#also conservatives are flipping their shit over this and it's just...hilarious

[rametarin]

One thing I'm happy about:

It used to be okay to make fun of southern whites (and, really, the caricature was also intended to hit non-southern whites, from Europe to the colonies) but it was most acceptable to single out former-confederate southern states and 'the pockets of confederate resistance.' I you know what I mean) for being inbred to the point of retardation and full of so many congenital recessive traits from bad breeding and shit genes that, in the absence of breeding outside their family, they'd fall over and die in a few generations.

But then the usual people that'd aggressively insult southern whites, or then conservative whites, and call them retarded incest babies, started emphasizing their relationships with people from other parts of the world.

The rest of the world takes a much, much more lax view on incest than modern, liberal western capitalist democratic republics and still put stock in family bloodline purity over reality. Much old world culture and intracommunity hegemony relies on this notion, and cousin marrying is common. So to be so aggressively, unambiguously hateful towards "the products of incest" and those that willingly engage in it, is to hate fundamental aspects of foreign cultures.

And the byproducts of hard incest, recessive genes and diseases resulting in missing limbs, teeth, other congenital diseases, becomes ablism and a cry against eugenics, turning people that mock such characteristics into people more similar to eugenicists and Nazis than they'd like.

It used to be making fun of those things was alright if it was under the pretense of reasons why southern whites are bad, but now in the wrong mixed crowd it's like catching buddies in friendly fire. They can't do it. They have to overcompensate and take the high road and go, "jokes about incest hurt other cultures and jokes about retardation and missing limbs from recessive gene expression is ablist."

This sounds like a little thing but societal norms and standards, man. People could still consider themselves progressive despite talking to you like you were a cannibalistic mutant with gills and scales, from 3-10 generations of sister fucking, insulting your intelligence and calling you the equivalent of untouchable genetic trash, and that still be considered an acceptable progressive dig because, "only racists (white supremacists) engage in incest."

They wouldn't dare say shit like this to people that weren't white, because it would be taken and aikido flipped to being perceived as a comment about how "all black/asian/Jewish/etc people are inbred genetic trash." And rather than get caught in THAT industrial cutter of a non-starter argument, just never ever use incest or birth defect as a way to mock minorities, unless they wanted to invite accusations of racism.

Hilariously, greater participation and recognition of a diverse world made it more like playing minesweeper to do this. But, it's still considered some degree of socially acceptable to call white people retarded inbred sub-humans. They just have to be well insulated from consequences in their own sub-cultures.

[cjcroen1393]

What the fuck is even going on with Disney right now????

[lordeasriel]

I am perhaps reading too much into things after a long day of reading political philosophy. But I was thinking about the politics of Jordan College, and my guess is that they are a pretty conservative institution but in an oddly liberal way that we don't see much anymore. Like most of the faculty probably believe in tradition for its own sake, support the aristocrats ect But on the flip side they support free thinking and are not super friendly to the Church. Does this sound right to you?

Oh, definitely. The thing about being progressive is that it comes in layers. You can be part of the LGBT community and still say racist shit, for example, or even just fight over who belongs in the community. These things don't intersect, and it's the same logic for Jordan, I think.

And Jordan is definitely conservative, like you said. They thrive off tradition; in TSC, we see Mr Cawson comment on the lack of rose water, and he and Lyra talk about her dinner experience at Jordan. She never had a full Feast dinner because after that, she wouldn't be invited to the Retiring Room - a room meant solely for men. Now, Jordan is considered to be the pioneer in Experimental Theology, so they are for all accounts, an institution who praises free thinking, and Dr Carne always seemed to work hard to keep a balance between college, country and Church. Lyra's opinion of the women's college also probably came from listening to Jordan's scholars - who claimed they were inferior - so even in its super progressive thinking most scholars would still draw the line somewhere, so to speak. So sure, they would fight the Church over publishing a paper, but god forbid those silly women do math!

I can also imagine Jordan being a place with high social tension, because of class divide. We know colleges have scholarships and other stuff to help not-so-rich students, so it wouldn't be surprising to hear stories of Professor Harington, a super progressive man who lives at Jordan under scholastic sanctuary, stating that students with financial aid shouldn't be allowed at the table with the rest of them. And while we never see it up close, if racial problem was a thing in Lyra's world, it definitely would exist at Jordan. It's because of that layered progressiveness, which is hard to work to go through.

But yes, I agree with you! I always write too much lmao I think their being liberal would be good for science, but socially speaking they still live in an ancient time for their standards. One of my favourite headcanons by @cozcat is that Jordan would only have one telephone in the whole building, while the other colleges were probably more modernized with their time. And I think that's genuinely hilarious and great, because it shows their commitment to tradition despite the fact they sought to serve science and freedom of thought.

[spookyshake]

*proceeds to do exactly everything but work on my pets* H-have some faeries and lore dump I had rotting in the cabinet

[Light Faerie - Justine] A stern light faerie who manages Faerieland's treasury. Rules and regulations are her creed, and she will not allow any misdeed under her watch.

Despite her uptight demeanor, she has a peculiar fondness for games of chance. She seems to have an unwavering confidence in the certainty of numbers- and the dice, once cast, are fair and absolute arbitrators in her eyes. Of course, it could just be that she's addicted to gambling. When there's no clear protocol for a situation, she opts to flip coins and leave it to luck and happenstance.

-Fwaku's life was saved by Justine, who had happened to be passing by the area. She decided to flip a coin to determine his fate- and as luck would have it, he would survive. -The townspeople that had found Fwaku suggested that Justine should give the draik a name. The exchange probably went something like this: Townspeople: Thank you great faerie!! Would you give the honor of naming this child you just saved????? Justine: (uh shit) Give me a moment. *furious dice rolling* Justine: I grant this child the name...F..W...Q...Fwaku. Townspeople: WOW!! WHAT AN HONOR!!

(What kind of name is Fwaku......)

-While Fwaku is generally irreverent and unlikable to most parties he comes across, he displays a great deal of respect towards Faeries because of his background. Justine, in her act of saving and naming Fwaku, also unwittingly left him with a strange blessing: he has extremely good luck to the point of absurdity, which has saved his skin from karmic retribution countless times in the past.

---

[Fire Faerie - Heliae] A go-getter fire faerie with a particularly strong affinity to her element. Still young for a faerie, she has trouble controlling her excessive energy and often bursts into flames when she's excited.

Fun-loving but a bit careless, she loves to attend concerts, festivals, and other events where crowds gather...a serious fire hazard waiting to happen. She doesn't seem to fully grasp the danger she poses to those around her, and was originally sequestered away in Faerieland before she decided to run away- as you do, when you're a young faerie whose had your freedom denied.

Very explosive. very explosive. very explosive.................................

---

[Earth Faerie - Lottie] A lax but cryptic earth faerie who appreciates tranquility. She wandered into Kiko Lake some long time ago, and has since stuck around trying to achieve what she calls 'perfect bliss.' Generally found quietly meditating and contemplating her surroundings- usually with sweets and a cup of borovan as accompaniment. Her perception of time seems to be a little out of sync with the world around her.

Though usually impassive and calm, she hates above else having her peace and quiet disturbed. She will, with a quiet but tremendous fury, catapult raucous intruders out the window. Her longest recorded throw was over a mile! So impressive is her throwing skill, that kiko children often dare one another to see who can get flung the farthest.

-Because the architecture around Kiko Lake are built with kikos in mind, it's not uncommon to see the faerie bump her head on the door frames and ceilings. Fortunately, there's also never a shortage of bandages in the vicinity.

[Dover] Brown Kiko. Ever since Lottie began living on their family land generations back, their crops have prospered- especially asparagus. Now, the family is in the Borovan business, exporting premium blends of chocolate and asparagus for which Kiko Lake is now famed.

Dover isn't the kiko's real name- that was the name of his great great grandfather, but Lottie doesn't seem to make a distinction. All of her little helper kikos are 'Dover' to her. His job is to run around fulfilling Lottie's errands, whether that be procuring snacks or chasing pesky kids out of her yard.

---

[Dark Faerie - Alluce] A vain dark faerie living near Neovia, known to kidnap Neopets to force into servitude. She periodically terrorizes the citizens of Neovia to spread her influence. She wants, above all, to be feared and revered! ...but her actual ambitions tend to be quite small and petty. Knowledgeable about mirrors and magic involving them.

Though she revels in garnering fear, she's rather full of fears and cares herself- the thought of the true horrors lurking within the depths of the Haunted Woods makes her quiver. All smoke and mirrors, no bite.

-Doesn't get along well with Clariote. Alluce can't maintain her high-and-mighty mistress of evil theatrics against Clari's general irreverence. ABSOLUTELY D I S R E S P E C T F U L

---

[Air Faerie - Nephele] A fickle air faerie scout with a light-hearted but arrogant demeanor. One of the faeries tasked by Justine to recover Faerieland's lost artifacts, which were scattered across the lands in the aftermath of the Faerie's Ruin. Holds a strong belief that Neopets are lesser beings, considering them to be incompetent without Faeries.

Rand (Faerie Tonu) and  Bell's (Faerie Tuskaninny) supervisor. She usually leaves the Neopets to do all the dirty work and takes credit for their efforts, usually under the justification that Neopets 'owe' the Faeries anyways.

