#it’s. pretty fuckin pertinent to this dude

[aegagrusscholarship]

hello i bring you redesigns of an oc i’ve drawn one(1) time prior. incredible

his original design looked generic as fuck so i made it less generic as fuck

…the shirt is one of my friends’ fault. i was complaining to them and i was like fuck this is frustrating i should just give him a hawaiian shirt and then they told me to do it. and here we are now

also his undershirt is. whatever design. doesn’t matter. idk idc it’s funny to draw it differently every time

[pesterloglog]

Dave Strider, Karkat Vantas

Page 291-293

DAVE: i dunno who the flower is in this case

DAVE: shit what if im the flower

KARKAT: SO

KARKAT: DAVE

DAVE: no hold up that makes no fuckin sense i gotta rewind back to the beginning

KARKAT: ARE YOU GONNA KEEP MUMBLING TO YOURSELF OR CAN--

DAVE: oh shit sorry what

DAVE: i was just thinking through some really convoluted metaphorical horseshit

KARKAT: YEAH THAT WAS PRETTY FUCKING EVIDENT.

DAVE: my b bro

DAVE: what were you saying

KARKAT: I WAS SAYING I THOUGHT WE MIGHT GO, I DUNNO, ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE SHIP WHILE THE CLOTHES WERE WASHING.

KARKAT: SEEING AS THIS DECREPIT MACHINE WE WERE SO BLESSEDLY PROVIDED WITH MAKES A WHIRRING SOUND SO PANCHAFINGLY ARHYTHMIC THAT IT THREATENS TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF TEMPO FROM THE UNIVERSE.

KARKAT: AND YET SOMEHOW BASICALLY ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE STARTED THE LOAD IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN USING IT AS A FUCKED UP BEAT TO WHISPER TO YOURSELF ABOUT FLOWERS TO.

KARKAT: AT THIS POINT I'M EITHER GOING TO NEED YOU TO SPEAK UP OR FOLLOW ME THE FUCK ON OUT OF HERE, BECAUSE THIS IS EXCRUCIATING.

DAVE: ok fine ill do the first one

KARKAT: GREAT. TURN UP THE FLOWER TALK VOLUME.

DAVE: so uh

DAVE: kanaya was telling me this kids story the other day about this dude who didnt cherish a flower enough until it peaced out to do flower stuff idk its not pertinent to the story

DAVE: except the flower was a person

DAVE: because it was a metaphor

KARKAT: YEAH LIKE YOU SAID,

DAVE: really convoluted metaphorical horseshit

KARKAT: REALLY CONVOLUTED METAPHORICAL HORSESHIT.

DAVE: yeah

DAVE: anyway what goes down in the story is that once the flower lady is out of the picture

DAVE: the main character goes around making all these connections between her and everything else in the universe until every damn thing feels like a symbol for how much he fucked up and how much he will never see her again

KARKAT: THIS SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE FOR A KID'S STORY

DAVE: yea thats pretty much what i said

DAVE: but i guess its not so much what the story was technically textually about but more like the version of it kanaya internalized and then told me when we were talkin about how she misses rose

DAVE: so like now im taking the story she told me she was projecting her feelings onto and projecting my feelings on top of that

DAVE: this is just one big game of emotional projection telephone so feel free to go paraphrase it to roxy later and make it about whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing

KARKAT: YOUR ABILITY TO GET TO THE POINT

DAVE: gotem

DAVE: anyway you’re not gonna have to miss that skill of mine for long

DAVE: get ready for this shit because i am about to slap you with the point so hard youll fall ass first into the washer

DAVE: just scrambling around in there getting all sudsy

DAVE: but your brain is gonna be so blasted from the mindfreak of a point im about to make that there wont be anything left to clean

DAVE: are you ready

DAVE: karkat you havent made any kind of comment about how youre ready in a few seconds so

KARKAT: YEAH DAVE DROP THIS FUCKING BOMB ON ME.

DAVE: ok thanks

DAVE: so its genuinely cool that kanaya can go around creating meaning that may or may not be actually present in every little thing

DAVE: connecting every feeling she has to the idea of her wife existing out there

DAVE: so i told her she should keep that shit up

DAVE: but im having the opposite issue where im struggling to find anything to be that kind of tether because every single thing i could possibly consider about what it is were doing just reminds me of yet another thing to be afraid about

DAVE: so if you were looking for a more concentrated point

DAVE: the real point thats that point simmered in its own juices into a perfect point reduction

DAVE: here it is

DAVE: everything fuckin sucks huge cosmic donkey sack and im terrified

KARKAT: OK, SO I FEEL LIKE YOU SKIPPED A COUPLE NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR POINT CLARIFICATION PROCESS.

KARKAT: I’M GOING TO RESIST THE URGE TO CONTINUE YOUR REDUCTION METAPHOR EVEN THOUGH I HAVE SOME INARGUABLY GOOD SHIT LINED UP FOR IT BECAUSE I’M AFRAID OF US GETTING TOO FAR OFF TRACK, HERE.

DAVE: ok but were you going with sweet or savory please give me that much at least

KARKAT: YEAH IT WAS GOING TO BE SUNDAE-BASED.

DAVE: nice

KARKAT: YEAH.

KARKAT: DO YOU WANNA WATCH MORE GBBO AFTER THIS?

DAVE: absolutely

KARKAT: GREAT. ANYWAY, LIKE I WAS SAYING, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET HUMAN CHRIST, PLEASE BACK UP TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU’RE ACTUALLY SCARED OF.

KARKAT: ALSO COME HERE, IDIOT.

DAVE: ok yeah this is a better position to unleash all my inner fears n anxieties from

DAVE: so uh

DAVE: like i said i talked to kan about it some

DAVE: and its not like weve not talked about it either but i dunno

DAVE: those times its like my mouth was saying words about the situation wherein our friends are AWOL and maybe dead but my brain wasnt fully letting me experience the emotion that goes along with them

DAVE: man its like i cant even start genuinely thinking about how afraid i actually am for rose and john without my brain flippin its wad and whiting out

DAVE: like haha fuck i hope theyre ok

DAVE: now i better make a fuckin joke before i succumb to the gaping mouth of despair waiting for me to fall in it as soon as i look down and acknowledge that its there ogling how juicy my ass looks as it trembles with terror

DAVE: and then if i think about either of them then its only a matter of time til i have to think about dirk too

DAVE: its an if you give a mouse a cookie situation but instead of more snacks its just another layer of fear about my loved ones

DAVE: and with dirk its

DAVE: whew

DAVE: i guess im just fucked up about how to worry about dirk and be angry at him at the same time

DAVE: because if i get as unholy pissed at him as i sometimes wanna be i also gotta admit to myself that maybe i coulda done something different there

DAVE: like if wed kept up better maybe there woulda been a point along the line where i could have said the right thing somehow and hed idk

DAVE: not stolen rose away on some nightmare family trip

DAVE: forcing us to accept the fact that hes our enemy now and chase after him for an unreasonably indeterminate number of years

DAVE: also like

DAVE: and this by the way adds a whole other layer of guilt on there that i dont really know how to fuckin reckon with but

DAVE: even with all the shit hes pulled and the fact that we are more or less heading toward having to take him down

DAVE: whatever that is gonna mean and whether or not he planned it like that

DAVE: i just

DAVE: me and him had come so far with each other and it was really cool for a while to have him and i

DAVE: ugh

DAVE: i dont WANT to hate him

KARKAT: IS THAT ALL? I’M POISED ON THE PRECIPICE OF REASSURANCE WITH MY COUNTER-RANT LOCKED AND LOADED BUT IT FEELS LIKE YOU’VE GOT MORE SHIT YOU’RE HOLDING BACK ON.

DAVE: yeah i got another thing

KARKAT: WELL THEN QUIT FUCKING PICKING AT THE SEAM ON MY SHORTS AND SPIT IT OUT. THEY'RE BARELY HANGING ON TO THE DEFINITION OF "SHORTS" AS IT IS.

DAVE: ok fuck its just

DAVE: ...

DAVE: the part i mentioned before about how we really have no goddamn clue how long this trip is even gonna take

DAVE: i cant help but feel like its barely getting revved up

DAVE: and for me and roxy and jade and callie and kan thats normal shit at best and boring at worst but we all have our immortality to thank for that

DAVE: we can just dick around in space for near-eternity waiting to catch up to our friends who may or may not be our enemies now and itll be fine

DAVE: i mean no itll be categorically miserable

DAVE: but well survive it

KARKAT: HOLD THE FUCK ON.

DAVE: but you

KARKAT: DAVE.

DAVE: no lemme say this

DAVE: we dont talk about it much and i got shit to say about it

DAVE: its not like i never thought about how youre mortal before but i just thought wed be able to figure it out before it mattered

DAVE: come up with some kind of plan

DAVE: i was just distracted being happy with you i fucking guess and so i didnt think up a way to fix it

DAVE: and now thanks to dirk we have to work it out right the fuck now

DAVE: because i cant spend this trip just sitting around watching you get old and die

[ambivalence-and-torpor]

I mean cmon. You're attempting to sticking your nose into the Oyabuns most favored heir's buisness. The same kid who caught the attention of his right hand man.. and his trusted circle. Those eyes wont particularly be on you unless you fuckin do something.. and I mean this without any offense.. Meeting with the kid is certainly doing something. Especially with a title as large as yours.

Certainty you have to be aware that they're not going to miss the chance to approach you in any way possible. Especially with their own goals... and with tensions mounting I feel like there is nothing to truly be gained out of this from you. You aren't netting anything. That's why it's concerning to someone who's looking in from the outside... I can tip toe my way around.. but cmon I'm trying to be worried bout ya! I really am! //gay pathetic eyes//

His expression remains entirely unchanged. You just realize that during your entire exchange it's not been doing a whole lot to begin with. Hard to read this dude, pretty damn perfect pokerface.

"... I am fully aware of everything you are saying. Though I find it amusing that you believe I have nothing to gain.

A man in my position, why wouldn't I wish to establish a baseline with the heir apparent? If he is to take over the throne at some point, perhaps I can create favorable relations, so that what I do now may continue to exist.

