#fucking massive iso

[motherfuckingcat]

[headfarintheclouds]

VALORANT: Iso As A Boyfriend HC

Quick Disclaimer ! These are my HC about how I think Iso would be as a partner ! I might be writing a fanfic inspired by one of those in the future :) Also please forgive any gramma mistakes, English is not my first language !

He is not big on PDA, matter of fact he rather not show his affection to you in public at all. Not because he doesn't love you or anything, but because his past as a hitman was a dangerous one. He has made many enemies during that period and would rather die than endanger you like that.

And while he doesn't show his affection to you outside, he makes it up to you behind the closed doors. As soon as you step into his bedroom, he would swoop you up and drop you on his bed. He loves to cuddle you, enveloping your smaller form with his arms. For him it was as if he was protecting you from all the bad in the world, plus he loved to press soft kisses on your forehead and the crown of your head. Good luck trying to escape him through, that man is 6'3ft and pure muscle.

You steal his hoody all the time and he doesn't bat an eye. He likes the way it looks on you. In his eyes there is nothing more adorable than you in his clothes.

He makes you a special Playlist for when he's away on a mission.

Buys you gifts ! There is no rhyme or reason to it really, he just wants to spoil you. You tried to tell him he doesn't need to spend that much money on you, to which he replied: "I have enough of it to spend it on someone I love." and that shut you up really quickly.

He gives you private 1 on 1 lessons in Marksmanship. He wants you to be prepared for anything and everything so he takes his time teaching you. Super proud whenever you land a successful headshot !

Speaking of shooting. He refuses to let you go alone on missions, even if there is five people on your team he will convince one of them, or Brimstone, to give him a place in it. And then during the actual part he will follow you like a shadow, ready to take out anyone who dares step too close to you. Good luck to the unlucky fuck that dares shoot at you, his Arena is set and ready and so is he.

He takes you out to hotpot every once in a while. Mostly to secluded areas where he knows it's safe and he can trust the workers there. He's a massive foodie and loves exploring new dishes with you, it makes Iso feel closer to you on another level.

His grandma adores you ! He introduced you to her during your guys vacation time when he took you to his hometown. Iso was pleasantly surprised about his grandma accepting you so quickly.

He's not the jealous type, or at least he liked to think that. That was until Neon invited all of the younger agents out to a club in the city nearby the HQ. You were dancing on the dancefloor with Jett and Neon, having the time of your life when suddenly you felt two hands garbing you by the waist. Turning around you saw a stranger, grinning down at you with visible hunger in his eyes. Before you, or the girls could react Iso was on the scene. He didn't say anything but put his own hand on your shoulder, gently prying you from the strangers grip. You couldn't see it, because your back was turned to him, but his eyes started to glow a vivid purple. A silent threat to the man in front of him to back off. You can bet your ass, he was standing next to you for the duration of the whole party right after the incident.

I hope it was alright for my very first post :) I am taking requests for Iso if you guys have anything in mind ^^

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! By the time this posts, it should be well beyond the debut of the second series, so I hope you all are doing okay! I am ISO crossovers with small or obscure fandoms which might be more difficult to search. I enjoy recs from popular crossovers as well! But sometimes there’s only one fic in a category which can get buried, and I’m specifically looking for that random good omens- tiny-fandom crossover where someone picks up one of their obscure old fav and creates something exciting with their love for good omens. Thank you kindly!

Hello! This was actually a lot of fun to search for! There's no 'easy' way to do it, but if you want to go hunting yourself I recommend using AO3 to filter out the popular crossover fandoms by adding them to the 'tags to exclude' list and just browsing through what's left. These aren't all necessarily small fandoms, but they don't have loads of crossovers with Good Omens. I'm recommending these ones simply because they sound fun and I want to read them myself!...

Perfect Books by risky_writing (G)

When Ted was looking for a book to perfectly communicate what he needed to each of his players, he found himself in the most peculiar bookstore in London. But, it sure is a swell place.