---

[Social Media Faerie - Papilla] A young faerie, rare in her time (Einse’s Future). Big-time celebrity and social media influencer, she loves travelling Neopia and blogging about her adventures (and promoting sponsored products.) Has a great love towards Neopets and lives life at her fullest interacting with them, but holds feelings of isolation due to being perhaps the last known faerie in Neopia. She’s invested in discovering why Faeries have all but disappeared in her time, and spends some of her time flitting across Neopia looking into the matter. She has a terrible sense of humor, and she sometimes has strange fits where she floods her social media with incomprehensible jokes and memes- terrorizing her followers’ feeds. She does all this in earnest, thinking her jokes are hilarious, but her fans generally think she’s just trolling and get a kick out of it. This creates a strange cycle of positive reinforcement as Papilla continues to get many reactions from her bad jokes, reinforcing her confidence in her humor. SOMEONE STOP THIS FAERIE

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

[The dynamic between Faeries and Neopets] Neopets aid Faeries, Faeries grant blessings. The dynamic between Neopets and Faeries is mutually beneficial, for the most part.

-Power of belief is essential to grant power to a Faerie's magic. Neopets, by helping Faeries on the premise that they will receive a reward or be granted a blessing, creates a transaction of belief. This is the premise of Faerie quests, which plays a vital role in powering the barrier that protects Neopia from wraiths (among other things.)

-Faeries are perhaps better defined as 'memetic' as opposed to 'elemental'- their magic is framed on a concept or idea, which relies on the belief/understanding/recognition of the themes surrounding the idea in question. The more wide-spread and strongly understood the idea, the greater the manifestation of a faerie's magic. (Motes, though simpler entities, also work on the same logic)

The basic elements, for example, are widely and easily understood as a concept- which may be why the majority of the faerie population falls in this category. (Something like a singular 'Fire' Faerie, for example, would probably be TOO POWERFUL AN IDEA to contain as a single being, so instead there's just a lot of them.)

-Names are very important, because they give shape to a concept or idea. -When they're cut-off from belief, they lose strength (Bottled Faeries) -They can shrink! Probably to conserve magic. -A Faerie without wings is essentially unheard of (with the special exception of Water Faeries). Taking away their wings is one of the most heinous things you can do to a Faerie. -Faeries are born spontaneously? Most of them just appear one day out of the ether or whatever. -They're ageless and nigh immortal

they're......the OG gijinkas <-- hold on this is actually somewhat relevant but that's a story for another time

[Shenkuu - A curious case study of Kaia, the Shenkuu Faerie] Kaia the Shenkuu Faerie appeared spontaneously in a relatively recent timeframe- probably within an average Neopian lifetime. She's a young faerie, younger than most of her kind. She's in the same category as Jhuidah and Taelia- faeries with a strong conceptual connection to the land they watch over.

There are no other (known) faeries in Shenkuu, which implies that the faerie population in Shenkuu is very low or...non-existent? At the very least, it can be said that Faeries are novel in Shenkuu, given that Kaia mentions how everyone stares at her. If we go a step further, we could postulate that Faeries, as a concept, isn't a part of common knowledge in Shenkuu as a whole.

Almost as if the concept of 'Faeries' have never existed here...?

-Shenkuu was a land that had barred itself from the outside world for an undetermined amount of time. The land only recently opened their doors to the rest of Neopia (Cyodrake's Gaze) (*in my lore I'm pinning that down to like 10~15 yrs ago for character reasons but passage of time in Neopia is not very well defined so.... shrugs) -It can be assumed that there was still some exchange occurring with the outside at a smaller scale (Airship merchants, travellers who ended up in or out of Shenkuu by happenstance, Neopians living in areas close to but not quite in Shenkuu proper, etc) -Assumably, Shenkuu has a history perhaps dating back to the heyday of Altador and other 'ancient' civilizations (1000+ years) -This creates a situation where: a. There never were faeries to begin with in Shenkuu or b. There used to be faeries, but they disappeared from Shenkuu AND from common knowledge

-Kaia's manifestation may have been the direct result of the opening of Shenkuu to Neopia- with the arrival of outside trade and ideas, so too did the knowledge of Faeries. Once the faerie 'meme' took hold in Shenkuu, where there was a void of Faeries, it took form as the Shenkuu Faerie: Kaia. This is why she's so young as a faerie- she probably spawned sometime between Cyodrake's Gaze and the present day. (Alternatively, she might have existed in Shenkuu before the events of Cyodrake's Gaze but I think it still holds that she popped up in a pretty recent timeframe.) Kaia herself only seems to know Faeries through the knowledge she received from travelers.  

[gayenerd]

This interview was the cover story for the 17th issue of Jaded In Chicago. It was conducted in September of 2004, several weeks prior to the release of American Idiot. It was a fitting end to the fanzine that was named after the band, as “Jaded In Chicago” references Green Day’s 1994 MTV concert special. To come full circle by interviewing the band that inspired the zine’s moniker was somewhat surreal.

With the release of American Idiot, Green Day has transcended punk rock. By crafting the first punk rock opera and fashioning what is likely the first tasteful concept album of the new millennium, they’ve provided pop punk bands everywhere with a blueprint for how to mature gracefully. Additionally, as much as American Idiot is about innovation, it’s also a return to the fundamentals of punk rock. The album sears with dissent, takes aim between the eyes of the Bush administration and contains a dangerous sense of unpredictability. It’s been ten years since Green Day was the most popular band in the world and with any luck American Idiot will allow them to recapture that title in no time. (Interview with drummer Tré Cool).

Bill – Before we talk about American Idiot, I wanted to discuss the infamous “lost” album first. About a year and a half ago, you guys recorded what was to be the follow-up to Warning, but reportedly the master tapes were stolen. What can you tell me about what happened?

Tré – We just knew that if it ever came out, we couldn’t do any of those same songs on the actual record. If somebody puts it out, like crappier versions of the songs, it’s going to totally ruin it. Plus, it happened right around the same time that Billie wrote the song “American Idiot” and most of “Holiday.” We were in the middle of working on those songs, so we just decided not to look back and we kept going forward.

Bill – I’ve read that you feel American Idiot is “maximum Green Day.” Why exactly do you feel this way?

Tré – Well, because we’re firing on all cylinders, ya know? Everything about even just being in the band now feels so right. Everything from the recording process to the live shows to our ambitions. This might sound kind of dumb, but even the clothes we’re wearing during photo shoots. It’s more together like a band.

Bill – People are certainly expecting this record to be political, but I think they’re going to be surprised when they hear how you really go for the throat with some of the lyrics. Examples of this would of course be the title track and also the breakdown section of “Holiday.” What are some of the main reasons why you’re so pissed off with this country?

Tré – It’s more like confused and jaded, if you will, (laughs). The bombardment of bullshit, fake news, like Fox News and CNN. All the reality-based shit that’s on television, stuff like Fear Factor that the government is using to keep everybody like good little sheep and not asking too many questions. It’s like how if a cop hears you use the word “terror” it basically means he can take any normal American citizen’s rights away from them. A cop can do that at his or her discretion if they think you might be a terrorist or whatnot. The whole Patriot Act. It’s like do we actually have any rights after all? We don’t have the right to a proper election, we already found that out. The fabric of our government right now is basically just made out of one hundred dollar bills that are drenched in oil. As far as this upcoming election goes, I know that John Kerry is extremely conservative and he’s nowhere near the liberal we need in the White House to clean up the mess. However, he’s not George Bush. Kerry’s money is in ketchup. Bush’s money is in oil and blood. I’d choose ketchup over that, (laughs).

Bill – How do you hope people react to these songs?

Tré – I hope they can look past the strong language and go into the meaning of it. I hope they realize there’s a bit of sarcasm. I hope they don’t feel that we’re telling them what to do. We’re just sort of pointing the fingers at ourselves, saying like “I don’t want to be an American idiot or I don’t want to be a part of this bullshit.”

Bill – Talk about the character called “Jesus of Suburbia.” What sort of journey does he embark on throughout these songs and what made you choose this type of format for your songwriting?

Tré – The album is sort of like a timeline of his life. Depending on where you’re at with your life, you probably fit somewhere on that timeline yourself. Whether it’s the “Holiday” party stage, or the “Give Me Novacaine” drug stage or the “Extraordinary Girl” being in love stage; all these different stages in life show that what paths you choose will inevitably lead you somewhere. It’s not necessarily the happiest ending in the world, but it’s pretty realistic.

Bill – Are you at all worried about some of your fans possibly being alienated by the two nine-minute rock operas found on the album?

Tré – I don’t think they’ll even notice they’re nine-minute songs. They’ll think they’re a bunch of short songs put together. It’s definitely short attention span theater. It’s not like Wilco, where they have a ten-minute song with the same drumbeat and the same chord progression. Not saying anything bad about Wilco, they’re a fine band. They’re great to relax to and drink iced tea to, (laughs). I think we’d get bored doing that. We just sort of get to the point, say what we want to say and move on to the next part of the song. The way the energy flows in the songs is sort of like the way America is now too, just so scattered. There’s a big misrepresentation of how we feel in this bullshit climate right now.