Oyabun is allowing my existence, but there is no guarantee that a new regime would not wish to change that. One must continually build and rebuild one's own niche.

Seeing as things seem to become rather serious with this new heir, I find it pertinent to at the very least introduce myself, no? What happens after? That entirely depends on him.

I may have to make plans for a new profession, as far as I know. If not, I will continue as before." He places a hand onto your shoulder.

"Your worry is appreciated, even if it feels misplaced... "

[tellywoodtrash]

immj2 28+29.12.20 lbs

ok we just gonna skimmmmmmmmmmmmm through these eps real quick, coz i wanna get back to reading my Bridgerton books.

28.12.20

i ship this so much, it fuckin hurtsssssss. GIVE ME THE KILLING EVE-ESQUE SAPPHIC ROMANCE I WANT, TELLYWOOD, STOP BEING SUCH FUCKING COWARDSSSSSSSSSSSSS

aaaaaaand she’s disappeared.

................... coz angre got his hands on her. angre i swear to god if you don’t unhand her and go back to just simping for your wife...........

lmao she bit him and ran away.

................ straightttttttttt into vansh’s arms.

oh shit. i ship this too????? fuck, this show is just too chock-full with ridiculously good looking people and i need them all to kiss each other’s necks.

ok, maybe not. BAAT BAAT PE YEH MANHOOS CHAAKU KYUN NIKAAL LETA HAI?!!?!? HAVE YOU NOT HEARD THAT THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE POCKET-CHAKKU?!!?!?

anyway, ahaana’s got a brain and just started screaming her head offfff for riddhima. which is what a normal person (read, anyone NOT RIDDHIMA) would do.

hein who this curly haired girl????

anyway, ahaana like i gots a secrettttt to tellll you. ABOUT VANSHHHHHHHH.

kabir a messyass bitch like me and is like ooooooooooooh ab aayega mazzaaaa.

iss sab ke beech ishani like heyyyy, this is my dress!!!!!! SIS, NO ONE CARES, WE ABOUT TO GET SOME HELLA GOOD GOSSIP. JESUS. PRIORITIES!!!

ahaana like someone wants to killllllllllllllllllll meeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and riddhima is like huh what who why they wanna kill you???? and sis, i think you know from living in this murder-house that ppl don’t particularly need a reason as such to wanna kill you. they just like homicide as a hobby.

vansh like I SHALLLLLLLLLLL PROTECT YOUUUUUUUUUU, YOU SHALL LIVE HERE. sir, i’m pretty sure it’s YOU that she’s talking about that wants to kill her.

riddhima like uhhhhhhhhh??? the fuck is going on? why you promising security to this chick who wanted to phodofy your bhaanda????

SOMEONE TELL ME WHO THAT CURLY HAIR GIRL IS, HAVE I FORGOTTEN A WHOLEASS CHARACTER OF THIS SHOW COZ I DIDN’T WATCH FOR 2 DAYS???????

anyway riddhima like WHOOOOOOOO IS SHEEEEE, YOU KNOW EACH OTHER FROM BEFORE????????? like damn, your psycho murderous ex is living in this house thanks to you, and vansh can’t even know a woman that’s not you????/

ahaana going on and on about this stupid SECRET and omg just spit it out or gtfo. i have 8 books of regency era sexy shenanigans to read, and i’m wasting time here on this nonsense.

ok. she saved his life. and did “seva” it seems. lmao the mental image i have.

“vansh, apna vaada yaad hai na? ki tum mera karz chukaaoge; keemat ya shakl jo bhi ho.” oh???????? big promise from vansh, if true.

vansh beginning to regret making such lofty vows.

(also mmmmmmm, what else dat pouty mouth do, baby???)

dadi has taken over and is like you saved my vansh‘s lifeeeeeeee, i shall make sure vansh keeps his promise, blah blah. lord WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALLLLLLL THISSSSSS?!?!?

riddhima like, why did you call me if you wanted to get in touch with him? why not just call him directly????

shaaaaaady reactions from vansh/ahaana at that. lightttttt goes out.

comes back on, and angre like fuck all this, let’s celebrate the new yearrrrrrrr. not sus at all. y’all are alllllllllllllll so fucking shady man. god, ahaana, just bust my girl ridz outta here and go to alaska and eat spaghetti together. iykyk.

and they all just started ballroom dancing as if they’re in beauty and the beast. attention span of a fucking gnat these ppl have. ek baat pe dhyaan nahi tiktiiii.

i’m here for this also. i just want all the sexy ppl to be with each other. idc who is with whom. just put any two of them together and i’m happy.

these two throwing some chabayaa hua dhamkis at each other. I DON’T CAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE UNLESS YOU SPILLING SPECIFIC DEEEEEEEEEEETS.

iske dimaag ke ghode kentucky derby mein daudne lage hain.

and hubs fullllllllllllly knows. he wanted exactly that.

she tries to ask questions and as usual, he shuts her down with ainvayi ki philosophy. MAN WHAT WILL IT FUCKING TAKE FOR YOU TO ANSWER A QUESTION STRAIGHT?????

big talk about pyaaaar and vishwaaaas and bro, i fully know what you’re doing here, you fucking bastard. bloody gaslighting her into ignoring her own instincts in the name of trusting you. like yes, she’s like extraaaa with the jasoosi, but she’s asking RELEVANT, PERTINENT QUESTIONS.

meanwhile this rakshason ki toli has got their hands on the “yes okay i’m a spy!!!!!!!!!!!!!” recording that siya had. great. wonderful. best.

they decide to wait for right moment to use it and show vansh. oh you fucking dumbasses................... he already knows. this is the problem; no one bothers to fucking communicate in this family. 

kabir trying to get the goss outta ahaana, but vansh ne mundi se ishaara kiya and angre just threw a drink on K, so he had to leave to go change.

i like her.

lol she called him a loser. never has a character been more right about all the men of this stupid show.

ahaana staring at vansh in a real strange way. oh bro, kya kaand kiya tha iske saath????? sach sach bolllllllllll.

these two seem have slid into each other’s inboxes already???? oh yeaaaaaaaaah.

ishani has come back with one V for Vendetta mask and is smirking some more about how riddhima is going down. *sigh* same old, same old. 

more ainvayi ka dancing. man, what a waste of a filler episode.

at the dinner table, riddhima finds a chit saying your life is in danger, come meet me out in the backyard. ishani and aryan and chachi making real weird faces. did they send the note or did ahaana???? either way, this not gonna end well for riddhima. as per always.

it’s got to the point where EVEN riddhima is calling out the plotholes in the damn show out loud; saying ahaana said HER life was in danger, now how the fuck is this all about MY life being in danger???

anyway the dumbass goes to investigate.

she got shoved into a car by V for Vendetta (that’s what they should call the show.) which is now filling up with smoke. wonderful.

———————————————————————

29.12.20

she’s so fucking stupid. there’s no way the car doors can be locked from the outside in such a way that they cannot be opened from the inside. peeche ke doors pe child-lock hain bhi, toh she can just climb to the front and open the front doors and jump out. honestly riddhima.

ishani trying to distract vansh from going to look for riddhima with chocolate cake.

vansh is me. cake pakda diya toh duniya ki koi parwaah nahi. it just meeeeeeeeeee and my cake, made for each other, truuueeeeeee loveee.

ALSO LMAO WHY DOES THIS DUDE EAT CAKE LIKE THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

riddhima still choking and struggling like a dumbass.

cake done, vansh off to look for his wife. gotta say, he’s got his priorities straight.

ishani making shady faces with Guy Fawkes mask. godddddd. who cares who cares who caresssss?

after 19023019283092130912390 moments of suspense, he finally found her and broke her outta the car.

some loving scolding for wandering off without telling him. dude’s she’s a grownass woman, not a toddler/pet.

anyway she told him someone shoved her in the car and he’s clenching his jaw most magnificently mmmmmmm that jawwww.

ab yeh kaunsi nayi musibat hai???

he’s promising to find and punish whoever and she’s thinking omg it kabir?!?!?!!!!!!!! as if noooooone else in the house wants to murder her.

she’s like you saved me again!!!!!!!! and he’s literally like stop playing khatron ke khiladi up in here every day and i won’t have to, bitch.

ishani literalllllly flaunting that mask on her arm and riddhima like OUFF YEH KHOOONI NANAD BAAZ NAHI AATI.

side mein dekha toh kabir also has one like that.

lmao everyyyyyyone has one of these masks.

R like i need to gtfo here from the presence of all these assholes, k byeeeeee.

she’s confronting ahaana ki why you call me outside and not show up yourself????

ahaana like, bitch tf you talking about? i didn’t call you or send any chit??!?!! get used to it ahaana, iss ghar mein rahogi toh yeh hourly occurance hai, aisa random chutiyaapa. tumhein toh aadat hogi hi, pichle janam mein oberois ke saath jo rahi ho.

riddhima bringing up vansh and ahaana like YOUR MAN SHADYYYYY AF. YOU SHOULDN’T TRUST HIM SO MUCH. iss ek line se hi i have gotten it ki ahaana has been planted by vansh and he’s trying to see if riddhima falls for anyone else’s hearsay again.

riddhima is giving speech about how much she trusts vansh and they’re each others’ parchhaai or some such shit, and lmaoooooooooooooo ahaana’s face......

same, sis. absolutely saaaame.

ahaana like “zindagi mein har bimaari ki dawaai hai, par galatfehmi ki nahi.” snortttttttt.

ahaana going heavy on “vansh don’t love you, he wants to killll your ass” speech and ouff....... ofc riddhima won’t listen. dumbass.

there is not ONE wrong thing ahaana is saying about vansh. not ONE. literally all of it is true. i mean, maybe he does “love” her or whatever, but kya hi karein aise bekaar roz roz life ruin karne waale pyaar ka? isse achcha toh naa hi kare pyaar.

aaaaaaaaand she got slapped for truth-telling. fuck. riddhima, you are such a fucking dumbass. where all this slappiness for your damn husband who was lying to your face for monthssssss, huh????

ugh mera pati mera ishq bhashaan. this chick deserves to be murdered. blindass.................. she’s doing the exact same shit she did with kabir, total blindddddd faith without listening to any reason. she deserves to be fucked over if she refused to learn anything from that kaand and won’t use her fucking brain even now.

honestly this sanctimonious speech she’s giving ahaana........

but for once she’s using her MAALKIN OF THE HOUSE rutba and telling to ahaana to gtfo the house.

lmao ahaana like tell vansh to throw me out, and i’ll go.

cut to......... riddhima is randomly staring at a ladder. as one does.

helllllllllllllllllllllllo. 😏😏😏

riddhima trying to tell vansh ki ahaana is off her rocker and....

well okay then! no more talking about ahaana! 🥰🥰🥰

great. all that was buttering up for the trust test he has set up for her.

climb the ladder, it seems. oh boy. i know what’s coming............

lmaooooo she climbs it and is like ok now you know that i trust you??? can i come back down now??? LOL DUMBASS HOW DID YOU NOT GUESS WHAT HE WANTED FROM THE MOMENT HE TOLD YOU TO CLIMB???????? dimaag ghutno mein hai iss ladki ki.

he’s telling her to jump. ofc. fucking asshole. tereko shauk hai random high places se chhalaang maarne ko toh you’ll make everyone do it or what?

