#Is This Offensive And Loud? (2020)

[olderthannetfic]

I'm IWTV-wank-avoidance-asking Anon and it kinda missed me that it would be a wanky topic lol I was trying to see if the show is worth watching. A lot of my mutuals are posting IWTV gifs so I assume it's good, but I was curious if anyone who read the novel would think "Better read the novel". I don't realize an asking-for-rec ask would be wanky, but now that I think about who the writer is, it kinda makes sense. My bad lol

--

Ahahahaha.

Around here, I don't think anyone is precious enough about Anne Rice to start the genuine version of this wank, but Rice fandom can be... uh... very intense even on top of Rice herself having been the queen of drama.

You know about Red Beans Anne Rice, right?

Many years ago, Anne got all butthurt about a tacky-ass restaurant taking over an abandoned building that she'd had Lestat being emo in in one of the books. Instead of gothic atmosphere, it was now very PINK and LOUD. So she wasted money taking out ads in the local paper as Lestat trying to shame the restaurant owner... at which point a bunch of other restaurant owners also wasted money to respond in newspaper ads saying that they welcomed fellow businesspeople. It all ended in the restaurant's grand opening and people with plates of "Red beans Anne Rice" (i.e. red beans and rice).

--

Anyway, I read the first book back in the 90s when I was like 15. It's decent from what I remember. The thing that made it iconic when it came out in 1976 was that it was pretty heavily pushing the vampire=drug addict metaphor. This is everywhere in sexy goth sadboi vampire media now, but it wasn't as much of a thing at the time.

It was also very, very gay but in that way where (at least in the first book), nobody really says the word. That meant something in the 70s. Even by the 90s, it wasn't such a big deal, and it's a big nothingburger in the 2020s.

Book 1 is Rice dealing with the death of her child. It's all about suicidal feelings and Catholic weirdness. The main character is Louis, a.k.a. Rice's self-insert (which she confirmed herself).

Books 2 onward are about Lestat's dick.

He becomes a rockstar, vampire-bones the ur vampire, which causes him to mega level up, thus enabling him to thwart her plot to kill all men on earth aside form a few for breeding purposes, bodyswaps so he has a working penis again, fucks a nun, swaps back, gets Louis back by trying to commit suicide and accidentally getting a tan, etc... Much, much later books are about the other bonkers vampires, most of them more in the horny rockstar mold than the sad mommy of dead baby one.

In book 1, Louis is a depressed plantation owner who eats a bunch of his slaves among other fucked up shit. Claudia, their vampire daughter, is a small child who is upset about being stuck as a kid forever. One of the more disturbing parts is when Louis finds out she's fucking adult men. Lestat turns out to be a French nobleman with mommy issues despite Louis thinking he was only pretending to be upper class.

-- The TV series moved the entire plot much later in history, made Louis black, and gave him a spine. Some racists cried about this and some of tumblr cried about how it was offensive to take the plantation owner and make him black instead of doing that with the other one.

The show also made it more overt that Lestat is an abusive jackass boyfriend. This apparently came as a surprise to people with poor reading comprehension. Others have wanked about fans still liking Louis/Lestat instead of Louis/less terrible boyfriends. But... like... It's IWTV. What did they expect?

(So yes, some book fans will be immensely wanky about the show. Ignore them.)

Also, I hear they fuck on the show? Rice's vampires don't have working junk, which we know because Lestat stands in front of an entire wall of mirrors in the most bougie bathroom ever in Akasha's evil lair and discusses how his penis—I mean "The Organ"—no longer does anything.

Also, Armand in the books is the 14-year-old kept boy of a Renaissance painter with a harem of boys or something like that. (It's been a very long time since I read these.) Shit like this never makes it into the adaptations.

--

If you're curious about the history of vampire media or about a certain kind of Southern gothic shit, sure, read the books, particularly the first one with its radically different tone and much greater historical importance.

The old movie is a decent adaptation of book 1, though it makes it less gay (or at least removes Louis' weird boner for his dead brother) and messes with the ending in a way that would have made sequels veer off from the books. I haven't seen that other old movie with Aaliyah, but it looks like a campy time capsule of baaaad movies of that era.

Anyway, no, you don't need to read the book before watching the show. They changed a massive amount of stuff.

I'm in more of a Chinese media phase right now, but a bunch of friends have watched and said the show is genuinely good.

[linddzz]

(with every disclaimer that Harris/Walz is far from perfect and while I feel better voting for this ticket than Biden, there's still more I want to see from them on several things but especially Gaza)

One thing that I keep feeling but am like....scared??? to say out loud after 2016 (and how close 2020 was lbr) is that there aren't just the happier vibes of a Dem ticket finally learning how to go on the offense, it almost feels like a total flip of where it's been since hell...2014???

The "you're being a fuckin gross weirdo" has been picking up in leftist spaces for a bit (I want to make a tally of how many commentators have joked that they should get royalties for saying it before Walz) but I never would have expected it to reach mainstream Dem messaging and for that to explosively flip the culture war vibes (so far. Man does it say a lot that I keep feeling the need to add caution into everything lmaooooo).

Harris/Walz seem to have managed the thing Democrats have struggled with since even the Obama years: messaging. And it's wild??? They figured out how to smack down culture war shit without ignoring it and without validating it with a full argument. You're being weird. Mind your own damn business.

And with that, now the wider social framing feels like the social progressives from the center to the left are on the offense. Now it's THEM who have internet brain rot weirdo vibes. Now the reactionaries are crying and being sensitive and throwing tantrums. They were before! But it feels like it's finally not being taken seriously. Now the center to left is making memes launching their ticket based on Vibes! Do you know how wild it is for the meme-vibes ticket to not be the other guy???

The backlash to the backlash feels like it's starting and I'm under no illusions that "oh sweet we won lmao we are so back" but man it feels nice to be on the side pointing and going "y'all are being fuckin weirdos."

(Knowing how to deflate a bully is definitely something Walz picked up from being a coach and teacher, but the "you're weird" and "mind your own business" are so word-for-word from how I've seen trans rights activists starting to hit back that I do wonder if he's gotten tips from his GenZ kids. He has said before that his stances on gun control changed bc his daughter talked to him and he's mentioned before that he listens to his kids a lot. So....I do wonder.)

[hournites]

for the best friends to lovers prompt- "did that kiss mean anything to you"

hope you are doing well!! i love your writing 🫶🏻

Soundless Spin

“You start.” 

Doja Cat blasted through Cindy’s speakers, fancy chandeliers overhead shaking from the noise as Rick eyed the offensive Bud Light in front of him. It pained him that Blue Valley, Nebraska couldn’t shake the 20th century out of its roots–Somehow, even amidst 2020 billboard charts, Jackbox games, and Tiktok trends, the only activity collectively agreed upon tonight was spin the bottle. 

“Do I have to?” 

“Yes,” said Cindy, already bored at how long he was taking. Why was she facilitating this nonsense–she hates half of the school. That said, Rick also didn’t understand how they scored invites to her party. Or why the girls wanted to go. They might have not been at each other’s throats anymore with the ISA discontinued, but it wasn’t exactly like they were close friends. Since the JSA recovered the true Sylvester’s pickle brain, Rick stopped applying logic in his life when he didn’t need to. Crowded between drunk teens sat in a seance approved circle, everyone waited on Rick to start the game he had assumed was a joke. 

“No, you don’t have to,” said Beth reassuringly from across the room, though Rick suspected the second it was her time she’ll nope out. She looked around the group of classmates, sober as a judge. “Please remember that kissing should always be consensual!” 

Cindy rolled her eyes. “It's not that serious, Dr. Chapel Jr.” She shrugged in that nonchalant way before she stirred the pot. “Rick might land on Cameron, for all we know.”

Yolanda facepalmed. “We’re supposed to be encouraging Rick, not giving him the ick.” 

Cameron shot Yolanda an icy look. She raised a brow in retaliation.  “I said what I said.”

Courtney, nestled beside him, placed an ineffective hand on his knee. To Rick, she chanted, “C’mon! Spin, spin, spin, spin!” 

Everyone joined in. 

“Spin! Spin! Spin!” 

“Fine. Fine!” he shouted loud enough to be heard, blowing hot air out of his mouth. “I get it!” He raised both hands in the air to get some of Cindy’s cheerleading friends to stop hollering, their enthusiasm giving him minor concern. “I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” 

The empty beer bottle spun tightly around their sitting circle–Rick anticipated disaster, regretting his cave to peer pressure the second his hand lifted away. Anyone but Mahkent. Anyone but Mahkent, he nearly prayed in mounting desperation. It whirled around Yolanda on his right, Becky Sharpe, Cindy and the cheerleaders, tipped past Jenny Williams, slowed by Courtney, and crawled past Cameron until it hesitantly landed on Beth. 

