#pro life shitheels

[beautiful-monsters-raging]

hi there

Hi, you might know me as @this-world-of-beautiful-monsters. I wanted an abortion-centered space separate from my main blog, so I'm attempting to raise awareness and collect resource re the current choice crisis here.

I respect all pregnant people, regardless of gender, and terfs can go straight back to hell. "Uterus" does not equal "female" and people who refuse to accept this are making things worse in a situation that is already very bad. I have preemptively blocked both "terf" and "radfem" tags in the interest of supporting vulnerable communities. I will be posting resources related to the current crisis, along with access to pro-choice art and stories across Tumblr. I'm also going to be reaching out to some of the people who followed me as monsters to see if anyone wants to submit any material or boost any posts.

I'm blocking the "pro life," "pro-life" "pro-life," and "prolife christian" tag and I'm encouraging everyone else to do the same. There's no sense in wading into that filth. If I find someone who has violated the tag, I'll mention it here, with proof, and encouraging everyone to block.

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

“PRO-LIFE” FORCED BIRTHERS CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES

Thank you, that is all.

[hussyknee]

Really struggling with self-hate. Intellectually I know this is due to anxiety and stress, and the past month has been pure chaos trying to look after Garfield.

Garfield is my neighbor's cat. Well, not anymore. He's mine now. He was sick as shit and they still weren't looking after him properly, hand-wringing over everything from lack of experience with cats to the fuel crisis. Certainly were quite happy to palm him off on me, because "he's not really ours, you know, he's a stray that found us a few years ago and the kid got fond of him". By the time I got him to the vet he was half-dead from...well, everything. He had cat flu, filaria, a tick fever that had burned through so many red blood cells it couldn't raise a temperature anymore, kidney damage and so dehydrated the needle could barely pierce his skin. I have no idea how he's alive. Well, I do, it's because he's a very tenacious little kitty and I took him to the clinic every day for a week for IVs, and kept him in my room and nursed him till I exhausted myself into an IBD flare. He relapsed twice. Then last week he seemed to have recovered enough that I was the sicker one, but then this week he started getting acute kidney failure, so we're back at the daily vet treatments.

I raised money for him on Twitter and some wonderful people sent enough to cover his medical bills, but the transport and food costs alone burned through all my money. I've been too exhausted and stressed to track my expenses or do my accounts, I flat broke by the beginning of the week and have had to ask my therapist for pro bono sessions from her clinic.

She's been a godsend, being a cat-lover herself, but also I might have alarmed her somewhat. Like, the whole reason I sought her out was because. Well, it was a last ditch effort really. The country situation and me going off my ADHD meds last month because I couldn't afford them didn't help (uh, protip: do not do that. Even if they're non-stimulants, like mine), but at one point I had made up my mind that if Garfield died it would be A Sign from the universe. Also when she asked me to check myself into a hospital if I felt like I couldn't trust myself, I was puzzled and said "why would I kill myself on impulse, it'll take weeks to get everything together if I was going to, I don't want to end up a vegetable". Which wasn't reassuring apparently? Neither was "Anyway, I can't top myself, Garfield is still sick." 😬

I'm still not sure what was so off about those responses, they still make sense to me. But my therapist wanted to set up a protocol and figure out avenues of physical support. Unfortunately, my family is estranged, only 3 of my closest friends live anywhere near me, and they're all also up shit creek. One of their mothers died a few days ago and I still haven't been able to visit. She's been so understanding and sweet about it, but when I tell you I feel like a shitheel.

I just. I don't know anymore. Gar's eating and drinking and the only outward sign that he's sick is the increased lethargy and sneezing. But his respiratory infection just isn't going away. As long as that persists, his kidneys can't get better, but giving him antibiotics for so long isn't doing them any favours either.

I'm using up all my energy caring for him but I don't see an end to it. My neighbors haven't been answering my messages, and anyway I'm damned if I trust them to look after him again. I tried so hard to find a caregiver for him while I was sick earlier this month, the tweeps sent even more money to offer one, but I couldn't.

In many wayos, caring for Garfield saved me from the black pit of despair I fell into after the protests unravelled. But now I feel so trapped. I haven't seen my doggos (they're with my ex) since June. I miss my other kitty cat (he's Mum's, but again I'm the only one who does more than coo at him). I miss having a life. My room and bathroom stink, and everything is chaos. I haven't sat down at my own desk in a month. And I'm still so scared this will all be for nothing and he'll die. I'm scared I'll have to make the choice to let him go. I refused to give up on my baby doggo boy two years ago, and as a result, instead of going peacefully in his sleep, I had to watch him go into acidosis and listen to his death rattle for an hour before the vet could get to us and sedate him through the final stretch. I will never let my selfishness do that to another animal. But I don't know if I'll survive having to let Gar slip away in my arms, after all these weeks of listening to his every breath. That still feels like it would be the tipping point.

I can't shake the idea that he would have recovered so much better and faster in someone else's hands. Someone healthy and abled and competent. Someone whose best efforts aren't so poor, pitiful and inadequate as mine. Everyone in my life deserves so much better than me.

[dukeofriven]

Frisk on the Road to Damascus: A Pseudo-Essay on Converting to Undertale

So 664 days after it was released, and 382 days after I purchased it, I finally, finally, finally beat Undertale.

And... I loved it. Controversial opinion: it’s really good.

But it took me a while to love it. Let me explain, because I’m sure y’all are super interested in me doing so.

