#just like how people who get really into conspiracy theories are not doing it because they are mentally ill.

[giantkillerjack]

Infinity Train isn't the best counterpart to Last of Us on positive representation. Remember the only explicitly Neurodivergent character in Infinity Train became a villain and died brutally on screen?

No, I don't remember. But what I do remember is that the entire core concept of the show is basically "a train that puts people through magical therapy." And so I remember that nearly every lead character is clearly dealing with some form of mental illness or another. I don't need every character to be explicitly diagnosed onscreen to know that the show is chock-full of neurodivergent characters, so I'm quite genuinely not sure what you mean. Have I missed something?

[the-trans-dragon]

I found a documentary series with an episode titled “The Next Pandemic” from November 7, 2019.

Pre-covid.

Really bonkers to watch. Various professions talk about their biggest concerns and priorities. Bill Gates gives his opinions a couple times.

I’m going to bed 💜

[caffeineandsociety]

There's a specific genre of shitty antisemitic joke that I have seen fly under the radar (as it was designed to) a LOT more often lately - especially since Kanye started going full mask-off nazi - so I feel the need to issue a warning about it. Namely, the genre is jokes that get spread around by people who aren't willfully antisemitic because outside of conspiracy brain rot land, it appears that the point of the joke is absurdism.

As an example, let's examine the 23-and-me lizard DNA test that I've sadly seen floating around unquestioned.

Because, see, to the average person who isn't willfully antisemitic, this genre of joke comes off as nonsequiturs, or hilarious mistakes - you, as a person with some level of basic observational and critical thinking skills, living on Earth and not in whatever batshit mirror dimension conspiracy theorists think we live in, might very well end up getting a giggle out of it because, HAH, we KNEW those DNA ancestry kits were a scam! If you're not a deliberate antisemite but not really up on the dogwhistles, it doesn't scan as anything awful because you're put in mind of things like feeding a photo of something decidedly not human into that one selfie-to-anime neural net, which sometimes works and produces interesting results because the thing is looking for specific patterns and trying to make anything fit - not things like blatantly lying about doing something like that in the hopes that normies who see the absurdity and want to have a laugh at a scummy company's expense will pass it along to people who unironically believe that Jewish people are actual literal lizard aliens and the test proves it.

This is the same strategy that guy at the game awards pulled. You, a person living in reality where the main source of political corruption is just the basic consequence of an economic system that makes power pool in the hands of anyone willing to exploit enough people, a world of banal mundane evil, know damned well that QAnon-pizzagate-satanic ritual abuse cult conspiracy bullshit is, well, bullshit, if you're even familiar with the details of what they believe at all. When someone crashes the stage and thanks Rabbi Bill Clinton, you may very well laugh because to YOU it is a blatant absurd nonsequitur.

Problem is that to someone else, someone who's deep into that shit, it's either someone letting the truth slip, or someone backing the deep state into a corner - whichever is more convenient to believe.

This is one form of how the far right uses memeification (CW: the example discussed in the link is a rape "joke") - it means something totally different to the in-group than it does to the out-group. To you, it's funny because it's nonsensical; to them, it's fun because they think they're onto something huge and they're about to blow this shit wide open and it's going to be their great moment of triumph.

I cannot stress enough that no matter how absurd an antisemitic conspiracy theory sounds to you, there are people who believe it, unironically. There are people who unironically believe that Jewish people are very literally not human and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever change their minds. There are people who believe that we're born with horns and tails and pointed ears and have them surgically altered to fit in with good Christian humans like some kind of extremely high-stakes game of Among Us. There are people who believe that we steal, ritualistically abuse, and kill Christian babies. These beliefs, while fringe enough that, yeah, most of you who this post is aimed at have never heard them in the wild before very recently, are not nearly as fringe as you probably think they are. Just look at fucking Kanye. This asshole has more fans than there are Jewish people in the world.

So I'm begging you to please, bare minimum, be careful of "absurdist" jokes about Jewish people, especially if they reference lizards, money, banking, or government power. Also, you may see Jewish people debating how religious laws may apply to fictional creatures, but outside of that context you should also be wary of any time Jewish people are mentioned in the same sentence as vampires, dragons, goblins, zombies, fantasy demons, or any number of other fantasy creatures known for greed, feeding on humans, or both.

If the reason it seems funny to you is because you'd have to be really stupid to believe it's true or makes any kind of sense - it's probably looking for you to spread it to people who are, in fact, that stupid.

[echosbento]

AU where Jason lived, but only barely. People know that Jason is alive, tragically injured in a villain attack, but alive. Thing is, they don't know that the second Robin is alive. Bruce tells anyone that asks, the kid is alive, but he never says he's fine because Jason isn't fine, he's traumatized and disabled and angry that he had his choice to be a vigilante taken from him, but he's clear that the kid is alive. People don't believe Bruce though, they think he's in denial, because it's clear to anyone who had ever seen the two together that Batman saw Robin as his son. It becomes common knowledge that the second Robin died, there are even conspiracy theories that he died saving Jason's life, and Batman was too distraught by this to ever really accept his death. So when Tim meets Bats, he too thinks the second Robin is dead, it's the only explanation he can think of anyways, because no new vigilante ever showed up like after the first Robin disappeared. And then Bruce takes him to the manor, and Jason is just sat on the couch, mending Dick's costume because his useless himbo older brother can't keep a costume intact for twenty minutes, and he sees Tim and he gasps all fake dramatic "You're finally letting me meet my replacement?!" And Tim goes through all the stages of grief at once as he realizes he never once even considered Jason being the second Robin, not even after he found out Batman was Bruce Wayne.

The potential, Jason loving Dick but hating him at the same time because Jason was forced into retirment and Dick gets to pick and choose when he wants to be a vigilante. Bruce realizing how few rights permanently disabled people have and deciding to fight to fix it and Jason yelling at him for not caring until it was his family being effected. Jason realizing if he ever loses Bruce's support he's totally screwed because he can't do any of what he used to to keep himself alive anymore, and breaking down because how could he possibly help the people like him when he couldn't even help himself anymore? Jason being obsessively over protective of Tim and every sidekick who comes after him because he's terrified one of them will end up like him and they're just kids they don't deserve that. Jason overworking himself because he's convinced if he just Tries Harder he can get past his disabilities, but slowly learning his new limits and accepting them. Just, permanently disabled Jason man.

