#either way I believe atheists to be quite stupid and annoying

[6mayhem]

many philosophers are posers as fuck they're like ohhh what if. but don't even feel it themselves. unlike me. i feel and truly believe every asinine theory about the world i post on here. aahh. aaaah. aaaaaahhh i'm scared lol

[incorrectfatui]

Today on my headcanons: are they superstitious?

Note that with superstition I'm primarily talking about belief in/worship of supernatural creatures/practices outside the Gods and known magic. Think knocking on wood/throwing salt over your shoulder/buying fortune slips. However I will make exceptions on beliefs in Gods/Entities that are not explicitly true, like the rumours surrounding some of the Youkai in Inazuma and how to avoid them.

With that being said:

In general, I think out of the regions, Inazuma and Liyue would be the most superstitious, with Mond and Snezhnaya close behind. Yes, Natlan, Fontaine and Sumeru have their own magical creatures and such, but Inazuma, Liyue and Mondstadt have much more obvious displays of superstition- Mond mostly in regards to the Gods (yes including Andriud and Vanessa) and Liyue and Inazuma with their prominent non-human population. Youkai and Adepti seem much more elevated above and less integrated in the general population than Foxians and Elves in Sumeru or Saurians in Natlan/Melusines in Fontaine. Snezhnaya I'm mostly going off of vibes tbh.

Least superstitious I'd say is Khaenri'ah, which is funny given that they're almost entirely based off of/inspired by Germanic Mythology.

I'd say my final order would be Inazuma > Liyue > Snezhnaya/Mond > Natlan > Fontaine > Sumeru > Khaenri'ah

As for the Fatui:

Pierro: Literally from the Atheist nation, so no, and he thinks it's stupid. Unlike a certain someone, though, he keeps his opinion to himself unless asked about it.

Capitano: no, but respects it when others are. Will participate for traditions, or to pay tribute to others culture. Does follow some superstitions just out of habit, but will gladly subvent them If necessary.

Dottore: actively looks at superstitious, tries to figure out how to do them wrong/offend the entity the worst, then does that.

Columbina: ABSOLUTELY superstitious. Technically stronger than most entities, but thinks they traditions are fun, so she follows them. Makes up her own little rumours as well.

Arlecchino: Not really superstitious, but tries her best to follow actual rules that surroung some of Teyvats non human residents, just to be sure. Fontaine is relatively low key in this regard compared to some other reasons, so she mostly doesnt have to worry about it

Crucabena: used to be incredibly superstitious when she was younger, but grew out of it for the most part. Likes using scary fairytales to get the children to do what she says, but lowkey kind of believes some of them herself on a lesser scale.

Pulcinella: yes. The grandpa type of superstitious. Doesn't take it too seriously, but definitely would rather follow the traditions then not.

Scaramouche: Kind of hard to explain. Inazuma definitely seems more suitable for superstition, given the Youkai, but considering his own heritage he's very aware about which legends are true and which aren't, and doesn't feel very threatened by them. Used to follow superstitions out of politeness as Kabukimono, now he doesn't really care. Imitates Dottore in actively disobeying tradition, but only in regard to the Shogun and Yae- he doesn't dislike the youkai enough to try and piss them off on purpose, although he definitely doesn't go out of his way to respect them either. Actually probably has quite a few urban legends and superstitions surrounding himself as Kunikuzushi and the Kabukimono.

Sandrone: no. Doesn't give a fuck. Thinks Dottore's approach is really annoying because he's actively inconveniencing everyone else in the process, but she herself wont follow tradition unless its useful to her.

La Signora: it's a little hard Not zo project on her (and Pierro) given they're from the nations inspired by my culture xD For her, I'd say surprisingly yes. She wont follow Seelies in the dark because they remind her of Will O' Wisps, and definitely believes Dragonspine and Old Mondstadt are haunted. Has shared books on scary Mondstsdtian fairytales (look I need to bring up German fairytales whenever possible) with Crucabena more than once.

Pantalone: Kind of. He used to follow all the good luck superstitions when he was a kid, but have up on them when they werent working.

Childe: a little weird case. Definitely kind of believes in Snezhnayan superstitions (and post Scaramouche leaving he believes in Inazuman ones, because remember the paper mansion?), but likes to take them as a challenge. Will be told to watch out for evil spirits and intentionally try to goad them into fighting him, but doesn't do that around his elders because it's rude and some of them get genuinely scared. Would do 3AM YouTube Challenges.

[xxdoubledaisyxx]

A king cannot be cannot be a sage simultaneously and vice versa.

That's because a king accepts a public burden of responsibility and the expectations of that responsibility as more important than his own personal interests, but the welfare of the kingdom for everybody living there as his personal interest too.

A sage is under no obligation or expectations of responsibility to the public or any individuals, but is on the same page of wisdom and understanding as the king as it concerns them both in civilization. In brief, the sage wants to cooperate, and the king wants to be cooperative.

One is inside, one is outside.

Both are unidirectional for progress, never separated by ideologies or conflict. They are always in harmony or there is something wrong in the distance between the center and edge that is disrupting the harmony. Either of them can seek out that problem and destroy it personally or send one of their representatives to do so, but both do so within the agreement of civilization, and there is one.

You want proof of that?

Consider what the USA government has done in hostile reaction to me calling them out for criminal activity they are doing on tv. Think about the excessive and extreme amounts of power and resources they have wasted entirely out of paranoia of me knowing they were fucked up when they didn't.

That reaction is the kind world that has no civil agreement. What are they afraid I am going to do!?

What could they possibly have to be so concerned about that they think I am their enemy when I point out they are wrong and offer them a workable and realistic solution?

I don't care. I've got better things to do than think about that, like smoke a cigarette.

The point is, that their lack of understanding is a limiting factor to the health and survival of all people in the world, and we cannot waste our time on such fools. Cast them out of the way and let them unravel their own personal problems on their own because national security concerns us all.

National security is not a secret government concern. It is the concern of citizens and also immigrant visitors who don't want to be threatened by crime, violence, corrupt police, crooked politicians propped up by the local drug and gun hoarder, and all other forms of inconvenience that lawlessness ruins everyday life with. None of us want to suffer the unhappy future of a lawless empire of idiocy and atheism.

Atheism is not only a confession of ignorance, but it is an insult to humanity and civilization because they are calling everyone of faith ignorant for having faith. Atheists are stupid. Fact. Don't trouble yourself with them. Atheists are also exceedingly boring because the most important, fun, and useful part of religion is the free happiness at all times that faith inspires within a person, and never in short supply.

Do not be so arrogant that you refuse to consider the possibility of your own understanding having limits. Atheism is quite easy to understand. It's trivially simplistic like a child's block game with shapes and matching slots to push them in. To understand religion, you not only have to understand the natural world, but also a metaphysical spiritual reality which is exceedingly complex and difficult to express linguistically in particular.

Being atheistic is like believing the earth is flat in the 21st century. How do they not understand that simple universal truth about life? They probably do, but they have it mistaken for something inappropriate and that is why they are such useless and annoying nuisances when they insert their evil plans into a situation without ever considering humanity.

Neither drugs or guns are going to solve your problems unless that problem is beneath your dignity, like an enemy in war that deserves to die for being evil. That's the only god damned reason people go to war. If they have any other reason, they are the enemy. Betrayal of the civil trust is evil because civilization is good and requires civil trust from all people. Evil can be proven easily, especially by people proficient in rhetoric, philosophy, and politics.

When is another human being ever beneath your dignity?

Most people understand these things without needing all the words like I am writing, but if they wanted to read them, these words would only confirm what they already knew to be true and make it easier to know better in the future from bits and pieces they take away. They were already fine but there is no harm in having extra power to defend yourself and provide for your own.

The politician should be able to explain anything and everything directly to the public with expertise in professional clarity. They are nothing like the buffoons and bastards in the polity now. Those people never have anything to say and they work tirelessly to hide everything that they do.

Idiots.

Here is the point, and you probably skipped here anyway:

There is enough suffering in life on account of the Lord being the Lord. Do not make it worse for other people because you think the lord is the Lord. The poor should help the rich with the work they want done, and the rich should help the poor with the profits that work generates and their influence as economic and civil leaders. There is no conflict between rich and poor in civilization, so why is there a conflict between rich and poor in the USA?

They still think the truth and "word of the Lord" is my dick, don't they? They can't stop thinking about dicks being the source of everything that has ever happened ever for any reason. That's what they think God and the Lord is to everyone, because that's all their lives are to them, and that is truly pathetic. They deserve to be enlightened so they can, stop embarrassing themselves and the USA population by receiving a civil punishment. If not, they will have to be beaten like a beast that cannot be reasoned with.

Even a wild beast needs to learn fear of the Lord too.

How proud is the man eating lion that ravaged a village of mischievous children when a man killing rifle shoots it dead before it even realizes it is in danger?

How proud is the atheist at the top of the world when a pilgrim of poverty and faith annihilates that false-king's entire delusion of power with a single word of justice.

Treason.

If circumcision is a problem for you, step out of the way, resolve that problem, and catch up with everyone else who does not have that problem, like me.

[broijuswannareadsmut]

Hidan the Jashinist: A Fem!Reader x Hidan Story (1)

Summary:Hidan was out on a mission to kidnap the kage of your hidden village with his partner Deidara, you were assigned to capture him and Deidara. Unfortunately that's not how things turned out, During the battle between you and Hidan he starts to realize that he has a strong liking towards you...

Series Masterlist

a/n: I made this last summer but posting it here to see if it gets a larger reach

🚾 :1518

"Shut up before I blow your immortal ass to another dimension dip shit!" Deidara screams at Hidan as they have a heated argument about art.

"Hey I'm just saying that art isn't blowing stuff up it's about showing your dedication to your beliefs and true religion." Hidan says passionately with a cocky smirk on his face.

"Yeah well my dedication is seeing the beauty in the shit I blow up before I blow it up, and I don't want to hear your stupid rants about your stupid religion that doesn't even exist." Deidara scoffs whilst quickening his pace so he could get this mission with this imbecile over.

"H-hey! You'll get punished by Lord Jashin for being a non-believer and a disgusting atheist!" Hidan yells after Deidara as he gets significantly farther from Hidan. Hidan and Deidara had never gotten along, their personalities were too hasty, hostile, and hot for each other, but they were stuck together since their last partners had died in combat. *Sigh* Why'd you have to go and get slaughtered by those untalented Konoha shinobi Kakuzu?

Man he sucks Hidan muttered under his breath. Kakuzu and him never got along either, he was always talking about money and it being the only important thing in the world, that pissed Hidan off since it was against his religion to only be lusting for money in this world. Although Hidan had a little hunch that despite all the snarky and petty arguments Kakuzu and him had that he cared for Hidan (to a certain extent at least).

"Quit your sulking idiot we're almost at the Village Hidden in the Snow." Deidara says in a nagging tone.

"I'M NOT AN IDIOT! AND I KNOW WE'RE ALMOST THERE 4 MOUTHS!" Hidan yells at Deidara. God he can't even let reminisce about my lost teammate. Eh who am I kidding? He was a bitch. Rest in Peace I guess, Hidan thought to himself before quickly jogging up to Deidara and wrapping his  left arm around his neck. Deidara gives him an annoyed glare.

"Finally." Deidara sighs in relief. "We're here. Okay you know what you're supposed to do right Hidan?" Deidara asks him cautiously.  Hidan takes his arm off Deidara giving him an offended look.

Hidan scoffs, "of course I do." "Hey by the way I only just realized that I'm shivering like a fucking skeleton over here." Hidan wraps his arms around his shoulders giving himself an awkward hug.

Deidara gives the san ring akatsuki member a frustrated glare "Maybe if you wore that robe correctly." Deidara eyes Hidan up and down before making eye contact with him again.  "And second we're literally in the Hidden Village in the SNOW. Winter is cold because it has snow. Snow. Is. Cold." Deidara kept pausing as though he was talking to a seven year old. Even a seven year old would be able to understand this concept better than Hidan, thought Deidara.

"I'm not a damn kid. Jeez I was just trying to make conversation pretty boy." Hidan frowns.

