#('ISN'T JANUARY 2020 LIKE TWO MONTHS AWAY NOW ?????')

[letstalkwhump]

Let's Talk Whump

Welcome to Let’s Talk Whump, a series of interviews that spotlight the amazing people in our whump community. I’m Malice and I’ll be your host. 

Joining us today is the fabulous @ashintheairlikesnow!

It’s great to have you here, Ash! Let’s kick this interview off with a fact or two about yourself!

Hi! I go by Ash, I am an ageless elder crone, and my life is built around the whims of an old dog and a very young cat. My primary hobby is reading, and I especially get lost in books on cults and new religious movements, World War I, and vampires.

What does whump mean to you? 

To me, whump is physical, mental, and emotional suffering. What causes that suffering can be any one of a number of things, and any of them might be what fascinates about the story. 

But it's whump when someone hurts.

And how did you find the whump community? What made you want to join?

I had gone through a tumultuous few months in 2019, including being laid off. I was reading and writing in-between frantically applying and interviewing for new jobs, and somewhere in there I stumbled back onto Tumblr after a long… long… hiatus. 

In August of 2019 I did a fanfiction writing challenge and the prompt for day 11 was 'whump'. A friend of mine had to explain to me what the word even meant, which is when I realized there was a whole subgenre dedicated to my favorite thing to write! After that, I started following some blogs with whump in their name and shortly after, took a chance on posting some writing, too. 

2019 you say, and yet I would affectionately swear you’ve been around the whump community forever! Do you think  your view on whump changed since you joined? 

Definitely! I was more timid when it came to what I would or wouldn't write out in detail early on. Eventually I gained confidence and started including things that delved into full horror, where before I wasn't sure how it would be received. 

I think I have come to appreciate a ton of tropes that didn't really speak to me or that I struggled with at first! Finding certain writers that really did a great job with them helped me get over that.

ANd now for the best bit; Let’s talk whump tropes! Do you have a few particular faves?

Noncon and recovery from it - one of my favorite things about whump isn't even the harm but the way a character recovers from it, and noncon can be a violation of physical self, identity, everything. So I enjoy the noncon but also watching someone rebuild themself afterward. 

Trauma recovery - on a related note. Most of my stories really focus heavily not on the worst of times, but in what comes after. How do you find yourself again when everything about you was erased? Or beaten, or broken? Resilience is essential in my work. 

BBU - I started writing at the beginning of the BBU taking off in early 2020 - I think my first Kauri piece was written in January 2020 actually. I love world building and dystopian fiction, so I never stop finding new awful details about the BBU to bring to the light. 

Creepy/intimate whumpers - Whumpers that get under your skin without necessarily treading into noncon territory. Think like @comfy-whumpee's Alistair, a master of overwhelming, awful affection and the power of control. Or @for-the-love-of-angst's Zever, a father-figure to OC Taron turned captor. 

Shades of gray - whumpees who weren't the good guys, but who have been forced to struggle and suffer. I like writing, and reading, imperfect people who are trying to make themselves better than they've been, or bad people who have their reasons who run into someone they can't get away from. 

Hype time! Do you have a few pieces of your favourite work that you’d like to share?

This is so hard! Oh my gosh. I need to think about this. 

Haunted - a Kauri piece. The way this one delves into the emptiness of Kauri from someone else's perspective… there are some metaphors in here I am really proud of. 

Blood, Freely Given - a vampire walks into a hospital. God, I love when I get the chance to work in a more horror-centered space. This one is lyrical and I love it.

I’m Here - a boy remembers everything he was made to forget. This was maybe the most intense thing I've written. It is disjointed and chaotic and I adore it.

Oh my god! I am obsessed with Blood, Given Freely’s vibes! Creepy but somehow tugging at my emotions- damn! Do you have a particular writing routine?

My best writing happens in a coffeeshop with a pastry and a latte on hand! I almost always sit down and put on a playlist based on whichever story, then write out a whole piece on two or three hours. Then I spend a day or two editing and cleaning up, then post. 

I used to try to write once or twice a week. Lately that's fallen off to every other week or even less. Life gets busy! But I still write when the mood strikes me. 

And do you find somethings are easier for you to write than others?

I am so so so bad at writing fight scenes or action. It's like pulling teeth! On the other hand, I am pretty good at dialogue, I think. The different voices of different characters come to me fairly easily. 

Can we get a peek behind the curtains and see what your currently working on?

I am half-heartedly trying to get started on a novel that I keep going back and forth on, involving a man looking for a vampire in 1926 upstate New York. But not for the reasons you think.

Actually, maybe exactly for those reasons.

I am definitely enjoying writing horror more often. My OC Finn Schneider's story is pure nightmare fuel, and I find myself thinking about him a lot. 

Do you have a joke or pun you would like to share to spread some smiles today?

When I was in high school, I decided to start telling bad jokes on purpose, as my "thing". To my credit, I kept it up for years. I had jokes I would tell at every party. They were all terrible.

I was surprised that people kept asking me to tell more.

Now I can't remember any of them. 

I mostly run screaming from puns. They are the real monsters here. 

Haha, puns seem to be very popular in the whump community, particularly in our urls! Would you care to share some writing advice with our readers?

My best advice has always been and will always be just to write often. Like any muscle, it gets stronger with exercise, like any skill you get better primarily through practice. Even if you doubt yourself, keep writing. You will look back and be shocked at how you improved even without realizing it over time. 

Try to set aside time to write. It doesn't have to be anything in particular, any one story. Write anything at all. 

Shout-out time for some of the wonderful people on here!

Oooooh it would be such a wildly long list. I will try! Okay, here are just a few:

@albino-whumpee who we recently lost created some incredible whump art from a very personal place. I miss them. 

@wildfaewhump @comfy-whumpee @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @card-games-and-pain @whumpiary @sableflynn @redwingedwhump @whump-it @for-the-love-of-angst @boxboysandotherwhump @whumptywhumpdump @winedark-whump @justplainwhump @just-horrible-things … gosh there are so many!

Finally, is there anything you'd like to add?

The whump community has been an incredible place to make my writing "home". I've met some pretty amazing people on this hellsite! May we all continue to enjoy the suffering of our silly little guys here together! 

Thank you for joining us, Ash. It was an absolute pleasure to have you on the show! 

And to all you fabulous folk at home, have a whump-derful day!

[blubushie]

How did you get over addiction

Through suffering.

It depends on what addiction you're talking about. I've had two: nail-biting and alcohol abuse.

On nail-biting: honestly, it was willpower. I was ashamed of my hands. Around January of this year it got particularly bad and I decided that I didn't want my hands to look like this anymore and so I forced myself to stop biting. Any time I got the urge to bite I'd redirect to something else--I'd smoke, I'd chew gum, I'd keep my hands busy and away from my mouth and my mouth busy as well. I still nibble the skin around my nails rarely, but I'm no longer biting the nails themselves and the skin nibbling isn't noticeable at all. My nails have grown out and while the beds are permanently damaged from 17 years of nail-biting so they'll never reach full strength, I was recently compliment on them (by people who'd never seen my nails before!) and it made my world.

On alcohol: I haven't gotten over this addiction. I still relapse. I've relapsed a total of three times now. However the reason I continue to relapse is because I also continue to drink. I enjoy drinking. It's a bad cycle and one that I have to look at critically. For alcohol, it's not so much as ceasing to drink. This helps some people--some people need full abstinence because that's the only way to ensure they don't relapse--but it doesn't work for me. Full abstinence only makes me want to drink more, which then results in binge-drinking when I finally have access to alcohol.

I only relapse when something is going on in my life. Usually when my depression gets particularly bad and I end up turning to alcohol to cope. In the time I was a full-fledged alcoholic (Apr 2020 to Aug 2020), I was a functional one. People wouldn't look at me and think I'm an alcoholic. It was at the end of the day when I was alone that I would overindulge and get drunk. And unlike nail-biting, I can't redirect my longing for alcohol. It's always there at the back-brain somewhere (this is probably due to me never quitting alcohol completely). It's more just a matter of ignoring it to the best of my ability.

My first relapse was in winter of 2022 and what got me out of it was a heart-to-heart with god. Sounds cheesy but it worked. I weaned myself off my physical dependence and made a rule that for the next few months I would only drink with supervision and whoever I was drinking with would cut me off after a certain point. This worked and eventually I was able to drink responsibly without supervision without overindulging. Withdrawals were fucking hell.

Second relapse was July of this year. I got some bad news that hit me like a brick, withdrew from everyone, and turned to alcohol while I got my shit together. I wasn't so heavily drinking that I had severe withdrawals but I did have the shakes for a few days. I came out of the relapse because I had shit to do that I couldn't do as an alcoholic, even a functional one. I needed my head on straight.

Third relapse was August of this year (honestly it was only part 2 of the second one, brought on by constant stress) and that one I came out of also by force of will. I stopped drinking, my dad helped me lock up all the booze in the house and in Matilda, and I went through terrible withdrawals for about four days. I'm still drinking but I'm now on an agreement with someone near and dear to me plus my father that I'm only allowed to drink and get pissed on the weekends and I can't drink at all during the week except a single beer a day, but I haven't even been drinking that daily beer. It's been working well for me and has made a good reward system for my abstinence during the weekdays.

But in the case of nail-biting and the first time I stopped being an alcoholic, the thing that spurred me to finally get my shit together was shame. I'd always been ashamed of my hands but something happened one day, I'm not sure what--I think I was high as balls and spent too much time looking at my hands--and I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to be like this anymore. So I forced myself to stop. And there were relapses. But I got there eventually.

With the alcoholism, it was external shame. I can handle sympathy. I hate pity. I had a broken heart, I'd lost Wiluna and my girlfriend, I stopped being a stockman and through that lost the job I'd loved most, I'd left behind the Akuna and got a new job as a commercial roo shooter. I rang my mum one morning and spilt my life out to her and the fact that it was only 9am and I'd already had four beers and there was a long gap of silence and the first thing she said after all that was "Honey, you have a drinking problem."

And I felt shame. Shame that I let myself reach that point, shame that my mum heard me slurring like that, shame that she had to be the one to wake me up to what I was doing to myself, shame about how I must've tarnished my name over the past few months to everyone who'd had the misfortune of meeting me. And like the nail-biting that came earlier this year, I immediately decided that I didn't want my mum to be ashamed of me. So I got my shit together, quit cold turkey despite being fully aware of how it could possibly kill me, and I walked out into the bush.

And I came back sober and with a new name, so it all worked out on my end.