Bill – One of the most important topics you address on this record is the American media. Specifically, how it perpetuates fear amongst the public and does little to question the President’s follow-through on his promises. Do you think the average American is aware of how the wool is being pulled over their eyes?

Tré – No, not at all. Say you see some guy driving down the street with a Bush/Cheney sticker on his Chevy S-10, beat-up truck with a pair of flip-flops hanging off the back. I want to ask him, “Why the fuck are you a Republican? What’s in it for you, dude?” Bush isn’t doing a thing for those people. He’s not helping them get a better truck or put food on the table. He’s not going to give them a tax break. Republicans don’t care about you. They’re not going to try and help you in any way. They just want to use you and get your dead peasants insurance once you’re gone.

Bill – Tell me about the upcoming club dates that you have scheduled where you plan to perform American Idiot in its entirety. Who came up with the idea and what are you looking forward to most about it?

Tré – I’d credit Pete Townshend with the idea. We’ve always admired The Who and their lack of inhibition as far as going for whatever crazy idea they had. As crazy as something like Tommy was when it was just a small idea, compared to what it’s become now, it’s pretty insane. They did A Quick One, where they played that live. That was a quick one, but ours is an hour. Basically, we just want to kick The Who’s ass. I listened to Who’s Next yesterday, which a lot of people are comparing American Idiot to. We totally got them beat. I’ve always aspired to be as good of a drummer as Keith Moon and I think I’ve fuckin’ passed by him on this record.

Bill – Roughly ten years ago, Dookie was released and went on to sell over ten million copies and become one of the most notable albums of the ‘90s. A decade later, I think you’ve constructed in American Idiot what is arguably your strongest record yet. Is there anything specific that you hope American Idiot accomplishes?

Tré – Yeah, I think it’s about time that people think of Green Day in a different light. We’re not snot-nosed kids anymore, we’re men now. I want people to think of us more as one of the mainstay supergroups of today. I’m not asking for too much, (laughs). We’re superheroes in our own minds. We think we’re really cool, why doesn’t everybody else?

Bill – What was the weirdest thing about being the biggest band in America in 1994?

Tré – I don’t think we really had time to enjoy it when it was happening. We were just trying to pay our rent and be able to make records for the rest of our lives. We didn’t know anything like that was ever going to happen. It sort of freaked us out a bit, but at the same time I was kind of busy just moving and doing it. We didn’t have time to look back since we were doing so much. By the time we had taken a break to make Insomniac it was like, “Do you guys know what you just did?” We were like, “Oh…shit.”

Bill – Earlier this year, Thick Records released the Out of Focus DVD, which featured live Green Day footage circa 1992. What are some of your favorite memories from playing at McGregor’s in Elmhurst, Illinois?

Tré – Demetri. Demetri was this male stripper that came onstage for some girl’s birthday at McGregor’s one night. They had her sit in this chair and the stripper did his thing for her. It was fuckin’ hilarious. In the middle of our show too. We took a timeout and let her get her strip on. I think that was the last time we played McGregor’s actually. I remember seeing State Street and I remember taking acid in Chicago. I remember going to the lake and wondering why all the fish were dead. I was inside Buckingham Fountain too. It was real hot out and I got in there during the Blues Fest. There were like a million people down there, but just one in the fountain. Of course this cop was like, “Get the fuck out of there! What are you thinking?” I was like, “I don’t know. I’m fried, dude.”

Bill – Do you have any comments regarding the rumors connecting members of Green Day to the mysterious band known as The Network?

Tré – The only connection is that their record was on Adeline, which is a label run by Billie Joe’s wife. That’s a few degrees of separation if you ask me. I think they’re getting a lot of mileage out of telling people they’re Green Day or pretending to be Green Day. The Network is not Green Day. Bastards.

Bill – Growing up I know that bands like the Ramones and The Who were very influential for you. What’s it like to now be one of the biggest influences on an entire generation of punk bands?

Tré – It’s kind of wild. Especially when younger bands meet you and they’re all nervous and stuff. You sort of get a little paternal with it, like “Ah…my children.” I feel like Michael Landon from Little House on the Prairie.

Bill – What has been the hardest part about achieving all the success you’ve attained?

Tré – I think you can pretty much choose what you want to deal with. You can choose for it to be difficult or you can enjoy it. It’s kind of up to the person.

Bill – After seven albums, what aspects of punk rock are still fresh and exciting to you?

Tré – I like seeing new bands. Bands that aren’t carbon-copied pop punk bands. Bands like Dillinger Four fuckin’ excite me. I think the Rock Against Bush compilation is a pretty damn good CD. There are some older bands on there that are still going strong and some younger bands that are real fresh and exciting too.

Bill – What does the future hold for Green Day?

Tré – I think whatever we put out next has got to be really fuckin’ good. After American Idiot we set the bar so high. It’s kind of like, “Now what are we going to do?”

[normal-thoughts-official]

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She's hilarious but there's two videos where she starts to speak more mumblingly

ok first of all these are brilliant and i'm losing my mind and i love you, thank you for curating these to me.

i will transcribe them in a bit but i just felt the need to leave this "little" (it's long sorry) note:

as someone who's been raised catholic i just want to say that she is pretty wrong about almost everything she said about catholics, and i say that as someone who hates catholicism with my whole mind body and soul and who's been traumatized by this stupid fucking faith to the point where i can't get into a church without breaking into sobs dauihdasiuh. the catholic guilt is real but catholics are absolutely allowed to divorce and use contraceptives, and also have sex before marriage. the first one is met with some guilt esp from women altho honestly i think it's more due to mysoginist reasons than religious reasons, and the second and third ones are commonpractice and if you say that it's wrong and bad everyone will think you're a fucking weirdo

and even with the divorce thing, while the guilt is there (im pretty sure half the reason my mom doesn't divorce is because she would feel guilty about it, although again, i feel like that's got very little to do with religion and way more with internalized mysoginy), i cannot stress enough that divorce is allowed, almost everyone i know has divorced parents and they're all catholics. the church's official position is kinda weird (as of now pope francis basically said that it's "morally necessary" in some cases but he also referred to ppl who divorced and remarried as "imperfect", but like, it hasn't been forbidden for years, so much so that people get second marriages at catholic churches literally all the time, and i kinda feel like ppl overestimate how much ppl care about what the pope says. at least here in latam, cuz we've always kind of freestyled religion since it was imposed on us anyway, but like... in my experience the average catholic practitioner is INCREDIBLY less conservative than the vatican and i feel like most people don't even know what the pope says or doesn't say. and i'm saying that as someone whose grandfather almost became a priest and only gave that up because he fell in love with my grandmother, and he's been a ferverent catholic his entire life. also two of his kids divorced, one married a divorced woman, one is gay and living together without marriage with his divorced boyfriend, one never married, and one had two kids before marriage which necessarily means that they fucked, and none of that was ever a problem to him. oh, also, my dad had divorced AND he was a buddhist when him and my mom married. currently he is a spiritist)

i think it might be possible that u technically have to ask for "permission" to the church to remarry in church, but in practice i think it's more of a ritualistic thing than actually asking for permission, cuz i've never met a single person who had them say no. it was pretty much "hey local bishop guy so my husband sucked and we divorced can i marry again" "sure lol". obviously it sucks that you even have to ask, but it's nowhere near as strict as people seem to think

the contraceptive thing is also absurd. like i cannot stress enough that my family would absolutely flip if they found out i DIDN'T use contraception. that was always something that my family reinforced very strongly, ESPECIALLY my grandpa. i've never met a single catholic who does not teach their kids to use contraceptives. my high school was catholic (literally named the Holy Cross, fun times, although they didn't impose the faith or anything. in fact almost half of the students in that school are jewish, but like, still, there was a priest in the school board) and we were taught to use contraceptives, put the condom in a banana and the whole pizzazz during biology class

like yeah the bible says not to but it also says not to mix different fabrics and that doesn't mean it's actually a thing that's reinforced in most catholic communities doaihdaj at least not here in latam. in here non-catholic christians are actually way more hardcore about the puritanism rules than catholics are, particularly evangelicals, which are kind of overtaken the catholics' traditional role of being colonialist fuckers as they are mostly from the US so they come to further US imperialism through religion here. watch out catholic church they're coming for ur crown

and even outside of puritanism, "non practicing catholics" are absolutely a thing like ppl who are catholic but don't even pray or go to church, much less care about that shit douahdsaohj so like the stereotype that all catholics are like the very small minority of hardcore catholics is like the stereotype that every muslim lives by the ultra-conservative muslim rules. it's not true and it's stereotypical and taking the minority ultra conservatives to be the rule when they are not

there's also the fact that there are many different currents of thought inside the catholic church (a little bit like with judaism although way less flexible than judaism is), some of which are very conservative, some of which are progressive. here in latam in particular the teology of liberation is extremely popular (it's the one my family subscribes to, and i'm pretty sure it was actually born here in latam) and it's pretty progressive. for catholics, that is

and like mandatory disclaimer that i am coming from my own experiences with latam catholicism, which i feel is different from other catholic countries - my polish friends for example have experiences with catholicism that are a lot closer to those stereotypes than mine ever were - but since most of the catholic population in the world is brazilian (like me), and second place goes to mexicans, i feel pretty comfortable taking it as a ruler to measure general catholic practices

with that being said, however, the catholic church can choke and die in a fire as it is a symbol of colonialism first and foremost, its proselitism is one of the worst things ever, and even the progressive currents are still way too damn conservative for my tastes. i just don't feel comfortable transcribing something that i know is incorrect and stereotypical (and that in some cases is used to further oppression like with the Irish in the UK or armenian catholics, and i've even had some US-diaspora latinos hear some incredible things from gringos who assumed they were catholic, or, in their beautiful words, "had latino religion". but obviously in most cases catholics are the oppressors, especially here in the third world)

also, her assessment in the third video is absolutely correct. A/B/O IS just conservative gender roles born of christian and catholic imposition transposed to a fictional world where the genders have slightly different names, which is why i, as a rule, hate it dauhdsaiuhdauhda and even though the assessment that catholicism is thaaat much more conservative than other christian religions (it's absolutely not, it's Exactly As Conservative) isn't true, catholicism is still where most if not all of western conservative rethoric is born of, and ugh, it's so refreshing to see someone understand this and put it into words so well

so yeah keep that note in mind but anyway, transcriptions:

[Video transcription #1: in reply to a tiktok question, which says, "now i'm thinking about the catholic guilt that would come with it oh my god". user @Omarsbigsister is saying, "good morning", she then covers her mouth as she starts to laugh, before continuing, "I guess I'm the religious omegaverse tiktoker now. I did not know catholic guilt was more than just sex, I thought it was just about sex, but nO. people who are catholic, if you don't know, they get guilt over every little thing, they get guilty when they eat, they have guilt when, like... [dismissive gesture] they have fun... it's messed up *cut* [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] in which you HAVE to be bonded before... *sticks tongue out* *cut* and catholics, from what i know, uhm, cannot get divorced, so you can't be unbonded, you're stuck for life with that alpha or omega, and then you can't use contraceptives so if you have a heat or rut, good luck, you cannot escape it, and on top of that, they preach abstinence, right, so if you're having a heat or rut in your teen years you just gotta deal with it alone like you are not allowed to be bonded, so, that would be really intense."

#2: in response to a question, which said, "follow up question: if in the real world hijabis are women, in ABO universe would hijabis be omegas of all genders?". the user is shown stroking her chin in contemplative silence for a long time, before she says, "actually, both men and women have to wear a hijab, it's just more visible on women, but men also have to cover from like, the neck all the way down... so like when you see them [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] that's their hijab. *cut* Islam is actually treating men and women, like, fairly somewhat equally, so, I feel like in omegaverse alphas, betas, and omegas would all be held to the same standards, and alphas and omegas would also be held by the same standards but then culture would ruin it, just like western culture has ruined it. for your other question. 'would muslim families prefer betas more, and would betas be spiritual leaders', i feel like everyone prefers betas more, but then also Islam came to like, uplift women [a written note then shows up, which says, "like girls are seen as a blessing to have as kids"], so like omegas would be seen as like, a blessing to have as a child.

#3: in response to another tiktok question, which says, "fun fact bestie you cannot get divorced in the catholic religion even if your spouse is abusive and horrible to you so in omegaverse how would that work?". she replies, "the reason that Abrahamic religions seemingly fit so well into the omegaverse universe is because catholicism specifically and christianity, uhm, all the gender norms and all the cultural norms especially in the west came from catholicism and christianity, they were forced on people, and then you know, people might not be religious, but the norms stay. but now you have omegaverse which is basically just a bunch of like youth exploring the youth through this, like, werewolf fanfiction trope, using all these gender roles that you have in society on their head, so, really, what i'm saying, is that... omegaverse is just catholicism fanfiction"

#4: she looks at the camera and says, "getting islamophobic comments is one thing, but getting islamophobic comments that say that muslims cannot be in the omegaverse".... she then breaks into laughter for a solid 30 seconds

#5: she is shown reading out loud, in a mock-outraged face, a tweet that says, "about to murder tiktok they try to make Ramadan a 'quirky' trend. it's a religious holiday. stop it, get some help. /srsly /g.", then a follow-up tweet, which says, "saw a tweet saying on tiktok they are asking questions about how ramadan would work in omegaverse. i'm done with y'all, just say you disrespect muslims and go". then another tweet by a different user, which says, "i tried to read, i got secondhand embarrassment-" they then break out of character and say, "oh, that's fair," before going back, "if it wasn't ramadan i'd be boxing those people right now. those people should be ashamed to even think that way wtf". then another, which replies, "well i'm not celebrating it, so as a non-muslim, i'll happily box them". then, back to her normal voice, she says, "i really was just making a silly little tiktok and seeing that stuff really hurts... i'm just kidding, i can't keep a straight face. you like minecraft youtubers, what are you gonna do to me? what are you gonna do to me?"

#6: in reply to a tiktok ask, which said, "prince philip was an omega". she slowly films herself as she takes a walk, finds the nearest trash bin, and tosses the phone there, before putting the lid over the box. end ID]

[nukenai]

yeah they take it super personally if you so much as imply that you're tired of those tropes in public too. then they gang up to accuse you of being an immoral person in real life to make themselves look good by cancelling you for unforgivable sin of "I've noticed these archetypes are popular". even if you don't say anything negative they'll still attack you just because it's not raving positivity & uwus. because another thing fr players suck at is understanding the world isn't all about them.

also reading rules. they suck at reading rules. even on officially run contests you'll still find about half the entrants clearly didn't read any of the rules. and then they whine when they're disqualified. also, if you just ignore everyone else and silently write your own lore outside of the 4 archetypes everyone uses? 9 times out of 10 you'll get blackmail pms accusing you of cultural appropriation or ableism or something because your dragon's brother's roommate's made up name sounds asian.      

they whine and whine over shit like the flight banner icon being changed slightly but then if you provide actual structured criticism about any actual big questionable thing the devs do (of which there are MANY, and it's always horrible Orwellian abuse of power and censorship stuff that gets swept under fast because they're so thorough about scrubbing their records clean) they scream in your face and call you an entitled ungrateful kiddie every single time no matter what. they're like boomers.            

the irony of calling people entitled kids for disagreeing with them when most of them will openly admit that most of their opinions on things are that way because the only way they can have fun is if they know no one else is having fun. it's the exact same mentality as rich people in the real world. they only want things if they know them having it means nobody else gets to have it. they even use real rich people argument lines. people turn conservative so fast the moment they stand to benefit.            

Bruh you sent me so many messages I thought I was getting anon hate because nobody ever sends me asks holy shit. But this is hilarious. Amazing to hear the far-off Dragon Drama going on over there. Goddamn.

And I thought people on Subeta were annoying... goddamn.

I actively want critique on my stories - I really do! I want to improve! And fix things! I never really get it though and I’m super bummed. People don’t really read my stuff. Once in a while I get a nice comment on my Subeta stuff but man... I can’t imagine flipping out over critique that’s well-meaning! Yikes-a-roni and cheese!

[morningsound15]

Stacie x Beca + “things you said under the stars and in the grass”

got this prompt in a direct message! hope you enjoy @bechloetitanium

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The glow from her uncle’s farmhouse is casting weird, distorted shadows for twenty feet in every direction, stretching all the way around the house and into the surrounding yard. Not that the light helps her see very far – his property is huge, and his land extends much farther than the glow from the house’s windows can reach. There’s a pool some fifty feet to the left, the tip of the inlet where the house has been built can be found maybe 70 yards ahead, and there’s a dock with a sailboat tied to one of the pylons, tapping lightly against the wood of the dock with each swell of the water, that’s just outside the light’s perimeter. There are crop fields around the front of the house, wheat and soy and corn, and a gravel driveway that stretches out a full mile before it hits the tiny side road that leads down to this part of the Bay. The only sounds that aren’t emanating from the house behind her are the crickets, which are releasing a low hum that dips and swells with the wind, a wall of buzzing that serves to both annoy and relax in equal measure.

She sees a shadow towards the left, at the farthest edge of the light, something large and dark that seems to be holding itself very still. Beca picks her way across the grass slowly, allowing her steps to fall steadily so as not to surprise the figure in front of her. The last thing she wants to do is sneak up on her unexpectedly.

“There you are.”

Stacie, where she lays on the ground, doesn’t turn her head. “I’m sorry,” she says right away, not taking her eyes off the constellations above her. “I didn’t mean to abandon you. I just had to get out of there.”

Beca is silent as she sits down next to her. She crosses her legs, and her splayed knee presses against Stacie’s shoulder. The grass is cool beneath them, a little damp on their skin. The night is relatively cool as well, unusual for this part of Maryland this late in the summer, but that’s probably down to their close proximity to the water. Stacie’s knees dangle off the pool deck, her legs submerged in the water up to her shins. The lights inside the pool are on, casting a faint, eerie, golden-blueish-green gleam over everything in the vicinity. Stacie’s skin glows with it.

“I’m sorry,” Beca says. Apparently it’s her turn to apologize, now.

“It’s okay, Becs,” Stacie assures. “Really. I’m fine, it was just… starting to get kind of intense.”