[eluminium]

WHAT IS IT WITH SKIZZ AND THE NUMBER 3???

I don't get it man, this guy. THIS GUY. He just CAN'T SEEM to escape the number three. Don't believe me?

What about the fact that he's died 3rd every single series he's been in? Yep, both in 3rd life and in last life, this man died third. And in the exact same way too, foolishly charging into the enemy with no plan other than bloodshed. Which fails.

What about THIS????

LIKE YOU CAN'T TELL ME THAT A LITTLE BIT SUS. IN 3RD LIFE TOO. 3RD LIFE. WHERE THE FIRST 2 KILLS WERE HIS.

What about the fact he's only ever had 3 lives assigned to him?

What about the fact that in B.E.S.T, S is the 3rd letter?

What about the fact that he missed Double Life, the 3rd season of the Life Series??

What about the fact that because he missed Double Life, he’s been apart of 3 seasons of the Life series???

AND NOW. WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT IN SESSION 1 OF LIMITED LIFE, HE DIES 3 TIMES IN THE FIRST SESSION????

LIKE WHAT IS HIS DEAL??? WHY IS HE SO HAUNTED BY THE NUMBER 3??? HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING????

And I mean, he's usually portrayed as an Angel in fanart. and 3 is considered a holy number. The Rule of 3, the Trinity, and its symbolism in numerology... (yes that's a thing. don't ask me how I know.) It all ties together. And it ties together to the man whose heart is too big for his head. To the man who, despite all the flair, has never killed in anything but self-defense, in the service of another. To the guy whose entire schtick so far in Limited Life is not to kill, but to appreciate the time he has and the people he's around. To the guy who's drawn as an angel.

I KNOW THIS SOUNDS LIKE A CONSPIRACY THEORY AND IT MIGHT BE BUT LIKE, YOU SEE IT DON'T YOU??? THE PATTERNS???? IT'S INSANE. I DON'T GET IT.

Now idk what you could do with this as like a design thing. Could have like a third wing sticking out of his neck so he'd have 3 wings? Could have a halo with 3 rings? Idk man, I ain't the artist, but I feel like there's potential here.

Could also have Dove symbolism? Y'know, doves and angels, doves usually being associated with peace and Skizz having a very nonviolent and more negotiating approach. I mean he spared both Scar and Bdubs in 3rd Life, he chose mercy when really, he could have killed them together with the Red Army. And after Skizz dies is always when everything goes to true shit. After his death came the final battles of Dogwarts in 3rd life. After his death, the Wither was summoned in Last Life and everything fell into slowly decaying chaos. First goes the canary, the first warning that time has run out. Second goes an innocent other, to hammer in that there's no return. And to complete the rule of 3, the dove follows the canary. The death of peace, a final warning. That now there will be no more.

im a little insane about skizzleman okay.

[evilwickedme]

I said I'd never do jumblr content again and yet here I am because this keeps coming up and it's like the only thing I can think about. That said I will not hesitate to turn off reblogs if y'all are horrible in the notes again, and be warned that I will be blocking anybody who supports any of the theories I mention immediately

There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory that isn't antisemitic. There is no such animal

Antisemitic conspiracy theories go back thousands of years. The ones that still have the most hold on culture to this day are the blood libel, and the protocols of the elders of zion

The blood libel was an accusation that would be brought against Jewish populations in Europe often but especially around Passover claiming that we were killing Christian children for ritual purposes, usually to use their blood for baking matza or other nonsense (it is important to me that you know that this is nonsense. It is horrible and damaging but also to the core a ridiculous lie that never at any point made any sense. They just didn't care). Debatably this trope is present in the merchant of Venice. Undebatably Jews were killed because people did and still do sincerely believe this

The protocols of the elders of zion is a fictitious document published in Russia at the very beginning of the 20th century, supposedly detailing the meetings of the Jewish people who secretly run the world. The protocols were almost immediately proven to be a rip off of another document - ah, plagiarism - but that hasn't stopped antisemites from embracing it wholeheartedly (special thanks fuck you to Henry Ford for publishing them in his newspaper, spreading it across the USA). It built on previous antisemitic tropes, from the greedy banker trope (Jews were forced to be money lenders in medieval Europe as it was forbidden in Christianity and Jews weren't allowed to join any guilds, preventing them from making money in any other capacity - the reason why there are so many Jews in Hollywood is identical, but in the early 20th century) to the concept of dual loyalty (i.e. Jewish are loyal to ourselves above all else and cannot be trusted to be loyal to the country where we live, see: modern trope that every Jew is probably loyal to Israel and the subsequent idea that it's okay to ask every single diaspora Jew how they feel about Israel immediately upon meeting them). It's also worth noting that the word cabal, used to denote the shadowy organizations that supposedly control the world, comes from kabbala, which is Jewish mysticism

The idea of lizard people, created by a guy literally named Icke because he is a gross human being, was designed to repackage the antisemitic shadow cabal concept to be supposedly more palatable

Most qanon theories also build on all of this, such as world leaders preying on children (remember pizzagate?)

But more importantly conspiratorial thinking always positions you as the good guy standing against a mysterious "them", an other which is influencing things behind the scenes. The Jew is the ultimate other, and specifically an other that supposedly forms a shadowy world government, controlling everything and yet somehow not managing to get rid of antisemitism (see: protocols of Zion, lizard people, we control Hollywood and the government which is of course conspiring against you). There is no way to decouple the idea of an evil shadowy organization (usually also referred to as a cabal to really hammer it in) from antisemitism and antisemitic tropes

And this means that even supposedly "harmless" conspiracy theories attract antisemites and train people who aren't necessarily rabid antisemites to confirm those kinds of biases. Obviously Qanon and lizard people are antisemitic, but what does the moon landing have to do with Jews? Well, it was Hollywood and the government that faked it, obviously. Hell, even the conspiracy that Taylor Swift is secretly a lesbian and is either still secretly dating or is exes with Karlie Kloss is riddled with antisemitism -

Okay so I need to explain my position on this because I fucking hate this conspiracy theory, and the fact that most people simply won't acknowledge that that's what it is. Firstly, Taylor Swift has stated that she is not gay or considers herself an ally at least three times off the top of my head, and specifically denied that she was dating Karlie Kloss. Secondly, outing people is wrong. Thirdly, the conspiracy theory hinges on the idea that she would be risking her career by coming out, except that she's proven that basically no controversy can come in the way of her career, she's already "come out" as an ally, donated to glaad and the equality act, promoted queer musicians & artists & designers (there was a song in the reputation tour that was dedicated to a gay designer every single night of the tour). So what's stopping her from coming out at this point? Mysterious forces, clearly. The antisemitism in that I've already explained, but also the virulent antisemitism among Kaylor shippers aimed at her husband and at the fact that she converted to Judaism is fucking disgusting