[avithenaftali]

[note: this was written on October 29, 2022, which was a few months before White Cat, Black Dog officially hit bookstores]

okay I will do a proper write-up on Kelly Link's story 'The White Road' later, when I'm doing my full write-ups on all her stories in White Cat, Black Dog—and also, I really should be going to bed now, I'm exhausted and it's nearly 3am—but.

I'll just share a thought I keep having about 'The White Road' which is largely unrelated to the text of 'The White Road', which is:

There's been almost no online discussion of 'The White Road', which was published in A Public Space back in January 2020, and it's very interesting to me why.

I mean, I know why! It's because it's paywalled. A Public Space is a neat and also prestigious literary magazine, but they paywalled 'The White Road' behind the $36 subscription fee and thus there's no search-engine-collated discussion of it online, at all. (I think I found one or two mentions of it on Twitter? That was it.)

Every other previously-published story collected in White Cat, Black Dog does have people discussing it online. And yes, some of these stories were also published online but not paywalled, so they're accessible and easy to read, and easy to discuss. Obvious! But some of these stories were published in print venues—aka, a print magazine, or an anthology. Should have been just as inaccessible as A Public Space. These were genre print venues, though. I wonder if that made the difference. I'm really not sure. Possibly it's that there's that different mindset among some genre readers, in how they will just talk about the things they read and then blog about them and stuff? A sense of DIY reviewing that got baked into the culture out of necessity over the years. I see it more rarely in literary circles.

But I came away from 'The White Road' badly wanting to chat about it with people or at least see what others had said (and especially about Alice Palace) and there was just. Nothing.

I know that 'nothing' is usually the norm! I know that a story is ordinarily published in a magazine and readers read it and enjoy it, and they don't necessarily bring it into some online discussion forum on default. Not every story needs to be talked about online! Sometimes people just read it and appreciate it. I recently read a story in Clarkesworld from last year which felt like it was blatantly referencing and commenting on the Kidney Person article, which surprised me to see in a Clarkesworld story, and yet when I searched around for discussions about the story online, no one was talking about it, much less drawing the connection. And Clarkesworld isn't paywalled or anything!

So I mean to say, I could be misjudging the impact of the paywall currently sitting on 'The White Road'. Maybe A Public Space is correct in how they're running their model. But it's a small detail that I think about, now, when I think about this story.

[grumpydoctorhello]

I'm thinking about using reddit to ask advice because I'm in an hilarious love situation and I want to read people's reactions to my and my bff antics...

For now I'll write it here for shit and giggles (english isn't my first language and I don't want to think too much about grammar in this weird June night so bare with me if you want and if you don't want that's fair) + this all could end in incomprehensible babberings

Me(28f) and bff(28m) are bffs since middle school, like really close bffs, level we sleep together when we are on vacation and we have seen each other in underwear multiple times and we talk about everything kinda deal.

I had a boyfriend in highschool for like 6 months and he never had someone, but he had a summer vacation sexual experience the last year of highschool... And then nothing.

Despite sleeping in the same bed at least once every year we never even kissed, and at the same time we weren't really interested in pursuing anyone else? I had a huge self exteem problem until this january due to a complicated relationship with my parents so it's understandable why I never presented myself as available? But I never understood his actions.

Until 2019 all was fine, then 2020 came and during COVID I catched feelings, expecially after touching him for the first time after so long in the summer of 2021...

Long story short I confessed my feelings for him two times now (he says I'm like a sister to him, or that he is confused) and after each time our relationship gets more affectionate? We stay away from eachother for a period and then not only we are back the same as always but we causally touch eachother hair or we sit really shoulder to shoulder... And I'm not the one starting it, it's him! And he always complimented my style but he got sweeter?

We talk about everything, even what genre of porn we like to watch, and sometimes when our friend group is together he complains vaguely that because of porn women think that every men has to have the sexual prowess of a porn star... He's a very anxious dude that tends to overthink things, so I wonder... Maybe he's insecure because he never had sex and that's the real reason why he rejects me??

I want to hold him and tell him that he's my sweet baby girl, my cutie pie, the prettiest man alive and I really don't give a fuck about his Masculine Active Sexual Power (TM), I just want to drown him in kisses...

What should I do girlies? Am I insane and delusional or something is afoot?

Now that I feel better about myself I really want to try having a relationship but I know no sane person will put up with me and my friend antics, the only solution would be to leave him for good and I can't do that?

Pls send help

[hyohaehyuk]

It's Pride Month and i want to post this before the month ends 🙃 Almost a year ago i found an old OOR interview where Taka might had come out as bi.

Now about Takeru i found some interesting interview that make me wondering if he is not gay/queer too.

Actor Takeru Sato (30) appeared on the TBS variety show "Sakurai Ariyoshi THE Yakai" broadcast on January 23rd, 2020. Looking back on his first date, he revealed how shy he was when he was a student.

According to information provided by a friend from junior high school, Sato was always at the top of his class and had outstanding athletic ability. However, he was "terrible at love." On his first date, while riding his bike to the date's destination, he started pedaling at full speed for some reason. He left the girl behind and went home.

Looking back on that time, Sato explained, "I just couldn't bear being alone with a woman in the city... I'm really sorry, but I ran away. I was so embarrassed," and apologized, "I'm so sorry that I caused her so much trauma."

Sato continued, "I never fell in love or got carried away with love during my school days. My romantic feelings for women were all directed towards the two-dimensional world." When Wakako Shimazaki asked, "What do you like about the two-dimensional world? It's not human," Sato reflexively turned around and said, "Eh, but!" The studio was filled with laughter at Sato's unexpected reaction.

On the show, Sato said, "I didn't think that the object of my heart's desire had to be a human," and introduced Amatsuka Megumi, the heroine of the manga "Tenshi na konamaiki" (Cheeky Angel) as his "favorite woman" from his school days. As the crowd exclaimed, "Eh?", Sato revealed that he was crazy about her, saying, "Even though it was my first love..."

Besides the fact that he run away from a date with a girl (lol) the interesting thing here is that, according with wiki (bc i didn't read the manga) Amatsuka Megumi is tomboy that always get into fights and have a secret: she used to be a boy."

From other place "Megumi is a nine-year old kid who, after saving a sorceror from getting beat-up by some punks, as thanks was given a magic book with a demon inside. His wish to become the "manliest man on Earth" is misinterpretted as the "womanliest woman on Earth" and he is transformed into a girl. Out of fury she throws the book into a river. Six years later, Megumi may still have the body of a girl but behaves like a guy and is only interested in fighting and martial arts. Megumi dreamed of the day when she can return to being a man by finding the book again."

I dont know if she turned back into a boy tho.

Even Takeru views about marriage are weird. It really feels that he is forced himself into that idea to fit in society norms rather than him really wanting to get married

From this video around 8:33 (transcriptions from here)

"I've been saying this for a long time, but marriage isn't something you do alone, it's something you do together, so do you have the desire to get married when you don't have a partner? Even if you ask me that, there is no way to answer.

If you keep saying things like that, you'll never get married. I think that if I don't decide to get married at some point, I won't, or rather, won't be able to do it even when I'm 40 or 50, and that's becoming a reality. So now I've declared that I'll get married by 35. I really want to do that. I'll try my best.

On the other hand, if I can't do it by 35, I probably won't be able to do it for a while until I'm 45 or something"

He even uses a fortune teller to telling me when he should get married like he mentioned in the Bokura no Jidai interview. At least here he is acknowledging that marriage is a thing made by 2 people (him and his partner, not him and the fortune teller)

Still on topic of marriage there is interesting convo in the Miura Shohei, Shirota yu, Takeru Sato and Taka youtube live.

Around 51:24, Miura says that Takeru, Taka and Yu are all equality the most difficult to get married. Taka and Yu are unbeliever at that and Taka even say that Takeru is the most difficulted one. Takeru says that he believes Yu is the one cabable of doing it but him and Taka cant.

Taka complains but then says "can't we do it?"

Takeru: "No, it's impossible"

Then Miura mentioned that Taka said before to him that he would when all OOR members got married and now that Toru is married he could do it anytime. Taka said "if there is the right person" and then Takeru start laughing and Taka asked why he is laughing. Then the convo start to be about Takeru.

Taka: Takeru is the most special among the four of us. Unlike us, maybe it will develop in other directions...

Takeru: Everyone is different

Taka: Although everyone is different...

Takeru: I think the next one it will be Yu.

(proceeds to talk about why he think Yu should get married and that he is suitable to start a family)

Takeru: This person (Taka) case is a little different (from Yu case). He have such a strong personality.

Miura: He values his music more/this is music is the most important.

Taka: No, No. That's not truth. I think my own life is more important than anything else.

[navree]

Tell us about your journey through The Magnus Archives!

The year, 2020. The month, May. Springtime in Boston, which means that it's already ten million degrees and humid and I, already intimately aware that working on a political campaign means that you're either gonna be making phone calls or entering data (so much fucking data) am using my limited free time, given that Circumstances meant I was in my apartment at all times, to watch shows and whatnot while on break. I finish my rewatch of seasons 1-3 of The Originals (given that they're some of the best television the CW ever put out and seasons 4 and 5 suck ass anyway) and am looking for new content.

Meanwhile, my friend has been listening to The Magnus Archives, mostly just to send me clips of Gerry and Gertrude (makes sense, they were a big RomanGerri during season two of Succession) and, given that this friend already has a track record of getting me to watch shows that they like, I decide, why not? Why not give it a shot? After all, I like supernatural stuff, and I like workplace vibes, and I even heard that there was some boss dude a lot of people like to talk about in various different ways, based on the little amount of content I've seen on Tumblr. So, I listen to one episode, remember that I am a giant scaredy-cat who currently lives alone with all my family across the whole country, and decide not to listen to this show once it got dark out (Anglerfish freaked me out, OK?) . This didn't necessarily last, one because once the time change happens in MA it stays light pretty late, and two, because honestly after the first few episodes the show stopped being scary and I didn't mind listening to it in the nighttime.

So anyway I finished season 1 and 2 in literally one single week. I'm not even kidding. I started the show May 1, got to Elias killing Leitner on May 7. And granted my primary thoughts were mostly "I like Elias" and "season 2 Jon is a fucking nightmare" with a sprinkling of "I wanna know more about the Lukas family" (anyone who knows me knows this isn't a surprise), but I'm still really surprised I was plowing through it that fast. And then i completely stopped listening to it, because the campaign was ramping up in the summer months and it slipped away from me.