"Ugh come on we've wasted enough time with this stupid 'conversation' of yours." Deidara turns around and as he's molding some clay in his right hand he tells Hidan, "I swear to god if you mess this up I'll make sure I really WILL blow you up into another dimension." Deidara warns. He finishes molding the clay and turns it into his go-to flying bird. The blonde boy hops onto the birds back and glances over to Hidan once more before he flies up into the afternoon sky. Hidan puts his hand over his eyes to cover them from the sunsetting light as he watches Deidara ascend through the sky. If Hidan was being honest he didn't remember jack-shit on what he was supposed to do but he figured that he'd remember, in fact he had to remember, not because he was afraid of Deidara's empty threats but because he knew that the higher ups in the akatsuki would give him troublesome consequences. Hidan sat himself up on a rock waiting for his memory of this mission's instructions to come back to him.

"AH! I know now, we came to his cold ass place to kidnap the village's kage!" Hidan exclaims to himself as he jumps to his feet from the rock. "But... what am I supposed to do again?" Hidan ponders this until he's interrupted by Deidara's bird holding something on its back as it's coming towards him. "Hm? Where's Deidara?" He asks the bird as though it could actually answer his question. The clay textured bird is now on the ground standing with the thing still on its back. Hidan walks around to get a better view of what the bird has brought to him. It's a human. "Not Deidara though that's for sure." Hidan muttered to himself. Then he realized. This was the kage of the Village Hidden in the Snow! He remembered because beforehand him and Deidara had been looking at the important people of this village and the kage was obviously one of them.  Suddenly the bird's mouth opens to which Hidan finds a note stuck to its tongue.

"Hidan go along with the bird and the kage get back to the HQ's and I'll catch up later. - Deidara" The note read.

"Ohhh so that's what I was supposed to do, wait for Deidara to get the kage and then I take him back. Okay easy enough." Hidan said. Hidan starts walking in the direction of the akatsuki's lair along with the kage still on the birds back. "Hm it'll be faster if I just get on that bird's back." Hidan said. He then gets on its back with the snow's kage in his arms. They all start to ascend and Hidan leads the way for the bird. The trip is going good for the first 2 hours, they're almost there. Suddenly the clay made creature gets struck by what seems to be a deadly sharp spear made of ice. The bird then explodes while the kage and Hidan are still in midair. Hidan quickly grabs the kage into his arms to make sure he doesn't get any long lasting injuries. Hidan takes a hard hit to the rigid ground.

"FUCK! THAT HURT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING BITCH! OH MY GOD I WISH I HAD BEEN IN MY JUTSU IF I KNEW I WOULD'VE FALLEN THIS HARD!" Hidan screams in pain. He's quickly interrupted by the Hidden Village Snow's shinobi surround him. He quickly gets to his feet with his sword in his hand despite the excruciating pain.

"Let go of the Yukikage this instant or else we're going to have to take you as hostage." Exclaimed a h/c haired girl, her hair was thick and luscious although it was tamed within her village's headband. Her eyes were an intense e/c. Hidan loved it. He checked her up and down and noticed her baggy clothes, how well could she fight in that? Hidan wondered. His imagination got the best of him and he forgot where he was for a minute.

"Hey purple eyed akatsuki give us back our kage and surrender easily!" The e/c eyed girl shouted at Hidan.

"HA! You think I'm gonna surrender to a little girl and her gay ass shinobi? WRONG!" Hidan cockily announces.

"Well this little girl and her 'gay shinobi' will absolutely destroy you, since you don't wanna give back our kage the easy way we'll have to fight you with force. Too bad for you." The baggy clothed girl asserted just as cockily as Hidan. Hidan was now riled up he was excited to get to prove all these snow village bastards wrong. He could feel the crazed adrenaline he would always get when he would be in a fight coming on. He gets into his regular position and is ready for them to strike first. He admits that it might've been easier if Deidara were here to back him up but he knew he could do most of it himself. All he needed was a drop of everyone's blood. Starting with the e/c eyed girl. Suddenly one of the shinobi starts to do a jutsu out of the blue.

"Ice: A Thousand Shards!" The blond shinobi interjected. Sharp shards suddenly flew towards Hidan, he was able to dodge most of them with his scythe but some of them managed to get stuck in his stomach and chest.

"OUCH, OW that hurts." Hidan lazily hollered. The snow shinobi are all shocked, how wasn't that hit fatal?

"Now it's my turn." Hidan roared with a smirk. He throws the scythe towards the blond shinobi, he managed to dodge it seriously injuring him he wasn't fast enough in completely avoiding contact with Hidan's deadly weapon. Hidan brings back the scythe to his side and bring the middle blade to his tongue and licks the blood off of it. Hidan's eyes become menacing and lusting for pleasure. The blond ninja then realizes his thumb had gotten a cut from the scythe. Before the snow shinobi know it Hidan has already begun his ritual...

[surveyhoursss]

97.

For people that hate stereotypes: If you think people should just shut up and stop, put this on your profile. (BOLD the ones you are.)

Italics=partially me or used to be in the past.

I'm SKINNY, so I MUST be anorexic. (I quite literally am anorexic tho)

I'm EMO, so I MUST cut my wrists.

I'm a NEGRO so I MUST carry a gun.

I'm BLONDE, so I MUST be a ditz

I'm JAMAICAN so I MUST smoke weed.

I'm HAITIAN so I MUST eat cat.

I'm JEWISH, so I MUST be greedy.

I'm GAY, so I MUST have AIDS.

I'm a LESBIAN, so I MUST have a sex-tape.

I'm ARAB, so I MUST be a terrorist.

I SPEAK MY MIND, so I MUST be a bitch.

I'm a GAY RIGHTS SUPPORTER, so I WILL go to hell.

I'm a CHRISTAN, so I MUST think gay people should go to hell.

I'm RELIGIOUS, so I MUST shove my beliefs down your throat.

I'm ATHEIST so I MUST hate the world.

I don't have a RELIGION, so I MUST be evil and have no morals

I am LIBERAL, so I MUST be gay. (oop)

I TAKE (or used to take) ANTI-DEPRESSANTS, so I MUST be crazy.

I'm a GUY, so I MUST only want to get into your pants.

I'm IRISH, so I MUST have a bad drinking problem.

I'm INDIAN, so I MUST own a convenient store.

I'm NATIVE AMERICAN, so I MUST dance around a fire screaming like a savage.

I'm a CHEERLEADER, so I MUST be a whore...

I'm a DANCER, So I must be stupid, stuck up, and a whore

I wear SKIRTS a lot, so I MUST be a slut.

I'm a PUNK, so I MUST do drugs.

I'm RICH, so I MUST be a conceited snob.

I WEAR BLACK, so I MUST be a goth or emo.

I'm a WHITE GIRL, so I MUST be a nagging, steal-your-money kind of girlfriend.

I'm CUBAN, so I MUST spend my spare time rolling cigars.

I'm NOT A VIRGIN, so I MUST be easy.

I FELL IN LOVE WITH A MARRIED MAN, so I MUST be a home-wrecking whore.

I'm a TEENAGE MOM, so I MUST be an irresponsible slut.

I'm POLISH, so I MUST wear my socks with my sandals.

I'm ITALIAN, so I must have a "big one".

I'm EGYPTIAN, so I must be a TERRORIST!

I'm PRETTY, so I MUST not be a virgin.

I HAVE STRAIGHT A'S, so I MUST have no social life.

I DYE MY HAIR CRAZY COLORS, so I MUST be looking for attention.

I DRESS IN UNUSUAL WAYS so I MUST be looking for attention.

I'm INTO THEATER & ART, so I MUST be a homosexual.

I'm a VEGETARIAN, so I MUST be a crazy political activist.

I HAVE A BUNCH OF GUY FRIENDS, so I MUST be fucking them all.

I HAVE A BUNCH OF GIRLS WHO ARE FRIENDS, so I MUST be a player.

I have Big BOOBS, so I MUST be a hoe.

I'm COLOMBIAN, so I MUST be a drug dealer.

I WEAR WHAT I WANT, so I MUST be a poser.

I'm RUSSIAN, so I MUST be cool and thats how Russians roll.

I'm GERMAN, so I must be a Nazi.

I hang out with GAYS, so i must be GAY TOO (again, oop)

I'm BRAZILIAN, so I MUST have a BIG BUTT.

I'm PUERTO RICAN, so I MUST look good and be conceited

I'm SALVADORIAN, so I MUST be in MS 13

I'm POLISH, so I MUST be greedy.

I'm HAWAIIAN so I MUST be lazy

I'm PERUVIAN, so I MUST like llamas

I'm a STONER so I MUST be going in the wrong direction

I'm a VIRGIN so I MUST be prude.

I'm STRAIGHT EDGE so I must be violent.

I'm a FEMALE GAMER, so I MUST be ugly... or crazy.

I'm BLACK so I MUST love fried chicken and kool-aid.

I'm a GIRL who actually EATS LUNCH, so I MUST be fat.

I'm SINGLE so I MUST be ugly.

I'm a SKATER so I must do weed and steal stuff

I'm a PUNK so I must only wear black and date only other punks

I'm ASIAN so I must be a NERD that does HOMEWORK 24/7

I'm CHRISTIAN so I MUST hate homosexuals.

I'm MIXED so I must be screwed up.

I'm MUSLIM so I MUST be a terrorist.

I'm in BAND, so I MUST be a dork.

I'm BLACK so I MUST believe JESUS WUZ A BROTHA

I'm MORMON so I MUST be perfect

I'm WHITE and have black friends so I MUST think I'm black

I'm GOTH so I MUST worship the devil

I'm HISPANIC, so I MUST be dirty.

I'm NOT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, so I MUST be a loser.

I'm OVERWEIGHT, so I MUST have a problem with self control.

I'm PREPPY, so I MUST shun those who don't wear Abercrombie & Hollister.

I'm on a DANCE team, so I must be stupid, stuck up, and a whore.

I'm YOUNG, so I MUST be naive.

I'm RICH, so I MUST be a conceited snob.

I'm MEXICAN, so I MUST have hopped the border.

I GOT A CAR FOR MY BIRTHDAY, so I MUST be a spoiled brat.

I'm BLACK, so I MUST love watermelon

I'm BI, so I MUST think every person I see is hot.

I don't like the SUN so I MUST be an albino.

I couldn't hurt a FLY, So I MUST be a pussy.

I support GAY RIGHTS, so I MUST fit in with everyone.

I have a DIFFERENT sense of HUMOR, so I MUST be crazy.

I tell people OFF, so I MUST be an over controlling bitch.

My hair gets GREASY a lot, so I MUST have no hygiene skills.

I'm DEFENSIVE, so I MUST be over controlling and a bitch.

I'm a NUDIST, so I MUST want everyone to see my boobs.

I read COMICS, so I MUST be a loser.

I hang out with a FORMER PROSTITUTE... So I MUST be a whore myself.

I'm TEXAN so I MUST ride a horse

I'm a GOTH, so I MUST be a Satanist

I'm a CROSSDRESSER, so I must be homosexual.

I draw ANIME so I MUST be a freak.

I am a FANGIRL so I MUST be a crazy, obsessed stalker.

I WATCH PORN so I MUST be perverted.

I'm an ONLY CHILD so I MUST be spoiled.

I'm INTELLIGENT so I MUST be weak.

I am AMERICAN so I MUST be obese, loud-mouthed and arrogant.

I'm WELSH so I MUST love sheep

I'm a YOUNG WRITER, so I MUST be emo.

I'm CANADIAN, so I MUST talk with a funny accent.

I'm a GUY, so I MUST ditch my pregnant girlfriend.

I'm CANADIAN, so I MUST love hockey and beavers.

I'm DISABLED, so I MUST be on Welfare.

I'm a FEMINIST, so I MUST have a problem with sexuality and I want to castrate every man on the earth.

I'm a TEENAGER, so I MUST have a STEREOTYPE.

I WEAR A BIG SUNHAT when I go outside, so I MUST be stupid.

I like BLOOD, so I must be a VAMPIRE.

I'm an ALBINO, so I MUST be an evil person with mental abilities and is A MURDERER!

I'm ENGLISH, so I MUST speak with either a cockney or a posh accent, love tea and cricket, and have bad teeth.