Rick jerked his eyes up, meeting her gaze. His heart stopped for, like, a minute. He’d been so caught up in who would be the worst option, he hadn’t had enough time to think what would happen if the bottle landed on one of his friends.

What the hell should I do?  

Courtney covered her mouth to hide her giggles. “Wow! Must be fate.” 

“Girlie,” Yolanda whisper-mimed, shaking her head and zipping her lips. “Shut up.” 

It didn’t matter–Rick easily ignored Courtney cajoling them six ways to Sunday because he couldn’t hear her. The music distorted around them as he tried to pick up on Beth’s cues. 

He almost asked her, should I spin again? 

Then her lips lifted into a small cheeky smile. Of course, Beth wouldn’t have let herself play if she minded getting a few kisses from this game considering she was the one reminding everyone about consent. And, he came to realize, this would be his first kiss sober. It scratched an itch in his brain to think it would be with Beth. They could laugh it off later. 

“Well?” some dude huffed, impatient. “Are you kissing or not?”

Rick cleared his throat. “Beth, are you sure…?” 

But she was already making her way towards him, answering his question. 

Okay. Welp. We’re doing this. 

Instead of shuffling into the middle of the circle like a circus act, Rick let her come to him. Once she was in arm’s reach, he reached forward, hauling Beth into his lap to move her away from a sticky beer spill. It was easier, more comfortable—Less of a spectacle, this way. 

“Oof.” She laughed breathlessly as he rearranged their limbs. “Hi there. This is close.” 

“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed, ready to shove her off him if she didn’t like it. 

Beth touched his hand. “Don’t apologize.” She was right, this was so close. He could count every curly eyelash of hers behind those dark frames.  “Did you know this only had a 7% probability of happening?” 

Rick inwardly rolled his eyes at her math brain guzzling out computations at a time like this. Why wasn’t she nervous? “I did not. It’ll just be a peck, okay?”

Her brown eyes brightened in the dim party room and she nodded. “Sure!”

Rick cupped her jaw, cautious to be gentle, then tipped her chin up so he could lean down and kiss her.

She was ready for it. She closed her eyes and looped her arms around his neck, meeting his quick peck with another kiss before he could end it. It caught him off guard when Beth let out a tiny sigh. 

It felt good. Right. Rick couldn’t pull himself away. 

She pushed herself up in his lap and then there was more. Rick’s thumb pressed against her cheek. He hadn’t had anything to drink since they first walked in, but his mind went warm and fuzzy, like that first sip of alcohol down his throat. Everything slowed around them. He didn’t know what they were doing or cared where they were, he just wanted the soft way Beth’s body pretzeled against his, her hand now moving, exploring down his neck to rest over his chest. It wasn’t rushed, or unsure, Beth was taking and he was giving or maybe it was the other way around. She let out another hum, and then there was another long lazy kiss, hypnotic enough for Rick to nearly believe that he had a soul she could’ve kissed out. 

“Woah, okay! Ew? Too much.” Jenny W clapped her hands. “Time’s up! Spin again!” 

He blinked out of the trance. “What?” 

She gave him a shy smile. “That was nice.”  Beth slid herself out of his lap seemingly unaffected nor aware of how she had just turned his life upside down.

 Nice? That was—Okay. Apparently the most intimate moment in his 18 years was just “nice.” Rick was fucked. 

“Yeah,” he croaked out, scared that if he spoke further his voice would crack, the tension between them was still palpable. Say something. You have to say something.

He focused on forming a coherent sentence out of his mouth. They should leave. To do what? He had no idea (yes, he did–her lips, that touch, the perfume on her neck, he needed it memorized). He also needed to process what the hell just happened, and, not surprisingly, Beth was very good at analyzing weird shit that happens to them–but not usually to both of them at the same time. 

“You heard me, right? It’s your turn now.” Jenny W thrust the bottle into Beth’s hand, not giving Rick the option to get a word in. 

“Oh,” Beth said. “Sorry!” 

He watched in stunned silence as she returned to her spot and wordlessly spun again. It landed on a guy from Ms. Woods’ calculus support group and jealousy took a hold of him with an iron fist. 

He got up and left, announcing he needed a piss, though the terrible excuse was luckily drowned out by the latest remix. Unable to stomach Beth kissing someone else, the rest of the night blurred like watercolors on a canvas. 

Nothing except the bleeding dark pinks of her lips dripped into every corner of his mind, the browns of her soft eyed stare, haunting his sleep. He suffered through the blue phantom-pain of Beth in his lap. The way she moved in it and how boldly he pulled her to him without second-guessing what he was doing. 

What was he doing? 

~.~ 

“Assuming the calculations from the goggles are correct, we would have six hours in the pocket dimension.” Beth wrote notes to follow her thinking on the Pit Stop whiteboard with a green marker, her goggles projecting a diagram. “That’s one hour in our dimension, meaning hypothetically your hourglass won’t time out.

“Got it,” Rick agreed without understanding, miserably distracted by the fact this was his first moment alone with Beth since Spin the Bottle. Thick tension returned with a vengeance. He could taste how bad he wanted her to like him. Every time she caught his eye Rick was certain he’d need a fire extinguisher to douse his hot heart within him. He sat on the table, his fingers tapping anxiously against the wood surface, really wanting to kiss her again. 

She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head like she didn’t quite believe him. Rightly so. He didn’t believe him, and that posed a risk for the JSA tomorrow. “Any questions, then?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

Beth folded her arms. “Really?” 

“Fine. Yeah. One.” 

She looked relieved. “Let’s hear it.” She turned around and wrote QUESTIONS on the board and set out to underline it.  

“Did that kiss mean anything to you?” 

Beth’s impeccable marker line careened to a crooked left. Slowly, she turned around. “That has nothing to do with our pocket dimension trip.” 

“You asked if I had any questions.” 

“Yes, you did. Fair enough.” She sighed in a way Rick couldn’t tell was wistful or annoyed. “Our kiss, you mean?” 

“Yes, our kiss.” Even calling it a kiss, as he had in his brain the last few days, was very modest. There was not just one kiss. There were several kisses. It was an experience. 

“Of course it meant something to me,” she said primly. The marker cap pressed into her inner-palm. “That was my first kiss.”

“That’s it?” 

She glanced away, fixating on the antiquated mugshots of Per Degatron’s goonies, finally starting to look as nervous as Rick felt. “What more do you want me to say? It was nice.”

He almost winced—There she went again. It was nice. For a girl with her vocabulary, that wasn’t promising. 

“It was a nice kiss,” she continued in his stretched silence, “and I’m glad I had it with you. I didn’t think the bottle would ever land on me, or that I would want to play until they made you go first. I’m pretty sure I went into it wanting to watch.” 

He furrowed his brows, trying to read between the lines. If she didn’t want to play unless he went first, then why did she continue with her turn afterwards? She must’ve used him to boost her confidence and practice kissing, not realizing he’d read into it so much. Now Rick felt stupid. 

“You’re hurt,” she said. He was about to argue, but there really wasn’t any point. Not when his voice would probably crack as he denied it. He cursed the accuracy of the mood reader still embedded in her goggles. Sensing his lingering wariness at the object above her hair, she took the goggles off and laid them aside. An offering that she wouldn’t leverage her emotional advantages in this conversation. She used the stool to step up onto the table, taking a seat next to him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you how you feel.” 

“It’s okay.” 

“It doesn’t have to be okay. Wasn’t it just a game?”

His hand inched closer to hers until their fingers brushed. She leaned against his side. He felt a strange catch in his breath as the warmth of her closeness untied some of the knots in his stomach. Beth was beautiful and sweet, and always bursting with compassion. How could he pretend he wasn’t falling for that? “It was supposed to be.” 

She looked up at him. 

“But..it wasn’t.” He met her stare and swallowed hard. “It wasn’t for me.” He dragged a hand over his forehead in disbelief he managed to say it out loud. He summoned the strength to keep going. “It wasn’t a game. It wasn’t just nice, it was…I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want it to stop. I felt like we clicked in that moment and I woke up from sleepwalking through feelings I have for you.”

Beth didn’t say anything, like his confession knocked the wind out of her. “You like me?”

He groaned softly. “It’s embarrassing, I know.” 

“No! No, no it’s not,” she objected, squeezing the hand nearest to hers, but Rick didn’t think he could handle her breaking his heart so softly. 

“Can you just tell me if I need to get over you?” 

