#and yes I know I'm canadian but I have people in the states who I care more about than my own fucking family

[hallows-personal-hell]

anyways so thank you to all the idiots able to vote who refused to over some fucking moral highground that have more than likely contributed to this. you've helped fuck shit up. good job.

[imperatorrrrr]

another new Nico Hischier interview, this time in French, highlights below:

Q: Are you still living your dream? A: Yes, of course. It has always been my dream to be a professional hockey player. It is an honour to be able to do it, to have the health to do it. To do what I love. Many others would have loved to be in my shoes. I wake up every morning with the thought that I am privileged. I do my best to help my team win games. 

Q: You are presented as a hockey star. How big is the pressure? A: It is enormous. It starts right away when you become a professional player. And it stays the whole time. In Europe and across the Atlantic. The pressure is everywhere, not just in hockey. It is about knowing how to manage it. To put yourself in a condition to release it. It is not always easy, when you have thousands of people scrutinizing what you do. You have to take the best of it. The pressure helps me give the best of myself in every situation. That is how I can go to bed with a good feeling without being disappointed in myself. 

Q: "It's not always easy," according to you. What were the most complicated moments of your career? A: The most difficult period was undoubtedly the season marked by Covid. Also because of the injuries that affected me. I learned a lot from that period. There was the virus. I was injured, I trained in my corner. Fortunately, my mother was able to join me, even in times of pandemic, to be by my side during the operation. I realized at that moment that health was the most important aspect. These injuries affected me at the time, but they also sounded like an inner awakening. I was able to put the cursor on what matters and in sport it is health.

Q: How do you deal with loneliness and being away from your loved ones? A: That's not easy either. I love Switzerland. I love being here with my family and friends. It's very important, even more so during the summer, to be with the people who matter, to recharge my batteries. When I go back to the United States, my life pretty much revolves around hockey. Well, only around hockey. We play three to four games a week, we travel a lot. When my friends or family come to see me, it gives me a good boost. To sum up, I appreciate both situations: my life there but also being able to come back, recharge my batteries and go back to America to give my all in hockey.

Q: Who are your friends and how do you find the balance between hockey and everything else? A: In the team, I share a lot of things with Jonas Siegenthaler and Timo Meier. Guys I already knew from a young age. It's cool to be able to play with them. I'm also lucky to have been able to meet players from other countries, to meet new people. Americans, Canadians, Swedes, Czechs. It's very enriching to have all these cultures and to be able to come together around a common passion.

Q: Has life in the United States changed you? What is American in you? A: Open-mindedness. Being open to others, to meeting new people. You don't need to be friends with everyone, but it is important to listen to others, to take their opinions into account. Nevertheless, I remain very Swiss, I feel very Swiss. 

Q: What do you mean? A: I don't know. I'm still very close to my family, my friends. I try not to attract too much attention. I'm content with little things, simple things. A good dinner, a raclette from time to time, a good glass of wine. These are moments that I appreciate.

Q: Let's talk about your club, the New Jersey Devils. A club that has evolved considerably since your arrival? A: That's for sure. It's very different from what I knew when I started. We were among the youngest on the team with Jasper Brett and Pavel Zacha. The other teammates were all more or less in their thirties. Everything was new to me. But it was good. I was able to learn a lot from all the experienced players. They made me understand a lot of things. What it means to be a Devil, how to take care of your body, it was very varied. In the middle of my journey, the team got younger and I had to take on more and more responsibilities. Today, there are obviously some younger than me. It's changed a lot in 7 years and that's normal. For my part, I try hard to present the best version of myself every day. 

Q: You are seen as a leader. You are a leader. Was that natural for you? A: Absolutely. On the ice, it's clear. I've always wanted to do things well. I've always wanted to win. A true leader has to have that mentality, putting your ego aside for the good of the team. Off the ice, I'm not the most visible or the loudest but I also enjoy the camaraderie, the jokes and the outings. Maybe that's where I have the most to learn. But I'm still learning. I'm only 25 years old. There's still more to explore. 

Q: You might think that communication is essential? A: It is very important. You never know how people react, what they need. You have to find a good balance between what you give, what you ask and what you receive. To be a leader, you need empathy, understanding but also firmness in your demands. Some aspects were more complicated for me but I try to find the right balance.

Q: Is the feeling of representing Switzerland even stronger when you have a career so far away like you? A: It's clear. They speak Swiss German in the locker room. I meet friends I had known in juniors. Hockey remains a small world, a small environment and not just in Switzerland. And it's always nice to meet up with people you know to share such an experience in a world championship.

Q: Are you ambitious, optimistic for the next big events, the 2026 Olympics and the 2026 World Cup? A: Of course. We have proven in recent years that we have a very good Swiss team. We know how it works in sport. Every piece is important, every detail counts to reach the top. But we have to believe in our chances. And we have a good group, as I said. I am looking forward to the next tournaments. The Olympic Games are certainly a dream for me, having never been there. It is different from a world championship but we will have the same ambition. You never know in sport. 

Q: Your season is so long. You could skip the Swiss national team selections. Why is it so important? For the good times, the ones that remain. I grew up watching Switzerland. And to be able to represent them, it really means something special to me. It's always a pleasure to wear this jersey, to see the fans of the national team. It gives me a lot of joy. It hasn't happened yet, but the only reason that would make me give up would be physical unavailability or mental fatigue. If I feel fit, I'll go. If not, it's a matter of being honest and giving up, because it wouldn't be good for me or for the team. 

[bardic-inspirjaytion]

Right.

We didn't want to be in this position, but here we are. Americans, I'm so sorry. The coming years are going to be rough, and not everybody will make it through, and we still need to look out for each other and fight like hell for one another anyways.

The point of this post? Everything you were told after the repeal of RvW has a LOT more urgency now.

If you are someone in the age bracket and with the anatomy that could become pregnant,

If you were using an app to track your cycle, now you're absolutely fucking not. Switch to something analog that can be destroyed, and/or keep it cryptic enough that you have deniability that's what it's for. You are NOT giving anybody any ammunition here.

Likewise, no texting or messaging anything about your intimate health that you wouldn't want used against you. It won't hurt you to learn how to use apps like Signal and VPNs to obscure your online traffic now, even if things are still legal in your state. Got it? Good.

IF IT'S MEDICALLY VIABLE FOR YOU, INVESTIGATE GETTING AN IUD. Yes, the procedure to get one implanted sucks, it can hurt a lot and making the arrangements might cause you some gender dysphoria. But it can be effective at preventing pregnancy for YEARS once it's in there, and a lot of people who rely on hormonal BC to treat medical conditions find it gives them some continuing relief from their symptoms even if their daily medication stops being available. I am not a doctor; obviously this isn't qualified medical advice, and you need to seek such before undergoing any procedure. This is just a reminder that, if you've been putting this off, get it done now if it's safe and available to you.

Watch each other's backs, now more than ever. If somebody tells you sensitive information about their medical status, especially on the reproductive front, no they fucking didn't. If you know or suspect somebody is undergoing a process or procedure, no you fucking don't. It's officially Shut The Fuck Up Friday, every day.

Find which orgs in your area are doing the work on the ground to connect people to the care they need. If you need help, reach out. And if you can safely help them, consider doing so.

You're on the active lookout for misinformation now. If anything health-related seems too wild or too simple to be true, it gets a healthy dose of skepticism. Especially if it comes from an online source.

Take a moment. Take a deep breath. And then figure out what you can do now to prepare to keep yourself safe through the next few years. It's overwhelming out there this morning - please know that you matter. Tomorrow will come, every tide eventually turns, and you deserve to be alive and well when it does.

Love,

Your Canadian big sister

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I don't know if you keep up with any YouTuber stuff, but right now a situation has blown up about Cody Ko having had sex with Tana Mongeau when he was 25 and she was 17. She had consented at the time.

There's been discussions about it being a crime and about age of consent and stuff like that, and there have been some people who have said that under no circumstances can a 17 year old consent to sex.

