#not a morality dick measuring competition

[k4txlulzz]

this might be an unpopular opinion but i genuinely don't get why some people think scourge is the best sonic rival or even a good one at all

he annoys the hell out of me and compared to other sonic rivals is not narratively compelling in relation to sonic

metal is the actual "best" sonic rival because, objectively speaking, he checks out almost all the boxes to oppose what sonic stands for. freedom which he actively denies while choosing a life of servitude, the more intimidating visual design and the fact that he is a literal robot that has almost no remorse for organic life. he is made to resemble sonic though, i heard someone make a great point by saying that metal is what sonic COULD be in eggman's eyes, if he agreed to be his, probably, most powerful asset.

knuckles and sonic has similar goals and aspirations (both want to do good for the world) but one is disciplined and strict while the other is more loose and free-spirited. one runs, the other punches. what sonic lacks in sheer arm strength and complicated combat, knuckles makes up for it.

silver and sonic are both visually alike and share that strong optimistic spirit and are both heroes but of their specific, different time time periods. silver is timid and socially awkward, sonic is confident and socially skilled.

shadow was literally created to match sonic, rivaling him in speed and sharing a similar silhouette with some differences like the quills and the color red—opposing sonic's blue. one is a hero of the past, the other one is a hero of the present. one is naturally free but the other one had to actively set himself free and define his own purpose, independent of anyone else's motives.

blaze is exactly a hero like sonic just for her own dimension, even having a smaller partner of her own like sonic who has tails. they are different because blaze is a disciplined, cool headed princess while sonic is just a simple dude who likes freedom and adventuring.

jet brings out the competitive spirit out of sonic like all of the before mentioned rivals but what makes his dynamic with sonic unique is that he needs to prove himself as the best always, meanwhile sonic doesn't bother with it. he's chill and laid back which means he doesn't care for winning as much as jet does. this makes for a super fun relationship

surge i don't even feel like i need to explain. she had that freedom that sonic loves stripped away violently and it defined the rest of her life. she chooses to follow the purpose that was forced on her: destroying sonic. similarly to metal, she CHOOSES to do what has been decided for her. she views him as this dude who thinks he's better than her and shoves morals into her face, it annoys her because she feels mocked. surge also has a small partner like sonic, just doesn't have the healthiest relationship with him.

in the end, what does scourge have? his whole "one bad day and you'll be just like me" shtick is just flat out wrong because sonic has had a million bad days and always came out stronger in the end. scourge has enough narrative points to be called a rival but not enough to be called a compelling rival. he's an asshole, egocentric, power hungry version of sonic who thinks he's cooler but is not, the only thing he parallels the blue blur in is speed, looks and maaaybe the thirst for action. the guy who's main goal is to dick measure with archie sonic and "steal his chicks", i guess💀

[poepoe-thebunny]

Damien The Littlest Brother

Or: Stuff Damian does with his siblings.

Dick

Dick in some ways was another form of idolization for Damian. Damian was so very young when they first met, younger still when Ra's and the league sunk their teeth into his heart and tried their best to tear it to shreds. Dick's role, part sibling part guardian, was the first major form of stability Damian had. Little Damian had been born with the mythos of The Bat hanging overhead, and the hope of measuring up to first his grandfather's and then his father's standards had nearly broken him.

Like a lot of children Damian didn't necessarily understand or appreciate what Dick was trying to do for him until he was older. But just like other children Damian clung to the emotional support and care Dick gave him, the care he had so often been deprived of.

Damian wasn't necessarily there for the events that shaped Dick and the rest of their family, but he is growing up in the aftereffects of it. Dick chose to give Damian the love he deserved, Dick chose not to punish a child for the situation he was born into. But Dick isn't perfect. He loses his temper, he gets frustrated, he gets things wrong, he makes mistakes, he bleeds. Dick, at least initially, was real and human in a way Bruce wasn't to a little boy who already had his future decided for him.

While he may not admit it, Damian looks up to Dick because in a lot of ways Dick is a better person than most. Dick is a good man, a better man than Bruce in some ways. He shows Damian what a hero actually is, and that the concept of being a hero isn't tied to the suit. Dick shows Damian that he can and is a good person, that he can make those decisions for himself and that his own emotional needs are not anything to be ashamed of. Damian is a boy first, not a weapon.

So Damian leans into his affection. There are shared naps after patrol, and days out getting ice cream or going to the zoo. Damian wakes a tired Dick up with a pillow to the face, and pillow fights and laughter ensues. Dick comes along to the school showcases, where an embarrassed Damian has pictures and paintings of their family up for all to see. He never once mocks Damian's desires, instead listening with seriousness to every moment of Damian's vulnerability.

That's what sticks with Damian the most. That Dick wholeheartedly believes Damian is a good person, that Damian can be good and kind and soft. He sees Damian fumble with his cool demeanor, growing shy and embarrassed when chatting with students his own age. Damian knows the names of most of his classmates, takes down random details that shouldn't be important to a stranger "We're NOT friends Grayson," but Damian talks to the youngest students about animals, and how to properly hold puppies. Damian has lists of underfunded animal shelters and regularly sends them to Bruce and Tim when preparations for the Wayne Foundation charity events come up. Damian knows most of the officers in Bludhaven since he occasionally stops by with something for Dick, a late lunch or hot drink or Dick's spare clothes in case he needs out of his police uniform. After many coos, head pats and cheek pinches, Damian is occasionally "babysat" by some of them while Dick is out on patrol of the police variety. He does not realize how much he has charmed Dick's co-workers, talking about his pets or his brothers.

Dick is the kind of hero, the kind of person, Damian was told wasn't real. That heroes were childish nonsense, that mercy and love were weak. The concept that someone could love him, that he was deserving of love instead of being forced to earn it, was foreign. But Dick Grayson was all of that. So Damian puts up less and less of a fight over the silly pictures they take together. Dick buys books about animals, and Damian grudgingly wears the cute stupid animal ear headbands Dick buys him. While part of Damian knows he won't be, the part that viciously beats "heroes" and "love" and "ice cream" back with a vengeance, another part of Damian, a very small fragile part, thinks that maybe if he grew up becoming like Dick Grayson the Person (TM) it wouldn't be so bad. "Awww thanks Dami!"

Jason:

Next to Tim, the Cain Instincts are strongest with Jason. Jason is constantly ruffling his hair, calling him names, and sitting on him. Jason does not give a single iota of a damn for any sort of authority except Alfred. Jason is not afraid of Damian.

So when Damian latches onto Jason's neck ready to strangle him, he laughs like it's the best thing he's ever seen, and a wrestling match ensues. They bond over it, over the goading and the competition.

They bond over books too, over stories and musicals and words Damian shouldn't care about but he does. Damian says he's too old for fairy tales even though he never had them to begin with, never had stories told when tucked into bed unless it was for a harsh life lesson. And yet Damian will find books as gifts for Jason, and Jason will read them aloud after Damian annoys him by pressing his feet into Jason's side. He swears up and down that the exaggerated voices and accented narration from Jason are done purely to annoy him. Damian constantly interrupts him, always asking questions and Jason tells him to shut up and be patient, "learn to listen demon brat."

They watch Disney and Ghibli, Laika and Illumination, and after a very enlightening conversation with one Tim Drake, Jason introduces Damian to theater. From Antigone to Romeo and Juliet, from West Side Story to Hadestown to Heathers the Musical. Bruce has walked in on them recreating various iconic sword fights too many times to count, quoting lines while dressed in blanket robes and crowns made of craft feathers and stick on jewels. Alfred thorough enjoys their riveting performances.

Like a lion teaching his cubs through play, Jason teaches him that he's never too mature for anything and screw anyone else who doesn't like it. Jason teaches him fun in a way Damian never allowed himself to have before, to look past his mission, and do things for enjoyment. He teaches Damian defiance and rebellion, two very important things for him to learn even if it's only interrupting rude rich people and disagreeing with his father over whether he needs to attend another gala.

Damian and Jason have a strange relationship, and initially aren't quite sure how to act around one another. Such large parts of their identity and experiences were formed by an indirect overlapping influence. Jason's death and the effect it had on the family and how they treat Damian, Jason's time with the league and the lazarus pit. But at the same time they understand each other in a way some of their other siblings don't. The strength and struggle in establishing their independence and identity means that their grudging respect turns into fondness with time.

Tim:

It appears that Cain Instincts don't particularly care if one is related or not, given the sheer amount of times Tim and Damian are at each other's throats initially. But with time they settle and grow more comfortable with each other, the words turn from anger to a grumbly sort of discontent, like irritated puppy's more than anything.

They bond over pride. They bond over failure. The two aren't that different really. They've seen each other at their worst. Missions with too many close calls, where the knife wounds cut too close and the bullets bit to deep, when the snap of Gotham's jaw came to close to closing over them and the only thing saving Gotham's Rogues from the collective wrath of two angry Robin's was the weight of their family's morals.

They had to learn to trust each other. But they do.

The insults are more to fill the silence, partially affection and partially with the need to annoy. They watch reruns of Star Trek and play Legend of Zelda in pajama pants (Tim) and hoody's (Damian), half draped over each other with his feet in Tim's lap. When Damian couldn't find one to his satisfaction, he gifted Tim a new skateboard with his own hand drawn and painted design. He sends a video to the family group chat of him laughing when Tim faceplants.

They are the DEFINITION of annoying to each other. Damian chucks clothes at Tim to make him shower, they get into slap fights over breakfast, they sneer at each other's drinks. "With all the coffee it's no wonder you don't grow Drake," While handing a sick Tim herbal tea for his throat.

It's an underlying trust that rarely needs to be affirmed. But when it does Damian won't hesitate to let his opinion be known. Whether it be high school bullies mocking his gangly brother, reporters trying to pit the "blood son" against the "Boy CEO", or shady members of the Gotham elite with too much interest in his family and his company, Damian's blunt attitude comes back with a vengeance. There will be no Wayne Charm, no shop talk, no backhanded compliments, when Damian Wayne gets between them and his brother. It's "I trust my brother," and "No business with the likes of you," or even "When I said you two weren't on the same level, I meant that you were the incompetent one."

Tim always tries to scold him, tells him he shouldn't be petty, I can protect myself demon, but he smiles while he says it.

Stephanie

She teases him mercilessly, will smile sweetly while "blackmailing" him and challenges him to do things he has never done before. Damian won't admit he enjoys any of it even upon threat of death. She's loud, annoying, and demanding and unapologetically so and Damian is convinced she was dropped on her head as a child. Stephanie is his sister and he loves her as a younger brother would, hurling insults at each other while fighting over french fries drinking smoothies in some fast food restaurant at 2 in the afternoon on a day out.

What strikes him about Stephanie is that she demands respect because she knows on a fundamental level that she deserves it, that all of her hard work was her own and she knew she could do it even when everyone else thought she didn't belong. As he grows Damian comes not only to admire her, but finds this a very important lesson to learn for himself.

Stephanie pushes him, she encourages him even if it's hidden under mutually shared insults. On days where she "babysits him" (she does not, Damian tells himself he doesn't need a babysitter he doesn't) she's perfectly happy to work on their motorcycles together, or have random picnics in the park with bags of fast food, or challenge him to rounds of ping pong. They learn eventually that they make a very good team together. Either destroying Tim and Jason in video games, the occasional local ping pong or DDR tournament when visiting Gotham U, or spur of the moment plans in a night time fight. Stephanie is crazy enough to believe it will work, and Damian is crazy enough to believe Stephanie will follow.

Stephanie understands what it feels like to constantly have to justify yourself, to be told you can't measure up and that you're place isn't here, even though you know it is. To have the weight of your family's decisions hanging overhead for the judgment of others.

So they learn to love each other through healthy competition and teasing remarks. Stephanie shoos him off to "talk to kids your own age, don't be so serious!". It's normal, in some ways the closest to normal Damian has had in a long time. And though they won't say it out loud, it's nice to know someone else agrees that they are entitled to these moments of happiness, these moments they were stripped of and denied for so long. They believe in each other and their right to happiness. Damian will never doubt Stephanie's strength, as spoiler or Batgirl or robin or Stephanie, and in return she will never doubt him or his place in their family.

...

Even if that means trying to escape when she wants to play dress up. "I am not your doll Brown," "Fine fine, whatever you say short stack."

Cass:

The moments between Damian and Cass are silent, but if you believe nothing is said then you are entirely wrong. They speak to each other quite often even if they don't use words.

He watches her dance, and thinks she is so strong. Damian swears she could have been a princess in another life, if life had not sunk its fangs in and poisoned her with pain instead. Just as he would have been a prince. While he initially tried to hide it, Cass always knew he was there. Damian watches her. Damian hears her words, her joy and her tears, and puts it down on to charcoal and paper. I hear you, and he shows them to her, how her form litters his pages as she pats his head. There is, Damian thinks, a poetic irony in seeing something so dangerous create something so beautiful. She is art and deserves to be heard, and Damian is grateful that she hears him too. He lets her look at pages of charcoal and ink, at canvases of paint full of everything Damian can't put into words quite yet, and finds understanding.

But while he is a Wayne, he was an Al Ghul at one point and his mother gave him the training every prince should have, skills beyond his sword. So one day, as she stretches, he brings in a case and sets it down with a clunk. He tunes the strings and plays Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, as she watches him with eyes that understand far too much, eyes that say I know, I hear you baby brother. Damian almost wishes she didn't, partially due to the struggle of his own pride, but also because no one should ever have to understand that kind of pain.

Moments with Cass are quiet, but they are never silent. Cass teaches him understanding, helps teach him empathy. And while Damian knows he can never dance the way she can, he can play and sketch and paint and between them their secrets can no longer be secrets. Cass doesn't teach him how to feel ,no, he's always been too good at that. Instead she teaches him ways to coax them out when the words won't come, to look around him with the wonder he wasn't allowed to have before, to let him be defined by a different set of skills that shows he can create something beautiful too.

Duke:

Damien thinks Duke is "cool", like the kind of cool you see in movies and TV shows, the average teenage boys in jeans and sneakers who fight for the underdog and stand up to bullies in a 3-on-1 fight even if they know they won't win. There is a conviction in Duke that rivals Damian's own, and Damian can't help but admire someone willing to strike out on their own and do something when they felt others were failing.

Duke is "Chill" as Jason likes to say, he's low pressure and not pushy in a way that Damian appreciates. He's calm, not in the stoic way of some of the others, but in a way that doesn't put Damian out of his comfort zone with expectations.

Time spent with Duke often consists of puzzles and card games, or movies. Duke is very good at using Damian's own pride against him to "trick" him into playing, but together they do everything from DnD to Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters. It's relaxing.

Duke tells him about school and if Damian is having trouble with the more normal things of being a tween, like worrying whether other kids like him, or wearing something embarrasing, Duke brings him out of his own head. Duke plays along with his competitive nature, challenging him to races the few times they patrol together. He finds Damian outside drawing, and teaches him soccer. Other times they sit there together, Duke writing whatever comes to mind while Damian sketches. Damian gifts Duke a detailed portrait of himself; standing in the center of the crowded streets, body spliced into neat clockwork-style segments with patches of his Signal uniform, the red jacket from his time in the "We R Robin" crew, his sports uniforms, and casual clothing, the bright light of his powers bursting from within in a halo under the Gotham smog. He is Gotham's daylight protector, unique and gifted, and Damian respects that.

It's not easy, Damian is still young and cocky, still isn't very good at saying what he feels. But Duke sees right through his attempts to play it off, and it's always met with head pats and a "Whatever you say lil' D." Damian won't say it out loud but he thinks that the sheer conviction Duke has for doing what's right bleeds into every aspect of him, and that maybe with time it will do the same for himself. Damian admires his strength of will and determination, and the work Duke is willing to put in to get what he wants.

[reddieao3feed]

I want you to notice / when I'm not around

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2YhmCAa

by queermccoy

The thing that only Richie Tozier seems to know about Eddie Kaspbrak is that he is an absolute nightmare. He looks so pressed and neat to the casual viewer, but Richie knows that he lives in a pile of his own dirty clothes, wipes Cheeto dust off on his shirt, and leaves his filthy jerk off tissues balled up at the top of the trash. Richie, who has never pretended to be tidy or morally upright, wants to steal them and look at them in the privacy of his own room like a dragon hoarding gold, if gold is his buddy’s wadded up jizz tissues.

or, Eddie and Richie are measuring dicks but there's a history.

Words: 13753, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: IT (Movies - Muschietti)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh, Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon, Bill Denbrough

Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier

Additional Tags: Mentions of Ben Hanscom - Freeform, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Swordfighting, Kissing, House Party, Party Games, Semi-Public Sex, Competition, Gay Richie Tozier, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalized Homophobia, Misogyny, 1990s, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Penis Measuring, Foot Jobs, Alternate Universe - College/University

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2YhmCAa

[an-organized-confusion]

The Sides & DAREBEE RPGs #1

Wow. Okay.

So I’ve been at this fitness thing for nearly 5 years. Mostly via DAREBEE (a not-for-profit resource I wholeheartedly recommend!)

I see that they’re going to release a new RPG-style exercise program, Spellbound by Aug. 16. So I’m SUPER excited to see/run it!

Aaand it made me think of my exp with the other RPGs they’ve published and what the Sides would think of ‘em. (Because if everyone could get on board with doing more exercise - I imagine these would be more appealing.) :,D

Let’s start with their first one, Hero’s Journey. (Side note, holy shiyit this one had a lot of push-ups to failure. Did not miss those.)

Just from title alone, think Roman would be like “SIGN ME UP.“ He would definitely pick the harder but just story branches. The equipment that’d suit him would be the sword and body armor. (Impressive, I still can’t do an actual pull-up.) Of the lot, he might have a bit of “go hard or go home“ mindset - constantly wanting to push the limits. He may also go for other equips just for the points, HE WILL NOT LOSE TO REMUS.

Remus might gag a little abt the heroic pageantry. Would pick the less morally good story branches. Would ATTEMPT to use ALL the equipment, WHOLE way through, like a complete masochist. Only would push himself just push Roman’s competitive buttons. Race to see who winds up racking the most points.

Virgil would probs get SOMETHING out of the fact that exercise is a great way to ground yourself. I have feeling the ribbon and bow would be particularly appealing (fight or flight, am I right?) Also don’t get a sense he’d be competitive about it - probs might find some amusement in what Roman & Remus are doing. Probably jab Roman’s ego with reminders of their scores.

Janus probs would take similar choices story-wise to Remus. I think of the equips - he’d go for the bow and/or magic ring. (Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say). He would absolutely see no point in a dick-measuring contest and go relatively easier on himself - “gotta listen to your body.“

Logan would probs have a similar play-style/philosophy to Janus. I think he might also like to use the ribbon because - what better way to let off some steam than combat exercises? He definitely treats the program as a means to an end - to just be healthier.

Patton would try some equipment here and there - but noncommittal about it and also not interested in competition here. But he would do his darndest to pick the Good options, no matter how hard they can be to pull off.

If anyone would like to be on a taglist on Age of Pandora, Carbon & Dust, Zero Hero, lmk!

(FFFFf- I hate how tumblr deals with global tags. REALLY kills motivation to post shit sometimes.)

[calamity-bean]

We’re on the same side, Shadow

Item #2342342 in the never-ending list of things that messed me up about American Gods 2.07: these lines right here. Not only because of what they demonstrate about Sweeney’s individual character growth, but because of how thoroughly they — and this entire episode, really — reflect and bookend Shadow and Sweeney’s whole relationship.

Which is an interesting relationship, I think — especially considering that although we, the audience, have seen plenty of both of them, and although they have significant relationships in common with other characters, Shadow and Sweeney themselves haven’t interacted that much. A long scene in 1.01, and a short scene in 1.03; a couple more short scenes in 2.01, and then nothing for the rest of the season until now, as far as I recall. I’d go so far as to say that their dynamic is informed as much by their separate relationships with Laura and Wednesday as by their actual interactions with each other. When they do interact directly, it tends to feel a bit like an ongoing dick-measuring contest: hostile, competitive, with a lot of bravado and aggression, especially from Sweeney.

Even if Sweeney hadn’t been under orders to pick a fight at their first meeting, I feel like conflict between these dudes would have been inevitable. Their personalities just tend to clash, for one thing. Sweeney is too irreverent, too belligerent not to annoy Shadow, who’s not the sort of person to be uncivil or aggressive without provocation but also isn’t a pushover who’s gonna let Sweeney bully him, either. And unbeknownst to Shadow, of course, Sweeney comes into the situation with a lot of complicated guilt and anger over Laura’s murder. But though this certainly aggravates Sweeney’s hostility — further aggravated, later on, by jealousy as Sweeney develops his own relationship with Laura and his feelings for her grow more and more romantic — I think that wasn’t the only thing bothering Sweeney when they first met. There’s something more, imo: a palpable irritation rolling off him, as he throws dart after dart at that bull’s-eye, at the fact that Wednesday is interested in Shadow at all.

