#80 entire fucking dollars + being subscribed to one of the worst

[kesagatame]

WHYYYYYY ARE UFC PPVS GOING UP IN PRICE AGAIN

[crazyintheeast]

I loved WW84. It was an amazing movie but what I loved even more was how it really showed how utterly irrelevant Batman has always been in the DC universe. Like we already got some hints in the Batman vs Superman  movie where Batman was not even considered news but seriously. Could you imagine just how crazy the DC universe is? Like the world was pretty normal until the 80′s. Oh there were some urban legends about mythical woman during WW1 but you know how those urban legends tend to be dismissed.

But then in 1984 suddenly every electronic device in the world switches to show you the face of some American dude who was known for running a pyramid scheme and he tells you to make a wish. And it fucking works. Even the people who were skeptical about it suddenly decide to make a wish when they see everything going crazy around them. Complete chaos and insanity ensues and humanity is half an hour away from wiping itself out of existence. Then the gentle feminine voice tells you that you could be a better person and literally talks humanity out of the brink of annihilation

Then things get normal for a while although normal is a relative term when your entire world was flipped  And then a guy dressed as a Bat appears in Gotham. The entire world holds their breath. Is this going to start a  chain reaction and throw everything in chaos the way it did in the 80′s? But nope nothing happens. Guy just turns out to be a dude dressed in a Bat with zero powers. The world completely loses interests in like two days

Then an actual super powered person appears on screen . This time humanity does not loses interests especially after an actual alien invasion happens. Everybody tries to learn more about Superman until he finally relents and gives several interview to help people feel safer. After seeing his expression when asked why he didn’t suggest to his people to simply colonize Mars humanity collectively decides that Superman is a well meaning himbo. Once again nobody outside Gotham actually cares about Batman despite the fact that he is now fighting random clowns and animal themed villains

Then a crazy alien monster attacks. Superman, Batman and a mysterious woman battle it. The entire world is at the edge of the seat and everything is streamed live. Superman dies like the himbo he was. Going on a suicidal charge againt the monsters instead of simply giving the magical spear to the mysterious woman who is clearly a master of melee combat. The Batman is also there and everybody is just wondering what on Earth is he doing there. Then still traumtised from their favorite himbo’s death they hear the voice of the mysterious woman and everybody loses their shit. That’s her. That’s the woman who talked to the entire world in 84. Batman is once again completely forgotten and the few times he is mentioned it’s like meme about how useless he is compared to the others. Gotha city official gleefully dunk on him as well since due to his illegal brutalization of criminals and his constant  disruption of the chain of evidence pretty much any criminal who can afford a half way decent lawyer walks

Then Midway City gets taken over by what looks like to be zombie monsters. The world is once again fascinated and  when literally a big chink of the major military installation on the planet.

Just when humanity is recovering from that there are are apparently insects aliens over the world again and somehow Superman is alive now? And he is back with the Wonder Woman but this time there is also a gorgeous man with a Trident and some weird kid in a red uniform that can move at an incredible speed? Batman is also there but apart from Gotham once again nobody actually cares about him and everyone is focused on the now living Superman , the Wonder Woman and the two new guys

Our gorgeous Trident man once again makes the news when literally entire garbage in the ocean and a big chunk of ships get washed up on every major beach in the world. Nobody knows whats happening but Trident gets caught live on every camera ripping it up in an small Italian city alongside a mysterious red headed woman with water powers. The world is once again fascinated with this new hero

Then in Philly of all places we get a new super powered hero who goes by Shazam. First people assumes he is another Kryptonian but he quickly clarifies that he just got his powers. Then he makes several tween references confusing people even more. Once again Batman is completely ignored by pretty much anybody and there are whole petition to kick him out of the what is dubbed as the Super Squad and replace him with the Philly hero

And then Birds of Prey happens and Harley blows up . And usually she would be a one day wonder about a clown lady who went on a rampage  but then someone uncovers footage from her in Midway City and Harley gets on social media and starts spilling the tea. Amanda Waller, the Suicide Squad, Enchantress...everything. She adored the attention and when she finds out how much people enjoy watching her beat up criminals (she doesn’t kill them on camera because she quickly finds out that a lot of kids are subscribed as well) she begins regularly live streaming it. Batman is not even the most famous weirdo out of Gotham anymore. Harley now has firmly cornered the market. But he doesn’t actually care. He didn’t fight crime to get famous or get attention. In fact he likes being in the shadows and the fact that Harley Quinn targets criminals now and keeps the casualties to a minimum to maintain her likes is a good thing. But then one horrifying day the internet learns that Harley’s hyena is named Bruce and they start shipping her with Bruce Wayne. Harley loves it and encourages it and everybody loses their mind. People write smutty fanfiction about them, the Harley/Bruce win all the internet polls, every time there is an interview he has talk about her. And worst of all one day he opened up his mail to see that someone had sent him the link to incredibly graphic deep fake of a Harley/Bruce/Batman three way.