Again: even a supposedly harmless conspiracy theory leads to antisemitism and attracts antisemites

A few years ago I tried to rewatch white collar cause I remembered really enjoying that show as a preteen and after around a season I just couldn't stand it anymore, because all I wanted to do was jump into the universe and yell at Mozzie to shut the fuck up because these conspiracy theories were barely presented as a joke and never challenged even once by any of the characters. When I rewatched that 70s show it also fucking sucked, but at least it wasn't showing up in every single episode. The blacklist focuses entirely on a literal Cabal, that's what they're called

This stuff is so normalized and it's fucking everywhere and it's exhausting. Jews are to this day being murdered over this. I can't change the world by myself, unfortunately, but if you don't have a specific person to blame for your troubles, shut the fuck up. Just shut up. There is no conspiracy against you. Sometimes life just sucks. Or definitely does for the Jews who get shot at over this shit

Again, I'll be blocking anybody who parrots this bullshit in the comments but especially fucking gaylors y'all are one of the main reasons that being a fan of Taylor Swift's music is fucking unbearable. Just accept you can connect to music made by somebody different than yourself it's not that difficult of a concept

[koolades-world]

More Obey me! Headcannons

had so much fun last time I wanted to do it again

Satan is so smart, but has issues doing basic math and refuses to admit it, like he can’t figure out fifteen plus seven without his fingers or a calculator (is this me projecting? maybe)

Belphie bought himself and Mc matching house slippers. Mc thought Beel felt left out and made Belphie buy a pair for him too

Beel has a huge green thumb, and takes upon himself to save plants he thinks are sad or lonely. He buys the dying plants from the store to bring back to life (partially inspired by the chat where someone, forgot who, told beel that if he talked to plants they would grow faster my precious baby)

Lucifer is the best cook at the HoL, but rarely has time to cook. Beel is the second best but usually eats the ingredients before he can make anything with them. Mammon is probably the worst because Levi can make food from animes almost perfectly

Asmo once almost set a store he was collaborating with on fire with his rage alone because they spelt his name wrong

Beel probably needs a new toothbrush every couple weeks. Belphie probably gets toothbrushes mixed up and uses ones that aren’t his

Lucifer and Solomon like prune juice haha old men

The one thing Luke and Simeon have seriously disagreed on is if raisins belong in dessert. Michael likes them, so Luke does too. Simeon thinks they’re awful but never directly says it, so Lucifer usually says it for him

Despite always being online, Levi had not once checked his RAD email. He has 9,999+ emails, probably a lot more because 9,999 is where it stops counting

Mammon collects cool rocks and keeps them in a box under his bed

Satan’s hands are always freezing, so he sticks them under Mc (or a cat) when possible, or uses a charmed hot water bottle from Solomon that stays warm for days at a time

Solomon and Asmo have had matching bracelet sets for as long as they’ve known each other, and since they didn’t make them anymore, they got some custom done for Mc so they could also have them

For about 1,000 years, Thirteen though jelly beans were an actual kind of bean and Solomon never let her let it go

The first food Mc and Mammon ate on a date in the human world together was Taiyaki, so he made it a point to learn how to make them to surprise Mc (even though he’s a terrible cook) (I might make this a fic since I like this idea so much)

Diavolo has always wanted a Devildom version of a hamster but Barbatos refused to have any kind of rodent in the castle, rat or not

Luke probably downloads those stupid app games with the ads unironically

Satan’s favorite Disney Princess is Ariel because she ran off to do what she wanted without caring what her father thought, it’s giving daddy issues. He’s probably considered running off and marrying Mephisto to make Lucifer angry

Raphael unironically enjoys off brand chips and soda

Lucifer is a nail biter, and Asmo is helping him curve the habit by putting a nasty tasting top coat when he does his nails, and it’s also why he wears gloves all the time.

Belphie and Satan once went up to the humans world together to mess with people in Salem, Massachusetts with magic, which spawned several conspiracy theory books. They read them together and laugh as a past time

Diavolo once went to the human world in his demon form for,, reasons, and accidentally got written into ancient mythology because he got spotted by humans

Barbatos had a home garden for cooking and sometimes lets Asmo have leaves from some of the plants to make homemade skin care products

Mammon probably has lots of earwax. Don’t share your earbuds with him unless you make him clean them afterwards

Belphie has a really large water bottle that’s always on his side table. He wakes up randomly though the night, chugs an ungodly amount of water and then passed out again. In the mornings he has to piss really bad but is too lazy to get up and actually do it, so he just sits and complains. Even Beel isn’t sure how he’s able to drink that much water in a short amount of time

Satan likes waking up early to enjoy the morning air and read outside for a while since mornings can get hectic with his brothers

Thirteen’s favorite torture device is the Iron Maiden. She had her own that she bedazzled. Even Asmo is jealous and wants her to make him one too

Mammon introduced Diavolo to Gatorade, and instead of sneaking behind Lucifer and Barbatos’s backs to drink Demonus, they have secret Gatorade meetings

Diavolo and Lucifer definitely both had a hidden Dialuci stash of things and probably clash trying to collect limited edition things online

None of the Obey me cast took birthdays or passing of years seriously until Mc entered the picture and suddenly time was precious, and they actually kept track. Because of this, nobody is really sure how old the twins are

Mephisto thinks roosters want world domination

Asmo thinks cilantro tastes like soap and Levi thinks anything cola flavored tastes like cough medicine

Mammon's favorite party trick is one Mc taught him, which is rolling his tongue Everyone he meets, including his brothers, thinks it's so cool when really it's just a genetic thing

[roach-works]

for all its (apparently many?) flaws, i really enjoyed the fallout show, and i'm ride or die for maximus, obviously. but one of the things i enjoyed about lucy's arc isn't that she wasn't necessarily proved RIGHT or WRONG about her own moral code, she didn't learn that either kindness is its own reward or that niceness is suicidal in a fight for survival.