“When I told them I was bringing my girlfriend as my plus one they said they were fine with it. Really, they promised to be chill.   Even my aunt Barb, and she’s notoriously the craziest one in the family.” Beca shakes her head, her chin hanging low to her chest. “God, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe they—”

But Stacie just shrugs it off. “Trust me, Beca: I’ve heard worse.”

Beca sighs again. She shifts on the ground, lowers her body so she’s laying perpendicular to Stacie. She rests her had against Stacie’s shoulder and joins her in looking up at the night sky. “We don’t have to stay,” Beca says quietly. “We can leave whenever we want. I don’t even like my cousins that much, and Ryan in particular sucks. Skipping his wedding is—”

But Stacie shakes her head. “They’re your family. And we’re only here for another two days.” Stacie turns her head and smiles down at Beca, her chin brushing the crown of Beca’s head. Beca twists her own neck so that they can make eye contact. Stacie’s eyes seem to shine under the light of the moon (or maybe thanks to the light emanating from the pool. Beca is enraptured either way).

“I’m sorry,” Beca says, because she feels the need to say it again. This really hadn’t gone the way she’d planned. She figured her family would be a little weird about meeting Stacie for the first time — despite the fact that they’ve been together more than two years, Beca has been reluctant to introduce her to the wider Holloway clan (Beca’s extended family on her mom’s side). Who knew her weirdly-estranged cousins who live in the boondocks of the Eastern Shore of Maryland would be pretty openly homophobic?

Well, Beca definitely knew. And she probably could have guessed this would be their reaction. Still, they didn’t have to bring Stacie’s personal life into it. Beca would have been fine politely ignoring all the sly, subtle digs about her ‘alternative lifestyle’ and ‘rebellious phase’ that her overly-involved relatives seem determined to get in before the rehearsal dinner has ended. But dragging Stacie into their weird issues was entirely uncalled for.

“You’ve already apologized,” Stacie reminds her, which doesn’t exactly make the sick feeling in Beca’s gut go away, but it does make her believe that Stacie isn’t about to break up with her over this.

Still.

“Still,” she says, turning her attention skyward again. “I know my family can be kind of crazy. My mom… she can be pretty out of it. And my brother is such an ass—”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing.” Stacie drops her hand to rest on Beca’s shoulder, and she squeezes tightly. “I understand; family sucks.”

“I never wanted them to make you uncomfortable.”

“Eh,” Stacie sounds a little unconvinced, “I don’t know if I was really uncomfortable. I just… that kind of stuff doesn’t really bother me, y’know? People have been making snide comments about me since middle school. Your grandma insinuating I’m a slut who’s only using you for your money — hilarious, by the way, you’re poorer than me right now — doesn’t exactly wound my ego.”

“It isn’t fair. She doesn’t even know you.”

“Everyone’s got weird conservative relatives,” Stacie says, unbothered. “Homophobic grandparents are kind of a norm, y’know. You’ve met my granddad.”

“Yeah, he called me your ‘queer roommate’ for all of Thanksgiving dinner.”

Stacie laughs. “Isn’t this better than that?”

Beca reaches up and takes Stacie’s hand. She threads their fingers together, her thumb brushing lightly against the palm of Stacie’s hand, tickling the smooth, soft skin there. “Not if it makes you uncomfortable,” she says quietly, seriously. And she means it. She’d go through a thousand weird Thanksgiving dinners with Stacie as long as it stopped her from getting insulted by Beca’s unfortunate extended family.

Stacie shakes her head. “I’m not uncomfortable. I promise. It doesn’t faze me anymore. I’m hot, I like my body, and I like having sex. Yeah, your brother’s an ass, and yeah, your cousin’s family is a little rude, but it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

Beca quirks her head up. She ends up looking mostly at Stacie’s chin, and her cheek. Stacie’s eyes are a bright point in the otherwise dark surroundings. “So then why’d you leave?”

She gets a shrug in response. “Family stuff weirds me out. My family doesn’t really… talk to each other. Seeing other families fight has always made me feel weird. Plus, y’know… tensions are high. What with the wedding tomorrow.” She shrugs again. “I would just rather ignore the messiness inside and sit out here instead.”

“And look at the stars?”

“Yeah. I like the stars.”

Beca turns her attention skyward again. After a few moments, she hums. “It is pretty peaceful.”

“No fights, no drunk uncles, no smells of burning appetizers.”

Beca has to laugh at that. “God, Barb really can’t cook for shit.”

“I also have an aunt who thinks she can cook but definitely can’t, so I feel your pain.” Stacie turns her head and presses a light kiss to Beca’s temple. “We’re definitely going smaller for our wedding, though.”

“Oh yeah?” Beca teases. “We’re getting married, now?”

“Oh please.” Beca can’t see it, but she can just picture Stacie rolling her eyes. “I’m not the one who insisted on leaving our engagement rings at home in case my crazy cousin Janine ‘gets super jealous and tries to cut our hair off in our sleep.’”

“Hey, that’s happened in this family before before, and Freddie’s engagement broke up the next week. So really I’m protecting us, babe.”

“Oh sure, make it seem like it’s about my safety.”

Beca flexes her fingers a little. She pulls their hands apart slightly, far enough so she can press their fingertips together. She opens and closes her hand, stretching their fingers but always making sure to keep all five touching, always connected, before she slips them together again, running her thumb over Stacie’s knuckles. “Does that bother you? That I… didn’t want to tell people, yet?”

“No,” Stacie says, and she sounds truthful. At least to Beca’s ears. “I like keeping it to ourselves; at least for now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I like that we still have some time to enjoy it. As soon as we tell your mom she’s gonna start planning the wedding like we’re getting married that week.”

“And you know Chloe’s gonna freak we didn’t tell her first thing.”

“Oh, obviously.” Beca can hear the smile in Stacie’s voice. “Are you sure you’re alright with having a wife who’s so much taller than you, though?”

“I think so,” Beca says, playing along. “I mean, basketball players’ wives deal with it fine I think.” Stacie reaches over and swats her on the shoulder. Beca laughs, and continues: “And you might not be as rich, but you’re much hotter than LeBron James, so I’m sure I won’t suffer too much.”

“You’re an ass.”

“Speaking of asses, you know if things don’t work out with us you could always go date my brother.”

“Beca—”

“What?” She asks innocently. “He’s been staring at your ass all night.”

Stacie rolls her eyes as she flips over. She shifts just enough so that her torso hovers above Beca’s, her hips pressing Beca’s into the grass. She quirks an eyebrow down at her as Beca tries to look innocent. “You’re really jealous about that? I told you he’s an ass.”

“I’m not jealous,” Beca says, with an impossibly serious face. “I just want what’s best for you, baby. He’s closer to your height, and looks a lot like me, too. Some might even call him an upgrade.”

Stacie leans down and presses a deep, nearly bruising kiss to Beca’s lips. It quite effectively shuts her up.

There are no sounds around them except the summer air, the rustling of the breeze off the Bay filtering through the thickly-leaved trees, the sound of chlorinated water lapping against the sides of the pool. When Stacie pulls away a moment later her hands come up to Beca’s temples, tenderly pushing her hair back. Her fingernails scratch lightly at Beca’s scalp, and Beca closers her eyes and leans into the sensation.

“I’m crazy about you,” Stacie murmurs.

Beca smiles lazily, suddenly more than a little sleepy. “Oh, good. I was worried we were in trouble.”

“I really don’t like your family, though. Is that a deal breaker?”

Beca opens her eyes and grins. “Nah, just something else we have in common.”

Stacie glances towards the main house. Beca can hear voices rising, slowly seeping out of the kitchen. Something crashes — a pan falling to the ground? — and Beca can hear the faint sounds of her uncle’s irate and drunken cursing over the ensuing din. A dog barks, somewhere upstairs, and Beca can already feel a headache coming on.

Stacie pulls a face. “Think we should go back in and make sure everyone’s alright?”

Beca laces her fingers together over Stacie’s shoulders, cupping the back of her neck. She pulls her slightly down, forcing Stacie’s attention back to her. “I think we can wait a little longer, don’t you?”

Stacie’s eyes flit down to Beca’s mouth. She bites her lower lip, clearly torn. “Maybe you’re right,” she says slowly. “I mean, we don’t want there to be too many cooks in the kitchen. We’ll just contribute to the confusion”

“Freddie and Janine are set to blow up at each other any minute now.”

“And the stars are lovely tonight…”

They grin at each other, and Stacie dips her head again, claiming Beca’s lips softly with her own. The sounds from inside the house fall away, and for a few minutes they can pretend that they’re the only two people on earth, wrapped up in each other so closely that nothing else matters.

[someinstant]

Okay questions from the writers guide. # 11 Books and/or authors who influenced you the most? Which ones as a kid and adult? What is your favorite book and why? 21. Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write?22. Who is/are your favourite pairing(s) to write? 42. How do you feel about love triangles? 46. Do you reread your own stories?47. Best way to procrastinate? 49. Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?

Oh thank god, I have written myself into a corner and I need a distraction while I figure this out.  And this is gonna get really long if I do this all in one post, so if you don’t mind, Nonnie, I’m gonna break this up into one question at a time.