And that’s when Bruce Wayne decides to spend several dozen billion dollars to construct the Watchtower. Because he absolutely does not want to be on this planet anymore

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 9 -  Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  They are at her husband’s old pack castle about it.  Are they hiding something?????

Chapter 9 – Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.

So off to dinner we go!  They talk about what a FRIGHTFUL sight it was that Alexia didn’t style and unfrizz her hair before going down to dinner with such dramatic terms that make me wanna gag. But I went from that to barfing myself inside out when I read the following line about Alexia’s frizzy hair:

“Lord Maccon adored it.  He thought she looked like some exotic gypsy and wondered if she might be amendable to donning gold earrings and dancing topless about their room in a loose red skirt…”

GOD DAMN AUTHOR!  We went from some poor choices but plausible deniability to straight up…

Like a lot of my racism complaints are subjective and nit-picky I will give you that.  But the author done goofed good and fucking proper with that line jesus fucking Christ.

GY*SIES IS A SLUR, AND ROMANI WOMEN ARE NOT ~EXOTIC~ SEXUAL OBJECTS! GOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YOURSELF!

I could fume about that fucking egregious shit the rest of the day but let’s try to distract myself with the parts of this story that aren’t openly racist.

At dinner, LeFoux is talking to some nerd about nerd shit.  Ivy is trying to talk about fish to some dude even though both of them don’t know anything about fish.  There’s a bit of drama when Lady Kingair (aka Sidheag) allows Maccon to sit in the Alpha seat, which TO BE FAIR is kinda bullshit, but the drama dissipates with a harmless distraction.  There is a brief interaction between Alexia and Maccon on the subject of the Tunstell/Ivy drama.  Maccon says they’re a bad match and Alexia agrees DESPITE THE FACT SHE LEGIT TRIED TO HOOK UP THE TWO AT THE END OF THE LAST BOOK BUT THAT’S FINE! Maccon ends the conversation about this slipshod ship-fest by sighing out a perplexed…

“Women”

Maccon you’re literally agreeing with a woman right now!  Boy howdy am I getting increasingly sick of how Maccon uses that word. If a male partner of mine used that word (woman) the way Maccon uses it (as this bullshit signifier that #yesallwomen are so hard to understand and difficult to deal with) I would uppercut him in the fucking taint.

CAN YOU BE ANGRY ABOUT THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE STORY FAPS INSTEAD OF THESE THROW-AWAY LINES THAT YOU’RE OVERANALYZING!

BLATANT RACISM AND SEXISM AREN’T THROW-AWAY LINES, BUT YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN BE MAD AT MORE STUFF! I AM ALWAYS HUNKERING TO ANGRY IT UP!

There’s a point where they call Alexia curse-breaker multiple times (cause she’s a soulless that can negate the powers of the supernatural.)  Ivy and Felicity have no idea what that means and don’t know Alexia is a soulless but nobody bothers to inform them.  I don’t know if this is going to be a conflict at some point or not.

Alexia then has to ~make a fuss~ by asking them about the humanization problem. They act like she is breaking some taboo, but honestly I don’t understand why.  They’re having a problem; it’s her and Maccon’s job to solve the problem, so they should ask about it so they can solve it right? Also these Scottish folks seem much more down to earth and don’t subscribe to the stuffy social mores of British society. So it’s dumb that they act as if Alexia is rudely asking why cousin Larry has two weeping pussies where his ears should be, while jabbing at them with a pencil, and making sexist jokes about it.

But she doesn’t ask questions that are going to be useful until a few pages into this conversation which means just in time for the author to avoid it with a distraction.  I have a feeling the author is going to do the same thing in this book that she did last book.  Started with a mystery, dances around it for the vast majority of the book without adding much to it, and just ¾ the way in the book SUDDENLY SHIT HITS THE FAN ALL AT ONCE AND IT’S REAL DUMB!

So it’s now after dinner and the men and women are separated to chit-chat. Alexia starts quizzing Lady Kingair. Lady Kingair says she wishes she could be a full blooded werewolf.  The only werewolf within a zillion miles who is powerful enough to turn someone into a werewolf is Lord Maccon, cause of course it is.    But Maccon doesn’t want to try to turn her because she’s his last heir and women very rarely survive the transformation.  

Which like, there’s no reason so far why the werewolf club has to be vast majority male.  No ALL MEN orgies, and no SINCE YOU’RE THE ONLY GIRL WE’VE SEEN IN 80 YEARS ALL OUR ERECTIONS POINT TO YOU FEMALE PROTAG!  Perhaps there is some plot point later on.  But honestly? I suspect it comes down to the bias that simply werewolfism is considered a male phenomenon. You can read all sorts of analyses of this but basically it comes down to that men are supposed to have a violent, animalistic nature that they try to suppress.  But women aren’t supposed to be angry, powerful, uncontrollable, or like worst of all HAIRY!  So I don’t want them even as no-name background characters yuck!

Also, oddly enough, last book they said that werewolves sought out actors, and arty types cause they seemed more likely to survive the transformation. Creativity is tied to ~extra soul~ or whatever.  So I want to know why all these werewolves are dim-witted, gruff, military philistines instead of sweet, sensitive, arty twinks, smooching each other?  Is it cause her type is gruff meathead and like an idiot she outright contradicted her own story for no particular reason?