what she learned, i am pretty sure, is that context matters. you can't actually help people if you don't know anything about them. you can't enact justice if you don't know what the case on trial is. you can't come in out of nowhere and make snap decisions and be anything more than one more complication in a situation that was fucked up long before you were born.

that's what we see over and over: she comes in out of nowhere, she makes an attempt to help based on her immediate assumption of what's going on, and then everything continues to be dangerous and complicated and fucked up. she doesn't let the stoners explain that some ghouls will genuinely try to eat you the minute they get the chance, and she pays for it. she jumps to the wrong conclusion in vault 4 because not everyone who looks like a monster IS a monster, and she pays for it. yeah a lot of the time cooper is abusing her for his own satisfaction, but when she's a free agent she's a loose canon and it's not because the show is punishing her for TRYING to do the right thing. it's because the show is punishing her for jumping to conclusions.

this show gets a lot of laughs from Fish Out Of Water situations, but i think that even though cooper explicitly says "you'll change up here and not for the better, you'll become corrupted and selfish just to survive" that's not the real message. what lucy learns is how important it is to hear people out, meet them where they're at, and get the full story.

that's why the final confrontation with her father is so important. she hears everyone out. she gets the full story. she listens to all of it. and then she acts with full knowledge of situation. that's what the wasteland taught her: not to be cruel, not to be selfish, but that taking the time to understand what's actually going on really matters.

this is a show that's incredibly concerned with truth and lies. everyone is lying to each other and themselves. scenes change over and over as they're recontextualized. love and hate and grief and hope are just motives in a million interconnected shell games, not redeeming justifications. maximus's many compounded falsehoods are approved of by his own superior, who finds a corrupt pawn more useful than an honorable one. cooper finds out his wife has her own private agenda and this betrayal keeps him going for centuries. lucy's entire society is artificial and from the moment they find out they're not safe and maybe never have been, all the vault dwellers are scrambling to deal with that.

ANYWAY. i just think it's neat. sci fi is a lens to analyze our present through a hypothetical future, and i think it's pretty significant for this current age we live in, where we're all grappling with misinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and deepfakes, there's a huge anxiety over how hard it can be to find the truth out about anything. i think the show suggests that it's always worth the work to try.

[cosmicpoutine]

leaving a lil rant here :]

I love Tim and his ships sm. Me personally, I only really ship TimKon. Those two are perfect for eachother and have so much clear queer coding that it’s crazy, and they have dialogue that’s just. gay shaped.

I also get TimBart, I don’t ship it romantically but I get why people do!! Tim and Bart are close as well, and the balance they get between ‘depressed tired wet cat’ and ‘living breathing embodiment of adhd’ is great.

I also get TimBartKon, they’re a trio. They are always a trio, so many people like to bring up how TimKon has so much coding and one of the big examples they use is when Tim tried to clone Kon. You know who else he tried to clone? Bart.

The only Tim ship I don’t get is TimBern, or any ship involving those two. When Bernard first appears, he’s Tim’s bully. He actively makes fun of tim and puts him down and then that character is forgotten about until Tim comes out as bi, then they just rework his character and go “haha guys this is his boyfriend not bully ygs are crazy” and just forget about all the bad stuff Bernard did? Reworking a character is great and all but, it just feels a bit weird and out of place for me. There’s always going to be that certain toxicity for TimBern, at least for me.

homie... bully??? im flabbergasted- im speechless- im jason todd (dead)

okay, im gonna start off by saying you have all the right to not ship them, and im not here to defend timbern as a ship. im here to defend BERNARD DOWD.

first thing bernard does is give tim advice about teachers, and he clearly says they're gonna be good friends.

if bernard was a bully, tim wouldn't hang around him so much. besides, i hate it when people place tim as a helpless little boy who would get bullied. he has put himself in situations where he looks weak on purpose to keep his identity safe, but he's not a victim at all. tim is a social butterfly because he's really good at masking and reading people.

not to mention, both bernard and darla push tim a lot because they're trying to get him to open up and be closer to them, but he keeps pushing them away. tim is a professional liar.

and when tim has to quit robin and start hanging out with normal people, he invites bernard over.

and bernard is acting relatively normal, and he wants to play video games and talk about how hot tim's stepmom is.

bernard is a normal teenager who has no idea one of his friends is the hero he's so obsessed with. he even shows concern for robin dying and makes up an entire conspiracy theory about batman havin a robin orphanage. you can tell he's afraid of robin being gone for real because at this point they haven't seen robin in months bc tim retired.

i dont know what about all of these interactions gave you the vibe that he's a bully because all i see is a normal teenager teasing his friends and being jealous tim gets more bitches.

im not saying that bernard was never mean or weird around tim, but he definitely wasn't actively bullying tim.

bernard is obnoxious and cocky, yes. but thats just because they wrote him as a real person. he's the school's chameleon, maybe even a little bit of a loser, too. he knows everyone but keeps a safe distance so that he doesn't get pushed into a box. im not sure if, at this point, he was already in a cult or being indoctrinated, but when we see his parents and the dowd home in tim drake: robin that just doesn't look right.

also homie talk about "forgetting all the bad things bernard did" (which in my opinion is none but okay lets follow that logic) everyone forget about all the bad things batman did to tim, he was not a kind and loving mentor, he was cruel to both tim and steph. we forget that batman was kind of an asshole to damien in the beginning. all those things are forgotten for the sake of the batfam.

in conclusion: we're just so used to the idea that superheroes can only ever form strong friendship bonds by having near death experiences together that we forget that the secret identifies exist and that the people who know them by their legal name also means a lot to them. after all, these people are the reason why they're heroes.

[twistedwonderlandimaginesblog]

Oh! Hi! Requests open! Can I request twst freshman bois, Ace, Deuce, Jack, Epel, and Ortho spying on twst MC who's out having their first date? They're all friends and completely platonic, they're just keeping an eye on their friend in case anything goes wrong since MC got asked out by an RSA student.

Ace Trappola:

Ace is just nosy, and he doesn’t exactly get why you’d want to date some from RSA, anyway. He tried to convince you that they could be using you for personal gain but that only seemed to hurt your feelings, telling Ace to stuff it before you went to get ready for your date. He didn’t understand why you had a reaction like that but since you were being stubborn he’d have to take it upon himself to keep an eye on you, rationalizing to Deuce that he has to do it because clearly your feelings had stopped you from seeing sense.