The lovers, the dreamers, and me by hapax (G)

A frog with a dream. An angel with an assignment. A pig with regrets. A demon with a mission. The crossover that nobody asked for, but everybody needs.

Hell and Back by anticyclone (T)

"Perhaps we could assist you with the …subjugation… of this angel," Winifred suggested, which made Crowley groan again and Anathema cringe. Aziraphale just rolled his eyes. "You see, I still have a connection to my Book, and I need to bring it back to Hell with me." "This book? With the eyeball?" Crowley looked at it, and then up at Aziraphale, who smiled at him. The demon turned back to Winifred. "That's not happening." The Sanderson sisters have been in Hell for some three hundred years and have still not had the pleasure of being introduced to Satan. But Winifred thinks she has a way to rectify that, if only she can get her hands on her Book. Luckily, some angel put it on an unprotected shelf, where it's able to find itself a witch.

Ineffable Dogma by ThetaSigma (E)

Aziraphale and Crowley find out there is apparently a massive plot threatening all of creation. With a bit of experience stopping the End of Everything, they set off to make sure nothing goes wrong. Which is a good thing, as no one told Bethany & Co what was really at stake. In the end, it takes all of them -- Bethany & Co and the Ineffable Husbands -- to fix this. *** Bethany has the feeling, on and off, since they left the club with the shit demon, that they’re being watched. Oh, she knows that both Heaven and Hell are watching their actions pretty fucking closely, really, but it doesn’t feel like that. It’s like someone, maybe several someones, are following them, following her. She catches glimpses, sometimes. Of red hair, or a scowl, or white hair, or a cherubic face wreathed in disappointment. But it’s gone as quickly as it came and she’s left doubting if it ever happened.

"So Fetch" Omens by IneffableAlien (T)

After sixteen years of van life with her religious hippie parents, homeschooled Azi is enrolled in public school for the first time.

The Divine at the Warfront by creativeimagination206 (T)

In the throes of the Korean War, Aziraphale is sent to a mobile medical unit near the front to address the sudden influx of prayer from that area. With Crowley by his side, the angel must determine and straighten out the cause of the heaven-sent pleas, all while navigating the unfamiliar territory of the 4077th and the rather eccentric cast of characters that await them.

The Starting Hinge by lucky_spike (T)

When a rare book collector is mysteriously killed, DI Barnaby and DS Winter are on the case. Meanwhile, the question of what will become of the victim's extensive library stirs a small group of rare books collectors into a furor. Who can be trusted? - This is predominantly a Good Omens fanfic with some Midsomer Murders thrown in just because I could do it and I wanted to. Contains death of an OC and (obvs) murder and attempts thereof. Nothing gory, though, so party on.

- Mod D

[nikisfwn]

"Idiots In Love" Alex Turner X Reader

Summary: You and Alex are in your final year of high school, exams are finally over so you're both stress free, or as the guys call you; idiots in love.

Warnings: swearing (as per usual)

Oh also, Isolation is where you would go in my school if you were being a dickhead in lessons. You got a warning if you didn't "fix your behaviour" you got sent to isolation or iso as everyone called it.

A/N: I seem to have an inability to write actual decently long fanfics. Which I am very disappointed in myself for because I love this one. Either way I hope you like it because I still love it but yeah, enjoy x

"Excuse me Miss Y/n, are you paying attention?" Your maths teacher, Mr Roberts broke you from your trance. "What-? Oh yeah, sorry sir." He sighed at you, "Y/n your name is already on the board for not paying attention, you have to go to isolation now." "Oh come on sir! Why?!" "There is nothing written in your book y/n." You took a quick glance down at the squared page with no writing on it in front of you. "Go on." Your teacher was looking at you as well as half the class. You scoffed, "Ugh, fine." You slammed the book shut, grabbed your pencil case and bag before walking out of the classroom.