HE’S ACTUALLY GETTING MAD AT HER HESITATION AND ALL I’LL CATCH YOU, DO YOU NOT TRUST ME?????? main hoti toh kehti ki bro, it’s not you that i don’t trust, i just know gravity as a force is more powerful than you are.

stupid stupiddddd bitch. she’s doing it also. DUDE, THIS IS A CLASSIC ABUSIVE TECHNIQUE, WHY DON’T YOU KNOW ANYTHINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG RIDDHIMAAAAA?!!?!?!? LIKE........................ THIS IS WHY PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO GET MARRIED BEFORE THE AGE OF 30. THEIR BRAINS ARE JUST NOT GROWN ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how self satisfied she looks. fucking dumbass.

while his face is like ‘i can’t believe the twit actually did it.’

some more talk about how she trusts him mosttttttttttttttttttttttttt in the world, while he gets horny for it. god, what a pair of boring dysfunctional fucks. i liked it better when he was vihaan and had a bondage kink.

bharosa talk bharosa talk and oh my god it’s sooooooo fucking obvious he’s planted ahaana to test her and her trust. aaj yeh toh bas level 1 tha. the chutiyaapa just gonna go up from here.

she’s like i don’t like ahaana, why does she have to stay here? he’s turning it back on her and saying if we trust each other, what does it matter if she stays here or says whatever????? which ....... is just some reallyyyyyyyyyyyyy manipulative BS.

he’s saying she has some “issues” that he’ll handle. oh lord. ahaana in danger of getting murdered by this fucker too.

riddhima giving some more vaasta of her neverending trust.........

while this asshole makes these very TRUSTWORTHY faces.

aaaaaaaaaaaaand someone watches them. as per usual. no wonder vansh made sure to go far far far far away from this house to get some nookie. idhar karte toh it would be like those olden days royal weddings, where the whole court would come and sit and watch the marriage being consummated.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-08-23

More homestuuuuuck

I’m a little tired today so I don’t expect much intelligent analysis out of myself, but if anything classpecty happens I doubt I’ll be able to help myself regardless.

oh, always

(EDITS: added note on horn colors, link to ask on potential Blood powers reference)

> CHAPTER 12. Really Convoluted Metaphorical Horseshit

cuuute

In the bowels of a different ship, at a moment in time that is not pinpointable in either direction from the previous interaction, another Dave raps quietly to himself.

another dave raps quietly to himself.  i am glad that phrase exists it brings me joy

(LATER EDIT: A friend on Discord pointed out that throughout this entire update, Karkat's horns are #FF0000 red. They were normal candy-corn colors in previous glimpses at the ship crew, though they used a dark single-color shortcut typical of old Homestuck at one point... but THIS time it stays STARK red even when we zoom in close later. Is this just artistic liberty? Did Karkat color his horns for fashion? Does this happen to red-bloods like the Sufferer after a certain age? Just how much time has actually passed, here? We might have to wait for the commentary for this one.)

KARKAT: I WAS SAYING I THOUGHT WE MIGHT GO, I DUNNO, ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE SHIP WHILE THE CLOTHES WERE WASHING. KARKAT: SEEING AS THIS DECREPIT MACHINE WE WERE SO BLESSEDLY PROVIDED WITH MAKES A WHIRRING SOUND SO PANCHAFINGLY ARHYTHMIC THAT IT THREATENS TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF TEMPO FROM THE UNIVERSE.

Karkat really has chilled out hasnt he?  like this is surprisingly level for him, and that fact is hilarious.

KARKAT: AND YET SOMEHOW BASICALLY ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE STARTED THE LOAD IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN USING IT AS A FUCKED UP BEAT TO WHISPER TO YOURSELF ABOUT FLOWERS TO.

oh gosh that’s why he’s rapping

> ==>

DAVE: kanaya was telling me this kids story the other day about this dude who didnt cherish a flower enough until it peaced out to do flower stuff idk its not pertinent to the story DAVE: except the flower was a person DAVE: because it was a metaphor

Oh right, coming back to the Little Prince stuff I was too lazy to metaphor-deep-dive into, and literally asking the same questions we were asking about who the Little Prince’s story applies to mapped here if anyone at all, like Dirk and such, or what biases were in the retelling of it and the way Kanaya phrased it.  So now we’re practically mocking it by deep diving it here, hence the last page’s “DAVE: i was just thinking through some really convoluted metaphorical horseshit”, which means we’re both about to further explore AND shit all over the existence of this story metaphor until it doesn’t mean anything and most of the meaning we drew from it earlier is made a joke~

well, not “we”, cause I was too lazy, so... y’all

DAVE: anyway what goes down in the story is that once the flower lady is out of the picture DAVE: the main character goes around making all these connections between her and everything else in the universe until every damn thing feels like a symbol for how much he fucked up and how much he will never see her again KARKAT: THIS SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE FOR A KID'S STORY DAVE: yea thats pretty much what i said

Oh holy shit.  That’s yet another way to put it.  Are we doing a whole moral takedown of the Light aspect today?  cause it sounds like we’re taking a dump on the Light aspect and RoboRose getting too obsessed and immersed in it, which would be excellent

DAVE: but i guess its not so much what the story was technically textually about but more like the version of it kanaya internalized and then told me when we were talkin about how she misses rose

exactly

DAVE: so like now im taking the story she told me she was projecting her feelings onto and projecting my feelings on top of that

yes absolutely, you just rephrased it a different way with that exact same bias

DAVE: this is just one big game of emotional projection telephone so feel free to go paraphrase it to roxy later and make it about whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing

perfect. i need an emoji for that Italian thing for when you pinch your thumb and forefinger together and kiss it

ah this’ll do:

its like the expression “choice” but in nonverbal form

[...] whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing KARKAT: YOUR ABILITY TO GET TO THE POINT DAVE: gotem DAVE: anyway you’re not gonna have to miss that skill of mine for long DAVE: get ready for this shit because i am about to slap you with the point so hard youll fall ass first into the washer DAVE: just scrambling around in there getting all sudsy DAVE: but your brain is gonna be so blasted from the mindfreak of a point im about to make that there wont be anything left to clean

Anytime dave is told to get to the point he is contractually obligated to spend at least 20 seconds talking about how he’ll get to the point in a way that is not getting to the point

DAVE: so its genuinely cool that kanaya can go around creating meaning that may or may not be actually present in every little thing DAVE: connecting every feeling she has to the idea of her wife existing out there DAVE: so i told her she should keep that shit up DAVE: but im having the opposite issue where im struggling to find anything to be that kind of tether because every single thing i could possibly consider about what it is were doing just reminds me of yet another thing to be afraid about

Great examples of Light being good and bad!  Attaching strands of connective meaning to everything.  --though, in Dave’s case AND Kanaya’s case you could argue it’s both bad in terms of effects.  That it’s great for Kanaya to care, but that she should be able to divest herself and live on her own terms without idealizing Rose literally everywhere she looks, personal growth which would be useful in helping bring Rose back to her in the first place.  The struggle they’re looking forward to is largely philosophical, not just physical, and until Rosebot acknowledges that she was wrong it’s not over.

DAVE: everything fuckin sucks huge cosmic donkey sack and im terrified KARKAT: OK, SO I FEEL LIKE YOU SKIPPED A COUPLE NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR POINT CLARIFICATION PROCESS.

Pretty sure Dave was on the same page as most Epilogue and start-of-HS2 readers.  This situation is pretty bleak to dump our heroes into, no matter how much we believe will be resolved in the long run.

DAVE: ok but were you going with sweet or savory please give me that much at least KARKAT: YEAH IT WAS GOING TO BE SUNDAE-BASED. DAVE: nice KARKAT: YEAH. KARKAT: DO YOU WANNA WATCH MORE GBBO AFTER THIS? DAVE: absolutely

--ah, Great British Bake-Off, can’t say I’ve indulged

do they still have that?? did they save it from old Earth?  or did they go where unflooded Britain used to be and say hey, new show reboot

KARKAT: GREAT. ANYWAY, LIKE I WAS SAYING, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET HUMAN CHRIST, PLEASE BACK UP TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU’RE ACTUALLY SCARED OF. KARKAT: ALSO COME HERE, IDIOT.

That last line is like, exactly as fucking sweet and awesome as we imagined their relationship to be.  :)

> ==>

OH MY GOD THAT’S ADORABLE

DAVE: ok yeah this is a better position to unleash all my inner fears n anxieties from

indisputably.