I had about five false starts playing Undertale, and all five of those false starts was how fucking irritating I found the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue. I have a hypersensitivity to sound, especially frequencies, and the sound of Flowey and Toriel’s dialogue is... not pleasant, especially at first aural blush. I got used to it when it when I finally powered through it, but if there were any major changes I would make to Undertale it would be better sound controls - being able to cut the audio down on the dialogue by even 25% would make a big difference to it on an accessibility ability level* ** It was Undertale that first ‘inspired’ me to get Tumblr Saviour - first because I didn’t want to be spoiled by a game I heard was good and wanted to play relatively unspoiled, and later because  I didn’t want to be reminded of the game I was having so much trouble with.

What was it that made me pick up Undertale long enough to get through it? As usual, it was podcasts (there’s a small paper to be written on how podcasts got me interested in pro wrestling, but that’s a whole other story.) The superlatively good Let Me Tell You About Homestuck podcast relaunched a little over a year back (shoutout to excellent co-hosts @yuri-librarian and @betgirl ), and when I found out I dived back in, and in the process rediscovered my love of Homestuck. Homestuck and I had a falling out during the gigapause and Homosuck - at the time it felt like the webcomic’s author was pissed at his own comic and actively self-sabotaging it, and even though I caught up with the comic before the ending I was still disgruntled with it and not willing to engage with it much.

But listening to LMTYAH re-ignited fandom joy within me - a euphoric Road-To-Damascus re-conversion I can only describe as ‘George Bailey coming back to existence at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life.' I gleefully snatched-up the pesterlogs and clutched them to my chest. I waved cheerfully at [S] Descend and [S] Cascade. “Merry Christmas you old mspaintadventures!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as I pelted through the snow to hug my beloved Beta Kid family again.***

You can’t discuss Homestuck anymore without discussing Undertale, which was so clearly fed by Homestuck, which was in turn fed by Undertale, because media is an incestuous slurry. Part of the issues with coming back to the Homestuck dialectic table is that you can’t ignore that big ol’ bowl of Undertale sitting between the roasted trans-media experiments and the mashed potatoes. If, every time that bowl gets passed around, you put your hands over your ears and and scram ‘LA LA LA LA LA I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT’ then the other guests are going to look at you funny and your nearest neighbour is going to conclude that they’d rather sit through that pompous lecture by the vegan on the other side of them after all.

It’s not a great dining experience, is what I am trying to explain with this increasingly overcooked analogy. I wanted to eat with the rest of the guests - I wanted to watch @revolutionaryduelist’s video on Undertale themes and Homesick themes. I want to suck it up, be an adult, and eat like a goddamn grown-up.

So I grit my teeth, grabbed the bowl, and started shovelling large spoonfuls down my throat. I think this is how grown-ups eat right?

I didn’t like the taste at first. What brought me to Undertax more than anything was the idea of the pacifist run. The games that have this as a legit option are few and far between, and some of them (e.g. Dishonoured) get downright nasty about it. Undertake wasn’t nasty about being helpful, but it didn’t make it easy, either.

Some of you may  feel the need to note that ‘the pacifist route isn’t supposed to be easy,’ to which my response would be ‘shove it up your bum you git-gud wankeroos.’ There are two types of ‘hard’ in video games - one of challenge, and one of ability. The excellent puzzle game The Witness doesn’t greatly challenge ability (for sighted people, at least) - by and large almost all of its puzzles just involve drawing a line. The Witness is hard because the puzzle are so tortuously, mind-bindingly challenging. By contrast, a platform like VVVVVV doesn’t preset much mental challenge - it barely has anything like a puzzle that I can remember, but in terms of ability it requires lightening-fast reflexes and great timing (Somehow I beat that game -I still don’t know how).

Undertale is not a hard-challenge game, it is a hard-ability game, and I flat-out suck at its bullet hell mechanics. All my frustrations with the game were met at the bullet board - if I could make one other major change to the game it would be slightly improving the speed of the heart cursor. Time and time again I violently cursed because I had just missed getting out of the way of something with a cursor I found sluggish and unresponsive, as though my keyboard was laggy. A poor skill level coupled with what felt like hardware problems made for an increasingly difficult experience, one in which I felt like the game was almost taunting me: “oh, you want to be a good person, huh? Too bad - you lack the skills to be a good person. You’re not going to get through this without resorting to killing, you intrinsically violent, terrible person."

Staying alive through the confrontation with Undyne drained me, and by the time I was on my second iteration of Mettaton being a shitheel I just felt burned-out. The story still felt pretty flat, and wasn’t really drawing me in. The hardest decision I had had to make was at the very beginning of the game - Toriel’s home, and Toriel herself, were so lovely and sweet that I still resented the game for making me have to break her heart. I didn’t want to leave her house, I just wanted to stay and live a nice life with her in the Underground. But no - the game wanted me to have  heroic destiny and shit so fine, guess i’ll go back to the surface I don’t have much interest in seeing. Since leaving Toriel’s house all I had wanted to do was return to that tranquility and warmth, and instead I just got more monsters trying to kill me. The stuff with Papyrus had been very funny, but the game still wasn’t sinking its claws into me - it was a quirky but light RPG, funny, but not funny or deep enough for me to understand why a big bowl of it was sitting at the Homestuck dialectic table other that Toby Fox had worked on both things - which seemed like a weak reason to include it. (Remember the Homestuck dialectic table? That didn’t stop being a thing or anything)

So I walked away again and did other things over several weeks, possibly months. I finally came to terms with the fact that my vision is permanently damaged and got myself a Kindle so I could read again. I read a book on the Apollo programme and took another crack at Bleak House. I watched an episode or two of Lucha Underground, got caught up on The Adventure Zone, and went through every post ever posted on @revolutionaryduelist’s Tumblr. I fantasized about buying a new computer. I told myself to watch the Little Witch Academia TV series and forgot every single time - and so on.