Because as is strongly implied in 2.07, Shadow getting hired essentially meant Sweeney getting replaced. That’s how Sweeney feels about it, at any rate. Once upon a time, he was Wednesday’s right-hand man; he had Wednesday’s favor, and it felt good, it felt special, it felt like the sun was shining on him. Wednesday gave him pride and purpose, and for that, I think he loved Wednesday a bit, in a filial fashion — certainly he felt loyal and indebted to him. And though Sweeney’s relationship with Wednesday has long since crumbled into scorn and derision and mistrust and hatred, he still envies Shadow having what he once had... yet also has enough morality (and enough spite toward Wednesday) to sympathize with Shadow for being in a situation that Sweeney knows, from firsthand experience, is shit.

Because the truly agonizing thing is that despite their conflicting personalities, Shadow and Sweeney actually have some important things in common! And that’s what kills me! That’s what really kills me here: the fact that these guys have reasons to find common ground with each other, but never quite CAN. Both are disillusioned romantics, both capable fighters, both full of pain, both susceptible to Wednesday because he knew how to make them feel more purposeful and important than they had in a long time... They even both get misread in similar ways. One of the first things we learn about Shadow in the novel is that he looks very “don’t fuck with me,” which stands in contrast to his quiet, polite, intelligent, and fundamentally goodhearted demeanor. Likewise, Sweeney reads on the surface as little more than a big, rowdy drunk — “a horny musclehead,” in Wednesday’s words — and only gradually, over the course of the series, has revealed a strong (though compromised) moral compass and profound emotional depth. On a personal level, Shadow and Sweeney tend to irritate the crap out of each other, and I don’t think they like each other as people very much at all. But I think they also understand each other... Or they could, if they were open to doing so.

So the tragedy of it, really, is that they HAVEN’T been open to understanding each other. Every now and then, one of them makes an overture — some sort of gesture toward camaraderie or connection. But it never quite works. Every time one of them is in the mood to reach out — Sweeney offering warnings about Wednesday, for example, or Shadow showing genuine concern at the beginning of 2.07 as he realizes Sweeney's not well — the other is never really in a good place, emotionally, to respond. Shadow’s too wary to believe Sweeney, or too angry to want to listen to him; or Sweeney’s too unsettled (and too prickly in general) not to rebuff Shadow’s concern; and since they don’t get along well in the first place, it can all devolve into arguing pretty quickly. 2.07 contains several of these little glimmers of camaraderie between them, these moments when they almost land on the same page...

...But it’s all too little and too late.

If Sweeney is ever revived, I hope he and Shadow someday manage to... maybe never quite be friends, that’s probably asking a lot, but it could be cool if they reached some sort of understanding. Some level of recognition or respect or even just grudging camaraderie. Till then, though, the note they’ve ended on — fighting each other when they could and probably should be fighting side by side — is so thematically appropriate and so bittersweet.

[maserati-yokota]

AJW We Are Running Thru Korakuen Hall 5/26/91 Commercial Tape

This one has links! So you know I'm not making this shit up!

Suzuka Minami & Takako Inoue & Cynthia Moreno vs. Bison Kimura & Mika Takahashi & Miori Kamiya part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9L6-ybHoc part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Ok-L8g3Jc Kamiya gets to work tossing Suzuka around before getting piledriven into pudding. Moreno tags in and man it's a shame she was perpetually disrespected by this company. Moreno was a treasure, you rubes. Bison is in full beast mode and she doesn't even have the leopard-print yet! Takako is young and gets stretched a lot. Whatever happened to Kamiya you say? She's Cooga, ya dingus; the dullest part of any late-90s card. Takahashi gets tagged in, puts Takako in an upside down double-underhook STFU WITH A BRIDGE and goes back to her corner so Bison can dropkick some more. The 70s Miles Davis solo of tag-ins. Incredible. Suzuka does a gorgeous vertical suplex to signal to all of us watching that though this is a heatless spotfest, the spots are in season. So dig in. Suzuka's dropkicks are so snappy it's a wonder she didn't get CTE from them. Kamiya must've just been spent by the Cooga era because she busts out tons of fun stuff here. Youth is young on the wasted. Bison, sensing the lack of Classic Tag Match Heat, throws Moreno into the bleachers. Good on her. Takako wants revenge but eats a Bison Chop. This is an interesting era for a spotfest--ie the pre-CTE era--despite it still being built off of the video-gamey idea of "strong attacks wear down more HP". Everybody busts out the weirdest shit they can come up with in the hope something--anything--will do it. But I shouldn't complain much. This is heavy on action, light on pointless near-falls, the screwups are minor, and there are some really fun and odd spots I haven't seen before. And Kaoru Ito is there to moisturize the losers!

Toshiyo Yamada vs. Yumiko Hotta part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfHqj7TdoTY part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtYiI8pb5hQ Q: And kicks?

A: And kicks.

Yamada is as spry and bland as ever and Hotta is still pretending she isn't a violence pervert. But the crowd knows The Truth so Hotta gets 1000000 streamers. Yamada, mad at her comparative lack of streamers, comes out swinging, only to get swung. Hotta brings the UWF realism but Yamada is convinced the puroresu will WIN. One thing they can both agree on is KICKS. The first notable one busts Yamada's nose and we are off to the races--which is to say, we are witnessing the suffering of women who work for men and therefore are never encouraged to have healthily competitive relationships with their peers. Healthy competition comes from camaraderie and a sense of community. Bull Nakano spoke in interviews about how brutalized and casually despised she was by the other wrestlers when she started. The Crush Gals  fucking hate each other irl. Aja Kong was made into a monster heel literally because she was biracial. These things and this match dynamic (hardway blood in basically a TV taping) are all symptoms of the same disorder: misogyny and the market sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Yeah, there's a ton of great work and powerful drama in this era, but how much of it was the inadvertent by-product of an unhealthy working environment? We'll never really know, since there was practically no other game in town--and what game there was (LLPW and JWP) was so consumed by the battle for market dominance, they could only mimic this model. AJW begat Rossy Ogawa which begat Arsion’s weirdly disjointed breed of misogyny which begat Stardom. “Send the girls out there and make them murder each other for the love of the fans! And fuck it! They're somehow also responsible for shilling all their merch, too, just to survive! And they’re little a nude sometimes! As a treat!” This match is pretty fun, don't get me wrong. But it's sometimes hard to distinguish a legitimately competitive match from all of what I just described. Did Hotta bust Yamada's nose cuz she was pissed about jobbing and there was no other outlet in the context of the company to properly express that frustration? Was that frustration even really directed at Yamada? Or was this more of a "Yoshiko shoot"-type situation, in which a wrestler makes a public display of frustration? Hotta turns the shoot into a work for good measure by attacking Yamada post-match. 1991 was 4000 years ago.

Aja Kong vs. Manami Toyota part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI746sByB-g part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKy0Kp5_MU part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gdv67lFa5M Two of the most compelling figures this era produced--both of whom took the weird and bigoted roles they were given and turned them into powerful characters that transcended that small-mindedness. Aja set out to be a fan favorite despite the booking and it fucking worked. Manami didn't want to just be a pretty baby-face; she wanted depth and conflict. She also trained Tsukasa Fujimoto and Tsukushi, who carry on her legacy of being weirdos with pin-straight hair who love punishment. Aja still sells at this point and Manami is such a string-bean it looks like her boots are weighing her down. Apart from that contextual novelty, this is pretty classic Kong/Toyota. Toyota gets tied in more knots than those catalogued in Moby Dick; eats every kick ever and even takes a headbutt to the lower back. But contrary to their later body of work, Toyota's hope spots don't pop the crowd as much since they're not yet sure she's capbable of fighting from underneath. They like it when she fires up, but they don't yet believe in it. In defense of Aja and Toyota, their work is just as compelling as in 93, 94 or 95, the bookers just didn't believe it yet. It would take the hair vs hair match and Aja's teary performance at the end of Big Egg to convince them of what everyone else on earth already knew. It's as thankless to be out-of-step with the times as it is to be ahead of the times. If you haven't seen this and you're familiar with their higher profile matches, you should. It's more than just a curiosity or a template for later and "greater" things; it's a sign they already knew who they were and how prepared they were to transcend management's expectations. Wild finish and a moving post-match moment, too.

Akira Hokuto & Sakie Hasegawa vs. Bull Nakano & Bat Yoshinaga (2/3 Falls Match) part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En6sdmXeMAY part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2crxtgZhY Hokuto's legacy is equally massive but differently complex. Hokuto was never really given an explicit role other than asshole. An early injury earned her a reputation with fans as a wrestler who refused to lie down--despite the fact that breaking her neck and refusing to abandon the match was probably due more to how toxic the work environment was in AJW. Can't blame her, or really anybody under these circumstances. Christ, they all started training when they were barely teenagers; what other reality did they know? But because she was picked by the fans long before management knew what to do with her, she had a far different arc. In the ring, she worked from underneath, but as an asshole. Imagine if Muta was somehow Cactus Jack: a being who existed outside the bounds of normal human morality but also took such a colossal beating it made you feel bad for them. Only a tremendously charismatic, well-drawn performance could carry that off. Hokuto is so hard-headed in every sense it's impossible not to root for her; she refuses to know her own limits and, subsequently, refuses to acknowledge the limits of any of her opponents. Anyhow, AJW was hoping Bat Yoshinaga would be Lil Bull, even though that never panned out. Sakie is comically timid in the pre-match promo and Hokuto seems doubtful but down to clown as usual. Bull comes out in a feathery gown only to reveal a tattered tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt to let everyone know she a) likes to party and b) is ready for a call from Vince whenevs. Hokuto is fully on her Maeda shit: aloof yet nervy. She's still in her Marine Wolves colors, too. A woman without a country. Sakie looks literally terrified about what she knows is coming. Ten seconds after the bell, Bull clotheslines them both and powerbombs Sakie for the first fall. THAT'S how Bull do. Hokuto is having none of it and top-rope dropkicks Bat's clavicle into a billion pieces for the second fall. THAT'S how Hokuto do. Now it's Bull vs Hokuto, what the crowd was thirsty for. Hokuto gets thrown over the ropes onto the bare floor but rallies and comes back with a suplex and the same dropkick she gave Bat--proving her contempt for Bull. Double underhook driver for good measure, but Bull gonna Bull. Sakie gets a huge pop on the hot tag despite being the obvious Kikuchi in this setting. Bat kicks and stretches Sakie back into her place. In some ways its hard to tell if Sakie's time in AJW is compelling because she is obviously better than how she was booked or compelling on its own merits--and due to her repeated injuries and transition to trainer we'll never know. But either way, Sakie whips. Hokuto helps her get some good licks in on Bull to drive home that despite her crankiness she believes in this young upstart after all. Sakie capitalizes on this heat by delivering a gorgeous flying headbutt to Bat, following by a pair of god-tier heel-kicks. The crowd is SHRIEKING. Bull senses Bat is gonna whiff it, so bum-rushes Sakie to get Hokuto to tag in. Hokuto is rewarded with a German suplex to the base of her skull and a double-team. A few dozen harrowing exchanges later, Hokuto is back on top and Sakie is ready to die for her. Unfortunately, the moment Bull comes off the top rope with a legdrop, we all know the credits gonna roll. Bull leads the crowd in chanting "Bat-o, Bat-o, Bat-o" and it's a shame that never got legs. Bull feels bad about how things ended, so gives them another chance at a fall. Sakie and Bat slap each other instead of kissing.

Weird but fun card full of all your faves before their prime. Have at it!

Wait . Hang on. Plum Mariko vs Chigusa Nagayo (JWP, 2/11/94) is tacked onto this tape! Fuck YES. Lorefice: the beef been squashed. THANK YOU. (jk jk you're still a bigot)

Watch it here, with glorious pre-match training footage cut from the commercial tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQLWwEHP4FQ Plum comes out HOT and bloodies Chigusa early. Never seen Plum this vampiric and fired tf up. Chigusa is having none of it and Hulks out because she's deeply cynical about joshi audiences at this point in her career. She also doesn't mind getting blood in her eyes because, of course, she is still Chigusa Nagayo~! (*DVDVR shout-out interrobang) I've talked a ton already about how much Plum rules and how wistful I get seeing any of her matches. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable saying "the business killed her" so instead I'll say "the business let her die." (The business has let many die but few so blatantly.) Chigusa has yet to enter her dom stage so instead inhabits a kind of quasi-Dynamite Kansai persona appropriate to JWP. She kicks less often but smushes necks just the same. She also is 1000x better on the mat. The announcer mentions, in English (?!) this is a full house at Koruken Hall. Chigusa hits pause to talk shit and Plum is OUTRAGED. Chigusa is also rocking a tan that says "yeah, I took some time off to chill tf out, what of it?" Plum thinks she can restart the match with a respectable test of strength (this is Chigusa, she of fightingo-spiritu, after all) only to get immediately clowned by The New Chigusa. The Post-Crush Gal. Plum says "oh fuck that" and throws on the Stretch Plum and DDTs Chigusa thru the earth's mantle. Chigusa is takes a breather outside then demands Plum give her enough room to get back in the ring, thus going full southern heel. Plum caaaan't quiiiite sink in the Stretch so does a quick German for good measure. Chigusa fights from beneath but gets shut down QUICK. Weird that this legitimately feels like anyone's game, given Chigusa's legendary status. Chigusa sets the record straight by soccer kicking Plum's head into the Mir space station (topical). The crowd now hates her. Plum squishes her back to the mat where she feels safe and torques Chigusa's legs until she looks like Brian Yuzna's seminal critique of capitalism, Society. Despite the contortions, Chigusa chinlocks her way to a victory we all kinda knew was coming.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

PARTLY BECAUSE YOU DON'T NEED A BRILLIANT IDEA TO START A STARTUP THAN REALIZE IT

Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to be running out of money.1 If even someone with the same qualifications who are both equally committed to the business, that's easy. Microsoft. You knew there would be.2 I wonder. You don't need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a way that doesn't suck. And yet the grad students seem pretty smart. That's ok.3

Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto should be i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto.4 I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be the ideal place—that it would basically be Cambridge with good weather, it turns out you have to have at least one person willing and able to focus on one type of ambition. We felt like our role was to be impudent underdogs instead of corporate stuffed shirts, and that the weight of a few extra checks that might be easy for General Electric to bear are enough to prevent younger companies from being public at all. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to go with Ron Conway and bet on people and those who prefer to bet on people. It would cost something to run, and it might be worth a hundred times as much.5 Some smart, nice guys turn out to be easier than I expected, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company with a valuation any lower.6 We talked to a number of VCs, but eventually we ended up financing our startup entirely with angel money.7 If you believe everything you're supposed to when starting a company. Yes, because they give them more leverage over developers, who can more easily be replaced. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves.

The English Reformation was at bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it seems so foreign. When you get a couple million dollars from a VC firm, you tend to, because that's where smart people meet. The church knew this would set people thinking. It would cost something to run, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did.8 That last test filters out surprisingly few people. It used to mean the control of vast human and material resources. Usually the claim is that you should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little Web 2.9

No one dared put on attitude around Robert, because he was obviously smarter than they were and yet had zero attitude himself. No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but the most important may be that once you have users to take care of. Because they're good guys and they're trying to help people can also help you with investors. But that assumption is often false, and this is the right way to search for components. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do.10 It would be too easy for clients to fire them.11 Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're thinking. Could you describe the person as an animal? So parents are giving their kids an inaccurate idea of the language by not using them.

Usually there is something deeper wrong. So the acquirer is in fact getting worse performance at greater cost. When you offer x percent of your company for y dollars, you're implicitly claiming a certain value for the whole company. He says the main reason is that people like the idea of being mistaken. One of the founders might decide to split off and start another company, so I figured it had to be carefully planned.12 It's not a charity, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate then. Suppose it's 1998. Of course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably have a separate note with a different cap for each investor.13 It's worth trying very, very few who simply decide for themselves.14 The trouble with lying is that you get a lot of people need to search for components, and before Octopart there was no good way to do that is to visit them.

In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations it's because we're right and they're wrong. But can you think of one that had a massively popular product and still failed? It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s.15 That depends on how ambitious you feel.16 David Filo's title was Chief Yahoo, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo.17 If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence. Clearly you don't have to find startups. More generally, design your product to please users first, you leave a gap for competitors who do. Online dating is a valuable business now, and they're all trying not to use words like fuck and shit within baby's hearing, lest baby start using these words too. Morale is tremendously important to a startup is that you need someone mature and experienced, with a business background, may be overrated.18 But only about 10% of the total or $10,000 of seed money from our friend Julian. I realized it would probably have to figure out where to live by trial and error.19

Perl may look like a cartoon character swearing, but there are cases where it surpasses Python conceptually.20 Don't do what we did. Of the two versions, the one where you get a lot of data about how they work. What drives people to start startups is or should be looking at existing technology and thinking, don't these guys realize they should be doing x, y, and z?21 And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. How much stock should they get? Programmers like to make a winning product. There could be ten times more startups than there are, and that is exactly the spirit you want. There's a hack for being decisive when you're inexperienced: ratchet down the size of your investment till it's an amount you wouldn't care too much about losing. The reason Cambridge is the intellectual capital is not just that there's a concentration of smart people, but diluted by a much larger number of neanderthals in suits. They'd face some challenges if they wanted to make web apps work like desktop ones.

Notes

I could pick them, but the idea is the only cause of the year, they can grow the acquisition into what it means to be a lost cause to try to be a good plan for life in general we've done ok at fundraising, but that it's boring, we try to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a spam probabilty of.

What if a company tried to raise money? This is an acceptable excuse, but I call it ambient thought. Many more than determination to create a portal for x instead of themselves. So, can I make it easy.

Only in a rice cooker.

We wasted little time on a saturday, he wrote a hilarious but also the perfect life, the top 15 tokens, because there are few who can say they're not ready to invest more, and stonewall about the paperwork there, and b when she's nervous, she doesn't like getting attention in the US treat the poor worse than Japanese car companies have little do with the government, it could change what you're doing. But in most competitive sports, the world in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be some number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. Particularly since economic inequality in the Baskin-Robbins.

It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid the topic. They bear no blame for any opinions expressed in it. Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference.

But it was cooked up, but what they made, but investors can get for free.

They look superficially like the one hand and the valuation of an investor? If the startup isn't getting market price.

William R.

There are successful women who don't aren't. The more people would treat you like a probabilistic spam filter, dick has a similar logic, one variant of compound bug where one bug happens to use some bad word multiple times.

Even though we made a bet: if he hadn't we probably would not change the number of customers you need to be about web-based applications. Everything is a function of two things: what ideas did European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they would implement it and creates a rationalization for doing so.

Is what we measure worth measuring? But this takes a startup idea is stone soup: you post a sign saying this is not pagerank commercialized. So if you're a YC startup you have a standard piece of casuistry for this point.

Deane, Phyllis, The First Two Hundred Years.

Anyone can broadcast a high product of some brilliant initial idea.

One new thing the company is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. The original edition contained a few old professors in Palo Alto, but they're not. Travel has the same attachment to their situation.

But although I started using it, whether you realize it till I started using it, and so effective that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality is not a remark about the same advantages from it. Html. But the change is a constant multiple of usage, so you'd find you couldn't do the equivalent thing for startups. 32.

Obviously, if the present, and mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. Those groups never have to put it this way that weren't visible in the 1960s, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but I'm not talking here about academic talks, which is probably not far from the Dutch not to be in most competitive sports, the fact that the VC.

At YC.

It's unpleasant because the proportion of spam. One source of food. The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

Even as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would give you fifty times as much the better. In a startup with debt is a negotiation.

There are fairly high spam probability. Once again, I'd open our own startup Viaweb, and that there's more of it in action, there are only pretending to in order to attract workers. Though you should probably be the technology everyone was going to visit 20 different communities regularly. Html.

[tiny-fierce-haole]

Spoils of War

@itsxharris

"So who is this guy again?" Danni asked her work partner once more as they approached the bar.

It was a seedy place in Waikiki, off the main drag and not one she'd been to before, but apparently this was where Steve had arranged to meet his friend from out of state.

"He's an old Navy buddy of mine, a SEAL," Steve explained, holding the door open for the shorter blonde as he always did. "His name's Jack Harris, and I haven't seen him in a few years but he's on leave for a few days and sent me a message to say he was in Hawaii. Couldn't resist saying hi."

Danni smirked, strutting past her friend and ignoring the leers from a couple of guys at the bar. Her petite blonde figure tended to attract unwanted attention from some men, though that only tended to last up until the point that she let them know she could break their fingers, cuff them and send them to jail all in the time it would take for them to smack her ass and call her 'sweetheart'.

"And I'm here for what exactly? Moral support? Or just to stop you two accidently blowing the island up in a dick measuring contest?"

Danni was all too aware of the competitive nature of Navy SEALs, having met a couple in her time, and she wouldn't put it past Steve and a buddy to take it too far when alcohol was in the mix.

Steve chuckled. "Figured you might need a night out too... And I haven't seen his, but I'm willing to bet mine's bigger."