And I was wondering what your position would be as a sex educator? Not necessarily about the Cody + Tana situation itself, just more about whether a 17 year old can consent?

sorry hang on, there are people sincerely arguing that there are *no* situations in which 17 year olds can consent to sex? including with other 17 year olds? because of that's the case, ooooh boy, I'm gonna need a lot of people to touch grass some grass asap.

anyway from a legal standpoint I'm unsure where this would fall. a cursory google search has indicated that Mongeau is American and Ko is Canadian. age of consent laws are different between the two countries, so whether or not this is considered a crime in the strictest legal sense of the word would depend on where, geographically, this took place.

even if it were in a US state where an adult having sex with someone under the age of 18 is categorically illegal, it's unlikely that it would have been treated as a crime at the time if Mongeau didn't alert authorities or press charges. the fact of the matter is that there are just, like, a lot of adults having sex with teenagers, specifically skeezy men hooking up with teenage girls. high school one of my closest friends had a 24 year old boyfriend and everyone agreed that it was weird but also her parents were completely aware of the situation, liked the guy, and let him hang out in their house pretty much constantly, so like. what was anyone supposed to do about that? hell, numerous studies have found that around a quarter of pregnant teenagers are impregnated by someone 5+ years their senior. yes it's a crime, no it's probably not going to see legal action unless someone (usually the minor's guardians) pursues statutory rape charges.

all of which I guess brings us to your question of whether or not a 17 year old can consent to sex with a 25 year old, which I presume you mean in, like, a moral sense and not a legal sense. to which I say sure, a 17 year old is absolutely capable of understanding what sex is and deciding that they want to do that, but that doesn't make it cool and fine that an adult agreed to do it with them.

look, man, I'm 27. I have a lot of 25 year old friends. if any of them announced that they were hooking up with 17 year olds, I would stage an intervention. a 17 year old is obviously not the same as a CHILD child, but the maturity differential is, for the most part, drastic enough that I do genuinely struggle to understand why someone in their mid-twenties would even be interested if not for the sake of having a sexual partners who's less experienced and easier to influence.

having said that I will throw in the final caveat that I am, deeply and always, firmly against carceral "justice," and particularly in a case like this where the younger party was (presumably) not forced or coerced or otherwise hurt, entry into an inhumane prison system is not an appropriate outcome for the older party.

[pixiesfz]

more jessie pls bby 🙏

in honour of more jflem news lets write some ANGST AHAHAHA

moving on j.f

plot: Jessie tells you she's leaving chelsea

warning angst

You could tell something was wrong with Jessie. She was spending more time on the phone which you assumed was her family as they missed her from the Christmas break but usually they would also ask to talk to you so when you texted her sister she said that they've only been texting.

You were getting slightly worried as your girlfriend wasn't telling you who was on the phone.

You were all at training, you were partnered with Niamh as you kicked the ball to each other. "You know how my last relationship went Niamh" you groaned and the English girl nodded "Jessie is not the type to cheat, she is so in love with you it's gross"

"Then why isn't she telling me who she's on the phone with 24/7?" you complained and the girl shrugged "Do you know what they talk about?" she asked and you shook your head "She always moves to another room in the house whenever they call" you explained.

Niamh furrowed her eyebrows "Have you ever thought that it could be her agent?" she asked softly as her eyes turned to Jessie who was talking to Emma on the sidelines.

"I- I don't know" you admitted as your heart started to beat faster "she would tell me if she wanted to move" you paused "wouldn't she?"

Niamh looked down at her feet "I mean she doesn't play as much as she used to" she said and your breaths felt quicker "but she would still tell me I mean I'm her girlfriend"

Niamh looked back at you, noticing your nerves, and walked to you, placing her hand on your shoulder "Hey we could be reading this wrong" she told you "she could just be calling her Canadian team mates" she tried to reassure you.

You both watched as Jessie excused herself from her and Emma's conversation to pick up her phone that had started ringing.

"Yeah because she can get out of training to call her teammates" you scoffed.

You were quick to get out of training, waiting at Jessie's car with your arms crossed and foot tapping whilst you thought.

You would be fine if she left Chelsea for more gametime, well maybe not Arsenal but it's what she deserved.

She had friends at Liverpool from UCLA they would look after her there.

but still... why didn't she tell you.

Jessie finally made her way to the car with a smile, her hair out and brushed back which usually you would run your hands through immediately.

"hey" she smiled, kissing your cheek before headig to the drivers seat, you froze as she sat down.

Was she this calm about keeping a secret from you.

You bit your tongue on the way home as the car filled with uncomfortable silence. It wasn't until Jessie parked when your short fuse had exploded.

"Are you leaving Chelsea?" you whispered as Jessie went to open the door, she stopped moving whilst you asked the question, leaning back into her seat with a sigh.

"I-I" she stuttered "You can just say yes Jess," you told her "People have been offering for me" she admits "Explains all the phone calls" You deadpanned.

"I wanted to tell you" she said softly and you scoffed "when?, when you played your first game there, I don't mind that your leaving to another club, it won't affect our relationship we're still going to be here and-"

"It's the Portland Thorns" Jessie cut you off.

Your head spun to your girlfriend "oh" was all you said.

Portland Thorns.... in the NWSL....in America....four hours away from you.

"How much?" you asked "what?" Jessie said "How much are they paying you?" you asked, your voice hard

"250,000 dollars" she whispered, her hands lifting up to grip the steering wheel harder.

You scoffed at the information "that's really good Jess" you whispered and the brunette nodded "I said no" she revealed and you furrowed your brows "why?" you asked

"I saw you at training with Niamh and-"

"This is because of me?" you asked, shocked at her words "I don't want to leave you y/n" she stated and you crossed your head "Jessie, this is an amazing opportunity for you and not to put it lightly you're not getting the time you deserve"

"If I work harder then-" "No Jessie you know that's not how Emma works" you cut the girl off as uncomfortable silence grew again in the car.

If it was for her career she had to do it, you loved her that much.

"You need to go and play there," you told her and she sat still "I love you y/n, I don't want to lose you, long-distance never lasts and we don't know how long I'll be there for if I go," she said.

You didn't say anything, you just got up and made your way into the house.

Her dream was to become a world wide name in soccer.

You were holding her back.

Jessie came in not too long after you, her hands in her hair "Do you want me to go?" she asked and you looked down, not answering her "I love you so much y/n I'll stay if you love me too, please be honest"

You wanted her to stay.

You wanted her to to be in your bed every night, cuddling you.

You sat still, preparing yourself to look into her eyes which you knew had tears pouring from them.

When you looked up your heart dropped.

"I don't" you whispered "I honestly don't love you enough Jessie," you said sternly as the girl looked away, as she did you wiped the tear that had fallen under one of your eyes.

"okay," she muttered, "I guess I'll go then".

Months later you sat next to Sam as she and Kristie invited you over for dinner and a movie.

"I never asked this but" Sam started "Jessie told me what happened and how you guys broke up" "Sam!" Kristie warned and you sighed "it's fine" you told her.

"I just told her what she needed to hear but I wasn't being honest with her".

[mostlysignssomeportents]

1900s futurism

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

I'm profoundly skeptical of the idea that the future can be predicted, and doubly skeptical that sf writers are any kind of prophet. The former grotesque fatalism (if the future can be predicted, then what we do doesn't matter); the latter is tragicomic hubris.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

That said, few people have been more consistently useful in understanding and anticipating (and yes, building) the future than my friend and colleague Karl Schroeder, whom I've known since I was 16 years old. Karl was the first person I heard say the world "internet." Also: "fractal," "World Wide Web," "ftp," and numerous other touchstones of the future just over the horizon.

Karl is, in fact, a futurist ("foresight consultant") who approaches the work with the same shrewd insight, wild imagination and humility that he brings to his fiction. In a new essay written with both his futurist and sf writer hats on, he nails down the toxic shadow cast by the 20th century sf, or, as he calls it, "The Science Fiction of the 1900s":

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/the-science-fiction-of-the-1900s

Karl starts by describing the odd "double vision" of the future of the 1900s. On the one hand, many of us (myself included) were convinced that nuclear armageddon was inevitable. Unlike the unhinged architects of the nuclear arms-race, realists understood that a nuclear war would effectively end the future. As Einstein put it, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

But the flipside of that certainty that the future would end with the first nuclear strike was the belief that if we could just somehow walk the tightrope over the chasm of nuclear holocaust, we'd emerge in a future worth looking forward to: "a new era of peace and prosperity for all."