And then I watched Car Boys.

Car Boys is one hell of a ride, no pun intended, a strange mishmash of video game fault testing and emergent meta narrative that ends up surprisingly emotional and affecting - and as the credits rolled I made the always unwise decision to wander down into the Youtube comments, where I discovered the fun ‘Car Boys is just like Homestuck’ argument which, natch, led me back to thinking about Homesick and Video Games - and, ultimately, Undertale.

“Fine,” I told myself, “I guess I’ll beat it, at least to finally have one thing in my over-glutted Steam Library I have actually seen-through to completion.”

So last night I booted up my Steam, made the conscious decision to stop trying to get my just-bought 360 controller to work with Sonic Adventures DX via wine (it keeps crashing), and booted up Undertale.

For a while it was just fine again. I don’t like Alphys, even after beating the game: she reminds me of a lot of shitty people I’ve known in my life, and the story uses her lack of self-confidence as sort of a moé defence - ah, look at how cute she is, isn’t that adorable, she feels bad about what she’s done - without ever actually examining that behaviour in any critical detail. Alphys being an adorkable anime fan and her relationship with Undyne are all great character traits - but it doesn’t make her a good person, and the game never truly calls her to the mat in much the same way that it sort of glosses over Asgore having condoned the murder of six other humans (but he comes into the story so late I find him less of a character and more of a symbol.) Alphys gets a whole ‘trip to the dump/romance role-play’ subplot after being revealed to have deliberately ordered a bunch of monsters to at least make a pretence of killing you in order to make herself look like a hero - and that's before you get to go into her basement and learn the really shitty shit she did with dying monsters' souls. I mean Jesus Christ Alphys how come nobody calls you on this!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I helped Mettaton’s ratings, left him to be patched upped by Alphys, and made my way to the castle walls - and the writing started to get really good. I loved meeting with Sans and his talk about the true nature of EXP and LOVE, loved walking into the throne room for the first time, loved the moment when I realized Toriel was the Queen-in-Exile - coming upon the New House was genuinely moving… but then I reached Ashore, and it wouldn’t let me TALK to him, and I didn’t like having to fight him after a full pacifist run, and also he was really hard.

So I swallowed my pride a little and googled vague hints for ways to make the fight easier. I learned that yeah, I absolutely had to fight him, and then I went and ground Cloud Glasses back and forth to the Temmie Store to unlock the Temmie Armor and earn the cash to stock-up on my beloved Bisicles. So equipped, I went and fought Asgore for the final time, thus beating this game that everyone raved about for reasons I could not understand.

Then the game ended and suddenly started to get really, really, really good. Much like Homestuck in Act 6, Undertale’s starts pushing the boundaries of games themselves, using save files against you and deliberately crashing the game. Omega Flowey is a goddamn nightmare, a visual headache who rails against you and the concept of friendship, and while he was a frustrating fight for the first time I felt like this was less a reflection of my shitty skills and more a deliberate choice of the part of the game to show what monstrous power he wielded.

As I was sent back into the world, I was eager to go find Undyne. I had to look-up where she lived because I had totally forgotten that her house existed - in fact, I had forgotten Papyrus had ever said anything about meeting up at Undyne’s house, so I never befriended her in my original run. The moment Undertale moved from a game I was starting to enjoy to one I knew I loved was the moment Papyrus leapt out Undyne’s window - late in the process to fall in love with a game? Perhaps, but so it was.

Missing Undone the first time through felt so narratively satisfying to me that it wasn’t until writing this that it occurred to me that it was something that didn’t have to have been missed - the run-in with Undone hardly ends on a high-note: after a miserable shield-fight and a whole lot of fleeing you give her a cup of water and she slinks-off into the night. It wasn’t something that exactly screamed ‘She’s Ready For A Friendship Lesson.’ I kept expecting her to show back up somewhere in New Home Castle for Round 2: Redemption Boogaloo, but it never happened. Then Sans got Anubis on my ass, the King of All Monsters got murdered by a flower and my game crashed on purpose - sort of forgot about her no-show appearance.

So there we were: breaking windows, sipping tea, making the worst goddamn spaghetti it’s ever been my misfortune to make**** and having a wonderful time. Other than my general misgivings about Alphys being let-off way too lightly by the narrative*****, after that first reset Undertale was practically a perfect game for me. The ending made me feel mushy and sappy, the epilogue where you get to pace around and talk to just about everyone felt so unbelievably RIGHT - if you want to head out and make one last personal connection with everyone you’ve ever met, you can pretty-much do that. Ben Croshaw wrote quite elegantly that Undertale represents “the triumph of kindness, reminding people of who they were before tragedy twisted them.”****** That kindness is what makes the game so compelling - what makes reading-up on the Genocide route feel so legitimately horrific and transgressive. It’s going to stick in the back of my mind every time I am needlessly rude to someone, overly sarcastic, or just my usual ‘less kind than I wish I was’ self. Homestuck wallets just went on sale today and I immediately bought one and then felt bad for all the Tumblr posts I saw for worthy causes - I SHOULD GIVE UP ALL MY WORLDLY POSSESSIONS TO THE POOR AND GO PREACH THE GOSPEL OF ACTING WITH MERCY as Undertale teaches.

It’s the kindness that will stick with me - and dear God, reading about the Genocide routes makes me nauseated. I’m the guy who claims that this time his Mass Effect play through will be Renegade and then goes 100% paragon again except for being rude to Anderson (because screw that dill weed - oh, geeze, I have failed Undertale again.)

Anyways, long, convoluted, not-very-coherent opinion: Undertale is a good game. Sorry it took me so long to learn that.