You walked swiftly out of the main building and towards the small music block, it was funny how in such a short amount of time you learn where someone spends all of their free time. You quietly opened the door hearing the music coming from inside the building and walked in. Matt was the first to spot you, "Oi loverboy! Yer girlfriend's 'ere." Alex's head quickly shot up looking straight at the doorway for you, he stood up putting his guitar in its stand before walking across the room to you and hugging you tightly. "I didn't know you had a free period baby." He gave you a quick peck on the lips, "I don't, got sent to iso in maths." They all laughed at you, you joined in too as you sat down on a stool next to Alex.

"Okay, lets go to lunch then idiots." Matt said after they had all been practising for about an hour. "Sure, let's go." Alex stood up and offered you his hand, which you took and stood up too. You all grabbed your bags and walked out to the field. It was two weeks before the summer holidays and a massive 26 degrees so little to no one was sat inside or wearing their uniform properly. "Let's sit down by that tree." Jamie said pointing towards a free patch of shade by an old tree. And so you did, all walking over and sitting down on the dry crunching grass. Alex patted the spot of grass between his legs for you to sit. You sat down and leaned back into him while he leaned back onto the tree kissing the top of your head.

"I love you." You softly whispered to him while the other guys were talking. "I love you too baby." He smiled widely at you leaning down to kiss you on the lips. Andy scoffed from beside you. "Oh fuck off Andrew!" Alex kicked him and hugged you tightly. "You two are such idiots." Matt started laughing slightly. "No Matt! They're idiots in love!" Jamie corrected him laughing even more. "At least I have a fucking girlfriend cookie." You joined in laughing as all of them teased each other.

"Y/n is way out of your fucking league anyway mate." Matt commented. "No I'm not Helders!" You jokingly threw your jacket at him. "Totally are. You're way too pretty to be hanging out with us losers." "He makes a point, love. You're fuckin' stunnin'."

You laughed covering your face in embarrassment. "Shut up you dickeads."

"Never woman." They all laughed in unison because they managed to say it at the same time. "You're stuck with us all now darlin'." Alex said into your ear. "I wouldn't have it any other way my love."

[cheesyimpressions]

🧀📸 Chaos granitique dans la forêt de Huelgoat (Brittany, spring 2023)

Taken with a Harman reusable point and shoot camera

Ilford FP4 PLUS 125 ISO

Spent a week in Brittany at a friend's. She showed me some very cool spots. I photographed A LOT of boulders that week. They were excellent (and fucking massive) 🪨✨👌

[tanadrin]

Sogant Raha is gorgeous. Do you have any recommended resources for worldbuilders who might want to do something similar?

no, because i did sogant raha all wrong.

it started as a Generic (albeit extremely low-magic) Fantasyland setting for a conlang when I was a teenager, which gradually accreted details at the edges until it was a whole world. but i didn't know what i was doing when it came to conlanging or worldbuilding, and as i got older and read more about historical linguistics, and history in general, i became dissatisfied with it and rebuilt it from the ground up a few times.

sometimes when you build a setting from the bottom up like that you miss the consequences of major decisions. when i started trying to map the whole planet for the first time, years ago, i realized i had put the Lende Empire on the wrong coast--for it to have a big forest to the east rather than be a massive desert, it needed to be upwind of the mountains, i.e., on their eastern side. so i had to either flip all the maps, on paper and in my head, or make the rotation of the planet retrograde. i opted for the second one, because reorienting my mental map of the Lende Empire would have been terribly confusing.

another example: i didn't realize how dramatic the consequences for the climate for having a low axial tilt would be until roughly, uh, yesterday. i just wanted to rough out some climate details and maybe calculate day lengths at different latitudes and seasons, and it wasn't until i started googling around to find formulas for average daily and annual insolation at different points on Earth that i realized low axial tilt produces a markedly different polar environment than what we're used to. the result is certainly more interesting, but it means there's some notes i have that are now just, well, wrong.