Deuce Spade:

Deuce didn’t want to invade your privacy and spy on you, but Ace put conspiracy theories in his head that he just couldn’t ignore. Deuce didn’t know if this RSA student had pure intent or if they intended to use you for some greater purpose, like hurting you simply because you attended their rival school of NRC. He couldn’t just wait around until you got your heart broken, he had to be at the scene to rectify the situation immediately, but it’s hard to keep his emotions in check. He ended up glaring at the person you’re with the entire time he’s secretly supervising, drawing unwanted attention as your date is suddenly sweating profusely for no reason they can explain.

Epel Felmier:

Epel has a bit of a competitive spirit in him, having to wonder why you chose an RSA student of all people to date. He doesn’t really think it bothers him until a ‘big brother’ instinct kicked in, suddenly making him feel on edge. As much as he tried to focus on other things he worried about how the date would go for you, and if that RSA jerk might be too aggressive with you… He followed you into town to quiet his anxieties, just wanting to see the person you’re on the date with to give him peace of mind. He didn’t think he’d end up staying the entire date, glued to his seat with an annoyed look on his face as he thought there was no way that RSA student was good enough for you.

Jack Howl:

Jack had said he wasn’t interested, not knowing why you even told him about your date plans. He started to wonder if maybe it was an ask for support, or a worry that you were confiding in him for a reason. He does remember what you said, including the date location, and he tries, poorly, to blend in with said location when you inevitably catch him. He pretended he didn’t hear what you said originally and that he definitely intended to come here on his own free-time, a shop that has zero things that are of any interest to him.

Ortho Shroud:

Ortho is set to kill. He’s not necessarily worried about you physically taking your RSA date on, but he did consider your emotional state in not hurting someone you liked (even if they deserved it). He’s very noticeable to you in public, so he tried to convince Idia to give him a stealth mode, a way to spy on you without getting caught and while still appearing intimidating. He keeps a close eye on your vitals and jots down mental notes for later when you get to talk, asking you all kinds of questions that make it seem like he had been sitting right next to you the entire time.

[chaoticace2005]

Why Sir Pentious got redeemed:

1. He was killed so his soul got re-evaluated (if so what happens to all other Sinners who die?)

2. He got redeemed a millisecond before Adam killed him, the intent of sacrificing himself being enough to get into heaven

3. He was destined to be redeemed when he put his pride away and confessed to Cherri

4. Being in Heaven or Hell is based on whether or not you believe you’re a good person. At that moment his opinion of himself shifted enough to qualify for Heaven.

5. He racked up enough good points to be redeemed, as did Angel, the only reason he’s there and Angel isn’t is because Valentino owns Angel’s soul.

6. Susan owned Sir Pentious’ soul, keeping him tied to Hell. She died at that very moment though, releasing him.

7. Susan is a bad bitch and can’t die. But she saw how stupid he was about to be and was like “I give up”, releasing him.

8. The universe knew that Adam was going to die and there always has to be one Alex Brightman in Heaven. They couldn’t take Fizzarolli because they don’t want to deal with Asmodeus, so they defied their own rules and took Sir Pentious.

9. He didn’t get redeemed. His design was just re-used and this is a totally different Winner, the story just ended like this to give us hope

10. He didn’t get redeemed, this is Charlie’s hope of what did happen because she can’t accept his death

11. All of Hazbin is a story being told by Frank, and he added his boss going to Heaven because that’s what he believes happened (either a conspiracy theory or that’s what the Hazbin crew told him.)

12. Using a war machine to kill people was the last sin he needed to repent for, the fact he was redeemed before Adam’s blast is just luck.

13. Adam’s blast beamed Sir Pentious up to Heaven

14. Adam’s blast is actually a de-Sinner, usually it kills people but because Sir Pentious didn’t have a lot of Sin-juice he was reborn

15. He chose that moment to convert to a born again Christian. He was born again.

16. He sneezed and an angel blessed him

17. This was another “fuck you” from the universe: he kissed the girl he liked and made a family only for it all to be taken away

18. It’s a Good Place situation where he thinks he’s in Heaven but it’s really not and this is just extra torture.

19. He’s in purgatory and this is what he’s dreaming.

20. It’s a test by the higher ups in Heaven “OH you think heaven is good for Sinners? Wrong!” Then they chose a guy who was starting to find happiness in Hell to prove their point that Sinners can’t find joy in Heaven

21. His death was so anticlimactic the universe felt like it had to give him a second chance.

22. Vox is a heavenly official in disguise (the TV is just a mask.) And told him back in episode 2 to kill himself, Sir Pentious sacrificing himself fulfilled that wish, so the universe redeemed him for fulfilling Vox’s challenge

23. Lilith ex-machina came in last minute like a girl boss and saved his ass. Her powers transcend time.

24. That’s Sir Pentious’ clone, which Pentious had programmed to be released the second he died (there may be tons of Alex Brightmans in the world, but there can only be one Sir Pentious.)

25. Charlie learns how to redeem Sinners in the future. She also learns to time travel, so she grabs Sir Pentious at that last second before he died, helps him get redeemed and then chucks him back into the timeline because screw the consequences.

26. Alex Brightman got amnesia and said “H-huh?! Where-where am I?!” during recording. Everyone though he just ad-libbed a line and tried to make it fit in.

27. The Eggs are secretly gods. They blessed and saved Pentious before Adam could kill them.

28. Emily saw what he was about to do and pulled a lever. It was the right lever.

29. Last minute someone realized the play on words with Pentious’ name (Sir Repentious) and added this scene in

30. Alex Brightman was originally not going to return to the show, so Pentious and Adam died. Later things changed and he could return, but most filming had already been done so they took him aside and filmed that final scene separately and added it in.

[livwritesstuff]

I've had a consistent thought in my head of the girls learning more about the upside down.

Like they know a bit: uncle Dustin still lives in Hawkins doing research on something, they've seen their dads and they know about the scars and their disabilities. They know something happened to their entire family and they know there was an earthquake that wasn't really an earthquake. But they've never learned more than that and they'll never know the details as long as Steve and Eddie have a say.

But at some point, each of them realizes that the monster hunter jokes that their dads make aren't really jokes.

In general, I think Steve and Eddie’s sentiment surrounding how they address the not-so-pleasant aspects of their past with their daughters is that they won’t lie (because that’ll only come back to bite them in the ass later), but they’re also only going to tell them as much of the truth as they literally need to.

Not that Moe knows any of this.

All Moe really knows is that her dads went through some scary-ass shit when they were her age and they don’t really talk about it.