*but if we’re going to talk about accessibility in video games we’ll be here all year: an especially big fuck you to all those games who don’t let you change the font size for all of us with really poor eyesight (which is to say essentially all games).

** And what is it with games being embarrassed to have their text dialogue scroll past without some kind of irritating sounds? Undertale at least uses the noise as a form of expanding character identity, but the world is littered with sprite JRPGs who think dialogue is best accompanied by a garbled, repeating beep.

*** Re-experiencing the comic multiple times gave me so many more insights I never used to have. Revisiting Act Six and Homosuck, especially through @betgirl‘s eyes, I found so much to love. Which there is some serious problems in it (The Dancestors and Abuser Gamzee), there’s so much more joy, depth, and thought then I remember. I don’t know if, at the time, with the broken pacing, it was possible to see the shape of the narrative arc that Andrew Hussie was trying to tell - the deconstruction of the nature of storytelling, video games, and the ‘Problem of Mario.’ It’s really good, you guys, and you do yourself a disservice if you have never read it.

**** Undyne is right, by the way: homemade pasta is unquestionably the best and super easy; its only major flaw is that it’s just time-consuming, especially if you’ve got to hand-crank an antique pasta machine to roll it out. KitchenAid sells a pasta roller attachment for their mixer for an amount that justifies a class uprising all on its own.

***** I’m not some weirdo going ALPHYS MUST BE PUNISHED but Alphys should really, you know, actually apologize for the shit she pulled. Yeah, she says ‘I got scared of my amagalgamtions and cowardly didn’t tell their families about it,’ but not being honest about it is the most insignificant issue here. Much more pressing and things like Experimenting On A Human Soul, Actually Making the Amalgams In The First Place, Setting Up A Bunch Of Death Traps So She Could Insert Herself Into Your Life As A Hero. I can forgive Alphys - I think she is a genuinely good person who made misguided and out-right foolish mistakes and should never have had the job she had (I hear Toriel fires her in one ending which fuck yeah Toriel, only one with sense.) Undertake doesn’t need to re-write a damn thing about Alphys - I would just like one more scene in which Alphys admits culpability for the original problem rather than just an aspect of the fallout.

****** And it should be stressed: Alphys deserves kindness (and a good therapist). I don’t want a kangaroo court or anything like that - my issue is with the narrative, not Alphys personally.

Asgore, though… dude kinda murdered six children? Do people talk about that, because they ought to.

[closetofanxiety]

50 wrestling questions

I answer these burning questions here, below the cut:

1. What got you into wrestling?

I don’t really know. I’ve gone through three phases of being a wrestling fan in my life. The earliest was probably just because all the other kids in the neighborhood liked wrestling, and I was a people-pleaser even then, so I wanted to fit in. I remember the older kids like AWA or NWA because they were “real,” while us littl’uns thrilled to the exploits of Hulkster Hogan in the WWF. I like nothing else that I enjoyed as a child, not the movies or the TV shows or the books or whatever, so there was something about wrestling that stuck with me.

2. What is your favorite wrestling promotion?

ECW, if I’m being honest. A lot of that stuff has not held up well, but I got into it at the perfect age, when a lot of my friends were getting into it, and I have very fond memories bound up with ECW. For better and for worse, the most influential American wrestling company of the last 30 years. 

3. Favorite male wrestler of all time?

Gorgeous George, but if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, then Dusty Rhodes. 

4. Favorite female wrestler of all time?

The Fabulous Moo- no. I don’t know. I don’t have the background in Japanese grappling that would allow me to make an informed answer here. Women’s wrestling in the USA was pretty terrible between the mid-1950s and the mid-2000s, and I mostly know American stuff. Let’s say Gail Kim, though.

5. Favorite current male wrestler?

Joey Janela

6. Favorite current female wrestler?

Su Yung, obvs

7. Favorite theme song?

"Psycho Killer,” when that was Ciampa’s theme song. One of my favorite wrestling memories is Americanrana ‘16, when the PA system died and the crowd sang the song a capella for his entrance. If we’re talking songs written specifically as wrestling entrance music, then Steve Austin’s music. With Shawn Michael’s “Sexy Sexy Boy Ooh La La” or whatever it’s called as a close second. That song makes me laugh every time I hear it.

8. Least favorite theme song?

I hated Ballz Mahoney’s ECW theme song, it just encouraged the worst meathead elements of the crowd, and it always heralded a crummy match. For wrestling-specific theme songs, Lana’s, while new, is almost unbelievably shitty. It’s like incidental music from an episode of “Night Court” where they go to a jazz club.

9. Favorite gimmick?

Gorgeous George, which is still being imitated to this day. Again, if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, the Road Warriors. They were almost 100 percent gimmick, and they were massive stars for years. They were the only non-WWF guys us WWF-loving kids would buy action figures for, because their look was so good.

10. Least favorite gimmick?

It’s hard to choose from all the racist and gay-hating gimmicks that have been used over the years. By sullying the image of the immortal Prince Rogers Nelson, fucking Velveteen Dream is making an impressive run for this designation right now.

11. Best entrance (either their usual entrance or a special one, like a Wrestlemania entrance)?

Again, Gorgeous George had the best entrance of all time, it was 70 percent of his act and it made him a fortune, and everyone has copied it since. In terms of more recent stuff, I liked the Sandman’s entrance. It was 90 percent of his act. Pretty much everything Sandman did except his entrance was so-so to terrible, if we’re being honest.

12. Best Undertaker Wrestlemania match?

The one where he got his ass beat by the savage god Roman Reigns

13. Most overrated?

The Undertaker. I acknowledge that he made a massive, unthinkable success out of a truly ludicrous, sub-Memphian gimmick, but he was never a real draw, and I was never a big fan of his at any point in his career. Maybe no one in WWE history benefited more from protective booking, where he was always billed as an unstoppable, supernatural monster even when he had a mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to be a motorcycle man instead. 

