permissions in 2015, you were also potentially letting them see information about your friends, as well; Cambridge Analytica scored all that data not from a hack, but because the developer of a legitimate quiz app passed it to them.

So! Time to audit which apps you've let creep on your Facebook account, and give the boot to any that don't have a very good reason for being there. That's most of them.

On a desktop—you can do this on mobile as well, but it's more streamlined on a computer—head to the downward-facing arrow in the upper-right corner of your screen, and click Privacy. (You're going to spend a lot of time here today.) Now go to Apps, and gaze upon what your wanton permissions-granting hath wrought.

On this page, you can see a list of apps with access to your Facebook profile information.

OK, so maybe it's not that bad. Or maybe it is! I have friends who discovered well over a dozen apps lurking within the Logged in with Facebook pane; I only have four, but that's because I did some spring cleaning recently. Either way, you can see not only what apps are there, but how much info they're privy to. For instance: I haven't used IFTTT in years, but for some reason it has access to my Friend list, my timeline, my work history, and my birthday.

To revoke any of those permissions, go over and click the pencil. To scrap the app altogether, hit the X. You'll get a pop-up asking if you're sure. Yes, you're sure. Click Remove to make it official.

An important note here: Those developers still have whatever data about you that they've collected up to this point. You have to contact them directly to ask them to delete it, and they're under no obligation to do so. To at least make the attempt, find the app on Facebook and send them a message. If they ask for your User ID, you can find that back on the Apps page by clicking on the app in question and scrolling all the way down.

It feels like you should be done now, but you're not. From that same Apps page, go down just a smidge further to Apps, Websites, and Plugins. If you don't want Facebook bleeding into any other part of your online experience—that's games, user profiles, apps, you name it—then click Disable Platform. This could have unintended consequences, especially if you've used Facebook to login to other sites! Only one way to find out, though.

And then scroll down just one more teensy bit to Apps Others Use, where you'll see about a dozen bits of information about you, like your birthday, or if you're online, that your friends might unwittingly be sharing with apps and websites. Uncheck anything you don't want out there in the world, which is honestly probably all of it.

OK, now you're done. With apps. There's still a lot left, though.

Bad Ads

Back to the Settings panel! This time head to Ads, which you'll find right below Apps. (The fact that neither of these falls under Security or Privacy should tell you all you need to know about Facebook's disposition here.)

Just to be clear, Facebook—along with Google, and tons of faceless ad networks—tracks your every move online, even if you don't have an account. That's the internet we're stuck with for now, and no amount of settings tweaks can fix it. What you can do, though, is take a modicum of control over what Facebook does with that information.

That pair of shoes that haunts your News Feed, even though you already bought a similar pair? Exorcise them by turning off Ads based on my use of websites and apps.

"Online interest-based ads" are advertisements that rely on access to your browsing activity.

Also say no to Ads on apps and websites off the Facebook companies, which covers all the non-Facebook parts internet where the company serves up ads—which is pretty much everywhere. Then head straight down the line to Ads with your social actions, which you should only leave on in the event you want to share with the world that you accidentally clicked Like on that sponsored post from a furniture company that probably exists only on a server in Luxembourg.

And for some fun insight into what Facebook thinks you're into, click on Your Interests. There you'll find the categories that Facebook uses to tailor ads to your Liking. You can clear out any that bother you by clicking the X in the upper-righthand corner when you hover over, but mostly it's a fun lesson in how digital advertisers distill your essence. You'll also likely find at least one surprise; Facebook thinks I'm into IndyCar, which honestly, maybe, if I'd only give it a chance.

Please remember that none of this will in any way change the number of ads you see on Facebook or around the web. For that, you'll need an ad blocker.

Friends Focus

After a decade on Facebook, you've likely picked up friends along the way you no longer recognize—not just their profile picture, their name and context. Who are all these people? Why are they Liking my baby pics? Why aren't they liking my baby pics?

To get a handle on who can see which of your posts, it's finally time to head to Settings then Privacy.

Start with Who can see my posts, then click on Who can see my future posts to manage your defaults. You've got options! You can go full-on public and share with the world, or limit your circle by geography, employers, schools, groups, you name it. Whatever you pick will be your default from here on out.

Whatever you pick, immediately go to Limit the audience for posts you've shared with friends of friends or public? to make that choice retroactive. In other words, if you had a public account until now, changing your settings won't automatically make your past posts private. You have to get in a few extra clicks for that.

Not everyone you know needs to see everything you do.