It's now January of 2021, I'm living at home with my parents for a couple months before school starts back up and honestly a bit bored out of my skull because my parents' primary residence at the time was in Carmel, CA and my GOD is there nothing to do there except for the aquarium (I love it there but it's true). And I decide to give TMA another shot since the final season is winding down anyway. Plow through the first two seasons again, most thoughts still the same, get to season 3 and start liking it, meet Peter Lukas and decide he's immediately the best character, which is still true, season 4 only reinforces that fact, and then slowly make my way through season 5 because I, uh, did not care for it. Also, true story, I've never actually listened to episode 200, cuz when it came out I was at the salon, so I just read the episode transcript on my phone (it was Fine).

I still work on political campaigns, by the by, and I honestly put on early season TMA when I have to do data entry (getting through season 2 is always a bit of a struggle because I love Jon but my God is he such a fucking nightmare that season, I just wanna shake him). Also, to be completely honest, any time I relisten to season 4, I just skip and skip until I get to the Peter scenes, since again, best character and the only one I really care about in that season.

[talkingpointsusa]

Daily Wire Responds To; January 6th

Well folks, I am a believer that history can give context to things we see today. This includes the Daily Wire. Now, while we haven't talked extensively about January 6th yet, I did mention that I believe that Matt Walsh ran cover for insurrectionists. I still hold this belief, and I believe the same for the entire team at the Daily Wire. However, I feel that given the fact that we definitely haven't seen the last of the Daily Wire's January 6th apologia, it is worthwhile to take a look at their coverage on the day after to see how the world of the Daily Wire reacted to the insurrection on January 6th.

Matt Walsh;

There's this thing called a mirror that might help you answer that question (Image via Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire)

At this point in the history of the Daily Wire, Candace Owens wasn't around, so she still has yet to make her debut on the blog. Instead,  we get to talk about the episode that Matt Walsh released on January 7, 2021, entitled "How We Got Here." Surely Matt will recognize the role that right-wing media like his show played in enflaming the rioters and issue an apology….right?

2:03: "It is being demanded that we view yesterday's events in DC as if they occurred without precedent. Nothing of importance or relevance preceding them."

Apparently not. So, it seems like Matt's argument here is that while the rioting was bad, the government pushed these people into doing it (and also, look at BLM!).

2:42: "We don't need to widen the lens very much to see that the rioting and violence on Capitol Hill this week happened to occur after many months of violent riots across the nation"

The BLM protests don't excuse the Capitol rioters. Even if Matt is right (which he isn't, but we'll get to that in a little bit) and all the BLM protests that occurred in 2020 were all violent riots, how does that make turning around and doing the same thing OK? Violent riots are a bad thing, period, and just because one side does them doesn't make it okay for the other side to do them as well.

Also, according to the NGO ACLED, 93% of the BLM protests were peaceful. Looking into them, they don't appear to be a left-wing organization, which means they don't have any skin in the game to say if they were more violent or peaceful.

In other words, the entire premise of Matt's argument here is built on the lie that there were riots all across the country when, in reality, there were very few riots overall. Let's keep that in mind as we continue to watch this.

2:56: "Now, I'll be accused of whataboutism for refusing to pretend that this particular bit of chaos erupted in a void"

Because that's literally what you're doing. In pointing the finger at BLM protesters, Matt is shifting the story away from the Capitol rioters and making it a story about BLM.

The reason Matt is playing this whataboutist game is because he doesn't want to acknowledge the role that he and the Daily Wire played in the insurrection. Matt churns out a new video about why the left's policies are leading to the literal collapse of society every single weekday. Odds are that at least one person saw these videos and thought that the only way to prevent the literal collapse of society was to take up arms.

I'm not saying that Matt was the sole cause of the insurrection, but he sure as hell played a role in it.

3:10: "The simple fact is that left-wing radicals spent the entire summer and much of the fall wreaking havoc on our cities and leaving burned out buildings, looting stores, dead bodies in their wake"

He just can't help but fearmonger can he? But I found that comment about "dead bodies" interesting. How many people DID die as a result of the BLM protests?

As it turns out, 25 but it is really difficult to squarely place the deaths on the shoulders of BLM and the left. For instance, two of those deaths could probably be attributed to Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Whether or not you agree with the verdict that it was in self-defense or not, it is clear that he is not on the left.

That's just one example of how some of the deaths can be chalked up to people on the right and some can be chalked up to bad-faith actors with no political affiliation who went to the protests just to sow chaos.

How this is different from January 6th is that there is no proof that left wing groups had any involvement in the planning and or execution of the riots on January 6th. However many people on the right like Enrique Tarrio and Charlie Kirk (who tweeted the day before the riot that his organization was sending more than 80 "buses of patriots to D.C. to fight for this president") had direct roles in what happened.

4:01: "Now, I'm not convinced that any rioters, whether the ones this summer or the ones in the capitol yesterday, are actually motivated by anything other than a savage desire to destroy purely for the thrill of destruction. That's why I oppose rioting in all its forms, all the time"

What Matt is doing here is pretty interesting if you're like me and you want to study how people like Matt Walsh form bad faith arguments.

On the surface, Matt is doing a good thing. He is denouncing the Capitol rioters, which is what he should be doing. But what he is also doing is absolving himself and his right-wing cohorts of responsibility while also furthering his narrative that protestors on the left are "savage."

If the Capitol rioters were only motivated by a savage desire to destroy purely for the thrill of destruction, then Matt doesn't bear any responsibility for pushing the kinds of conspiracy theories that led the rioters to the point where they believed that the only way to prevent society from collapsing was by taking up arms against the government.

Plus, it continues to paint BLM protestors as savages for protesting the unacceptable amount of police brutality (which is any by the way) in the United States.

This is the kind of thing I would urge people who listen to guys like Matt Walsh to watch out for.

Matt Walsh spends the rest of the episode talking about the BLM protests and shifting the blame onto the left while not really talking about what happened. This episode is just the same "what about BLM" thing over, and over, and over again. Since we already covered Matt's main points, we don't really need to talk more at length about his episode. Although I did notice comments saying that Ben Shapiro's episode was more "leftist" than Matt Walsh's and Michael Knowles. I find that super hard to believe but let's give it a look.

Ben Shapiro:

So I am kind of surprised here, yet kind of not. Ben is really not a fan of the rioters, something that me and him agree with! But it makes sense; like I said the last time we took a look at Ben Shapiro, he is the face of the company and, as a result, has the most eyes on him. Ben has to be against the Capitol rioters because he's legally liable if he isn't. So with that in mind, lets observe this quote from the first minute of his show on the 7th.

1:29: "So yesterday was, no, bar none the most horrifying thing that I have seen in American politics in my lifetime.

See, me and Ben are in agreement on this. However, saying that doesn't excuse his role in what happened. On the day of January 6th, Ben posted this on YouTube and the Daily Wire.

So, how fucked are we Ben? Surely a guy as disgusted by the rioters on January 6th wouldn't also spread the narratives that led to the capitol riots in the first place....right?

1:35: "So, yup, things suck all the way around! So, Republicans had two extraordinarily winnable races in Georgia last night. They proceeded to apparently lose both. So Raphael Warnock, who is a Marxist radical, who hates the American founding, who believes America is inherently racist; who has praised Fidel Castro, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan in no particular order, is going to take the seat in the United States senate."

Wow, Ben is really going hard on portraying Mr. Warnock as dangerous. Surely a guy who has praised Fidel Castro and is a radical Marxist is himself a fascist!

By the way, regarding the Castro thing, that is a half-truth. A church where Warnock was a youth pastor, not the main pastor, mind you, a youth pastor, invited Fidel Castro to speak in the 1990's. Warnock certainly has never praised Castro; at least I couldn't find an instance of it, but I'd gladly invite Ben to show me where he did.

In spreading these lies, all Ben Shapiro is doing is creating fear. And fear can very easily lead to violence. Was Ben disgusted by January 6, like he claimed the day after? I don't know, maybe. But he can't pretend his rhetoric did not play a role in what happened. Anyway, let's keep watching.

2:37: "So, let's talk about what this means for the republic. So, obviously Joe Biden has unified control of the government. Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th and the senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, will be in charge of the senate, and Nancy Pelosi will be the speaker of the house, and the Democrats will have the power to do pretty much anything they want."

Remember that in the minds of Ben's audience, the Democratic Party are the bad guys who are responsible for most (if not all) of society's ills. Ben is essentially scaring his audience about the Democrats winning which in my opinion contributed to people feeling like they needed to take up arms.

Later in the show (you don't miss much, Ben talks about how Trump wrecked the Georgia Republican candidates chance of winning, a doorbell ad, and about the Byrd Rule (which is spelled incorrectly as "The Bird Rule" in the timestamps). Ben then goes on to tell us the "problem with Democrats".

22:26: "The real problem with Democrats having unified control of the government is going to be everything else. It's gonna be executive action - most of what Joe Biden, on an executive basis, is going to be extraordinarily dangerous."

Again, scaring your audience = violence. Ben should not have been surprised that the sixth happened. So overall my point is that it doesn't really matter how much Ben acts like he is disgusted by the January 6 Insurrection, he played a role in causing it.

Michael Knowles:

Third banana time! On our previous installment of Michael Knowles deranged show, we talked about how he posted an entire episode defending blackface which is about as stupid as it sounds. Now we get to see Michael's brilliant take which is that COVID Lockdowns are what caused the insurrection at January 6th.

It appears that his video on the 7th was taken down from YouTube, either by the moderators or by Ben Shapiro for being too embarrassing for even the Daily Wire, and I don't want to pay for a Daily Wire Plus subscription to watch it there. Luckily, it is still up on Soundcloud in podcast form. Now lets take a look at the title and see why this isn't on YouTube:

Golly, I wonder why I couldn't find this on Michael's YouTube Channel (Image Via Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire)

Before we cover this, uh, I guess you can loosely define this as a "take", allow me to present the titles of the episodes on the sixth and the fourth without comment.

Yeah, probably regretting those ones huh? (Images via Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire)

2:11: "I said this six months ago during the BLM riots, which everyone seems to have just miraculously forgotten about". It was true then and it's just at true today, this is about the lockdowns"

I've got to hand it to Michael; that's a take I genuinely wasn't expecting nor have I ever heard before. We already talked about BLM in the Matt Walsh segments, so we don't need to talk about it here.

But we can't judge too quickly; let's hear the man out. What is his explanation for how COVID lockdowns led to insurrection?

2:52: "You cannot lock people away from their jobs, lock them away from their families, from their kids, from their loved ones. Lock them away from just regular socialization, go to a restaurant, go to a bar, put them in their apartment and tell them that the minute you go outside your gonna die. And you can't keep them away from their church, and you can't keep them away from their civil rights, and you can't do that for nine or ten months and expect that everything's gonna be perfectly fine."