14. Most underrated?

Pretty much anyone who had their entire careers, or the bulk of their careers, prior to the 1980s and the attendant explosion in wrestling’s popularity. It’s hard to properly rate someone like Nick Bockwinkel, when so much of his best work was done in the 1970s, let alone Gorgeous George or Buddy Rogers. Of guys since then, I’ll say Ted DiBiase, who is fixed in the public mind as the cackling rich guy caricature, but who was a phenomenally talented wrestler who could effortlessly pull off being a charismatic babyface or a cheating, despicable shitheel. Ted’s Mid-South run is amazingly good stuff.

15. Have you ever been to an event? If so, which one?

I have been to many pro wrestling shows. Last year I averaged three per month, which is, I’ll have you know, Too Much Wrestling Shows. My mother took me to my very first one, and since she died when I was five, I must have been very young indeed. I remember almost nothing about it, except that Bob Backlund was there.

Since then, I’ve been to a lot of ECW shows, including the 2000 Living Dangerously PPV with the famously hideous New Jack scaffold bump; many WWE shows, ranging from Raw and Smackdown episodes to house shows to Backlash 2003, where Goldberg met the Rock in the ring FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE; and lots and lots of indie shows, which are my favorite. I’ve sort of limited my show-going this year to Beyond Wrestling, Blitzkrieg Pro, and Northeast Wrestling, and I don’t go to all of their shows. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I used to go to shows with big crews of friends, but these days it’s usually me and one or two other people, or sometimes just me. It turns out most people my age are not down to drive to West Warwick, R.I. to see Zack Sabre Jr vs. JT Dunn! I enjoy it, though, it’s been a nice thing to have in my life at a time when there isn’t much else going on.

16. Who has the best merch?

The Young Bucks have something for every aesthetic.

17. Do you own any merch?

Yeah, I mean, too much. T-shirts, 8 x 10s, DVDS, loads of old wrestling magazines. I have a Young Bucks foam “Too Sweet” hand. I have a little plaster sculpture of AJ Lee where she’s a zombie, because WWE Shop was selling it for five dollars. I’m a disgrace, as a grown adult man.

18. Best nickname?

"The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

19. Worst nickname?

I’ve always thought “The Cerebral Assassin” was the dumbest goddamn nickname. Is the assumption here that assassins are typically stupid?

20. Best mic skills?

Bobby Heenan. He could do screaming and angry, he could do calm and menacing, he could do blustering and funny. He had the timing of a professional comedian and the verbal dexterity of the Midwest’s best used car salesman. People hated this man so much that a member of a Chicago crowd shot a pistol at him. 

21. Most annoying?

All-time: The Ultimate Warrior. Currently: Bray Wyatt.

22. Most attractive male?

Roman Reigns. The WWE is leaving money on the table by having him wrestling in a shirt/vest and long pants.

23. Most attractive female?

I really like Hikaru Shida’s complex aesthetic, which combines “hard-hitting Japanese wrestling” with “elaborate theatrical strangeness” and “Hey, check out my ass.” 

24. Favorite faction?

The first two incarnations of the Four Horsemen. If pressed, I prefer the Flair/Arn/Tully/Windham lineup. 

25. Worst faction?

It’s easy to pick one of the five million here-and-gone WWE factions like the Union (ugh) or the Social Outcasts or the League of Nations, but they didn’t really last long enough, or have enough of an impact, to be truly wretched. Same deal with, like, the Aces & Eights: they just stunk up TNA, which was already bad to begin with. The answer is the nWo, from January, 1998 onwards: until that point they had been the most compelling thing about American wrestling, but after that they became a bloated, tedious, airtime-gobbling monstrosity that helped drag WCW down into depths it never recovered from. 

26. Best ring gear?

Su Yung and Penta El Zero Miedo. I like the spooky stuff.

27. Who do you think would be the nicest in real life?

I’ve had very few interactions with wrestlers beyond the standard “Hey, great match, how much is that DVD,” but among those I have had more substantive encounters with, JT Dunn, Swoggle, Gangrel, Su Yung, and Santana Garrett stand out as particularly nice. I’ve also heard people from all walks of life praising Little Guido as the nicest dude around, and universal praise is vanishingly rare in pro wrestling. I like to imagine Kevin Owens is a good egg.

28. Who would be the rudest in real life?

Like anyone else, I’ve Heard Things, but I haven’t had a really bad encounter with a wrestler beyond this one guy who works local indie shows and who is a rude chud in real life. It seems unfathomable to me that Matt Riddle is the kind of person I’d want to share a cab ride to the airport with, but maybe that’s just the strength of his brand working. 

29. Favorite heel?

The Dudley Boys in ECW. I legitimately hated them, and bought tickets in the hopes of seeing them get their asses beaten. 

30. Most hardcore?

I bet the real answer to this is like the answer to the great “Who is the most legit tough guy” question that everyone asks. Like, it’s someone we’d never suspect. It’s not Nick Gage, it’s Eva Marie. That woman has seen some shit that would turn your hair white, I bet. I honestly don’t know the answer to this. Probably a guy in Japan who blew himself up in a volcano. 

31. A wrestler you could beat?

At wrestling? Absolutely none of them. Eva Marie would destroy me, Goldberg style. It’s like sports: the worst fucking guy on the worst fucking NBA team would beat the best pickup player in your town by a hundred points in a one-on-one matchup. Once-a-monthers who have office jobs and still wrestle in singlets and are 30 pounds overweight could put me in a coma without breaking a sweat. But what about ... trivia regarding papal history? Ah, now the worm has turned, Eva Marie! You’re on my turf now.