DAVE: those times its like my mouth was saying words about the situation wherein our friends are AWOL and maybe dead but my brain wasnt fully letting me experience the emotion that goes along with them DAVE: man its like i cant even start genuinely thinking about how afraid i actually am for rose and john without my brain flippin its wad and whiting out DAVE: like haha fuck i hope theyre ok DAVE: now i better make a fuckin joke before i succumb to the gaping mouth of despair waiting for me to fall in it as soon as i look down and acknowledge that its there ogling how juicy my ass looks as it trembles with terror

I really hope that the writers of HS2 know full well that this feeling? the one Dave is describing here? is what many of us who got way overinvested in the well-being of Homestuck’s surviving characters felt reading the Epilogues and Homestuck^2.  So I really hope they’re working through it in a way that will result in a preponderance of GOOD THINGS happening and hope-filled situations.  Cause that “can’t even think about X” feeling is too familiar, and if they understand it as well as it LOOKS like they’re getting to, I’d really like them to give us a helping hand healing.

I think that’s what they’re going for?  Seems hopeful for me to think so, but they HAVE been doing better as HS2 has been going forward, from an emotional standpoint anyway; definitely better than the Epilogues.  And I’ve worked through some of that stuff with the help of that, because it’s MUCH easier nowadays to think about Homestuck without my gut clenching.

DAVE: i guess im just fucked up about how to worry about dirk and be angry at him at the same time DAVE: because if i get as unholy pissed at him as i sometimes wanna be i also gotta admit to myself that maybe i coulda done something different there

Mhmm, Karkat’s potentially a pretty good person to speak with here since he’s done so much work trying not to feel responsible for everything that’s ever gone wrong.

DAVE: also like DAVE: and this by the way adds a whole other layer of guilt on there that i dont really know how to fuckin reckon with but DAVE: even with all the shit hes pulled and the fact that we are more or less heading toward having to take him down DAVE: whatever that is gonna mean and whether or not he planned it like that DAVE: i just DAVE: me and him had come so far with each other and it was really cool for a while to have him and i DAVE: ugh DAVE: i dont WANT to hate him

Yeah, Dirk and Jane’s heel-turns were really shitty for anyone who was a fan of them in the fanbase, as well.

KARKAT: WELL THEN QUIT FUCKING PICKING AT THE SEAM ON MY SHORTS AND SPIT IT OUT. THEY'RE BARELY HANGING ON TO THE DEFINITION OF "SHORTS" AS IT IS.

That is an adorably real boyfriend-laying-in-boyfriend’s-lap thing to do

DAVE: the part i mentioned before about how we really have no goddamn clue how long this trip is even gonna take DAVE: i cant help but feel like its barely getting revved up DAVE: and for me and roxy and jade and callie and kan thats normal shit at best and boring at worst but we all have our immortality to thank for that DAVE: we can just dick around in space for near-eternity waiting to catch up to our friends who may or may not be our enemies now and itll be fine DAVE: i mean no itll be categorically miserable DAVE: but well survive it KARKAT: HOLD THE FUCK ON. DAVE: but you KARKAT: DAVE. DAVE: no lemme say this

Oh god damnit.  Karkat’s limited lifespan.  As if we hadn’t ALREADY covered a nauseatingly extensive gamut of disheartening topics of conversation.  We really have to confront every shred of misery in their past, present and future one after the other after the other in the Epilogues and HS2, don’t we?  >:(

I guess it had to be discussed, though.

DAVE: we dont talk about it much and i got shit to say about it DAVE: its not like i never thought about how youre mortal before but i just thought wed be able to figure it out before it mattered DAVE: come up with some kind of plan DAVE: i was just distracted being happy with you i fucking guess and so i didnt think up a way to fix it DAVE: and now thanks to dirk we have to work it out right the fuck now DAVE: because i cant spend this trip just sitting around watching you get old and die

Jesus.  I mean, WE know(?) that it’s not gonna be THAT many years, but THEY don’t know that.

Unless it really IS going to be that many years and HS2 is going to shamelessly take a fucking sledgehammer to our feelings for no goddamn good reason.  Which it won’t!  Right???  >:T

> ==>

Dishwasher ding

> Dave: Grapple with the clean, soggy consequences of the passage of time.

Hey, don’t make it a metaphor here. --though, fuck.  I suppose we are dealing with everyones dirty laundry.  God damnit.  SURE, deal with it all story but then GET IT OUT OF THE WAY AND PUT SOME SERIOUS FUN AND LAUGHS IN HERE so we don’t feel like we’re wading through an entire garbage dump!!!  *click*

Karkat’s eyebrows-only mouthless frown is really cute.

> ==>

okay Karkat explain the nope you’re lodging

> ==>

*put*

> ==>

*foot*

> ==>

DAVE: ok go on

I mean I at least appreciate the time investment in adorable boyfriends.  That’s definitely something of SOME good value they’re giving us in exchange for this misery

> ==>

That Karkat image makes me wanna do that red-shaky-gif-thing with it

KARKAT: IT'S NOT LIKE I'M NEW TO THE PARTICULAR MOOBEAST WRANGLING EVENT OF SOMEONE I PREVIOUSLY LOVED BRUTALLY TURNING ON ME AND LEAVING ME TO TRY AND CRAM MY FEELINGS ABOUT THE SITUATION BACK TOGETHER ALL ON MY OWN.

True

KARKAT: HE DID THAT ON HIS OWN. AND WE MADE THE CHOICE TO GO AFTER HIM ON OUR OWN.

Yes, and you’ll possibly convince him more of that over time, though not in this short conversation

KARKAT: I WAS FOLLOWING YOUR LITTLE TRAIL OF COOKIE CRUMB FEARS UNTIL IT LEAD TO THE BIG SNACK FINALE OF WORRY ABOUT MY FRAGILE MORTAL MEATSACK. KARKAT: IF I HAVE SOMEHOW NOT BEEN CLEAR ABOUT THIS WITH YOU YET, LET ME GO AHEAD AND RECTIFY THE SITUATION RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. KARKAT: HANGING OUT WITH YOU ON THIS LONG TRIP TO WHO THE SHITTING FUCK KNOWS WHERE IS QUITE LITERALLY THE HAPPIEST I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY ENTIRE MEAGER EXISTENCE. KARKAT: I'M SO ABSOLUTELY BLISSED THE FUCK OUT OF MY MIND TO BE ABLE TO LOOK AT YOUR STUPID IMMORTALLY SMOOTH HUMAN FACE SKIN EVERY DAY AND NOT HAVE A COMPLEX ABOUT IT.

D’AWWW

And with that darkly angry expression too, that’s PERFECT

I mean it’s true.  What exactly would they be doing DIFFERENTLY on Earth C other than enjoying each other like this?  It’s pretty fucking great.

...hm.  Isn’t this journey-not-the-destination stuff pretty Breathy?  Karkat’s proving more balanced by the moment.

KARKAT: AND I'LL BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU. IT'S NOT LIKE I HAVEN'T BEEN EXPERIENCING SOME COMPLICATED GUILT, MYSELF. KARKAT: THE FACT THAT I'M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE JUST FUCKING CHILLAXING AND BEING IN LOVE IN SPACE IS A CLEARLY INCONGRUOUS WITH THE REASON I'M ACTUALLY HERE CHILLAXING TO BEGIN WITH, AND I'M NOT LETTING MYSELF FORGET THAT, EITHER.

Pff.  He feels guilty for ENJOYING IT so much.  <3

KARKAT: BUT I RESENT THE IMPLICATION THAT MY HAPPINESS IS REGISTERING FOR YOU AS YOU HAVING TO JUST "SIT AROUND AND WATCH ME GET OLD," BECAUSE I KNOW YOU KNOW IT'S MORE THAN THAT.

I’m glad Karkat knows that DAVE knows somewhere in him that it’s more than that, because yeah, if Karkat thought he DIDN’T know that at some level that’d be a reason to take MUCH MORE SERIOUS offense.

KARKAT: LIKE, JESUS, DAVE. YOU KNOW I'M AFRAID FOR YOU, TOO, RIGHT? KARKAT: OR DID YOU FORGET THE WHOLE HEROIC DEATH THING? KARKAT: I WORRY ABOUT LOSING YOU FAIRLY FUCKING REGULARLY.

Hah!!!  Point taken.  Karkat must view Dave as practically more fragile than HIM.

KARKAT: ONE: WE'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA THAT I REFUSE TO NOT ENJOY THIS SHIT WHEN I FINALLY FUCKING GET IT, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT MAY OR MAY NOT LAST. KARKAT: TWO: IT'S NOT LIKE WE'RE DOING NOTHING. WE’RE MOVING. WE’RE WORKING. WE’RE HEADED SPECIFICALLY TO A PLACE WHERE WE WILL UNDOUBTLEDLY ENDURE YET MORE FUCKING HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA. KARKAT: AND THREE: WE'RE DOING THAT BECAUSE WE HAVE FRIENDS WHO WE CARE ABOUT THAT NEED US. THAT IS OUR FOCUS, HERE. NOT OUR FEAR. IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE HAVE TO SAVE. KARKAT: SO DON'T FUCKING WORRY ABOUT ME, DAVE. I'M FINE.

Okay, this is great and wholesome.  I am now retroactively GLAD that this topic got brought up.  :)

> ==>

Dave is still afraid. There is a part of him that will always be, he thinks. He has accepted this about himself. There is another feeling coursing through him too, though. It’s something he's felt before, though never quite so intensely. He looks up at Karkat and understands, viscerally, the simple power his words have. They pump through Dave’s own body, alive and warm and true.

He wonders if Karkat realizes it, or if he’s just, as always, saying what he feels as he feels it. Dave doesn’t attempt to dissect it further. There will be time for that later.

Every really loving moment like this is sort of undercut by the fact that it’s also, in some senses, part of alt!Calliope’s narration and, by extension, her fanfiction.

EDIT 2: There's also either a hint to potential Blood powers or even an explicit Blood power use here that I didn't recognize. I'm leaning towards it's-laying-the-groundwork-for-future-use-of-Blood-powers-but-isnt-magical-in-this-case.

> ==>

Smooooch!

That was nice.  Still gonna wait on doing any commentary til next time or a Bonus update or two, cause I’m beat.  See y’all next time!