Let's go through this, shall we? Now, the lockdowns were obviously the result of a deadly virus that, at the time, was spreading like wildfire throughout the population. In America, 1,183,924 people have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic started. If we didn't have lockdowns, way more people would have died.

And what the hell is Michael talking about when he says, "lock them away from their kids?" Does he think that family units had to all be isolated in separate buildings or something? Yeah, families couldn't see more vulnerable members of their family. Do you know why? Because that would put them at risk of death!

Also, lockdowns still don't justify TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT!

3:45: "Not excusing rioting in the Capitol but the longer you keep society shut down, it's like a powder keg, it's obviously gonna blow"

First of all, the sentence "Not excusing rioting in the capitol" should never be followed up with "but". Second of all, say ANYTHING that shifts the blame away from far-right rhetoric.

3:59: "Everybody seems to be at each others throat, more than they were before, which was already pretty intense"

So if it was "already pretty intense" before, how come nobody tried overthrowing the government back then?!

Man, I'm starting to think the Daily Wire took this off of the channel. At the very least they should be thankful it is gone now because this is embarrassing.

4:17: "And there have been riots before. Why did they all of a sudden start torching city after city week after week in 2020, huh?"

I know I said we weren't going to BLM again but this argument is so stupid that it needs to be addressed. It's because seeing such a violent display of police brutality like the killing of George Floyd being spread all across social media was unprecedented before 2020. And it bears repeating, 93% of the BLM protests were peaceful!

Well, that's all the Michael Knowles I can handle at the moment and really all the Daily Wire I can handle as well. Have a lovely day and I'll see you in the next one!

[nostalgebraist]

An update:

I made this post in December. Since then I've only written two more chapters, both in January.

I've felt mildly depressed on and off for a large fraction of this calendar year. Spring has arrived, so it's clearly not just the usual seasonal depression anymore.

It continues to make writing difficult.

(There are other factors too. I've also been unusually busy at work for some parts of this year, and I've had an unusual amount of physical illness, e.g. I had Covid for the first time.

I continue to work on Frank, but that's different. Coding doesn't make any emotional demands on me, the way writing does, and in fact it takes me away from my emotions in a way that's very welcome, when my baseline emotional state isn't good. It's not a coincidence that I really started working hard on Frank in the middle of 2020, when Covid was new and no one knew where it was going to go.)

----

I wrote around 1000 words of the next chapter, this past weekend.

I would have written more at the time, but I was suddenly struck by a feeling of,

"no, the light's gone out, the magic is gone, I don't care about this anymore; I don't feel passionate about this story and these characters, or indeed about anything at all, right now; I could try to continue, but it'd be a mockery of what I was doing a moment ago, and -- all else aside -- the reader would be able to tell that something had changed, had gone wrong, in the words I might hypothetically write now."

So I stopped. It was around 5 PM, when that happened. There was still plenty of time in the evening, but I couldn't go on.

Those 1000 words are still there, of course, on my computer (and my cloud backup).

Maybe I'll write another 1000 next weekend. Hopefully, a lot more than that. But maybe even less. The light goes on, unpredictably, and then it goes off again, unpredictably.

Based on past experience, it should come back on for good ... eventually. I've been depressed on and off in the past, many times, but never for more than a few months at a time. I don't know if I'll still be able to say that in once this year is over, but we'll see.

----

It's frustrating!

I've dragged on the writing of this book for an absurdly long time already, and it really is very close to done.

There are a lot more discrete things to get through, in the story -- events, explanations, revelations. And there are a lot of distinct chapters that need to be written, just to space all those things out in a structural sense.

But in terms of the larger structure, all those things are a single big, dense cluster. This section of the story is meant to feel fast and explosive, not dragged-out and laborious -- and hopefully it will feel that way on the page, for "archival readers."

Ideally I'd be writing it in a fast-and-explosive way, too. (And not just for the benefit of "serial readers." If you want to build story momentum, it helps to have writing momentum.) But I'm ... working with the resources I have, here.

----

And, as I always say: I really, really appreciate the readership that the story has gotten so far.

Sometimes I feel like this book is a merely a long, lonely, and endless conversation between me and myself. A single-player game whose only player is also its designer. Or a Henry Darger novel. Or ... one of any number of other metaphors.

But every time I the story gets a new comment, or I get an ask related to it -- it snaps me out of all that. And I really appreciate it. These days more than ever.

My seasonal depression has really kicked into gear in the last few weeks.

I find it nearly impossible to do creative work while depressed. That's why I haven't written any more of my novel since late November.

(Among other things, it disrupts my ability to look at my own ideas or drafts and ask myself "is this good? how good is it? how could it be improved?" If I'm depressed, this faculty is replaced with a broken machine that always says "no, this is worthless, don't even try."

Even if I know not to trust the broken machine, that still leaves me unable to perceive gradations of quality, and unable to tell which changes might improve the thing I've got in front of me.)

It's very frustrating...

My mood is usually not too bad while the sun is up, but during the work week that time is all taken up by work, and then in the weekends there are often other constraints.

I am relatively free this weekend, so I'm going to give writing a try. Probably won't finish a chapter, though. And there are a lot of chapters left . . . but "waiting around until one's 'productivity' returns" is a great way to get absolutely nothing done, so I shouldn't just do that.

[fuckyeahkagepro]

( negl I’m genuinely surprised Hibiya post got notes )

[elminx]

Energy Update: Mars in Gemini, August 2022

Yesterday Mars, our planet of Action, entered the mutable air sign of Gemini where it will remain for the next seven months. The reason for this is that we will be undergoing an intense Mars retrograde cycle that begins on 10/30 and continues into the new year ahead.

Welcome to the great indecision of 2022-2023.

If you are familiar with the energies of the signs, you might know Gemini as the sign of many minds. As our mutable air sign, Gemini is concerned with the mercurial activities of thinking. Gemini as our first air sign is about the expansion of thinking - first, you explore in Aries, then you break ground and settle in in Taurus, and only then, once you have found and created a structure in your life can you start to wonder - what else is there?

(Spoiler alert - the answer is everything)

Where Gemini can flounder is that once you expand beyond your immediate needs, you will find a whole world of options that you never considered when your whole being was focused on a place to live, a place to eat, and a safe space to sleep at night. Gemini often sees so many options and they all look so exciting. Gotta collect them all - or try them all at the very least.

You can see why this energy does not combine particularly well with the drive needed to propel forward action (signified by the planet Mars). Though exploring every option available can be fun and enriching, it's not known for getting anywhere. The biggest problem is that when Mars gets too stymied and feels immovable, his next course of action is often to get destructive. With our final Saturn-Uranus coming to a head and keeping us in a vice grip (a world aspect) and some very important midterm elections on the horizon (for us US folx), this is a bit troubling.

This message, per usual, isn't meant to scare you - instead, it's meant to make you aware of the greater energies descending upon us to add some context to the events that will (likely) unfold in our lives over the months ahead.

This isn't the easy road but then again, there hasn't been an easy road available since almost all of our planets met up in the sign of Capricorn in January of 2020. These transits that we have been undergoing for two and a half years are WHY we live in "interesting times." We can't make the transits go away, but through our understanding of the planets, we can learn to live with them and work through them.

The other major impact that will affect Mar's seven-month journey through Gemini is that of our lunar nodes. It is worth noting that earlier this year, the lunar nodes switched from Gemini-Sagittarius into Taurus-Scorpio. The reason that this is noteworthy is that our North node, until recently, was in the sign of Gemini where Mars will reside now AND our South Node is now in Scorpio which is co-ruled by Mars (and Pluto). This is a bit of a double whammy - supporting the same message of the upcoming retrograde: we will have to move backward in our Marsian pursuits in some way.

Some actions, already taken, need to be reviewed and redone.

By the end of the first quarter of 2023, however this will have gone down will be mostly resolved but until then we will likely have to sit in the indecision of this all. It is going to feel uncomfortable (as indecision often does). There will be no ready or easy answers. Things may start and stall out over and over again. Expect mixed messages (Gemini is one of our "lie to me" planets) and broken promises.

The big flex during the next seven months: if you can't rely on other people (or institutions), rely on yourself. It will be hard to get up every day and take steps to better your own life when it seems like nobody else has got your back. Do it anyways. As long as you are moving forward, no matter how slowly, you are still moving.

And, at the end of this all, note this: if you can keep moving through a Mars retrograde in Gemini, you can (truly) do anything.

[lwt28brave]

LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

[lovesgonnabe]

Love Is Worth It Episode V - We Got The Pandemic Blues Under a New York City Skyline

Characters: Chris Evans x Maya Alonso-Evans (Black OFC)

Warnings: straight fluff, cursing, implied smut.

Word Count: 3485

Summary: What happens in NYC stays in NYC!

AN: The NYC Skyline prompt is by @iguessweallcrazyithinktho thank you so much for letting me use your theme I hope I did it justice. If you haven't read any of her stuff what are you doing get on it!

Disclaimer: There’s only slight edits so there may be errors. Also if you haven’t noticed this series will have many time jumps and things referenced here may make more sense later on in the series when new episodes come out so please bear with me.

Taglist: @thesecretlifeofdaydreamss, @canadian-girl87, @i-just-like-fanfics, @omg-mymelaninisbeautiful​ if you would like to join the taglist message me.

Please leave a note and tell me what you think!

June 13th, 2020

Being with Chris had its many perks but not working was definitely one Maya never wanted to take advantage of.

When Chris first brought it up when they got engaged she looked at him like he had two heads and said “I worked to hard put myself through school to get these expensive ass letters behind my name to just stay my ass at home” and that was the last time they had that conversation.

But fast forward to 2020 If you told Maya that she would have to close both of her dermatology offices in the middle of award season a few months ago she would have laughed at you.

She just couldn’t see herself not working because she loved what she does, but with both New York and Boston putting in place stay at home orders there’s nothing she could do.

It didn't help that it was only Maya in Boston dealing with work and all that entails, Delilah's up in the air school situation, and a whole hoax of things while Chris was in L A being as supportive of a husband and father as he could be on the other side of the country.

At least Dodger was being pretty normal.

Thanks to Chris's family for being so helpful where they could because for a minute Maya felt like she was beginning to drown.

This saga starts with the beginning of the pandemic.

January was chill there were whispers that there was a deadly pandemic on the horizon but no one took it seriously.

February Chris had left at the beginning of the month to LA to promote his new show Defending Jacob and it wasn't like anything out of the ordinary the couple worked, and called each other daily.

Chris told her he'd have to be there through March but would be home in time for Maya's birthday in April.

Her lawsuit against Boston PD was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount that was donated to charity and trust me that lawsuit cost them a pretty penny because Chris was threatening to go to the press and Boston PD did not need anymore negative press.