I'm WHITE, so I MUST be responsible for everything going wrong on the planet: past, present, and future.

I don't like YAOI or YURI, so I must be a HOMOPHOBE

I'm not the most POPULAR person in school, so I MUST be a loser.

I care about the ENVIRONMENT...I MUST be a tree hugging hippy.

I have a FAN CHARACTER, so I MUST be an annoying Mary-sue.

I CHAT, I MUST be having cyber sex.

I'm PAGAN so I MUST sacrifice babies and drink the blood of virgins

I'm PAGAN so I MUST worship Satan

I'm CONSERVATIVE, so I MUST be against abortion.

I'm SWEDISH so I MUST be a tall blond blue-eyed lesbian.

I'm a LESBIAN so I MUST want to get with every single girl that I see.

I like CARTOONS, so I MUST be IRRESPONSIBLE.

I like READING, so I MUST be a LONER.

I have my OWN spiritual ideology; therefore I MUST be WRONG or MISGUIDED.

I am WICCAN, so I MUST be a SATANIST.

I DISAGREE with my government, so I MUST be a TERRORIST.

I am a WITCH, so I MUST be and OLD HAG and fly on a broomstick.

I love YAOI, so I MUST be GAY.

I'm a PERSON, so I MUST be LABELED

I DON'T CURSE, so I MUST be an outcast.

I like GAMES, ANIME and COMICS, so I MUST be childish.

I'm SWEDISH, therefore I MUST be WHITE. (i mean, 3rd generation immigrant)

I SPOT GRAMMATICAL ERRORS, so I MUST be a pedantic bastard.

I'm GOTHIC, so I MUST be mean.

I'm STRONG so I MUST be stupid.

I'm AUSTRALIAN so I MUST hunt crocodiles and talk to kangaroos.

I go to RENFAIRES, so I MUST talk weird, be a loser, and not be up with the times

I'm GAY so I'm after EVERY straight guy around.

I don't want a BOYFRIEND so I MUST be lesbian.

I'm NOT CHRISTIAN so I MUST just need converting.

I love MARCHING BAND, so I MUST be a friendless freak.

I DRINK and SMOKE, so I MUST have no life.

I am friends with a CUTTER, so I MUST be a CUTTER too. (oop)

I CRY easily, so I MUST be a wimp.

I can't help pointing out mistakes so I MUST be an over-controlling perfectionist.

I'm a PERFECTIONIST so I MUST check everything ten times, them burst into tears at one mistake.

I DON'T LIKE to talk about my personal life so I MUST be having problems

I'm SCOTTISH so I MUST play the bagpipes and eat haggis.

[rametarin]

The complicated issue of the ‘war on science’ in the United States.

We are all painfully aware that there are individuals and communities in the United States of America that believe garbage like, “The earth is between 2021 and 6000 years old.” That’s not where the story begins or ends.

Yes, individuals like this exist. Small communities of people like this exist. I’m not denying that. They’re well documented and will out themselves in the right section of the country. They do tend to be right wing voters, but not exactly for the reasons you’d think. And it is an anti-science position to say the earth is only that old. This is not in dispute.

Typically the conversation then goes to a smug look at the 4th wall, some smug assed, “LOL LOOK AT THE AMERICAN MILITARY BUDGET VS. ITS PUBLIC EDUCATION BUDGET. :^)” And the implication for this thinking is that North America is so full of religious zealots, systematic conservative theocratic control and by extension nativist white supremacism based on bellowing blowhards that it does not value science, “as a society or a culture.”

This is pure and simply masturbatory fantasy on behalf of people that tend to see all religious culture under this light. Or at least, Christianity. Since they often don’t have the balls to apply these “harshly judging medieval superstitious culture” standards to immigrants from Islamic countries or cultures or communities.

The actual numbers of flat earthers, young earth creationists, etc. are extreme outliers with very little actual power. However, those people are good caricatures to shame and embarrass and stigmatize and stratify religious people. They don’t have to DIRECTLY mock the religious, they just have to mock those extremes, get the actual religious to also join in and be part of the cool kids for mocking the more extreme and nonsensical beliefs. That creates a mental, psychological and social division. It’s a Mean Girl tactic and technique to make a person socially divorce themselves and shun and ostracize someone else in order to be spared being made fun or, or similarly be shown that derision or hostility.

The people doing it the loudest and most subvserively tend to do it because they aren’t JUST atheist or agnostics, like normal scientifically minded individuals, but zealous atheists and secularists that have a big mind about what “society” is and means and what they want it to mean. And they abhor that religious culture that is so contrary to science and reality exists. Especially when they’d much rather those people stop existing in their own bubbles, (”Atomization”) and get on board with THEIR brand of culture, society and, dare I say, revolution.

So they publicize and shame the religious by showing every potentially inbred, belligerent, anti-science yokel from a small community where a religious culture is the norm of the territory by embarrassing them, they put it in the news to create this image of a basis and normalty. “Look at how stupid and anti-intellectual the seedy underbelly of the US of A’s culture is!”

When in reality, that’s the sign of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism does not mean, “a bunch of different cultures that also fit your neat ideas of reality.” Some cultures, despite what your cultural relativism says to you, really are that stupid. And guess what? Many of them would make their new home a lot like the failed or inadequate idea of home, if they could.

Multiculturalism is not, “we’re all different but we all believe the same things!” Multiculturalism doesn’t even necessarily mean all cultures will cease being based on imaginary shit and only pull from objective, measurable reality. When you shame an outlying religious community for their asinine beliefs and then try to use the broad strokes to negatively portray the land they live in as dangerously unhinged psychopaths purely based on what the outliers believe, you lose any and all credibility when you defend corrupt religious nations like Pakistan or Taliban era Afghanistan.

The, “War on Science” is a lot like the War on Christmas. In that, neither are quite happening in quite the same way the people crying about them are saying.

If you asked a person that voted more left-wing or liberal, they might say the US was full of religious kooks that vote contrary to reason or science. That they think with their egos, not their rational brains, and that the only thing that has stopped them from destroying everything is exploitative greed and/or sadism.  They imagine people that disagree with them as effectively screaming, shit throwing chimpanees wearing papal gowns and beating people with scaramental candle holders.

If you asked a person that voted more right-wing or conservative that also happened to believe the hooey about the US being a “blessed Christian nation,” they might say that “liberals’ (an umbrella term used by these types) are waging a war on North America’s religious Christian traditions and culture. Firstly by trying to disentangle Christian participation in public schools, such as getting rid of Christmas decorations, holiday songs, even cutting snowflakes and stuff. Not in any display of multiculturalism, but simply to eliminate “respecting establishment of religion” in a secular public school environment.

By trying to stigmatize “Merry Christmas” as unwanted and uncalled for, the product of assuming if you’re wished one, they assume the recipient is inherently Christian, and that’s either annoying or offensive depending on the religion of the recipient. Borderline hate speech, if the recipient is a member of a religious faith or culture that sees such well wishing to be heretical.

Both of these examples are of people with a vested interest in painting your perceptions of the issue from a position of bias. Both of these examples have elements where they are correct in all the wrong ways and incorrect in all the right ones.

The truth is that the US also has a problem with smarmy assed people that rue the power of the religious communities and would give anything if only they could find some legal avenue to make them go away, short of going out and firebombing churches in high profile. Some way to disincentivize going to church, to get observation of religious culture and beliefs to have the communal aspect removed from them in order to be acceptable, since they view the entire concept of culture and society to be the sole domain of secularism, and religious community is seen as a stumbling block, opponent or even a danger to their preferred majority society.

We seldom get to hear about these ones outside the context of an angry religious idiot harping on about, “them godless li-bur-awls.” That doesn’t mean these people that are just jealous they bow at the altar of a different god aren’t the secular, dogmatic yuppies and shit. It just means the reason they’d specify as to why they have a problem with them gets stuck in their own personal bias and perspective. From their view, erroneous as it is, the United States was a country created by the will of God and ordained for a purpose (it wasn’t) and to divorce God and Christianity from dominance in the United States is to deliberately be spitting in the face of god and trying to destroy the world.

Outwardly, that sounds crazy and stupid. And it is. But just because that guy is crazy, egotistical and stupid does not make the objectives, reasons and goals of the person doing it noble, reasonable or even beneficent. Not even by comparison.

Socialists and communists style themselves as The Scientists, The Thinkers, The Creatives. Which is why so many of them wind up burnt out, addicted to drugs and miserable, while going nowhere. They share many of the same ideological trappings as creationist Americans. They do not share much of the same peace of mind as the simple minded religious folk that everything happens in some grand plan or because some beneficient deity willed it.

American socialists/communists desire a more unified and singular society and culture that does not bow its thought processes to religion. Which isn’t to say that it bows to science, just that it doesn’t bow to other religions and disagree. For you see, the major failing of socialist/communist culture is that it sees itself as THE way fashioned and formed by objective science. At the same time and in the same breath they fashion their own proposed solutions to problems based on the ideals and “theories” (opinions, editorials) of social science. Which ultimately are just arbitrary crap from people produced with degree granted institutionally provided papers of authority they believe gives them more credibility and justification to run their mouths, because they’re “valid to society.”

They do not see the inherent contradiction of hating religious and theocratic institutions for doing the same bogus shit, just under the pretense of a creationist shared myth. In fact, they view the shared myth and everybody believing the same shit with veneration and ideals. They just don’t want people believing rival or opposing things to their Grand Society.

God and the different religious communities, to them, aren’t a bunch of different cultures we all need to make room for and tolerate and appreciate and let live. They’re rival oppositional sources of competition for society’s attention. The only use this particular brand of secular dogmatist has for religious multiculturalism is to break up the homogenuity of a small community without dirtying their reputations or even having to lie about their intentions when they try to derail the inertia of celebrating things like religious holidays in those small, homogenuous communities defined by their populations and people.

They’d rather drive to get a number of similarly devout religious people, toss them into the same population, and not only make the established population fight for dominance, but deal with the incoming sects trying to use secular, neutral civic government as a bat to disentangle things like Town Christmas Parties from being acceptable, community gathering things.

The people conspiring and trying their hardest to inflate and magnify the expanse and reach and power of the religious right, the supposed anti-intellectualism they see as so base and prevalent in the United States, are simply covetous of the useful idiots in the Christian pews, when they could be useful idiots in yoga class, or gazing into crystals and inhaling incense fumes and doing irresponsible amounts of shrooms. Anything but being part of a coherent and established mainstream religion or religious culture and anything but a cloistered off community that differentiates itself with space and partitions itself with ideas.

And given the predatory, condescending, often “ends justify the means, by any means necessary”, culturally predatory way these types conduct themselves, using psychology, social psychology, institutions of state and interpersonal relationships to peel away the onions of misc. groups identities, try to force them down specific lines of social thought using the bridge of modernity as the means to reach them, I simply cannot mention the US’s supposed “War on Science” without also explaining that these people have been deliberate agitators in the debate between the place of religion, faith and society and secularism in the US since at LEAST the rise of communism across the US, if not the rise of anarchism in Europe.

The argument of the war on science is not, “polite and civilized society desperately trying to calm down a schizophrenic and make them take their anti-psychotics.” The war on science is more like a corrupt psychiatrist that detests the local church and would rather not just own the property the church is built on, but disestablish the entire religious community, chemically treat and psycho-condition the flock to feel (not think) the same way the psych does, and have them operate in the way he (or she) sees as “normal and good.” Whatever that is at any given moment, based on whatever doctrine they feel serves them.

It’s not about science. It’s about control. The fact they make the environment contested about secularism in the state and creationism in the mind and civilized society in the heart and soul of a given population or community is just good human resources and public relations nonsense. They honestly don’t give a fuck about anything but being right. The minute they don’t have competition for thoughts, out comes the Lysenkoism. The minute they don’t have to worry about shit like armed insurrection or forceful resistance, out comes the jackboots and the open shirking of legitimate channels of government. Out comes more blatant and blazen corruption.