32. Best story line?

Have to agree with Tape Machines, it’s the Freebirds vs. the Von Erichs 

33. Biggest missed opportunity for a story line?

The WCW Invasion angle didn’t work for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons were probably beyond WWE’s control, but holy shit did they bungle what could have been a gigantic machine that spit out money. 

34. Worst story line?

I can’t pick just one. The 1990s were an absolute golden era of terrible storylines, from Cactus Jack getting amnesia and thinking he was a sea captain to the terrible saga of Katie Vick. I’ll say the Chuck and Billy storyline, because it somehow managed to be insulting to people who had never heard of wrestling in their lives. 

35. Which wrestler should turn heel?

Matt Riddle. I mean, I guess he is a heel, in the sense that his act today is the exact same as it was when he was breaking into the business in 2015 and was hated by indie audiences. He hasn’t done anything differently, but the smug choads from the Internet Wrestling Community have decided he is their savior because they can chant the syllable “bro” in public. 

36. Which wrestler should turn face?

Kevin Owens. I’d love to see what he could do as a fearless asskicker with witheringly sarcastic putdowns on the microphone. 

37. Who would be the worst to room with?

If you’ve ever had close friends or relatives with drug problems, you know the answer to this is Jake Roberts. On a more lighthearted note, sharing an apartment with the Ultimate Warrior would have been a mindbending ordeal, since he was pretty much like that all the time.

38. Who would be the best to room with?

Candice LeRae is a former professional baker, so as a fat guy, I would be very happy to be the person she tests out new cakes and stuff on. But most contemporary wrestlers are people obsessed with the gym, video games, and meal prep, so calibrate your roommate expectations based on those parameters. 

39. Who would be your best friend if you were a wrestler?

I like to imagine it would be Kevin Owens, and I would constantly joke about him betraying me like he always does with best friends, until finally he’d stop responding to my texts. AND THEN I’D KNOW.

40. What would your job be in a wrestling promotion?

I would be styled as “Engagement Director for New & Emerging Media and Content Outreach,” and my job would be taking tickets at the door, applying wristbands to people old enough to drink, and keeping my fucking mouth shut when the wrestlers were hanging around.

41. Favorite wrestling podcast/Youtube channel?

AIW’s “The Card is Going to Change” is the best wrestling podcast in the world. I recommend it to people who don’t even like wrestling, mostly because it’s three dudes telling picaresque tales about restaurants getting trashed and bizarre exploits in northern Ohio. Their recent episode about being paid to put on a show for a child’s 10th birthday is amazing. My favorite wrestling YouTube channel currently is Rassle Reel, which is constantly uploading obscure shit from the 1970s and 1980s.

42. Favorite finisher?

Mr. Perfect’s Perfectplex, a thing of artistic beauty

43. Least favorite finisher?

The Pedigree

44. Favorite match?

Taz vs Sabu at Barely Legal in 1997

45. Favorite PPV?

I’ll always have a soft spot for the first Survivor Series, which is the first PPV I ever watched (we didn’t order it; the neighbors did, and a bunch of us crowded into their den to watch). I don’t know if the first Starrcade was technically a PPV, but that’s one I can watch over and over.

46. Guilty pleasure wrestler?

I don’t like the concept of guilty pleasures, but if we mean which wrestler do I like that some vague critical consensus insists I should hate, I’ll say Honky Tonk Man. 

47. Favorite submission?

THE KATA HA JIME, otherwise known as the Tazmission. 

48. Most entertaining to watch?

Randy Savage

49. Best spot?

Anyone spitting mist into the unsuspecting eyes of their foes 

50. Who do you most respect?

 I respect you, booker man. 

[justanartsysideblog]

Hum a Tune

have some Muppet AU Melarue plotting the takedown of child trafficking rings. Warnings for brief mentions of child abuse. Kass (mention) belongs to @scurvgirl, Agla, Rica, and Lela (mention) belong to @feynites.

---

The anger slowly builds in them, a steady burn on the train ride to Orzammar; they had been in Valammar discussing a business transaction when Kass had called them. And it had brewed, just under their breastbone, throughout their conversation with Agla. But they had tampered it down, like they have done since they’d first learned how to hide their feelings below a veneer of charming indifference.

Agla does not need to see their fury, lest she think it is directed at her. She is afraid, and confused, and Melarue’s anger does not help the situation. They will let it continue to simmer under their skin, stoking it silently until they can unleash it on those who deserve the wrath.

They immediately slip into old ways and old thoughts, when taking a life meant survival and they slept soundly by the end of it all. But this is a different time, Deceit reminds them. A time of law and order and justice—justice, they scoff, justice has never existed, not truly—and they must move within these new parameters to prevent detection.

And so, as soon as they leave Agla and Kassaran in the apartment and head to their own rented vehicle in the parking lot, they dial a number rather than pull out to hunt Beraht down immediately.

Nialas picks up after the third ring, and Melarue can hear raised voices in the background. “Serah Bre’A?” She must be in a public place, to be speaking so formally. Melarue hears the sound of an office door closing, “What’s happened this time? How much paperwork will I need to fill out before the end of the night?”

“That is what I wish to know as well,” Melarue admits. “I am in Orzammar dealing with a…case of largescale child abuse. There is an orphanage that has shown evidence of physical and mental abuse, as well as ties to child trafficking.”

There is a very long pause, and Melarue hears Nialas hiss “Orzammar” under her breath before she clears her throat, “You’ll need to contact the Dwarven Department of Child Services. I can give you the number—what is the orphanage called? I can see if authorities can be sent as well, to help keep the situation under control.”