“I’m not doing that.” Beth sat up straight. “I called the kiss nice because I didn’t know how else to explain how I felt. I was inexperienced and surprised at myself. I won’t lie, the thought of kissing you excited me, but I thought that was because I trust you, so it would’ve been an easy way to get my first kiss out of the way.” 

Rick started to smile, thinking back on what she said. “You calculated that 7% chance.” 

 “I did, and then that happened. I didn’t know if that’s how kissing always felt like or if it was because it was you. So I kept playing and I had a few more turns after you left, okay, but none of those kisses were like ours. But I knew you hated the game, left right after kissing me, and intended to only give me a peck,” she repeated the last fact with fake quotation marks. “I was the one that got carried away. I was the one that was embarrassed. It was easier if I pretended it didn’t happen so I wouldn’t make things weird.” 

It was such a relief to hear her say that they were on the same page. “So what do we do now?” 

“Well, first, we need to go over the pocket dimension because I know you were not paying attention, which I thought was because you were feeling uncomfortable but now I think it is because you were staring at my skirt.” 

“Holy shit.” Rick scratched behind his neck as heat crawled up his face. This was perilous and exhilarating new ground. He liked Beth and she knew it. He was attracted to her and she could feel it. “Uh, I plead the fifth?” 

Beth laughed and flashed him that same flirty grin from the party. “But as for right now?” Rick knew he was either in for trouble or a really, really good time. “I can think of a few ideas.”

She unearthed the green marker from her pocket and gave it a spin.

[princesssarisa]

Autism headcanon: Runt (Animaniacs)

Maybe this is cheating. Maybe this is less of a headcanon than it is canon in all but name, because Runt's voice and verbal tics are based on an explicitly autistic movie character: Dustin Hoffman's character Raymond Babbitt from Rain Man. This is probably why he and Rita were left out of the 2020 Animaniacs reboot, since it's not very PC to have a goofy cartoon dog caricature an autistic movie character's speech patterns.

Still, I've always liked Runt and I still do. Until I saw someone else point it out, it never occurred to me that his autistic-seeming mannerisms could be offensive. As a person on the spectrum myself, I've always found him relatable.

Here are the reasons why:

*He compulsively repeats sentences and words – especially his favorite word, "definitely."

*He often talks out loud to himself.

*His physical actions can be compulsive too. For example, when someone throws a ball, he has to chase it. Or when he sees a dangling tablecloth, he has to charge at it and tug it with his teeth. And almost every time he hears the word "cat," he goes into a wild, snarling rage, threatening to tear it to pieces... yet never once realizing that his best friend Rita is a cat.

*While he doesn't usually show the savant skills of his Rain Man counterpart, he does show a hint of them now and then. For example, when he points out that a rock pile contains 147 rocks, or when he instantly identifies a dish of fish as Mahi-Mahi.

*He's very literal-minded and doesn't understand sarcasm. This causes headaches for Rita, since he constantly misunderstands her sarcastic remarks.

*He tends to be oblivious to the world around him, and he often doesn't recognize danger or notice when a seemingly friendly person is behaving suspiciously. This is why Rita needs to look out for him. That said, he's not completely clueless, and rises to the occasion whenever Rita or someone else he cares about is threatened.

*His debut episode implies that he's never responded to normal training methods. Despite being an adult dog, he's still not housebroken and still chews things, which is why his owner abandoned him at the pound.

*Despite his sweet nature and devotion to Rita, he sometimes shows an innocent lack of empathy and obliviousness to Rita's discomfort. For example, when he shakes rain water onto her, or eats food that she was about to eat, or doesn't notice when a human is mistreating her as long as he's being treated well. This is all naïve and unintentional, however, and in the rare moments when he realizes he's upset Rita, he's always contrite.

*Sometimes in scary situations, when the obvious thing to do would be to spring into action, he freezes up instead. For example, the first time Rita fights the Nazi dog in "Puttin' on the Blitz," or when Ross Perot almost falls over the waterfall in "Icebreakers." That said, he always comes through and takes action when it matters most – namely whenever Rita is in danger.

*He seems to particularly like music and find it comforting, especially Rita's songs. He can even hear the word "cat" without going into a berserker rage as long as Rita sings it. But then, who wouldn't be soothed by her beautiful voice?

[juni-bug-666]

TQBF ALIASES:

The quick brown fox, Mayhem, Jackal Queenston, Renard Queenston, Kitsune, Rotteen, BANDETTO and Emoticon are all of the characters

He has over 334 releases under multiple different aliases such as: LAPFOX, Jackal queenston, Renard, Hailey Labs, etc.

(It’s loud furry music)

With his different ‘Fursonas’, and aliases he releases different music styles under each one

Renard Queenston:

Raggacore, Breakcore, Experimental

Jackal Queenston:

Jungle/Drum and bass

Mayhem:

Electro house

Rotteen:

Hardcore fusion

Kitsune:

Chiptune/Chipcore

Quick brown fox:

Speedcore

BANDETTO:

Gabber, happy hardcore

Emoticon:

Oldskool happy hardcore

More about Jackal Queenston:

SPECIES

Jackal/German Shepherd hybrid

GENDER

Male

GENRE

Jungle/Drum and Bass

DATE CREATED

May 2008

CHARACTER DESIGNER(S)

Em Essex, Timmothy Sewell, Squeedge

STATUS

Retired

Jackal Queenston was an alias under the Halley Labs label. He is a hybrid of a jackal and a German shepherd, who was often seen smoking and wearing attire originally inspired by the Nazi Party and other WW-II era uniforms, as time went on, JQ's outfit would slightly change to reflect less of its original appearance, with the Nazifur symbol being replaced with an X as a homage to Metal Slug, to the armband and hat badge being completely removed. He typically produced drum and bass, characterized by heavy bass lines, fast drum breaks, and dark themes alluding to violence or power.

Jackal Queenston originally debuted as a new character for the Mungyodance series, with songs first appearing in an official Addon Pak for MGD 2 and then MGD 3: The Third Rave, released on August 23, 2008. His first album, Rise, included several songs originally made for the Addon Pak.

Due the rise of Neo-Nazism on the internet, no possibility to redesign this character without connection to offensive content, and the restrictions of the alias's sound, Jackal Queenston was retired around the end of 2020.

Rise (May 2008)

Poison in a Killer's Sketchbook (October 2008)

Slop (June 2009)

Conquer (June 2009)

Smal Nästa (September 2009)

EPs

Cursed (2008)

Laugh at Life Remix EP (September 2008)

Jakkaru (October 2008)

Poison (October 2008)

Soulcrusher + Heartsifter (With Sonitus Vir) (November 2008)

Robo EP (December 2008)

Down Here EP (March 2009)

Slop EP (April 2009)

Primo Gusto (May 2009)

Fire Planet EP (May 2010)

Midwich / Toluca (June 2013)

Meat Machine EP (April 2019)

The State of DNB 2020 (June 2020) (with deuteronomy)

Singles

King Vicious (June 2008)

Mechanized (September 2008)

You're Already Dead (September 2008) (vs Emoticon)

Injection (2008)

MilkshakeManCP - That's Disgustingly Beautiful (JQ Remix) (August 2009)

Panic (December 2009)

Sleep Tight (December 2009)

Infamy (April 2010)

Raatid Fiah! (January 2011)

The Road (March 2013)

Mixes

Painajainen (August 2008)

In Strange Care (April 2010)

The Killer's Notebook (August 2010)

Compilations

Singles Collection (June 2008)

Don't Stop Moving (November 2011) (with NegaRen)

Other appearances

Furries in a Blender - Dig. Trax (2008)

Kitsune² - Squaredance (January 2008)

MGD Sound Team - End of Days (August 2008)

Kitsune² - STRIKER (August 2008)

Dig. Trax III: 2008 Year-End Mix (Limited Edition) (December 2008)

Mayhem - Dig. Trax IV (December 2008)

Adraen - Your Roots Aren't Showing EP (January 2009)

PHYZ TRUX KOLLEKSHUN (January 2009)

Azrael - Overdead (June 2009)

Furries in a Blender - The Best! The Best! (June 2009)

Klippa - Turn Back (June 2009)

Renard - NO. (July 2009)

ON Trax Vol. 1 (March 2010)

ON Trax Vol. 2 (March 2011)

Lapfox Anthology (July 2011)

Darius - ERGOSPHERE (August 2011)

Renard - Old Undesirable Audio Files (March 2012)

ON Trax Vol. 3 (March 2012)

ON Trax Vol. 4 (September 2012)

ON Trax Vol. 5 (December 2012)

RAKUGAKI (July 2013)

ON Trax Vol. 6 (December 2013)