Still, Moe has eyes. Maybe she didn’t realize it when she was little, but even just the sheer amount of scar tissue her dads have isn’t exactly normal. When she asks where they got them, though, all they ever say is that a monster tried to eat them.

Moe also knows that the reason Pop doesn’t usually join them on shopping trips at the mall is because they can trigger bad migraines, and she knows the reason he gets migraines in the first place is that he’d taken too many hits to the head in too short a time, but when she asks how he’d gotten a concussion and then a TBI and then two more concussions in the span of four years he always just says something like picked a fight with the wrong Russian spy, or something like that.

And it’s public knowledge that Dad was accused of murder when he was in high school and nearly died before the charges got dropped, but when she asks about what happened, he gives her some spiel about curses and demons and portals to alternate dimensions and monsters (again, with the monsters).

They’re kidding, Moe knows. They’re giving obviously fake answers because…well, for a lot of reasons, she can imagine– not wanting to relive whatever actually happened, not wanting to put their own trauma onto Moe and her sisters.

Honestly, Moe doesn’t really even bother asking about it anymore because they clearly don’t want to talk about it, and if it really was that bad, she can’t even blame them. Besides, she’s pretty sure that dads are supposed to be total mysteries to their kids, so…whatever.

The story of what happened in Hawkins, Indiana starts to gain some public attention again while Moe is in high school – one of those true crime conspiracy theory-type stories people make Reddit threads and YouTube videos about, and apparently (because Moe has no interest, but Robbie likes that kind of stuff) Dad almost always comes up in them, Pop sometimes.

Around that time is when Moe’s dads start to get all kinds of media requests – not that Pop had any idea. He’s basically chronically offline, so no one is really able to track him down other than finding his work email on Psychology Today, but he’s got filters set up to send that shit to spam so he doesn’t even have to see it. Dad, on the other hand, is (supposedly) well-known for his books or whatever, so he doesn’t have the same kind of anonymity. He got all sorts of calls and emails from people wanting his first-hand account, but he always refused to participate, told them to lose his number and never contact him or his family ever again.

That’s the kind of thing that really rattled Pop – Moe didn’t like that. He’s kind of an immovable object in that way, so seeing him rattled just seemed wrong.

They’d even needed to threaten legal action against one online tabloid who just wouldn’t leave them alone – not that Moe is supposed to know about that, but she’d eavesdropped on a phone call between her dads and Uncle Dustin, who seems to exist as a central point in it all even if Moe doesn’t know why (maybe it has something to do with how her dads always complaining about how he still works for that lab, whatever that means).

“Are you ever gonna tell us what really happened?” Moe asks one day, when it’s just her and Pop in the car on their way home from a basketball tournament in Connecticut.

He sighed, not taking his eyes off the road.

“Hon, can I ask you to stop and consider that maybe we have been?”

And for her dad’s sake, she does, she makes herself run through the mental log of all the lore or whatever she’s unlocked over the years.

Monsters, Russian spies, superpowers, demon-animals, curses, portals to alternate realities, government corruption, evil scientists.

Bullshit, she’d always thought, but…her dad had never bullshitted her before. Why would he choose to start with this?

Moe looked back at him, some kind of question on the tip of her tongue even though she had no idea what to ask, and this time, Pop spared a glance back.

“I’m not telling you everything,” he warned her as he looked back at the highway stretching out endlessly ahead of them, and Moe tried to keep any signs of disappointment off her face, “But I’ll tell you some.”

[arillusionist]

grishaverse dashboard simulator

🤯 conspiracy-theories follow

theory: the sun summoner is definitely still alive. all we know is that she “gave up her life to save ravka” but how? have YOU ever heard of a grisha dying from using their powers?? it just doesnt make sense.

🌝  ruinsruiners follow

Bitch shes a SAINT. All saints die. Move on lmao

🐺 awooga10384 follow

alina was different and u know it just bc she was a “saint” doesnt mean she had to die op is right and ur being an asshole get off their post

☀️ starkovers follow

not you calling her alina like you know her personally… put some respect on her name bruh

🐺 awooga10384 follow

wait til u find out not everyone is religious and ravkan and doesnt use sankta labels n shit

☀️ starkovers follow

the way i literally never even mentioned religion… the lack of reading comprehension on this site is insane

3,377 notes

⛴️ wraithupdates follow

Friendly reminder to DNI if you think the Wraith and D*rtyh*nds are together! We do not welcome you guys on this blog :)

61 notes

🌤️ saintlydays follow

drew some fanart of sankta anastasia i hope you guys like it!! i drew her with a bleeding eye because shes the saint of sickness and when my mom was sick her eye started bleeding for like 2 days straight lol but i prayed to sankta anastasia and she made my mom get better even though her eye is permanently damaged and my sister and dad could not recover and they passed away after like 5 days of pain (we stabbed them to put them out of their misery)

#sankta anastasia #saint anastasia #saint #sankta #saints fanart #sankta fanart #sankta anastasia fanart #saint anastasia fanart

3 notes

🍺 giddyuphorsey follow

tired of yall stereotyping kerch as a dark and gloomy place… not all of us live in ketterdam or in the north in general. its extremely offensive to us so please fucking stop.

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

womp womp

4,018 notes

❓ grishapolls follow

🔥inferni-heart follow

Sturmhond is a privateer…

🧟‍♀ razorskull follow

who gaf

🔥inferni-heart follow

Shut up you dirty kerch ketterdam gang member money worshipping heathen 

🧟‍♀ razorskull follow

it was never that deep but okay..

201 notes

🦴 shadowsandbones follow

not trying to b racist or anything but why do grisha always act like they’re better than anyone else… and why doesnt anyone ever call them out…

1,121 notes

🦐 merchingaway follow

JUST FOUND OUT THAT WYLAN VAN ECK’S BOYFRIEND IS DIRTYHAND’S EX LMFAO WHATTTT

🫠 theseventhsoldier follow

guys im shu can someone please tell me that dirtyhands is not what i think it means… i keep seeing that name all over this app and im so confused

🦐 merchingaway follow

trust me its not but based on this new info…

981 notes

💣 boomboomboom follow

JUST TRIED A ZEMINI PIE FOR THE FIRST TIME MY LIFE IS FINALLY COMPLETE 💞💞💞💞💞💞

17 notes

🪴 green-skies follow

Funny how people keep hating on Kerch when Fjerda is RIGHT THEREE

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

as a heartrender whos grisha mom got captured by a fjerdan ship: womp womp

🧙🏾‍♀️ zowaaaa follow

also op is kaelish so like… why tf are they talking lmao

💎 ravkasbeauty follow

right!! also fjerdans are barely on the internet (too many grisha here for them lmao) so its not really funny bc they cant see it

☀️ starkovers follow

kerch on the other hand… most chronically online mfs i’ve ever seen

12,347 notes

[artist-issues]

every now and then I play with the exercise of "what if we're wrong" because sometimes I get bored and also as an actual exercise. I usually apply this to Christianity/religion, matters of the after life, or about other people.