Danni rolled her eyes - she should have known Steve would take that joke literally - but as they arrived at the booth Steve had been directed to via text from his friend and she spotted the hot brunette guy waiting for them, she raised her eyebrows at the sight.

The man stood to greet them, his broad, muscular build and confidence implying other parts might be just as impressive, and Danni shook Jack's hand firmly before grinning at Steve in a way she knew would needle him.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure, Steven..."

[elizabethrobertajones]

lmao what do you mean this entire season has been about dean's dick?

Lemme take you back to my first year of uni where I did a literature degree, and in my sort of analysis 101 class about how to do all the readings and subtext and who is even reading this text nonsense, one day we all came into a lecture theatre where the teacher wasn’t present yet but the projector was already showing the first slide of the powerpoint, which in 3 feet-high letters, simply read,

PSYCHOANALYSIS

… so yeah that’s the flavour of my academic background :P 

The 13x21 promo had that great bit from the wilting portal montage where TFW ready their weapons, and Dean cocks the gun in that suggestive jerk-off way, while Cas spins his blade for better grasp, and Sam does something un-suggestive like why do I even know you guys. Dean’s gun has been his dick a lot this season, either held loose between his legs while talking to Ketch - who had been coming onto him all episode in 13x18 - or cleaning it in 13x08 before Barthamus called for their ill-fated not-Crowley-replacement encounter. I already made that embarrassing post about Dean sliding Cas a drink in 13x19 and how he was holding his own… 

So, anyway the fact the season came down to junk waving between Lucifer, 

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/174172780257/justanotheridijiton-destielhallow-its-the

with his archangel blade, and Dean with his, doing the “Look at my junk” wing display, with those phallic windows behind him, really isn’t surprising. They measure power for archangels with a sexual edge with Lucifer and Anael, and all the stuff about Gabriel and his potency… Dean juiced up on the Big Dick Juice and essentially took a massive erection to fight Lucifer.

The Colt was also a representation of his manhood and he sort of met Lucifer via storming up to him and unloading the Colt directly into Lucifer’s face. This probably goes way deeper than I can handle right now, given I’m woozily lying in bed feeling very unwell at the moment, but the show has put a fair amount of phallic competitiveness in for Dean. And I mean with everyone. The entire Mark of Cain arc with the first blade was about Dean’s dick, and Cas won that one but only after he and Crowley went back and forth a lot on who owned Dean’s dick. Crowley even links Dean’s strength to his virility in 9x17.

Or like, season 7, a whole season of Dick jokes and Dean hellbent on getting Dick, which, of course, involves boning him and at the end “exploding Dick” sends your ass to purgatory. Where Dean gets another rugged ambiguously sexy dynamic friendo and a big ass knife. 

Anyways for season 13 for Dean it all comes down to this fight, where he needs to be stronger than Lucifer (to “beat the devil” as 13x21′s title suggestively told us >.>) and this is the conclusion of a story where Cas won Jack’s moral centre and loyalty in 12x19, Sam won his heart pretty early on but 13x23′s personal conclusion with them proves that, and Dean is the gruff John-mirrored alpha dad figure that Jack sort of emulates and whose affection is more hard earned in a rugged manly way; Lucifer as the bio father and Dean as this version of fatherhood are the ones in the macho showdown and the ones staking their virility against each other as their right to parent Jack, in the same way Lucifer and Sam had that struggle for Jack’s heart over 13x21-3. 

Early on in the season, I think after the 13x08 gun cleaning lols, I remember discussion of Dean’s potency/impotency especially when it came to the fights, and how many times he lost or let someone else take the kill vs his big successes. He’d just seen Lucifer impale Cas on his phallic blade and it destroys him and in some ways takes the fight out of him. He gets his mojo back eventually (for… some reason…), and I guess with the big fights through the season for Dean we were supposed to be building up to him being BAMF enough to take down Lucifer - not that the fight scene we got was worthy of the others, but that gnarly fight with Bernard stands out. Jessica even hung a lampshade that Dean was skilled enough to take him down, so we shouldn’t be doubting he could kill Lucifer with the extra juice. 

Also, Michael’s world is one riddled with massive phallic angel blades sticking out of the ground, around his HQ and main battleground. He has The Biggest Dick and now Dean has that too because he’s possessed by this guy with the 20ft high angel blades. 

So, yeah. Dean, as himself, it makes perfect in character sense he shows up at this door with the windows above it like 3 large dicks, and as himself. Dean. Chooses to spread his massive fucking wingspan he now has and show off how potent he is, vs Lucifer. Who is stealing others’ grace to be strong anyway, so the implication is that it isn’t even his own potency. Though, since it’s Jack, we’re staying surface level here :P 

And yeah this is not a unifying theme of the season or anything like super serious or critical to understanding or whatever, but 13x21 made it extremely clear that the phallic imagery is there and intended. I mean talking about being a vessel as an “angel condom” implies Michael is literally a walking dick with wings (aww the romans had them as lucky charms and they were much nicer :P) and now Dean is that dick. So. 

That point where I gave up in despair trying to take notes on 13x21 and just wrote “Penis” as my analysis for an entire minute of the show? That’s season 14 in its entirety, probably.

[twentyonepilotsficlibrary]

Miscellaneous Fandoms Fic Rec Masterlist

This is something new we’re trying out. In our admin group chat we all started talking about our other fandoms/pairings we read and thought it might be fun to share some of our favorite fics. 

I know not everyone will be into this idea but i think it’s easily ignored if it’s not your cup of tea. Otherwise we hope you enjoy this mess of fics, maybe you’ll find yourself a new pairing, or maybe you’ll get inspired to write Joshler. 

we hope you enjoy! 

**this will be a long post**

Madi’s recs

Teen Wolf - Sterek (Stiles Stilinski & Derek Hale)

Cornerstone by Vendelin (6/6 | 83738 | Explicit)

Suffering from PTSD, ex-Marine Derek Hale moves back to Beacon Hills to open a bookshop and find a calmer life. That’s where he meets Stiles, completely by accident. Stiles is talkative, charming and curious. Somehow, despite the fact that he’s blind, he’s able to read Derek like no one else.

//PTSD //anxiety attacks 

No Homo by orphan_account (12/12 | 84092 | Explicit)

Stiles' sophomore year starts something like this: 3 FourLokos + 1 peer-pressuring cat - 1 best bro to end all best bros = 1 Craigslist ad headline that reads "str8 dude - m4m - strictly platonic". Derek is the fool who replies.

//internalized homophobia 

We Got Claws by Onlymystory (15/15 | 34914 | Mature)

Peter, Isaac, and Scott get de-aged. Stiles and Derek take care of them.

Harry Potter - Drarry (Harry Potter & Draco Malfoy)

Open For Repairs by FeelsForBreakfast (1/1 | 34901 | Mature)

After the war, Draco works at a tv repair shop and Harry breaks things.

feat. sad boys in jumpers and more ABBA than is probably necessary

There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That byLomonaaeren (36/36 | 105549 | Mature) 

The day that Harry stops Draco Malfoy and his son from being bothered in the middle of Diagon Alley starts a strange series of interactions between him and Malfoy. Who knew there was a pure-blood custom for every situation?

Transfigurations by Resonant (1/1 | 71284 | Explicit)

Five years after Voldemort's defeat, Harry returns to England to help re-open Hogwarts.

//major character death 

IT - Reddie (Richie Tozier & Eddie Kaspbrak)

Yours Truly by Buttercup12 (14/14 | 51414 | Mature)

Eddie Kaspbrak has it bad. He’s bullied for being a tiny, delicate, hypochondriac boy. He’s also bullied for being very, very, very gay. Long story short, his life isn’t the easiest.

However, that’s all a piece of cake when compared to his gigantic, pathetic crush on Derry High’s most popular and oh so very straight Trashmouth, Richie Tozier.

Richie has no idea he even exists.

Right?

Wrong.

ugly moon by weepies (27/27 | 79482 | Teen and Up)

Richie Tozier hasn’t spoken a word to anybody since he came to Derry in the middle of the school year. Until he talks to Eddie Kaspbrak.

//abuse mention

----------------------

Christie’s recs

Harry Potter - Drarry (Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

Turn by Saras_Girl (14/14 | 306,708 | Explicit)

One good turn always deserves another. Apparently.

All Our Secrets Laid Bare by firethesound (16/16 | 149,549 | Explicit)

Over the six years Draco Malfoy has been an Auror, four of his partners have turned up dead. Harry Potter is assigned as his newest partner to investigate just what is going on.

South Park - Creek (Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak)

Do Not Try This At Home by Marasa (6/? | 32,100 | Mature)

A post is made that night detailing the rules of their arrangement:

• Video must be taken of the event.

• Video must be uploaded.

• Turns will be taken; after one group uploads, the other must upload as answer to the original post. This ensures equal stunts and higher expectations with each stunt.

• Don’t half-ass it; this is a fucking competition!

//depression //anxiety //past abuse //drug use

The Roommate by DoAsYouWill (27/? | 277,882 | Mature)

Craig is off to college, where he is introduced to the weirdest person he's ever met. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, (Craig can't decide), that weirdest person is his roommate.

Just your typical cliche 'meet as roommates' story, but with a lot of nostalgic undertones.

Deadpool - Cablepool (Wade Wilson/Nathan Summers)

Incognito by CQHD (Comet_Kohoutek) (2/2 | 5,810 | Explicit)

Deadpool introduces Cable to porn.

The video, Deadpool realises belatedly, is way too quiet. There's no cheesy bass line that gets stuck in his head and makes him feel each pulse in his dick. There's just the soft rustling of clothes against skin as the man strips. It's got an aesthetic to it, but it doesn't stop Deadpool from hearing the catch in Cable's breath once the man steps out of his underwear and crawls on to the desk. 

Toaster by edy (1/1 | 3,339 | Mature)

If someone were to strap you in and measure your heart rate, it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone to find it'd be beating in time with his own heart. The notion is meant to be romantic, as is customary in romances, and you think it might be romantic if an uneven heart rate wasn't a sign of a serious health condition.

//suicidal thoughts 

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Sydney’s Recs

South Park 

Do Not Try This At Home by Marasa (6/? || 32,100 || Mature)

A post is made that night detailing the rules of their arrangement:

• Video must be taken of the event.

• Video must be uploaded.

• Turns will be taken; after one group uploads, the other must upload as answer to the original post. This ensures equal stunts and higher expectations with each stunt.

• Don’t half-ass it; this is a fucking competition!

// depression, anxiety, past abuse, drug use

A Perfect Love Like Craig and Tweek by ugandadistrict9 (1/1 || 3,783 || Teen and Up Audiences)

Tweek and Craig have been close for a few years, and everyone says that they’re dating, but Craig has neither confirmed or denied it. Tweek has developed strong feelings for Craig over the time, but is worried that Craig doesn’t feel the same way he does.

Homicidal Maniac by Maroonedpunk (3/3 || 17,654 || Teen and Up Audiences)

They called him a homicidal maniac for years.

Then came the allegations against the coffee shop.

Tweek can’t do this by himself.

// depression, anxiety, drug use, mental illness

Spirit Animals by hollycomb (1/1 || 22,191 || Not Rated)

Cartman wants to film his amateur ghost hunting show at the site of the grisly McCormick massacre. Stan hates the idea but he can’t stay away, because Kyle will be there.

✓✓ Read by Boyue (16/16 || 65,196 || Teem and Up Audiences)

WENDY Nice picture but you have the wrong number.

AKA how Stan Marsh met Kyle Broflovski through a dick pic mishap.

// depression, alcoholism, derogatory language

Detriot: Become Human (Gavid Reed/RK900)

Chrysopoeian Heart by feistymuffin (6/? || 22,826 || Explicit)

Chrysopoeia - the act of transmuting a substance into gold

Gavin doesn’t like androids… but then again, nothing’s written in stone.

// graphic depictions of violence

Still by Terminallydepraved (1/1 || 4,277 || Explicit)

Sometimes it takes someone else nearly dying to make you realize the important things.

Life sucks, but in a beautiful kind of way by ConsultingStag (5/6 || 7701 || Mature)

Gavin stares at RK900 and regrets it immediately as its gray gaze bores into him. LED spinning yellow. Dissecting what happened. Analyzing the clues in front of it. And then a perfectly fake eyebrow lifts and equally fake lips twitch into a tiny smirk and Gavin knows that he is fucked. 

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Cade’s Recs 

Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia - Macdennis (Mac/Dennis Reynolds)

a beachfront of bad blood by castielanderson (1/1 | 28,366 | Mature)

or alternatively “Dennis Tries to Kill Himself: MacDennis Remix” Originally for the 2017 MacDennis Big Bang, but alas

.

They don’t have a falling out so much as a slowly drifting apart.  Being a dad makes Dennis tired, so tired sometimes he feels like he might never have energy again, and that means that he stops checking in with Mac as often.  Eventually, they stop talking.  Mac gets a boyfriend.  Dennis stops taking his medication.

After Dennis attempts suicide, Mandy insists he return to Philadelphia with the gang, and she will follow with Brian Jr. when she can.  Faced with an unwanted recovery, a failed family, and feelings he would rather ignore, Dennis is forced to navigate uncharted waters within himself and within his relationship with Mac.

//rape/non-con //suicide attempt //self-harm //eating disorders //depression

Fullmetal Alchemist - Royed (Edward Elric/Roy Mustang)

Reverti Ad Praeteritum by Batsutousai (30/30 | 288,908 | Mature)

Unwillingly forced to serve as a human trial for a crazy alchemist experimenting with time travel, Edward Elric finds himself standing across from Truth in the moment it takes his leg from him. Armed with the knowledge of what's to come and burdened with guilt for the choices he'd made as an adult, Ed sets out to fix every mistake he ever made and save every life they ever lost, no matter what it takes.

//underage //implied/referenced dubious consent //violence 

Know the Difference by ShanaStoryteller (1/1 | 9,083 | Teen)

“You’ve heard the rumors,” Mustang says, looking at Ed over the top of his latest report, “about the angels.”

Ed scoffs and rolls his eyes, “Angels don’t exist, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Of course, of course,” he murmurs, gaze sliding back down, “There have been multiple eye witness accounts, however.”

Ed slouches into the chair and doesn’t bother to keep the contempt to from his voice when he says, “Don’t depend on anything with wings to save you. Things that were made to leave always end up doing so, in the end.”

“Yes, well,” he says, “sometimes they come back.”

a terrifying clamour of trumpets by ShanaStoryteller (1/1 | 12,194 | Teen)

Edward grabs Marcoh’s arm and says, “That stone – what can it heal, exactly?”

The old man’s eyebrows rise to his forehead, and he looks like he already knows the answer when he goes, “Why do you ask, Edward?”

There's no metallic footsteps so there’s no way Al’s close enough to hear them. “I’m sick,” he admits after another moment of deliberation.

The Codeine Scene by Xyriath (31/31 | 111,257 | Explicit)

After finding himself entangled with King Bradley's gang of criminals and no way out, Roy Mustang must struggle between balancing his morals and the need to keep himself alive. He walks a thin rope, and a chance meeting of a young man, addicted to drugs and forced into prostitution, complicates matters further. By all rights, he should consider Edward to be collateral damage, an unfortunate bystander in his already difficult situation, but this is one person Roy soon finds he can't leave behind.

//rape/non-con //forced prostitution //drug addiction //mentions of suicide //mentions of depression 

Fullmetal Alchemist - Edling (Edward Elric/Ling Yao)

Nothing Gold by Rydia (ungarmax) (1/1 | 22,219 | Teen)

Ling has gained immortality. Ed has not.

//major character death

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Bard’s Recs

Bastille - Dyle (Dan Smith/Kyle Simmons)

and in the morning you'll be stranded in love (it goes around and around)by brujay (1/1 | 15,717 | Teen)

“Have you seen Groundhog Day?”

Kyle took a moment before replying. “I have… what exactly are you trying to say, here?”

Dan sighed again. “I think I’m living it.” Dan gets trapped in a time loop, and he is not having a good time.

//panic attacks

argonautica orpheus by trailsofpaper (Sanwall) (note: it is private, you can only read if you have an account but it’s too good to not share) (6/6 | 17,478 | M)

Kyle, like Jason on the Argos, sets out on a journey to retrieve something important but, more importantly, he finds love along the way. Dan, unlike Orpheus, doesn’t look back.

(Dan and Kyle are flatmates in Leeds, but when Kyle wrecks his keyboard a week before he and Dan are about to enter a competition, they need to go to London to get another keyboard. Complications and even shenanigans ensue.)

Harry Potter - Drarry (Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

He Who Must Not Be Normal by lettered (1/1 | 40,913 | Explicit)

Potter has fame and fortune and posh clothes and all he wants is a simple life. Draco has a flat and a cat and a steady job and all he wants is a complicated life. Which makes you think this story has something exciting like body-swapping, but it doesn’t. Instead it has Indian takeaway and a blue jumper and people wanting a whole lot of what they can’t have, discovering themselves as they discover each other.

All Life is Yours to Miss by Saras_Girl (4/4 | 114,741 | M)

Professor Malfoy's world is contained, controlled, and as solitary as he can make it, but when an act of petty revenge goes horribly awry, he and his trusty six-legged friend are thrown into Hogwarts life at the deep end and must learn to live, love and let go.

Buzzfeed Unsolved - Shyan (Shane Madej/Ryan Bergara)

i think i'm still turning out by the_tenerife_sea (1/1 | 6,325 | General)

Shane is starting to think Ryan is using him for his baby, considering how much he’s already talked her up to all of their coworkers and friends. ____

Or the one where Shane is a new parent, and Ryan is always there for him (and his daughter, of course).

[alittledropofheaven]

On the internet, where people become data and popularity is conveniently quantified, it’s easy to learn what a community values most. Twitter embraces celebrities and #brands. Reddit stans for Barack Obama and elaborate pop-culture GIFs. Quora is an asylum of techies questioning their morality and their stock options; its second-most-upvoted answer is a “soul-satisfying” account of a sales bro helping a homeless man.

On the Bodybuilding.com forums, the two most popular threads of all time are not about deadlifts, intermittent fasting, or maintaining motivation. They’re about women. Specifically, women Bodybuilding.com members would “love to pound.” While one thread features pictures of “petite/slim girls” and the other of “athletic girls,” both are an endless stream of lightly Photoshopped near-nudity and predictably lecherous comments. Both have been viewed almost 3 million times. And both are on the lone section of the Bodybuilding.com forums that’s explicitly unrelated to fitness: the Misc.

“Participate at your own risk, some content NSFW,” reads the description of the Misc. on the forums’ homepage. “U Aware?”

The number of people who are Aware, it turns out, is over 16 million. As of January 2018, these members of Bodybuilding.com have made more than 137 million posts on the forums, including 90 million on the Misc. The forums first became active in 2000, a time before Wikipedia and when “Skype” was neither app nor verb. Myspace—Myspace!—didn’t exist until three years later. The Misc., as the predominant section of an internet community with such immense popularity and longevity, has cemented its place near the top of Google’s search results for any query imaginable. To appropriate Rule 34, if it exists, there’s a Misc. thread for it. Online, at least, the Misc. is inescapable.

A cursory scroll through the Misc. reveals what it has in common with the still-popular internet communities it predates, Reddit and 4chan. There are the memes, comics, copypastas, acronyms, and slang recycled endlessly in a digital echo chamber largely devoid of moderation. There are the forum members—Miscers, they call themselves—who post, and post in, intentionally incendiary threads about whether tongue rings scream “cum dumpster” and how “Crossfit is gay,” then fan the flames for entertainment’s sake by doubling down on their inanity. There are moments ofuproarious, absurd, gut-busting idiocy. There are ideology-clarifying usernames (RICHSTRONG, MinisterOfLust, weightsb4dates, WishIWasJawBrah, MericaThatsWhy) and statement-making profile pictures (deliberately titillating yet invariably off-putting abdominal shots, monochromatic selfies, strategically underlit bicep closeups). There are trolls surely seething and/or laughing maniacally, their keystrokes like machine-gun fire, as they launch poorly punctuated ad-hominem attacks and, at their most destructive, encourage people to commit suicide. There are sexists, racists, xenophobes, and homophobes. There is the sense of being in a parochial, patriarchal madhouse where decorum has gone to die.

What emerges, when you spend enough time on the Misc., is a ghoulish portrait of a place that embodies the white, male id currently at the helm of S.S. America. The Misc. is a stone-faced Uncle Sam with Popeye’s forearms and a cocked pistol in each hand. It’s a screeching bald eagle with a foreign Bad Thing in its talons. It’s everything that defines America’s bro culture, magnified and weaponized. But it’s deeper than that.