ON Trax Vol. 7 (April 2014)

The Queenstons - dethrone (December 2014)

LFTHHC SQUAD - FIRST❤REFRESH (March 2015)

Rotteen - Bon Voyage (October 2015)

DJ Snaggletoof - THE FUCKDEST JAMS (November 2015)

B-SIDE U: 2015 (December 2015)

B​-​SIDE U: 2016 VOL. 1 (May 2016)

ON TRAX: THE ABSOLUTE (September 2016)

Patreon Exclusive Series (2014 - 2016)

B-SIDE U: 2017 VOL. 1 (July 2017)

HALLEY LABS SOUND CREATION - AKUMA NO AKUMU 〜AR EQ-KUA ER SETA〜 「FIRST DREAM」 MINI SOUNDTRACK (October 2017)

B-SIDE U 『𝟚𝟘𝟙𝕏 ø۷ﻉɼिɭ๏ฝ』 (February 2018)

B-SIDE ME 2018 (July 2018)

Rotteen - it's an EP! (October 2019)

EVERYDAYS02 ~february~ (February 2020)

B-SIDE the WAYSIDE (March 2020)

FD04 ANOTHER VERSIONS (May 2020)

Mungyodance discography

Mungyodance 3: The Third Rave

Amber Starlight

Amber Starlight EX (with Renard)

Funky Rhythm (feat. Dean Gamin & Haiku)

Killing Fields (with D-Mode-D)

Killing Fields EX (with D-Mode-D)

Osiris

Sunrise (Jackal Queenston Mix)

The Holders

Fun facts :3

Jackal Queenston is 5'7" and weighs 150 lbs. [citation needed]

The 'X' insignia seen on Jackal's armband is an homage to the Rebel Army from the video game Metal Slug.

This change was made by Squeedgemonster, who eventually removed the armband in other art. Em agreed to these changes. [1]

Before Squeedge's Metal Slug homage, in older artwork it is seen that Em wanted Jackal's armband to have an paw insignia, depicting that Jackal is a Nazi Fur.

Jackal's markings used to be that of a golden jackal, but were changed later on to show more resemblance to a German Shepherd.

Jackal may hold the record for songs that were later attributed to another alias, with Amber Starlight (re-attributed to The Queenstons), Sleep Tight (re-attributed to Adraen), Soulcrusher + Heartsifter (both re-attributed to G-DARIA, Darius' stylistic predecessor. They were originally collaborations with Sonitus Vir). Poison & After Effect (both re-attributed to Azrael, as collaborations between the two), and My Wolf Eats Preps (re-attributed to Renard). Humanoid was originally a Jackal song (It is still available on ON Trax Vol. 1), but it was later re-released with vocals on The Queenstons' album Figurehead.

Em has expressed that Jackal Queenston is due for a design overhaul to completely be rid of looking like a Nazi. [2]

Full name: Jackal A Queenston

Sex: Male

Date of Birth: April 20, 1986

Blood Type: O

Country: Germany

Province: Saxony

City: Dresden

Artist type: Nazifur (before Metal Slug redesign)[1]

Lmk if u want more TQBF STUFF BBG😘😘😘💣💣💣

H U H

You scare me pookie 😰😰

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I read Lee Mack's autobiography in 2020, when I did not have the knowledge of comedy to have recognized the person he's talking about in this passage. But a friend of mine is reading his book now, and has reminded of this very nice passage from the book:

I actually vaguely remember reading this passage in 2020, and vaguely thinking maybe I should look that guy up, and then not doing that. Did not get into Kitson until two years later. But I'm glad I got to read that story now that I can appreciate it more. The last line of the second last paragraph, about wishing he could say that even more now that he knows how offensive it would be, made me laugh out loud.

He was talking about this, by the way:

The 1999 BBC New Comedy Awards, with finals that were shown on TV and are now on YouTube, featuring Lee Mack and Daniel Kitson as finalists, Barry Cryer as a judge (as mentioned in Lee's book), and (spoiler alert) Julian Barratt as the finalist who ended up winning. It's a pretty fun watch if you're interested in any of those things.

And we do, of course, know that Lee Mack would go on to get to know Daniel Kitson better. Due to The Greatest Video On All Of YouTube.

The video doesn't even actually feature Kitson because he seems to have not been there that day, but it is of a league that he organized (and it was filmed in the sports complex just down the road from where Kitson was living at the time, don't worry about why I know that or how many locations that were frequently referenced in old stand-up shows I've looked up on Google Earth), featuring Lee Mack hitting soccer balls with his head.

Hang on, I have another piece of evidence of Daniel Kitson and Lee Mack technically existing in the same universe, despite being wildly different people. According to this clip from The Bugle, they were still playing soccer together by the day Obama was inaugurated in 2009:

This post has devolved into any excuse to post vaguely Chocolate Milk Gang-related content (Lee Mack was very much not Chocolate Milk Gang, but I enjoy finding tiny morsels of his crossover with them as it seems like an unlikely combination), but the point is that that story about Kitson from his autobiography is quite funny and worth reading. That was the point.

[mikasa-stan]

Im piggilybacking off of the sukufushi anon's post but i do want to talk about how most of the english fandom likes.megumi over yuuji (which fine to esch their own) and the only way they can show it? By shittalking.... not actually creating anything for megumi just.... shittalking yuuji.

Its the complete opposite in the japanese and a few ither asian communities, ive heard they love yuuji and dislike megumi. But ive never seen them shit talk nearly as much as westerners do.

Likw you'd think theyd go and create an au or a fanfic to live their fantasies but they dont even do that.

Ive been in all dofferent types of fandoms since the early 2000s but this trend of just dissing other characters happens alot more nowadays, it makes me not want to interact with fandoms, and its almost always either normies who got into anime during covid.

It sucks because people just feel entitled to bitch about anything they like instead of focusing on what they love.

Hello, sorry, this is a late answer but yeah it sucks. I'm mostly on the Eastern fandom and I just can't meet on the same line with the Western. It just hurts me to see their opinion about Yuuji. Like, nooo.. he's the sweetest character. But it's also funny how I'm the opposite with Megumi. I don't hate him tho but he's just fine. I don't like some of his fans tho lol. And if they're gonna ship skfs, why don't they stay there instead of batshitting Yuuji? Their opinions about him can be so disgusting.

And yes, you're right about the new phase of the fandom culture. It's less sensitive way back on 2015. I was 10 at that time and there were less criticisms and people were just having fun. But now, people are just dissing each other and what I don't get with the Western fandom is that they feel the need to slander a character. I don't like how some Westerners that are vocal on things that are unnecessary and worse is the misconception of the characters. Like, okay, people have different interpretations, but how they voice them out like facts is so irritating to me. And yes, I absolutely hate the drastic change of fandom culture in 2020. A lot of people have time on their hands and the fandom fell into the normies that people forget how to have fun without criticisms. Like, no offense to the normies, but I hate them having to call out literally unnecessary things.

I like the Eastern fandom more bc they are more chill. While the Western fandom is so fucking loud lmao. Tho, I like Westerners who have the same perspective as I am.

[joslincox]

The Bratty Teenage Daughter Trope in Cartoons

Max Goof from A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie, as well as on occasion on Goof Troop, qualifies as a male example. He cares about his popularity and image, loudly complains about minor inconveniences, and is somewhat materialistic, as shown when he expresses envy for his friend who has cool stuff but not a good home life. Most of the time this shows up, however, he learns to appreciate what he has... for now.

Kootie Pie from The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World (1991) is the only Koopa Kid to make "King Dad" sweat via tantrum.

Angelica in All Grown Up! after being a Bratty Half-Pint in Rugrats. In the 1st show, there was Susie's sister Alisa, especially in "The Last Babysitter".

Katie Ka-Boom of Animaniacs. She was more short-tempered and impatient than particularly bratty, though, and was sweet and cute when she wasn't angry.. The 2020 reboot also has one, Cora, who is shown to be upset at having her sixteenth birthday ruined.

Catherine from Arthur in her first appearances. She matures in later episodes though.

Caprice the goth teenager from The Crumpets is into fashion and liking boys, but she does remarkably rude things, gets frustrated, and can extravagantly gush when she can't get things the way she wants. She may hate "this world" or herself, the latter case maybe going into suicidal territory.

Quinn Morgendorffer from Daria, as well as Sandi Griffin, who is also an Alpha Bitch. Quinn, at least, grows out of it a bit.

Candy of Dave the Barbarian. Dave and the other lampshade her many attributes with incredible familiarity.

Judy Funnie of Doug is this sometimes, when she's not being a Cloudcuckoolander or Cool Big Sis. Beebe Bluff too, in the Disney version, anyway.