So if you are not a fan of either extreme, you realize the status quo is simply a rapidly diminishing peaceful, middle ground. A middle ground that has been the inertia and the status quo of secular mainstream society, put in place literal centuries before you were born, maintained with temperance and discipline not by innocent cavemen that could not possibly understand the things you’ve seen and understood because they lack a modern perspective, but reasoned and civilized individuals that had more intimate schooling and treasured it all the more when they had it to spare. That they didn’t “finish off” their competition, be it religious docmatic or “li-bur-awl” anarchist/socialist, because they staunchly fought for the ability to respectfully disagree and would shut down, by force if necessary, any extreme that tried to assert itself over these values of tolerant religious secularism in government and society.

You realize that the religious people seldom can make more than even minor headwinds in even the most bumpkin and backwater of places without the next generations moving away and leaving them decaying husks, unable to properly establish themselves for long. And that while the disgusting megachurch evangelical pews of the 80s were monolithic and ridiculous, they also all but curled up and died by the turn of the century as secularism and reason and simple CHOICE allowed young parents the luxury of not forcing religion on their kids. And so, attendance dropped.

And you realize a lot of the supposed “war on science” is in fact a smear campaign levlied against a weakened religious institiution and its credibility and justification for existing in a modern society. Designed like putting the poor, simple fool in stocks in the middle of town while some falsely compassionate jackass of a jester disingenuously asks it, “harmless questions,” only to get back vitriolic declarations of fire and brimstone and just generally behave like an irrational, angry poked bear. So the faux-intentioned performer can shrug helplessly and go, “Eh, religious nuts, what can ya do?” before mourning how anti-intellectual and misplaced our values are, pumping so much money into national defense and so little into secular, federated, public education.

And as much as you may despise the preacher being socially and mentally flogged and made to look like an idiot, a loose and unhinged cannon, a danger to themselves, others and every impressionable child they are allowed to bark mythical nonsense at, the people behind the camera, the people directing where the camera looks, the people arranging this “interview” to show and bring out the worst in the targeted, vetted mark, are just as insidious and disgusting as the Holy Rollers extorting millions from dying old people that want to buy their way into heaven.

And you realize the enemy that they want you to shake your head at in sadness and pity is just one enemy on that stage. One easily spotted wolf in sheep’s clothing that lures the gullible, the mentally troubled, the simple, the emotionally unwell and looking for purpose, structure and community belonging to function.

And the other is so slick and sneaky, you don’t even notice they exist. Their campaign to embarrass the predatory they see as their competition so organic and well orchastrated and asymmetrical, they don’t even get their name dropped. The nature of the relationship is not mentioned. Their presence, obfuscated unless you know what to look for or suspect conflict of interest behind it.

And this predator vying for the pews and the flocks from the religious authority? Here’s the biggest kicker of all.

They wage their own war on science, too. By labeling their religion as ‘social science,’ and demanding when hard, empirical, objective, physical or biological science butt heads, it is social science that gets to dominate, get priority and interpret other science based around the social science. Based on what? Abstracts and constructs in law and philosophy that say to not do so would be a violation of civil rights and protections. To NOT give them ideological right of way is oppression of other people.

The American war on science is not limited to fire and brimstone spewing megachurch preachers. It’s in the heart and on the face of every horn rimmed glasses wearing, “quirky hair dyed and dyke short cut”, “nonbinary and politically ‘kweer’“, hammer and sickle flag waving asshole, as well.

Both want to destroy culture and philosophy which are not their own. Both want to dominate how government works and why it functions and how. Both want to dictate what is right and wrong based on ideology. Only one observes an organized creationist myth, though the other may harbor some arbitrary individual “spiritualism” if they’re particularly narcissistic or crazy.

But explaining this takes a lot of time, space and breath, and, well... saying it is one thing, proving it is another.

Thems my thoughts. I hope they help in some small way.

[extraordinarilyirrelevant]

Back again with my bullshit!

Like I don’t even know what to say for this crack-iest of crackfics. It started out with me wondering how Kakuzu would be as a kid and wondering if he’d still be as obsessed with money as he is in canon, me thinking up that whole scene of Kid kuzu explaining how tax works to Hidan and then evolved into:

‘Kid kuzu would totally still be the adult with the man child Hidan’ and then BAM, this happened

That’s why you’ll notice the first part I refer to Kakuzu as his name and not Kid kuzu as I do sometime in the middle, it started out as a draft, me just putting my thoughts to paper and then crafting a story behind it. I mean I could quickly change it but shut up

That’s ALSO why it’s never stated that Hidan wants to get closer to Kakuzu until like the kid kuzu section, but what can you do? (see shrugging gif above)

Summary: through reasons not explored, Kakuzu somehow turns into a kid. Pain gives them time off until they fix things Hidan’s left to look after him

----

Hidan was scrutinizing the map pain given him with intense focus. Apparently, there was a empty house of one of Akatsuki’s suppliers that was willing to let the two use his estate that he only used on business trips outside his nation, located in Iwagakure they had quite the walk to get there from amegakure

The two would be station there until Kakuzu’s underlings got information on how to reverse this jutsu and turn the miser back to normal

The miser in question, was… well not himself. Even looking at the kid was weird, the taki missing nin was no longer his opposing and menacing self. He barely reached Hidan’s stomach and had short hair with plain old clothes, and don’t get Hidan started on those eyes-

“Woah!” Hidan yelped in surprised as he nearly tripped over exposed root sticking out of the ground. He only managed to save face thanks to small hands grabbing his cloak 

“Every good ninja is aware of their surroundings” Kakuzu stated as a matter of fact, sounding quite unimpressed by Hidan’s slip up “What? Can’t multitask?” Kakuzu asked in a slightly mocking tone

“This fucking map!” Hidan snapped, stopping his urge to rip the damn thing in half “It’s fucking confusing as all hell, I can’t tell where the fuck we are or where we’re suppose to go!” He ruffled his silver hair in frustration when Kakuzu wordless snatched the thing away from him

“And that blasted leader wasn’t any help at all” Hidan grumbled in a foul mood “Go where the trees form a natural path” He mocked the instructions given to him “Fucking atheist should’ve at least pointed me in the right direction, I swear to Jashin I’ll curse him one day”

Hidan haltered in his step when Kakuzu suddenly changed directions

“The hell are you going?”

“The right way” He answered simply as he jumped up into the trees

“Oi! Wait up!” Hidan called out as he jumped in after him, and was forced to follow after the boy as he didn’t relent or stray from their new path

----

Hidan panted as he looked down at the house they’d be staying in, It was rather large and spacious, tradition down to the secluded pond with a Rock Waterfall, with bonsai tree on either end of the yard

Kakuzu was the first to hop into the yard, landing near the stone path leading into the house. Hidan followed suit and continued looking around, catching a enclosed enclave situated between the house’s structure. It was a damn nice place

Entering, it was traditional as tradition got with Tatami mats covering the expansion of the floor save for the wooden entrance where one was meant to take off one’s shoes. Kakuzu proceeded in, respectfully taking his shoes off and getting acquainted with their new living space for the time being; only briefly considering ransacking the place of it’s goods and pawning them off to get more money, before he reminded himself that he frequented business with this man and that it’s be unwise to tarnish that relation

Hidan stormed past him in excitement, Kakuzu noticing with distaste that the zealot didn’t bother showing the proper pleasantries of taking his shoes off. Sighing before opening a room up to find a single lone table accompanied by cushions adorning the floor, eating place he noted before closing the sliding doors

Walking down the hallway further, Kakuzu wanted to find the washroom to shower before heading to bed, it was a long journey to Iwagakure and the duo travelled nonstop for two days just to get here

At least this house was relatively secluded from any town or village, less people aware of their stay the better

“Kakuzu!” Hidan called out for him, making his way over to where the voice came from, he found Hidan in the bedroom “Look at that bed! It’s like fucking royalty!” He exclaimed as he jumped onto the big cushion-y bed. Nearly being devoured by it when he sank in before he sprung back up to land just before Kakuzu

“And their bathroom isn’t to shabby either” Hidan smirked that smirk that always managed to piss Kakuzu off “Want to take a bath together?”

Kakuzu blanked at that

“Hidan?”

“Yeah?”

“Say something that disgusting again, and I’ll drown you in the pond to feed the koi fish” Kakuzu threatened seriously to which Hidan only snickered “Fucking relax heathen, didn’t you bath with your parent growing up? I mean you’re a kid now. I won’t exactly be looking forward to seeing anything down there”

Although Hidan had a valid point, it still irked Kakuzu making his blood boil “I can manage on my own. Just go to bed, you can shower tomorrow morning”

“Oi!” Hidan yelled catching his attention “You’re the brat now got it, whatever I say goes!”

“That logic is as deluded as you” Kakuzu mused as he entered the bathroom and locked the door, ignoring the shouts of protest outside, opting to take his clothes off and start his shower

----

----

“I thought everyone knew people with higher taxable incomes are subject to higher tax rates, and people with lower taxable incomes are subject to lower tax rates?” Kid kuzu seemed legitimately confused that this wasn’t common knowledge “Your tax bracket is based on “taxable income”, which is your gross income from all sources, minus any tax deductions you may qualify for” He explained while going through the finance sheets with minimum difficulties, only occasionally pulling out a calculator to punch some numbers in before scribbling down some more numbers

Kid kuzu sighed “A tax deduction is a dollar amount you can subtract from your taxable income. The lower your taxable income, the lower your tax bill” the boy explained further when Hidan looked although he were speaking a foreign language “Being an adult I figured you’d have at least the bare minimum knowledge for this sort of thing, but I guess I was expecting too much”

“Listen here you little shit, I denounced material crap the moment I devoted myself to Jashin-sama! Whatever I need, I kill for it” Hidan went to jab his chest only for a small hand to catch the appendage with ease, bending it enough to strain muscles in a wordless threat of breaking the damn thing should Hidan do anything else

“Jashin sounds like the god of poverty” He stated bluntly as he threw Hidans hand back at him and closed his little book before setting it aside and standing up “I find religion to be a waste of time, it certainly doesn’t pay bills. Now if you’d excuse me, I’m going outside” Kakuzu explained as he opened the sliding door leading outside, taking a book with him as he hopped into the gated backyard

“Where are you going?” Hidan asked, peaking his head out to see the little fucker as he made his way to the shade of a tree to sit down and start reading in silence

Hidan growled as he hopped into the backyard too, hands on his hips as silence stretched between the two. Kid kuzu seemingly content to read in silence “What are you doing?” Hidan asked annoyed

“Don’t ask questions with obvious answers” Kakuzu snarked back at him without skipping a beat “But I guess someone as stupid as you never heard of it; it’s called ‘reading’.” All without looking up from his book

“I get that you smartass, but why the hell did you bother coming out here for?” At that Kakuzu looked up at him, his green eyes (alarmingly normal with the absence of red sclerae) before cocking a brow in silent question

“You could’ve easily read inside” Hidan pointed out

“Habit” He answered curtly

“Growing up in Takigakure a epidemic of sorts spread, and my mother was bed ridden. She was the superstitious type and wouldn’t want me near her in fear that she’d infect me with this unknown illness plaguing our village. Sounded like rubbage to me, but she kept pestering me about it” Kakuzu shrugged and let his shoulders sag some as he relaxed against the bark “So whenever I wasn’t keeping up with our financial situation for us, I’d go outside to read” wordlessly gestured to the book

Hidan couldn’t believe he was doing this, but if it meant getting closer to Kakuzu it was worth a shot. Perching in a crouched position to get on the smaller boys level, Hidan sighed as he ran a hand through his silver locks before asking “And how did that… make you feel?” Even to him it sounded awkward as all hell, he almost regrets even asking until Kakuzu simply shrugged

“My mother always kind of annoyed me, she was weak willed and had serious insecurity from father leaving. So she tended to smother me” Kakuzu recalled “Although I worried for her health as many kids would, I found interest in the adult world. Money was fascinating to me, even as a kid. It was the most powerful force the world had”

“What do you mean?”