Contrast that with the existential dread of today's polycrisis: environmental collapse and political decay up to and including fascism. These aren't the binary proposition of nuclear annihilation vs Utopia – rather, they're a continuum of worse-and-better outcomes of every description. As Karl writes: "It’s not that simple. Our future now is an exhausting spectrum of scenarios, each with its own promise, and its own problems."

For Karl, we have entered a new epoch, but we've dragged in the long-expired way of imagining (and hence creating and navigating) the future with us. What makes this a new epoch? For Karl, it's the kind of future on our horizon. He cites Charles C Mann’s 1491, a superb history of the Americas before Columbus:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/9781400032051/readers-guide/

1491 radically reframes "the patchwork of propaganda and inference" that makes up the received narrative of the so-called "New World." It describes a land of flourishing cities, art, science and culture "in the Americas while Rome was just getting its act together." Contact with colonizing Europeans was a disaster for First Nations people, who call this period "The Invasion." It was an epochal break.

Futurism is an inextricably historical discipline. The willingness of some settler-colonialists states to consider this epochal break forces us to reframe our literal place in history, the story of the land under our feet. At its best, this futuro-historical work can begin the long work of reconciliation, as with the Canadian government's promise of $23b in reparations for the First Nations people who were kidnapped as children and sent to murderous "residential schools" before, during and after the Sixties Scoop.

The sf of the 1900s is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. It's a literature that was steered by open fascists like John W Campbell, who explicitly saw the literature as a means of inculcating a societal narrative of the triumph of white, corporate technocracy over all other forms of government:

https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/

Karl isn't the first sf writer to try to overturn this orthodoxy – indeed, it was continuously challenged by radicals within the field, as with the New Wave, personified by the likes of Samuel Delany and Judith Merril (who both mentored and introduced Karl and me):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians

The cyberpunks took a good hard run at it, too. For plenty of writers (including me), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum" was a wake-up call:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng216/gernsback.pdf

Not for nothing, William Gibson has long insisted that his 1984 classic Neuromancer should be read as utopian: after all, it depicts a future in which the inevitable nuclear war only reduces a few cities to radioactive ash, sparing the rest of the planet.

Bruce Sterling once paid me the supreme compliment of describing a 2003 story I wrote about the ways that algorithms will enshittify self-driving cars as "making everybody else in the business look like they live in a dark basement growing on the mulch from old STAR TREK scripts":

https://craphound.com/stories/2005/10/12/human-readable/

Schroeder – along with today's new radical sf writer cohort – wants to fashion a fictional futurism that is fit for this world and its crisis: "in our modern technological society, science fiction tells us what to spend our time and money on." The fact that our mediocre billionaires are mired in the sf of the 1900s means that we're getting some decidedly old-fashioned futures.

For Karl, Musk is a poster-child for this profoundly conservative, backwards-looking vision: "He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from." Musk's obsessions – "Space flight. Settling Mars. Cyberpunk-style brain-computer interfaces. Artificial Intelligence. Self-driving electric cars. Humanoid robots." – are 1900s science fiction.

Ironically, much of this fiction labels itself "hard sf," despite the fact that interstellar travel is utter fantasy – as is mass-scale, near-term interplanetary civilization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

Karl wants "a future for the 2000s." He points to some efforts to make this happen, like Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hieroglyph-ed-finnkathryn-cramer

The "Hieroglyph" is Stephenson's shorthand for a recognizable, tangible, meme-able gizmo or other touchstone for a 2000s-era vision of the future – a replacement for jetpacks and flying cars. Karl's story for the anthology, "Degrees of Freedom," focuses on an abstraction (governance: "the single most important thing humanity can focus its creative energies on right now"), and by Karl's own admission, it's not quite the hieroglyph Stephenson was looking for.

But Karl did come up with a hieroglyph in a later work, the "deodands" of 2019's Stealing Worlds – a software agent "that believes it is some natural system, such as a river or forest, and acts in its own self-interest, that being the preservation and thriving of that natural system":

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/18/karl-schroeders-stealing-worlds-visionary-science-fiction-of-a-way-through-the-climate-and-inequality-crises/

(My own contribution to Hieroglyph was very gadget heavy – "The Man Who Sold the Moon," about autonomous lunar 3D printers. It won the Sturgeon Award):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

I've been impressed with Karl since the day I met him in 1987. There's no one whose thoughts on the future I'm more interested in hearing. I don't think that's a coincidence, either: Karl is an autodidact who was raised by a Mennonite TV repairman – the first TV repair shop in the Canadian prairies. If you want to understand the future, try being raised by someone who takes that kind of deliberate approach to which technology to adopt, and how.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

[respectthepetty]

You're American?!

Anon, this is the expression I feel you had while you wrote that sentence.

Yes. Yes, I am American. What gave it away? Me stating all the time I'm American (rural Southwest, Catholic, bisexual, a slut, Hispanic/Black, a Leo, a vegetarian) or was it the way I spell "colors"?

For an aging millennial who knows better, I actually offer up way too much information in the tags. So . . . fuck it, let me offer up more - I was born in Japan due to America's strategic colonization in over 80 countries (aka my father was in the Air Force), so my first passport has a picture of a week-old me! Whenever I renew my license or fill out any type of legal paperwork, I have to present five documents to prove my American citizenship since I was born in a regular Japanese hospital instead of the one on the American base. When I travel, internationally or domestically, it never fails that I get held up because my passport is American, my place of birth is Japan, and my place of residency is . . . just know people don't realize it's an American state. I travel often, but I think about two years ago, I might have fucked an international criminal at a Canadian music festival because I got held up in the Montreal airport for hours trying to leave and since then, I always have to go to the counter to print out my boarding pass and I always get asked additional questions. Odd, but if the criminal was who I think it was, the sex was worth it.

[murainhell]

I like Alastor's designs that include more deer details, but I've noticed that I'm not thinking on the same deer as the rest or something? Or that everyone uses the same base and ideas, but which are not necessarily correct? (I write this just to talk about deer, everybody can draw him as they want without having to take into consideration real biology, just have fun <3)

I guess most people are using the white-tailed deer, right?

(I love that in most of the photos, deers are looking at the camera; it's not surprising that Alastor knows when Vox is watching him).

It is, after all, an American species. And people tend to draw him with a tail with white details, so I guess we're going this way. But a few details:

I have seen that it has become very popular to put a lot of fur on his chest and I really want to know who started that?? Because yes, there are deer that have a lot of it, but it's usually on the neck. And as far as I remember right now it's another species, Canadian maybe? (I'm not that well versed in the species on the other side of the pond, sorry, but it sounds like a thing for a colder region). For me, the fact that he has a broad chest is because that's the way the designs of the series are, but in his case it's also because the deer are built like way lol

I am guilty of this too, but normally deer have their tails down when they are relaxed. If it is up, they are alerted, signalling danger to others.

Which would make sense with him, because I imagine he lives on constant guard, but don't be afraid to make his tail relaxed once in a while. Also, I don't think he would be happy to show the white part, because it could be interpreted as him seeing you as a danger.

Okay, I admit it, I love it when people draw dots on Alastor's fur or like freckles. That said… Only fawns have that. It's adorable, but I feel like he'd die of embarrassment if he had those marks and would hide them.

He was still a man in his late thirties or early forties when he died, if I remember correctly from the file they found with information for auditions while they were looking for actors? Just as I feel his human designs look too young (please, someone add laugh lines and wrinkles on him; in Hell he clearly looks younger (not a rare thing according to Helluva Boss), but I guess he pursued his hobby as an older man too), the dots on his fur make me think of him as a child orz

There are some species that do have spots when they are older, such as fallow deer (different antler shape) or sika deer, but they live in other parts of the world.

A lot of redesigns I see give him more elaborate and bigger antlers, because deer have them like that, don't they?

Can I offer you the roe deer in these difficult times?

Wrong continent? Yes. Beautiful antlers just like he has when he's not in his demonic form? YES. Also, red fur.

And the detail that makes me laugh the most, in the debate of whether Alastor has a tail or not, roe deer have super small tails, so in this case the anatomically correct answer would be no lol

Wrong part of the world too, as it lives in Latin America, but I simply love the marsh deer.