This was the original characterization of Meg Griffin from Family Guy, which was justified by the desire to gain acceptance from her high school peers.

In the short-lived God, the Devil and Bob, Megan qualifies as one, which her mother revels in when Megan, over her objections, tries to adopt a disobedient dog, complaining about it behaving the same way she tends to.

Trina Riffin of Grojband is an exaggerated take to the point of being downright evil in her self-centered, overdramatic attitude. In fact, Grojband gets the inspiration for their songs' lyrics from her angst-filled diary entries. However, it's been hinted that she wasn't always this way.

Judy Jetson of The Jetsons. She sometimes acts much like a typical rebellious American teenage daughter whose interests include clothes, hanging out with boys, and revealing secrets to her diary.

Discussed In The Legend of Korra episode "A Leaf in the Wind" when Tenzin expresses frustration with his teenaged live-in Airbending student, Korra (the fact she's the reincarnation of his father Aang provides a very odd family dynamic). After his daughters witness a particularly bad bout where Korra insults Tenzin's teaching skills, Tenzin tries to avoid the inevitable.

Lori Loud of The Loud House tends to get uptight when things don't go her way. Justified, given her Valley Girl tendencies.

For a non-Valley Girl example, Lynn Jr. She's a Passionate Sports Girl who will often resort to Tantrum Throwing over the pettiest of offenses like losing a board game.

Miraculous Ladybug: Chloé Bourgeois’ father André is not only Mayor of Paris but also a hotel owner. It’s no surprise she’s spoiled and used to getting what she wants, throwing tantrums, or doing petty things out of revenge when she doesn’t. She gets it from her mother.

Serenity Zilla from My Dad the Rock Star, who's spoiled by the rich lifestyle of being a famous rock star's daughter. However, she does have her moments showing she's not quite as shallow or self-centered as she seems.

My Life as a Teenage Robot: Downplayed, but Jenny occasionally acts like a bratty teenage delinquent towards her mother Dr. Nora Wakeman if she doesn’t get her way.

Ozzy & Drix (2012): Ozzy was this as a teenager, as he only cared about shopping for clothes, idolizing artists like My Chemical Romance (Gerard Way in particular) and Avril Lavigne, swooning over his girlfriend Leah Estrogen, delivering comebacks to his popular Mayor brother, Paul Spryman, and arguing with his police chief dad. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to turn a bratty teenage cell into a cop just because of his family's legacy.

Peppermint Rose has Rose start out as this, and she learns to put others' needs before her own.

Candace Flynn of Phineas and Ferb. High-strung, to boot. Though she's a more minor example. A more major one from the show would be Vanessa, but having an "evil" goofball for a father would do that to any girl.

Martha DeBoar in Pig City is concerned solely with things that benefit her, and takes pleasure in things that negatively impact her brother and cousin in any way

Becky Detweiler in Recess at times. By the end of the movie, she gets better, and is back to the way she was for the DTV movie "Taking the Fifth Grade".

On South Park, Stan's sister Shelley has been this, but it has become progressively less and less covert.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Mr. Krabs' daughter Pearl often falls into this category. She's regularly crying about mild inconveniences and has little patience for Mr. Krabs' weirder quirks even beyond his greed

Gems in Steven Universe are The Ageless, but some of them certainly look and act like teenage girls:

Amethyst is the "rebellious teen" of the Crystal Gems and is frequently at odds with Pearl, the "mother" of the team.

Flashbacks show Pearl acting rather petulant when she was younger, mostly towards Greg, especially for things involving Rose.

After Lapis Lazuli is defused from Malachite, she has a consistent attitude of apathy and untrusting aloofness. She shows a warmer side toward Steven and, eventually, Peridot.

A flashback dream in "Jungle Moon" reveals Pink Diamond to have been a mix of this and Annoying Younger Sibling to Yellow Diamond, with Yellow Diamond acting like an Aloof Big Sis who gets fed up when her bratty fellow Diamond gets in the way of her work. Pink Diamond, clearly trying to get Yellow's attention, whines that she deserves her own army and colony since she's a Diamond and thus just as important as Yellow Diamond. Yellow Diamond snaps that Pink Diamond sure isn't acting very important. The dream ends with Pink Diamond smashing a window in hurt frustration. And by the way, Pink is about twelve feet tall, but still completely dwarfed by the other Diamonds

Molly from Taz-Mania is Taz's younger sister, who despite being more refined than him, often shares his vicious nature, though in a more Sibling Rivalry sense. She loves the boy band New Chips off the Block and worries constantly about her image.

Kitten from Teen Titans (2003), daughter of the supervillain Killer Moth, who forces her father to threaten Robin into taking her to her junior prom.

Amanda Duff, Elmyra's older sister from the Tiny Toon Adventures episodes, "Take Elmyra Please" and "Grandma's Dead".

Debbie Thornberry from The Wild Thornberrys, who would be anywhere except travelling the world to film wild animals with the rest of her family. Though she's at least a little smarter than the average.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

I'm staring to get scared...

I've been scared, but let me unpack this for people who don't understand me as well as my spouse...

Oh. Good. Yay. Right? Justice?

No.

Biden, in a statement, said his actions would help make the "promise of equal justice a reality." ...The pardon also does not apply to those in the U.S. unlawfully at the time of their offense.

Here's the thing: If the law is unfair (and it is) is it fair to say, Well, only #Real Americans deserve to have that unfairness addressed? Is "equal justice" the intent here?

Justice isn't a goddamn bag of Oreos. It is good for you. You don't have to seal up the bag and go, "Ya know, that's enough for right now. Don't want to eat the whole thing in one sitting! Let's save the undocumented immigrants, who are also disproportionately punished based on race and class, for later." No! You're not done yet! You're not allowed to pick out the ones you don't like and call yourself fair and just! And, btw, the unopened bags of Justice have been piling up around here for quite some time. You have a lot more to do.

And, if we're going to look at this in the spirit of bipartisan compromise (between two parties who keep saying the other party is trying to destroy democracy?!?) I'm not comfortable with who has been assigned the consequences of the compromising. Neither are a lot of other people who share my heritage. The US government is looking to legislate more people into illegality even as we speak. I think the decision has been made on who's going under the bus so that "democracy" can continue. It's (among others) the folks fleeing political unrest and violence fomented by the US out of anti-communist paranoia, social scapegoating, and a desire for cheaper fucking bananas.

It is possible to legislate "these people don't belong here" without banging on a podium and screaming about ultranationalism and polluted blood. That's the way we've done it for generations, only Trump started saying the quiet part loud and some folks got nervous.

I'm pretty fucking nervous, too, but for vastly different reasons.

This is a cold equation. This is being pushed through and publicized in the runup to the election. Biden is a friend to American Voters and let's define who those are and who they should be concerned with.

My fiction-based musing on trolley problems and who we're willing to throw under the bus to save someone who matters to us is still unpublished. Probably will be for a couple more months. But it has been on my mind because I'm seeing it play out in real life, again and again and again. We are exhausted from pulling levers and deciding who dies. A lot of us don't even consider it anymore. We accept the premise that politics means somebody has to die, and we pick a victim who bothers us the least. But how are you deciding who bothers you the least? And is that okay? And why do we have to keep doing it?

I will accept that we can't save everyone. The decisions come fast, and the decision-making process is slow. But this thing where we create law-breakers and then shrug and go, "Oh, well. They have less value to society," is some bullshit. And if you didn't notice that before, the messaging of, "It's no longer expedient to do this to marijuana-users, so let's do it to border-crossers - but, shhh, don't report it that way," should hammer that home. It's just another dog whistle for a racialized minority, one that apparently didn't turn out quite enough for the Democrats in 2020.

You don't have to wait for Trump to see politicians taking it out on their enemies while in office. It's just that the professional, civil ones confine their retribution to whoever the American public is willing to throw away. It's not personal. It's political. YOU get to decide who we kill next November! Well, we've already reached an agreement on immigrants, Palestinians, women, and Blacks - but you can raise or lower the volume on their screaming, and decide whether the folks in charge are gleeful or disapproving. And is there anyone else you (the majority of voters) are willing to lose? We're always listening! Just let us know! We may need to kill a few more people in the spirit of bipartisan compromise and we'd like to upset you as little as possible.

I can't accept that this is the cost of doing business anymore. I'm fucking ashamed I accepted it for so long in the first place.

And... And I'm terrified of sitting up here and watching voters mechanically make choices between ever larger groups of potential victims as the only options on the ballot conspire to rack up the price.