“Bro-merican” culture is largely defined by the stratification of power and status, both real and imagined. So, too, is Bodybuilding.com, where a power imbalance is embedded in the structure and design of the site’s forums. Unlike on 4chan, where all posts are anonymous and ephemeral, or on Reddit, where the grand sum of a user’s upvotes has little value, Bodybuilding.com members’ reputation points, or “reps,” mediate and deeply influence community interactions. While reps are similar to Facebook likes—weighted such that getting either “repped” or “negged” by a user with hundreds of thousands of reps will drastically affect your own rep count—they function as the Misc.’s de facto currency. Your rep count is displayed next to your every post. It’s like your bank account balance flashing on your forehead whenever you speak.

Bullying by those with power (high-rep Miscers) and obsequiousness by those without it (low-rep Miscers) is rampant. Getting negged by a high-rep Miscer means potentially becoming a “red,” a user with negative reputation points, displayed beneath your username as a gradated red bar as jarring as a stop sign. If you’re a red, you’re a second-class citizen. Your posts might as well come with a disclosure: “I’m a worthless idiot. Please listen to absolutely nothing I say.”

The opinions and caprices of high-rep “green” Miscers, then, dictate the forum’s personality. Any Miscer brave enough to post contrarian ideas—including, and especially, those that are liberal and feminist—is often negged into oblivion. Bad joke misses the mark? Negged. Sincere comment comes off as sarcastic? Negged. The Misc. is an echo chamber in which “greens” are given a megaphone and a gun.

But in contrast with Reddit and 4chan, the Misc. has been filtered through and molded by bodybuilding subculture, a set of beliefs and customs rooted in the many manifestations of stereotypical masculinity: egotism, aggression, hypersexuality, über-competitiveness, entitlement. Insecurity, intolerance, misogyny. Bodybuilding, after all, is not about functional strength but about vanity and surface appearances, how masculinity is projected to the world. It fosters narcissism by trading in cosmetic superlatives: the highest bicep peaks, the most vascular calves, the most extreme V-shaped back.

The Misc. applies this dog-eat-dog frame of mind to every topic. Everything is a masculinity- or dick-measuring contest. Including, of course, the actual dick-measuring contests, because Miscers are nothing if not cripplingly aware of their own inadequate manhood. Swears and slurs are censored but their creatively misspelled phonetic workarounds are not, which makes for a forum full of “kunts” talking “chit” and menacingly telling each other to “pepper your angus” (prepare your anus). The most recurrent insults all concern perceived masculinity, or lack thereof. “U mad bro?,” a popular retort, juxtaposes one-of-the-guys slang with the notion that showing emotion means demonstrating debilitating weakness. A real bro doesn’t get mad, he only gets testosterone-fueled revenge.

Near the bottom of the masculinity totem pole are “low-T beta manlets”—that is, short, shy, effeminate guys. Lower down are “phaggots,” a word that gets tossed around the Misc. like salt at a Sichuan restaurant. Lest any Miscer think you’re a “phucking phaggot,” all posts about personal care, fashion, home decoration, or how to look like a certain actor/model/bodybuilder are appended with “no homo.” Yet shaky Misc. logic dictates that even if you’re a gay man, there’s still someone you genetically out-alpha and who is, therefore, below you: a woman.

While the entire internet is teeming with horny men whose dark loneliness and insecurity wears the cloak of misogyny, they seem to be especially vocal, and in especially high numbers, on the Misc. Every other thread is a depressing question (“Think she’s faithful to him?”) or a charged statement (“Drunk Sex > Sober Sex”) about women—their bodies, hitting on them, their innate tendency to cheat—and sex—where to find it, how to go “no contact” after having it, why she is fucking him.

The Misc.’s ties to PUA (pickup artist) forums and Reddit’s /r/TheRedPill, a perniciously misogynist, anti-feminist Reddit community dedicated to “discussing sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men,” are as well documented as they are unsurprising. One of PUA’s most frequent suggestions is to acquire “inner game,” or self-confidence through self-improvement. Miscers, being on what is ultimately a bodybuilding forum, have inverted that mantra—they’re going from the outside in. Look good, feel good.

Other elements of the manosphere, from cries of societal misandry to sexual techniques like kino escalation and shit-testing, permeate the Misc. All women are “thirsty sloots” to be conquered, their emotions and physical well-being to be toyed with for internet strangers’ entertainment. When, to the forum’s delight, a Miscer posts about a sexual conquest in lurid detail—a surefire way to rack up the reps—the verbs employed are barbaric: “took down,” “smashed,” “hit.” To have “oneitis,” or an obsessive and unrequited crush on one woman, is to be afflicted with a masculinity-destroying emotional disease, one that can be cured, naturally, by sexually subjugating another woman. Regardless of whether a Miscer is successful or is rejected in the pursuit of sex, the response is the same: “Sloots gonna sloot.”

Despite the Misc.’s obsession with women, it has the latent homoeroticism you’d expect of a website devoted to a male-dominated sport in which bronzed, muscled competitors get smeared with oil and put on thongs before preening onstage in front of other men. This is no more obvious than when discussing a “Chad.” While there is a 5,000-post thread asking what, exactly, defines a Chad, the consensus is that he’s shorthand for a tall, built, strong-jawed, big-dicked, thick-haired, financially successful, athletic, confident, funny, sociable man who, because of these eminently desirable qualities, has his pick of the XX-chromosome litter. You look at a Chad and say, “This guy fucks.” (The prototypical Miscer might be a “Sheldon,” minus any TV-driven connotations of high-level intelligence.) Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski is a stone-cold Chad. Chad Johnson of The Bachelor is a Chad, and not just in name. It’s no accident that “Chad” is one of the most generically white and straight names imaginable, nor that archetypal Chads are nearly always white and straight. The etymological origin of the name Chad is the Welsh word cad, meaning “battle,” a fact that would surely delight Miscers to no end.

The Misc.’s resident Chad is an Australian bodybuilder known by his Bodybuilding.com handle, Zyzz. In early 2010, Zyzz began regularly detailing his “aesthetic” lifestyle on the Misc. As the so-called and self-proclaimed “king of aesthetics,” and with the zingy catchphrases “U mirin’ brah?” and “U jelly?,” Zyzz became the preeminent demigod of the Misc., where he and his “Aesthetics Crew,” acolytes similarly lacking in shirts, body fat, and social grace, were #bodygoals and #squadgoals come to life. Pictures and videosof Zyzz fist-pumping shirtless in public, wrapping his tanned arms low around the waists of nipple-pastied ravers at festivals, adopting a Herculean pose while standing in a shopping cart—these were the icons of the Misc. religion. When Zyzz died of a heart attack in 2011 at the age of twenty-two, his death became the sixth-most-searched death-related topic in Australia that year. His Facebook page, still regularly updated, has over 400,000 likes.

Zyzz’s masculinity showed itself in vain but harmless demonstrations of grandiosity, but other headline-making Miscers have expressed theirs through violence and morally indefensible acts. Gable Tostee first became a Misc. star by posting screenshots of his Tinder and text conversations with women he “rooted,” or had sex with; he entered Misc. lore after creating an ill-advised thread titled “Regarding the balcony tragedy” in the wake of news that one of his Tinder dates had been found dead from a fall from his apartment balcony. (Tostee was later acquitted of murder and manslaughter.) A Miscer known as YaBoyDave secretly filmed himself having sex with women—“whale-smashing,” in Misc. parlance—and posted the videos on the Misc.; he served 10 months in jail and is now a registered sex offender.

Still worse was Luka Magnotta, a wannabe model whose desperately misguided attempts at fame led him to asphyxiate kittens on camera and, later, live stream the brutal murder and dismemberment of a Chinese student while music from American Psycho played in the background; he was arrested at an internet café in Berlin, alternately surfing for pornography and reading news stories about himself, and it was later revealed that he’d posted on the Misc. Most infamously, Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara shooter, was active on the Misc., starting threads like “Why do girls hate me so much?” and “I’m tired of seeing losers with hot chicks.” In the latter thread, he recalled being “disturbed and offended” by seeing a “short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda Civic” with a “hot blonde girl in his passenger seat.” It’s the bro’s classic sense of entitlement: Why should someone less masculine than me have what I know I deserve?

Miscers reaching toxic masculinity’s most violent nadir are mercifully few and far between. Yet the obvious connection between these people is one shared by the vast majority of the Misc. They’re young, white men whose social and sex lives are marked by absence or humiliating rejection, and their worldviews have likely been shaped by those failures. Rodger, for one, admitted in his autobiographical manifesto to having “never even kissed a girl.” He was an “incel,” or involuntarily celibate. “Not getting any sex,” he wrote, “is what will shape the very foundation of my miserable youth.”

A pervasive negative sense of self, of disappointment about one’s past and simultaneous anxiety and hopelessness for one’s future, is to the Misc. what the iceberg was to the Titanic: visible if you know to look for it, destructive if you don’t, and lurking below the surface all the same

The running joke about Miscers is that they’re all sad, awkward, forever-alone virgins who don’t lift and are on the only non-fitness-oriented section of a bodybuilding website because they can’t get their shit together. It’s revealing that one of the Misc.’s celebrities—there’s a 24,000-word condensed version of his “saga” on a fan-made website dedicated to him—is a weird, often clueless Everyman. He’s neither egregiously out of shape nor conventionally “aesthetic,” and his videos show a distinct lack of social awareness, a trait cultivated, presumably, by a life spent behind a computer screen and under a barbell.

Users of other Bodybuilding.com sections and other internet communities entirely propagate this idea of the Misc. as a cesspool of beta males with hopelessly futile aspirations of being alpha. “They have to be some of the most insecure dudes out there,” a Hypebeast forum user said of Miscers. On another forum, a user wrote that the Misc. is “filled with people [who] make fun of autism, while at the same time they themselves complain about their jobs, women, etc.”

More often, however, the call is coming from inside the house. Miscers reveal their vulnerabilities and problems in earnest with critically self-aware, self-deprecating posts. There are countless threads about “beta” topics like being a virgin (a Google search of site:bodybuilding.com “virgin” yields nearly 70,000 results), undergoing hair loss, not knowing how to normally interact with women, and giving up entirely. The Misc.’sRelationships and Relationships Help sub-forum would be more aptly titled “Sex: Help.” The “Depression Discussion and Support Thread Part III” thread is “stickied” by moderators at the top of the Misc., indicating that it resonates with the community; “Part II,” before it got so long that a new thread had to be created, had 10,000 posts and 1.6 million views. After the two aforementioned pornographic threads of “petite/slim girls” and “athletic girls,” the most-viewed Misc. threads are one about “Beta/cringe” moments of social awkwardness and another that documents the 350-pound weight-loss journey of a Miscer named Wetbreasts. For many Miscers, undoubtedly, browsing those threads is either motivational or like looking in a mirror. Or both.

It might appear counterintuitive that unconfident, sex-deprived, socially awkward young men would congregate—by the millions—on a bodybuilding website. But that paradox is precisely what’s responsible for the Misc.’s enduring allure.

It goes like this: A young guy thinks that improving his body will improve himself, that lifting weights will make him more confident, which will make girls like him more, which will make him happier, which will get him laid. And so on. In search of guidance, he finds Bodybuilding.com, where, after analyzing fat-to-ripped or skinny-to-jacked transformation stories, he ends up on the most popular part of the website: the Misc. But in the Misc. he finds a different kind of self-help: a vibrant, active community of like-minded guys. Guys who’ve felt inadequate and lonely and somehow less than manly, who’ve struggled with women and friends and money and body image, who’ve laughed at internet jokes and self-referential image macros that no one found funny, much less comprehensible, in real life. With a newfound sense of solidarity, this young guy wades deeper into the Misc., a community that gets him, his worldview increasingly shaped by this bodybuilding subculture, his mind warped by the community’s devil-may-care, “LOL, nothing matters” ethos.

It’s this last quality of the Misc. that Miscers themselves most readily use to characterize the forum. They see the stupidity of getting worked up over little green internet squares. They don’t take themselves seriously—it’s a motley crew of dudes on a bodybuilding site, bro—so nor should anyone else. Their attitude, one adopted from the bro culture with which they’re intertwined, is predicated on actions not having consequences. Break shit and someone else will pay for it. Get blind drunk, scream offensive things in public, and your boys will carry you home. Sexually harass or assault a woman, more than one woman, dozens of women, and you’ll still be revered, promoted, elected. You’re just “bro-ing out,” man, be easy, be chill, have a beer, have a protein shake.

“bro that forum is a fucking laugh man, just need a sense of humour,” a Hypebeast forum user wrote, in a thread titled, “The misc section of the bodybuilding forums is full of clowns.” If you’re young, white, and male, with a sense of humor shaped by the internet and a sense of privilege shaped by, well, everything else, the Misc.’s “clowns” can certainly be hilarious. But the further you are from that in-group, the more those clowns start to look like a horde of disturbing, misogynistic Pennywises.

Zyzz was once your standard insecure teenager with bad hair and spaghetti-thin arms. “I remember feeling like a little bitch when I was out with girls, walking next to them and feeling the same size as them,” he said in an interview. Becoming “aesthetic” hid a profound insecurity. His no-fucks-given attitude hid a fierce desire to be wanted.

Miscers see only the mirage. To them, Zyzz was living, walking, flexing proof that an average guy could eventually open the door to the HBB-filled alpha-male kingdom by gaining confidence and an aesthetically pleasing body. But the king is no more. And not every guy in search of personal fulfillment finds the key to that door by picking up a barbell. Not every young, white male who’d otherwise troll Reddit or 4chan becomes, through bodybuilding, the type of bro who doesn’t spend time on internet forums because he’s too busy crushing it, whatever “it” is, in real life. The Misc.—an online fraternity of the average and awkward, a safe space of the resentful and lustful and doubtful—is for the bros still searching.

[lia-nikiforov]

Weekly Anime Rambling Re: Creat...ive Conceit

Another week of getting everything mixed up because my viewing schedules are a disaster hahaha! is it very obvious i’m running out of puns

The season’s drawing to a close, and it looks like every show is rushing at full-gear to wrap up all their loose ends or end on a good place before the season break. Which means a lot of shows are doing shitfests and I have A LOT OF WORDS

I haven’t talked much about Fate/Apocrypha in this feature but I must shamefully admit I’m enjoying it way more than I expected. I’ll talk more about that in my final season rundown, so for the time being I’ll just say Astolfo is my waifu and if you use the T slur to refer to them I’ll gut you alive. 

One show clearly struggling to meet its planned middle-point is Altair, with the past two episodes breezing through plot points like a speedcourse on acquiring new party members for Mahmut. The production itself is also clearly suffering, finding an in-model shot of any given character woud be a challenge. I did like the latest episode because we’re finally getting to see more political nuances beyond “Evil empire wants to conquer the world”. I also really liked how they brought the Prenses into the fold by emphasizing her importance in the political moves they’ll carry out next, and that she was the one to come up with them was specially great

Giving female characters agency? What, Like it’s easy?

I’m not even gonna talk about episode 10 of Ballroom because it was so boring I hardly remember anything about it except thinking “is there ever gonna be any dancing” (the answer was no). But I am going to talk about episode 11 because god was it frustrating.

Firstly, this was the episode that featured the most and probably best dancing animation of the entire show. Unsurprisingly, even then it’s overshadowed by the abuse of stills and audience shots. Whatever little magic and good-will they manage to create with, for example, a neat shot of Tatara and Mako hopping is almost instantly voided by a full minute of still frames. Let 👏 me 👏 see 👏 the 👏 fucking 👏 dance 👏 gdi 👏

Of course it wouldn’t be Welcome to the Ballroom without at least a very fine layer of casual sexism and neglecting the female characters entirely, this time awfully noticeable in the second half where all the focus is on Tatara and Gaju having a load of fun with their dick measuring contest! Wait, what do you mean ballroom dancing is a pair sport?

If you ask this show, Ballroom dancing is a sport about men being cool while dragging around women who have no fucking idea of what the fuck is even going on. Add to that all the harping on how “it’s the lead that makes or breaks a pair” “if the leader is bad the pair will look bad” because I guess the follower doesn’t ever matter.Or how only the boys are dead tired after the event, because I gues the girls weren’t dancing at all, what a relaxing job it must be to be a female in competitive ballroom dancing, you don’t have to put in any effort at all!

Also the music choices are atrocious which is finally explained by the Production team revealing they thought the audience would not like “old” music -because I guess the audience is too stupid or smth- so instead they went for completely inappropriate pop-rock themes instead! Maybe don’t underestimate your audience if you want them to buy your produc! (source)

But okay, after god knows how many episodes, the Tenpei cup finally ends, Gaju and Shizuku win but Mako wins Queen of the Dancefloor! At least some recognition fo Mako’s dancing skills, that even in spite of Tatara’s sloppy dancing she managed to outshine Shizuku through her own talents! Wait, hold on, what’s that?

FUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUU SHOOOOOOW

Adding insult to injury, Gaju doesn’t even apologize to Mako for treating her like crap. In spite of his scummy attitude, Gaju seems to be a good sport, so I thought at least he’d “officially” ask Mako to become his partner again, but no such luck, it’s her who approaches him first. Fuck you again, show.

I also have a lot of thoughts about the garbage treatment of Shizuku, but I’ve talked about the show enough in this week, so that’s another post.

Oh yeah, Vatican is... the expected mess I guess lol. I have literally no idea of what is going on anymore but...

I want some of that cocaine too bruh (i’m kidding, don’t do cocaine my friends)

Also, Made in Abyss is great but can we please drop all the pee jokes.

I’ve technically already watched the final episode of Re:Creators, but I want to address the penultimate episod which is the actual resolution of the conflict because it’s not only a convoluted mess (and if I went into that in detail I’d write thousands of words), it’s ultimately a betrayal of the show’s opening promise.

To elaborate, Sota’s first dialogue is something along the lines of “I’m not the protagonist of this story. This story is about her”. At first I thought it meant Selesia too bad she died meaninglessly and without really doing anything for the story like 99.99% of the creations :’D, but we later learn he’s talking about Setsuna, for whose death he feels guilty yadda yadda Potato McBoring manpain.

But then the show decided to make Altair so ridiculously and unbelievably overpowered that the only way to defeat her is the very predictable “create Setsuna” and this is where the show betrays itself

Because even if the resolution is that Setsuna and Altair go off into this some other world to live as abstract creations happily ever after, the actual emotional climax of the episode is after they disappear:

This is a massive slap in the face to everything the show was trying to do and to Setsuna’s character. Basically she’s stripped of her agency and becomes a figment of Sota’s creation. Sota who abandoned her when she was going through the hardest of times, now gets to be -even if briefly- her creator, her god, and he takes the credit for being the amazing creator that save the world. He even says it out loud in a culminating moment of disgusting conceit.

The whole purpose of the story, of the show, as it turns out to be, is to satisfy Sota’s ego. Setsuna is literally fridged for the sake of Sota’s manpain. This was never a good show, but until now it just felt like a lot of poorly executed great ideas. This, though, is basically giving up on any pretention of being “different” of stepping away from “Blandy McBoring protag saves the world because no one else but him can do it, he is so special”, and it’s made even worse because of the context of Setsuna’s death and the meaning of being a creator. Ugh, I’m coming short of words so I’ll just leave it at this was already a mediocre show and somehow they managed to go all the way and make it terrible.

And now another show that is sadly crapping the bed for its last hurrah, and one I’m very sad to be dissing like this. Yup, I’m talking about Virgin Soul

It’s like 10 episodes late and all the reward we get for waiting so long to hear Charioce’s motivation boils down and awfully rote and predictable to “Bahamut killed my mommy so now I kill Bahamut”. Next we know Charioce’s mom was also named Martha I guess. The explanation is also delivered in the most transparently expositional dialogue possible and seems like a very last-minute attempt by the writers to paint Charioce in a sympathetic light because they realized too late they hadn’t given him anything for the audience to like him beyond his romance with Nina. Somehow their explanation doesn’t even address the genocide against the gods or the enslavement of the demon race, and it seems every insinuation of Gabriel being shady has been forgotten too. Okay...

It’s sad because this feels like a hugely missed opportunity. The first half of the series painted the possibility of a tri-racial conflict in which all sides were to blame, but instead it seems like it was all a fabricated conflict to pad the way so they could have a three-way confrontation bombastic finale, but with none of the nuances and grey morals it initially promised. The characters are still great, but I’m very sad that the story has been reduced to an uninteresting, predictable cliché that doesnt even quite work with all the previously established ideas.

Oh well, the season’s almost over. Next week should be my last Rambling of the season before my Final Review and I also somehow gotta find time to post about my most anticipated shows for the fall. Fun!

[myaltao3feed]

by queermccoy

The thing that only Richie Tozier seems to know about Eddie Kaspbrak is that he is an absolute nightmare. He looks so pressed and neat to the casual viewer, but Richie knows that he lives in a pile of his own dirty clothes, wipes Cheeto dust off on his shirt, and leaves his filthy jerk off tissues balled up at the top of the trash. Richie, who has never pretended to be tidy or morally upright, wants to steal them and look at them in the privacy of his own room like a dragon hoarding gold, if gold is his buddy’s wadded up jizz tissues.

or, Eddie and Richie are measuring dicks but there's a history.