if you are starting a project like this as a big worldbuilding project, and you know a little bit about climate and astronomy and stuff, i think working top-down can save you from a lot of errors like this. damon wayans' worlds on Planetocopia are like this: but then, he seems to typically start with one High-Concept Worldbuilding Idea, and then see what the results are. i just had stories i wanted to write, that turned out to be connected, and gradually built the world up from them.

in some respects, this means as a world, Sogant Raha is not particularly exotic. the stories i wanted to tell are stories about humans, in societies not too dissimilar from ours, so the world is not too dissimilar. if i had known at 15 or w/e everything i know now (and had access to similar resources), i might have intentionally complicated certain parameters more, so that i could play with the results. but the stories are what has kept me coming back to this world year after year--and while an ice planet of methane breathers would be more interesting from a high-level view, i don't know what being a methane-breathing being on an ice plant is like, and i don't think it would have had the same perennial narrative appeal that has kept me interested all these years.

i guess my actual advice would be some or all of the following: be omnivorous in your interests. the fun thing about conworlding is that literally every domain of human knowledge is relevant to it. be willing to make weird choices, and equally willing to force yourself to justify them. sometimes you make an artistic choice, and you come back to it a little while later and go "what the fuck was i thinking?" you're tempted to erase it. but figuring out how to make that choice work often produces a much more interesting result. pay attention to what projection you're drawing your map in. try not to think in standard fantasy archetypes. no matter how original your spin on the ISO Standard Fantasy Races, they're still ISO Standard Fantasy Races. full blown conlangs are optional, but constructing even simple naming languages can make worlds feel much richer. don't use apostrophes in the names of things unless that apostrophe actually has a phonetic effect on the pronunciation. read a lot of history. real-world history is bigger and weirder and more interesting than you can possibly imagine. it's good fodder for worldbuilding.

[roses-r-free]

homestar runner british secondary school because i need a way to fucking cope here

homestar would be a year 7 that runs to the canteen like it’s his very last meal and would be a massive neek. not many people would like him especially the popular kids as they’d think he’s annoying.

marzipan would try so hard to fit in with the popular kids. she’d be one of them nice chavs. also nobody knows she’s dating homestar.

strong bad would try so hard to act hard, when deep down he’s the biggest neek there is. he’d probably get in iso a lot.

strong mad has already graduated but his soul is still left there. my mate was the biggest roadman there is.

bubs would sell elf bars behind the school for 50p.

coach z would be a proper teacher’s pet, but nobody knows if it’s an act or not.

strong sad would be one of those kids that get things shouted at them. a common one for him would be “emo”.

[bloatware-xl-rp]

"Mora Quora"

[Quorra x Not you Reader]

Contains: bbw. Gluttony. Eating

Quorra eases herself back onto your lap, the whole couch sounding like your fucking bones felt.

"...where'd you go?" Quorra frowned, brushing her black hair out of her face so she didn't get pizza sauce on it. Leaning forward, her back pulled away, leaving you imprinted in the couch like a chocolate in a tray, but now able to breath, you gasp as she folds a slice the size of her dinner plate in half like a taco and shoves it into her chubby cheeks.

The ISO had grown massive and soft since leaving the grid, and seemed to only get dumber by the day, frequently sitting on you, or knocking you over when she bent down to pick things up. Or braining you with her big belly when you were sitting or kneeling.

Quora wore a shiny black mumu, and soft (black) bunny slippers everywhere she went down. Her thong was a joke, lengths of silk string that popped anytime she walked too fast. Her breasts like fat baby seals resting atop a beanbag sized gut, cut into a cellulite and stretch mark riddled double belly, that turned into rolls when she leaned over to eat.

Her ass was driving yiur legs hard into the couch and you couldn't help let out a gasp of pain.

"Oh THERE you are. Fuckin sat on you again, huh?" She beamed at you, her black hair was immaculate, and even with the rounder face you couldn't help but melt at that innocent smile. Quora wasn't born in the human world, bus she sure fucking loved to eat in it.

She tipped the pizza box drinking the grease, it ran down her chin and she had to dab at her big soft tits. "Ugh they didn't send napkins again."