Beautiful species in a vulnerable state of conservation :( But every time I draw Alastor's arms and legs with black fur, they always come to my mind. It's literally what happens to these deer. And they have a beautiful reddish colour.

But then again, these are just ramblings. Thank you for reading this far. I just really like deer lol It's always a magical experience when I travel to Cazorla and I come across them in the forest.

[felassan]

Edmonton radio station interview with Alex Kennedy, lawyer for the former BioWare employees who are sueing for better severance: [link]

Description:

"Seven former employees of BioWare are suing the Edmonton-based video game developer for wrongful dismissal. They allege they were let go without cause, and that Bioware and its parent company, Electronic Arts, are not offering them reasonable compensation. We talked to Alex Kennedy, their Edmonton-based lawyer."

Transcript of segment:

Host: "Seven former employees of BioWare are sueing the Edmonton-based video game developer for wrongful dismissal. They allege they were let go without cause, and that BioWare, and its parent company EA, are not offering them reasonable compensation. Alex Kennedy is their Edmonton-based lawyer, and joins us on the line this morning. Good morning Alex."

Alex: "Good morning Mark."

Host: "So how did these seven former employees come to be fired from BioWare?"

Alex: "Well, on around August 23rd of this year, 50 people were let go without cause from BioWare. That was about 20% of their workforce. So these were among the 50 people who were let go."

Host: "So what kind of work would they have done for BioWare?"

Alex: "A wide variety of things. One of the people, I'm allowed to share her identity, is Mary Kirby, who's done a lot of writing for BioWare's sort've, central games, and is the creator of a lot of very popular characters. But we have people who did programming, we have people who did sort've, directing of the games, and all sorts of different, different, functions."

Host: "And were these plaintiffs, were they long-time employees of BioWare?"

Alex: "Oh, yes, yes, one of my plaintiffs, one of my plaintiffs was 23 years at BioWare and he started when he was 20 years old, so, most of his life has been at that job."

Host: "Now when the layoffs came here, was this part of an overall restructuring of EA, or was it specifically at BioWare? What happened there?"

Alex: "Yeah, my understanding is that this has to do with the larger restructuring at EA. It's strange, EA is doing pretty well in terms of its profits. I think, if I've read correctly, that they made $400 million last quarter. But they still wanna remove 6% of their jobs for some reason. I'm not, I don't really understand how those decisions are made, to be honest."

Host: "So what amount of compensation has BioWare offered for letting them go?"

Alex: "Yeah, I can't give the exact numbers because, you know, that was offered in an offer to my clients, but we would suggest that the amount that they gave is probably less than half of the amount they would be truly entitled to in court."

Host: "And so, are we talking about just severance, or are there other things that are involved in compensation that you think should be considered?"

Alex: "Well, the issue, part of the issue in this particular case is that what BioWare offered was just based on the base salary that my clients were receiving. But in Canadian law, generally speaking, it appears to be that people who are removed from their jobs, when they receive severance, when they receive notice, it should include all of the benefits, including things like, even stock vesting [?], or profit-participation [?], that a person was engaged in at the time that they were fired. So in these cases, because that was absent, my clients are winding up not only with less money in terms of the amount of time they should be paid, but also less money in terms of the total amount they should be paid."

Host: "Now are these contract workers that have things spelled out, and so wouldn't the contract sort've indicate how much they would get?"

Alex: "Well, there is a contract in some cases, although not all of my plaintiffs' cases, but there is a contract in some cases, but, it has a term that appears to be illegal, which states, as I said earlier, that any severance will be based on the base salary and will explicitly not include any benefits. It seems to be contrary to Sections 57 and 61 of the Employment Standards Code."

Host: "Can you tell us how much your clients are asking for then, in damages, or, then, I guess, in severance?"

Alex: "Yeah, well, I'm asking, in my clients' case, for about 1.5 months of severance for every year worked in service at BioWare. We're also asking for a one million dollar punitive damages just based on the fact that the contract was illegal and that BioWare, despite the fact that this has been drawn to their attention, is continuing to stand by that being the requirement."

Host: "So, why the punitive damages?"

Alex: "Well, again because, when my clients are paid the small amount that they, that BioWare has essentially decided that they're entitled to, that already does not include their benefits. So my clients are put in a situation where, in order to pursue their legal rights, they have to, you know, live on a small amount of money that's been allowed to them. On top of that there have been a couple of cases where, you know, as we indicate in our Statement of Claim, that BioWare has failed to give proper information to new employers, and also that the requirements that BioWare put on my clients are pretty onerous in terms of preventing them from finding appropriate new work."

Host: "What are we talking about there? Are these NDAs, or are they restrictions on where they can work?"

Alex: "Yeah, they're NDAs. And how that applies in terms of people who've done a lot of creative work can be very difficult. You know, my clients worked on a game for about, say, 3, 4, 5 years, game hasn't been published yet. They're not really in a position to be able to say, 'oh, well I created this and that, and this and that', they can't really speak about it, so they have to say, 'well I worked at BioWare for 5 years, and I can't really say what I did'".

Host: "NDA, by the way, is a non-disclosure agreement, for those who don't know about the acronym. So have there been any special challenges for your clients in trying to get back into the workforce?"

Alex: "Well yes, I mean, my clients, you can imagine, a lot of my clients have been doing this for, as I said, majority of their adult lives. They're not sure if they wanna continue this. They are in Edmonton, where, there's a, you know, it's good that we have such a vibrant software industry, but, you know, it's limited in terms of what they can do. 6000 other people have been let go from the computer games industry this year, so it's hardly a wide-open market at this point in time."

Host: "Now these layoffs came in August. Are you anticipating a long haul here for your clients, or what do you hope the timeline is?"

Alex: "Yeah, I mean, we always hope that a matter will settle. But, in reality, BioWare's stance to date has been that there's simply nothing to negotiate, and 'take us to court', so, you know, obviously I hope that BioWare changes its mind, maybe this is a big misunderstanding or something like that, but, you know, as things stand right now, we have to go through the entire court process, which, as you know, can take quite some time."

Host: "Alex, appreciate you coming on to talk about it today. Thanks very much."

Alex: "Thank you."

Host: "Alex Kennedy is a lawyer representing seven plaintiffs who are sueing BioWare for wrongful dismissal. The allegations made in this lawsuit have not been proven in court. CBC did reach out to BioWare for comment on this lawsuit, but we did not hear back from them by deadline."

[source]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: Whoa, Canada | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule. If we want to save our country, we should follow the advice good liberals have given for decades and learn from other countries.

Especially those beacons of progressivism like Canada, England, and Scandinavia, and I agree we should, as long as we're honest about the lessons we're learning. And as long as we're up to date on the current data. Such as, the unemployment rate in the US is 3.8 percent. And in Canada, it's 6.1. And of the 15 North American cities with the worst air pollution, 14 are in Canada.

I'm not citing these stats because I have it out for Canada. I love Canada, and its people, and always have, but I hate zombie lies. Zombie lies. That's when things change but what people say about them doesn't. Yes, for decades, places like Vancouver, and Amsterdam, and Stockholm seemed idyllic, because everything was free and all the energy we needed was produced by riding a bike to your job at the windmill. Canada was where all the treasured goals of liberalism worked perfectly. It was like NPR come to life but with poutine.

Canada was the Statue of Liberty with a low-maintenance haircut and cross-country skis. A giant idealized blue state with single-payer health care, gun control, and abortion on polite demand. Canada was where every woke White college kid, wearing pajama pants outdoors who'd had it up to here with America's racist patriarchy, dreamt of living someday. I mean, besides Gaza.

There's only one problem with thinking everything's better in Canada. It's not. Not anymore anyway. Last year, Canada added 1.3 million people, which is a lot in one year. The equivalent of the US adding 11 million migrants in one year. And now, they are experiencing a housing crisis even worse than ours. And we're sleeping in tents. The median price of a home here is 346 grand, in Canada, converted to US dollars, it's 487. If Barbie moved to Winnipeg, she wouldn't be able to afford her dream house and Ken would be working at Tim Hortons. And because of mortgage debt, Canada has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any G7 nation. I don't know what that means, but it sounds bad.