[coralsgrimes]

I know we knew this but it’s incredibly offensive that Ben thinks people are stupid enough to buy that Bulianne is over when he is continuing to follow her closest friends on IG even though he unfollowed her and made the effort to unlike posts dating back to 2020. It’s also pretty insulting to her, tbh. The way his fans are only worth the $$ they give him (in his POV) is an unfortunate truth but I guess he’s going full asshole and saying the quiet part out loud now lol.

I mean like he made his life out of his fangirls and finding them stupid and beneath him is part of the transaction soo...

It was always like so but ye know since they led him to believe they can sponsor his vanity music projects he just stopped pretending altogether

[haleigh-sloth]

Dabi and endeavor for the duo bingo

Extra emphasis on the wasp nest, because youch.

It is very, very, VERY complicated.

They absolutely do make each other worse. Endeavor is too scared to face what he’s done which makes Touya worse, Touya is burning to a crisp and causing mayhem which makes Endeavor too scared (ashamed, idk you pick the word) to face what he’s done, which makes Touya worse. It’s an awful cycle that desperately needs to be broken. I think that moment is coming soon.

Discourse because it’s hard to outright say out loud that Touya is jealous of his little brother and that was the focus of his pain for why he didn’t return home without people taking personal offense to that. It’s a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people but, man, that’s definitely what we’ve got. And ignoring it—which a lot of people do—isn’t gonna make it go away? Lol.

It also gets misconstrued when I say like “Touya wants his dad’s attention and that will help him stop in his suicidal tracks” to “Touya shouldn’t NEED his dad’s attention to move on 🙄”. No fucking shit, but he’s a character on a page and I didn’t write the damn manga.

Touya was written in a way that’s not…catering to everybody. He’s certainly written well though. Imo his character was so easily sold to me in the most minimal amount of chapters. Combine the two hospital chapters and chapter 350 and 351, and I got it. I understand who he is, what he wants, why he’s hurting. God damn.

I’m excited for the conclusion with these two. I’ve been waiting since *checks watch* November 5, 2020 for Endeavor to play his role and for all the bullshit his character comes with, to fucking pay off finally.

[dykecubes]

@le-tiny-tato basically back in 2020 or so there was this big meme about Tommy’s content being for the lesbians (this was during the woman loving era in his content) which then sort of morphed into people calling Tommy himself a lesbian as a joke, it was a popular meme which was created by and for other lesbians who liked his content but it did still cause a lot of discourse, this came to a head in one stream where people in his chat started jokingly saying he was gay, to which he responded that he loves women (of course), then someone in the chat said “can’t believe Tommy’s a lesbian” and he paused for a couple minutes after reading it out loud before ultimately deciding he wasn’t going to play into the joke

This spurred a TON of discourse which, in all honesty, was really silly, people got pissed at him for a “offensive” joke that he didn’t even make and it resulted in a lot of people spewing a lot of borderline or just outright terf rhetoric

The same thing later happened again during a stream where Tommy made a joke about loving women again, then after it said “I get lesbians” (meaning, he understands their attraction to women), iirc right after this he realized what it sounded like and corrected himself but it was already clipped to hell and back and there was just. Soooo much discourse. On one side there were people who knew he meant that he understood them saying “you can never understand lesbians because you’re a man” (that terf rhetoric coming back) and on the other hand you have people who saw the clip fully out of context and thought that he meant something along the lines of he can “turn” lesbians (which would be an understandable thing to get angry about but again. Context)

Tommyinnit inadvertently collecting every LGBTQ+ identity for himself despite being a cishet man is the funniest thing in the world, first he gets cancelled for being a lesbian, then he gets gay married to tubbo and writes fanfiction about how sad he is that he won’t kiss him with tongue, now apparently terfs think he’s trans because he got ball surgery??

“‘This [person] is LGBTQ+’ what, all at once” is about him, he’s the final boss of allyship

[arpov-blog-blog]

Hopium Chronicles

Stocks In Record Territory, Trump Is An Extraordinary Risk For GOP Part 2, Loud and Proud, People

Our Monthly Hopium-Wide Gathering Is Wed, 8pm EST - Tom Suozzi Is The Special Guest!

SIMON ROSENBERG- JAN 23, 2024

..."All Three Stock Indices In Record Territory, Dow Breaks 38,000 For First Time Ever - The run of remarkable economic news continues this week as the Dow broke 38,000 for the first time, and all 3 major stock market indices have now been in record territory. It’s worth recapping what we’ve seen in recent weeks:

Best job market since the 1960s, stock market setting records (401Ks are happy), best recovery in the G7, consumer sentiment rising

The inflation fueled by COVID/supply chain disruptions, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and OPEC price hikes has ended, and we are now in a place much closer to historic norms. Prices for many items are falling including groceries, gas, rents and mortgage rates

Historically elevated wage growth, new business formation and prime-age worker participation rates. In the last few months we’ve seen some of the most robust real wage growth we’ve seen in decades, and Americans at all income levels have seen sizeable increases in their overall net worth

Lowest uninsured rate in history, record ACA signups this year

Renewable and domestic oil production set records in 2023, US more energy independent than its been in decades. In 2023 the US produced more oil than any country has in any year in history

The investments Biden has made will creating prosperity for America and opportunities for American workers for decades to come

The annual deficit is trillions less than when Biden came to office

For young people the job market is the best since the 1960s; more young people have health insurance today than ever before; the President has forgiven more than $130b in student debt; by some measure home ownership rates are higher for Gen Z than Gen X and Millennials at this point in their lives; and rising minimum wages in states and cities across the US have created higher floors for new and entry-level workers than in many years.

The US economy is taking away the Republican Party’s central indictment of Biden. In my new With Dems presentation I show how much better the economy does when Democrats are in office, for we are far better at this capitalism thing than the Rs. In this post I show that Americans are remarkably content with their lives, work, and incomes, and a new Axios poll finds broad satisfaction right now with people’s own finances.

Need to go on offense here, peeps, be loud and proud. Joe Biden took over the country in a time of COVID, a deep recession and insurrection, and his central promise to us was that he could get us to the other side, successfully. He has kept that promise; we are far better off today; the Democratic Party is the party of growth, opportunity, fiscal responsibility and progress; the Republican Party remains the party of recession, higher deficits and American decline. Let’s be shouting all this from the rooftops people, working all this through our networks and work together to drown out the poisonous pessimism and never ending BS coming from the other side.

The national chatter has been dramatically over-discounting Trump’s historic negatives and misdeeds in their assessment of 2024. He is a weaker candidate than he was in 2016 or 2020. He is far more degraded, extreme, dangerous. His performance on the stump is far more erratic and unhinged. He keeps making deeply consequential unforced errors like coming out against the ACA and admitting he ended Roe. He is a historically bad man, the worst to ever run for President in our history. He is also in my view a historically bad candidate, and Republicans are making a huge mistake in nominating him this year.

Donald Trump is not strong. He is weak, unfit, a disgrace - and we are going to kick his ass, together, this year.

A Reminder About The Polls - Donald Trump Does Not Lead Nationally Or In The Battlegrounds, The Democratic Coalition Has Not Fallen Apart, It Is Very Unlikely Isreal-Hamas War Plays A Major Role In The 2024 Election - Ok, going to do this as quickly as I can - one can only say a trend is a trend if all or a large majority of polls show the same results. Where many went wrong in 2022 was they made conclusions about the election based on what some but not all polls were showing. In 2022 Tom Bonier and I showed there was a lot of data challenging the red wave theory, and that it would be a close, competitive election. However many analysts dismissed that data and stuck to the data that confirmed the red wave. And they were wrong, and where their mistake lay was not in acknowledging this other data out there which showed a different outcome in the election than they had forecast. Not all the data pointed in the same direction in 2022, and it is not all pointing in the same direction now. So caution was required then, and it is required now, too."

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh

In today’s dispatch, we’re turning to Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous enclave in the South Caucasus that, until two weeks ago, was home to the breakaway Republic of Artsakh. Although internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, the region and its predominantly ethnic Armenian population had been under a de facto separatist government since the 1990s. This resulted from a bloody war — fought from 1988 to 1994— that saw Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia pitted against Azerbaijan, coinciding with the Soviet Union’s dissolution. (However, the region’s disputed history stretches back much further than that. You can read more about it here and here.) 

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War, as it is now known, killed around 30,000 people on both sides and displaced more than a million others as Armenians left Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis fled Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and seven adjacent territories that came under Armenian control. In the decades after the 1994 ceasefire, intermittent deadly clashes continued along the line of separation, escalating into intense fighting in April 2016 and then all-out war in September 2020. The hostilities lasted just six weeks but resulted in more than 7,000 military and around 170 civilian casualties. More than 130,000 people were displaced from their homes, mostly Karabakh Armenians who returned by the thousands after a peace deal was reached. 