Quora had completely forgotten you were pinned under her 3 foot wide ass, slowly losing feeling in your legs that you suspected, might never actually come back again.

"Ugh, I gotta find something to..." she spotted one of your work shirts, and piked it up, matting it into her cleavage and leaving greasy, dark, titty heart shape after titty heart shape on your shirt in pizza grease.

"Oh my God breadsticks are amazing. We never had them on the grid i swear they make me fucking so horny, I SWEAR." She dunked three into a cup of marinara...well.

Okay.

It was a jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce. Quora ordered a lot of bread sticks. It was just more efficient this way.

Dunking three at a time she chewed down stuffing her face.

It was INSANE the 200 pounds she'd piled on in just the three weeks since her breakup with that billionaires kid.

"Oh, shit. Your legs are turning purple hang on..."Quora stood, and your lap rose with her stuck in her butt a little. She peeled you out of the sofa, and out of her ass, and plopped you onto the couch beside her, before sitting down.

When her ass spread out, it nearly shoved you off the couch.

"Quora honey, don't you think you've had enough?"

Quora rolled a pizza like a burrito, and shoved half of it in her mouth. Damn, she really wasn't human. "Mmm, nmmm." She shook her head, rolling her eyes and dragging thick gooey cheese off the slippery saucy surface, poking a breadstick in, like she was chasing a burger with a fry, and before she could even close her lips: Quora took a thick gulp of soda....from a floral vase she called a "cup".

The bulge was softball sized as she swallowed it all down. Before putting her head back and inhaling the pizza like a weird freaky snake!

"To answer your question, uh, no? If I had enough, I wouldn't still be hungry. Or at least...still eating." Quora said confidently.

Wait. Was she saying she wasn't even HUNGRY anymore?

"I dont really get hungry. I just like to eat." Then your date proceeded to pull a fucking taco bell bag out of her purse and the thud of the burritos inside hitting the table made your eyes pop.

"Hey, you wouldn't mind feeding me would you? Sometimes my arms get tired."

You stare at her, your mouth fell open. And after a minute you stared: your new date, had gone up three dress sizes in the four days you'd been dating. You stared at the empty packages of oreos and nilla wafers you'd bought literally that night for Netflix and chill. You stared at the pizza you ordered, gone. The four pizzas she'd brought, also gone. The five containers of breadsticks she was eating like French fries. The huge jar of sauce. Her perfect makeup and gorgeous cut black bob of hair, ruined by red mush in the corners of her lips. Her food partly visible because she couldn't close those perfect peach lips. The bag of very FAT sounding burritos she'd just pulled out of nowhere and the...and the...

DING.

The fucking popcorn was done.

"No!" You wailed. "No, you...you come into my house, you wolf down our dinner while I'm in the bathroom. Your fat ass is crushing the couch!" Quora wasn't even blinking just staring at you continuing to stuff her face. "Babe, you're getting fat! Like you were kinda thicc when I met you and that was hot. But you're fucking huge! It's been four days, and you've blimped up! Look at you! You're not even hungry! I'm not gonna help FEED you! You lazy, spoiled, fat brat! I don't know what kind of messed up trauma happened that maybe...you gotta stuff your feelings away but Its wierd! Its weird to ask me to-"

"I'll suck your dick."

You stopped. Mouth wide open. Your crotch betrayed you immediately at this offer to be in those soft, plump lips.

"Or you know...whatever you have down there. I'm not picky." She was casually just eating a burrito, Quora's cheek the size of a golf ball as she spoke while chewing.

"I dont eat because I'm hungry. I eat because it makes me horny. Getting fatter makes me horny. You want to fuck, right? I'm gonna stuff myself until I can't lift my arms because they're falling asleep. Then you're going to stuff me even further. Until we rip my dress. Then you're going to rub my belly until I fall asleep. Then I'm going to eat you up, and when you cum, I'm ordering IHOP for breakfast. And then you're going to feed me that."

You were still, open mouthed and flabbergasted.