“With money you could do anything. Money had the power to save or ruin lives. Take my mother for example, because our money was going into paying off our property, we hardly had any left for her. So when she became ill, she couldn’t get the proper medical treatment she required and died because of it. Money and our lack thereof killed her” he answered in a bored tone as he flipped the page

Hidan wasn’t one to care for death, that shit happened. So, he didn’t really know how to approach this. Should he laugh it off and say that’s Jashin’s divine punishment for placing money above god like he always did? Or try sympathizing? Hidan really didn’t know since he easily sees the brat getting annoyed with either one he chose. The silence stretched between the two and Hidan let it since Kakuzu himself seemed content to leave it as that

“The fuck” Hidan mumbled as he finally took note of the book in Kakuzu’s hand and blanked when he read the title ‘how to make a profit’ Hidan scoffed, leave it to kid kuzu to read boring ass shit like that for fun

Snatching the book, Hidan stood at his full height when Kakuzu snarled and tried grabbing it back

“Hidan” Kakuzu’s voice was like that of a patient mother a second away from scolding a child, Hidan found that ironically hilarious seeing how Kid kuzu barely came up to his stomach “Give that back” He demanded with a glare

“Haven’t you ever been a kid? I mean I now back in your day it was expected to be a ninja from a young age, but damn. I think I’m starting to see why you’re such a grouch all the god damn time” Hidan noted with a sympathetic shake of his head “Come on little guy” Hidan said as he tossed the book behind him uncaring as he hefted the kid up by the arms

“Hidan. Put me down” Kakuzu said not really struggling. But he sounded immensely annoyed to Hidan’s amusement

“Can’t believe this small body of yours becomes your imposing self later in life. I bet puberty hit you like a truck” Hidan chuckled, and when Kakuzu began struggling in his hold. The zealot could only find his efforts cute

“Where are we going?” Kakuzu question unamused. He promptly gave up knowing struggling would be pointless. Hidan wished he kept at it, it really was adorable watching his tiny arms and legs thrash about

“To the park”

“Hidan, I’m not going to play” Kakuzu spat the word ‘play’ out in a disgusted manner

“And why the hell not?” Hidan spat back

“Because I’m a grown ass man nearing 100” He answered dryly

“To anybody and everybody you look like a kid, I bet even other Akatsuki members wouldn’t recognize you” the platinum haired man tried to reason “Just fucking let loose and take this chance to have fun”

“My definition of ‘fun’ isn’t that of a normal persons Hidan. My fun is silence, my fun is curled up under the shade of a tree with a good book. Not doing pointless play and socializing more than I must” Kakuzu began resisting again, giving a loud growl of frustration when he gave up yet again as he didn’t even budge in Hidan’s grip

“And it’s definitely not being carried off by my idiot partner to be forced to do just that” Hidan stopped, setting Kakuzu down, Kakuzu was surprised at this and looked up at him as they silently held each others gaze

“Can we do something?” It sounded like a plea, and Kakuzu hardened a glare at the sound of it

“Like what?” He ground out, crossing his arms angrily as he really couldn’t be bothered to do anything. He just wanted to read damnit

“What do you want to do” Hidan paused and looked to consider something before he added “That’s not reading” Kakuzu tsk’d audibly

Time passed as Kakuzu mulled over what the two could do together

More time passed, a gentle breeze whipping past the duo

“…”

“You really can’t think of anything can you?” Hidan asked with a small amount of pity in his voice, it pissed the miser off

“Well what did you do back in your day? Did you find anything enjoyable? Anything at all?” Hidan prompted, trying desperately to get something. But Kakuzu was giving him nothing to work with

“Training”

“Huh?” Hidan asked stupidly, dumbfounded

“Training” Kakuzu reiterated “It was the few things me and my father used to do together before he left. I remember learning how to throw kunai was fun” He explained

Hidan beamed startling Kakuzu

“Then let’s fucking“ Hidan drawled to look around trying to find a place to practice, not seeing anything “er- Let’s fucking do it” Hidan nodded before grabbing the smaller hand in his to drag him back to the backyard of their little impromptu house

‘Progress’ was all the albino could think. After spending an entire week with the man, finally he was making some real progress. He couldn’t screw it up

----

“You need to flick your wrist and add more power” Kakuzu explained with mild irritation

“It’s not my fault I never fucking use these things, I mean who would with a scythe like this” Whipping it off of his back he made a show of showcasing his prized weapon by flinging it around like a madman Kakuzu sighed

“You graduated without perfecting this simple trick?” Kakuzu questioned in disbelief “my, how far have shinobi fallen?”

“Hmph, this whole thing is stupid anyways” Hidan concluded snobbily as he turned his nose up and crossed his arms over his chest

“Nobody forced you to do this you know, let’s just call it quits”

“No!” Hidan said hurriedly only to scratch the back of his head awkwardly “I mean, I think I almost got the hang of it”

“…” Kakuzu stared at his partner before narrowing his eyes “Not even close” He stated bluntly “Your trajectory was awful; your wrist flick needs work and your power was pathetic”

“Hah?! You got a problem you little shit?! I’ll fricken sacrifice you to Jashin-sama don’t test me!”

“Calm down” Kakuzu glared over at him “I’m sure that even someone as hopeless as you could learn to do this if you tried harder” Kakuzu explained as he walked over to the man, stopping just in front of him and stared up at the man before gesturing for the man to lower himself

Hidan did after a second, and Kakuzu held his hand. Hidan jolted at the contact not expecting it in the slightest before Kakuzu adjusted his grip on the kunai and turning to position his hand properly before taking a step back

They stared at each other, Hidan in stunned silence before it became apparent that Kakuzu wanted him to try throwing it now “…” keeping his hold the way Kakuzu adjusted it for him, he lined up his shot before whipping it like a dart

-Twunk- the sound of the kunai’s sharp edge embedding into the wooden tree of bark. It missed the target’s middle by quite a bit. But it was an improvement seeing how Hidan couldn’t get the damned thing to stick before now

“See?” Kakuzu asked condescendingly, pissing the jashinist off

Kakuzu walked over once more to handed him his own kunai, Hidan took it and again Kakuzu stared at him. Knowing what that meant he did his best to hold the weapon like how Kakuzu showed him before throwing it again

“Oh!” Hidan gleefully cheered once it nearly hit the center “Did you fucking see that shit?” He questioned snapping his head from the target to kid kuzu and back

Kakuzu let out a chuckle at his overzealousness of his minor (and admittingly unimpressive) accomplishment “I did indeed” He needlessly informed the other

By the time the sun was setting, Kakuzu realized that they spent practically the whole day kunai throwing

“Hidan, make diner” Kakuzu demanded as he stalked towards the house, his hands were killing him. He can’t remember the last time he did the basics of kunai throwing for so long

“Take out?” Hidan asked, not really feeling up to cook, his arms were quite sore as well, turns out making a competition of who can hit the center of a target the most in an hour was draining (Kakuzu won)

“Don’t be lazy, we can’t let just anybody find out we’re here. I mean, if anyone saw your face, they’d recognize you as part of the Akatsuki immediately”

“Fiiine~” Hidan whined as he stomped his feet childishly to the kitchen, surprised when soft sounding footsteps followed after him. Peering over his shoulder he saw his ‘little’ companion

Kakuzu picked up on his silent question “I could cut the vegetables” was all he said

[vaguely-concerned]

I played Death of the Outsider finally and I have some Feelings about it

and most of them not very positive. nice stuff first tho!

THINGS I LIKED:

- billie is such a good character. still new to her old self and slightly tender from coming out of the protective shell of lies that was meagan foster, full of old scars and doubts and bitterness but trying for something better, something kinder even though she still doesn’t quite understand what she’s walking towards -- the genuine care and tenderness in her voice when she talks to daud or thinks about deidre. I love her.

all that and she effortlessly IS also the queer disabled woc the gamer bros refuse to believe could possibly exist. exquisite. 

- the idea of ‘killing’ the outsider is compelling, but it’s the sort of idea that needs a full length game to support it and its implications. cool idea, completely wrong execution.

- saying that: I love that the injustice of the outsider’s creation being righted is only made possible by a long unbroken line of mercy and kindness. daud saved billie from the streets, corvo spared daud, daud saved emily and spared billie after her betrayal, billie tried to save aramis stilton and became entangled in the void, emily spared billie, billie took this job in the first place partly because she loves her dad daud and wants him to find peace. that idea is so beautiful that I wish the rest of the narrative was strong enough to hold it up lol.

there’s also something going on here with other people holding on to the important pieces of you -- that billie is ‘all that is left’ of daud after he’s dead. once he saved a child from true loneliness and gave her a purpose, made her feel seen again, gave her the closest thing she had to a home, and when he’s completely lost himself in the void... that kindness is still alive in billie, and she helps him find his way. again that is really touching and thoughtful and plays wonderfully into the chaos system in these games thematically! too bad about all the stilted dialogue and characterization messes and uh. everything else. 

- most of all I love how clear it is that billie and daud love each other. it’s a quiet love that has nothing to prove anymore, it’s survived all the blood and the ugliness and everything they’ve done to each other and to the world, a love with no demands left. it’s not the sort of love you usually see, in all its unsentimentality, but it’s real. when daud tells her he’s proud of her and trusts her no matter what she chooses to do, you feel how much he means it. (making his insistence on trying to make her choice for her all the weirder -- see my long rant of lamentation about his characterization in doto below lol)

there’s something about daud’s undramatic yet complete acceptance of and respect for billie that... I didn’t know I needed this, but it was a nice gift nonetheless haha, thank you. (it’s similar to how good it feels in D2 when you realize corvo just likes emily a lot as a person, even aside from her being his daughter. a good series for father & daughter stories)

- this carries over from D2, but I think the journal/log entries are better written and more insightful than the stuff out in the world.  

- it cannot be overstated how much the gameplay loop of these games is just... pure crack cocaine for my brain haha, very few things give me this specific kind of brain tingle. I love the sound of looting and I love the art style and ambiance and I love planning out a strategy after finding all the options and I love never being spotted or killing anyone and I love the puzzle elements they put into exploration sections and I love the feeling of how you move through the environment. it’s one of the few games where I routinely get so into it I end up with a crick in the neck because I’ve been so focused for so long and never noticed I’ve been sitting in a way that makes my entire spine hate me. I needed something to get me through the last few days and it did deliver that, at least. karnaca is pretty enough that I didn’t even mind that most of the levels were recycled from D2 either. 

- I’m not quite sure whether I understood this right but there’s a woman standing behind daud in the void -- I wonder if that is actually his mother and he’s been so close this whole time? at first I thought maybe it was jessamine but god no I hope she’s finally at peace after All That Nonsense, she shouldn’t have to hang around there anymore. there’s also a figure near him I could swear was corvo with his mask on, but he’s not dead canonically so that would make very little sense. oh well I’ll take my feels where I can get them even if I have to make them up wholesale  

- the bankheist was cool as fuuuuuck, that and the emotional impact of daud dying was sadly the height of this game for me, after that it all went mediocre real quick     

- paul nakauchi as shan yun was, as I have said before, a blast. ‘ugh I cannot continue my throat is as raw as a plucked pheasant’ fsdkfhlsadjkhfas

- daud’s funeral is genuinely touching. she gave him the entirety of her old life for a sendoff, battered and worn and dear as they both were. someone hold me 

THINGS I  H A T E D:

- the stuff they did with daud’s characterization. I am so unreasonably angry over this haha, the more I think about it the more I hate it. I think there are paths you could go with his ACTUAL character to make this work, but this was not it. I’ve said this before, but his most iconic, most defining scene is him surrendering himself to corvo’s judgement without justifying himself or deflecting the blame for any of what he’s done. this isn’t even regression in his character, it’s just.. a different character altogether. they could have gone for the angle that delilah almost managed to end the world b/c daud showed mercy and that’s the reason he’s moved to action, I think that might be a more compelling motivation for him at least. OR have him be more conflicted about how to do things -- violence is still the only tool he knows how to use but it’s not what he wants to or even can be anymore and the conflict troubles him, ‘His hands do violence, but there is a different dream in his heart’. or even use a different character for the ‘kill kill kill’ angle, he didn’t need to be here for this dlc at all.   

also, just on a purely practical level... for all his flaws and longstanding moral shortsightedness daud is not a stupid man. why the FCK would he be so sure that killing the outsider will fix anything? if I, dumbass extraordinaire, could within half a minute wonder if maybe something even worse would take the outsider’s place if you removed him... why does that never occur to the Knife of Dunwall tm, a man about Void for like half a century or whatever?? ugh fuck this, I’m having a hard time explaining exactly why it all feels weird and wrong to me, but know that it does and that I Do Not Like It lol. I feel cheated out of something important I thought I had.  