After finding out that the older officer already had many reports against him for abuse of power he was "let go" by Boston PD and the other officer was demoted to desk duty and sent Maya an apology letter for his actions

She thinks he only did it because her husband is Chris Evans but she tries not to be a cynic.

In mid March with her offices were forced to close and the lives of her twenty employees were in her hands, but sin there was no money coming in she had to regrettably furlough all of them until she could open back up.

This news could come at a worse time because Lilah's school was trying to transition them to online learning for the rest of the year.

So Maya now had to also be her home school teacher for the last 2 months before summer vacation .

Maya does feel blessed because she was still able to teach some derm online classes through NYU, and her family was healthy but Chris still wasn't home.

Because of travel restrictions in LA on April 1st Maya found out that the earliest Chris could be home was in possibly July or Mid June if they are lucky because he need to start filming for Grey Man that was set in Boston.

Then rumors started to swirl that Chris could be cheating on Maya but

She doesn't play that and isn't a dummy

Chris isn't stupid and

He's been in their home in LA quarenting with his brother Scott the whole time so if some foul shit did happen she would be the first one to know and on the first jet smoking to beat some ass.

But hey when it rains it pours.

In interviews Chris would say he was "quartining with his family at home in Boston."

They would try to make the spaces look just like Chris and Maya's homebase in Boston even going as far as strategically moving photos of them in the background to make it look like his office at home.

And it actually work most people thought Chris was in Boston anyways and it was all gossip the others thought he went back home to clean up this mess.

But nope Chris was not in Boston he was 2,764 miles away and this time it all just felt different and he hated not being able to be there with them during this crazy uncertain time and Maya just needed a vacation.

In April Maya and Delilah just had dinner at the house for her birthday they facetimed Chris and once Liliah had gone to bed Chris and Maya had sexytime over the phone.

The rest of the month Maya just went with the flow and did the same through June.

Now we are all caught up and in the present day.

It's Chris's 39th birthday but he was still in LA.

Maya stayed up to call him at midnight in LA because that was their tradition but now it was about 12pm and Chris has not picked up any of her phone calls Maya was annoyed.

Maya and Delilah sat in the Den as Maya was detangling Delilah's freshly washed hair getting ready to put her curly hair into braids as Mulan played on the tv in front of them.

"Mommy can I call dad it's his birthday and I haven't got to talk to him today. Lilah says playing with Maya's phone.

"Go ahead sweetheart maybe you'll have better luck them me." said Maya as she sectioned Lilah's hair.

As the facetime ringtone went Dodger who was laying in his dog bed next to Lilah began to bark and then he ran for the front door Maya looked that way but didn't see anything since the alarm didn't go off either which she found strange.

She shrugged it off only for a second until she heard a bag hit the ground as she quickly stood up the only thought in her head was to protect Delilah helping her to hide under the couch.

As the person entered their den Dodger continued to bark and she grabbed a pair hair scissors about to attack the intruder until she saw his face and exhaled the breath she didn't even know she was holding.

"CHRIS you scared the shit out of me" she said before he could say anything.

He laughed "Baby I didn't mean to scare you" Chris said

Lilah screamed and crawled from under the couch.

"daddy, daddy, daddy I missed you and Happy Birthday." Lilah said running into Chris's arm.

"I missed you to babycakes you been taking care of mommy for me" Chris said holding Lilah and walking towards a still shocked Maya.

He kissed Maya's forehead trying to pull her into a hug but she rolled her eyes and pushed his hand away.

"Chris i thought you weren't coming home till July" Maya asked

Chris shrugged "plans change now are you gonna come and give daddy a kiss you what"

He said flopping on the couch with Lilah on his lap.

Mays sucked her teeth peeked his lips and told Lilah to come so she could finish her hair.

Her saltiness cause Chris to laugh as Lilah moved over to her mom.

They were sitting on the same couch so Chris bent over and began to whisper in her ear. "Stop acting like that baby I wanted to surprise you"

Maya gave minimal response and Chris didn't like that so then he brought heat.

When he walked Maya had on a beige short set the top was fairly tin and the shorts barely covered her ass, he could see her nipples stand at attention on her delicious breast when walked.

It's been 3 months since he's had sex with his wife and boy can he feel it. He gave her tigh a firm squeeze now pecking her spot behind her ear forcing Maya to stop mid greasing Lilah's scalp to take a deep breath.

"if you stop acting up tonight I'll do that thing with my tongue that you like if not daddy won't be letting you cum at all tonight.

Chris said moving his body back to his original position smirking at his shooken up wife whose attitude did a 180 quick, fast and in a hurry.

Chris was no home and with his girls and he couldn’t be any happier.

After braiding Delilah's hair Maya went and they dropped her off at Chris’s moms which was a fight in itself because she wanted to stay with her daddy but Maya had other plans.

The original plan was to take Chris out of the country for his birthday but plans change.

Before Chris showed up today Maya had nothing planned for Chris's birthday because he was not suppose to be home they were just going to the same thing they did for her birthday.

On there way back home my had an idea with there hands intertwined Maya began to speak.

“So birthday boy what do you want to do for your birthday” Maya asked

“You know I don’t care as long as I’m with you my love” Chris said kissing her hand.

Maya giggled “Well we’ve dropped Dede at your moms and Scott said he could take Dodger”

She states looking at the puppy through the rear view mirror as Chris began to rub is thumb over her knuckles.

“It seems you already have a plan for us babe” he smirks

“I know you are just getting home but how about we drop Dodger off and I was thinking maybe drive to New York, I need to get out of Boston and have a bit of a staycation”. She said.

Chris chuckled and looked at Maya as the stopped at the red light.

“Wherever you lead I’ll follow. He said

“You are so corny old man” Maya laughed as she leaned over and peek his sweet lips.

They continued their drive to Scotts and talked enjoying eachothers company for the first time in a while, they were so wrapped up in each other that Dodger had to bark to remind Chris he was about to pass Scoots house .

Maya laughed at the puppy then pet him telling him how good of a dog he is.

“Alright birthday boy Scott has Dodger now let's switch its my turn to drive you around” She said.

They headed home to pick up a few things and then The Evans were off and headed for there trip.

After the 3 and 1/2 hour drive they got to New York and the barren streets shocked them.

They are staying in there penthouse apartment on the upper east side that over looks Central Park and New York's famous skyline.

Before settling in Maya decided to get groceries once she got back Jazz played softly in her ears as the punchy aroma of the candle Slow Burn hit her nose.

“Hey Chris I'm back” she called out to him.

She was met without a response just the smooth stylings of Frank Sinatra.

Maya put the groceries in the kitchen and headed to their master bedroom.

Kicking her shoes off and following the rose petals into the bathroom that revealed Chris who sat in all his glory in the pink tinted bathtub.

Apparently he did not hear her as his eyes stayed closed and his arms outstretched.

And all Maya could do was admire the greek god that was her husband.

His long wingspan encompassed the entire back of the tub as his strong biceps would flex ever deep breath he took. And don't to get Maya started on those baby blues which were one of the only things Lilah did not get from Chris. Those same blue eyes were now looking straight at her.

“I was hoping you’d be back soon” he said

Raising his head to look at his goddess of a wife smirking at him.

“So I’m guessing you would like me to join you?” She asked

Maya teased him as she began to slowly remove her clothes.

“Hey aren’t I the birthday boy that shouldn’t even be a question Maya so you better bring your sexy ass in here” Chris said to her as his arms still laid on the back of the tub looking like a king”

Maya stepped in with Chris’s help the warm water encapsulating her body as she sinks down.

She sighs in satisfaction when her body is finally completely in the water as she lays into Chris’s embrace.

They just sit there and enjoy each other company, washing the dirt off of each other from the day, and stealing kisses from one another.

Maya and Chris were that couple you loved to hate they didn’t show off their love that much with Chris’s anxiety and Maya’s destain for public scrutiny because she’s black woman with a man of Chris stature, PDA was mostly off the table. However behind closed doors they are the cutest most intimate couple you’d ever meet.

Once she was clean from her road dirt Maya left the water first placing a kiss on Chris’s lips as she headed to start dinner and Chris laid back and continued to relax.

Once Chris finally got out the bath he found Maya in the kitchen halfway finished with dinner.

“Jesus babe it smells fantastic in here and I see you changed the music” Chris said

He was now fully dressed in a blue t-shit in matching joggers, his hair damp from the bath as Lauryn Hill's rendition of Can't Take My Eyes off of You played in the background.

She chuckled “only the best for you my king”

"Mhm I like the sound of that" He said as he went in the fridge and grabbed a bottle of white wine and poured them both a glass.

She was at the counter cutting up veggies.

“Ok so how long do I have wait before I can devour all this?” he asked placing the glass in front of Maya.

They took their first cheers of the night tapping the glasses together.

Maya took a sip and moan at the taste of the wine.

“Soon Chris don’t stress it babe you will be fed very soon” she said.

Her hips began to sway to the music as she hummed along.

At long last, love has arrived, and I thank God I'm alive

Chris walked up behind her wrapping her arms around waist swaying with her body and catching the rhythm.

You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off you

Moving her hair to her left shoulder Chris begins to kiss her neck.

"Remember when we first bought this place." Chris asked

"Yes you didn't want to you said my place in Brooklyn was enough for us" Maya said putting the knife down and melted into Chris's strong arms.

"Mmm but you did an excellent job at convincing me why we need this place, 3 bedrooms right in the Heart of the city just for times likes these when want to get away." Chris said with his arms still wrapped around her.

She laughed "I thought it was because you fucked me against the balcony on our terrace is why you said yes"

He smirked at the memory "well that to"

Chris sucked on her neck and moved his down her satin dress but the timer on the pot decided to be a cock block and go off before he could make a move.

He groaned and Maya laughed directed him to get ready to eat.

Just as the food was finishing up Chris set the dining table for two, taking the rest of the flowers from his bath laying them out between the kitchen and there Terrence where they were having dinner overlooking the city.

It was a beautiful night. There was a soft breeze and the city was a glow quieter that usual but still a sight to behold.

Maya brought out the food as Chris poured them another glass, they both sat prayed then rose their glasses to cheers again.

During dinner Chris made some corny jokes that always seemed to put Maya in a better mood as Maya would slyly rub her foot up Chris’s pant leg.

Next came dessert still out on the terrace they shared a slice of cake (more like Maya fed Chris cake) which is how she ended up in his lap enjoying the very expensive yet immaculate view they had from their home.

He rubbed her thigh as he kisses her shoulder just thinking of the fastest way to get Maya out of her dress.

"god you are beautiful" Chris said

His hand now playing with the trim of her panties under her strappy white satin dress.