Words: 13753, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: IT (Movies - Muschietti)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh, Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon, Bill Denbrough

Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier

Additional Tags: Mentions of Ben Hanscom - Freeform, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Swordfighting, Kissing, House Party, Party Games, Semi-Public Sex, Competition, Gay Richie Tozier, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalized Homophobia, Misogyny, 1990s, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Penis Measuring, Foot Jobs, Alternate Universe - College/University

[maiismsworld]

Under Maiism, man has no superiority over woman

Money greed and sexual-lustfulness are such terrible forces, that they have overpowered even the most advanced of souls. Here therefore under Mai-ism the most difficult examination has been treated rather leniently and it should be enough that man passes with grace marks. It is enough that the man is true to his wife and that he gets money honestly in fairways without indulging in hundreds of ways of lying and cheating and defrauding, and that he makes it a point to spend a certain proportion of his wealth for deserving religious charitable purposes, etc. At this stage, Mai-ism does not mind his remaining infatuated with his wife, and trying his best to be wealthy enough, to be living in full comforts by honest and fair methods and without resorting to systematized cheating methods, that have lost their sting, in modern times, being in common prevalence.  

739-A. Mai-ism is for using the terms "Money-greed and sexual lustfulness " and not the centuries-old expressions  " Kanaka कनक and Kanata कांता  "  or " Kaanchan  कांचन and Kaamini  कामिनी ". It is not the woman that is the source of temptation, but it is the lustfulness in man. Mai-ism thinks it is an ungratefulness to denounce the sex of Man's mother, sister and daughter. A woman is in no way a grater degrading force than a man if at all we study the black side of a man and woman’s relations. However, there has been never such a thing as man’s downright condemnation. These centuries-old expressions have led the prejudiced modern minds to infer, that the scriptures were written for “Man” alone, that the scriptures writers were averse to womankind and believed women to be a foreign undeserving inimical element for religious progress, and that Saints in the past evaded the very shadow of a woman. These views are quite ill-founded. All the same, both the sides are to be blamed. The moderners have not seen how much worshipful reverence the Saints and or Scriptures have shown to deserving women, especially to “mothers” and “satees”(chaste life sacrificing true wives). On the other hand, it has to be sorrowfully admitted that few or no saints have taken pains to raise a protest against such deprecating expressions, nor have they made the point clear, while they left volumes of teachings after them.  Why should they have left it necessary, for their followers, to write long comments, stating,”No, no; our Guruji had no hatred towards women”?? I was once assailed by a highly educated woman, who quote a Saint’s words “ Dhol, Dadama, Shudra, Pashu, Naari, Voh sab Tadana ke Adhikari (the drum, the blowing trumpet,, the menial, the animal and the women, work best under “beating”). I tried my every defence saying “beating “ in the case of a woman meant here is only an unpleasant but effective appeal to her heart, that a “Nari”, a woman, in said quotation means a bad woman.”

She left me with hatred-full face gesturing saying “Were all dictionaries then burnt”? She meant, “Why not be explicit and say specifically “a bad woman”?? Why wholesale condemnation of womankind? “We mean the same thing” is an attitude of a deceptive roguery. It is not fairness. It is like passing over one false currency note in the midst of many, hiding a true one for substitution, in case a protest is raised. Let Mai-ism at least be free from the contamination of this centuries-old condemnation. The Founder of Mai-ism cannot keep his one foot in milk and another in curd. He has to speak one way or the other, on such an extremely important issue about womankind as a whole, even though he may be wrong. Perhaps some saints in the past did not make much of the expressions (so many of them), because they knew a woman was safest with her infatuating powers against such parrotry. Let the woman enslaved have a forceful eye-opening, or at least, a vent in words. It is only a small word pinch only, which even women, if they think sexlessly and religiously, may not mind or may even appreciate, understanding full well what the saints and scriptures really meant. The crudeness has, however, to be admitted and should entirely cease, at least for Mai-ists.        

A Mai-istic eye towards woman is not that of chivalry and appreciation of beauty, engaging manners, softness, tenderness and sexual sentiments or emotions. It is not again that of vengeance towards man, in return for the man's subjugation of woman in the past. Mai-istic eye is that of mercifulness, sacrificing, service-fullness and sacredness of mother, which almost every woman is, like a fruit-bearing tree that suffers heat and cold, frost and rain, for the nourishment of the world itself. As between man and woman, Mai-ism wants to develop a true understanding of mutual indispensability and in-competitive co-operative spirit of reciprocal love and service. The question of superiority, equality and inferiority is entirely irrelevant. Mai-ism insists on the sublimation of that natural human emotion known as “sex attraction”. Let the wholesale benefit of man-folk on its looking upon the women-folk, as comprised of mothers, sisters and daughters, be not lost. Mai-ism wants a man to love and serve all women and not of any particular relationship or category alone.

So many saints, it can not be denied, were indebted for they were, to their "Mothers". So Many Ashrams were ably conducted for public spiritual welfare, through the assistance of women. Paramahamsa was declared to be Incarnation by a woman, a Sannyasini. Should we not be ashamed of man's ungratefulness, while using expressions of wholesale denunciation??

Of course for  a worldly man, it may not be possible for him to be agree to the highest ideal of looking every woman to be a mother, but then, let the understanding be clear, as under:

A woman is poison when approached with lustfulness, and is a nectar when viewed with a feeling of motherliness. The woman that pulls man more and more towards worldliness, is a venom, whereas the woman that gives him a spiritual, moral and virtuous life is a nectar. The woman that pulls man towards Godlessness, enjoyment and selfishness, is venom, whereas, the woman that takes him to God-ward-ness, self-control and selflessness, is a nectar. The woman that makes a man more attached to his parents, Gurus, benefactors, helpers, destitute and the needy is the nectar. The woman that makes a man a slave of her infatuation and grind mill bullock for increasing requirements of the family, is a venom. The woman who sits on man's head and through the strings of her infatuations rides him as a camel and satisfies her thirst with the water in the camel's belly if a need arises is a venom.

Why are people so very fond of short misleading formulae in Religion? when they would be exhausting their brains with hair-splitting over-two-penny worth worldly matters?? Neither infatuation nor denunciation. Such expressions have been a plum-feather, which no man professing to be religious has failed to crown himself with. Mai-ism, however, takes strong objection thereto. Just as service and love have been there, but not religionised, so here too, it is not that the idea of looking upon woman as mother is not there but it has not been religionised. Mai-ism religionises Love and Service, and the trying of one's best to look upon every woman as mother.  

739-B. The yet greater humiliation is to be seen in that woman has been bracketed with wealth, as if both were of an equally degenerating order, calling them both, temptations, as per old religious belief. There is, however, earth and sky difference. Whereas the former is with reference to matter and materialism, the latter means a much subtler and nobler fight of living spirits and living forces. Wealth itself has no craving to conquer any man and to fell any special joy and blessedness in being with a certain man. Money temptation is murderous, women temptation is suicidal. The former arises from wickedness and cruelty, the latter from weakness and misplaced lovingness.  A greedy man impoverishes the world and creates repulsion. A lustful man has at least one chance in a thousand of reaction in the spiritual direction. Lustfulness abates with the passing of years, but the greediness increases with age.

In the first place, don't denounce "woman". If at all you do, don't bracket with wealth. It is only one sided and blind man's judgment. When you reach that high stage of spirituality when non-attachment becomes the goal of your Sadhana, you have to practice for the attainment of proofness against sex attraction. But that you can as well do, without denunciation and hatred. Condemnation is a wrong remedy and a harmful teaching. It is great injustice that such a parrotry should be repeated John, Dick or Harry, or by envious members in a family, to break the happy blending of a husband and a wife , or by an evil-eyed friend , of if for no serious reasons, at least for slighting and belittling, be the speaker a drunkard, or a pauper or profligate. This misunderstood and misinterpreted religious licence given to men against women stands entirely cancelled, rejected and even condemned, under Mai-ism.

Launching a crusade against wealth and women is, in reality, a stage of declaring war against worldliness itself; and let us think deeply, how few are prepared honestly and un-hypocritically to accept such hard requirements of a religion. Man must have reached a certain stage before he comes to this. Man must have felt, he is in a dilemma. On one side, the practical impossibility of living without the help of a woman, and on the other, the possibilities of downward pullingness. And he must have decided in favour of resisting the latter, with necessary determination for sacrifice.

It is only at that stage of a man that only as a temporary measure, like the wooden centring while constructing an arch sets and not thereafter.

Hindu scriptures have found out the most efficient and practical solution regarding the above-stated dilemma ."The chaste faithful and religious wife, that victimizes herself  for the sake of her husband, without absolutely and special exertion of her own for herself on the spiritual lines." Few religious men have however an all agreeable wife. Once the Divine Mother decides to make a "Narayan" नारायण  of a certain "Nara" नर, She sets up every machinery to grind the unhewn diamond to the required shape and lustre and to be without deformity, disproportion and depreciation. A devilish eye and a demonish tongue in respect of woman (Mother Site too was not saved), is the greatest handicap for righteous, religiosity-seeking Sister world. The world has thrown its prowess only to the virtuous, weak and meek. This too, Mai-ism strongly objects to, in practical routine social life.          

   Nothing should be so practical, simple, sweet and noble and most appealing to the present western mind, as the Christian Mary Magdalene decision and the principle of action in this respect, viz., that they alone are entitled to defame others of immorality, who are themselves of a sterling golden moral character, of purity in thought, word and deed. And these latter would never stoop to such cowardly meanness.

   Mai-ism most emphatically states rules of morality are for the development and control of one's self, and not for imposition and accusation of others. If your own practical experience and observation of outside world or teachings of scriptures, creates in you a deep belief of an extreme difficulty or almost an impossibility, about withstanding sexual temptations, please never fail to remember that failures are only rarest instances in the cases of really high moral souls, and that self-control is not so great a thing as some people of no worth imagine, on judging others with their own standards, and on their getting misleading corroborations from rarest instances seen or heard.  We hear instances of failures only. Instances of conquest over lustfulness in face of highest temptations, are never known by people in general, because of an extremely high delicacy about social self-repute, and because of chances of misinterpretations. Such beliefs mostly resulting from wicked baseless rumours in society, and from instances in scriptures, (which latter have as their object, the desire of infusing pridelessness and the belief of nothingness of however a great sage, before Maya), should never be for squeezing out poisons of weakness, defence or accusation therefrom. Let your churning from such sacred scripture-stories of failures, be the nectar of your supreme character, resulting in your pitying, forgiving and forgetting.

The best thing is to close your eyes and seal your tongues, except in cases for which you have the first-hand responsibility, and where you are first liable to suffer.

Rise above such prejudicial routine religious mentalities, and ways of looking and judging and dealing with things. Seek and follow the spirit. It is the sexual attraction itself, that has formed a prominent element of the Divine Arrangement for ameliorating souls of both sexes. It is only the abuse of the attraction that is responsible for any disastrous evils.  At least, these cannot be evaded by denunciation and flying away. How far can you run away from woman? You have to conquer your lustfulness by deep thinking, constant memory, cautious alertness, creating relishlessness and hard practice of self-control, with the temptation itself in your front, and with Mother's mercy and Guru's grace. It is the highest and wonderful force of sex-attraction, that makes a savage man and an ever-changeful emotional woman be a He-dirty and She-deity, in course of their religious development, during lives and lives. Sex-attraction is not an evil, for which one would be justified in blaming or cursing Almighty. It is sex-attraction alone, in its subtlest and purest meaning form and relation, that is responsible for the material, moral, religious and spiritual progress of humanity. If there were no sex-attraction, the world would have ere long ceased to exist. It is no use closing our eyes to real facts. It is quite praise-worthy for routine-religionists to eulogise some like Shukadevji शुकदेव  and Bhishma Pitamaha, and to deprecate some like Dasharatha दशरथ and Vishwamitra. Go however deep and deep. Don't be fighting shy, nor be satisfied with children-like-superficial, theoretical, scriptures-taught-parrot-thinking. We have no knowledge, about Shukadevji having never been indebted to any Rambha रंभा  or Rambhas in previous lives, nor that Bhishma Pitamaha भीष्म पितामह  had not had a previous life-excess or subsequent life-reaction. We don't know, that the ordeal through which Vishwamitra विश्वामित्र had to pass had not raised him and his sex-resistance-power enormously. Let us go still deeper. Can we think Menaka was, or any woman is a lifeless statue? She too was a soul and a spirit, with ambition and desire. We are entirely in the dark. It is quite like that Menaka might have put her maximum infatuating powers to their highest mettle. She would feel the pride of being the possessor of a such a mighty sage of wonderful austerities. What is then the subtle most conclusion? Do not en foolishly condemning woman. Don't idiotically find fault with Almighty for creation of sex-attraction Don't be sitting on judgment throne and don't stamp highest souls with you labels of good and bad , moral and immoral; but yourself be increasing your resistance power against infatuating power, by practice and Sadhana while living in the world itself, with Mother's mercy and Guru's grace.   Please understand the inner truth, in absolute thinking. There is an invisible incomprehensible and long-sustained warfare in the progress path of every soul, of an Infatuating power and a Resisting -power. A success or a failure in any particular case proves nothing in absolute "yes” or “No” terms. A resistance power of 2000 units will vanquish an infatuating power of 1000 units and will have a moral victory, but the very same units power will suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of 5000 units infatuating power. There is no greater delusion than to call as victorious one who had no foe or a negligible foe, to fight. The final achievement is the resistance power. Power of how many units is the test. And that Sadhana of a man has in its requisite, the training of a Motherliness-seeing eye. Looking from the higher plan, it is wrong even to imagine infatuating power with woman and to identify resistance power with man. Most, unfortunately, we as “men” have absolutely no idea of the women’s mental and emotional world. That is a sealed book and packet. Men have imagined women’ feelings and written, but we have little literature authenticated by women writers. For women, a man can be an infatuating power and in such a case it is she that has to develop the resistance power.

Motherliness seeing annihilates lustfulness, because of the working of so many associations and emotions, so very familiar to man. The sublimity of the ideal is that not only man is saved from the feeling of hating woman, but there is a germination of positive factor viz., love of the type one bears to one's mother.

For a Sadhaka, infatuation of one's own wife is absolutely no smaller disqualification than for any other woman, in the strictest test, although assuredly from the point of morality, the former man is much superior to the latter.

I am determined the pull the reader high up, in this most important subject about which the greatest ignorance prevails. Is your wrestling Gymkhana competition, your enemy? You or I can pass our whole life, taking every acre never to go near waters and have no fear of drowning, but what about a sailor's son? A circus lady proprietor purchased her dearest son from high swing, with men to catch him in the net, on the ground. In a word, neither hating nor evading can give you the finality. The jump from the high swing is surely a downward jump, that will break neck, noes and bones if Mother's Grace does not station various net holders.  But let once for all, your anti outlook go. The fact remains and is there, viz., that, before you reach perfection, you have to acquire the resistance power against sex-infatuation, sex attraction and finally, sex notion itself. If Mother's mercy and Guru's grace are there, how wonderfully circumstances are created, how the resistance power is developed and how a man is made proof, are most mysterious subjects, which few have tried and dared to touch and reveal!!

In a word, Mai-ism says, do not blame the mirror showing your face -eruptions. They have originated from your own bad blood.

Each sex has its own best or worst qualities and agree-abilities and living conditions. The soul in the body of a man or a woman has no sex; and any soul takes one sex form or another, according to the need of developing certain qualities and paying off Prarabdha debts. Man and Woman are not of a different species, such as, of a rabbit and of a serpent.

Under Mai-ism, man has no superiority over woman either from the point of Soul-evolution or worthiness and receptivity for religiosity or spirituality or in the matter of securing Mother's Grace. Mai-ism means an equal religious recognition of both sexes. 739-C. Shall we go a bit deeper? Think with every depth. Is there anything absolutely and inherently, in wealth and women, which is of an invaluable nature on the one hand or of a tempting nature on the other? Both have a value which changes from man to man, and from moment to moment. Its value to you is only a measure of your own volumes of desires. What is the value of gold to a thirst-dying man in a desert, or of the best damsel to a diseaseful dying man, or even to normally healthy eunuch?  Where lies than the value? Mahadeva Shankerji burnt away Cupid, but Mother restored him. Wealth has only the instrumentality for a satisfaction of your desires; and woman is the concentrated centre. Greater the desires of happiness, greater the belief that they can be  satisfied with money, greater the ignorance about higher happiness, greater the fear we shall be doomed and miserable the day we are money-less, greater the passion of holding others in your fist, greater the blindness about its slipping away any moment, greater the ignorance  about the dependence anxiety care and danger that immense wealth brings in, greater the ambition of rising to a high eminence, greater the pride and anxiety about the richness of your future generations etc., the greater is your value for money.      Regarding woman, what is your value for her, before and after marriage, during the period of your imagining her to be a shadow that will never fail to follow you? Where does every value disappear, when you find her to be a life-long pest, and an iron steel chain around your feet, hands and neck? Why go over long periods? What value do you set on her, when she is pleasant and agreeable and obedient, and how do you cherish her when she is otherwise? The great Rishi Yagnavalkya ऋषी याज्ञवल्कल्य  said: " Nothing is dear to us, because of itself, but because, our own soul is dear to us and things help us to be deriving happiness for our own selves". Today, you have an infatuation, and tomorrow, a hatred, for the very same woman.   How blamable are poor they !!! Wealth, woman or world !!! The whole scene changes with this understanding and conviction. From hating wealth and woman, especially the latter, to killing your desires. Least dreamt-of change !!! So long as your desires don't die, your infatuation for both won't die. Study yourself all your scriptures and visit all saints and all places of pilgrimages and worship every deity, and make your conclusions. Mai-ism repeats: Let the gaslight go, not by your sudden violent switching; no wildness; every cool-mindedness; no balance-loosing; no injurious and reactionary remedy of generating hatred. Let the light go of itself because there is no oil-drop for the light to draw its nourishment from.    "No belittling; no blaming; no blasphemy, no hating and evading woman " is the first Mai-istic teaching, the primary teaching. A wholehearted effort has also been made by so many welfare-wishing saints to create a nauseating sense, by referring to the dirty constituents as scum, phlegm, mucus, bile, urine, blood, puss, etc, Surely, that is also a way, but at quite an elementary stage, when man has no other cause for his agitation, except the physical beauty. Such one will be surely saved by such a teaching. The world has however gone much ahead, materialistically and intellectually. Deformities can be covered up, with artificialities.  There is very little of natural living in this age, and the perverted intellect of an infatuated man gives a retort  " Are not men's bodies made up of every similar dirtiness? Where is the justification for any nausea ?". Finished; mouth-gagged !! The said nausea-creating-remedy is of the past ages, and is out of date and out of application, at present. You may continue your old-inherited-parrotry; that is all. Infatuation arises not simply out of physical personal beauty, or the bodily charm, and only as a hunger for corporal enjoyment. Perhaps, the underlying wisdom of this teaching is: " If all your discrimination and lamp of light has extinguished, at least, stop before, and desist from, physical action." But, on the whole, that teaching has proved entirely inefficient. It was an extremely useful teaching when people believed they were saved from perils of a dire hell, by at least not falling into the physical sin. The devil has, however now, dived much deeper.    "   Kill your desires " is, therefore, the second teaching. Not simply the desire of sexual connection, but kill all desires. Reduce the sum-total of all your desires; and, as this sum-total goes on diminishing automatically, you will be surprised to find that the infatuation, the temptation, and even the value of wealth and woman, go down. When the fever is high, there is head-ache, joints-pain, exhaustion, distaste, etc. When the fever goes, everything goes. When a Jhinghari horde's head (chief man ) with his ferocious soldiers is at your City gates, streets of wisdom will be deserted, there will be market-attacks, house-breaks, pillages, quarrels, fights, cruelties and casualties. When he leaves the City, there is not a single locust of his soldiers staying behind. You yourself will be surprised with their sudden disappearance and the normal peacefulness restored. When the lake dries up, fishes, water-fowls and alligators all disappear, without any effort on your part. When does that Jhinghari chief (head) go?? When you approach your prince (of Soul) and hand over all your possessions saying " Nothing is ours ", and when the prince is awake and kills or drives the Jhinghari-chief out. You have to wake up your Soul, ceasing your little-self to be the master, the actor and the owner. When the Jhinghari-head goes, the smallest remnant of evil annihilates itself, most automatically. Approach, therefore, your prince (Soul), or, the Regent Supreme Mother- Queen (MAI).