[autismgavemychildvaccines]

Why I’m Ashamed to Be Christian

So, now that I am literally sick of the Measles nonsense (no, fucking literally, working 12+ hour shifts on an incident management team has got me sick and tired enough to call in tomorrow), I’ve decided to do a non PH rant, though it’ll for sure rear it’s fucking head somewhere in here. Instead, let’s tackle something real fun. Religion! Time to buckle up.  In my half fucking awake daze that I was just nudged out of, something really wild hit me. My faith, my belief in a very specific God with a specific book (though I admit that other religions, so long as their origin is not a company or a tool to oppress others on the outset, are valid/likely just as true) makes no God damned sense.  (For reference, here I will claim my most closely related sect as my own; American Evangelism [though if one were to ask in person I’d say “non-denominational”, but historically, the two are close] and will be speaking as a part of a community I used to closely belong to but now have drifted away from on some granola-crunching dumbassery that is “I am a church of one” bullshit. I’ve wanted to be other things, but ever since I left the Freemasons, fuck all else has had much appeal.) So, first things first, Garden of Eden, right? Pretty fucking cool place, some might have even called it a perfect garden, a perfect place for humans and God to interact? But here’s my hang up with it. The trees of Life and Knowledge, and the rule that Adam and Eve could eat of any fruit except those grown upon that pair. Why even fucking have them?

 When I asked that as a kid in a faith based area, they said because it was a test.

 Of what?

 “Well, of our loyalty to God and our Faith, of course”. 

Except again, what the fuck? Like, I get the idea of free-will, in fact I am a huge believer in individual free will (I’ll get to that in a sec), but here’s the stickler here. As any other creative type will tell you, we want our work to take on a life of its own. Like say I wanted to program a remarkably bright AI, and it worked, and all I wanted was for it to recognize me as its creator and to discover and enjoy what home I could make for it. You know what I wouldn’t do? I wouldn’t give an AI, even with some simulated free will, the ability to break certain rules. For example, I wouldn’t allow it unrestricted access to the internet or my personal accounts. I wouldn’t even give it the concept that such things existed, let alone put it right fucking there to be used. That would be a flaw, an imperfection in an otherwise perfect place. And yeah, there’s something to be said for giving free will with not-free consequences, sure. But two things: 1) Don’t be pissed when the thing happens that you allowed to exist in the first place and thus forced it to be a mathematical certainty now that you’re dealing with perhaps the most curious species to ever exist.  2) Don’t go blaming them for a lack of faith. If anything, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, an act that abusers often use to get what they really want and have a thin veneer of an excuse to make happen. Now doesn’t that sound a lot like a good number of the followers of this faith, as opposed to an almighty, omnipotent, powerful being? Hmm, something to consider there, maybe.  Speaking of followers, let’s actually also take a look at some of the prophets that we as American Christians often hold so dear. Now me? I’m a Luke guy, I like Luke. Peaceful, loving gospel for the most part, and I dig it. Peace and love, baby, that’s all I want coming from stories regarding a higher power that we had to hang up like a fucking tapestry to make sure we got all that love. But do you know who I fucking hate, and who I blame the most for how the American chruch is? Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Thiiiiiiiiiiis prick. This fucking Deus Vult Vulture. Actually in many ways, he really is the archetype to the Modern Evangelical fucking anything. Actively participated in the harassing, attempted extinguishing and successful terrorizing of a marginalized group. Then after being hit back for it, literally “seeing the light” and trying to be the fucking vanguard of said group only to lead it down a path where he’s suddenly the appointed expert of anything to do with the issue. And while he does this, he helps create the most violent and bigoted thoughts in the whole of the religion, and is praised for his visions as he says they are truly from God, and can thus act oh so righteously. This right here is a fucking problem, y’all. Like, I know the whole forgiveness idea allows for some mental gymnastics on how this could even happen, but even then to make a genocidal ass-face your de-facto leader aside from Christ himself for the next 2000 years is a fucking flip that even at the 1988 Olympics, if Christians were America, Russia would give them a straight 10/10.    And yet, for many of us, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Hell, we’ve even fallen into the forced victim narrative of the synopsis of this asshole:  “Oh well, you see, I was a heathen and thus I couldn’t help myself, but then like, the God of the people I was killing talked to me and like, now I have to do this (Take on the “burden” of leading the church) as penance for what I couldn’t help myself over.” We’ve fallen for it so much, that it may as well be hard wired into our nervous system to believe anything resembling it, just as we assume if something is flat, green and on a tree, it’s a leaf.  Maybe it’s why we as a religion (and let’s face it, other Abrahamic religions as well) are so damn good at beating down the marginalized while screaming that we are the saints, we’re the sacrificiers trying to make things better. Like, let’s have some modern day fun with this bullshit, man; let’s see how we treated and in many places continue to treat women.  Of the few churches I have been to, 100% of them had one dual-sided message that made me real fuckin’ uncomfortable, fam:  Part 1) That women cannot be trusted onto themselves and thus 2) Men must take control of them and society to not allow for some unspecified “Ridiculous bullshit”.  (as a fair heads up; I do fully recognize non-binary, trans individuals, etc, but for the sake of brevity I’ll be mostly referring to M/F in the traditional sort of way, because opening up Christianity’s treatment of anything regarding gender fluidity is a Ph.D. thesis for another day)  Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I know damn well that out of all the dudes I know, and all the lasses I know, they’re a pretty mixed fuckin’ bunch. It’s almost like their gender assigned at birth doesn’t really affect how reasonable they could be as people nor how much responsibility they should have. Obviously some cultural practices skew this quite a bit in so far that women are expected to take more responsibility, younger, and for less praise, but if anything that should help destroy, not reinforce that message.  And yet, the idea persists so much in Christian circles. And not just by the men themselves, but the women, also. For the longest time of my church going days, the pastor was a woman. She wholly believed it was just and right that her husband be in charge of everything, that women should be loyal to their men in all aspects. Then again, she also (despite recruiting members primarily from college) did not believe in evolution at all, so there’s that in terms of an intellectual hurdle. But regardless, this inherent submissive attitude within the faith (and even the half-hearted and self-congratulatory “Yeah but we REALLY are the ones making the decisions because we can withhold sex if we want” is essentially that too just a smidgen more empowering), when combined with the idea that men should be wholly in-control (which is a breeding ground for toxic masculinity if there ever was) is shameful. It’s what has allowed so much bullshit in the past, including these recent abortion laws. Now, I’m going to cover abortion in another post (I might get to it tomorrow; It’s been on the burner for weeks), but it’s super pertinent here.  We, as a religion, have allowed ourselves to tell women (just as we tell/told minorities before) that they cannot be trusted with their own bodies, that they cannot be trusted when they speak, and most certainly cannot be trusted to truly hold dominion over anything. And that has allowed the most insidious, hateful, bigoted, disgusting things to happen in the name of God. A God that while I am writing this post I still believe in, but my doubts about how genuine the message has ever been is hitting home. One whose words about peace have been ignored when they could be interpreted or pointed to to support war, where the rich can profit off the poor, or to support sexism, because we as men historically have wanted to control “everything of ours”, or to take the very free will we claim to hold so dear from those who need the ability to make their own decisions the most. Words that have been used to hold down good people from making lives better. Words that in the hands of those who wanted, could be profaned and desecrated and thus allow for profane and disturbing events, both on the grand stage of the world and behind the closed doors of any house in some small town. Words which are held up with a wink and a nod so that followers feel included when they are scammed by some fucking fried chicken joint who wants to make more money to fight against equality, or to pay for another $9 million jet for some asshole who croons about how the poor should be grateful they do not have the temptations of the rich.  To other followers, do you not lament that we are this way? That we have been this way for so long? Because I fucking do.  And to those who have been discriminated or marginalized or whatever else against because of your gender or skin colour or situation or victimization or  past deeds of any sort; I’m sorry. Genuinely, truly sorry you have suffered as you have. Sorry for what people have done thinking it was somehow morally or spiritually justified, sorry that they thought they were saving you. And I can assure you that I will never try to lead you as those before me have tried to. Though if it’s all the same, I’d like to get to hear you, and walk beside you. 

[blessuswithblogs]

Video Games are a God Damned Mess: Bad Business Practices, Unsustainability, and the Fidelity Plateau

(shoutouts to the anon rando in my inbox for telling me about the read more button you were kind of rude about it but i don’t use this website so i legit didn’t know)

The video game industry has always been a bit wild and wooly compared to its older contemporaries. The emergence of a new medium is always rife with upheaval as paradigms shift and people discover that the old rules don't necessarily apply all of the time. That said, the past three months have been filled with what I can really only describe as catastrophes for many disparate publishers and development studios.

 You may recall I talked a bit about this during my game of the year list and Fallout 76 analysis, but to recap: with Telltale shutting its doors and shafting its workers, the writing was on the wall for the same thing to happen again as the intrinsically unsustainable boom and bust cycle began the less glamorous stage. It turns out I was correct in my predictions but congratulating myself for seeing this coming is not unlike congratulating myself for accurately predicting that tomorrow will be Tuesday. Or. Whatever day it will be when I post this. fuck i dated the lp thread ruined LOOK the point is that this was really obviously going to happen and that nobody felt the need to prepare for it or try to stop it before 10% of Activision-Blizzard's workforce got canned is a major failure of the industry at large.