She paused, staring at you out of the corner of her eye. She grabbed your hand, and forced it against the round, warm, smooth, soft surface of her belly. You felt it vibrate as it rumbled and churned. Then she took. Huge bite out of another burrito.

[leam1983]

Some of the comments are a little disconnected from everyday use, honestly.

I work in IT, I get it, in a fair and just world, we'd all be running Proxmox bare-metal and we'd be piling on VM after VM for the sake of freeing ourselves from the shackles imposed on us by corporate ecosystems. The thing is, you are not going to convince someone who's already tech-averse to go this deep, this quickly. Considering how most of my employees do everything on their phones and barely know how to turn their work rigs on or off - and most of them are in their twenties - there's a ton of ground to cover.

Here's a small - if still longish - taste of it all below. Click for more.

Start small. If anyone's curious and wants at least one solid stepping stone, consider checking whether or not your version of Windows contains the Hyper-V virtualization suite. To do so, open your Start menu, and start typing Turn Windows features on or off into the search bar. Pick the first item that pops up, and you'll access a window listing all of your OS' installed and pending features. You're looking for Hyper-V. Click on its box, then let your machine restart.

Congrats, it, uh... sort of looks like nothing's changed, right? That's good, actually. Now what you want to do is head to the Internet Archive and pick whatever operating system from your childhood that you happen to remember, or you could even go nuts and pick out one of the Enthusiast ISOs for Windows freaking 7 that some diehards are still putting together to this day. Pick a system, download its ISO file, and then search for and start Hyper-V.

Following the steps onscreen, you'll create your first virtual machine. For now, just hit Finish right off the bat, the program's going to pick best-case options that'll at least shield you from massive fuck-ups, seeing as this is your first time. Pick out your virtual machine in the main window, right-click on it and select Settings. Inside, you'll point its virtual CD-ROM drive to where you download your operating system's ISO.

If all goes well, you should see your operating system of choice's first boot screen in the window that pops up, once you boot up your VM. You can full-screen the program, if you want to fake running this natively a little more comfortably. Don't forget to (ahem) source a valid CD key through entirely legal means - you only really need to Google for this. If you're looking for a Microsoft key, you'll find Generic keys listed by the boatload. If you're trying out a MacOS install, you might have a little bit of a harder time finding the right serials, but it isn't impossible.

Of course, the easiest option is a Linux distro. Distros, barring a few exceptions, are typically free to use and have no copy-protection shenanigans to handle. If that's your course of choice, start with Linux Mint - it's designed to be as familiar as possible to people coming in from a Windows system. Once you've got the ball rolling, have fun with your now-sandboxed OS install. Revisit old favourites maybe, or even practice using Hyper-V's Guest tools to make your host PC and the virtual machine effectively "share" a network!

Later on, you'll realize that there's virtual machines dedicated to all sorts of things: you can run home automation servers, play games or run servers for said games - the sky's the limit, really. Running your VMs in instances on a bigger OS like Windows works on the short term, but sharing hardware resources like this is a huge pain. Eventually, you're going to want to run a hypervisor - that's a virtualization suite - directly on top of your hardware. That makes it much easier to divvy out resources as needed.

That, however, is neither here nor there if you're just starting out. If all you ever do is power on and shut off a PC, start by running the same version of Windows you're already familiar with on a separate VM. Then, poke at that sacrificial system to your heart's content. The fun thing about virtual machines is that irrecoverable fuck-ups do not exist. Save a state before doing dodgy shit, like you're playing a game on an emulator, and then go on right ahead.

Does the VM now refuse to boot? Reload its last save state. Bam, you're done. Learn that system from the inside out, and then try out its Server Edition, or jump to a Windows or a Mac, all depending. Try out Linux, too! You have no limits on the number of virtual machines you can run - none save your own hardware's limitations.

This is the best start to a home lab that you could possibly get, short of going fucking nuts for what's still just a hobby and speccing yourself a server-grade system to fuck around with.