"Oh no birthday boy you not fucking me out here tonight you gotta come inside for your last present" Maya said.

Chris groaned Maya got up seductively waking back inside her curves just begging him to follow her

“This woman Is going to be the death of me” Chris thought as he came back inside and closed the door that lead to the terrace.

Maya handed Chris his third and final glass of wine of the night.

He raised an eyebrow "Are you trying to get me drunk Mrs. Evans so you can have your way with me?" he asked.

Taking a sip from his glass he smacked Maya the ass and watched it move as she walked towards their living room.

She laughed "I wouldn't have to get you drunk to have my way with you Mr. Evans"

Their living room had floor to ceiling windows that overlook Chris's second favorite city, and that's where Maya stood wine glass in hand looking all the people that looked like ants. But all Chris could think about was how this woman fell for him.

She watched the scenery and he watched her but when that signature trumpet blew he remembered that the music was still playing and so did she.

Maya turned around to see Chris was watching her one hand in his pocket and the other still holding his wine, she made a face at him.

"What are you looking at me like that Chris, you ok?” she asked hand on her hip taking another drink from her glass.

The moon shined off her skin like she was in the sun, her white dress reminding him of their wedding day the way it hugged her figure.

Still speechless Chris walked up to her placing both of their glasses on the coffee table, he brushed her hair behind her ear and she moans nuzzling her head in his touch.

"Baby I am absolutely perfect because I am here with you" he says.

Chris softly pulls her by the waist bringing her flush against her body as raspy voice of Louis Armstrong in Le Vie En Rose brought butterfly’s to Maya’s stomach because this was their song.

His hands lay softly on her waist as her arms lay around his shoulder as they dancer slowly around there living room.

Hold me close and hold me fast, The magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose.

His cologne sent waves of pleasure and warmth through her body, when Maya laid her head on his chest not wanting to let him go. As their heartbeat became in sync the moonlight casted their sillones on the ground.

They were two lovers who were lost in eachother hoping to never get out and wanting to hide from the world it felt new but familiar.

Once the song ended Chris kissed her so deep and and passionately Maya thought she was gonna cum then and there.

Chris's hands moved from their previously respectable position making circle on her hips to the bottom of her ass telling Maya to jump causing Maya wrap her chocolate legs around his waist.

As Chris walked he kept repeating how much he missed Maya so much while he was in LA.

They couldn’t even make it back to their bedroom for their first round of many.

And Maya was a goner as Chris made love to her all night in every corner of their apartment as the city watched as the couple were engulfed with each other.

But there was a little voice in the back of Maya's head "Well damn how are we going to top 40 next year" it asked.

The preoccupied side of her brain shooed hat thought away so she could just enjoy being with her man at this moment.

Thanking god there was no more space between them like the miles before.

[thegothicviking]

Happy New Year! Someone was stabbed to death nearby where i live... AGAIN!

Happy New Year! Someone was stabbed to death around 1:00-1:30 AM on New Years eve in the biggest city (which isn't even that big) nearby where I live! AGAIN! FOR REAL: This is the 3RD STABBING/SHARP OBJECT RELATED MURDER THAT HAS HAPPENED WITHIN 3 ALMOST CONSECUTIVE YEARS!

1.In late October or early November 2019 there was an AXE MURDER on a freakin CEMETERY (the largest cemetery in this city and according to me the most beautiful and now I am too scared to even walk around there!) where a middle aged woman died in the hospital from her wounds, after being struck by an axe. The man who was charged had apparently, miraculously, SOMEHOW managed to sneak a small/portable camping size Axe and snuck it in his jacket... (they are not THAT small y'all!) then taken a TAXI to the cemetery...and then hatched this middle aged woman who was most likely visiting someone's grave. Minding her own business because the woman didn't know her murderer!

2.In June/July 2020 there was a PUBLIC STABBING in the middle of the STREETS and with SEVERAL WITNESSES in the middle of BROAD FREAKIN DAYLIGHT...in basically one of the BUSIEST STREETS of this city! This time though the victim apparently KNEW the murderer(s) so I am guessing som drug-deal had gone terribly wrong... That area of this city is notorious for drug dealing and drug addicts. I am so glad that I have happened to been away from the main city when all these murders happening. Including the most recent;

3.Yesterday, or at around 1:00 AM on 1st of January 2022 there was yet.again. another freakin' public stabbing. This time on a parking lot nearby an apartment complex! Because...why not!? Two suspected men, one is aparently British and "on a visit to Norway" but is still "known to the local police here" !?!? Excuse me what!? And apparently he KNEW the other suspect, a Norwegian citizen. Both the suspected men and the victim where in their 20's and once again: they apparently didn't knew prehand who they just stabbed to death! Oh that's just great!? So a british guy having a merry trip to Norway just hanging out with his Norwegian buddy...drinking...shooting up some fireworks..and stabbing some random man on NYE! Okey then! :)

Ok but this is crazy because; in mid Desember 2021 (not even a MONTH prior to this stabbing) The Norwegian national "All day news channel" sent a clip about this VERY CITY where I live close to and where ALL these murders took place: "About how the local police there were going to talk nice with and keep an eye on those who were outside of a society/known to the police for having a criminal record already...to PREVENT FURTHER CRIME!!" I FREAKIN' SHIT YOU NOT!

ONCE AGAIN (in case you didn't catch this ridiculous irony: Not even a month prior to this MURDER; They showed a NEWS CLIP on National Norwegian Television about how ''the local police (in THIS CITY, where now not even a whole MONTH LATER.. ANOTHER MURDER HAPPENED by someone YET AGAIN KNOWN to the police).... was ''going to PREVENT FURTHER CRIME by TALKING with these LOCAL CRIMINALS...that was well known to the local police''. They LITERALLY preached about tlking with local criminals as a mean to ''prevent further crimes'' and they they couldn't even keep this "campaign" going for A SINGLE MONTH! Because surprise surprise! Two men known by the police stabbed someone to death! Wow! I am not surprised if the rest of Norway will make fun us who are living here where I am from.. :) Not the slightest surprised!

Ok, I know what you are thinking; if you live in the U.S or in a big European country or whatever..you may not think 3 stabbings in nearly 3 consecutive years, is alot! 3 stabbings in 3 years? Whatever right? HOWEVER: let me tell you. The community where I LIVE, in THESE SPECIFIC Norwegian towns...are incredibly small. Yeah we are very "crowded" as in how many that live here but...its a small snoozy community. Except for drug addicts and some rapes...serious crimes like MURDERS....NEVER happen! Or VERY RARELY! Before we were talking about like..a murder every 5 or 10 years. And now it's 3 murders happening in almost 3 years in a row! So hey don't freakin' blame me for asking: WHAT THE F***!?!? IS GOING ON AROUND HERE!?!? It's like people have been snorting or drinking some maical violent-killin dope/mixture or somethin'! It's Insane!

(Oh and btw...if it weren't for me rejecting one of the 30 -something year old F* bois that all of a sudden decided to contact me and ask me about my NYE plans...I could have actually celebrated NYE in that VERY SAME F* CITY where the MURDER happened....At.That.Very.Same.Night!! Think about that. The two suspects in the NYE stabbing didn't knew their victim prehand. Which means that thevictim could have been anybody! It could have been ME that night!:) Who would have known that not only was it good that I rejected a NYE celebration with that F*boi, to keep my own DIGNITY but also apparently to keep myself alive!

Ok but all this aside: I do feel bad for the close friends and family to the victim. What a horrible, tragic start to the new year for them! :(

[a-womans-rhetoric]

Natalie Wynn's "J.K. Rowling" and Disruptive use of Women's Rhetorical Tropes: A Defiant Reply to Transmisogyny

ContraPoints, surrounded by an opulent, candle-lit set and adorned in witch's garb, leisurely pours champagne into her glass — she's ready to breach the internet's hottest topic of January, 2021: her childhood idol being outed as a transphobe (link here). The video itself being over an hour and a half long, I would be hard-pressed to claim that I could ever hope to cover its entirety, comprehensively, in a single post. So to save-face, I'll be dedicating this space only to breaking down her most frequently used rhetorical tropes, one by one.

Irreverence

"Joanne, I wanna talk to you, Joanne! [Fans herself with a rainbow paper fan with the word "BIOLOGICAL" written across it] What is it about Joannes? I can't catch a break from these people" (00:23-00:29, emphasis added).

Wynn's introductory lines immediately open a dialogue with J.K. Rowling — however, this invitation of discourse is defiantly "irreverent" (reminiscent of Nomy Lamm's punk-feminist style in "It’s a Big Fat Revolution” (1995)). Contrapoints, herself a transgender woman, is aware that her very existence is considered in opposition to the TERF-ideology that Rowling subscribes to. Thus, she's rather playful — even openly disrespectful — with her diction: calling the British author by her first name in a mocking-tone and flaunting her own trans identity to the camera (in a way that would likely offend the fragile sensibilities of a transphobe). Her personal tone (with ample use of the pronoun "I") servers a duplicitous purpose: a simultaneous message of "sit down and listen" and a fair degree of "I don't care if you can't accept me."

"So, now that 2020 is finally over, I think we can let the record conclusively show that it was a year whomst is bad. And on top of everything else going on, truly the last thing we needed was the author of Harry Potter coming forward to announce there's two things she can't stand: bigotry, and the transgenders. (00:31 - 00:50, emphasis added).

Finally broaching the subject at hand directly, Wynn employs kairos alongside her irreverence. Kairos, or the rhetorical use of an "opportune moment," holds incredible weight in the first month after 2020: the year in which the whole world fell into a stasis. Characterizing Rowling's transphobia as a collective "the last thing we needed," is also rather dismissive — she unites herself with her audience with the pronoun "we" and invites us all to groan at the exasperating nature of Rowling's bigotry.

Claiming the Right to Speak / Personal Experience

"This is a painful topic for me all around because, as a transgender woman, I am honestly really hurt by a lot of the things Joanne has said in the last year. But I also know what it's like to be the target of a Twitter mob" (01:36-01:47).

As she begins to touch on the topic, Natalie Wynn claims the right to speak on the issue of Rowling's transphobia — a type of bigotry that directly effects her. However, Wynn also situates herself partially with Rowling in her acknowledgement that receiving Twitter backlash is a terrifying experience (an experience, she argues, that the human brain is not prepared to handle the scale of, 01:49-02:39). In treating her subject with such dignity — and adding her own deeply personal account— ContraPoints creates a credible ethos in the beginning of her video essay. The audience is inclined to listen to someone who has been directly effected by the subject of Rowling's controversy (transphobia) and someone who is, rather compassionately, willing to empathize with those who would wish her harm. Although the generally sassy, glamorous, and irreverent tone of the video still appears soon after (see: the above image), her opening up for this somber moment garners a fair degree pathos in the viewer — we, as human beings, are inclined to sympathize with people who are open about being hurt.