11. Books and/or authors who influenced you the most? Which ones as a kid and adult? What is your favorite book and why?

Oh, gosh. Okay. So I’m just gonna list a bunch of stuff, first, and then dig into the rest of it in a bit.  Books that mattered a LOT to me:

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The World According to Garp by John Irving

A Room with a View by E.M. Forester

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Doce cuentos peregrinos by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker

Everything and Nothing by Jorges Luis Borges

By the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery

Matilda by Roald Dahl

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

And, like, this is just me spitballing and not looking at my bookshelves, so I am CLEARLY leaving shit out. So.  Let’s break this into parts, shall we? 

Books that influenced me as a kid would be: anything by Robin McKinley (although The Blue Sword was and is my favorite), everything L.M. Montgomery wrote (although I was particularly fond of the Emily series), and I adored the Little House books as a kid.  Like, Laura was my imaginary friend, and I am not even joking about that. HOWEVER, I now recognize that there are All Sorts of problems with those books– I’m currently working through Prairie Fires which is an examination of the writing of the Little House books, and it is FASCINATING. I highly recommend it.  I also adored everything Roald Dahl wrote, and that’s something that’s stayed with me.  Although I think my favorite of his works, now that I think about it more deeply, would be his short stories– The Marvelous Story of Henry Sugar is brilliant, and The Swan makes me sob.  

And– this sounds so weird, but I’d include Gone with the Wind in this category?  I read it when I was ten (because I was a little shit and was determined to find the longest book possible and read ALL of it), and I’m from Atlanta, so it’s– kinda everywhere.  (My town has a GWtW museum on the square, and there’s a part that recreates the bit where Scarlet shoots the Yankee soldier in the stairwell with mannequins?  The South is an odd place.) Anyway, it’s the only time either of my parents ever talked to me about anything I wanted to read.  I remember when my dad bought me the book, he sat down with me and told me I could ALWAYS read anything I wanted– they’d never stop me from reading something. But it was important, he said, to remember that just because an idea is in a book doesn’t make it right, and that there were words in that book used to describe people of color, and ideas about race and people, that weren’t acceptable. Not in our house, not in school, not in public, not in private: not ever. And it was okay to read the book, and to find good things about the story, but it wasn’t okay to ignore the fact that there were ideas in it that were wrong, and it was important to ask questions about them.

And then he let me read the book, and figure it out myself.  I’m really grateful for that, honestly.  I think it showed me, early, that creative works– that culture– is complicated.  That people are complicated.  That curiosity and appreciation of things that are beautiful doesn’t give you a pass on problematic ideas that rest of the lessening of others. 

And Dad followed through on the “you can read whatever you want” thing, too, by the way.  I wanted to write my junior research paper in Brit Lit on Victorian morality and the articulation of male homosexuality in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, and my teacher nearly flipped her shit.  She was a nice lady, but she was in her sixties, and this was 1999 in conservative, suburban Georgia.  She said she’d need a note from my parents if I were determined to do it, so I told my dad.  And he rolled his eyes so hard I’m surprised his retinas didn’t detach, and then wrote, “[My daughter] can read and research whatever she likes, and you can get over it,” on a sheet of paper and signed his name, and it was the BEST THING EVER.  He also thought it was hilarious when I got in trouble for reading Burrough’s Naked Lunch after graduation testing (apparently, that book is not “school appropriate”), although he doesn’t have a high opinion of Burroughs as a writer.  (Neither do I, nowadays.  I was going through a phase.)

This is what happens when your dad is a political journalist who’s as big a book nerd as you are.

As an adult? Oh, man, I love me some post-modernism, and I’m stupidly fond of a good short story.  I’m a particular sucker for “boom” writing out of Latin America from the 1960s and 70s; like, give me ALL the magical realism.  La luz es como agua by Garcia Marquez might be the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever read in my life, and BOTH of my online nom de plumes (the one I created at seventeen and the one I use now) are both references to writers who use stream of consciousness. (SomeInstant comes from Borges y yo, porque “no sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.”)  I’m also more than halfway in love with Virginia Woolf, and I think I can recite most of the first chapter to Mrs. Dalloway? Although To the Lighthouse is my favorite, outside of her journals.

As to my favorite book: there is no such thing. There is only my favorite right now, and now, and now, and now.  Although if I had to nail something to the wall, I’d maybe pick Wislawa Szymborska’s collection of poetry, View with a Grain of Sand, because there’s not an imperfect poem in that thing.  I go back to her again and again, whenever I need a rock to lean on.  She’s glorious.

[fruit-teeth]

The truth about my middle school years

You know what I haven’t thought about in awhile? What middle school and high school feel like. I’ve been in college for only a year and I already forgot what it feels like to have to ASK to use the bathroom and to need to have a hall pass, because in college if you have to use the bathroom you just get up and leave the room!!! What a concept!!!

So yeah, once again, I’m bored and I’m gonna talk about my life. Are you ready to learn about the bleakness of American pre teen/teenager’s life???? Of course you are

5th grade: Not quite sure if this counts as middle school in some places, but it does for the school I went to. I went to a conservative, private Christian school where classes were combined and my fifth grade class was merged with the sixth grade class. The sixth graders were the “cool kids”, and they hated all the fifth graders except me. Every morning before class started, the 6th graders would demand that I entertain them, and this led to me performing inappropriate pop songs and scenes from intense movies/shows by myself, and yes, this DID create my love for performing in shows.

I also had a cool writing teacher who adored everything I wrote and constantly praised the dumb comics I drew and the short stories I wrote, and that was when I decided I wanted to write all the time. All the while, I had a best friend who did everything with me and came to my house every Friday afternoon, where we would play with barbies and watch Power Puff Girls. It was a great year, but alas, it came to an end.

6th grade: shit got dark. My best friend dropped out of school so her mom could homeschool her, and even though the new 5th graders loved me, the people in my own grade thought I was annoying. I made friends with an angsty new girl who I’ll only called ‘Kira’ for this, and Kira was a rebel. Therefore, to impress Kira, i became a rebel as well, and my angst was born.

I had a new writing teacher who hated me, and i purposefully went out of my way to make her angry. Specially, she hated it when I drew in my class notebook (“This is WRITING class, not DRAWING class, Mara!!”), so I retailiated by drawing ridiculously busty women throughout my notebook. She didn’t say anything at first, but after a few weeks, she pulled me aside privately and told me that drawing those pictures wasn’t very ‘Christian’ of me. She then made me throw out my notebook and then gave me a new one.

7th grade: Things got better, and yet worse at the same time, if that’s possible. I was still friends with Kira, only something was different- I realized, not only that I wasn’t straight, but that I had a crush on her. This was bad because a) half the people at our school were homophobic, and b) she had a crush on the biggest douchebag in our class. They eventually ended up dating, although I have no idea why because he hated her and she knew he was a dick.

To make up for this, I swallowed the feelings I had for Kira and started ‘dating’ (there’s a reason this word is in quotes) a guy I’m only going to refer to as Jughead Joe. Jughead Joe was basically the epitome of those dark, brooding, misunderstood boys that appear in Anime, only he wasn’t cool. He was also extremely bigoted and a jerk, but I acted like I didn’t notice and hung on his arm anyway.

Stuff started to get weird as the year came to a close, and it all ended at a summer pool party. Jughead Joe and I played Xbox inside, and out of nowhere, he told me he wanted to have sex. When I said no, he said, “oh, come on. No one else wants you.” I didn’t know how to react so I poured my soda on his lap and ran outside, where I called my mom while hiding in a bush. I haven’t spoken to Jughead Joe since.

8th grade: THIS was when my world got flipped over. I switched schools, and I ended up at a dreary public middle school. The beginning of the year was just lonely, terrifying and confusing, but somehow I got out alive. Not unlike Hilary Duff in ‘Cadet Kelly’, there were tears and angst, but I eventually learned to adapt. However, I did not do a ribbon dance at the end of the year, although I wish I had...

At the same time, I had a DeviantART account where I posted my Invader Zim fan art and fanfiction. It was all fun and games until I pissed off the wrong edgelord, but that’s a story for another time.

The highlight of the year was when I finally found a group of friends who actually liked me, and we had a spa day for my birthday. Afterwards, we went to the mall and bought Build-a-Bears and ate overpriced mozzarella sticks. It was a beautiful day in my history, and I finally felt accepted and appreciated.

And then freshman year happened, which I’ll talk about in another post.

That’s all the tea I’m willing to spill for now, everybody! It’s depressing, it’s probably a little exaggerated, it’s probably wearing too much eyeshadow, but you know what??? It’s me. I shouldn’t deny the fact that I was the class clown, the rebel, the weird new girl, and Cadet Kelly all at different points in my life. And if I’m being honest, i don’t regret any of it. Except Jughead Joe.

[arcticdementor]

I’ve never voted. Well, I lie, I voted once. I was 18, and my mother sorta forced me. It also felt like some rite of passage, you know, you grow to 18 and you get to do grown-up stuff like voting, having a voice in the political process. I’ve never been into rituals though, and I felt stupid immediately after putting my vote in the box. I didn’t even like the guy! I thought he was retarded. All of them, really. I still do.

Of course ever time there’s an election people would ask me now and then who I’m gonna vote to. I evolved a series of bunch of canned answers. First one was “Nah they all suck”. Then I read Bryan Caplan’s Myth of the Rational Voter and started saying “one vote doesn’t count anyway”. This triggered huge discussions if there was even a single Boomer at home. “But if everyone thought like you nobody would vote!!”.