- again, this should have been a full game. (I think it is sold as one already, but it just hm isn’t) there’s way too much shit of literal cosmic importance for the game’s universe being picked up here for something this short to cover. save this HUGE idea for a rainy day should you ever want to do another game in the series and do something else with the dlc, honestly. 

- god but the outsider is insufferable in this. I don’t know what happened, but by the end I was like ‘*thoughtfully strokes chin* maybe daud has a point billie keep that knife handy’. he’s annoying and boring, which is wild to me because he was always a lot of fun in the other games.

for real tho I don’t know if this is just my atheist-but-still-angry-at-god-somehow??? talking, but daud HAS a point. people are responsible for their own actions, but the outsider didn’t have to do any of what he did either. he could have chosen to be bored through the centuries instead of seeing what people would do if you gave them such ~*morally neutral*~ abilities as y’know summoning a bunch of rats to eat other people. the game wants me to buy the ‘but really this black eyed boy is woobie tho uwu’ so badly and no I’m not buying that give me my refund I want my chaotic neutral bastard back pls. I’d probably be more inclined to want to help him like that. where’s his salt gone, arkane. if you didn’t want him to be edgy why did you make him look like that.  

- this is the lamest possible version of the outsider’s backstory lol, it feels like the pearl clutching panic about satanic cults back in the day all over. listen if it’s this easy to make a god the thrill is sort of taken out of it, if these randos did it anyone could. also how the fuck are they just normal-ish people anyway? why do they follow modern fashions? haven’t they been hanging around for thousands of years, haven’t their culture changed in any meaningful way? (I realize these aren’t the same guys as back in the day but it’s just weird) why do they speak a language billie and the player can understand? why did anyone think ‘idk some cultists no one’s ever heard of before with no thematic significance whatsoever’ was the way to go world building wise? they’ve taken all the unknowable eldritchness out of the eldritch horror and we’re all poorer for it now haha 

relatedly the last level is... just not very good. you come down from the awesome bank heist and then there’s... whatever the fuck this was.

- while I do like billie finding daud in the void and him remembering her I hate that he goes out still full of self loathing and rage when you talk him into the nonlethal option, that he can’t forgive himself or find any sliver of hope or peace. I wish there had been a few more moments for the two of them to come to peace with themselves before he gave the outsider back his name, some real catharsis. as it is I was annoyed when the outsider ‘woke up’ or whatever b/c it felt like he was stealing attention from what I was actually emotionally invested in and not done with.    

they had  n o t  built up billie’s or my sympathy for the outsider well enough either. again this is something I think they could have done if they’d structured things differently, if they’d been more deliberate in making you understand he was basically a child and letting you dwell on it. because there is a parallell there between him and billie, and billie and daud, but I, how do I put this, did not give a fuck  

in short this was really similar to my experience with D2 in that there’s enough good there that it’s all the more painful when it fails to deliver on it again and again, and it ruined things I already liked about this story from the first game (daud’s arc and everything to do with the outsider, mostly). give me some months of denial and hard core headcanon work and I’ll probably be able to live with it

[feliicityrampant]

Okay I got a few questions 1. are you an atheist and 2. do you agree with bairn-sidhe's or whatever their name is addition to your post that "white male atheists" are only so because they don't want to face consequences for their actions?

1. im “”agnostic”” by which i mean a) i didn’t grow up in a religious environment tho i did go to lutheran church for a few years as a child and b) i honestly don’t care or believe it’s any of my business how the universe is ordered.2. i have various feelings about it. to begin with, my post wasn’t about anyone’s specific beliefs. it was about who has the power to create and enforce laws and social standards within communities (local, city, state, nation [yes, this was a us-centric post. no that isn’t a crime as a lot of people seem to believe.]) based on their beliefs. minorities (and whether or not this includes cishet white women honestly is a debate) lack that power so their beliefs are “inherently different” based on that fact alone. minorities in organized religion lack power within that religion at its largest form. minorities within atheist/scientific communities lack power within those communities. i made the post as a response to posts floating around which broadly accused atheists of having some form of anti-religious power. i felt this was tone deaf to the reality of the power structures in place.so i get really mad that i constantly (day in and day out) have to read various accusations about what my one sentence post means from people who totally lack context and additionally have taken the context they DO have and decided to read something into it that quite literally is not therethat being said, i think it’s worth talking about the relationships people have with religion (of all forms, not just christianity, although it seems to be the only thing people want to talk about, which i guess makes sense because of the extreme impact it has on many people’s lives in the us) because of who they are on a social level. as someone who was not raised religious at all (my mom recently confessed to me that we only went to church when i was little so that i could have options) and whose brushes with local christian communities were not negative (i am also white and cis and though i am a lesbian i didn’t know that until a decade after i had stopped attending church) i still have thoughts and feelings about who i am in relationship to organized religions. i feel it’s disingenuous of people to respond that they are “atheist because they don’t believe and not for any other reason.” i think people are more thoughtful than that. they are inquisitive and seek to understand the universe and themselves in the process. at some point everyone wonders if there is a higher power. at some point everyone makes a decision about it (or doesn’t, and that’s a decision of its own). and decisions are formed the way the rest of our thoughts are formed: by what we are exposed to in the world and how we are treated. i think it’s absolutely true to say that cishet white men surrounded by other cishet white men are going to approach the question of “is there a god and if so what does that mean for me?” in a way that’s different from, say, a lesbian surrounded by straight people, living in a patriarchy. that’s not a value-laden statement. it is what it is. people are different. difference isn’t bad or good. it’s just the various ways in which we’re human. so i don’t necessarily think ‘cishet white men are atheists because they’re smug assholes’ or ‘minorities are atheists because they make emotion-based decisions’ are true statements. i think ‘cishet white men who are atheists are more likely to be atheists because they were raised in non-religious environments’ and ‘minorities and women are more likely to break from religion are are more likely to have done so because of bigotry they have experienced and/or trauma they endured’ are probably true, but that doesn’t really say anything about “atheists” in general or even “minorities and women who are atheists” in general.also i really really fucking resent all the people saying it’s racist or homophobic to say “some people are atheist because of trauma” because it implies they’re too stupid to make decisions based on logic. how thoughtless and insensitive can you be. how can you possibly look at people who have endured hatred from their families and communities and been so shaken and harmed by that experience that they broke from their beliefs and FAMILIES and COMMUNITIES as a result and say “wow what a moron.” nobody NOBODY in that post is making that judgment except the people saying they are and they should be ASHAMED. that’s their value system that they’re projecting onto other people and it shows.(as a side note, at some point in all of this it’s necessary to point out that white people and gentiles regardless of whether or not they are minorities in other respects are absolutely capable of exerting power over muslims, sikhs, and jewish people)

((i also realize you probably weren’t interested in this long of a response. i’m honestly not sure why you reached out to me for comment. the post has 100k notes, most of them people arguing about it or sharing their extremely witty comments about ‘op’, and i think like one other person has ever bothered to ask me about it. even assholes very rarely try to antagonize me directly. at this point i think it’s fair to say my opinion or what i actually meant doesn’t actually matter. the opinions expressed belong to the people who reblog it, in whatever state they decide that should be. and i reserve the right to be fucking annoyed by all of it.))

(((as a final aside, because i thought it was kind of interesting, someone recently reached out to me and asked my permission to use the post in their phd research, which i found equal parts annoying and funny. probably my greatest impact on the world and it has basically nothing to do with me. this is why i try not to think about the universe as either ordered events or total coincidence. it’s too depressing either way.)))

[rooftinandskyblue]

Ginger Judas, obscure superstar

Well that’s an old interview released on Aug. 26, 2012… I haven’t seen the whole article before so I guess I’d just put it here. And there are some highlights…maybe.

A couple of months ago the comedian and lyricist Tim Minchin told an audience at a literary festival: “I hope my daughter dies tomorrow in a car crash. I’ll tweet if she does.”

That sounds bad, out of context.

“People get dim about stuff sometimes,” he says of the ensuing outcry. At the festival, he explains, he was trying to illustrate his point that you can’t actually “tempt fate”.

“You have to overcome your superstitions. Saying ‘I hope you have a plane crash’ isn’t going to change the outcome of a person’s flight. I said, 'I hope my daughter dies tomorrow at 10am.’ The specificity’s very important. You have to say something that won’t happen - because of the odds - in order to overcome your superstition that it will happen. "You have to overcome your megalomaniacal 'I’m so important’ human bullshit bias - you have to overcome the idea that you are magic. Because you’re not magic.”

Minchin is magic, though. He’s the most famous Australian nobody can quite picture until you say “that ginger bloke with the piano and the funny songs”.

And they are very funny. Look up Prejudice on YouTube - a song about how six little letters (N, I, E, R and two Gs) can be so hurtful. Millions already have. Or Lullaby, his wry assessment of fatherhood (“Your blanket’s hand-knitted, with pure angora wool/Your nappy is dry and your tummy is full/Of enough antihistamine, to chill out a bull/Yet still all this gringing”).

Through his twenties, he was an impoverished jack-ofall-arts playing late-night gigs in “bars full of drunken British tourists in Melbourne”.

The combination of music and comedy - he says he’s funny for a musician and a good musician for a comedian - held him back. No one could see a market. He was advised to specialise in one or the other but he wouldn’t. “I was having too much fun,” he says but also, he’s stubborn. Most people would have chucked it in and become an accountant.

Eventually, YouTube happened (“it made me”) and Minchin went viral. He toured. He made DVDs. He became that ginger guy with the eyeliner (to exaggerate expressions) and the backcombed hair (umm). We started calling him British-Australian rather than just Australian (he was born here to Aussie parents and lives here now).

At the same time he was reading lots of philosophy and his unflinching rationalism became a trademark. A Richard Dawkins, but funnier, nicer and camouflaged in flowery piano trills. One Minchin song re-examines love at first sight with the opening couplet: “You grew on me like a tumour/And you spread through me like malignant melanoma”. Another rejoices in Christmas as a time for humanism rather than deism.

Yet another, Ten-Foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, considers God and anal sex.

Why is he still not quite known? “To be a household name, you have to be on telly,” he says. “I don’t believe comedy songs work on the telly.”

Minchin might just be too risque for mainstream television.

Last year, ITV cut his song Woody Allen Jesus from the Jonathan Ross Show because, “the tone wasn’t quite right for the Christmas show”.

True, he did liken Jesus to a zombie. He also covered the virgin birth with the memorable verse: “Breeding without the opposite gender is commonly known as parthenogenesis/Other animals that don’t need males include a lot of lizards and various snails”. But still, you would have thought a television audience could take a bit of mild blasphemy.

ITV thought not.

Critics then accused him of picking only on Christianity. Was he scared of taking on Islam? “It’s a non sequitur,” he says now. “It’s like saying, 'Why are you doing jokes about ice creams, not dolphins?’ "I have no obligations to be balanced, I’m a comedian. Secondly, Christianity’s my culture, it’s the culture I grew up with. I don’t really want to criticise Islam. I mean, I do it but it’s not my thing, even though I do spend five minutes on stage with a Koran talking about sacredness. Thirdly, sure I’m scared of stirring up a violent minority and getting my family killed. Is that not a good reason? It’s like saying, 'You punched that tiny guy, now go punch that karate guy’.”

What we are supposed to be discussing here is Jesus Christ Superstar. Minchin is taking a lunch break from rehearsals at 3 Mills Studios in east London. Alongside Chris Moyles’s Herod, God help us, and Mel C’s Mary Magdalene, he will play Judas Iscariot in the stadium version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 40-year-old hit next month.

This seems an odd career move. Still basking in the huge success of Matilda the Musical, first in the West End and now Broadway too, Minchin has been variously hailed as the “saviour of British musicals”, “an original talent”, “a unique genius” and “unmissable”. But now he’s doing Superstar. With the “saviour of Radio 1”. And a Spice Girl. And Lloyd Webber. Not exactly cutting edge.