Skip ahead down to How People Find and Contact You, since that's thankfully pretty straightforward. Tweak all the settings to your liking. The main note here: Don't share your email or phone number unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, keep the circle as small as possible. (If you do have to share one or the other with Facebook for account purposes, you can hide them by going to your profile page, clicking Contact and Basic Info, then Edit when you mouse over the email field. From there, click on the downward arrow with two silhouettes to customize who can see it, including no one but you.)

And while we're almost done with this part, first we have to talk about tagging. If people want to tag you on Facebook, there's not much you can do about it. Sorry! But you can at least stop those embarrassing pics from showing up in your timeline. Enable the option to Review posts you're tagged in before the post appears on your timeline so you can clear anything out that you'd rather not see there.

Then, head to Timeline and Tagging in the left-hand menu. There you can limit who can post to your timeline, who can see which posts, who can see what you're tagged in, and so on. Your tolerance here will vary depending on how active a Facebook user you are and how obnoxious your friends can be, but at the very least it's helpful for setting custom audiences that exclude people—your boss, maybe, or an ex—you definitely don't want taking an active role in your Facebook experience.

To test out those changes, head to Review what other people see on your timeline, where you can see what your account looks like through the eyes of a set of people or a specific friend.

One last thing: You'll see a Face Recognition option in the left-hand menu pane as well. It has some genuine uses, like letting you know if someone is using a photo of you in their account for trolling or impersonation. But if you're fundamentally more creeped out by Facebook's algorithms hunting for your face than by potential human jerks, go ahead and switch it off.

What About Russians?

While it still sounds like the subplot to a lesser Die Hard installment, dozens of Russian propagandists really did infiltrate Facebook a few years ago. Did you follow or like one of their accounts? Find out for sure here, assuming Facebook doesn't once again upwardly revise the number. And then find a way to get that link in front of your aunt. You know which one I mean.

Is Facebook Listening To Everything I Say?

By this point, it's a trope: You have a casual conversation about umbrellas with your roommate—as one does—and a few hours later, umbrella ads flood your News Feed. Surely this means Facebook's using your smartphone's mic to eavesdrop, right?

Well, no, sorry! As we've explained here and others have investigated elsewhere, Facebook's not actually hijacking your microphone. For starters, it would be wildly impractical not only to sort through all that data, but to figure out which words meant anything.

Besides, worrying about Facebook eavesdropping distracts from the far more concerning fact that it doesn't have to. The things you and your friends do online, and where you do them, and when, and how, and from what locations, all form more than enough of a profile to inform ads that feel like Facebook isn't just listening in on your conversations, but on your private thoughts. So, please do feel better about the mic thing, but much, much worse about the state of internet tracking, targeting, and advertising at large.

Going Nuclear

If even scrolling through all of these settings tweaks has left you exhausted, much less actually implementing them, you do have a more efficient option: pulling the plug altogether.

Before you do this: First, do recognize that this won't solve all of your online ad woes. You'll still be tracked, targeted, and so on across the web, both by Facebook and other ad networks. They'll all have that much less info to work with, though! So that's something.

And second, if you do decide to go through with it, think about downloading your account first. There's no reason to lose all those photos and statuses and such. To preserve those memories offline, head to Settings > General Account Settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data and click Start my archive. Facebook will email you with a download link when it's ready, which you should pounce on since it'll expire eventually.

OK all set? Here we go. Head back to Settings again, where you'll start in General. Click on Manage Account, scroll past the grim "what happens to my social media presence when I die" bits, and click Deactivate my account. You'll need to enter your password here, look at photos of friends who will "miss" you, take a quick survey about why you're bailing, and then click Deactivate one more time.

There are several steps to deleting your account. Be sure to complete all of them.

Please note that you have not yet actually deleted your account! You've just put it in hibernation, in case you ever decide to come back. For full-on deletion—which means if you do decide to go back you'll have to start from scratch—head to this link right here. That'll put you just a password entry and a CAPTCHA away from freedom. There's a delay of a few days though, and if you sign back on in the interim, Facebook will go ahead and cancel that deletion request. So stick to your guns, don't log in, and maybe delete the Facebook app from your phone just in case.

And that's it! You're clear, at least until Facebook changes its privacy options once again. Whether you decide to stay or leave, the important thing is to take as much control over how your data gets used as possible. Sometimes that's still not a lot—but it's something.

That's What Friends Are For

A recap of the week a hurricane flattened Facebook

Cambridge Analytica's targeting efforts probably didn't work, but Facebook should be embarrassed anyway

If you want to be done with Facebook altogether, remember that it owns Instagram too