-“Well sure but my not voting doesn’t influence other people’s behavior”.

“But you have to vote, if nobody voted…”

-“It doesn’t follow that if I don’t vote then other people don’t vote”.

“But you have to vote, if everyone did like you”

-“Where on earth are you taking that ‘if’ from?

“But you have to vote……”

You should try this, it’s hilarious. They just go in an endless loop bug. Talk about NPCs.

…

And then… Trump happened 3 years ago. It took me a while to get into Trump. I didn’t care about elections, you see? Elections don’t matter. It’s all the same. And not being American I knew little about the guy. I’d seen him on TV now and then but besides him being this kinda sleazy showbiz guy I couldn’t care much about him.

But I was on Twitter, and I was watching all the outrage, and man, Trump was good. He wasn’t good, good. He wasn’t Moldbug. Not even Pat Buchanan. Trump is really inarticulate, I don’t know his verbal IQ but he has the vocabulary of a dumb 10 year old. And yet he got his points across. Good points. Drain the Swamp. NATO is pointless. Make America Great Again. China is ripping us off. You’d be in jail. No more senseless wars. BUILD THE WALL. All great, and most importantly, hilarious ideas. Trump was trolling everyone that I hated, the press, the bureaucrats, the whole Cathedral was up in arms against him, and *he was fighting back*. Successfully! He was talking shit to AIPAC! I just couldn’t help myself. Trump was my guy. I couldn’t vote for him, I’m not American, but I would have. Honest to god, I’d wake up early and vote for Donald Trump.

…

Fast forward 2 and a half years later. No wall. No jail for Hillary. Narrowly avoided jail himself! The swamp is a big as always. Forever war still going on. Spending more time tweeting about Israel than his own country. Shits on Ann Coulter and says he wants more legal immigration. Did I mention no wall? What a disaster. Trump has been a huge and complete disappointment. Again, I don’t dislike the guy personally. I mean I never *liked* him. He’s weird, talks like a retarded 10 year old. I’d say I’d probably wouldn’t enjoy having a few beers with him but he doesn’t even drink. But I don’t hate the guy, I think odds are his heart is in the right place. He just can’t get stuff done. He’s incompetent. I mean, it’s hard. It was always hard. One just doesn’t come in as a complete outsider and reform the whole government from scratch. Then again, people who work in the heart of the beast, in Washington DC, tell me he’s just incompetent.

…

So now what? Back to Moldbuggian detachment? Nothing ever changes, huh. The Cathedral really is all powerful. Ever since Trump made some protests about the intelligence agencies being disloyal or outright attacking him, the Establishment feels so powerful they just blatantly say in the press that the CIA are the good guys. Does nobody remember that the CIA being evil was pretty much proven by the 1960s, and that evil CIA ops have been a staple of books and films for decades? Not anymore; they’re not content with being powerful in the shade. They want outright public submission.

Democracy really is a sham; but it’s hard to go back to detachment now that Bioleninism is out in the open. Elections now are openly not about economic policy or social conservatism. Elections now are about the speed of the dispossession of white straight males. It’s for or against Bioleninism. The majority of candidates of the Democratic party are openly talking of “reparations” for black people, i.e. outright Danegeld. And don’t get me started with open hunt to mess with the sexual hormones of white children in schools. It’s going on right there in the open.

The US has an election next year, the campaign is starting now. Given the present demographic trends, it is very likely that Florida, if not Texas, will flip blue very shortly; that means a rock-solid majority for the Democratic party, forever. Donald Trump is likely to be the last white male president in American history. The 2020 election is probably going to be the last election which is more or less contested. Trump does still have a chance.

But Trump is incompetent. He’s not helping. He’s just treading water while another million Third-world immigrants sneak in, another middle-school boy gets injected estrogen because he doesn’t like football, and another hundred-thousand white men just overdose on opioids because you can’t even play a videogame today without being forced to play a black woman avatar. Can you support this guy? I sure can’t. Again, not my nation, but I wouldn’t. I won’t call him a traitor, although many have. But he didn’t build the wall. He’s letting Amazon, Facebook and Twitter campaign openly against him and censor everything to the right, and he hasn’t lifted a finger. He doesn’t deserve support.

…

Seriously though, to the extent Bernie represents a constituency that’s not for instant Brazilification, I wish him well, but he’s old and frail, and his program isn’t very interesting. And most importantly, his own constituency is being taken over by a guy who’s 10 times smarter, is young, has actual good ideas, is not white and will give the Bernie crowd everything they want, and more. Much more.

To be precise, $1,000 a month more.

Come Andrew Yang.

…

He’s the only candidate in this whole race that doesn’t talk like a bugman. You know what a bugman is. All those politicians and corporate guys who talk in that odd and disingenuous jargon designed to obfuscate. High-grade NPCs, that’s what bugmen are. Well, he isn’t. He goes straight to the issues, analyzes them intelligently, and then has a plan. It may be or may not be a good plan. But I dare you to show me a presidential candidate with a higher IQ than Andrew Yang in the last 30 years. That’s even more of a feat because the guy is East Asian, and God knows East Asians tend to be bugmen too.

The guy even wrote a book called The War On Normal People, which is the perfect definition of the Left. I should use it as a subtitle for a Bioleninism book.

…

But a big part of it is just pure appreciation for the guy. Look at his interview with Tucker. You might remember my last post on Tucker, and how he’s revolutionized conservative commentary in the US by arguing that the focus of government should be taking care of working families. Well, Tucker himself liked Yang, and it’s no wonder he did. Yang is the candidate who’s using the closest arguments to Tucker. By far. He’s lamenting the plight of the working man. He’s calling to help the rural white middle class who’s being ravaged by the opioid suicide crisis. Note that Trump has said some stuff about that, and has tried to get China to stop exports of fentanyl, but he didn’t mention white people by name. Yang did, just like that. He’s the only guy who’s not only overtly or covertly calling for your extinction; he’s the only guy on the record for trying to stop it.

…

And, he’s promising to stop it by taxing the hell of the Enemy. Which again, as Tucker mentioned, isn’t a huge abstract thing The Jews or the Left. No. The enemy is Big Tech. It’s Amazon, it’s Google, It’s Apple. It’s Facebook. It’s Twitter. It’s Woke Capital. It’s those guys who aren’t only taking your jobs, they’re using their monopoly in the management of information to censore us, hide us, slander us and ostracize us. You might remember that Trump also hinted at doing something about that. Regulate Facebook and Twitter as utilities to make sure the Right could actually fight the Culture War, and perhaps show that there’s a majority of people against injecting synthetic hormones into 12 year old children. That he’d make big tech build in America and stop avoiding taxes with blatant laundering tricks. Well, Trump did nothing, and he’s avoiding the topic. Yang isn’t. I have nothing against Amazon’s business, but Bezos chose sides by buying the Washington Post and recently going on a censorship spree, banning right wing books from Amazon. He must pay. Yang says he will.

I don’t know if UBI would work. Americans are crying bloody murder about a proposed 10% VAT. I say cry me a river. Europeans have a 20% VAT. It’s annoying, but it’s not a big deal. Smart people say that automation is overhyped, it’s not growing that fast, self-driving cars, one of the biggest talking points of Yang, are likely to not even happen after all. That may be true. But I’d like to say that the beauty of UBI is not that it’s actually necessary in the way Yang says it is, to give people something to fall back on while they find a new job.

Tucker is also worried about the middle class trucker. But Tucker’s answer is to ban automation. Go full Luddite. Yang is talking about automation a lot. But he doesn’t want to stop it. By implementing UBI he wouldn’t stop automation, he’d accelerate it. Businesses would start automating like crazy once people left unsatisfying jobs to go play Fortnite on UBI or try an instagram e-thot career. A big majority of white collar jobs are complete and utter bullshit make-work made by government regulation to keep people busy and have some income to tax. If Yang succeeded in his proposed plan to completely change the regulatory paradigm to adapt to the computer economy at last, companies could actually get rid of all the inefficiencies, and automate everything. Starting with the bureaucracy.

…

Well China is pushing hard for developing AI and automation. Which is weird in a country which could have a serious unemployment problem if automation goes on. But China doesn’t care. Why not? Because China has realized that with Internet and modern computing, they don’t need the corporations to manage the people anymore. They can do it directly. Everybody has a mobile phone with a camera and a microphone 24/7 with them. The government knows your every move. You don’t need to shame people into buying your ideology by threatening with firing them from their jobs, like America does. That’s so 20th century. Now you can control behavior directly with internet surveillance. Social credit is an extension of this trend. It boggles the mind that accelerationists aren’t talking more about this. Not saying it’s a good thing. But the tech is here and it’s happening anywhere. The only place where it isn’t happening is Europe because we’ve outsourced it to American companies.

If you think UBI might work at giving people hope and readjusting the economy in a more just and fair way, sticking it to the oligarchs, vote for Yang. If you just want $1,000 a month, vote for Yang. If you think UBI would crash everything, vote for Yang, as this gay earth deserves crashing. If you just want UBI to show people that democracy inevitable ends with the people voting themselves money and thus proving democracy is a sham and discredit it as a political system, vote for Yang.