739 - D. "Kill your desires" is the most well known old teaching, but the generalization and the automatic disappearance of all the pigmy depredators, on their chief (head) being vanquished by the prince or by the Mother Queen, has not been equally emphasized. It will take centuries for some , especially for muddled men, to appreciate that the simplest fewest least incomprehensible, least unfamiliar teachings, stated in the most straight way and in a manner, childlike and stripped of all secrecy, and in the plainest and easiest language, will surely carry you, much quicker to the Final Truth. Simple-most and easiest and familiar most things are nearest the stage of Truth Realization. The world thinks just the reverse!!! The world is not for the believing that such a hand-folded-sittingness-remedy as "fasting" can cure a disease. Let us think of the third stage; and please note , just as the Founder is of opinion that Dwaitism and Adwaitism are not two different schools, but the latter is a continuation of the former ; so, here too, he states, any higher stage is attainable only after the lower stage is gone through, more or less, even though for an extremely short period, and most progressively. After not hating and evading (the first stage), "Killing especially the six desires and killing all desires all told" (the second stage) comes the third stage. Yes; "kill your desires "-most precious teaching. But that too is not a small thing. It is a terrible job of restless activity,  a constant fighting and never-ending business of carrying bloodshed and conducting a crusade. That too is again Rakta-Beeja-killing Herculean task. Every drop that falls on the ground creates thousand of Rakta Beejas. You conquer lust and greed, but from their ashes, often emanate pride,, anger, hatred and power craving, etc. " Why not ask Mother to kill the Rakta Beeja for you? You be doing what Mother bids you do, but let Mother kill the Rakta Beeja (demon)." That is the secret of the secrets and the remedy of remedies, and that is Mai-ism.

Go ahead slowly, silently, steadily with continued caution and constant alertness. Your; love and surrender are no small powers for your gradually increasing victory. Who would be playing games and showing prowess to an innocent Mother's child?? Let there be no exasperation and no blood boiling wrathfulness of the battlefield warrior, determined to kill or die. Next, the fourth stage below.

Don't entertain deadly inimical feelings, even for your foibles. Deal with them gently, but resolutely,, successfully and conqueringly. Besides the painful laborious and uncertain way of "killing desires" through Gnana, here, there is the further devotional way of love and sweetness all around, with non-attachment and surrender. When you become an inmate of Mother's mansion, and the child of the Royal Place, you are safe. Who would kill an innocent child?? Have any time heard of dacoity carried out in the decoit's Bhaanjaa's (sister's son's) house? Why killing and why any deadly enmity?? "Come on, Maamaa मामा, Kaama-Raajaa काम राजा (maternal uncle Cupid), and come on Maashi Dhanaa -Trishnaa  माशी धन-तृष्णा (maternal aunt, Wealth-craving);  welcome, I would have given you, royal reception, but all the children (enjoyment senses) have gone to the Grandmother (Mai), there is none in this house and there is nothing in the whole house.!!!" Who would exert to break open the old lock in the front wall of a dilapidated cottage which contains nothing but dust and debris?? Be yourself nothing, handling all your things to Mother, and leave the cottage to take care of itself. Is it possible? Can an earth-crawling ant ever go to a high terrace?? Yes, it can provide it sticks itself to the lotus feet of its pigeon, its dearest dove. Utilize all methods, freezing, sublimating, evaporating, distilling, whichever is placed before you by Merciful Mother. But, moderately and persuasively, and not in a violent drastic manner of coercion, compulsion and consternation.  

~ Maiism 

[letthenexttrytheirluck]

“bee care full win yew ewes spell checque:?.”

– Pamela Pantsuit

“But the mere truth won’t do. You must have a lawyer.”

– Dr. Allan Woodcourt to the wrongly accused George Rouncewell, in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

“It could have been prevented. That is the message [to pharmaceutical companies]. Respect us.”

– Juror Derrick Chizer, who voted against Merck in the first Vioxx case to go to trial, who said the 10 like-minded jurors believed a heart attack triggered the Plaintiff’s fatal arrhythmia.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (Dick the Butcher to Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2 (1592) act 4, sc. 2. – Shakespeare’s misquoted implication that lawyers stand in the way of tyranny.) – W. Shakespeare (1564-1616)

“I shall not rest until every German sees that it is a shameful thing to be a lawyer.” -Adolph Hitler

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“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible. For the fainthearted, it is unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant, it is ideal.”

-Victor Hugo

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“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

-Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a “heathen proverb” in Daniel: A Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott

“We love lawyers. If there weren’t any lawyers, there wouldn’t be any jokes!” -Click and Clack

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Where law ends, tyranny begins.” – William Pitt

“…Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heros have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith.” – Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)

“For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.” – Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“Fiat justitia ruat caelum.”

– Latin phrase meaning “Let justice be done though the heavens fall”; attributed to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar

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“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and if no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”

– Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), prominent American lawyer

“Consider the reason of the case, for nothing is law that is not reason.” –  Sir John Powell

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” -Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

“The jury system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice. The scrutiny of 12 honest jurors provides defendants and plaintiffs alike a safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law.” -Winston Churchill

“The one governmental agency that has no ambition.” – Justice William O. Douglas, on the Supreme Court

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson (1788)

“Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.” – Louis XIV

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“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

– Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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“What I want is a competent lawyer who will counsel me. … I also need him with me at my trial and in hearings. … I would also like to be able to sue him if I later conclude that I have been defectively or inadequately counseled, because I feel that I have received less than satisfactory service in the past. It occurs to me that … we each will feel as though we are caged with a rattlesnake: There is going to be mutual fear, mistrust, dislike, and a contest for dominance. I don’t consider it my fault, however.”

– Randall S. Boyd of Denton, TX, in a prose motion seeking appointment of counsel

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“To the wise, a word is sufficient.”

– Prince John Lackland, before the return of King Richard

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“Life’s real victories must be shared.” – Former President Bill Clinton on the passing of Former President Nelson Mandela

“There’s always room for a good lawyer.” – Milas Hale

“A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.”

– Henry Ward Beecher

“If you want peace, work for justice” – Pope Paul VI

“Laws are the very bulkwarks of liberty; they define every man’s rights, and defend the individual liberties of all men.” – J.G. Holland

“Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.” – William Blackstone

“When you’re up to your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut.” – Jack Beauregard, played by Henry Fonda. My Name is Nobody.

“The safety of the people shall be the highest law.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Plead the Fifth.” – Gary Vert

“Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” – Barry Goldwater

“Predicting coding algorithms are already able to do much of the legal research lawyers do. Before long, ‘there will be many thousands of lawyers out of work,’ one legal expert told Pew. Don’t all weep at once.”

– Rick Newman on the fate of lawyers, in his August 2014 article 28 Jobs Endangered by Technology, viaYahoo Finance

“Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.” – Aristotle

“Every man is enthusiastic at times. One man has enthusiasm for 30 minutes, another man has it for 30 days. But it is the man who has it for 30 years who makes a success in life.” – Edward B. Butler

“V. The next fpecies of trial is of great antiquity, but much difuted; though ftill in force if the parties chufe to abide by it: I mean the trial by wager of battel. This feems to have owed it’s original to the military fpirit of our anceftors, joined to a fuperftitious frame of mind; it being in the nature of an appeal to providence, under an apprehenfion and hope (however prefumptous and unwarrantable) that heaven would give the victory to him who had the right. The decifion of fuits, by this appeal to the God of battels, is by fome faid to have been invented by the Burgundi, one of the northern or German clans that planted themfelves in Gaul. And it is true, that the firft written injuction of judiciary combats that we meet with, is in the laws of Gundebald, A. D. 501, which are preferved in the Burgundian code. Yet it does not feem to have been merely a local cuftom of this or that particular tribe, but to have been the common ufage of all thofe warlike people from the earlieft times. And it may alfo feem from a paffage in Velleius Paterculus, that the Germans, when firft they became knwon to the Romans, were wont to decide all contefts of right by the fword: for when Quintilius Varus endeavoured to introduce among them the Roman laws and method of trial, it was looked upon (fays the hiftorian) as a “novitas incognitae difciplinae, ut folita armis “decerni, jure terminarentur.” And among the antient Goths in Sweden we find the practice of judiciary duels eftablifhed upon much the fame footing as they formerly were in our own country.”

-“A description of the “great antiquity” of “the trial by wager of battle” from Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, Volume III, p. 337 (1768)

“A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.” – early-19th century proverb found in Henry Kett’s The flowers of wit, or a choice collection of bon mots (1814)

“All bad precedents begin with justifiable measures.” – Julius Ceasar – Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, J.T. Ramsey ed (1984)

“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right…” – Judge Learned Hand

“I think the first duty of society is justice.” – Alexander Hamilton

“Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world! – Richard Price

“Remember always that all of us…are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.” – Clarence Darrow

“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.” – Abraham Lincoln

“When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.” – Cicero

“Beware the smoke screen!” – Gary Vert

“Right… is the child of law.” – Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

“I wholly disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire (1906)

“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Argument weak; speak loudly!”

– a handwritten note by Theodore Roosevelt in the margins of one of his speeches

“When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”

– G. K. Chesterton, speaking of society

“By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.” – de Tocqueville on jury service

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”

– Chief Justice John Marshall

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

– Thomas Paine, “The Crises” (published after Washington’s army had to retreat from Long Island to Breucklyn)

“Take to the study of the law. Possession is nine points of it, which thou hast of me. Self-possession is the tenth . . .”

– R.D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone

“Come now, and let us reason together . . .” – The Song of Solomon – Isaiah

The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith. -Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address 1801

“There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” –Washington Irving (1783-1859)

“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” – Author Unknown

“Very few souls are saved after the first five minutes of the sermon.” – Mark Twain

“The law is reason free from passion.” -Aristotle

SIR EDWARD COKE (1552-1634)

“Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason…The law, which is perfection of reason.” – First Institute [1628]

“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium.” – Third Institute [1644]

“The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his repose.” – Semayne’s Case. 5 Report 91

“They [corporations] cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicate, for they have no souls.” – Case of Sutton’s Hospital. 10 Report 32

“Learn to do right; seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” – The Song of Solomon – Isaiah 1:17

“The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: ‘In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.’”

“Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh. -Shakespeare: Hamlet III, i, 162

“Lincoln’s image is sometimes invoked as a model for lawyer advertising, with his advertising having been the feature of at least one recent television campaign for legal services. Other times, he, obviously, is advanced as the highest example of professionalism. He is probably an excellent illustration of the ability of a lawyer in that era to combine aspects of commercialism, competence and dignity in the practice of law.” -American Bar Association, Commission on Advertising, Lawyer Advertising at the Crossroads: Professional Policy Considerations 31-32 (1995).

“Our reason is our law.” -Milton: Paradise Lost, bk. IX, l. 652

“The sleep of reason produces monsters [El sueño de la razón produce monstruos].” – Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes: Los Caprichos [1799]. Plate 43¹

“Education is what you get by reading the fine print; experience is what you get if you don’t read it.”

– from The Furrow, Volume 119, Issue 6

Judge: “Is there any reason you could not serve as a juror on this case?”

Juror: “I don’t want to be away from my job that long.”

Judge: “Can’t they do without you at work?”

Juror: “Certainly, but I don’t want them to know it.”

– from The Furrow, Volume 119, Issue 6

“Lawyers are like other people — fools on the average; but it is easier for an ass to succeed in that trade than any other.”

– Mark Twain

“Man is a reasoning animal.” -Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Epistles, 41,8

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” – Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852.

“Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and who write oppressive decrees, depriving the needy of judgment and robbing my peoples’ poor of their rights, making widows their plunder, and orphans their prey.” – Isaiah 10:1-2.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” – Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968, American Attorney General, Senator)

“About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.” – Elihu Root

“A crooked thing is ruined and fit only to ruin everything else. (Chose tournée est corrumpue et propre à tout faire tourner par suite.)”

– Guillaume le Maréchal, III, 170

“[The law] is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.” The Value and Importance of Legal Studies – Joseph Story, (1779-1845)

“All the sovereigns who have chosen to govern by their own authority, and to direct society instead of obeying its directions, have destroyed or enfeebled the institution of the jury. The Tudor monarchs sent to prison jurors who refused to convict, and Napoleon caused them to be selected by his agents.” “The institution of the jury, if confined to criminal causes, is always in danger; but when once it is introduced into civil proceedings, it defies the aggressions of time and man. If it had been as easy to remove the jury from the customs as from the laws of England, it would have perished under the Tudors, and the civil jury did in reality at that period save the liberties of England.” – de Tocqueville on civil jury trials

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” – origin unknown; attributed to several sources but made especially popular by Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

“Statistician. A person who draws a mathematically precise line between an unwarranted assumption and a foregone conclusion.” – author unknown

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.” – Samuel Johnson

“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.” – Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting, United States v. Rabinowitz (1950)

“I used to say that, as Solicitor General, I made three arguments of every case. First came the one that I planned–as I thought, logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented–interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night.” – Robert H. Jackson, Advocacy Before the Supreme Court (1951)

“Judicial reform is no sport for the short-winded.” – Arthur T. Vanderbilt

“To be a successful contingency attorney requires three things: 1). Accept only good cases; 2). Settle the good cases; and 3). Try the rest.”

– Gary Vert

“And do as adversaries do in law –

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. – William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew – Act 1 Scene 2

“It usually takes three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” – Mark Twain

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” – Mark Twain

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: the rest is interpretation.” – Hillel (30 B.C.- 10.A.D.) Source: Talm

Seek justice for all . . . Champion the cause of those who deserve redress for injury to personal property . . . Promote the public good through concerted efforts to secure safe products, a safe work place, a clean environment, and quality healthcare . . . Further the rule of law in a civil justice system, and protect the rights of the accused . . . Advance the common law and the finest traditions of jurisprudence . . . and uphold the honor and dignity of the legal profession and the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity. – Mission Statement – Association of Trial Lawyers of America

“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: . . . For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:” – List of Colonists’ Grievances against King George III, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

“The law must have the last word.” – French President Jacques Chirac in response to rioters in France November 6, 2005

“The study of law is sublime, and its practice vulgar.” – Oscar Wilde

“No man is above the law and no man below it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually also recognize the voice of justice.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Simple is good.” – Jim Henson

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – – deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth – – persistent, persuasive, unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy

“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.” – Adlai Ewing Stevenson

“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.” – Voltaire, Zadig, 1747

“Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.” – Albert Einstein

“Unkindness has no remedy at law.” – Thomas Fuller (1654 – 1734) comp., Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs,5402, 1732.

“The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone his due.” Justinian I (482/483-565). – Justinian Code, A.D. 533.

“There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” Moses (14th Century B.C.). – Exodus 12:49

“They that make laws must not break them.” – John Ray (1628 – 1705). Comp., A Collection of English Proverbs, p. 166, 1678.

“Ignorance of the law excuses no man, not that all men know the law, but ’tis an excuse every man will plead and no man can tell how to confute him.” – John Selden (1584 – 1654). “LAW” (2), Table Talk, 1689, ed. Frederick Pollock, 1927.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Lord Mansfield (1705 – 1793). – Corporation of Kingston – upon – Hull v. Horner, 1774.

“The success of any legal system is measured by its fidelity to the universal ideal of justice.” Earl Warren (1891 – 1974). “The Law and the Future,” – Fortune Magazine, November 1955.

“Lawyers with a weakness for seeing the merits of the other side end up being employed by neither.” – Richard J. Barnet (1929 – 2004). Roots of War. 3.3, 1971.

Saying

(Latin): The law is not concerned with trifles.

The more laws, the less justice.

Where the law is uncertain, there is no law.

(Spanish): One lawyer makes work for another.

(German): A lawyer and a wagon wheel must be well greased.

“It is unwise to pay too much but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common sense law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done.” – John Ruskin

“When law and nature collide, nature usually wins.” – Forrest Reynolds, June 1, 2012, on discussing the verdict in the John Edwards case

“Lawyers are just like physicians; what one says the other contradicts. -Sholem Aleiche

“One thing I have learned from this experience is that it is hard to keep an audience attentive and involved with a “speech,” but it’s easy if you tell a story that involves your listeners and inspires them with a memorable moral.”

– Jim M. Perdue

“He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.” -Charles Lamb

“You get a reasonable doubt for a reasonable price.” -Criminal attorney’s saying

“Lawyers help those who help themselves.” -Anonymous

“It is true that, of the people of my Gracious Prince here, some out of all offices and faculties must be executed: clerics, electoral councilors and doctors, city officials, court assessors, several of whom Your Grace knows. There are law students to be arrested. … The notary of our Church consistory, a very learned man, was yesterday arrested and put to the torture. In a word, a third part of the city is surely involved. The richest, most attractive, most prominent of the clergy are already executed. … I have seen put to death children of seven, promising students of ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen.” –A Letter from Würzburg (1629), reprinted in Witchcraft in Europe 400-1700353-54 (Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peters eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)

“Lawyers are a learned class of very ignorant men.”

-Erasmus, Dutch philosopher and theologian

“I am not afraid of lawyers as I used to be. They are lambs in wolves’ clothing.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay

“If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.” -Mark Twain

“‘Curio vult advisari,’ as the lawyers say; which means, ‘Let us have another glass, and then we can think about it.'”

– R.D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone

[Curia advisari vult is a Latin legal term meaning “the court wishes to consider the matter” (literally, “the court wishes to be advised”), a term reserving judgment until some subsequent day. It often appears in case reports, abbreviated as “Cur. adv. vult”, or sometimes “c.a.v.” or “CAV”, when the bench takes time for deliberation after hearing counsel’s submissions.]

“Law is the second oldest profession.” -Anonymous

“Thus tis we say though quite uncivil, A cunning lawyer beats the devil!” -Early American Rhyme

“Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.” -Montesquieu

“May you have a lawsuit in which you know you are right.” -Spanish Gypsy curse

“He that loves the law will get his fill of it.” -Scottish proverb

“There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.” -Michel de Montaigne

“He wastes his tears who weeps before the judge.” -Italian proverb

“That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.” -Thomas Jefferson (referring to the U.S. Congress)

“Love all men – except lawyers.” -Irish proverb

“Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice” – Proverbs 13:10

“I, Lucius Titus, have written this my testament without any lawyer, following my own natural reason rather than excessive and miserable diligence.” -The will of a citizen of Rome

“They do tricks even I can’t figure out.” -Harry Houdini

“If it weren’t for the lawyers we wouldn’t need them.” -William Jennings Bryan

“Great management decisions make themselves” -Bob Howe

“The very definition of a good award is that it gives dissatisfaction to both parties.” – Goodman C. Sayers

“Our holding will be spelled out with some specificity in the pages which follow but briefly stated it is this: the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination. By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” – Earl Warren, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966)

“The power of a sonorous phrase to command uncritical acceptance has often been encountered in the law.” – Calvert Magruder, “Mental and Emotional Disturbance in the Law of Torts,” 49 Harvard -Law Review 1033, 1033 (1936)

“I left law school more than 40 years ago, and I still have that dream – and not infrequently.” – Paul Kelly on anxiety-producing exams

Judge: Are you trying to show contempt for the court? Flower Bell Lee [played by Mae West]: No, I’m doing my best to hide it. – Mae West and W.C. Fields, My Little Chickadee (screenplay), 1940, quoted in The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West 51 (Joseph Weintraub ed. 1970)

“A cent or a pepper corn, in legal estimation, would constitute a valuable consideration.” – Nicholas Emery, Whitney v. Stearns, 16 Me. 394, 397 (1839)

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal-there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United State or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird 218 (1960)

“It is not enough to say, that in the opinion of the court, the damages are too high and that we would have given much less. It is the judgment of the jury, and not the judgment of the court, which is to assess the damages in actions for personal torts and injuries….The damages, therefore, must be so excessive as to strike mankind, at first blush, as being beyond all measure, unreasonable and outrageous, and such as manifestly show the jury to have been actuated by passion, partiality, prejudice, or corruption. In short, the damages must be flagrantly outrageous and extravagant, or the court cannot undertake to draw the line; for they have no standard by which to ascertain the excess.” – James Kent, Coleman v. Southwick, 9 Johns. 45, 51-52 (N.Y. 1818)

“More truly characteristic of dissent is a dignity, an elevation, of mood and thought and phrase. Deep conviction and warm feeling are saying their last say with knowledge that the cause is lost. The voice of the majority may be that of force triumphant, content with the plaudits of the hour, and recking little of the morrow. The dissenter speaks to the future, and his voice is pitched to a key that will carry through the years.” – Benjamin N. Cardozo, Law and Literature 36 (1931)

It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universitis [sic], Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. – Act of Mar. 13, 1925, ch. 27, § 1, 1925 Tenn. Pub. Acts 50, 50-51

“A grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.” – Tom Wolfe (quoting New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler) in The Bonfire of the Vanities

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightment and culture to the human mind.” – Clarence S. Darrow, Speech at Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tenn., 13 July 1925, in The World’s Most Famous Court Trial 87 (1925)

“Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.” – Harry S. Truman, Address at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., 15 Dec., 1952, in Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 1952-53, at 1077, 1079 (1966)

“Since the earliest days philosophers have dreamed of a country where the mind and spirit of man would be free; where there would be no limits to inquiry; where men would be free to explore the unknown and to challenge the most deeply rooted beliefs and principles. Our First Amendment was a bold effort to adopt this principle – to establish a country with no legal restrictions of any kind upon the subjects people could investigate, discuss and deny. The Framers knew, better perhaps than we do today, the risks they were taking. They knew that free speech might be the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny. With this knowledge they still believed that the ultimate happiness and security of a nation lies in its ability to explore, to change, to grow and ceaselessly to adapt itself to new knowledge born of inquiry free from any kind of governmental control over the mind and spirit of man. Loyalty comes from love of good government, not fear of a bad one.” – Hugo L. Black, “The Bill of Rights,” 35 New York University Law Review 865, 880-81 (1960)

“The issue of a cause rarely depends upon a speech and is but seldom even affected by it. But there is never a cause contested, the result of which is not mainly dependent upon the skill with which the advocate conducts his cross-examination.”