“It is a casteless orphanage in Dust Town.”

There is a sharp intake of breath, and Melarue counts the seconds that tick by as the silence stretches. That, Melarue supposes, is not a very good sign. Finally Nialas lets out the breath she’s been hold, in a long, heavy sigh, “Damn it all, Melarue. You couldn’t have picked a more problematic situation.”

Melarue taps the steering wheel absently. “Is there a problem?”

“The problem is that they’re casteless, Melarue. My contacts in the Orzammar department couldn’t do anything even if they wanted to and most don’t, the shitheels. I’ve been trying to suggest alternative systems for years, but I don’t have any sway in the Dwarven cities. Usually I am reminded that I should go raid an alienage for some mistreated elvhen children.” The irritation in Nialas’ voice is evident. Melarue must admit that whoever stood up to Nialas and told that to her face was someone with a spine of steel, and also a fool. “I can give you the names of a few people that might be able to tell you more, but there’s no way a Dwarven court is going to take that case seriously. At the most the orphanage owners will have to pay a fine.”

A slap on the wrist, after all they’ve done, because they don’t see those children as people. “What if the information were leaked to the surface?”

“Surface authorities can’t do anything. And you know how it is, Melarue. The humans don’t care about a few dead dwarves anymore than they do elvhen or vashoth ones, and the Chantry is the only power strong enough to even put up a threat. The elves and the vashoth can barely look after their own.”

“So there are no legal means of rectifying this?” Melarue’s voice sounds distant, even to themselves. They’ve already begun planning alternate routes, making paths sprout from imagined scenarios, weighing the pros and cons.

“None that would save those children, no.” Nialas answers, and she sounds frustrated with herself more than anything else.

“Very well.” Their voice is clipped, they know, far colder than Nialas deserves, as she apologizes and Melarue hangs up and stares at the dashboard and the nearly empty parking lot beyond the window shield.

They really had wanted to work within the law, this time.

They dial a second number from memory, and wait. They fear, as the ringing echoes in their ear, that it will go to voicemail, before the line connects, and they hear the static-y shuffle of someone moving, followed by a slightly breathless voice, “Old Mel?”

Melarue hums, “I do believe I’ve changed my phone number since the last time I’ve spoken with you, Serah Cadash.”

“You have,” Maibrit agrees, and seems to decide that’s enough of an answer. “Please tell me there isn’t a crime scene you need me to cover up because I am really busy right now.” There’s a second voice, muffled and soft, barely audible in the background.

“Please give my regards and apologies to your fiancé. The situation demanded I call someone of your talents and knowledge.”

“I didn’t think you cared for astrophysics and engineering, Serah!” Maibrit chirps, “Did you finally decide to help fund my Lesbians in Space project?”

“Unfortunately it is your other talents that I require.”

“Figured,” Maibrit mutters with a sigh. Melarue hears more muffled voices, as Maibrit places her hand on the speaker and speaks with her fiancé Lela, before her voice comes through clear and crisp once more. “Am I finally going to be clear of my debt after this?”

“It would seem that way.” Melarue acknowledges. “How much of a hold do you have over the judicial courts in Orzammar?”

“Did you murder someone in Orzammar?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, not yet, that’s comforting,” Maibrit groans. “Well my grandmother still holds Orzammar. I haven’t been able to get a foothold in, aside from some informants. She has most of the courts under her thumb. Why?”

“How likely would she be in aiding me in dealing with an illegal trafficking ring involving casteless children?”

“You mean disregarding the fact that you helped her heir set up a rival syndicate under her nose and protect said heir’s fiancé? Unlikely,” Maibrit answers readily. “The reason that The Old Nug has managed to keep her hold over the dwarven cities as the only syndicate is because she protects the old ways for them. She doesn’t push the stuffy traditionalists or try and change their laws. She isn’t going to stick her neck out for casteless children, even if Carta doesn’t feel kindly about child trafficking.”

“That is unfortunate,” Melarue agrees, frowning. “That being said, how likely would she be in investigating the…violent dismantling of said trafficking ring?”

“That’s where you’re in luck,” Melarue can almost hear the smile in Maibrit’s voice, “Because even if she won’t help you take them down, she also isn’t going to try very hard to find out who did, even if the Orzammar council asks her to, which they likely won’t. It doesn’t benefit her to waste resources on something she doesn’t care about and they know it just as well as I do.”

Melarue nods, “Do any of your informants know where I could find a dwarven man by the name of Beraht?”

“I’ll look into it.” Maibrit promises. “Anything else?”

“I may find myself in need of a safe place for several dozen casteless children.”

“Lela and I were thinking about adopting but I don’t think we planned on that many,” Maibrit jokes, “I’ll talk with my Orzammar contacts and see if there is a safehouse. We can work from there to get them out of the city.”

“Thank you, Serah Cadash.”

“I’ll send you the information as soon as I get it.” The line goes dead, and Melarue leans back and closes their eyes. So much to do, so little time…the window of opportunity is slipping them by. They need to get to Rica soon.

They know what it is like, that life, and they wish it on no one.

Memories begin to climb out of the depths where they’ve buried them, and they tsk and turn on the engine. No need to remember those unpleasant things, not when they have work to do.

Their phone rings again, and the recognize the number as Nialas’. “Serah Nialas?”

There’s a pause, before Nialas speaks. “Listen there’s…I may know someone on the surface who could take all those children. She owns an orphanage outside of Gwaren. But you’d have to get the children handed over to you and get them there.”

Finally, something pieces are beginning to click into place. “I can pay for transportation from the surface.”