“My interest is this incredibly told story - The Passion of the Christ put to rock music,” he says. “As a lover of Deep Purple and Seventies rock, I’m interested in the show musically.

As a musician and a fan of Tim Rice, I’m interested in it lyrically. And as a child whose life was changed by Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, why would I ever not do this? "It’s theatre. It’s a story. I have no problem delineating stories from real life. I get really annoyed at people who call themselves psychic and telekinetic, but Matilda does magic with her eyes. I tell my children all sorts of fantasies but it doesn’t mean I’m trying to sell them something as truth; it’s just stories.”

To progress further, we must separate the two Minchins. Minchin One is the passionate advocate of humanism and Minchin Two is the happy-golucky storyteller. Of course they are intertwined, but they don’t always both define him. He’s doing Superstar because he wants to. And it will make him more famous, because there’s also a third Minchin, the one who wants affirmation.

“Fame is like group sex,” he tells me confidently. “You desire it till you’ve had it and then it’s like 'meh’.”

I’m halfway through admitting I wouldn’t know on either count, but he interrupts.

“Actually, that’s a bad metaphor.

Once you’ve had group sex you just want more group sex, but I really believe most of us are driven most of the time to be affirmed. I’m absolutely driven to be affirmed but I’m not driven to be affirmed by being rich and famous. Although they are intrinsically linked to what I am driven to be affirmed by, which is impressing people.”

This is how he talks. And writes lyrics. An idea wrapped in the opposite idea inside a riddle. On Twitter he describes himself as “a musician with a swollen sense of my ability to articulate my insignificance”.

He also calls himself an “educationalist”.

Minchin One, the advocate, wants to expose the hypocrisy of those who preach morality but don’t practise it.

Does he believe in nothing? “I’m a humanist materialist.

I don’t believe in anything that’s unlikely. To believe in Jesus, you can either make the assumption that there was a man who broke all the laws of biology and physics or say that humans have mythologised other humans throughout history, and sometimes myths take off. Just because ideas take off doesn’t mean they’re real.”

He continues: “I’m going to write a musical with the Pope as the central character. I want to take a sympathetic view of what it would be like for a young man - while other young men are getting stupid tattoos or accidentally getting girls pregnant - to say 'I believe in a master of the universe’.

What are the odds that these young men stick with their beliefs? That they won’t, at some point, think, 'Well, I don’t really believe that shit any more but this is the structure within which I do my pastoral care. I’ve got bills to pay’?” Last scene: an atheist running the church. Curtain falls. There would be protests. ITV wouldn’t like it. But the lyrics would be good.

Until then, we have Tim Minchin playing the questioning, betraying disciple at the O2 arena. It’s a long way from the Melbourne dive bars, but it sort of adds up. It could even be part of a grand design.

“No, it’s just luck,” he says.

“There’s no soul, no nothing.

It’s just luck.”

And with that, he heads off to rehearse Judas.

Tickets are available at jesuschristsuperstar.com

[anthony-cohen-blog]

QUESTIONNAIRE

PART 1: THE BASICS

What is your full name? Anthony Joshua Cohen

Where and when were you born? In a small, barely-named town on the west coast of the US, 25 years ago

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.) Monty and Eshel Cohen, both working at the local middle school of our town, my father as a maths teacher, my mother as the librarian. They are mellow-hearted, simple people who mean no harm and pull their small weight in society as best as they can, hardly ever complaining, never wanting more than just leading a happy, comfortable life. 

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like? No siblings by blood, no, but Tanner, James and Micah who I met in the Biel hospital will always somehow count as family.

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people. Tanner has temporarily given me shelter until I find an affordable apartment. Sometimes I dream about never leaving her again, but she is with her girlfriend, and who am I to intrude?

What is your occupation? Waiting in a bar and sorting in products in a supermarket.

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks. People say I look good, I prefer not to look at all. I try to blend, and I think my unflashy appearance helps, but for the leather jacket that is. But I need this one. I’ve got blue eyes, curly light hair (it’s rather soft but I don’t like people touching it) and pale skin; all attributes that make it easy to be trusted and forgotten by the people I meet.

To which social class do you belong? Despite not owning much at the moment and requiring two pasttime jobs to pay my mere share, I would still consider myself middle class because if I were to truly need it, I coudl always go back home to my parents and ask for help. That is a luxury not many have. 

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses? You mean except turning into a walking bush every now and then? No.

Are you right or left-handed? Right-handed.

What does your voice sound like? I keep it low, I don’t like talking, I don’t like people hearing me, so I guess I mumble a lot. But I’ve also spent a lot of time living with someone far away from any noise, so I prefer being silent than talking over noises around me. 

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently? I make sure not to have verbal habits, as they help people remember you. But I think I shrug a lot, if that counts.

What do you have in your pockets? Let me see. Cigarettes, a lighter, keys, money, the usual. Oh, and if you don’t tell anyone ... a few pretty stones I found along my way. They mean nothing. But they’re pretty.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics? No. As I said, I make sure not to. 

PART 2: GROWING UP

How would you describe your childhood in general? Chaotic, very stressful. My parents wanted to know what was wrong with me, and eventually gave me to the Biels. Those are anything but happy memories, but everything after that was a simple, calm life. They thought I had been cured, you know.

What is your earliest memory? The red balloon I got for my third birthday, I was very excited about it, don’t ask.

How much schooling have you had? I graduated high school.

Did you enjoy school? I never hated it. Learning in itself is something wonderful, but sitting in a classroom all day was never my favourite thing to do, even if I didn’t despise it. I was never bullied or particularly popular either, by the way, so I never made horrible memories.

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities? At the Biel Hospital, learning how to shut all emotions out. I think, above all, this is what taught me how to survive.

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them. No. I never wanted to be like anyone else because I never wanted to be.

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family? After I came back from the hospital, well. They are normal and simple people, I am good at being normal and simple. Totally ... human.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Cured.

As a child, what were your favorite activities? I liked listening to people talk and read to me, I think. I was never allowed around other kids before the hospital, so I don’t think I had many exciting hobbies worth talking about.

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display? I think I was predispositioned to be a happy child, but my parents sorrows about my condition made me, if not anxious, quiet and guilt-charged.

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like? I spent most of my days alone before the hospital, in the hospital I met Tanner, James and Micah and we were great friends, family, and after the hospital I was good with a few people I shared classes with. I went to parties and proms but I was also never invited to sleep overs or dates. 

When and with whom was your first kiss? Cora Singer, whom I had been sharing classes with for many years, was my first kiss and girlfriend. We were together for about five months, I can’t quite remember why we broke up.

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity? After Cora Singer came Loreley Abson. We were only together for a few weeks in the last year of high school and I think she slept with me because she didn’t want to go to college as a virgin. However, when I close my eyes and think of my first time, I’ll always think of Purple.

If you are a supernatural being (can include Gifted), tell the story of how you became what you are or first learned of your own abilities. If you are just a normal human, describe any influences in your past that led you to do the things you do today. I was born with my gift, and for many years I considered it a curse because my parents did. I was experimented on, some would call it torture, but I like to think I was treated. Not healed as my parents think, but treated. I now know how to suppress my abilities and deal with them. The first time I called it my gift, though, was when Purple showed me the beauty of it.

PART 3: PAST INFLUENCES

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far? When the hospital burnt one night and Tanner saved us. And then, a few years later, when I met Purple. It’s maybe cheesy or stupid to say that, but our first kiss, to realise what love means, that was very important to me.

Who has had the most influence on you? I don’t know? Children are influenced by parents, no? I don’t consider myself particularly influenced. Then again, Purple changed my opinion on many things, like my gift. No, really, I can’t answer this question.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Finding Tanner.

What is your greatest regret? That I am who I am. I think I caused a lot of pain for my family. I know I should not feel ashamed for it, but if I had the choice to give it all away, I might.

What is the most evil thing you have ever done? I’ve done a lot of unspeakable things. Unspeakable in the sense that saying them out loud could get me in trouble with the law. But at the end of the day I never hurt anybody. I did what I had to do to survive, but never at a cost of someone’s well-being.

Do you have a criminal record of any kind? Not officially, no.

When was the time you were the most frightened? Every night at the Biel hospital. 

What is the most embarrassing thing to ever to happen to you? Oh. That. I once went to school on a Saturday by accident. But I guess that’s not very ... 

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why? Maybe I’d teach myself how to control my gift sooner. Maybe I’d make myself never fall in love with Purple. Maybe I’d never leave him.

What is your best memory? Last month, meeting Tanner again. I have other beautiful memories, but this? It shines bright against everything else.

What is your worst memory? There have been many ugly memories, but just like with the good ones, it’s what happened the most recent that hurts the most. Destroying Purple’s trailer in our fight. I. I am still disgusted by having done that.

PART 4: BELIEFS AND OPINIONS

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? Optimistic.

What is your greatest fear? Losing Tanner again.

What are your religious views? My father is an Atheist, my mother Jewish, I’d like to say I believe in nothing, but ever since the portals have been opened? What is real and what isn’t anymore?

What are your political views? I believe the well-being of the individual is more important than money.

What are your views on sex? It is just natural. Neither avoiding it nor making everything about it seems sensical to me but then again, I can’t really have it. Not with someone else, at least.

Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable? I asked myself this question many times and I think, yes. I would be. To protect those who love, I would go very very far.

In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do? Take someone’s life. But my answer stands.

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? I wish I could say no, but then, sometimes I meet people and I just know that I will see them again, that they will matter to me one day, and how else would you explain that?

What do you believe makes a successful life? Who cares about success.

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)? To myself I have no choice but to be honest. If I were to ignore how I feel, poppies and violets would bloom to remind me. But to others? I don’t know. I’ve learned how to suppress all feelings, and in a way I’d rather never share them with others. Even if that means to lie to those I love.

Do you have any biases or prejudices? The more time passes and the more Royce Industries goes against the gifted, the more I find myself despising the non-gifted. Other than that, no, I don’t think I am very biased. I go with what is logical, and sometimes the most beautiful thing to believe.

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it? No. 

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)? All those who have saved me, deserved to be saved in return. My parents. Tanner. Purple. 

PART 5: RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how?

Who is the most important person in your life, and why?

Who is the person you respect the most, and why?

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people.

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person.

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened.

What do you look for in a potential lover?

How close are you to your family?

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not?

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help?

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why?

If you died or went missing, who would miss you?

Who is the person you despise the most, and why?

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict?

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations?

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not?

Do you care what others think of you?

PART 6: LIKES AND DISLIKES

What is/are your favorite hobbies and pastimes? I like taking long walks and baths.

What is your most treasured possession? None of the few tings I own are treasured.

What is your favorite color? Yellow.

What is your favorite food? Bread is good.

What, if anything, do you like to read? I don’t enjoy reading.

What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)? To talk with someone you like until late at night. When I still had a car, I used to listen to music, whatever was on the radio. But I’d never consider it good entertainment. Necessary, if anything. The same goes for all other form of art.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit? I smoke cigarettes, but I can’t drink or do drugs. They make me lose control on my gift, and that is the last thing I can have.

How do you spend a typical Saturday night? I didn’t have a typical Saturday night in many many years. At the moment I cook if ever someone is hungry, back in high school I used to hang out with my friends by the football stadium. 

What makes you laugh? A lot of things, actually. I like me a good joke. I have a simple humour, I think, Charlie Chapman and Laurel and Hardy will always get a chuckle out of me.

What, if anything, shocks or offends you? Violence of all sort. Even just yelling or threats. It makes me very uneasy.

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself? This happens a lot. Usually I go take a walk or drink tea. I like just pondering about things.

How do you deal with stress? I’m hardly ever stressed, it’s not really something that happens in my life style, but the answer would be the same as the previous one.

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan? This is a strange question because my whole life through I had a plan. At first I needed to find someone to cure me. Then I needed to find Tanner. Within those two plans I act spontaneously and never ever planned, but can you still call that spontaneous? If you do everything as it comes up as long as it lets you stay on your path?

What are your pet peeves? People who can’t listen. People who judge others blindly. People who only care about themselves. 

PART 7: SELF IMAGES AND ETC.

Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when this routine is disrupted? At the moment, I get up with the sun, get myself cleaned and dressed, then make breakfast for whoever wants. Then I go to work. Take breaks. Come home and cook again. Sometiems I go back to work for a later shift. But usually, if I can, I go to sleep with the sun, too. I cannot stand the night. Back when I still used to travel around it was about the same thing. 

What is your greatest strength as a person? I guess you could call me loyal.

What is your greatest weakness? The same, I fear. 

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Please don’t make me say it...

Are you generally introverted or extroverted? Introverted. People exhaust me.

Are you generally organized or messy? I don’t care about being orderly or planned out within my own space, but as soon as it affects others I can be very organized and clean.

Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at. Reading people (and thus making them trust me, waiting, getting jobs, etc), cooking tea, and waiting. The waiting-waiting. Sitting and taking a breath. Letting time pass with patience. I’m good at that. What I’m bad at is expressing myself, not getting hurt by small things, and trusting people.

Do you like yourself? I serve my own purpose.

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime? I once wanted to find someone, now I don’t know anymore. I have lost all ambition.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Please. Don’t ask me about the future.

If you could choose, how would you want to die? Painless, fast, with my body looking preserved enough for my parents to identify me and being able to say their goodbyes.

If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left. I’d do just what I’m doing now. Maybe say the things I could never speak.

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? I don’t wish to be remembered.

What three words best describe your personality? Quiet, loyal, healthy.

What three words would others probably use to describe you? Quiet, odd, good. Or at least I wish they did.

[jungianthing]

1, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 23, 31, 35, 39

character development questions.

this is really long so it’s going under a cut!

1. How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy?     joker is super dynamic in the way he moves about: like, just physically speaking, he walks with a bit of a swagger and he has a kind of confident lope to his step. he’s also pretty high energy when he’s actually moving, but surprisingly still in terms of gestures. he doesn’t really talk with his hands but he does fidget and shift if he’s sitting or standing in one place for too long. he’s the kind of person who has a constant undercurrent of energy running through him and it shows.

5. How do they dress? What styles, colors, accessories, and other possessions do they favor? Why?     in modern verse i have this idea of joker in my head right down to what he wears. i have a few things in his wardrobe tag but generally i’d describe his clothes as colourful with lots of patterns and very bright. he wears his jeans rolled up at the ankles and has one pair of white low-top converse that he’ll wear until they’re completely busted and then just buy a new pair.     he also has a bunch of really stupid tshirts that he’ll wear outside and also recycle as pyjamas. whenever he’s on vacation he really likes hunting down those off-brand shirts that are clearly supposed to be showing like bart simpson or something but because he’s copyrighted it’s a spiky orange kid on a tshirt with a slogan saying DON’T HAVE COW or something. he really loves those. he also will kind of impulsively buy clearly super personalised tshirts that people have left in thrift stores.     most of his clothes are really well-worn and casual-leaning and if he has anything on the more formal side (like pullovers and plain shirts) they’re most likely birthday/christmas gifts from his mom.     he has a really high quality backpack that he’s had for a few years now which he usually has with him most of the time, and the only other static part of his wardrobe is his mickey mouse watch (it’s in the movie too) which he’s had since he was about eight or so. he’s really attached to it out of sentimental value; his mom bought him a rolex for his birthday a few years ago and he caused a huge fight because he took it back to the store instead of wearing it because he already had his mickey watch.

11. How are they vocally expressive? What kind of voice, accent, tones, inflections, volume, phrases and slang, and manner of speaking do they use?     he relies a lot on vocal humour in general. as he says in the book, years of drama classes have made him a mimic. he has a real aptitude for impressions and he can usually pick up on someone’s voice after only talking to them for a few minutes. john wayne was the first person he ever learned to mimic and he has a pretty easily identifiable voice so he falls back on that one a lot, but he can do a whole bunch of impressions.     joker is super loud, and he has a pretty surprisingly high-pitched voice, but he talks fairly slowly and enunciates quite clearly and recently he’s been trying to make a concerted effort not to be so fucking obnoxious. like, he really is trying. because he speaks so slowly and tends to think a while ahead when he’s speaking, he doesn’t really stutter that much and he tends not to trip over his own words unless there’s something getting in the way of coherent thought like overwhelmingly negative emotions.     he also peppers what he’s saying with a lot of internet terminology because he’s just in the habit of it, like he has said “oh worm” in a real conversation before.     also he sings a lot but he cannot sing at all, his singing voice is like the dude from wheatus in teenage dirtbag, it’s absolutely abysmal and i cannot emphasise this enough.

12. How are they bodily expressive? How do they use nonverbal cues such as their posture, stance, eyes, eyebrows, mouths, and hands?     he usually stands pretty straight because he really likes being tall, and he’ll kind of reflexively spread out to occupy as much space as possible if he’s sitting down - like, he’ll spread out his legs or lean back in his chair and throw his arm over the back of it or just lie down on a sofa.     like i said he doesn’t gesture when he talks but he does do a lot of fiddling, he’s restless but he doesn’t gesticulate. he smiles a lot, like big full grins and sort of half-grimaces and he also bites his lip when he’s smiling too.

13. How do they greet the world — what is their typical attitude towards life? How does it differ in different circumstances, or towards different subjects? Why do they take these attitudes, and why do they change? How do these tend to be expressed?     he’s pretty much relentlessly positive? the only time that changes is when he feels that he doesn’t have to be around someone he knows really well. he’ll usually contain negative feelings and emotions and refuse to share them with strangers because he wants to project himself as someone who only Is Funny and Finds Things Funny.

14. What do they care deeply about? What kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? How do these tend to be expressed?     he’s a sort of passive atheist in that he doesn’t believe in god but he doesn’t really care either way; his family only used to go to church for christmas and only because of the sense of community. his main loyalty is to people he considers his family, which is his little sister cecilia first and foremost, and then his parents, and his boyfriend ben (@sameriver) and his best friend cowboy (@mousekateer), and then friends like leonard and kennedy. he cares about being happy and being loyal to people who trust him. that’s pretty much it.

18. What kind of person could they become in the future? What are some developmental paths that they could take, (best, worst, most likely?) what would cause them to come to pass, and what consequences might they have? What paths would you especially like to see, and why?     his most likely path for the future is that he’ll maybe mellow out a little; he still has some work to do trying to get over that obnoxious hump he’s been working on for a while. in the last few years of high school he was a huge jerk and it was only his breakup with his girlfriend in college that really made him aware of how he was as a person, so right now he’s trying to fix that. i don’t think there’s anything in his life right now that could cause him to go back to that, because he’s really happy with what he has and he knows he wouldn’t have it if he was still a complete fucking douche.

19. How do they behave within a group? What role(s) do they take? Does this differ if they know and trust the group, versus finding themselves in a group of strangers? Why?     joker takes quite easily to being a leader, but he feels he’s more suited, appropriately, to a sort of ~court jester~ role where he just cracks jokes and whines but generally does what he’s told. he does like to question the person in charge, though. generally he’s the same with everyone, regardless of whether he knows them or not.

23. How do they respond to difficult social moments?     joker’s the kind of person who just rolls with the punches, so if something becomes difficult he’ll just remove himself from it. he’ll usually just try to laugh it off.

31. Is there anything that counts as a “dealbreaker” for them, positively or negatively?     in terms of a relationship, someone who doesn’t get along with him, someone who’s constantly questioning the things he says or the jokes he makes, someone who obviously would be annoyed by him, someone who doesn’t talk straight to him. also hair in the shower drain, he hates that shit, if you leave stray pieces of hair in the shower he will go the fuck off

35. How and why do they internalize knowledge? What effect has that had on them?     idk, i guess when something speaks to him or has some kind of impact on him personally or emotionally? he has a pretty good memory for words and phrases because he mimics them a lot.

39. What sort of questions or thoughts recur in their lives, either specifically or as a theme?     he tends not to question things that deeply, like he is capable of critical thought but if it doesn’t concern him then he’s not liable to lie awake at night worrying over it.

[xtalmay]

When you live with your best friend....

November of 2013, my BFF of 9 years, moves in with me because she quit her job and had nowhere to live. Since I consider her to be like a sister, for the most part, of course she can stay with me. This is the third time she has lived with me. For the first 11 months she didn't have a job. No job. But she helped a lot with my kids and kept the house cleaned up and also made dinner almost every night for both me and my boyfriend..... The perfect housewife. Then in October of 2014, she got a job. A shitty job, but a job, none the less. Since that moment she has had a job, non-stop. Different jobs, but at least she was employed and able to help out with rent and whatnot. She has not made a single dinner or meal for anyone in this house since she got that job 3 years ago. Not even one. She doesn't do anything around the house anymore, either. About once every 2 months she will clean the bathroom. But that's it. So she does pay us rent. But she does nothing else at all. (I am the one that picked up the slack) After the first year, I was ready for her to move out. But I can't kick her out because she doesn't have anywhere to go. She makes enough for a cheap apartment or even to find a roommate and share rent. This she CAN afford, but chooses not to. CHOOSES not to. I've even had friends tell me to tell her she needs to move. I have a daughter (8) and a son (5) and they need their own rooms. We live in a 3 bed, 1 bath apartment, approx 900 square feet. 3 adults and 2 children sharing a very small space. I had been planning to move my daughter into the third bedroom the week that I found out she had quit her job. So my daughter has had to keep sharing a room with her brother. Anyone with kids will probably understand what I'm going thru with that one. During the last 3 years, all I've heard is how much she hates her job. Or the people. Or the other employees. Or the managers that hate her. Never good things. Ever. It's sad. But this is her life. I have had a couple friends of mine and family ask why I haven't kicked her out, and honestly, I don't know how to ask her. In a way, I have become a bit passive aggressive toward her. In August 2016, we got a cat, Stella, for my daughter. She's been dying for one, and I figured, why not?! But also my reasons are that my friend hates cats...... So maybe she will move out? Nope. She didn't speak to me for 3 weeks. Like a grown up. Because, ya know, grown ups act like this. I bought her a nail polish and that broke the silence, but every single day she bitches about the cat. Poor Stella. So after we had Stella for about a month, I wound up taking in my ex husband's cat because he needed a home. This also didn't get her to move out, but at least she continued to talk to me. After a month or so we had to give him back though because Stella had a big problem with him, and anyone with cats probably knows what I'm talking about. Also, about a year or so ago, she realized that she's atheist. And not just, not believing....... She now bashes people that do. And she's rude about it. When not 2 years ago, she used to complain how people need to not bash others religions. I still believe this. And now she's one of them. And she wonders why her life 'sucks' On top of all this, she has all these plans of grandeur. She wanted to move to New York. Now she obsessed with Korea. Like, obnoxiously, obsessed. Her plan: get her TEASL (sp?), move to Korea, find a rich hot Korean man and marry him. I should also probably mention that she has this obsession with her age and only goes for young guys...... Like 18-20 year old boys.... She constantly asks people how old she looks, and everyone is either stupid or just being nice, but she doesn't look 28....she claims that everyone always says around 28......shes actually 37. And not a young 37, an old one. *no offense to people that are 37, I don't think that's old. This is her opinion. * She's pretty much, in not so many words, said she isn't moving out. She will live with me until she dies of old age. Ugh! So I told the boyfriend that we need to look for a new place and when we move, let her know that can't come with us. She's on her own. Time to be a grown up. Here's a funny story about what happened today. We are in the dining area and I'm making monkey bread while she sits at the table on her phone. She then says 'when I'm old I do not want to be in a nursing home..... I said but you already are old...then she says, no when I can't take care of myself anymore...... (considering she lives with me......) ha ha..... I wanted to scream out, 'But you can't!!!' instead I didn't say anything....... Which I still found hilarious. But anyway, now she's come to just stay in her room all day. She won't come out unless its time for food. I think she hates Stella because she is acting just like a cat. Sleep all day. Be aggressive and annoying all night. Ha ha. Really though. I know she's my 'bff' but I also don't want to deal with her being awkward around me, either. And I have a hard time hurting people's feelings. I don't even follow her on Facebook. My own best friend, I can't follow because she's annoying. This she knows, too, but doesn't seem to care. I suppose I'm done for now. Any ideas on getting her to move out?