. . .

“A good advocate should be a good actor. The most cautious cross-examiner will often elicit a damaging answer. Now is the time for the greatest self-control. If you show by your face how the answer hurt, you may lose your case by that one point alone. How often one sees the cross-examiner fairly staggered by such an answer. He pauses, perhaps blushes, and after he has allowed the answer to have its full effect, finally regains his self-possession, but seldom his control of the witness…..” – “Francis Wellman” “The Art of Cross-Examination (1903, 1904)”

“The practice of law is a busyness.” -Gary Vert

“We can imagine . . . no better way to counter a flag-burner’s message than by saluting the flag that burns. . . We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.” – William J. Brennan, Jr. Texas v. Johnson, 109 S. Ct. 2533, 2547-48 (1989)

“It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.” – Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” – Clarence S. Darrow, Address to jury, Communist Trial, 1920, in Attorney for the Damned 121, 140 (Arthur Weinberg ed. 1957)

“And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.” – James Russell Lowell, “A Fable for Critics,” 1848, in Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell 114, 136 (Horace E. Scudder ed. 1925)

“The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air.” – Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States 38 (1908)

“That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” – Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, § 12, in Federal and State Constitutions 7:3812, 3814 (Francis N. Thorpe ed. 1909)

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” – A.J. Liebling, “The Wayward Press: Do you belong in Journalism?” New Yorker, 14 May 1960, at 105, 109

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 16 Apr. 1963, in Why We Can’t Wait 77, 79 (1964)

“We disclaim altogether any jurisdiction in the courts of the United States upon the subject of divorce, or for the allowance of alimony.” – James M. Wayne, Barber v. Barber, 62 U.S. (21 How.) 582, 584 (1858)

“That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.” – Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, § 11, in Federal and State Constitutions 7:3812, 3814 (Francis N. Thorpe ed. 1909)

“Where there is Hunger, Law is not regarded; and where Law is not regarded, there will be Hunger.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1755, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin 5:472 (Leonard W. Labaree ed. 1962)

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Andre Limozin, 22 Dec. 1787, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson 12:451 (Julian P. Boyd ed. 1955)

“I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.” – Ulysses S. Grant, First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1869, in Messages and Papers of the Presidents 7:6, 6 (James D. Richardson ed. 1898)

“Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling never fails of employment in it.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, 22 June 1792, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson 6:92 (Paul L. Ford ed. 1895)

“Our profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it; it is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money catching.” – Daniel Webster, Letter to James Hervey Bingham, 19 Jan. 1806, in Papers of Daniel Webster: Legal Papers 1.69

[When advised not to become a lawyer because the profession was overcrowded:] “There is always room at the top.” – Daniel Webster, quoted in Edward Latham, Famous Sayings and Their Authors 65 (1904)

“Whatever their failings as a class may be, and however likely to lose their immortal souls, lawyers do not generally lose papers.” – Arthur Train, “Hocus-Pocus,” in Tut, Tut! Mr. Tutt 119, 120 (1923)

“Look well to the right of you, look well to the left of you, for one of you three won’t be here next year.” – Edward H. Warren, quoted in W. Barton Leach, “Look Well to the Right…,” 58 Harvard Law Review 1137, 1138 (1945)

On one occasion a student made a curiously inept response to a question from Professor Warren. “The Bull” roared at him, “You will never make a lawyer. You might just as well pack up your books now and leave the school.” The student rose, gathered his notebooks, and started to leave, pausing only to say in full voice, “I accept your suggestion, Sir, but I do not propose to leave without giving myself the pleasure of telling you to go plumb straight to Hell.” “Sit down, Sir, sit down,” said “The Bull.” “Your response makes it clear that my judgment was too hasty.” – Joseph N. Welch, “Edward Henry Warren,” 58 Harvard Law Review 1134, 1136 (1945)

“They have a proverb here [in London], which I do not know how to account for ; – in speaking of a difficult point, they say, it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer*.” – “A Humorous Description of the Manners and Fashions of London; in a Letter from a Citizen of America to his Correspondent in Philadelphia,” 2 Columbian Magazine 181, 182 (1788) *This is the earliest known usage of the phrase Philadelphia lawyer to mean “a shrewd lawyer expert in legal technicalities.” This term may have been inspired by Philadelphia attorney Andrew Hamilton’s successful defense of John Peter Zenger in a New York court in 1735.

Searching for quotations on lawyers, I found this on your site:

“They have a proverb here [in London], which I do not know how to account for ; – in speaking of a difficult point, they say, it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer*.”

– “A Humorous Description of the Manners and Fashions of London; in a Letter from a Citizen of America to his Correspondent in Philadelphia,” 2 Columbian Magazine 181, 182 (1788) *This is the earliest known usage of the phrase Philadelphia lawyer to mean “a shrewd lawyer expert in legal technicalities.” This term may have been inspired by Philadelphia attorney Andrew Hamilton’s successful defense of John Peter Zenger in a New York court in 1735.

There is a much earlier use of “Philadelphia lawyer”. The Gospel of Luke, in KJV, refers to “a certain lawyer” who asked “Who is my neighbor?” [“To whom do I owe a duty of care?”] Other translations say that “the lawyer of Philadelphia” asked this question. The city called Philadelphia in Bible times is the city now known as Amman, Jordan.

I learned this in New Testament Studies at Pacific Lutheran University here in Tacoma, Washington.

Theresa Tilton, Attorney at Law

************************************** Luke 10:25-37 (King James Version) King James Version (KJV)

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

“Let me not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenseless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames and cork up my ink bottle forever, than infringe even for a nail’s breadth upon the dignity of these truly benevolent champions of the distressed. On the contrary, I allude merely to those caitiff scouts who, in these latter days of evil, infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant Cornish knights of yore the honorable order of chivalry, – who under its auspices, commit flagrant wrongs, – who thrive by quibbles, by quirks and chicanery, and like vermin increase the corruption in which they are engendered.” – Washington Irving, The History of New York 261-62 (1868) (1809)

“A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; … This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1:353 (Francis Bowen trans. 1862) (1835)

“The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance of suitors. The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily that he can get you out of a scrape.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Power,” The Conduct of Life, 1860, in Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson 6:53, 76 (1904)

“Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive. A lawyer who does not know men is handicapped.” – Louis D. Brandeis, Letter to William H. Dunbar, 2 Feb. 1893, in Letters of Louis D. Brandeis 1:108 (Melvin I. Urofsky and David W. Levy eds. 1971)

“Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer. It is more important than competence or vision. It can never be an elective in any law school. It can never be de-limited, dated or outworn, and it should pervade the heart, the halls of justice and the chambers of the mind.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Speech at University of San Francisco Law School, San Francisco, 29 Sept. 1962, quoted in Sue G. Hall, The Quotable Robert F. Kennedy 111 (1967)

“One hires lawyers as on hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one’s hands off the beastly drains.” – Amanda Cross, The Question of Max 61 (1976)

“Send lawyers, guns and money, the shit has hit the fan.” – Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns and Money’ (song) (1978)

“Some debts are not to be reckoned.” – Thomas Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, on PBS’s Wolf Hall, Season 1 Episode 2 (2015)

“The lawyers’ contribution to the civilizing of humanity is evidenced in the capacity of lawyers to argue furiously in the courtroom, then sit down as friends over a drink or dinner. This habit is often interpreted by the layman as a mark of their ultimate corruption. In my opinion, it is their greatest moral achievement: It is a characteristic of humane tolerance that is most desperately needed at the present time.”

– John R. Silber, quoted in Wall Street Journal, 16 Mar. 1972, at 14

“Anyone who believes a better day dawns when lawyers are eliminated bears the burden of explaining who will take their place. Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, the victims of racial violence?” – John J. Curtin, Jr., Remarks to American Bar Association, Atlanta, 13 Aug. 1991, quoted in Time, 26 Aug. 1991, at 54

“Lawyers, Preachers, and Tomtits Eggs, there are more of them hatch’d than come to perfection.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1734, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin 1:354 (Leonard W. Labaree ed. 1959)

“I should apologize, perhaps, for the style of this bill. I dislike the verbose and intricate style of the English statutes, and in our revised code I endeavored to restore it to the simple one of the ancient statues, in such original bills as I drew in that work. I suppose the reformation has not been acceptable, as it has been little followed. You, however, can easily correct this bill to the taste of my brother lawyers, by making every other word a “said” or “aforesaid,” and saying everything over two or three times, so that nobody but we of the craft can untwist the diction, and find out what it means; and that, too, not so plainly but that we may conscientiously divide one half on each side. Mend it, therefore, in form and substance to the orthodox taste, and make it what it should be; or, if you think it radically wrong, try something else, and let us make a beginning in some way. No matter how wrong, experience will amend it as we go along, and make it effectual in the end.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 9 Sept. 1817, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson 17:417-18 (Andrew A. Lipscomb ed. 1904)

“There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.” – Fred Rodell, “Goodbye to Law Reviews,” 23 Virginia Law Review 38, 38 (1936)

“Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.” – Mark Twain, “The Gorky Incident,” 1906, in Mark Twain: Letters From the Earth 155, 156 (Bernard De Voto ed. 1939)

“What we need to do is to stop passing laws. We have enough laws now to govern the world for the next 10,000 years. Every crank who has a foolish notion that he would like to impose upon everybody else hastens to some legislative body and demands that it be graven upon the statutes. Every fanatic who wants to control his neighbor’s conduct is here or at some other legislative body demanding that a law be passed to regulate that neighbor’s conduct.” – James A. Reed, in 67 Congressional Record 10,708 (1926)

“The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.” – Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 163 (1803) See also OBEDIENCE TO LAW 2, OBEDIENCE TO LAW 3

“In the United States, every one is personally interested in enforcing the obedience of the whole community to the law; for as the minority may shortly rally the majority to its principles, it is interested in professing that respect for the decrees of the legislator which it may soon have occasion to claim for its own. However irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the United States complies with it, not only because it is the work of the majority, but because it is his own, and he regards it as a contract to which he is himself a party. ” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1:317 (Francis Bowen trans. 1862) (1835)

“As [a citizen] is a “law-maker,” he should not be a “law-breaker,” for he ought to be conscious that every departure from the established ordinances of society is an infraction of his rights. His power can only be maintained by the supremacy of the laws, as in monarchies, the authority of the king is asserted by obedience to his orders. The citizen in lending a cheerful assistance to the ministers of the law, on all occasions, is merely helping to maintain his own power. This feature in particular, distinguishes the citizen from the subject.” – James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat 83 (1956) (1838)

“A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbade as few things as possible; a wise legislation would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Address before 10th National Woman’s rights Convention, New York, May 1860, in History of Woman Suffrage 1:716, 721 (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda J. Gage eds. 1881)

“The words which are criticized as dirty [in James Joyce’s Ulysses] are old Saxon words known to almost all men and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical, and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe. In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season spring.” – John M. Woolsey, United States v. One Book Called “Ulysses,” 5 F. Supp. 182, 183-84 (S.D.N.Y. 1933)

[Standard for obscenity:]” Whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.” – William J. Brennan, Jr. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 489 (1957)

“I have reached the conclusion . . . that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area [obscenity] are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know if when I see it; and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” – Potter Stewart, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (concurring)

“The First Amendment guarantees liberty of human expression in order to preserve in our Nation what Mr. Justice Holmes called a “free trade in ideas.” To that end, the Constitution protects more than just a man’s freedom to say or write or publish what he wants. It secures as well the liberty of each man to decide for himself what he will read and to what he will listen. The Constitution guarantees, in short, a society of free choice.” – Potter Stewart, Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 649 (1968) (concurring)

“The term “f—–g pigs” in the context in which it was used referred not to copulation of porcine animals but was rather a highly insulting epithet directed to the police officers…..Appellant’s use of the vulgarism describing the filial partner in an oedipal relationship is fairly to be viewed as an epithet rather than as a phrase appealing to a shameful or morbid interest in intra-family sex….There is, after all, a strong possibility that an expert witness called in the matter before us might have testified to the occasional use of the offending profane adjective in bar association quarters or in trial judges’ lounges-alas, all too often in reference to a decision of the Court of Appeal.” – Robert S. Thompson, People v. Price, 4 Cal. App. 3d 941, 948-49, 84 Cal. Rptr. 585 (1970) (dissenting)

“I put sixteen years into that damn obscenity thing. I tried and I tried, and I waffled back and forth, and I finally gave up. If you can’t define it, you can’t prosecute people for it. And that’s why, in the Paris Adult Theatre decision, I finally abandoned the whole effort. I reached the conclusion that every criminal-obscenity statute-and most obscenity laws are criminal-was necessarily unconstitutional, because it was impossible, from the statute, to define obscenity. Accordingly, anybody charged with violating the statute would not have known that his conduct was a violation of the law. He wouldn’t know whether the material was obscene until the court told him.” – William J. Brennan, Jr., quoted in Nat Hentoff, “Profiles: The Constitutionalist,” New Yorker, 12 Mar. 1990, at 45, 56

“The appellant has attempted to distinguish the factual situation in this case from that in Renfroe v. Higgins Rack Coating and Manufacturing Co., Inc. (1969), 17 Mich App 259. He didn’t. We couldn’t. Affirmed. Costs to appellee.” All concurred.* – John H. Gillis, Denny v. Radar Industries, 28 Mich. App. 294, 294 (1970) * This is the opinion in its entirety.

“Literary license allows an avid alliterationist authority to postulate parenthetically that the predominating principles presented here may be summarized thusly: Preventing public pollution permits promiscuous perusal of personality but persistent perspicacious patron persuasively provided pertinent perdurable preponderating presumption precedent preventing prison.” – H. Sol Clark, Banks v. State, 132 Ga. App. 809, 810, 209 S.E. 2d 252 (1974)

“Our amended Constitution is the lodestar for our aspirations. Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text. The encounter with the Constitutional text has been, in many senses, my life’s work.” – William J. Brennan, Jr., “The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification” (speech), Washington, D.C. 12 Oct. 1985, in Original Meaning Jurisprudence: A Sourcebook 151, 152 (1987)

“I, Andrew Johnson, …..hereby proclaim and declare unconditionally, and without reservation, to all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion, a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war, with restoration of all rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution and the laws which have been made in pursuance thereof.” – Proclamation 25 Dec., 1868, 15 Stat. 711, 712

“The patent system…added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.” – Abraham Lincoln, Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, Jacksonville, Ill., 11 Feb.1859, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:363 (Roy P. Basler ed. 1953)

[To the Court requesting a precedent for his position during the Crafts trial:] “I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so just a rule.” – Rufus Choate, quoted in Works of Rufus Choate 1:292 (Samuel G. Brown ed. 1862)

“We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy. It represents an element of continuity in law, and is rooted in the psychologic need to satisfy reasonable expectations. But stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision, however recent and questionable, when such adherence involves collision with a prior doctrine more embracing in its scope, intrinsically sounder, and verified by experience…This Court, unlike the House of Lords, has from the beginning rejected a doctrine of disability at self-correction.” – Felix Frankfurter, Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119, 121 (1940)

“I would rather create a precedent than find one.” – William O. Douglas, The Court Years: 1939-1975, at 179 (1980)

“The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.” – William O. Douglas, Public Utilities Comm’n v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952) (dissenting)

“We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” – William O. Douglas, Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966) (dissenting)

“In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States; nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws of property.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 2:314 (Francis Bowen trans.1862) (1835)

“Any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall, from and after the first January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to preemption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; or eighty acres or less of such unappropriated lands, at two dollars and fifty cents per acre, to be located in a body, in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed.” – Homestead Act of 1862, ch. 75, § 1, 12 Stat. 392, 392

“With the rise of property, considered as an institution, with the settlement of its rights, and, above all, with the established certainty of its transmission to lineal descendants, came the first possibility among mankind of the true family in its modern acceptation. . . It is impossible to separate property, considered in the concrete, from civilization, or for civilization to exist without its presence, protection, and regulated inheritance. Of property in this sense, all barbarous nations are necessarily ignorant.” – Lewis Henry Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity 492 (1870)

“The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done.” – Canons of Professional Ethics Canon 5 (1908)

[William Jennings Bryan:] “Your Honor, I think I can shorten this testimony. The only purpose Mr. Darrow has is to slur at the Bible, but I will answer his question. I will answer it all at once, and I have no objection in the world, I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in a God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee-” [Clarence S. Darrow:]” I object to that.” [Bryan:]” to slur at it, and while it will require time, I am willing to take it.” [Darrow:] “I object to your statement. I am exempting you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.” – Clarence S. Darrow, Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tenn., 20 July 1925, in The World’s Most Famous Court Trial 304 (1925)

“Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.” – William O. Douglas, United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78, 86 (1944)

“Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.” – Hugo L. Black, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 495 n.11 (1961)

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.” – Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1861, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 4:269 (Roy P. Basler ed. 1953)

“The word “revolution” has of course acquired a subversive connotation in modern times. But it has roots that are eminently respectable in American history. This country is the product of revolution. Our very being emphasizes that when grievances pile high and there are no political remedies, the exercise of sovereign powers reverts to the people. Teaching and espousing revolution-as distinguished from indulging in overt acts-are therefore obviously within the range of the First Amendment. ” – William O. Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs v. Clark, 389 U.S. 309, 315-16 (1967)

“If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 15 Mar. 1789, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson 14:660 (Julian P. Boyd ed. 1958)

“But the word “right” is one of the most deceptive of pitfalls; it is so easy to slip from a qualified meaning in the premise to an unqualified one in the conclusion. Most rights are qualified. ” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., American Bank and Trust Co. v. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 256 U.S. 350, 358 (1921)

“This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person.” – William O. Douglas, Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 520 (1964) (concurring)

“America is of course sovereign; but her sovereignty is woven in an international web that makes her one of the family of nations. The ties with all the continents are close-commercially as well as culturally. Our concerns are planetary, beyond sunrises and sunsets. Citizenship implicates us in those problems and perplexities, as well as in domestic ones. We cannot exercise and enjoy citizenship in world perspective without the right to travel abroad; and I see no constitutional way to curb it unless, as I said, there is the power to detain.” – William O. Douglas, Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 520-21 (1964) (concurring)

“Of course, I believe that every child has a right to decent education and shelter, food and medical care; of course, I believe that refugees from political oppression have a right to a haven in a free land; of course I believe that every person has a right to work in dignity and for a decent wage. I do believe and affirm the social contract that grounds these rights. But more to the point I also believe that I am commanded-that we are obligated-to realize those rights.” – Robert M. Cover, “Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order,” 5 Journal of Law and Religion 65, 73-74 (1988)

“And I take this opportunity to declare, that …I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me…the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of the constitution, that ever was found in an English law-book.” – James Otis, Argument against the writs of assistance, Boston, Feb. 1761, quoted in John Adams, “Abstract of the Argument for and against the Writts of Assistance,” 1761, in Legal Papers of John Adams 2:134, 139-40 (L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel eds. 1965)

“Your Honours will find in the old book, concerning the office of a justice of peace, precedents of general warrants to search suspected houses. But in more modern books you will find only special warrants to search such and such houses specially named, in which the complainant has before sworn he suspects his goods are concealed; and you will find it adjudged that special warrants only are legal. In the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition being general is illegal. It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” – James Otis, Argument against the writs of assistance, Boston, Feb. 1761, quoted in John Adams, “Abstract of the Argument for and against the Writts of Assistance,” 1761, in Legal Papers of John Adams 2:134, 141-42 (L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel eds. 1965)

“Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty, is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle;* and while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ [of assistance], if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege.” – James Otis, Argument against the writs of assistance, Boston, Feb. 1761, quoted in John Adams, “Abstract of the Argument for and against the Writts of Assistance,” 1761, in Legal Papers of John Adams 2:134; 142 (L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel eds. 1965) *Burton Stevenson, Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases 1192 (1948), traces the proverb, “A man’s house is his castle,” back to 1567 and notes legal usages of it by Sir Edward Coke in the 17th century.