“I’ll call Sylmae and let her know. I’ll message you her number as well. And Melarue?”

“Mm?”

“Make sure you dispose of the bodies properly.”

“I would never break the law, serah,” Melarue drawls.

“Of course.”

Ten minutes later, when they pull out of the parking lot, it’s with a message from Maibrit with the last known location of Beraht and the knowledge that once they’ve plastered the remains of him and the orphanage owners on the walls, they’ll have a safe place to take the children.

They begin to hum a tune.

It’s been a while since they’ve had a chance to let Deceit stretch its legs.

I agree, Deceit laughs, and the sound is not kind.

Melarue hums a little louder.

[spacequeenemily-blog]

on On-Line

i love On-Line. it's a good place to be me without the baggage of real life. it lets me network with people that are miles and miles away. on the internet i can assume my preferred identity and persona without judgement. i can meet people as Emily and the friends i make think no less of me for being a woman. there are people who have no idea what my birth name is and that's a wonderful feeling. you can get so much insight from other people's lived experiences. so long as you seek them out, you can organically engage with many differing viewpoints and issues you had no idea existed. a big trend i've noticed is an openness about mental health, on which millennial and gen z tend to be much more open and honest about due to the stigma behind it slowly but surely receding. there are pros and cons to this, but i'll save that for another day.

what i wanna talk about is why the internet and social media can be such an absolute drain. early 00s era posting garnered a reputation of Being Weird And Funny. more often than not, in communities, comedy was the be all end all. the early internet largely being nameless and faceless (an almost foreign world compared to today when one's online identity and "real life" identity are one in the same) predicated a large portion of its humor to making jokes about other people. not always malicious, but it did set a precedent. just like public school, you could become popular by putting someone down. Look At Me, I Am So Smart And Clever, I Have Obliterated This Fool. you dunk on a nerd by quote-retweeting them with some pithy joke, and the engagements roll in. the dopamine releases and you feel good that you were noticed. the issues with this are pretty apparent, but the real death knell for me is how this is weaponized in today's internet culture as a whole.

the correct way to deal with a bigot, someone acting in bad faith, etc. (read Nazi) is to refute their very existence. america's political climate for decades has been a shit-eating tepid centrist farce where all the supposed liberals can do is tut-tut and proclaim their moral superiority against a party that is deeply rooted in white supremacy and is gleeful evil. Nazis don't get a platform. unless you're the media, in which case you have to trip all over yourselves and send every reporter you have deep into the mythical Trump Country to prove a bias you already had against southern voters, who of course are the only people who support the monster, certainly not well to do middle class folks everywhere and the ultra rich and privileged. no, the Nazis are The Dapper Alt-Right. they deserve a platform -- after all, ours is a country built on free speech and that means so long as they are polite and follow decorum, they can twist their disgusting weasel mouths into a horrific reasonable-seeming tirade about desiring a white ethnostate and killing the jews who control the country. now it may be wrong, but it's their right, so all we can do is repeat an endless media cycle turning up our nose at them and doing nothing more than give them infinite credibility and a platform for more reactionaries with poisoned brains to join the holy crusade against caricatures of caricatures of falsehoods these buffoons have created because they didn't get to be the center of attention all the time forever. and now they are. hooray.

even self-proclaimed leftists and hashtag resistance dopes are born from the early online. you see a MAGA dipshit spew out some sort of vile 3rd grade understanding of the world and what do you do? well you call them a cockgobbler on a public platform and get Cool Guy Points. aren't you so clever. then, if the MAGA asshat shitheel has a platform (and a truly terrifying number of them do), you've now incited their groupies to spew vile trash at you. "the thought police are silencing good clean american views, and only you can help defend against the goddamn commies who want to burn our freedom to the ground by donating to my patreon." now RationalGamer45 is making an indescribable amount of controversy dollars while good people fail to raise enough on their gofundme to survive another day and die from a lack of insulin. and the onus is on you. don't give these fucks a platform. be better than that.

the worst part is it's not always dipshit MAGA chuds. it's so called liberal columnists and pundits. every two seconds the New York Times hires a bright young fresh new star to provide a unique viewpoint and she ends up being a terf or pals around with Nazis. Kevin Drum publishes another article where he jacks his own superiority off, blasting his credentials all over the idiot poors who are too stupid to order a sandwich at an italian shop. and from 20 different people every few hours, you will see Takes. a veritable sea of Takes from everyone you ever knew and everyone else you never knew. a hell of blue checkmarks going EXCUSE ME, GOOD SIR lasting an eternity. every precious childhood memory i have is slowly being eroded as i remember the names of your Jordan Petersons, BakedAlaskas, Bari Weisses, and a whole sea of others who dominate the moment because instead of giving them no platform, we instead dedicate days, even weeks, to making them The Discourse. it's enough to break a person. i know i've been broken by it. there's a reason the common refrain is something like "this hellsite has broken everyone's brains."

[beautiful-monsters-raging]

This might seem redundant, but I'm asking everyone to please consider blocking @pro-birth, @life-advocate-feminist, and @prolifeproliberty who have posted prolife content with using proper tagging.

Also, PLEASE block @shadowfromthestarlight who not only posts prolife content, but doesn't even mention this stance in their URL.

[beautiful-monsters-raging]

A site centered around false abortion clinics in the New York area. To encourage boosting, I'm going to take it in all the major NYC-centric fandoms I can think of.

[beautiful-monsters-raging]

I am asking everyone to please block @birthright-victoria, a crisis pregnancy center who has posted on the internet, but failed to tag as "pro-life." Also, please consider blocking @iamfitzwilliamdarcy , who has shilled for crisis pregnancy centers and other forced birther organizations without tagging pro-life.