So does their vaunted health care system, which ranks dead last among high income countries in access to primary health care and ability to see a doctor in a day or two. And it's not for lack of spending. Of the 30 countries with universal coverage, Canada spends over 13 percent of its economy on it, which is a lot of money for free health care.

Look, I'm not saying Canada still isn't a great country. It is, but those aren't paradise numbers. If Canada was an apartment, the lead feature might be "America adjacent." And if America was a rental car, Canada would be "America or similar."

And again, honestly, Canada, I'm not saying any of this 'cause I enjoy it. I don't, 'cause I've always enjoyed you. But I need to cite you as a cautionary tale to help my country. And the moral of that tale is, "Yes, you can move too far left." And when you do, you wind up pushing the people in the middle to the right. At its worst, Canada is what American voters think happens when there's no one putting a check on extreme wokeness.

Like the saga of Canadian shop teacher, Kayla Lemieux, whose pronouns are she/her and those. Kayla is now back to being a guy named Kerry, but two years ago when "they" showed up to teach children, the progressive high school "they" taught at said that they-- They, the school, not the person. Really? You couldn't have found another word? We were using that one. Anyway, okay. They were committed to a safe environment for gender expression. Safe for who? What about the children? What about the equipment in that shop class?

You know, there was once a weirdo D-list movie producer in the '60s named Russ Meyer who made low-budget B movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! And Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Always featuring women who look like this. His movies played in porn houses and were featured in Hustler and Playboy. Okay, fine, but who says, "No, when it comes to huge, ridiculous tits, let's save that for the kids."

And this is why people vote for Trump. They say in politics, liberals are the gas pedal and conservatives are the brakes, and I'm generally with the gas pedal, but not if we're driving off a cliff.

On the trans issue, America is no ands, ifs, or buts about it, absolutely alone in the world now. An outlier country. Last month, England's National Health Service announced that there's "not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness" of puberty blockers for third graders, and that they were going to stop fumbling around with children's privates, because that's Prince Andrew's job.

So too with all the other good place countries in direct opposition to America's choice to affirm children's wishes on switching gender, no matter the age or psychiatric history. The Far Left, which always like to use, "Well, Europe does it." Yeah, no, that doesn't work on this one anymore.

Or on immigration. Sweden opened its borders to over a million and a half immigrants since 2010. And now 20 percent of its citizens are foreign-born and its education system is tanking, and it has Europe's highest rate of gangland killings. And one result is that the far-right parties are in the government now there for the first time.

To which liberals say, "Blaming immigrants for the rising crime rate is racist." Yeah, but is it true? Of course, it's true. It's not a coincidence. The quality of life went down after the Somali gangs started a drug turf war using hand grenades.

Calling it "racist" doesn't solve the problem. It hands future elections to someone who will solve the problem, and who, I promise, you're not going to like.

==

For the record, I've said literally all of this, including making the comparison of flying off a cliff if you rely entirely on the gas pedal. Just saying.

When Trump takes office again, and he will, people will act stunned and ask, "how could this have ever happened?"

[papirouge]

Ok but this trump brain rot is SO weird right?

. I make a comment about how women choosing to be celibate is the best thing and that they should kill their rapists on ig and I get so many maga men in my dms angry and triggered. Hit dogs holler, I guess

Now my brother is the same and acting like trump is going to save “him” like, we’re canadian?? And my friend in Norway saw a guy waving a trump flag until he was kicked out of the country for harassing a lot of women who had him reported. He was American who fled the us but came to Norway??

NOT YOU casually admitting you post death threats on IG ???!!! 😭 didn't you get censored??

but yeah, moids are soooo transparent. The other day I was on a live tiktok arguing that women could be married and still don't want have children and moids on the chat were seething like "urghduur do you even know what's the point of marriage is???" and I was like "where did you read on the Bible that the point of marriage was popping as many children as possible?" we're not on Adam & Eve time anymore, we don't have the mission to physically reproduce to populate the earth. Our role as Christians is to reproduce through spreading the Gospel & saving souls. There's literally no point popping babies if they're become lost souls. Plentiful of non Christians do that already... Moids are obsessed with controlling women and imposing narrative they're making up in their own head.

and non Americans being sooo invested in those elections are so weird. Like yes, the USA is a superpower but in the end of the day, your local parliament has more power in your everyday life than the US president ever will. (I'm french and the French presidency is infamous for being incredibly powerful)

I watched this whole election like a lolcow thread. All the people who took it seriously truly missed the plot.

Those "patriots" from european countries looking up MAGA when a true actual patriot/nationalist should defend their own country interest FIRST and not eat the boots of the yankees that wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. I remember USAmerican redditors expecting Europe to go to war against Russia... for what? watch the whole continent burn while you're looking oversea? YOU go to war to Russia!!

Anti American nationalists make much more sense imo And that's also how I know that Q anon was a deep state psy-op to rally foreign nationalists in favor of the the USA (posing MAGA as the savior of the world or whatever bs they believe in)

There won't be world peace as long as the US is still alive, I wish more people would realize that.

[fine-soup]

PLEASE read through the threads made by @renhanasgf on twitter, they go through what actually happened with the Gatobob situation and yeah, what she did was pretty bad tbh :(

Well u told me to read it, and, well, I will respond the thing, and I'm going to tell u first of all, yes, she made some mistakes and took bad responses... Do I will tell u what I think abythat an I hope the girl that was staked for racist people (the mod) can get better and star safe.

I just read what they published, and well... I don't like getting into controversies and that's why I didn't read much, I don't like having problems with controversies. That's why I prefer to continue not knowing and enjoying the fandom and all that, the simple fact that I like it does not mean that I support the actions of others (speaking of other fandoms I'm in and tastes).

I finished reading most of it to inform myself a little (I didn't read it completely, I just read things that I missed checking)

And well... In my opinion I have seen people around me who suffer alterations just like those that gatobob suffered, and I do not justify what he said and the way in which he said it, But I do understand her state, so much stress about being a content creator and the fact that she notices a bit of the "savior syndrome" due to her need to help everyone... This clearly affects her character.

But hey, I don't want to get into the controversy just because I want to enjoy the content, sometimes people enjoy ignorance to be happy in my opinion, I'm not minimizing nor do I want to sound non-empathetic... Yes, it was bad but I don't want to get involved in all that...

Well, in this I don't think she is racist because of this, and she never insulted the girl but rather she was a moderator, the Nazi strade drawing I suppose was a stage... I once drew one of my ocs like this, but I was in high school and I was just learning about it and I found the story interesting, I ASSUME it was the same since it was an old drawing, I don't know.

But I don't think I'm racist for having white OC's (I don't have colored OC's either but that's not because I'm racist, it just never crosses my mind).

AND THIS IS COMPLETELY FALSE, you can tell because she is Canadian, those terms are Mexican, it is poorly translated into English and even using a translator the translator would not use the term "mexichangos."

Apart from the fact that she, being a content creator, should not change her profile photo, in that case she would have the profile photo.

I'm Mexican so I can say that even if someone told her to put it in she wouldn't know exactly what it meant.

But hey, that's my opinion and why I don't get involved in those things. Thank you

[alterrune]

A MESSAGE FROM IRL!ALTERRUNE

tw: the 2024 election, politics, homophobia

Do I have to fucking do this...?

Yes, Kyle. I know you don't want to talk about this, but we need you to say something about your sudden absense from the story.

(Kyle's been in his room ever since 'the event' happened. He's been facedown on his bed ever since and is being incredibly rude and vulgar, even to Harmony and Synth. I've been trying to convince him to say something about this for a long time, and he finally let me do it after I intercepted an order from the cafeteria for him and said he'd have to leave his room for food until he did what I wanted. Believe it or not, he actually SUPPORTED the-President-that-must-not-be-named back in 2016, which he now considers as one of his biggest regrets. So seeing him back in power...yeah, his past came back to haunt him, and it's haunting him HARD.)

Let's just get this fucking over with.

Are you going to lift your head up, or...?

No. I'm fucking fine. Let's get this shit done.