So sometimes I poke at the big question, if Christianity isn't real, what does that mean? And I don't usually go the route of atheism or bad sci fi, just that the religion is proven to be fundamentally inaccurate to reality, so what does that mean?

Anyway it wasn't until I was reading a really good sci fi story, where this one dude explains to some aliens the concept of "Love your enemies, do good to those that hurt you" and of course the aliens are like what? (Because in the sci fi narrative the universe is functioning under a Dark Forest Theory) And the dude explains its from one of earth's greatest teachers. And the aliens are like, if the inhabitants of the universe could believe that, this universe would be a different place entirely.

And it was at that point where I realized bro... even if it's not accurate, practicing Christianity is still worth it, for a human being. Loving your enemies means loving them like humans. The Poor, the Meek, and those who mourn, those are promises and comforts that we shouldn't toss aside even if heaven isn't real.

I don't know, this is just a terribly simplistic because I'm not the best at putting my English thoughts into english out loud, but that crack gave me a touch of useful coping. I asked my dad, if aliens are proven to exist it doesn't automatically mean christians stop practicing and believing, right? And he said obviously not.

I don't know but have you ever engaged in such a question " what if we're wrong?" And if you ever have what answer had you arrived at?

EDIT: As @atwas-meme-ing correctly pointed out in the comments section of this post, who cares whether or not I’ve played this game: God answered the question through Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” 1 Corinthians 5:19.

There’s no “good moral teaching” to be found in Christianity if Christ wasn’t God, or if God didn’t exist, or if eternity weren’t real. My rambling logic is below the cut.

I mean, I play that “game” all the time about other things, and sometimes I do it for work. I’ll take two established characters and a setting me and my friends have agreed on, and I’ll “run a scenario.”

But the thing is, once my brain picks out something that doesn’t make sense, or that wouldn’t be in-character for the characters to do, the whole scenario grinds to a halt and I have to start over. I can’t suspend my own disbelief once I notice that something doesn’t line up. Even if I really liked “where the scene was going” before I noticed that thing. Whatever I’m getting stuck on because of it’s out-of-character nature unravels the parts I like, too.

All that to say I can’t even run a scenario in my head where “what if all this isn’t true? What if it fundamentally doesn’t line up with reality?”

I can’t. Once or twice I have tried. But I hit snags immediately. I’ll go, “pretend all of this Christian religion really is just a centuries-old conspiracy humanity’s been patching up the holes in.”

But then that little simulation-checker in my brain goes, “then how do you explain people dying for it? That many martyrs aren’t likely to have allowed themselves to be tortured and murdered for something they knew was a conspiracy.”

And I go, “well, pretend they died because they didn’t know it was a conspiracy, they believed it.”

And the sim-checker goes, “but the original disciples of Jesus, ground-zero of the faith, were all martyred. Not just people who learned from them and came after them and could’ve been hoodwinked: the starting points, themselves. They would’ve had to know it was a conspiracy, if it was a conspiracy, and they still willingly died for it.”

Maybe I’ll pivot and go, “pretend there isn’t objective truth.”

And the sim-checker goes, “there isn’t truth…objectively?”

Maybe I’ll pivot again and try, “pretend that everyone really does just measure morality based on what they’re used to, what their individual society’s trained them to associate with pleasant feelings and reactions.”

And the sim-checker goes, “Okay, where did those societies get the training manual? Where did it come from? Why do so many different societies’ and people groups’ ‘association with pleasant feelings and reactions’ around the world have so many things in common?”

And the answers to all that leads me back to Christianity. Even if I go the longest way round I can think of.

And eventually I quit running those scenarios. Because guess what?

Where’d the ability to run scenarios come from?

How did I get that? How did you?

See, the thing is, we go, “what if all of this isn’t true?” But it’s right there in the question. “Where did you get that desire? The desire for “truth?”” Is it to keep yourself safe, like the natural animals have an instinct toward, or is it to keep yourself sane, because you need some sense in this life to make it through? Sure. Maybe. But why? What’s “sane?” What’s “safe?” Sanity presupposes order. Why do you, and all humans, naturally lean toward wanting things to be “the way they’re supposed to be?” Where’d that come from, that idea of “supposed to be?” And Safety presupposes good being found in avoiding pain and damage and fear. “Good?” Where’d you get that idea?”

The further you dig, even into your own psyche, the less you can run any scenario that has God absent entirely. And no wonder. He designed it.

One more thing.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” - C.S. Lewis

I used to lean into the idea you’re saying here. “Even if it’s not true, I’m going to live like it is and believe it just in case. Besides, it makes me better, and makes the world better.” That’s not belief at all. That’s ends-justify-the-means thinking. The teachings that Jesus gave which “make the world a better place” are utterly worthless if they’re coming out of the mouth of a liar. Because why should anyone believe Him? Why should anyone “turn the other cheek,” or “do unto others?” Because it makes us “better?” Who gets to define “better?”

The answer, of course, is Jesus does. The One who taught those sayings. But only if He’s God. Only if He was telling the truth. If He wasn’t God, what right has He, to tell us to give away our possessions to others and let them abuse us and give our lives up? If He was a liar, all of those “good teachings” would be tainted and untrustworthy. Besides, like I just said, they’re all only able to be called “good” teachings if you accept that there is one objective, universal “good.” And we’re right back to “where did Good come from?”