Metis (Embodied Rhetoric)

[The following ContraPoints quote is addressing the above J.K. Rowling tweet, content warning for transmisogyny] "Transphobes love to play this game where they pretend that trans people just don't understand basic biology, that's our problem! As if I didn't start taking female hormones because I'm acutely aware that my body is not the same as a cis woman's body, that sex is real. "[Fictional TERF character] You will never be a woman, Nathan. Every cell in your body is male and has a Y chromosome." Really? That's crazy. How you'd you learn so much about science? You know I don't really feel the need to have a second X chromosome, I get by with only one, I make it work. I actually like the Y chromosome, I think it's a little more dainty, you know, it's little softer, a little more petite. The X chromosome has a lot of extra appendages, and don't you think? I don't need anymore of those, thanks. No trans person thinks it's possible to change chromosomal sex and to pretend otherwise is to argue in bad faith" (08:47-09:34).

If you can excuse my gargantuan quote, I hope you'll agree that the dialogue ContraPoints builds here was just too good to cut short. Within this excerpt, we see Wynn's use of irreverance and personal experience blended seamlessly together. For this YouTuber, the personal is perpetually political — especially when her own identity is constantly taken as an ideological stance. She uses her own expertise in trans issues to pick apart just how disingenuous Rowling's assertions are — even accusing her of "argue[ing] in bad faith" with her reductive claims (later, taking specific issue with how Rowling treats trans-ness as a costume). But, here, she also directly invokes another rhetorical trope: that of metis, or embodied rhetoric. Natalie Wynn specifically references her transgender body as a sort of counterpoint to the condescending "sex is real" claims by TERFs. She cites her intrinsic desire to pursue hormonal therapy as evidence that she — and other trans people like her — are all "acutely aware" that there are chromosomal differences between themselves and cis women. With this salient statement, she then follows with some humor: which, again, utilizes her trans body in her rhetoric. Her characterization of the Y chromosome as "more petite" and playful declaration of not needing "extra appendages" lightens up the often dark tone that arguing for trans rights and liberation can take. The clever points she makes are by no means weakened by her humor — if anything, the audience is more willing to listen to someone who can "joke about themselves" (so to speak) while still arguing an incredibly important message.

Naming and Defining Issues

"When I see Joanne tweeting about how trans people think sex isn't real and they're erasing same-sex attraction and they're silencing women, alarm bells are ringing because I recognize these as familiar transphobic talking points, specifically TERF talking points. "TERF" means trans exclusionary radical feminism. God are we still talking about this? I promise this is the last time. So TERFism is a hate movement that disguises transphobia as feminism. ... The fundamental problem with TERFs is not that they're mean. It's that they're politically reactionary, they want to reverse the progress of trans liberation." (14:05-16:02)

In her definition of TERF rhetoric, Natalie Wynn outlines some dog-whistles that are obvious to her, as a trans woman. She calmly explains to the viewer that, oftentimes in the present-day, rhetorics of exclusion are thoroughly disguised; TERFs, specifically, hide their rampant transphobia as a form of feminism. However, she further clarifies that the specific "danger" that TERFs pose is not from their cruelty — it's from their fervent dedication to strip away trans rights through political means. By specifying this danger, Natalie Wynn shifts the conversation away from empty discussion of offensiveness/terminology, to issues which directly affect the lives of trans people every day.

[This portion addresses the picture above] Also an act of naming and defining, ContraPoints makes a distinction between "Direct" and "Indirect Bigotry." She argues that many people envision bigotry as a festering, public, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred — a phenomenon she dubs "the Westboro Baptist Church theory of bigotry" (20:06). In bringing attention to the human tendency to think of people as exclusively practicing "direct bigotry" — envisioning them as a sort of delusional "other" — she then forces the audience to contemplate the relative omni-presence of the more covert (and possibly alluring) "indirect bigotry." This definition, crucially, requires introspection. By allowing ourselves to think of bigots not exclusively as "Westboros," we're made to adopt a much more nuanced view of subjects (most) generally prefer to keep black-and-white. Natalie Wynn uses her J.K. Rowling case study to complicate this 2D view of "The Bigot," inviting others to more carefully examine how politically reactionary views develop.

Phew, this was probably the longest post I've ever typed up on tumblr! Hopefully, I succeeded in demystifying (or at least adding clarity to) some of the specific tropes ContraPoints uses (that are common to women's rhetorics as a whole). Thanks for reading if you stuck around this long, and my ask box is always open!

[goddess-help-us]

social media truly is toxic for your mental health. I just went through my Instagram and un-followed around 130 people/pages over the last two days because I realized it wasn't doing anything for me to be connected with these people/accounts. I recently saw a meme, of all things, that said something along the lines of, "this thing isn't actually a big deal, you just secretly enjoy being angry." And this really got me thinking about something else I recently saw which was like, "social media companies have figured out that what keeps people engaged are anger and sex and so those things get incorporated into the algorithm to keep you scrolling and scrolling."

I had been following lots of political accounts—some were actual politicians in Congress, others were former politicians, some were advocacy, many were meme accounts, and many many were identity politics accounts. I think when I re-joined Instagram in May 2020 Instagram got flooded with social justice fervor, which then continued through the rest of the summer into the election of November 2020, followed soon thereafter by the Jan. 6 insurrection hysteria, and then again the following spring in April 2021 with the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Things maybe calmed down for a bit during the summer until the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, then the Texas anti-abortion bill soon afterwards, then Covid Delta surge in October 2021 which then was followed for like a 3-month period between November 2021 and January 2022 of Covid Omicron surge. This was then capped off by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Basically, Instagram is now the place of doom-scrolling. I wouldn't say all accounts or content produced surrounding these events are bad either, in fact some of them contained good bits of analysis for all these events. That doesn't mean it's good to be constantly scrolling through there though. Like maybe if you were someone who doesn't extensively use IG or rely on it to stay in touch with people back home or with other long-distance friends, then you aren't actually on there that much so the algorithm's temptation isn't there to exploit you as much. For me, however, I never really stepped away from IG after it blew up with fervor in June 2020. I relied it on since I didn't really know anyone in my new city—and it's tough to meet new people when you're constantly busy with schoolwork anyway—so I was kinda trapped in my room (monk's cell?) through these whole past two years with Instagram being one of my few escapes. And when one of your only escapes is constantly telling you how bad the world is and constantly trying to apply sociological analyses onto every single thing, it really starts to make you feel like everything is hopeless.

And there it is—"you are here because you enjoy being angered, etc.". The algorithm gave me these pages to look at because it profiled me and found out how to keep me engaged. I don't enjoy being angry but social media likes you to be angry while on their platforms so you don't leave. I think part of truly being mindful is understanding when a space is actively working against your wellbeing and, if so, then you need to take action to either reconstruct that space or leave. I've done both. I removed a lot of people who I don't know from my feed and I've had a time limit on IG that I've been following for a few months now (probably February of this year).

There is something very weird. It's almost like if you aren't posting on IG, are you even real? We have our online and in-person personas and I'm not sure it's so good to compartmentalize our minds into these halves if we aren't being paid to do it. Probably the best thing to do is actually leave IG but I don't have the will to do that, just because I have so many people I'm connected with on there that I wouldn't have connection with otherwise. But maybe that's also the point? We'll see.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Happy new year everyone 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

I know 2020 has been hard for everyone.

And I want everyone to know, suffering isn't a contest and we all suffer in different ways. But I feel I should give my year in Review. Just some things that happened to me personally.

This was an intense, and long and spiritual and emotional journey for me...

I really discovered what it meant to have community, family and what my life means to me.

But I feel I need to get this in writing cause I can remember the year with vivid detail and I will probably forget if I don't get it down.

Do I have to share this publically online to my tumblr account for a bunch of strangers to see? not really.

Do I want to?

Yes. I think so. Just from how so many people on tumblr and real life have touched me.

This is kinda long and no one needs to read this.

(idk how to do a readmore on mobile. But this is where I would add it later. No one needs to read if they don't want to.)

January/February: (and some background on the last five years of my life cause.....well. it's important.)

As people knew, I got way into Invader Zim last summer. I spent most of my waking life working a dead end job at a grocery store. I lived a sad lonely life, going straight home to a single dark studio apartment. With not many material possessions outside of games, my laptop and my tablet to my name. Half of my material loves, such as home furnishings and books were still in boxes from when I moved in. In case I ever had to move again, or get some "big screenshot or copywriter" job in the city.

....

I lived in that city in the same dead end job and apartment for five years.

No friends. No social life. I often refused to make doctor appointments or attempt to establish myself in that city. I didn't even talk to anyone in my workplace.

Work. Go online. Go to sleep.

I lived like that for five years.

I thought it was good.

Even my therapist thought I was doing well.

When I really wasn't. My main character flaw I struggle with is motivation.

I can talk to someone about very detailed plans I have to fix a problem... But I tend to never follow through.

Just because I can describe in detail how to fix my personal problems, it doesn't mean I will do it.

(I have gotten better at this but it's a major struggle)

I might have been a Zombie during the day...

But by night I was pouring my soul into my AU and my analysis.

After being so thoughly ignored or overlooked by the Naruto fandom and the Undertale fandom, I felt like I had finally found my home and was settling into a community there.

I just loved that people loved what I had to say.

Especially my AU.

It's no secret that a lot of themes in my au revolve around found family, grief, and loss.......

Fatherhood, in particular.

What it means to be a father, how much do you need to try when you mess up, how willing should a child forgive their parent, especially those that have wronged you and how much of it is factually accurate and simply a self projection of what children want their parents to be and visa versa... What amount of forgiveness and change is nessasary...is it needed?

....

It's no secret that a lot of my AU is a giant coping mechanism for my Dad's death. Espessially the falling out and growing closer with a lot of my family members throughout the years following his death. (Most of the time I keep it ambiguous to how it relates to my personal life unless I include a readmore that states so outright. I feel my au can be enjoyed by a variety of people in the fandom who don't need to know me as a person or my life story.)

My Dad passed away in 2016 in February and my family still feels the aftershocks to this day.

It's part of the reason I moved to the city, alienated myself from my family and people that loved me and refused to experience life for five years.

My entire world was Zim, and I was okay.

March: When America finally realized and started to feel the effects of the pandemic....

A lot of people got scared.

Me included.

I didn't have any streaming services or access to the news. So I only heard accounts from my mom.