If this really appeals to you, I'd advise picking up Windows Terminal commands, formerly known as MS-DOS prompts, and pairing that with some passing understanding of Bash. These two Command Prompt syntaxes are essential to start with. For maximum fun and chaos, set your newfangled server as a target, deploy a Kali Linux install, and start picking up Network Security basics by actually playing the part of a hacker.

If this speaks to you, you'll have enough on-hand to potentially make a career out of it. If you're just curious, you'll still know more about how to keep safe online than 99.9% of your fellow netizens.

Someone needs to inform the (rightly) pro-piracy tumblr users that it is no longer 2014 and some of the services they are recommending will turn ur computer in a broken microwave that serves bitcoins to shitheads.

[dangerouslygay]

a letter to future me (after this coronavirus panic has subsided)

ok i've just found this in my drafts from 2020, it is now 2023 💀

please make the most of:

- shelves at work being stocked

you no longer work somewhere where shelves require stocking

- being able to go out with your friends and dance

you no longer rly enjoy nights out but you do enjoy a good dance :)

- the normalcy and mundanity of everyday life

you do love some mundanity :)

- be there for the old and the vulnerable in your life at all times, not just when there’s a pandemic

you do - your job is now 90% being there for the old and the vulnerable!

and also here’s some questions me in the middle of the panic wants to know:

- how far did the government have to go before things started to calm down?

there was a very long lockdown, there were TIERS, you were miserable for a while but you made it through!

- what were the lockdowns at work like? did they actually happen?

...yes. they were gross

- do we have toilet roll back on the shelves now?

you no longer work there but yes

- did the uk go into lockdown?

... yes. very much yes

- did phoebe get into sixth form? what happened with her gcse grades? (and the a level students’ uni applications)

yes, they did amazing and they're at uni now and living their best life!!

- when did things finally start to calm down?

like. the end of 2021? the start of 2022?? i've blocked it out atp

- which of your gigs did you actually end up going to?

i think when i wrote this i had tickets for my chemical romance, the killers and harry styles - i made it to my chem and the killers eventually but got massively fucked over by harry styles and didn't end up going :,)

- what was your first night out after self iso/quarantine like? 

it was ok! it was a beer garden with three of your mates and it was fun, you tried **** and ******** for the first time so that was fun

- how did your friends cope?

about as well as you did - so not great!

- got your adhd appointment yet? 

got adhd and maybe autism babes!!

- anything else drastic happen?

where to START 💀 grandad died, lost an aunty, lost an uncle, developed a borderline addiction, went to uni, dropped out of uni, left that job you were at for 4 years, moved in with your bestie from said job, got diagnosed with ADHD, worked at a shit office job for 2 months then got your dream job!! and probably more but my memory is shit :)

- do you think it’s impacted you for the rest of your life/altered your outlook? 

without question

- you at uni yet? 

yes and then no - you went for a year and dropped out 😭

[bytchysylvy]

alex’s magic bullshit

I think generally northern magic is a mix of night ellyon and lufayn folk magic. Ice as a form of neutrality is from lufayn and Moon as a form of neutrality is from night ellyon. 

how northern magic works is like. MOON is a central noob neutral type (alex’s bubbles is a moon type) and ICE is another form of neutral however its far more advanced. Largely moon magic is self afflicting, bubbles, shields, stat boost, ect though I think minor traps could also be placed here. Ice is more environmental, its able to fight back against iso’s inherit magic, idk telekinesis probably belongs here. Other elements exist between these two neutrals. 

dont quote me on this elemental arrangement I kinda want to cop skies of arcadia’s system but shes so fucked up. love her but she doesnt make any goddamn sense, I can fix her though.

I kind want earth to be understood as chemical manipulation, so plants and rocks, not having much will of their own, are easily manipulated by it. All living things are just chemical reactions sustained by chemical reactions uninterrupted since it began. anyway the path to ice through that is because permafrost and is technically a crystal. You already know this. Next.

Fire path to ice is because ice burns ig. Dont worry about it.