Three years on, we are witnessing a mass exit once again — one that marks the end of the self-declared Artsakh Republic. It began on September 19, when Baku launched a lightning offensive that forced Stepanakert’s surrender overnight. In the days after, nearly the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh fled to Armenia in a 100,000-person exodus that the European Parliament says “amounts to ethnic cleansing.” Truth be told, this week’s story was in the works well before Azerbaijan retook the breakaway region, as a follow-up to our March report on the humanitarian crisis brought on by the Lachin corridor blockade. Of course, the events of the last two weeks called for additional reporting and rewrites, as the hypotheticals we set out to discuss with experts became a reality. And so, for The Beet, journalist Teresa Di Mauro recounts how the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh happened slowly, and then all at once. 

Lusine Hambardzumyan was at her office in Stepanakert when Azerbaijani forces began attacking Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19. 

“The children were at school, and I was sitting at work. Suddenly, we heard some loud, intense sound of bombs. It was horrific,” Lusine recalls. 

The strikes were a frightening disruption to Lusine’s already fragile daily routine. The Nagorno-Karabakh region — an enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but home to a self-governing and predominantly ethnic Armenian population — had been under an Azerbaijani blockade for more than nine months. The resulting humanitarian crisis was dire, and months of contending with shortages of food and other essentials had left Lusine and her compatriots exhausted.

As Azerbaijani troops blitzed the regional capital with drones and artillery, videos showing damage to Stepanakert’s residential areas slowly began appearing online. Widespread Internet outages were hindering communication, leaving locals cut off from each other as the offensive unfolded around them. Within hours, Azerbaijani troops had broken through the front line and encircled several of Nagorno-Karabakh’s strategic settlements. 

A store damaged by shelling in Stepanakert during Azerbaijan’s offensive on September 19–20, 2023

AIK ARUTUNYAN / IMAGO / SNA / SCANPIX / LETA

Children in a shelter during shelling in Stepanakert. September 20, 2023.

SIRANUSH SARGSYAN / AP / SCANPIX / LETA

“I don’t know what is happening. I am at the university. They’re bombing us,” Larisa Nersisyan wrote in a message that reached The Beet’s correspondent hours after the attack began. Larisa, a student, was in class at Artsakh State University at the time and couldn’t get in contact with her loved ones. “I don’t know where my family members are. There is no connection here,” she said. 

Nagorno-Karabakh’s unrecognized government, the Republic of Artsakh, capitulated within 24 hours, announcing on September 20 that it had agreed to a ceasefire. 

In a televised speech, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev declared that Baku had restored its sovereignty with an “iron fist.”  

‘A humanitarian catastrophe’

The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh didn’t actually happen overnight. 

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region, which goes back decades, escalated into a full-blown war in the early 1990s and again in the fall of 2020. 

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted 44 days, ending with a Moscow-brokered ceasefire that saw Azerbaijan regain part of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories it had lost in the 1990s. To maintain the ceasefire, Russia deployed peacekeepers to the region. But this didn’t prevent intermittent skirmishes and tensions were rising again by 2022. That September, renewed hostilities along the border with Azerbaijan spilled over into towns in southeastern Armenia and left hundreds of soldiers dead. 

Bursts of explosions during fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces near Shusha. Nagorno-Karabakh, November 5, 2020.

AP / SCANPIX / LETA

A man kisses the walls of his home in Karvachar, Nagorno-Karabakh, before abandoning it. November 12, 2020. (The Karvachar district was ceded to Azerbaijan under the 2020 peace agreement with Armenia.)

ALEX MCBRIDE / GETTY IMAGES

Just a few short weeks later, however, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held talks with Azerbaijan’s Aliyev in Prague, after which they released a joint statement recognizing the territorial integrity of each other’s countries. According to Ahmad Alili, thedirector of the Baku-based Caucasus Policy Analysis Centre, this signaled to Azerbaijan that the recent flare-up had “paid off.” 

Then, in December, Baku-backed activists blocked the Lachin Corridor — the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. The blockade left Karabakh residents stranded without access to essential supplies and services, paving the way for a humanitarian crisis. International calls to end the blockade poured in from the European Union, the United States, Russia, and the United Nations. But Baku ignored them, arguing that Nagorno-Karabakh was an internal affair. 

After Azerbaijan installed a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor in April, Pashinyancondemned the move as part of a “policy of ethnic cleansing.” Nevertheless, the prime minister continued to reiterate Armenia’s readiness to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan — with the caveat that any peace agreement must ensure the “rights and security” of Karabakh Armenians and provide “international guarantees” for direct talks between Baku and Stepanakert. 

Russian peacekeepers block a road outside Stepanakert. December 24, 2022.

DAVIT GHAHRAMANYAN / AFP / SCANPIX / LETA

Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, Gegham Stepanyan, reported the first death from starvation on August 15. In an interview with The Beet about a month later — coincidentally on the very eve of Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive — Stepanyan said Nagorno-Karabakh was experiencing “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

“People are not able to find food for their families,” he explained. “We also face huge problems in the healthcare sphere [...] All pharmacies are completely empty. All surgeries are suspended.” 

Humanitarian aid supplies through the Lachin Corridor had also resumed that day for the first time since June 15. But Stepanyan warned that the deliveries were woefully inadequate. “The 120,000 people of Nagorno-Karabakh, including 30,000 children, cannot rely on humanitarian aid for a long time,” he underscored. 

A woman and her son have dinner by candlelight at their home in Stepanakert. January 18, 2023.

EDGAR HARUTYUNYAN / PAN PHOTO / AP / SCANPIX / LETA

Empty shelves in a Stepanakert pharmacy. Winter 2023.

NANA MARTIROSYAN

‘Leaving would be like betrayal’

A month into the Nagorno-Karabakh blockade, in January 2023, President Aliyev suggested that anyone unwilling to take Azerbaijani citizenship should leave the region. “The road is not closed; it’s open,” he insisted. “They can leave. No one will hinder them.” 

At this juncture, the prospect of leaving Nagorno-Karabakh was unthinkable to most local Armenians. And this remained the case even as the humanitarian situation deteriorated in the spring and summer of 2023. “Most of these people want to live here,” Stepanyan told The Beet on September 18. “They want to live in their homes. Everything they have is here.” 

When interviewed in early September, both Lusine and Larisa said they and their families intended to stay. “The bodies of those who lost their lives in the 44-Day War are here,” Lusine said. “Leaving would be like betraying them. They gave their lives for us to live here. After the war, this place became like a sanctuary.” 

Stepanakert. October 2, 2023.

 AZIZ KARIMOV / GETTY IMAGES

Larisa said she dreamed of buying an apartment in Krkjan, the Stepanakert neighborhood where her mother grew up. “I have so many nice memories there. I used to have so much fun [there] as a child. That’s probably why I would like to live there,” she mused. 

A week before Azerbaijan’s 24-hour offensive, political analyst Tigran Grigoryan, who heads the Regional Center for Democracy and Security in Yerevan, described the prospect of evacuations from the region as a “worst-case, catastrophic scenario.” 

“That's one of the reasons nobody's talking about [evacuation] publicly. Nobody wants to legitimize this narrative because, for some actors, this might be like the easy solution,” said Grigoryan. “If this happens in the 21st century, with all the international principles, it would put an end to any notion of comprehensive goals in the South Caucasus,” he added. “It's impossible to talk about peace at the cost of one side.” 

‘Violence, not diplomacy’

After the ceasefire announcement on September 20, Stepanyan reported that Azerbaijan’s offensive had killed at least 200 people in Nagorno-Karabakh, including at least 10 civilians, and wounded more than 400 others. 

In turn, Azerbaijan’s Health Ministry said that 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and 511 wounded, adding that one Azerbaijani civilian also died in the hostilities. “Overall, it's around 200 people — 200 young people in 24 hours,” Alili said, referring to Baku’s losses. “It shows that the [Azerbaijani] government wanted to finalize it as soon as possible.” 

“Violence, not diplomacy, has always determined key outcomes in the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh,” wrote Thomas De Waal, a Carnegie Europe senior fellow, in an article for Foreign Affairs. He argued that Azerbaijan’s gains in the 2020 war had tilted international negotiations in Baku’s favor. Then, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine again changed the power dynamics in the South Caucasus. 

“When the war in Ukraine started, one local observer told me Azerbaijan was [like a] young lady everyone wants to marry. And that was the case,” said Olesya Vartanyan, Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the South Caucasus region. “Azerbaijan has become more important, not just for the European Union or some leaders in the Middle East, but also for Russia.” 