I didn't understand why the store was so dead quiet and empty for a few days, then it went into mass chaos and panic in the span of two days.

It felt like Retail black friday in the worst way. Everyone was packed like sardines. Everyone was yelling. The lines at the registers bled into the clothing department.

I was witness to customers shoving others for toilet paper, being rude to cashier's and just overall unpleasantness.

At the time, I didn't even fully grasp what the pandemic was, and I feel a lot of people at the time didn't either.

I ended up absentmindedly scratching my eyebrow in front of a customer and she screamed and villanised me for it. That they didn't want groceries touched by my "unclean hands"

I ended up breaking down into tears.

The customer behind me gave me a hug and told me I was doing a great job.

But the damage was done. It was the final straw, I couldn't stop crying and I was breaking apart.

Thankfully my Boss (the one who likes me) pulled me aside and asked what's wrong.

It was then that I quit. No notice. Same day. I had to get out of there.

I was planning to move to an apartment with my sister in the summer, but my Mom offered for me to move back in with her temperarily just so I can get out of the city and away from the pandemic.

So I did.

I got scared, broke my lease a month early and quit my job of five years that gave me nothing back.

He told me, "take care of yourself and your family, I won't keep you here, do what you need to do."

So I did.

April-June:

A very eventful few months.

My mom offered for me to live at her place, but for some reason she was acting like I would live there forever. That this wasn't a temporary arrangement, and that I didn't have an apartment set up already.

This was in large part to my sister, who had lived with my mom taking advantage of her for years.

Even though my sister and I were going to move in together, I was just never sure about it cause of how she never packed her stuff or made any effort to find a job.

My mom often acted like I was lazy and not searching and was treating me like... Well, an unruly teenager instead of a woman of 29 years. She acted like I was a failure for returning home when it was her idea in the first place.

I would have just been petrified in the city.

Like usual, I retreated to my au again.... And in the spring, something eventful happened.

In may, 8th 2020:

I was invited by @rissynicole to join an invader zim discord.

Now, I've never really used discord before. I always thought it's interface is too confusing.. and I'm a member of a few other iz discords and I usually don't follow them that closely.

Rissy assured me it was different cause some friends of thiers made it and it was smaller.

Before I knew it, I was sharing memes and getting to know everyone there.

It wasn't long after I invited my partner in IZ crimes, @paketdimensioncomic who was genuinely wary of iz servers due to a bad experience with the last one they were a part of.

But soon they were sharing memes and laughing with everyone else.

My eyes were starting to open and I was able to connect to fans of my work in an interpersonal way. And I was able to discover new artists and aus I never knew about.

I was also able to meet so many others of the community and invite them to the server myself.

The moo-ping 10 server kept me sane while I was living with my judgmental mother.

Not only that, the summer was very productive for my au.

Drawing was all I did, and it was a huge break from the job as a cashier I had.

Not only that, June came, and with it, me and Ceph's first collab fic:

A result of us just going back and forth in our DMs constantly about Professor Membrane and how he changed in ETF for the better and how much we adamantly stan "trying-to-be-a-good-dad-brane" and how much of his ETF development has to be implied off screen in order for the emotional resolution in the movie to matter.

The only reason I never professed my love for Membrane as a character in the fandom before the fic dropped was.... Well....

Membrane can be a decisive character in the fandom and I was so worried people would hate me if I did an analysis on him, simply because he's not the best parent in the world. (As an understatement)

Ceph and I really encouraged each other to scream our love for the science himbo loud and proud more frequently and so often.... I actually start to see less Membrane hate posts and breakdowns then their used to be.... I like to think it's a combination of Me and Ceph's influence, along with ETF and the Quarterly's painting Membrane in a slightly more nuanced light then he was previously.

I never wrote a collab fic before and it's such a rewarding and fun and unique experience that I don't think I'll ever have again. And I love working with Ceph on our fics so much.

So much so we did it again...

July-August:

I never thought I would be one of those people who writes NSFW IZ fic... But here I am.

The Brainbrane au started.... An au of my au where Membrane and the Computer fall in love and Membrane makes him a body.

This ship was based around the idea where we joked that Membrane and Zim's Computer would have funny interactions if they ever met, under the pretense Membrane thinks Computer is Zim's parent.

Our headcanons morphed and shifted until we just full blown started shipping them.

Just because Membrane and Zim's Computer have overall REALLY entertaining chemistry.

It's a character dynamic never seen in the show or comics (yet) and I imagine thier interactions to be nothing but entertaining banter.

The fic was also born from spite... Making fun of the troupes and cliches that we found personally destestible in some questionable zadr fics.

So an angry ace and a demi-bisexual collab on a porn and end up blessing the fandom with

Compapa headcanons,

Computer being recognized as a more common used fanon character,

The ship of Brainbrane.

The fandom having a crisis of "oh God, not only are we xenophiles we're technophiles too!!!" Or "why you gotta give Zim's Computer an ass"

More android Computer designs

It was an eventful summer.

In the midst of all this, I moved into my new place, got a new job, and I was able to see my friend (who is def my platonic straight soul mate) who lives in Indiana.

She came to visit, showed me how to decorate and how to take care of my body better! Things were looking up! It was great.

September-November:

My job was at a boat store. If was approaching the fall and my hours were being severely cut.

I was getting into a rut of depression again.

I thought things were changing but the same routine I was trying to escape from was the same thing coming back.

But instead of letting it take hold, I decided I was going to do something about it... I was gonna visit a museum and go with my sister. Just... variety stimulation.

Well that didn't happen.

I talked about this shortly in my au itself...but..

My sister had a complete mental breakdown.

She stopped taking her meds, went off the deep end and was in the hospital a total of five times throughout November.

A lot of it was acting out and the perfect storm of environmental factors that made her scream and act out so she would keep going back to the hospital.

It was traumatizing for me.

I just can't explain what it's like. For her and for me to be in that position.

I'm not telling the full story and a lot of bullshit things happened I won't share here.

She got diagnosed with bipolar one and my mom expected me to be a caretaker for her.

I threatened to disown my family and move away out of state.

It was just too much for me to handle.

So much I was a nervous wreck.

I tried to pick up a second job... Cause my sister was in the mental ward so frequently and couldn't pay the bills.

But I was fired within a week cause I was so stressed I couldn't retain the basic information they were training me for.

It was an office job.

My dream.

It could have been.

I was fired from something I really wanted.

I was only there for three days.

I could not retain any information.

I was a mess.

My sister was a trigger, my mom wanted me to live with her. I couldn't live like this.... I had to get out.

I had to get out.

December:

Remember my Indiana friend?

Well the first week of December is my birthday.

My 30th to be exact.

While I did pick up a seasonal position at Target (not my first pick)

I took the first week of December off so I could spend time with her. Cause she agreed, I needed a break from this crap.

Surviving 30 years is cause to celebrate and if I had to celebrate with my sister I would have cried.

I know there was a risk traveling out of state during a pandemic...

But I needed out, I needed a friend..

And I kinda wanted to look at the place since I was considering moving there.

My friend's mom was sick so she avoided me and her daughter and got us a hotel room.

It was fun! I got to swim in a salt water pool, we talked about Naruto, I showed her the iz and su art books I brought, also Computer and Membrane tea.

I also got to meet her other friends and get crunk. And her bf who is super nice and funny!

I had a super fun birthday....

Until her mom told my friend that her grandparents had covid and that was what she had. And my friend got sick within that same day.... As did I.

I owe so much to her family.

I was an entire state away...about a ten hour drive from home.... She let me stay at her house. "The covid house" we called it.

Cause everyone (except the father. He avoided everyone and booked a hotel immediately cus he was an ER doctor) had covid within a day.

I called in, the test results were positive and I had to stay with her family for ten days quarantine before I could work again.

Which would have been fine....

If my tumblr didn't log me out perminately of my old account. @dana-chan325 .... Which really sucked cause I had a constant headache and was too sick to engage with tumblr or much of the fandom. I didn't want to make a new account when my head was in a bad fog and I could barely breathe or smell.

It's not like I saw much of my friend either.... We all slept at different hours and she had more symptoms then I did.

It was just netflix, danganronpa v3 and cry.

I was miserable, but at the same time.... Not?

I really feel like God himself was the one who pulled me off from tumblr, and my living situation.

Maybe a whole extra week feeling like a bobblehead was what I needed.

It gave me some much needed clarity on my relationships with my mom and sis and friend.

Running away to Indiana was not the solution here.

Once I was better within ten days and no longer had a leave of absence, I drove home.

I am glad I fully recovered (but from how I understand it, my dear friend is still ill. I'm praying for her)

I might have gone to work a bit too soon, cause I had an asthma attack after trying to unload a single cart in the span of six hours.

My boss lectured that my speed was unacceptable, and even though I explained the covid situation and breathing problems many times, she threatened that I'd be fired if I'm that slow again.

Que the next few days of work where they put me on register.

Instantly I was sent into a panic remembering the last time I was on the register and how that panic attack caused me to quit.

I even asked if I could go back to stocking, since my breathing had improved. My boss assured me that I was put on the register cause they needed help and nothing to do with my covid thing.

Then as December concluded and the new year began, my boss said that this was the last shift for me cause my position was seasonal and they were letting a lot of people go.

I then asked why I was on the schedule for Sunday, and he told me to ignore it and I'm free to reapply for full-time.

I mean.... They can act smart about it...

But putting your general merchandise stocker onto register after she had an asthma attack and missed working the first two weeks of December due to covid.....

Not a good look.

So once again, I'm jobless once more.

Will probably continue to live with my sister for awhile.

But I do not feel as if it's a bad thing....

I met so many good people this year....

My friend's family even gave me 500 usd to cover my rent since I couldn't work for a majority of December.

I've seen evil and good from humanity this year. I've seen acts of god, good friends and what my real family means to me as well as friends I consider family.

This year really made me look back at the person in the mirror and say,

"I deserve better."

And actually worked for it this time.

Oh and after Christmas I got a horrible yeast infection that burns over most of my body currently.

Very accurate doodle to the pain I'm in right now.

(seriously my body is a fungus.)

But hey, good news, I respected myself enough to go to the doctor about it!!

So that's progress.

I really hope 2021 holds good things for me.

Thank you to the mooping 10 server for always being there and keeping me sane,

Thank you tumblr for liking my au and everything.

AND A SUPER SPECIAL THANK YOU TO @evartandadam and her family for housing me and my dumb diseased ass. Everyone, she is an angel and I can't express how much she means to me. Please check out her art and buy her stuff on redbubble.

Anyways... Byebye 2020.

I look forward to what I can accomplish for myself this year.