All roads lead back there, to Him. But we humans like to do this thing with God where we pretend there could be any reality outside of Him. It sort of makes sense, how we got that way. After all, when was the last time you noticed oxygen? How often during the day do you consciously inhale and exhale? As often as it happens automatically? How often during the day do you notice oxygen touching your skin or moving your hair or drying your eyeballs? As often as those things happen automatically? No. But it’s ever-present. Without it, you couldn’t live, let alone notice anything. But oxygen has always been around and everything in our lives interacts with or can only exist WITH it. God is much more than that, but that’s as close as I can get to communicating: He’s so good, and He’s so constantly there, everything, all the time, that it’s easy for us to take Him for granted, forget Him entirely, then use our two-pound brain matter to say, “He might not exist.” You might as well say, “imagine a world with no matter.” 🙄 “Ohhhh kay. Then it wouldn’t be a world.”

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

why do so many people keep calling ed izzy's abuser? I thought it was kind of funny how wrong they were at first because I love being right but at this point I feel like, if you really believe that why do you even like this show? where the main love interest is a violently abusive indigenous man? that sounds boring as shit. what would possess the writers of the show for them to make such an awful decision?

but then I think, if this many people believe it does that mean I'm the one who's wrong? or is it that the creators fumbled that storyline when they should have been clearer about it? or maybe it's just that most people on here have had their reading comprehension scorched away by Sherlock Holmes conspiracy theories and Steven Universe discourse. I can't tell. sometimes I think the internet may have been a mistake.

No they're wrong here's what's going on. People all read this shitty fic called Hell or High Water where Ed was everything the Izzy stans say he was and then instead of realizing that Ed is sad everyone regressed into thinking that the Kraken Era TM was going to be incredibly violent, like serial killing blond men because they look like Stede levels of violence. Even if you didn't read HoHW you saw art or read fic from people who had engaged with this fic and succumbed to it's premise. So there's been this background radiation of misunderstanding what the Kraken is on the fandom for several months. So inevitably when Ed did some mild violence and then attempted suicide by threatening murder until the crew took matters into their own hands, which is not abuse or torture by any stretch, btw, it's a murder-suicide at worst (I say at worst because I consider it fuckery-suicide I don't think Ed was trying to kill people I think he was trying to force them into a situation where they thought it was kill or be killed so that they would choose to kill him, but that is my interpretation and you are free to think it's a botched murder-suicide I have no problem with that), which, murder is something the show has never condemned and if it did it would be horribly inconsistent. So anyway, Ed's whole Kraken Era was categorized in the show by him being sad and doing so many drugs and begging someone please god anyone to kill him and trying to break Ned Low's record out of the evil boredom, but because it had a murder-suicide element to it and Izzy's toes were getting removed and he waved a gun around at everyone once (in a way that felt to me like he was trying and failing to work up the nerve to blow his own brains out but I digress) people who liked HoHW and were mad that people had called it out were like "see hes being violent HoHW author vindicated" as if anything Ed did rose to the level of that fic

And you want to know how I know this read is bullshit? Because when I watch the show with people who don't read fic or interact with the fandom and then I gauge their reactions without showing my hand they all implicitly understand that Ed is reacting to Izzy in a way appropriate to how pirate captains react to threats from subordinates. The spectrum of reactions has been from "hey isn't it weird how Ed was the Kraken because his dad was abusive and now he's the kraken because of Izzy? Maybe there's something there but idk" to "I don't think you can apply the logic of domestic abuse to a pirate captain and first mate but also Izzy had it coming" to "I cannot feel bad for Izzy after last season, I'm sorry." To "lmao Izcel" and I've showed this show to roughly everyone I know. The only thing I can conclude from the fact that people who don't engage with OFMD fic almost unilaterally thinking that Izzy is in the wrong and then coming online to see people thinking the opposite is that Izzy as victim and Ed as abuser is pure fanon, like how Stede is a cinnamon roll who talks like Azeriphael.

But anyway yeah you're completely right about the fact that this would be a bad show if they decided to make Ed into a domestic abuser. I don't want to watch a rom com about a domestic abuser falling in love and I don't want a show that decided to make it's indigenous lead abusive when the stereotype of indigenous men as abusers is still to this day used as an excuse to separate indigenous children from their families and put them with white Christians in order to erase their culture. Good thing OFMD didn't make Ed abusive, so I still like the show.

[cryptotheism]

(politely) the kneejerk reaction to dismiss anything as a 'conspiracy' is just as bad as believing something without thinking about it critically. yes, csa is something that is oversensationalised, but understand that elite crime (specifically sex crime) is of a very different character than sex crime commited by the man on the street. high-end fashion is an especially dirty scene. i dont know how you can read about something like pizzagate and think 'yep. nothing fishy going on there. steven colbert told me so' yes, there is always a lot of ill-informed 'noise' around such topics, and god knows we need more rational voices in the discussion, but too many are too eager to debunk stuff regardless of evidence; and it only strengthens the conviction of the people of people who believe there is a coverup. same reason no one takes snopes seriously anymore. criminals do love hiding in plain sight, they do communicate with eachother by means of secret symbols, and many of them are in high positions in entertainment, fashion, government, police, etc. this is fact. its a recipe for paranoia to start seeing it everywhere, but its just ignorant to deny it happens. also, such abuse often involves drugs and psychological torture, and sadly victims often do sound like crazy people when they try to tell their stories; especially if they are children. the mcmartin preschool, for example. although the whole trial was a mess, they did actually find suspicious tunnels under the ground (though not where the children claimed) filled in with concrete, there are a number of other strange things about the case. but no one will ever know the truth now, because the absurd publicity around the trial guaranteed that no truth or justice could come about from it. sortof a fitting metaphor about how even if any given 'conspiracy theory' were to be true, no one would ever be able to know anyway.

(politely) Conspiracy research skills are not a kneejerk reaction. Sex trafficking at the highest echelons of power is a problem, but you are deeply and conspiratorially misrepresenting it. It's not this crazy James bond fantasy of drugs and torture prisons and secret codes, it's just rich assholes breaking the law.

There was nothing suspicious about Comet Pizza. That whole crock of horseshit came from a single white supremacist on twitter. He lied and it went viral.

Also there were no tunnels under the McMartin preschool, that's been repeatedly disproven.

You want know what really helps my research skills? Comparing theoretical conspiracy theories to actual, proven conspiracy theories like MK-Ultra and Iran-Contra, both very real things that happened.

Here's the thing; sober, critical, research into a conspiracy theory involves wading through a river of sensationalist bullshit, and it's no wonder that people get lost. If you want an example of conspiracy research done right, I HIGHLY reccomend Gerald Posner's Case Closed, it's a veritable master class on how to research weird conspiratorial bullshit like as a journalist while keeping your head on straight.