And if you want the final death of 20th century politics, and a new paradigm which breaks with the thievery of Boomers inflating the currency so that asset prices are rising through new records every year, while young people have to go through unpaid internships and ‘gig economy’ servitude until their 40s, while the Bioleninist government is busy with the soft genocide of every productive person with natural biological instincts.

Then Vote for Yang. I rest my case.

[nightcoremoon]

there's a disturbing trend going around recently in which binarism is being overused.

now when I say binarism I mean in the literal most basic sense. 1 and 0. black and white. good and evil. right and wrong. dark and light. and the like.

people pretend like all values are in absolutes.

discussion of religion lumps all atheists versus all those with faith. this ignores agnostics. this ignores atheists of different faithful upbringings and different societies and different cultures. this ignores the divide between judeochristian entities. this ignores the divide between east & west. this ignores the split between buddhism and hinduism. this ignores the difference in the structure of faith versus mythology. it ignores enmity between different branches of various faiths but mostly between types of christianity: most notably the divide between catholic and protestant. even further it ignores orthodoxy (which I'll fully admit to knowing jack shit about which is why I don't discuss it with frequency). this ignores unitarians and other blended faith. I see cishet white dudebros talking shit about faith and religion as if it's all the same thing, all diametrically opposed to their own philosophy, and assume that all atheists are how they are even though this demographic is still instilled values of fundamentalist christianity. they see the issue as their limited intelligence and their position on atheist as the other side of the coin in which all religious people are on the same boat on the other side. I see ignorant christians lumping "heathens" of every religion and also atheists together as The Enemy™ who are all equally bad and terrible and going to hell for their beliefs. even though that's not even how christianity works. even further I see christians believing the basics of their faith in which jesus forgave all of humanity for their sins and they'll all be pardoned in the afterlife but still turn right around and condemn gays, women, and brown skinned people to hell. sure, there are multiple multitudes of people who don't follow in these demographics, but view the discussion in the same terms, as atheism / science vs religion / christianity, as if terms were interchangeable.

this is just one example.

politics. people see left versus right. they see liberal versus conservative. they see red versus blue. they see republican versus democrat. this ignores the tiers of leaning, apoliticals, and the extremists. this assumes all people on either side are all the same. this ignores all of the more complex situations that can arise from governing masses of people. you'll get liberals clamoring over hilary clinton, bernie sanders, and both of the obamas in spite of all of their questionable deeds which come hand in hand with big government, unable to distinguish the difference between moderate conservatives and outright fascists, who either refuse to compromise with the moderates or don't take seriously the threat of the nazis. and you'll get conservatives shitting themselves in rage at lgbtq rights because they're bigoted assholes incapable of considering dissenting opinions or just bitching and moaning over their guns being taken away and digging their heels in at any left leaning prospects which save lives, adamantly refusing to acknowledge that their paragon of tangerine apathy is an incredibly dangerous sociopath with the mind of a child no matter how many steps down hitler's path he takes, because they can't comprehend that racism affects people other than themselves. and on top of all of that you'll see cynical fucknuggets sneering at everyone because "both sides are the same" because they both feel conviction in their beliefs. you'll get rabid anarchists who all demand that everyone create cryptosocieties because the neoliberalism and liberals are all the same people who will cause nuclear winter when they take control of the country and go to war with russia, the moderate conservatives and the literal mussolini sympathizers are all the same people and should be murdered on sight, and even the rare breed who follow in randist objectivism as if that's a good idea. you get literal fucking communists who have never read a history book in their life who delight in cyberbullying everybody who dares to have an opinion. caught in the crossfire are all of the minorities who suffer to the tyranny of majority which is democracy. there are liberals who love cops and guns, there are conservatives who're black or gay, and they get left behind without a single explanation and thrown under the bus for the sake of "their side".

it's ridiculous.

we've even got this mentality so ingrained we stop acknowledging it. just likes and dislikes on youtube, and no "I liked some aspects of this video but disliked other aspects" selection. "I love this band" vs "this band sucks", no "this band does not appeal to me but I can respect its artistic integrity and I can appreciate that there are people who enjoy it". the line drawn between rich capitalists and the poor workers even though there are people who have money and struggle to make ends meet as well as people who have no extra money but still have a roof, a bed, clothes, a meal, and animals who also have a meal [the middle class and the lower middle class exist, it's not just the upper class and the lower class. also fuck billionaires]. division of intelligent people and stupid people as if there aren't a dozen types of intelligence exhibited in people. I could go on for hours.

it's a problem with humans in general, it seems. our obsession with anally compartmentalizing everything has stretched nearly every aspect of society to the breaking point. every culture in the world I'm aware of has issues like this. and the biggest topical issue right now is gender. uneducated eurocentric white christianized cis people only think there are two, and ignore all attempts to explain that the gender binary is completely nonexistent outside of the realm of social constructs. they shove their heads up their asses and go "blah blah blah I can't hear you" until your mouth stops moving and they regurgitate the same platitudes forcfed into them their whole lives, hands held through everything they've ever experienced, and told exactly what to think at any given moment.

literally nothing in life is a coin flip.

tangential I know but I wanna draw analogues to blizzard entertainment. particularly think of the worlds of warcraft and starcraft... no pun intended. warcraft has horde versus alliance. you got the humans who have gone to war with the orcs forever, the dwarves who support their allies the humans, the gnomes who take refuge with the dwarves, the night elves who just want to keep the world from falling apart, the drainei who are basically just literal stereotypical space jews who want to keep their dying culture alive, the worgen who are just humans who are also werewolves from HyperBritain, and the pandas who joined them but didn't realize they were enlisting in a war against their own people. and that's the alliance. frail tenuous connections based on necessity. then you have the horde. you have the orcs who just wanted a home in azeroth but the xenophobic humans attacked them and started a war, the trolls who all lived peacefully with the orcs, the peaceful tauren [giant cow people] who traded with the orcs, the undead forsaken who were cast out by the humans (for being similar in appearance to the undead scourge of lordaeron who were all used as weapons by literal demons) and taken in as allies by the orcs, the blood elves who used to be what became the night elves before they became literal space nazis like it's in fucking wolfenstein and decided hey let's help out all the people who hate the people who love the people who we hate (the enemy of my friends friend is my friend), the goblins who almost got eaten by a dragon and then begged the orcs for help, and the pandas who were in the same boat as before. an honor bound covenant of staying alive together and resisting the purge from the alliance. but then you also have the evil aliens and the evil demons and the crazed wildlife and the evil dragons and the evil lich king and the evil humans and the evil orcs and the evil elves of all elf races and the neutral goblins that make it absolutely clear that the horde and the alliance are not the be all end all on inherent goodness or evilness. evil is done by the alliance, the horde, third parties; good is done by the alliance, the horde, third parties. there are dozens of "sides".

meanwhile starcraft has terran, protoss, & zerg. all three just wanna live their lives but they're all brought into a war with two kinds of aliens they never met before, and the actions of a few evil people in each group caused a fuckin full scale intergalactic war between all of them. and not to mention the terran fighting each other even though they're all from the same planet, the rogue protoss having their various civil wars, and the collapse of the zerg overmind causing tribal warfare between zerg, and amon who is super super evil and wants to kill everybody in the universe and fuse their corpses together because the xel'naga (gods) left an unclear prophecy, and also the xel'naga themselves. there are a dozen factions of each of the three races ALONE who all hate each other, and not all of them are good or evil. in fact it's left super obvious that the only truly evil people are amon and the only truly good people are in raynor's allies, kerrigan's swarm, artanis' fleet, and uhhh probably valerian's dominion maybe.

and that's just how the world is. things aren't ever simple and easy. there are exceptions to every rule. bickering and fighting and putting things into neat little categories and thinking you're the fucking king of the field are all not helping the situation we're in.

all atheist assholes and all religious assholes are bad. all neoliberals and all fascists are bad. not all atheists or religious people are good but many are. not all people with a political leaning are good but many are. (this ones iffy and I'll make a lot of enemies but... moderate liberals seem to be pretty okay for the most part and moderate conservatives can be okay if they make concessions and fucking listen and the other positions seem to be directly proportional in overall goodness to how much they discount dissenting opinions. naziism is not an opinion, guillotine the billionaires, complicity in fascism is fascism which is bad, tolerating intolerance is a fallacy, fuck trump, fuck every single dumb motherfucker who voted for him, oh yeah and fuck the broken not working two party system). gender is a complex concept beyond complete human comprehension and anyone who thinks they know everything about us is a fucking idiot who should stop talking. stop shoving things into one of two boxes.

we should really think in more like magic the gathering colors. black is the evil demon hell zombie monster fucks. white is the be nice to people but destroy evil brigade. blue is the logic/science/reason/coexist with the scary brutal nature or die/survival of the fittest kind of people. red is the "nature is scary and life is meaningless so let's all just get drunk" aspect of apathetic nihilistic neutrality. green is the "nature is beautiful and we should stop fucking destroying it and then make the world a better place" tree hugging nerds who mean well but can be a bit cold and unfeeling when it comes to those less fortunate. we'll all probably do a lot better thinking in those terms than how we've been doing.