(He's also been swearing like a sailor, and if you could hear his voice right now, it'd sound like he was totally and utterly exhausted. Which, to be frank, he is. He shot off numerous rounds into the walls of his room [which he said he'd pay the repair costs in full for], and told me he had to empty every single round of ammunition he had on him into the furniture and walls of his room so he didn't shoot a person. Of course he's exhausted.)

"okay, we're rolling."

Hey everyone. It's IRL!Alterrune here. And I'm fucking off for a bit.

To every fucking one of you in the USA right now who actually used their fucking brains during the elections: You have my sincerest condolences.

I supported that motherfucker, and to this goddamn day, I still consider that my biggest fucking regret ever.

"You're Canadian, why should you care?" Because thanks to the dumbass people who fucking supported that jerk-off, EVERYONE loses. The USA is incredibly powerful, so yeah, everyone on Earth, INCLUDING THEIR NEXT-DOOR-NEIGHBOR CANADA, fucking loses.

I am fucking retracting myself from the story for a bit. I don't know when I'll be back. But until he either gets impeached or fucking assassinated, I'm going to stay like this. And I sincerely hope it's the latter. I hope someone fucking blows his motherfucking brains out all over the goddamn floor and---

OOOOKAY, Kyle, that's enough of that! Let's move on, please!

(Kyle gives us a sneer. Excuse me, Kyle, but I'm not the one insinuating ASSASSINATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA here! I'm trying to stop you before you get us all in trouble!)

Regardless, as I was fucking saying, I'll be gone from the story for I don't even fucking know how long. I'll be back, but until then, I hope HE goes down before shit hits the fan.

And by the way, Vi. Believe me when I say this: there is a fucking LINE-UP for people trying to assassinating him. I'm MOST CERTAINLY NOT one of them because I'm not fucking looking to add "terrorist" to my resume, but there are others out there who can and WILL try to get a hit on him, and I'll be overjoyed when they finally kill him and fucking finally send him straight to Hell.

Vi? We should probably cut the feed before he says anything else that'll get us in HUGE trouble.

"HE'S ALREADY SAID ENOUGH. CUT THE FEED, ALREADY."

WAIT. There's one more thing I want to say.

(Kyle suddenly forces his head up...and...oh god. He hasn't been taking his sleeping pills for his insomnia, his face clearly shows that he hasn't gotten any sleep. He looks AWFUL. However, his angry expression suddenly changes into a somber one.)

(ahem)

To anyone who's in the LGBTQIA+ community:

Don't give up. Fight. Fight like you've never fucking fought before. He says you don't exist? Fuck him. You do exist. Don't let him drive you to suicide, that's exactly what he wants you to do. I may be straight, but I'm not going to sit back and let him ruin all of you. I don't care what the hell he says or does, BREAK THE LAW if you have to. Love is love, and fuck me if I'm letting that BASTARD try and ruin that.

(We all suddenly look in shock. Kyle, completely unprompted, just straight-up gave a sincere and heartfelt speech, and didn't add any unneccesary pander to it. ON ALMOST NO SLEEP.)

(While we're all picking our jaws up off the ground, Kyle gets back onto his bed, this time lying on his back with a pillow over his face.)

Okay. I'm done. Cut the fucking feed now.

(Harmony stops the feed on Kyle's command. Holy shit, what just happened?)

Well, that...could've gone better.

Yeah, but...that speech at the end. Kyle just suddenly did a 180 degree spin on that entire thing.

What the hell even happened there?

Yeah, Kyle, what was with that sudden shift?

I said exactly what had to be said. That the LGBTQIA+ community shouldn't give up just because the-President-that-must-not-be-named said so. If the world wants to fucking explode itself, then by god, I'm making sure I'm staying on the chunk of earth that has the right people on it. I had a PRIDE MONTH EVENT for AtO, so believe me when I say that I do not (and never will) support the actions he is taking. I will NOT let him fuck up the people in that community no matter what. I will defend them with my life if I have to.

Wow. I...uh...never expected YOU to be this defensive about this.

Who else will be?

Fair enough.

Alright, everyone, let's leave Kyle alone for a bit. I think he needs to take his insomnia pills.

Oh shit...I completely forgot to take them. Yeah, I think some rest would be nice.

(I escort everyone out of the room, as Kyle takes his sleeping pills and conks out almost immediately.)

Thanks, Kyle. Glad to know that even in times of peril, you still know who the good guys are, and you rush to defend them.

(I close the door to Kyle's room, leaving him to his nap. Sweet dreams, Kyle, hope you come back soon.)

STATUS OF IRL!ALTERRUNE: OFFLINE

[thethiefandtheairbender]

So, I feel hopeful for the PJO series (haven't the premiere yet, I'm waiting for my off day) but then as I was searching stuff about it, I ended up finding the whole debacle about Uncle Rick being a zionist? I couldn't find many sources that weren't a bunch of hearsay and calls for boycott of the series, do you happen to know what that's about? (Sorry if this is wierd, you don't have to answer if you don't want to)

So this is why it's good to go back to the original source to make up your own mind (I've linked it here for your convenience). For posterity's sake I've provided by own thoughts on it down below, as well as some additionally needed context:

Disney+ is one of many companies that people have called a boycott for (alongside ones like Starbucks) due to BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel). Disney+'s status in the boycott exists separately from claims about Rick Riordan (I haven't seen much backlash about people watching "Wish" or any other disney project recently, by comparison.) I can't comment since I don't actually have Disney+ myself, but have access to it through my technical in-laws who I barely speak to, let alone am going to have honest political conversations with. (I have also, for comparison, gone to Starbucks perhaps 5 times in my 24 years of life out of preference, so like. yeah.)

As for Rick Riordan's statement: he's not a Zionist. The main point of his statement is to express sympathy for the violence affecting both sides of the conflict. Which is true! Civilian hostages were taken and have died, thousands of civilians on the Palestinian side have died, and I've also seen stories of pro-Palestinian Israeli people being harassed and beaten by the IDF. The Hamas have also inflicted harm on the people of Gaza for quite some time.

He also acknowledges that "the Israeli government’s brutal retaliation against the entire population of Gaza has reached genocidal proportions. This is not only an atrocity. It is folly" and how that kind of violence will only create more pain, unstability, and suffering.

He goes on to say "The only real solution is treating each other like equally worthy human beings, and negotiating a peace that allows all parties a chance to live in security and dignity, with hopes for a future that does not include bombs and rockets and gunfire. This means security and support for Israel, yes. It also means a secure Palestine which is allowed to get the international aid and recognition it needs to build a viable state."

So bare minimum, he's a two state solution person. Which isn't that crazy given the context; personally (in my white, previously Christian, Canadian perspective, so grain of salt) I think the easiest path to Progress is 1) defunding Israel's military to enforce 2) a more permanent ceasefire so that 3) a two state solution can be hammered out. That is not a perfect solution and while I hope that eventually Palestine would have total liberation, I'm also trying to look at the situation realistically as a series of steps (not ultimatum endgames) forward to minimize damage and death from getting any worse than it already has.

I also don't think focusing on the dangers of dehumanization is a 'Bad' stance either, given Riordan's context as a close to 60 year old white man American born and raised in Texas, or indeed within the general political climate in America. There are definitely people who are way too pro-Israel (often times because of being unable to see past their emotional trauma) and there are also, likewise, people who refuse to watch themselves for their Antisemitism or Islamophobia (the rise in hate crimes directed at particularly Jewish, but also Muslim, individuals in Canada and the USA). Neither people's lives, anywhere other than people enlisted in active military service, are worthy collateral damage, tbh, because nobody else signed up for this (and the IDF's conscription is an interesting grey room). You shouldn't be cheering over anyone dying, and that's exactly what some people are doing or are trying to inflict. If you're cheering for any and all Jewish civilian deaths in Israel or any other country, or you're cheering for the death of civilian Palestinian people, you are a shit head. Full stop

I think his statement is likely written to both 1) express how he personally feels and 2) written as a response to the deep polarization of the issue at hand. If you can get a wedge in and have people consider, briefly, the propaganda they may be taking without question (particularly for Americans, who are raised on a whole prominent host of pro-Israel sentiment), then it's worthwhile taking the 'neutral' road to me.