Coffins placed outside a morgue in Stepanakert. September 24, 2023.

DAVID GHAHRAMANYAN / REUTERS / SCANPIX / LETA

This shift was on full display in the aftermath of Azerbaijan’s 24-hour offensive. While the U.S. and E.U. expressed concern and condemned the attack, Armenia’s purported key ally, Russia, demurred. Rebuffing accusations of inaction, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman pointed to Yerevan’s recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, adding that Russian peacekeepers in the region were working “night and day” to help evacuate civilians. Kremlin press guidelines (obtained by Meduza) even instructed state-controlled media to shift the blame for the assault onto Armenia and its Western “partners.” 

Meanwhile, Armenian officials were sounding the alarm over the consequences of Azerbaijan’s actions. Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan described it as “the final act of [a] tragedy aimed at the forced exodus of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.” 

Indeed, despite Azerbaijani officials pledging to treat them as “equal citizens,” Karabakh Armenians feared reprisals and started fleeing the region en masse. 

Vehicles carrying refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh queue on the road leading towards the Armenian border. September 25, 2023.

DAVID GHAHRAMANYAN / REUTERS / SCANPIX / LETA

‘They lost everything’

On September 28, officials in Stepanakert announced that the Republic of Artsakh would formally dissolve itself as of January 1, 2024. By that point, more than 65,000 refugees had arrived in Armenia. 

In the days that followed, this number swelled to more than 100,000. And Armenia found itself dealing with a humanitarian crisis for which it was completely unprepared — despite earlier claims that the country was ready to accommodate 40,000 displaced families. 

“Most refugees we spoke to either had a temporary host family arrangement or nowhere to go at all,” Eurasianet reported on September 29. 

“There are people spending days and nights on the streets, and the hygiene conditions are really bad,” said photographer Eugene Shalnov, who was covering the situation in the border town of Goris. “They lost everything they had, and many blame Armenia for not supporting them,” he added.

Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh in Goris, Armenia. September 30, 2023.

MILENA AVETISYAN

Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh in Goris. September 30, 2023.

MILENA AVETISYAN

Kornidzor, Armenia. September 25, 2023.

MILENA AVETISYAN

Earlier, the Armenian government had announced that it would offer a one-time payment of 100,000 drams (about $256) to each displaced person and allocate 360 million drams (just under $1 million) to regional governors to purchase humanitarian aid for refugees. 

A U.N. mission arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh on October 1. But journalists were already reporting that the Stepanakert was a “ghost town.” According to Stepanyan, “the last bus from Artsakh” reached Goris that same day. 

Larisa and Lusine, meanwhile, had both made their way to Yerevan. “The last days in Stepanakert were so chaotic. Everyone was waiting for fuel to be able to leave,” Larisa recalled. (Amid the chaos, a massive explosion at a fuel warehouse near Stepanakert had killed at least 170 people.)

“Thankfully, my family and I are together. We are all healthy, and that is the most important part,” said Lusine. “I am living with my mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, their eight-month-old child, my two sisters, and our grandmother. We are in a small apartment.” 

A damaged vehicle and furniture outside a house in Stepanakert. October 2, 2023.

EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP / SCANPIX / LETA

A wreck of a van that was abandoned on the side of the road on the outskirts of Stepanakert. October 2, 2023.

EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP / SCANPIX / LETA

‘The end of Nagorno-Karabakh as we knew it’

On October 2, Azerbaijan’s presidential office presented its reintegration plan for Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenians. But according to the U.N. mission’s report, this population has dwindled to “between 50 and 1,000” people. 

“I think there’s little doubt that we have seen the end of Nagorno-Karabakh as we knew it,” said Laurence Broers, an associate fellow at Chatham House, in an interview with Meduza. “The question now is whether there will be any Armenian presence left in the territory at all.”

Several international experts have suggested that the exodus of Karabakh Armenians constitutes the war crime of “deportation or forcible transfer” or even a crime against humanity. However, Azerbaijani officials have rejected any and all such accusations. 

“We cannot accept accusations of ethnic cleansing or genocide,” Hikmet Hajiyev, a diplomatic advisor to Azerbaijan’s president, told AFP. “We opened the gate and respected their [civilians’] freedom of movement, freedom of choice.”

“Azerbaijan emphasizes that it is a civic nation, a multicultural nation that has cordial relations with different ethnic and religious minorities. But I think it’s a stretch to imagine that Karabakh Armenians could feel safe,” Broers told Meduza. “There is a very distinct and specific history the Karabakh Armenians have been through. And that’s why we have this discussion about security guarantees.”

The hills along the road from Shusha to the Lachin Corridor. October 3, 2023.

EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP / SCANPIX / LETA

According to Azerbaijan’s reintegration plan, Baku pledges to ensure the rights and security of Karabakh Armenians who accept Azerbaijani citizenship. But after years of official rhetoric propagating dehumanizing stereotypes and hatred, experts remain skeptical. 

“Armenophobia legitimized Aliyev’s regime for decades because the image of the external enemy is what creates unity and neutralizes [internal] contradictions,” said Bahruz Samadov, an Azerbaijani political activist and doctoral candidate at Charles University in Prague. 

“Peaceful coexistence can only be possible if this deep hatred is changed, but I don’t think official discourse needs this,” he continued. “In Azerbaijan, nationalism is the basis of the regime’s legitimacy.” 

“They could not force us to live there,” said Larisa. “It would have been inhuman.”

[ordinarytalk]

We just got an announcement that they're making Juneteenth a paid county holiday and the fox-news-watching lady at work has been ranting about it all day.

Subjects of rant have included:

- Why don't we have Flag Day as a paid county holiday anymore?

- Why don't we have Good Friday as a paid county holiday anymore?

- I'm triggered, this is triggering, hahaha

- Juneteenth isn't even a real holiday

- If we get this new paid holiday we need the old paid holidays back

- We shouldn't be giving the rioters anything they want, that's rewarding violence

- You can't say anything anymore because people get offended

- Everyone's getting triggered and no one has a sense of humor

- Why can't we have Flag Day back? (round two)

- The song Barbie Girl by Aqua is going to be removed by Democrats because we can't say anything offensive anymore and that song says "Come on Barbie let's go party" and the Democrats think that's offensive

- Hey, why is this order signed by only one county commissioner? Why isn't this signed by (second county commissioner who has said horrifically racist things about the Black Lives Matter movement)? This shouldn't be legal if it's only one commissioner.

- We should get paid triple for Juneteenth to make up for the other holidays the county took away

- Why can't we have Good Friday back, that's more important!

- Flag Day (round three)

At this point I tuned out and started playing animal crossing during my downtime, but she was still going as of my last break.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

What specific actions would you have the Board take to 1) fulfill its commitments made in 2020 to reduce racism on AO3 and across the OTW and 2) continue to expand anti-racist efforts in the OTW? How will you support Black fans, Indigenous fans, and fans of color in feeling welcome on the Archive of Our Own and in avoiding harassment? How do you feel about #EndRacismInTheOTW?

Some of the actions addressing these issues within the strategic plan include individual committees reviewing and identifying ways to decrease bias in the recruitment process, forming volunteer coalitions, and implementing procedures to deal with interpersonal conflict. We should also review the comms style guide to ensure offensive language has been properly identified and contextualized. (This would be a conversation for the board to have with the communications committee.)

Regarding #EndRacismInTheOTW (henceforth #EOTWR), the impetus for the movement is valid; there are clear concerns that need to be addressed. That being said, no one from #EOTWR recruited existing volunteers to the movement, nor encouraged their followers to volunteer and eventually run for board. Instead of taking steps and involving existing volunteers and board members to genuinely make change, the only coordinated effort has been to disrupt a board meeting. It feels like the movement expects change to be done in their way on their terms.

I am offended by their demand that candidates go to their platform to make our voices heard, as if our own platforms and the work we have put in is not enough. We are addressing this formally, as a professional organization should, while acknowledging the limitations of being entirely chat-based and volunteer-run. The timelines for these changes move quite slowly because we are, again, run entirely by volunteers.

One of the most important things I learned on the campaign trail was this: it does not matter how loud your voice is if you don’t have a seat at the table. My advice to #EOTWR is recruit and/or run so they can get a seat, and find ways to involve the people currently in the positions to make change.

The central paradox of modern witch hunts is that those who claim to be the victims are often the ones most enthusiastic about carrying them out. [Tweet]

Elections Committee Statement on Harassment

OTW’s Elections Committee makes a statement on the recent harassment of an OTW Board Candidate.  Read more at https://otw.news/fa6c6b