SEEMS SO! GOD I WANT A CASTLE FULL OF HAIRY BESTIAL WOMEN AND/OR CUTE SENSITIVE TWINKS! IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR?

Nothing else really comes out of the conversation with Lady Sidhaeg Kingair and thankfully we’re saved from that conversation by the sounds of the men folk fighting.

Maccon is fighting with the current beta.  Maccon wins, cause of course he does.  They both grumble bitterly at each other for BETRAYAL and nothing is revealed. Like I am glad there was action, but this was so limp and tepid.  It could have easily been dramatic and they should have revealed something, especially considering they dump the whole story at the end of this chapter.

So Alexia takes him upstairs for fade to black SEX, cause of course she does. Like I won’t kink-shame much, but getting all hot that your husband beat up another dude who is clearly weaker than him for no real reason is bogus yo. A thousand kink-shames upon you.

Afterwards Maccon FINALLY fucking explains something.  He says the reason why he left the Kingair pack is because everybody in the pack was planning to kill the queen of England and didn’t tell him about it.  They’re Scottish and Supernaturals and APPARENTLY the crown hates both of those things.  She appoints Scottish and Supernatural people to the highest places on her court and we have not seen any oppression but just trust us okay.  They kept it from Maccon, because Maccon is a ~progressive~ and thought killing the queen would be a bad idea.  He believes this because the Queen is giving Supernaturals more rights and that if they kill her that it would make Supernaturals look real bad and innocent Supernaturals would be targeted.

That’s a reasonable fear, and honestly since we’re supposed to be on Maccon’s side she doesn’t really try to explain the other side.  Like was it supposed to be a military Coup so that werewolves would be in charge of Britain, since the military is made up of werewolves? Cause that’s honestly pretty fucking interesting.  I know the author says there are a lot more humans than werewolves…but I don’t know why they would fear much of a backlash if they all have superpowers, lots of the money, and are the ENTIRE military.  The fucking Spartans quelled every slave uprising even though slaves vastly outnumbered their military cause their military was trained as hell. Those masc 4 macs thug bros weren’t even able to turn their faces into dog faces.

Also Maccon’s feelings were really hurt when they were going to kill the queen with poison.

“Poison is for bitches amirite?” Maccon laughs misogynistically.  Alexia chuckled in kind and sprinkled something in Maccon’s 5th glass of Scotch.  As he dies in agony Alexia licks her fingertips in triumph. Oops they still had poison on them and she dies.  LeFoux travels to reality and she has the good sex with me. The End!

Okay that exchange didn’t happen, I just wish it did.

So anyway due to the ~betrayal~ Maccon left his pack and it really fucked his pack a big one because nobody was powerful enough to turn other people into werewolves so their pack couldn’t grow and outsiders were disinterested in serving them.  (BTW humans who serve werewolf packs in exchange for being turned into werewolves are called Clavigers in this book.) But this was their punishment for betraying him.  Not punishment for the high treason of attempting to murder a queen and thus throwing the entire country into violent chaos which could have resulted in millions of deaths. The focus for the punishment is highlighted as Maccon’s feelings were hurt.

I have a million questions about this situation but I can forgive the author for not going into more detail. This is a fluff story and doesn’t need to be bogged down with politics.  I can’t help but be  frustrated because the author doesn’t give anything of substance, so when something mildly interesting happens I want to latch onto it but it’s just plywood stuck to a cliff with bubblegum, it ain’t gonna hold my weight.

Thus I plummet back into the pit of frivolousness, hoping futilely there maybe something enjoyable I can grab in order to save my sanity from this stack of bullshit.

PS – I’m way into the fact that the thing they did reveal is not relevant to the actual conflict at the center of this book.

LOVE THAT!

PPS – The fight should have had the Beta forcefully removed from the fight. That he thrashes against another werewolf about how ineffectual Maccon is.  That he has all sorts of strength, power, and money but he’s just a complacent lapdog.  Since he has been dubbed ‘one of the good ones’ he’ll let the less fortunate ones of his race rot while he nibbles pheasant in his castle.  Maccon fires back how hypocritical it is to say you want what’s best for werewolves/Scottish folks while picking fights and putting the less fortunate on the line.  That he’s proving to the kingdom that werewolves are valuable by being a good example and working within the power structure to help his own kind. Afterwards Maccon goes back to his room physically and emotionally exhausted, and cuddles with his wife while he explains the backstory. He cries over his guilt of hurting his pack, and wonders if what he is doing is the right thing.

Problem with that is it doesn’t make the conflict easy to understand and cut and dry.  It also makes Maccon emotionally vulnerable…which like I’M INTO but seems as if it’s not the author or this set of reader’s fetish.

Say something nice Faps:

After pulling teeth for a book and a half we learn something about Maccon.  And it’s actually potentially interesting.

Ivy’s back and forth about her lack of knowledge about fish was genuinely cute and funny.