I've expressed it before in this post, but Neutral -- genuinely neutral, not "I don't have an opinion bc I'm not informed but my not informed opinion errs on the side of the oppressors because why would kids need to transition lolol?" -- opinions are not a bad thing. It means that, for an ultimately pro-Palestinian person like myself, he's not in my way. Neutral people are not in your way. And that means you can jump over them, and work on combatting the people who are actively hostile and opposed to you (supposedly 'neutral' people included) because that's where the work actually is.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Read the thing, take your time, draw from the people around you that you trust if that's an option for you, figure out how you feel, and make up your own mind about it and what to do about it. Applicability > emotionality and all that. Hope this helped

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #321: The Crossing Line Part 3: MISSING LINKS

August, 1990

STRIKE FORCE!

The Crossing Line. Because sometimes, as a change of pace, superheroes need to punch terrorists on a submarine.

Or, something, I guess.

Anyway.

Last time in the Crossing Line, starring the Avengers: Russian terrorist group Peace Corpse hijacked the British submarine Waterwind with a plan to go to the United States and blow shit up.

The Avengers got called in to reclaim the sub but found that Russian super-group the People's Protectorate were also on the same job. For no reason, they fought. Which aggroed the Atlanteans, which both teams then fought. The Waterwind got damaged in the fighting and fled to Newfoundland for repairs.

The Avengers and People's Protectorate eventually finished punching Atlanteans and chased the sub but Peace Corpse had a lot of hostages. The Avengers very bungled a hostage negotiation, getting Stingray shot in the head, and then Alpha Flight showed up because you're in Canadian jurisdiction now!

The splash page is getting so crowded.

I honestly hope a new shows up every issue. Let's push the envelope on how crowded we can get. Does Mexico have a superhero team? Let's get them in on this.

So, the adults have arrived. Or the Canadians. Whichever.

Captain America: "We are all here for the same purpose. We want the terrorists who call themselves the Peace Corpse stopped and we want the Waterwind returned to the British Navy." Red Guardian: "The Protectors are responsible for the apprehension of the Soviet military traitors!" Guardian: "We are empowered to order you out of our country. Or you can work with us. Which shall it be?"

Crimson Dynamo doesn't know about these Canadian guys. The Avengers he knows and trusts. But Alpha Flight.....?

Captain America vouches for their abilities. And Vision goes yes but do they have the experience to handle an international incident.

Kind of rude! You're in their territory!

Since the time is almost up before Peace Corpse shoots another hostage, Captain America asks Guardian her thoughts. And her thought is rather than let someone get shot in the head again, they let the Waterwind dock and start making repairs. To buy the heroes time to figure out what to do.

Quasar: "They've already shot Stingray in cold blood -- we can't just-" Guardian: "We aren't 'just' anything! We're doing something that has not been done since this incident began -- we're thinking things through!"

Wow. She hasn't even been around the whole story and she already knows that everyone has been acting the fool.

Which Cap himself acknowledges while admiring what a good job Guardian is doing leading Alpha Flight.

Captain America: "I had heard of her husband's return. It doesn't seem to have adversely affected her though. If anything, Guardian seems to have grown in her role as leader of Alpha. Perhaps Alpha's presence is exactly what we needed. So far, the teams representing the world's so-called super powers have spent most of their time tripping over each other! I'm not surprised, though I am disappointed. I had always hoped the world's heroes could work together in a way the world's nations haven't."

So the Waterwind is escorted to a berth while the heroes regroup to a loading warehouse that overlooks the shipping yards.

Red Guardian offers to have Vostok run an MRI of the submarine (which is apparently something he can do) to figure out what's going on inside.

On top of the sub, second-in-command Peace Corpse guy Strokov discovers a flattened bullet and it's revealed that Stingray isn't dead. Yay, Stingray. He is very unconscious from being shot in the head but his pressurized suit held up.

Leader guy Illyich is like eh, whatever, we got our demands, doesn't matter that the hostage we shot didn't die. Which makes Strokov mad because he sees it as Illyich's resolve weakening.

Sure.

The traitor British naval officer guy takes the hostage British sailors back to the hostage room to guard them.

Meanwhile, Strokov starts yelling to the other members of Peace Corpse that they're losing sight of their ideological purity or something. The others tell him to stfu because they've got bigger problems.

The member called Voroshilov figures that the only reason the heroes would let them berth and repair is to buy time for an assault.

Illyich agrees and decides they'll have to make their final stand here and now in Newfoundland.

Peace Corpse member: "Will the message be the same? After all, destroying Newfoundland does not carry the same amount of international impact as would the destruction of New York!" Illyich: "Agreed. But the fact that Canada will become directly involved could help to precipitate the conflict we desire."

So they go to prepare the warheads. And plan to draw lots to see who is chosen... for some grim task, I dunno.

Illyich: "Implementing our final solution now may be the only chance we have of succeeding! And the only hope this world has of seeing the next century... will be to destroy it in this one!"

I wish you'd explain your ideology in more detail.

Over in the warehouse that has become superhero HQ, planning is afoot.

The heroes have obtained the Waterwind schematics from British Intelligence and have the data from Vostok's MRI of the vessel.

But Peace Corpse still hasn't made any demands. And the superheroes are assuming that they're up to something a lot less dire than blowing up Newfoundland and are worrying that there hasn't been a peep of motive yet.

If the raid goes wrong, the people of St. John's will be in danger, not just the hostages on board the Waterwind.

Vostok uses his computer logic to suggest they establish an acceptable casualty rate. Equally computer logic Vision say that sounds like a good idea.

Shaman: "I find the supposition that a minimum amount of people should be expected to die to ensure our success to be reprehensible."

I mean, fair. Superheroes are supposed to be better than that, a lot of the time.

Captain America suggests two teams. One raids the sub to incapacitate the terrorists and save the hostages, the other evacuates the civilians.

And they've got to move before the Waterwind is repaired enough to move back out into open seas or the job will be that much harder.

(Since the heroes don't know that Peace Corpse is planning to settle things right here.)

For Team Sub Raid, Cap suggests himself, Vostok and Box for their mechanical aptitude, Vision for stealth, and Puck for being compact and for his experience.

Yes, he does say Puck's size is a factor for choosing him.

Red Guardian volunteers himself for the mission too because Peace Corpse are Soviets and he is the symbol of the Soviet people and is responsible for capturing terrorist Soviets BUT ALSO the Peace Corpse leader Illyich Prokvitch... IS HIS BEST FRIEND

DUN DUN DUN.

And Captain America agrees that this is a good reason for Red Guardian to join the raid team.

Although, it seems mostly because he figures Red Guardian is too emotionally invested not to barge into the situation anyway. Best to just let him join so you can keep an eye on him.

Fun how it works out to two members of each team.

And I guess everyone else (Sersi, Quasar, Guardian, Shaman, Diamond Lil, Fantasma, Crimson Dynamo, and Perun) are on team evacuate the entire city.

Back at the ruins of Atlantis, I guess Atlantis is still in the plot.

God knows why.

Okay, I'm not god but here's why.

Tyrak is big mad that the superheroes kicked their asses. He's mad that when Atlantis is the aggressor, they get their asses kicked. When Atlantis is the defender, they still get their asses kicked.

Because, yeah, usually Tyrak is a villain but here he was just minding his own business in the ruins of his home and some jerks start an international incident in his front yard. He's right to be pissed!

He's maybe not right to then jump to 'hey wasn't there a nuclear submarine involved? Maybe we make it blow up while it's on the surface, see how they like their home blowing up.'

That's maybe disproportionate.

Canada didn't even blow up Atlantis, you guys. It was Lemuria, another undersea city.

Back at the Bay of Placentia, where the Waterwind is parked.

Puck kicks a man in the head.

We like Puck here. He's cool.

Peace Corpse only left one guy to guard the hatch. Captain America estimates that there's one guy guarding the hostages and the remaining four terrorists are working on repairs.

The hatch is locked so Vision visions through to open it from the inside. Vision, Vostok, Captain America, Red Guardian, and Puck enter the sub.

But during choosing teams, Captain America made a slight miscalculation.

Box is just too fucking big to enter a submarine hatch.

Wow, Cap. You are not doing a good job during this arc.

Box offers to scout around the outside of the Waterwind, see if there's anything he can do from there, and transforms his armor into a submersible.