So let's talk a bit about what's happened since then. There's been a lot, so forgive me if I miss your favorite corporate implosion. First, at Blizzcon, Diablo Immortal was revealed to what actually might have been the most actively hostile reception of a game in history. This has less to do with the more financial aspects of the ongoing Videocon Crisis and more just kind of served as an ill omen and an example of Blizzard's worrying descent into... wherever it is they're going. If gross incompetence was a place, they would be descending into it. On paper, a Diablo mobile game is a money-printing proposition. When all is said and done Immortal will still probably make them gobs of cash. In practice, however, they fucked the landing so hard they probably lost potential sales. The kind of folks who go to Blizzcon and get omegahype for a new diablo game are not the kind of folks who play mobile games. Mobile games have a Stigma among the hardcore crowd, and also the Ethical Business Practices in Video Games crowd (which as of this writing appears to be me, Jim Sterling, and the Warframe devteam). For a lot of braindead gamerbros, mobile games are synonymous with things like Candy Crush and Peggle, which are perfectly fine games honestly but they're For Girls or some shit so mobile games are bad and for casuals. More pertinently, mobile games are also a ferocious jungle of microtransactions, pay2win mechanics, and generally shoddy design. Command and Conquer and Dungeon Keeper, beloved franchises that have been ripe for revisiting for years now, both found mobile games and they were both utterly terrible. These games make a great deal of their money by exploiting "whales", or in actual human being language, vulnerable people with disposable income and difficulties with impulse control or addictive personalities. Or kids who know their mom's creditcard number. Kids play video games. Now that we are no longer kids (theoretically, anyway) it can be easy to forget that. I'm not the pearl-clutching type, but I think that stigmatizing a genre of games that proudly touts an exploitative-of-children business model is probably okay.

So there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of Diablo Immortal right out of the gate, and quite frankly whoever thought that just pushing that out there with literally no other Diablo related news items (like any whispers of the long coveted hd remaster of diablo the second) was either transferred in from another company the day before or had some kind of unspeakable grudge against the scheduled presenters, to whom my heart goes out to. There is also some undeniable precedent that Blizzard-Activision will, in all likelihood, monetize the everloving daylights out of it. Both Hearthstone and Overwatch have more or less become nicely polished vehicles with which to deliver lootboxes to players for a nominal fee. If this hadn't been followed by a seemingly unceasing calvacade of disasters, the whole debacle would have been really funny to point and laugh at. It's still pretty funny to point and laugh at, but it also has some less amusing implications. Blizzard in particular has been up to a lot of no good lately. Let's talk a little bit about their recent one-two punch.

First up, we have the complete and sudden abandonment of competitive support for Heroes of the Storm. Heroes of the Storm was essentially Blizzard's seething regret and resentment for letting Valve snatch up the whole Defense of the Ancients thing put into code and unleashed upon an unwitting populace. It had actually been gaining some renewed interest over the past year or so due to the developers putting in some elbow grease and making the game both more accessible and just. More better. HotS has also had a modest but respectable eSports scene since the game's launch, with a variety of professional players, shoutcasters, tournament organizers and emergency bugfixers employed. Many of them were anxious about their jobs for months in advance with no word from the higher ups about who would still be employed by 2019. Sometimes, companies have to make difficult decisions and let people go to keep operating. Even my communist ass reluctantly accepts this as a reality of the system we live in. However, there is a protocol about this kind of thing. Giving notice. Giving, you know, severance pay. Stuff like that. And of course this presupposes that this sort of cut to the workforce is actually necessary in the first place. Given that AB subsequently reported record profits for the year of 2018, I have some doubts. Completely dropping support for a game out of the blue is a scummy thing to do to your playerbase. When it is also directly impacting the livelihood of hundreds of people in your employ, it goes beyond scummy and turns right into Unacceptable.

But "unacceptable" is Bobby Kotick's favorite word in the English language so while shoving hundred dollar bills from his latest corporate bonus up his butt he and his friends in the boardroom decided that the HotS esports people might get lonely, so they had better go and fire another 10% of the workforce too. Just because. Like literally just because. His company is doing fine - better than fine! They are at record levels of better than fine. But the shareholders demand more and more exponential growth, so to cut costs that really didn't need cutting, away goes 10%. Will game quality suffer because of this? Undoubtedly. More work being piled on fewer people who are also living in mortal fear of losing their jobs Just Because is not a recipe for success. People are mad about this, much like people were/are mad about Fallout 76 - players of games, industry wonks, and iconic voice actresses alike are no longer tolerating this kind of thing in Two Thousand and Nineteen, Common Era. Nor should they!

Elsewhere in the Game-o-sphere, similar developments are brewing. ArenaNet, the folks wot do Guildwars, went through another round of mass layoffs. EA's stocks have plummeted and Battlefield V "failed to meet expectations" because it only sold A Ton and not A Fuckin Shit Ton, and Anthem is not really lighting the world on fire. After Mass Effect Andromeda's... curious debut, Bioware has probably been feeling the heat and a lot of people are concerned that it too will suffer the ultimate fate of all studios acquired by Electronic Arts: joining Visceral Games in a broken heap at the bottom of the garbage chute. Bring back Dead Space you motherfuckers. Bethesda continues to, improbably, suffer through PR disaster after PR disaster with Fallout 76, a game that seemingly cannot stop fucking up. Ubisoft has received some positive attention for vowing to NOT lay off hundreds of employees for no discernible reason, which leads me to believe that our standards for praiseworthy behavior have dropped alarmingly low. Even 2K Games in all of its monolithic glory seems to be feeling a bit of a Stock Price Squeeze. Honestly by the time I get this done and posted it's entirely possible that somebody else will fuck something up. I'm still kind of waiting on the fallout from Randy Pitchford's porn thumbdrive, but I'm also a little bit pleased that Actual Money Crimes are getting more traction in the news cycle.

So, returning to the main point: the industry is in a bad situation of its own making. It's a scene that's almost always been defined by trend-chasing. For a while, that meant that we would just have to suffer through an endless glut of EXTREME SPORTS GAMES SPONSORED BY A DUDE or a barrage of samey console shooters desperately trying to be Halo every once in a while. Unfortunately, the trend-chasing now extends not only to the games themselves, but to the methods by which they are monetized. Ever since DLC became a mainstream thing, the brightest minds of the boardrooms have been working tirelessly to deduce which method of fleecing players will scientifically speaking get them the most money. Inevitably, when some enterprising little weasel develops a new and improved monetization scheme, the rest of the little weasels will immediately latch on to that scheme and that's how you end up with Battlefront 2's ridiculous lootbox grind and Shadow of War's ludicrous inclusion of randomized lootboxes in a singleplayer action-adventure game. While I'm certain that the platonic ideal of the lootbox has existed in some form or another for decades now, I think that we can squarely lay the blame for the Great Lootbox Plague of the Twenty-Tens at the feet of Valve.

Valve has been known for questionable business practices for a while now (albeit in a more lowkey way than We Fired 800 People So Bobby Kotick Could Buy a New Yacht), largely getting away with it because Steam has been more or less unchallenged as the premier digital distribution service for video games. This might be changing soon, as Epic Games is going straight for the jugular with a number of aggressive moves with its own fledgling platform, but historically, Valve has faced very few consequences for just kind of being petulantly antagonistic towards its userbase because said userbase is easily mollified by steam sales and Gaben memes. When people think lootboxes in 2019, they probably think of games like Overwatch or Battlefront 2 or basically any contemporary multiplayer game. I certainly do, but a bit of fact finding allowed me to remember that Valve has been doing this shit since Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2's byzantine cosmetics market can't be overlooked either. All three of these games are or were at one point genre leaders and made Valve so much money they basically decided that they didn't really need to make games anymore. A reasonable conclusion to draw, given the fact all three of these games are inextricably linked to their history as very popular mods. Valve just outsources a great deal of its labor to dedicated, naive fans and gives them a pittance of the huge mounds of dollars they make from their hard work. It's a good racket, but it has set an alarmingly poor example to the rest of the gaming world.

Games as a service, in concept, is fine for games that lend themselves well to the idea. MMOs have been using a variation of the model for decades now and that genre is actually like, Perplexingly Healthy. Free to play games like League of Legends and Warframe have also had success with a service model. The problem comes from the AAA Game industry's pathological insistence on shoving square pegs into things that don't even have holes to begin with. Shadow of War, or Assassin's Creed, or any other major singleplayer offering, has no business whatsoever being a Live Service. They are finite experiences by design and that's completely fucking fine and normal. Appending microtransactions and lootboxes to them is a transparent attempt to just suck up a little bit more money from players in the most unsustainable way possible. Here is a small hint if some WB Games bigwig stumbles upon this: first of all, I'm building a guillotine, so you better watch your ass. Second, how dare you fucking make Shelob a sexy lady. Third, (this is the one that is probably most relevant): People are willing to pay as they go for cosmetics and timesavers for games that they like and want to support. I've dumped a lot of money into League over the years because there was a period of time where I was playing it nonstop and having a wonderful time for quite literally no cost to myself, so I felt like buying the cute Panda Annie Skin was a good compromise. Regrettably I would later learn that there are aspects of Riot Games I'm not super okay with giving money to but at the time they seemed agreeable and my friends who work there gotta get payed somehow. This whole dynamic of wanting to support a video game goes out the damn window when you are already charging a $60 entry fee, plus whatever highway robbery pricing you put on the inevitable DLC. In this case, the onus is squarely upon the publisher to provide an experience and content one would reasonably expect of the pricetag. Putting in microtransactions for cosmetics is galling. Putting in microtransactions for actual game progression, like in Battlefront 2 or Shadow of War, is outright insulting.

Many will leap to the defense of these publishers and developers, saying that these measures are necessary to make these ludicrously expensive and lavish AAA games that all look suspiciously like one another. For the time being, let's accept this as a true statement. If this is, in fact, the state of affairs in the industry, then the industry needs to change to a more sustainable business model. When playing Destiny 2, during a big space cutscene, the cute pilot lady ferrying me to The Large Molerat Man's Murderboat had beautifully rendered skin where you could see the pores and the little wispy cheek hairs that swayed to the momentum of the space plane's movements. It was very nice but then the next year or so I heard nothing but people pointing out "hey this game has no content you dipshits" or "the devteam is actually scamming people with the experience system to wring more playtime out of them". The cheek hairs affair succeeded in making me want the pilot to buy me dinner and regail me with stories of her space adventures as I batted my lashes at her in romantic admiration, but also: stop it. You do not need to do this. This is strictly unnecessary. The graphics arms race of yesteryear is over. Nobody cares anymore. Fidelity is plateauing harder and harder, to the point where games running properly on console without having to settle for 30FPS is becoming very difficult. There is an Earth B somewhere out there where Bloodborne was not a sony exclusive and got a PC release with 60FPS support and loading times for humans and on Earth B I am still playing that game for the forseeable future because it is the best game ever. We are far past the paradigm where we are making Tremendous Graphical Leaps with each successive generation. Right now, as of this writing, games look jawdroppingly good. Just ludicrously pretty and grandiose. Continuing to push the graphical envelope for Every Damn Annual Release is a waste of resources: monetary resources, labor resources, system resources. As of March, 2019, what people really want is stability and functionality. Something that runs nice and smooth at 60FPS and doesn't turn its characters randomly into nightmare inverse-Rayman beasts. I think the huge success of the Nintendo Switch, a console with relatively modest hardware but superb functionality, portability, and a surprisingly full featured library of both massive first party titles, like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey (which honestly look better than a lot of games on more robust hardware because of wonderful art direction) and smaller indie games, is testament to this line of thinking.