“That general warrants, whereby an officer of messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.” – Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, § 10, in Federal and State Constitutions 7:3812, 3814 (Francis N. Thorpe ed. 1909)

It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails… (A) To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud, (B) To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, or (C) To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. – Rule 10b-5,13 Fed. Reg. 8183-84 (1948) (codified at 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5)

[Definition of insider trading:] “Stealing too fast.” – Calvin Trillin, “The Inside on Insider Trading,” in If You Can’t Say Something Nice 141, 143 (1987)

“He must make instant decisions that would take months for a lawyer.” – Paul Harvey, on policemen

“Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional…..All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle. – Earl Warren, Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 298 (1955)

“The hardest case we ever heard of lived in Arkansas. He was only fourteen years old. One night he deliberately murdered his father and mother in cold blood, with a meat-axe. He was tried and found guilty. The Judge drew on his black cap, and in a voice choked with emotion asked the young prisoner if he had anything to say before the sentence of the Court was passed on him….”Why, no,” replied the prisoner, “I think I haven’t, though I hope yer Honor will show some consideration FOR THE FEELINGS OF A POOR ORPHAN!” ” – Artemus Ward, “A Hard Case,” in Artemus Ward in London 183, 183-84 (1867)

“I’m often asked why there is such a great variation among sentences imposed by Texas judges. I can only quote the Texas judge who was asked why a killer sometimes doesn’t even get indicted and a cattle thief can get ten years. The judge answered: “A lot of fellows ought to be shot, but we don’t have any cows that need stealin’.” – Pearcy Foreman, quoted in Michael Dorman, King of the Courtroom 104 (1969)

“Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court.” – Marshal’s cry at the opening of public sessions of the United States Supreme Court

“Equal Justice Under Law.” – Inscription on West Portico of Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C.

“Justice the Guardian of Liberty.” – Inscription on East Portico of Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. Court

“[We’ll] never really know how many brothers-in-law were ‘accidentally kilt’ by their kin who were holding their shotgun and stepping over a fence at the same time.” – Robert Meriweather, Professor of Political Science, Education and History and Dean of Students at Hendrix College (1959-1993)

“Knowing Master Huckaback to be a man of his word, as well as one who would have others so, I was careful to be in good time the next morning . . . “

– R.D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone

“Justice the Guardian of Liberty.” – Inscription on East Portico of Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C.

“Anything less than full justice is cruelty.”

– William Penn

“Your brand is your promise to the consumer. It’s your reputation. It’s the encapsulation of your core values. . .When someone attempts to steal our brand it’s personal, as though some part of my family has been assaulted.”

– Doug Shafer, A Vineyard In Napa

Here this extraordinary man [Charles Townsend], then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However, he attempted it.

– Edmund Burke, Speech on American Taxation, 19 April 1774, in Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke 2:409, 454 (Paul Langford ed. 1981)

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.*” – Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy, 13 Nov. 1789, in Writings of Benjamin Franklin 10:69 (Albert H. Smyth ed. 1907) *Not the man in the moon, not the groaning-board, not the speaking of friar Bacon’s brazen- head, not the inspiration of mother Shipton, or the miracles of Dr. Faustus, things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed. – Daniel Defoe, The History of the Devil, 1726, in Defoe’s Works 3:283, 481 (1912)

“I don’t see why a man shouldn’t pay an inheritance tax. If a Country is good enough to pay taxes to while you are living, it’s good enough to pay in after you die. By the time you die you should be so used to paying taxes that it would just be almost second nature to you.” – Will Rogers, “They’ve Got a New Dictionary at Ellis Island,” 28 Feb. 1926, in Will Rogers’ Weekly Articles 2:157, 158 (James M. Smallwood ed. 1980)

[Responding to a statement that “laws should be considerate of the poor”:] Not more so than of the rich. The laws should be equal and just; and the poor are the last people who ought to wish them otherwise, since they are certain to be the losers when any other principle governs….No class suffers so much by a departure from the rule, as the rich have a thousand other means of attaining their ends, when the way is left clear to them, by setting up any other master than the right.” – James Fenimore Cooper, The Chainbearer, 1845, in Complete Works of J. Fenimore Cooper 27:94-95 (1893)

“The true form of the Rule against Perpetuities is believed to be this: – NO INTEREST SUBJECT TO A CONDITION PRECEDENT IS GOOD, UNLESS THE CONDITION MUST BE FULFILLED, IF AT ALL, WITHIN TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER SOME LIFE IN BEING AT THE CREATION OF THE INTEREST.” – John Chipman Gray, The Rule Against Perpetuities 144 (1886)

“During my life, and now by my will and codicils, I have given considerable sums of money to promote public or humanitarian causes which have had my deliberate and sympathetic interest. If any of my children think excessive such gifts of mine outside of my family, I ask them to remember not only the merit of the causes and the corresponding usefulness of the gifts but also the dominating ideals of my life. They should never forget the dangers which unfortunately attend the inheritance of large fortunes, even though the money come from the painstaking affections of a father. I beg of them to remember that such danger lies not only in the obvious temptation to enervating luxury, but in the inducement . . . to withdraw from the wholesome duty of vigorous, serious, useful work. In my opinion a life not largely dedicated to such work cannot be happy and honorable; And to such it is my earnest hope-and will be to my death-that my children shall, so far as their strength permits, be steadfastly devoted.” – Joseph Pulitzer, Will, in James Wyman Barrett, Joseph Pulitzer and His World 295-96 (1941)

“And do as adversaries do in law – Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, act I, scene ii

“Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, a river of righteous living that will never run dry.” – The Holy Bible – Amos 5:24

“In the heart of every lawyer, worthy of the name, there burns a deep ambition so to bear himself that the profession may be stronger by reason of his passage through its ranks, and that he may leave the law itself a better instrument of human justice than he found it.” – John W. Davis

“I do solemnly swear or affirm: I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas, and I will faithfully perform the duties of attorney at law. I will maintain the respect and courtesy due to courts of justice, judicial officers, and those who assist them. I will, to the best of my ability, abide by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and any other standards of ethics proclaimed by the courts, and in doubtful cases I will attempt to abide by the spirit of those ethical rules and precepts of honor and fair play. To opposing parties and their counsel, I pledge fairness, integrity, and civility, not only in court, but also in all written and oral communications. I will not reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the impoverished, the defenseless, or the oppressed. I will endeavor always to advance the cause of justice and to defend and to keep inviolate the rights of all persons whose trust is conferred upon me as an attorney at law.”

– Oath administered to new attorneys in Arkansas

“We will either find a way, or make one.” – Hannibal

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

“I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.” – Clarence S. Darrow, Defense against charge of jury bribing in McNamara Case, 1912, in Attorney for the Damned 491, 497 (Arthur Weinberg ed. 1957)

“We cannot not be here. People look to us.” -Mari Wright, Executive Director of the Southwest Georgia Chapter of the American Red Cross.

“The law favors farmers.” – an old folk saying

“…There nothing more expensive than a bad lawyer”. -Mike Gowen

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. – Albert Einstein

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning people are all the same. – Albert Einstein

“It’s never about the opponent or who we’re facing. . . . Coach likes to say they’re faceless – and they are. It’s about us and about what we do and how we take everything on the field. It doesn’t matter who we play. We’re trying to play the way we’re capable of playing.”

– Alabama senior quarterback AJ McCarron, quoting Coach Nick Saban

Men of few words are the best men. – William Shakespeare

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. – Sir Winston Churchhill

I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. – French writer and mathematician Blaise Pascal

Funny Order from Kenton, KY Circuit Court – Click to download PDF

“[W]hat many of those who oppose the use of juries in civil trials seem to ignore [is that t]he founders of our Nation considered the right of trial by jury in civil cases an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign, or, it might be added, to that of the judiciary.” – Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 343 (1979)

“Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.” – Thomas Babington Macaulay

“There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury.” – George Washington (1788)

“It is through trial by jury that the people share in government, a consideration which ought to make our legislators very cautious how they take away this mode of trial by new, trifling and vexatious enactments.” – Lord John Russell, Prime Minister of England (1823)

“What individual can so well assess the amount of damages which a plaintiff ought to recover for an injury he has received than an intelligent jury?” – Henry Peter Brougham, Lord Chancellor of England (1828)

“The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.” – Jeremy Bentham, English Philosopher (1832)

“The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

“The jury system is the handmaid of freedom. It takes on the spirit of liberty, and grows with the progress of constitutional government. Rome, Sparta and Carthage fell because they did not know it, let not England and America fall because they threw it away.” – Charles S. May, Address to the Michigan Law School (1875)

“In the Declaration of Independence, the King of Great Britain was arraigned before the world for depriving us of trial by jury. This language evinces the purpose of our representatives to risk their lives and their fortunes to secure the ancient right of trial by jury.” – Justice Alphonso C. Avery of North Carolina (1892)

“In the jury box, no less than in the polling booth, every day the American way of life is given its rebirth. American jurymen are the custodians and guarantors of the democratic ideal.” – Justice Bernard Botein of New York (1946)

“The more I see of trial by judge, the more highly I think of trial by jury.” – Australian King’s Counsel B. R. Wise (1948)

“Through 500 years of human history the jury trial has been regarded as an unalienable right cherished in the thinking of freedom-seeking peoples. It remains today a refuse against all those little tyrannies plotted behind hypocritical fronts in well-respected places theoretically dedicated to the preservation of basic civil liberties.” – Judge William J. Palmer of California (1958)

“In the minds of American colonists, trial by jury was the firmest barrier of English liberty; it survives today as the voice of the people.” – Arthur Schlesinger, The Birth of the Nation (1968)

“The most persistent hate is that which doth degenerate from love.” – Map, De Nugis Curialium, 245

“[N]o man’s life, liberty or fortune is safe while the legislature is in session.” – Benjamin Franklin

“The right of trial by jury in civil cases is fundamental to our history and jurisprudence. The founders of our nation considered it an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign.”

– U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (1979)

“The concept of the jury system is as close as any society has ever come to true democracy.” -Paula Di Perna, Faces of American Justice (1984)

“Plaintiff respectfully demands trial by jury and tenders the required jury fee”. – Non-parenthetical requirement in every complaint alleging personal injury or wrongful death, Law Offices of Gary Green

“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” – Robert Frost Taken from: http://ggreen.com/just-for-fun/famous-quotes-in-law

[njawaidofficial]

“Billions” Is The Best Show About The Worst Kind Of Masculinity

https://styleveryday.com/2018/04/16/billions-is-the-best-show-about-the-worst-kind-of-masculinity/

“Billions” Is The Best Show About The Worst Kind Of Masculinity

Paul Giamatti as Chuck Rhoades and Jeffrey DeMunn as Charles Rhoades Sr. in the Billions episode “Hell of a Ride.”

Jeff Neumann / Showtime

Dick is a multipurpose metaphor in Billions. Most of the characters in Showtime’s hedge fund drama talk about their work, their success or lack thereof, and their stature as an extension of their virility. They aren’t all men, but they do all circle a luxe locker room of an industry that’s been overwhelmingly defined by men. Any observation you might feel inclined to make about Wall Street being dominated by bros vying to prove who has the biggest balls, Billions makes for you. In its very first episode, without the hint of a wink, a trader describes his issues at work to performance coach Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) by using the language of erectile dysfunction: “I hear it happens to guys my age.”

Exactly a season later, Wendy shakes a bottle of Viagra at an audience of hedge fund types, telling them that while some of them rely on it, none would admit that: “The thought that someone might know you need help is worse than not getting the help you need. Still, when the time comes, when you need to pull the trigger on the buy or sell order, you better be hard as a rock and ready to go” — no Freudian subtext necessary. More recently, to really underscore the erection connection and the fragility that accompanies it, a character insists he would part with a fraction of his — “an inch off my dick” — if it meant he and his failing fund could get back in the game.

When Billions, the creation of Brian Koppelman and David Levien, premiered in 2016, it was a show that — much like its wilder cinematic sibling The Wolf of Wall Street — felt unwilling to commit to being either a critique or a celebration of the excesses and amoral schemes it was putting onscreen. When you wallow in dudes slinging their schlongs around without any apparent subversion, it tends to come across as endorsement, especially when considered through the fumes of the presidential election that followed the first season, in which macho posturing and cartoonish wealth carried the day. In its early episodes, especially, Billions could be taken for another variation on the “flawed but great man” drama, and an addictive but particularly sour one whose standards of greatness were questionable.

Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and Chuck at the end of Season 1.

Jeff Neumann / Showtime

It’s actually about two men — US attorney and rising political star Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), and hedge fund superstar and billionaire “man of the people” Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) — and the series unfolds in the shadow of their kaiju battle. Chuck, who sets out to take down Axe for insider trading with the obsessiveness of Ahab chasing Moby (sorry) Dick, might nominally be on the side of “good,” or at least the law, but Billions is quick to muddy this divide. With his aims to run for office, Chuck proves himself to be someone willing to cross lines to further his own interests, while Axe is shown to be, while far from innocent, not the worst offender in his ethically flexible industry — just the showiest target.

Three seasons in, Chuck and Axe are still duking it out, and what’s striking is how much smaller their continuing struggle now makes them look — so very human-sized. They’ve lost relationships and fortunes to a conflict that was started, by Axe’s own acknowledgment, for “dick-measuring purposes.” Somewhere along its run, Billions snapped into focus from being a blurry drama about power to being an infinitely sharper one about gender. It’s a snappily paced, light-on-its-feet nightmare about pissing contests, bruised egos, and displays of dominance, and what happens when power and gendered behavior are so intertwined that they get openly treated as if they were one and the same.

Midway through its current season, Billions still couldn’t be described as a critique of the finance world, or the political one that intersects with it — it regards them both with a clinical gaze, as structures that protect and serve themselves, resist consequences, and erode people’s ideals with rewards and compromises. Part of what makes the protagonists’ continuing clash quietly ridiculous is that, however intent they are on obliterating one another, both are wealthy white men cushioned by all the advantages they inherited or accrued for themselves, and they could ever only fall so far.

Chuck, with his pedigree and connections, could roll through the scandal that may or may not erupt around him and into a lucrative private sector gig if he had to; Axe, who in a recent episode had an earnest conversation with his ex-wife Lara about whether they could afford to live on a mere $300 million if they had to, immediately comes up with a workaround after being cornered into giving up his ability to trade. Billions is technically a drama, but it’s more fitting to think of it as a dark, near-subliminal comedy about machismo and avarice, about what a surreal thing it is that so many people in power are really just jostling to throw their junk on the table.

Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) at the poker table in “Optimal Play.”

Jeff Neumann / Showtime

The best thing Billions has done was to introduce a nonbinary character in its second season. That’s not just because casting the nonbinary actor Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor Mason — a brilliant analyst who strides into Axe’s office, informs him of their preferred pronouns, and proceeds to impress him so much that he coaxes them out of their plans to head to academia with offers of a hefty paycheck and mentorship — is a milestone of representation. It is, as is the conversation that Dillon went on to lead about actor/actress awards categories. But Taylor has also crystallized the themes of gender and power that the show had previously been circling less certainly. The transformation of Taylor from an intriguing side character at the start of Season 2 to a central series regular in Season 3 is the saga of Billions finally clicking together, like a dance troupe finally nailing its choreography.

Billions is not exclusively a show about men, but it is shaped by masculinity to the extent that most of its women — formidable, brainy, tough — are seen through the ways they’ve had to learn how to navigate the expectations and biases of men. They shield themselves when needed, soften their edges when it’s advantageous, and contend with being seen as sexual objects. Characters like Wendy, who can effortlessly hamstring a heckler with a precise observation about the source of his insecurities, or Assistant US Attorney Kate Sacker (Condola Rashād), whose guardedness when talking about the depths of her convictions speaks to an awareness that they could get her labeled as too emotional to get the job done, have had to get used to being one of the few women in the room. Wendy’s storyline has been explicitly about those challenges, about being Chuck’s romantic partner and Axe’s professional one, and contending with how much trouble they have accepting that she can do both.

Taylor’s experience is by no means easier than that of the women on the show (“You skinny fucking freak!” a finance bigshot spits at them at one point), but it’s different, in that so many of their colleagues are confounded about what biases to bring to bear. No one at work has context for Taylor. In their first appearance, Taylor teases another trader about assuming they’re a vegan, letting him sputter before dryly saying, “Of course I’m a vegan.” Taylor, with their shorn head, neutral dress, and intense eye contact, is cerebral and straightforward instead of gut-driven and posturing, concerned about their carbon footprint, and uneasy with conspicuous consumption — all qualities that put them at odds with everyone around them at the office. At first, that made it seem like they were going to get saddled with being Axe Capital’s conscience — that frequent burden of the outsider, to have to serve as a morally pure buzzkill.

Taylor and Mafee (Dan Soder) in “Dead Cat Bounce.”

Jeff Neumann / Showtime

Instead, Taylor becomes the company’s star, then Axe’s unexpected chosen successor, carving out a path for themselves as someone for whom strength is not bound up in performing masculinity or displays of aggression. Taylor was clearly initially introduced to be a foil for Axe, to demonstrate that, despite how chest-thumpy the office culture around him is, Axe himself is capable of seeing talent whether it comes in a form he’s accustomed to or not. But since then, Axe has in many ways been transformed into a foil for Taylor. He is an adviser who keeps trying to pass along his worst qualities as well as his best ones, because he doesn’t see them that way, even as his skirmishes with Chuck end up making him an exile from his own fund.

“You know the rider in the bicycle movie who, just when he has victory in sight, takes his hands off the bars and just holds them out like this, taking in the sun, gliding, letting all the other racers whiz by him just because?” Taylor asks Axe this in the Alex Gibney–directed episode “Optimal Play” in the second season, when Axe approaches them about representing the company in a Wall Street charity poker tournament called, honest to god, the Alpha Cup. “I always want to be that biker,” Taylor says. Despite their disinterest in that sort of competition, Taylor of course gets roped into playing and wins, taking down a taunting opponent whose rage makes him transparent.

It’s an exhilarating moment underscored with unease, as their colleagues slap them on the back and cuff their head affectionately, rewarding them with “one of us” gestures of acceptance they weren’t seeking out. Taylor understands that knowing you can win, and then opting not to bother, is actually a bigger power move than needing to constantly destroy all rivals. They even put it in language the Axe Capital community should understand: “The whole ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ thing, it wasn’t for me.”

Axe in “The Wrong Maria Gonzalez.”

Jeff Neumann / Showtime

The motif of fathers and their (literal or figurative) children has become a throughline in the third season of Billions, and another way for the series to explore gender and power. Taylor, in becoming the heir to Axe’s throne, has had to contend with their mentor’s unwillingness to cede control of his kingdom. Axe turns up at the office, which is full of employees he’s forbidden from interacting with, to show that it’s still his territory, a compulsive flaunting of strength that mostly just undermines Taylor’s still-new leadership role. There’s a sense that he can’t resist wanting to compete with Taylor, even if it means competing with his own company — to prove, even if only to himself, that he’s still the best. As is the case with his war with Chuck, Axe just can’t help himself.

While Taylor and Axe settle on a mutually agreeable detente, a more perverse reconciliation is achieved in the parallel storyline of Chuck and his actual father, Charles (Jeffrey DeMunn), a New York real estate tycoon. Charles’ desire to further a family dynasty wars with his contempt for what he perceives as weakness in his son, and he is a great believer in manly posturing, in ways that his son is at least conflicted about. Billions is, on the sexposition-happy scale of cable dramas, relatively restrained with displays of sex and nudity. So it’s telling that in Sunday’s episode, “A Generation Too Late,” the writers allow DeMunn a moment in the buff when Charles shucks his robe to dismiss a man who tries to corner him outside a steam room for an unwanted conversation — full-frontal as a power move.

In the previous episode, Charles scornfully lectures Chuck about trying to repair their relationship with a sentimental speech, as they stand outside an alumni event on a campus Charles describes as “the site of my greatest conquests.” He points to a dorm and announces, “I fucked three girls in there once in a 24-hour period — one in the can.” Charles is a hidebound, amusingly loathsome creation, and last night’s installment ended with a particularly grim punchline about just what it takes for Chuck to secure affirmation from his father. All Chuck needed to do is to screw his dad over and force his hand. “I’m proud of you, son — you fucked me good,” the older man says, in the first expression of pride toward his son since young Chuck lost his virginity to a sex worker of his dad’s choosing at age 14.

Chuck and Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) at the start of Season 2.

Showtime

Billions can be cartoonish, and if the past year has underscored anything, it’s that the IRL worlds of finance and politics sure can be, too. But the fictionality of Billions provides enough distance that there’s a strange sense of comfort to be had from the series. Watching actual world leaders conduct their own dick-measuring contest on a nuclear scale is terrifying, because we exist at the mercy of their decisions, and we have to live with the consequences. Watching Axe and Chuck sneer at each other in the plush spaces the show rarely strays from, we’re freed up to consider the sad absurdity of these tendencies. These men are so inured to competition and a desire to prove their dominance that they work against their own best interests and those of their successors.

The series doesn’t pander by suggesting that its non-male characters are either better or more compassionate than men — both Taylor and Lara, for instance, advocate for financially gutting a small town whose debt Axe purchases. But the show does end up portraying stereotypical masculinity as a trap that its main characters can’t find their way out of. That masculinity is a vulnerability that they have internalized as strength, even if these same characters still hold most of the power. They may be smart men, but they can be baited into doing some very dumb things for the sake of their pride and the need to demonstrate their prowess. And that’s a hell of a lot more fun to watch unfold on scripted television than it is on cable news. ●