Hey, that's cool! You seem pretty cool, Box.

Inside the sub, Vision found one of the Peace Corpse monitoring the communication systems and knocked him the fuck out.

And Puck finds Allanson guarding the hostages and also knocks him the fuck out.

You're doing a great job, Puck.

The three remaining members of Peace Corpse are working in the missile control room.

Voroshilov, the one lady in the Peace Corpse, hears the gunfire from Puck's rescue of the hostages and goes to investigate.

She runs into Vostok and Red Guardian. Vostok turns her gun into a flower and Red Guardian kicks her face in the face.

Well, that's a cool visual and a very funny symbolic move from the beep boop logical robot man.

But is that how his powers work? He can manipulate mechanical systems but does a gun count? I mean, technically, yes, but then his powers would also work on a pully or a bicycle? It's just kind of overbroad compared to what I thought his power was.

Anyway.

Cap sends Vision and Vostok on ahead to find the two remaining Peace Corpse members since they no longer have the element of surprise.

The two synthezoids find the last two terrorists, Illyich and Strokov.

And they've wired themselves into the missile control.

Vostok: "The - two - remaining - members - of - the - terrorist - insurgency - have - biologically - attached - themselves - to - the - missile - control - console. In -essence -- we - find - ourselves - confronting - two - men - whose - sole - desire - has - been - to - start - a - third - world - war... And - they - have - turned - themselves - into - living - nuclear - arsenals..."

Um. Okay? Is this like a deadman switch thing or what? Was it necessary to be shirtless or just because the sub was a bit warm?

Well, I guess we'll find out. And sooner than expected because I'm not alternating for a bit. Sticking with Avengers East Coast through #325.

See, the next Avengers West Coast issue mentions the events of an annual. And I looked it up and the annual best fits after this arc concludes and after an additional one-issue story.

So I'll go through all of those Avengers East Coast issues, then do the Annuals story The Terminus Factor, then swing back to Avengers West Coast to sync up the dates again.

Anyway, men wired up to nukes isn't the end of this issue. The Avengers Crew focused back-up stories continue in MOTHER OF INVENTION.

Apparently, the Avengers book was being published bi-weekly at this time and the back-up stories were to help the creative team out.

This back-up focuses on our good pal Fabian Stankowitz. Y'know, that guy that attacked the Avengers during the Trial of Yellowjacket story and they didn't take him seriously and it didn't backfire at all because he wasn't something they had to take seriously?

And then he also attacked Late Night with David Letterman when the Avengers were guest-starring there? Letterman knocked him out with a big doorknob?

Well, he's a Good Guy now.

Surely, you already knew that.

Well, the refurbishment of the Avengers Subbasement is getting to the laboratory he'll use as the team tech guy.

While going through all the unmarked crates, Fabian finds his first suit of Mechano-Marauder armor.

He reminisces about winning the New York lottery and spending his winnings converting his garage into a machine shop and buying steel and microchips so he could build a suit of armor and go try beat up superheroes.

Fabian: "What a feeling I had back then -- like I was ready to lick the world...! So what'd I do? I tried to lick the world. Staring with the ever-mighty Avengers... challenged them to fight me three times... once on network teevee, no less! What a robot's rump I was. Spending six months in the juvie slammer cured me of wanting to be a super villain, that's for sure. I sure am lucky Cap forgave my youthful escapades and offered me a staff job -- don't know where I'd be now otherwise. As is, I'll probably never live down the Mechano-Marauder! I've got the lowest security clearance of anybody else in this place -- it's a wonder I even have a bathroom pass."

I don't think I knew he was a minor all those times he attacked the Avengers.

I'm glad that Cap gave him a second chance, especially since Fabian seems more short-sighted than malicious.

Anyway, this is the series of back-up stories about Avengers Crew being haunted by their past. So obviously the armor suddenly comes alive and forms around his body.

Obviously.

The suit also seems to be moving on its own, lifting its arms and blowing up all the crates in the room with repulsors.

Then Fabian's mom shows up.

And she is a piece of work.

For one thing, she's supposed to be dead. Fabian's dad told him she died when he was a baby.

But Ma Stankowitz tells him that she didn't die, she abandoned him after his first birthday. Because she didn't want to deal with a screaming baby or a screaming husband. She straight up ditched.

She finally decided to check up on him and found that Fabian is just as bad as her lousy husband.

Fabian: "That's not true -- dad isn't like that! He doesn't hit... much. Only when he's been drinking..." Ma Stankowitz: "Well, Frankie, it is nice to know that I was justified in abandoning you. Goodbye."

GEEZ.

There is something odd going on with the Avengers Crew so it's likely that none of this is real and none of what "Ma" had to say was fact. But still, you gotta feel for Fabian. His mom maybe abandoned him and his dad is Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Anyway.

The Mechano-Marauder armor then decides to shoot Ma in the back, leaving Fabian to just protest it was the suit what did it, the suit!

Poor guy.

At least next time will traumatize another member of the Avengers Support Crew.

Follow @essential-avengers for more traumatized supporting cast and maybe the Avengers will prevent or cause World War III. We're in a weird era, my friends. A weird era indeed. Like, reblog, comment, whatever. Keep me company on this weird journey through the early 90s.

[genericmain]

I'm 24, Born in 2000

I'm Canadian

I'm Married (I know it's shocking)

I like anime, cartoons, horror, Spooky things, Crowcore, Podcasts but especially the magnus archives and protocol, I'm an artist & hobbyist writer (as in I don't really write so much as delete all my drafts), a poet, And I'm a lesbian.

I'm trans masc and it's taken a LONG time to figure that one out. I use He/Him pronouns and Ze/Zir/Fae/Faer pronouns. I have a slight preference for masc terms but I still identify as female, and gender queer. I'm seeing a wonderful nonbeanie who might be an egg, so we're seeing how that goes while they explore. You can call me Wren, if you gotta call me anything!

I can already hear the but haven't you talked about dysphoria and being a trans guy? Yes. Yes I did. Turns out self discovery is kind of hard. You can find out a bit more here. Nsfw warning for under the cut, it is the ONLY exception I've posted/will post but it does feel necessary to me to explain that too. The flag I use in my stuff jic.

This isn't my first time here, but I am hoping it'll be the last account I make unless I decide to write an interactive choose your own adventure blog again, that was fun. I'll keep y'all posted if I do.

That being said please kindly leave me alone if: you're a creep or a bigot of any kind, you sexualize kids, You're anti-systems/Any of my interests, You're here to start drama, You're gorey or gore related strictly, You post about self harm frequently or eating disorders, Or you think literal animals are sexy. Basically the standard DNI. Additionally, please don't interact with me if I can't interact back. Thanks. Adding: Pro-Ship, because pedophilliac relationships bad. I understand the argument of fiction, that argument was used by my pedo ex (confirmed that he had non fictional materials, no I didn't see them why would I want to) to try and convince me non fictional materials were okay too, so while I understand that fiction doesn't always equal reality.. I've seen evidence that it can. & I don't support that.

What is my policy on asks regarding donations?

Note: Some of these things are hands down worse than the others. Just because I am lumping them all together doesn't mean I think self harm is just as bad as being a pedo. Some of the things on this list are there specifically for my safety & comfort. I'm stating this plainly & explicitly because I know some people on this website struggle to differentiate between "I'm saying all these groups are bad in general" and "I'm saying all these groups are bad for me" and I quite frankly don't want to deal with that again.

You might see swearing here, I'm not sure honestly. It's a generic main blog. I'm not even sure I'll use it honestly.

Fictional others list:

Main F/O's

Asra - The Arcana (Non-canon system Fictive) Partner

Beidou - Genshin impact (Fictive/FO, kinda unclear) Partner.

Pike trickfoot - (Vox Machina aninated series specifically) Platonic/familial F/O

Retired/Rarer F/O's

Kaeya - Genshin impact (semi canon) platonic

Itto - Genshin impact (Canon) Platonic

Arrlechino - Genshin impact (Semi canon) Platonic(?) Familial(?)

There defo are more but I'm struggling to list them all. That being said, I don't think I have an issue with sharing? If you do I won't interact if I know, or be upset if you block me for it! I respect wanting to not share!