Maybe that's too bold of a statement. Maybe there's this huge swath of the gaming public that is just clamoring for more cheek hairs. If there are I think they're fucking out of their minds but who am I to judge. As long as games like that werewolf game The Order exist, where the universal reaction is "this is so pretty!!! ...wait there's nothing in here." I think that there is a serious responsibility to push back against that because evidently it's bankrupting the game industry and forcing them to violate international gambling laws to stay afloat. Except it's fucking not, actually. Many publishers are claiming record profits, upward trends, and are in a spot to have the raw nerve to say "well this game that sold 7 million copies didn't sell 8 million copies so it failed to meet expectations". They are doing ludicrously well for themselves in terms of generating revenue from sales. Where these highly successful corporations are running into problems is satisfying the almighty Shareholders. Shareholders are sort of like. Imagine if you got a job where you had to keep a large committee of actual babies happy, except the babies don't know shit about fuck about anything and demand that you routinely break all reasonable laws of sustainability and keep bringing in exponentially higher profits or they will take their ball and go home. There is still, evidently, money enough to give newly hired executives million dollar signing bonuses, but when it comes to just making a game that doesn't fall back on exploiting people with gambling addictions, we're suddenly dealing with an outfit of noble, longsuffering churchmice just trying to make ends meet. People are rapidly getting fed up with this blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty. Sales from Hearthstone card packs alone could fund a robust HotS esports scene for eternity if properly apportioned. This money is not properly apportioned. It is thrown into a gigantic incinerator so Kotick can get high on the fumes.

You might be wondering what this girls' deal is with Blizzard. Surely there are more egregious offenders? Firstly, Blizzard is very relevant at the moment because they are one of the highest profile publishers to recently Do A Business Oopsie. Secondly, I live in Irvine, California. Blizzard HQ is a ten minute drive from where I live. It's a local company to me, and it's legitimately kind of hard to see it continue to go down this path because I've had friends and neighbors who have worked there and enthusiastically described the experience right up until the very moment they get canned for no reason. My alma mater, UC Irvine, is one of the leading schools in the nation on adopting eSports into their collegiate athlete program. I understand, to a lot of people, Electronic Sports (please support them) are a big joke silly thing, but to me and my family who work in the UC system, they're actually like a huge and pertinent part of professional life. I'm literally being consulted by my mom's co-workers for advice and insight on how to minimize the abusive and toxic behavior that has become synonymous with streaming and professional gaming because campus now has a huge eSports center with rows on rows of gaming computers for students to use. Games Are Big. They are a powerful cultural and economic force in the lives of millions of people and denying that because of "haha nerds" is the same shortsighted, utterly-lacking-in-self-awareness wanking that resulted in the stupendously destructive "its just the internet, it doesnt matter lol" attitude that has caused the world so much grief. That said Bart Simpson becoming an esports legend sponsored by Riot Games is still pretty lame don't @ me.

What it comes down to is this: the games industry has grown into a hugely influential and powerful institution that affects the lives of more and more people every day. However, the appropriate growth in regulation, oversight, and worker protection has not occurred and has honestly shrunk. People love to talk up Satoru Iwata because when the Wii U was floundering he took a massive pay cut and refused to lay off any staff, reasoning that "it will be very difficult for our teams to create software that will impress the world when they are constantly worrying about losing their jobs." It's a little incredible that The Baseline Reasonable Thing To Do has elicited such effusive praise, but that's the world we live in and Iwata-san was pretty alright so I'm okay with it. Both his conduct and reasoning are both solidly above reproach in this case: it is really hard to be creative when the Sword of Damocles is hanging over your head! That’s 500% true! This goes for game developers, community managers, eSports staff, support staff, literally every part of the process that matters, even the totally unrelated clerks and communications people who are still completely necessary for creating games. The only people who don't suffer are the dipshits on top who don't actually contribute to the creation of games in any way. They're still fine. Better than fine, really. That's why people are mad. That's why people SHOULD be mad. Don't stand for this anymore.

[scenesplitterworld-blog]

It’s Not About the Shape – It’s About the Lie (An investigation into why flat earth hip-hop may seem merely stupid, but might actually be dangerous too: Electric Bugaloo)

Author’s Disclaimer: I’m sure that, like most people, most flat earthers are fine. Most people who rap about the shape of the place we all live on are probably fine. I acknowledge that the two dudes I profile in this investigation are probably the ISIS of your conspiracy movement. If you come across this article, and you’re a regular John or Jane Q. Flat Earther, please understand that your willfully ignorant belief has some truly disgusting expressions and intellectual underpinnings. So, with quite a bit of conscious irony, if you are a “moderate” flat earth truther, I exhort you to denounce your radically anti-Semitic fringe, particularly Eric Dubay. It may be a shitty presumption on my part, but I just assume that even you, hypothetical, humdrum Dale or Erma P. Flat Earther, are the kind of person to constantly post to FacePage that “moderate Muslims” must unceasingly denounce Al-Qaeda. And if, havin’ read through this, you’re the kind of person who’ll accuse me of being a “SJW” because I think promoting Holocaust denial is hugely problematic, eat shit; die mad with stank breath. But, if you’re a hardcore ODD TV or Dubay boy, please come at me, I’ll gladly take whatever you consider lumps. All that said, let’s listen to some real fringe fuckin’ hip-hop, shall we?

               I’ll bet most folks view people who believe the earth isn’t really round as nothing more than loons and larks. That’s how I started. Owing to a strange encounter I had with a feller at a show last winter, I had a picture of flat earth truthers as young, isolated, drunk, white dudes with dreadlocks wearing kneepads over their jeans saying gross things to pretty ginger gals. I was a little worried, but still mostly tickled, to discover that there’s a largish community of believers online. If you don’t get into the weeds of what belief in the flat earth entails, it’s easy to laugh it off as mere ignorant buffoonery, but, whoooooo boy, if you examine it closely, you’re in for one of the wildest, and surprisingly disturbing, rides of your life.

                 I stepped through the looking glass on accident, when I stumbled on this music video, “Cartoon Ball,” by ODD TV. At first, I clowned on it. Of course I did. Did you watch it? Christ. Dude’s shirt says “Never Sleep Again,” and he really looks like he ain’t slept because he’s in the early, still exciting days of a meth bender. I sent this video to friends and shared it on my timeline because I wanted to spread the chuckles. To be fair to ODD TV, I think he’s got legitimate talent. Not just on this track, but also throughout his catalogue, he’s got a catchy flow and his songs show a deft use of samples – for example, in the bluntly titled song, “Dear NASA, Why Are You Lying,” he takes the lyric “Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” from Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song “Californication,” and using that in a song about how the earth is actually not globe-shaped is, artistically, fairly dope. Not at all what the funky, cock-socked, SoCal, alt-rock, boys had in mind when they wrote the song, but that’s ODD TV’s genius. His video production, likewise, is slick. It’s much slicker than this other flat earther we’re gonna scrutinize in a sec, but one thing these guys share, which, I gotta say, is utterly derivative of almost every other conspiracy theorist with social media accounts, is referencing the Rowdy Roddy Piper flick, They Live. Guys. Give it a moratorium, right now, y’all have made it lazy.  

              Anyway, I got my giggles and moved on, right? Obviously not. After my mirth settled down, I found myself returning to “Cartoon Ball,” and for all my above praise, I wasn’t watching this weird shit again because I was real into the music. Nah, I think it was this lyric in particular: “God created the heavens and the earth / in a verse / but we’re livin’ in a Freemasonic Galaxy.” ODD TV doesn’t get into what he means by that, exactly, in this video – although, he gets into in in his oeuvre, bet your ass on that – because he’s focused mostly on rallying the viewer against NASA.

              But, on repeat viewing, you know, I caught this brief WTF nugget – a what the fugget, if you will: “We follow rapists and murderers / liars, thieves, and sun worshipers / sayin’ we can’t see curvature / ‘cause we’re all too small.” It’s the sun worshippers part that’s the sore thumb, right? Well, get ready for that sore thumb’s equally sore counterpart when ODD TV raps that believers in a spherical planet are “Stuck in the material domain of Satan.”

              Well, little ol’ me, Alice Donkey Boy Croix, was drawn further into the flat earth hip-hop scene by YouTube’s helpful recommendation. Oh, what a twisted Wonderland that turned out to be. But store those what the fuggets away for later use, Beloved Reader, they’ll crash back into pertinence again directly. Presently, we need to turn to how things got soooooo much more goddamned bonkers. The other cat I referenced briefly earlier, his name’s Eric Dubay, and he’s just about the whole rest of the haul of our investigation. So, settle in to peep this video, “Once You Go Flat.”

                Holy. Steaming. Shit. Y’all. Good. God. Damn.

              Right?

              Sorry to spring that diarrhea spray of hippo shit at you without much warning, but I wanted you to be as utterly gob-smacked as I was when Holocaust denial enters into things…and continues to spiral out from there. And just in case THAT was somehow an aberration from his mean, I watched this one. If you watched the first one, you already know to brace yourself, but, I cannot really stress enough that he, whew, he doubles down.

   So, let’s shelve the vegetarian polemic and uh…yeah…that was the most hardcore anti-Semitic thing I’ve ever experienced in musical form. Oh, you too? Neat. Look at us, Gentle Mentals, with all this shit in common!

              So, that video left my jaw on the fuckin’ floor, and that’s when I went over to www.ericdubay.com. I can neither confirm nor deny that visiting this page puts you on any sort of NSA list, but if the NSA is keeping tabs (hello, special agent, how are ya), it maybe should focus some attention on the shit our boy Dubay’s proudly posted here. Red flag it if you ain’t already, you may thank me later. Imagine that! The federales thanking little ol’ me!  

   BTW: we’re “in country” now, so maybe get your tin-foil helmet on.

              A few sick bars and a shocking affinity for the OG Nazis ain’t the only radical thing about our boy Dubay. He moves in circles so fringe that they consider Alex Jones to be part of the “controlled opposition.” Dubay’s even a truther against other flat earth truthers. He goes hard on The Flat Earth Society for being “controlled opposition,” by pointing out the idiocy of their theory for what is really going on with “gravity” on a flat earth, which is that the earth is like a pizza crust tossed continually upwards, so…things don’t really fall, they’re just kind of suspended until the ground catches up to them. Yeah. The idea of controlled opposition is that you get a shill to be a very vocal idiot in order to discredit the more “legitimate” conspiracy investigators who have come too close to the truth. But who controls the controlled opposition? Remember when I told you to remember ODD TV’s reference to the Freemasons? The Sun Worshipers? The Satanists? Dubay says it’s them. He says that both The Flat Earth Society and NASA are chock full of Masons, Masons who are behind these lies. He claims NASA agents – whatever those are – have murdered flat earth truthers to maintain their grip on this elaborate illusion. And, in a series of infographics, he ain’t shy in explicitly linking these nefarious Masons directly to, you saw it, the Jews. He’s one of these New World Order, Jew World Order types. I realized I tossed that off kinda casually – he’s just one of those types – but let me assure you, I don’t do it dismissively. Dubay compares the way this global Jewish cabal runs the world’s affairs to the orchestrated sturm und drang of televised professional wrestling.

              So you gotta wonder why lying about the shape of the earth is so important to our crypto-kosher overlords. I sure as fuck needed to know the answer to that myself, and, like any conspiracy theorists before him, this is where Dubay stumbles somewhat. He’s got 200 proofs for the truth of the flat earth, but he’s less articulate as towards the damnable “why” of it all. As I’ve been able to understand of his position, Eric Dubay believes we’re indoctrinated with the spinning globe model of cosmology, because if the global elite of Freemasonic Zionists can brainwash everybody on such a fundamental level as the ground beneath our feet, they can deceive and control us in any other sinister way they fuck well feel like.  

       ��      Y’all, I’m a great many things. I’m not an astrophysicist, so, to be honest, I’m not really interested in engaging with the specifics of these dudes’ arguments regarding round versus flat, because – you know the Family Guy throwaway joke where Peter’s at the Cineplex helpfully pointing out when somebody in the movie says the movie’s title – to quote Mr. Dubay himself, “It’s not about the shape; it’s about the lie.”

              Before I get deeper into this shit – yeah, you thought you were down the rabbit-hole already – I want to point out that if you want to get all this from the horse’s mouth, the last twenty or so minutes of the two-hour FAQ video on his site is my source for all this. And since getting deeper into this gets pretty heavy, I think we need a bit of a levity break, so, I present a riff on a few screen grabs from that video.

               First of all, it’s hard to tell – among the things I am is poor of vision – it looks like the letter G has been replaced by the number 6 in the phrase “Sacred Geometry. The Great Architect of the Universe. Gravity.” 666 is metal, but in this case you’re using it in a way that’s way too mental to be heaviest, fam. The Jews are Satanists too, remember? Luciferian nonsense is a thing Alex Jones dabbles in also. Second, Pythagoras was the leader of a cult that worshiped numbers. Pythagoras literally had a motherfucker 86ed because he felt that the concept of pi was blasphemous and threatening to him personally as a cult leader. The reason I’m scratching my head is that you might know pi as a pretty foundational concept in calculating the circumference of the globe. Globe. So, if he’s part of a cabal bent on convincing you the world is round, why would he be so violently opposed to that squiggly little Stonehenge-lookin’, 3.14 on to infinitum meanin’, mathematical concept that would support the whole damn thing? Anyway, here’s another.

              I think this is supposed to be an Illuminati thing, but all it proves to me is that many people have fingers, and covering one eye is an easy way to look mysterious and sexy. It’s not like they’re all holding their hands the same way either. If a person were to try to argue that Eric Dubay himself is part of the controlled opposition, I think this could be evidence of “too dumb to be serious.”

              But I wanna get serious again. Back to the investigation. I wanted to know what made this dude tick. Call yourselves Ishmael, because ol’ Dubay became my white whale, only in this version, I think we spear the shit out of Moby Dick. Truly, I believe that in the final portions of that long ass video I’ve been talking about, we see into his core – and unlike the molten core of the round earth we sheeple foolishly believe in – the heart of Eric Dubay is a frozen, Jotunheim-esque, barren fearscape.

              Eric Dubay’s animating impulse is this: a deep, incomprehensible terror that humanity has no purpose in existence. He believes that subscription to the ideas of the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of life on earth via the mechanism of natural selection is subscription to a fundamentally nihilistic outlook; if humanity has no reason – as he sees reason – to be, the crisis in his soul would be too great to bear. And, sure, I get that. But he has not coped well with that adolescent existential angst. If the universe is a vast and vastly complicated place, it’s a scary place to be at the fringe of, so, to bridge the rift of this Lovecraftian horror inside himself, he’s put himself at the center of debunking a conspiracy to shroud our planet’s central location in the universe; our planet’s non-rotating position, which is to say a position of stability. Stability. Think about how comforting a concept that is. Purpose. Stability. Simplicity. These are not abnormal desires, but our boy Dubay’s gone about attaining ‘em in an abnormally toxic fashion. And he’s certainly doing his damnedest to create the fellowship he craves though all his media outreach. Can’t blame a feller for not wanting to feel alone…but when Holocaust denial is such a big part of your identity, it’s – to put it politely – extremely fuckin’ troublesome that you want others to believe as you do.

              Dear reader, Gentle Mental, “Hypocrite Lecteur,”* if you’re wondering why the fuck any of this matters, this here’s that part of the article; buckle the fuck up. I believe that never before in human history has the battle against propaganda been more vital to the survival of the species. I’m typing this on Sunday, October 15, 2017, and the last headline I read was about Kim Jong threatening to bomb Guam if Trump don’t shut the fuck up about him on Twitter. We’ve got fucking lunatics at the trigger; we’ve got so much evidence that the Kremlin orchestrated the most effective “hearts and minds” campaign of the internet age; we’ve got tactics of division being employed by the most cynical and unhinged people of influence. So why should this flat earth shit matter? We’ve got all that more important shit I listed, right? Because flat earth’s your gateway conspiracy. Pretty soon, you’re hip-deep in the most virulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion bullshit.** Some conspiracy theorists have the…decency’s not the right word, so let’s start over. Some conspiracy theorists are crypto-anti-Semitic. OBVIOUSLY not our boy Dubay. Lemme quote from his song “Blood Rituals,” “You are blind, so fuck what you say / I’ll expose the flat earth and hail Hitler all day.” That’s so obviously dangerous, and the ideas of flat earth and anti-Semitism are so clearly linked, that we shouldn’t need to dwell, so I’ll move us along with this tossed out aside: fuck you, Richard Spencer, for ruining Tiki Torches, but thank you for being conveniently illustrative of the point that being a ringleader for Nazi sympathizers does in fact correlate to assholes in the street beating people and murdering them indiscriminately with cars.

 *Editor’s Note: Goddamnit, DB! After I chewed your ass for quoting Yeats that last time, you have the nerve to bring this Baudelaire shit to the table? I want a picture of Spider Man on my desk TOMORROW!!

 **Author’s Note: For an wonderfully illuminating examination of the history and influence of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I highly recommend the July 27, 2017 episode of a podcast called Knowledge Fight. (http://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/size/25/?search=Protocols+of+the+elders+of+zion) Hosts Jordan and Dan do a thorough job of linking this fraudulent document DIRECTLY to Alex Jones’ framing of his favorite nemesis, the Globalist bogeymen, and even David Icke’s Reptilians. Do yourself a favor and dive into this podcast whole hog.

                Provided that even one fewer gullible cocksucker buys into the dangerous worldviews of somebody like ODD TV, Alex Jones, or Eric Dubay, I will deem all efforts to expose their nonsense worthwhile, valid, and necessary. I don’t believe I’m virtue signaling when I speak out in order to shed light on hucksters’ efforts to spread dangerous racial, religious, or national divisions. It isn’t trivial to examine how those divisions may be spread insidiously as the necessary expression of these ideas; symptoms of the cancer, boils on the ass of the corpus scientia. Alex Jones is right about at least one thing: we are fighting an info war. He’s on the wrong side of it, to be sure, but it’s the same sort of info war Mike Pence fought in when he performed his indignant pageant at the ball game. And I don’t think that in speaking against any of this nonsense I’m beating a dead horse. And I believe that speech is action. If I reiterate a point, it is at least my humble intention to bring new nuance. I believe that the one person who was teetering on the fence but saw the truth of these bonkers narratives could be the one person who might have otherwise been the next to take a gun to something like a DC pizza joint to find out if interdimensional, shape shifting, child-molesting, psychic vampires run the government. Or do something so much more tragic in the name of bringing down whatever conspiracy it is they’ve been taken in by.

              This’s the rock I reckon I’ll die on, should anybody respectfully disagree. Thank you for your time, Gentle Mentals, friends, fiends, and foes alike. It’s time to pray.

[fishyshinobi]

rokami replied to your post: I long for the day when the japanese movie Your...

big fuckin same, i’m so pissed that it only got a limited theatrical release

I assume you are speaking about the American* release. Unfortunately we didn’t even get as much down here. They are cracking down on piracy pretty hard too. I mean, dude, I want to pay for this but you are not letting me. 

* only pertinent to 1 country. Rest of the continent is sold separately