Water should be obvious. That section between moon and bold blue is where im thinking air would be.

again dont quote me on this elemental arrangement

The intermediate elements dont have hard divisions but it looked ugly when I tried to blend them lmao. Understand, as a general rule of iso, there’s always gray zones in magic.

Alex can tap into any of the elements between, he’s not gonna be able to do ice magic I dont think. He’s 18 and living quite literally under a rock. He’s got a centuries old demon to help him but he’s just making potions which is an element that doesnt lineup with his. 

idk if he tap into blue because idk if he’s got wind magic, dont worry about why thats an important thing i need to figure out. “yo that fits his personality perfectly he’s passive and wants to hide give it to him wtf” first of all you could never understand how I assign a characters elemental alignment, second the western mainlands are constantly battered with massive force winds its not going to have that kind of associations, god, you worldbuilding noobs, normies even. 🙄 Magic is a projection of one’s will which is influenced by one’s perceptions which is influenced by culture which is influenced by the environment. 🙄 I didnt spend my teenage years studying the occult just to give every pale boy with anxiety air magic come on. 🙄

I’ll fuck with it on an as-needed basis since alex is the only person using it. No one else in sf would use this system since the magic the church uses is locked up and i think is four element based system closer to irl western alchemy and wouldnt appear in sou. storytelling > worldbuilding always. 👊

[ilaiyayaya]

I'm still dumping the ISOs because it takes like 15 minutes per disc and there are 4 discs total so I guess I should probably actually show the UMDs I'm dumping while I have the time. I am super censoring them because I do not trust Tumblr at all, like I've absolutely seen more explicit stuff on this website so it's probably fine but like, I'm not taking any chances.

There are at least 56 total UMD-PGs as listed on VNDB, which is the only real somewhat comprehensive list of these that seems to exist across the entire internet as far as I can find.

I say at least 56 because during my searching I found listings for 2 more that aren't listed on VNDB in any form, not even a PC release for them, the VNs just aren't anywhere on the site from what I could find. Which I guess could mean the possibility that they're both UMD-PG releases that aren't actually visual novels, but I feel like that's pretty unlikely, it's probably just a couple of exceptionally obscure releases on an obscure format that just got missed when listing. I don't think a genre of game that isn't a visual novel could even run on a UMD-PG, even something as light as a simple RPG I think would be too much to work with the limitations of the UMD Video format. (I'll actually list the names and links to the listings I found of those 2 missing ones once I actually make a more comprehensive write up on this stuff, the links are in my notes somewhere but I'm not digging through those right now, I'm pretty much only writing this to pass time while waiting for the ISOs to dump anyways. Speaking of which, disk 2 of 4 is at 95% copying now!)

Finding and buying these 2 that I actually have was a fucking massive timesink. The actual cost of the discs (excluding international shipping ;-;) was actually very cheap, off the top of my head I don't remember the exact cost of each of them, but I think one was around like, 1800 yen, and the other was like 1000 yen, so like, around $20 combined, which is cheaper than most common English PSP games, so for 2 pieces of a nearly completely lost format of media, I'd say that's pretty reasonable. But to actually find them took fucking forever, both I found on Surugaya, after months of searching every website I knew of, the only other place that turned up any results was Mandarake, but all of the listings were sold out long ago, and they were also almost all multiple different listings for School Days. School Days is by far the most common UMD-PG, no surprise considering how popular of a VN it is, but I'm honestly really surprised that of the ones I ended up getting a hold of, neither were School Days. Before this I had never used Surugaya, I'm not really sure why, I guess it just never crossed my mind, I've heard great things about it for years, even from other people looking for really rare media, so it probably should've been a lot higher on my list than, literally at the very bottom. In my defense, I just kinda assumed it didn't allow 18+ items, that was probably the biggest thing making it so hard to search for these is them being porn, there are a lot of websites that do allow erotic content, and there are also just as many if not far more that do not, and so it immediately ruled out a lot of potential search avenues. I feel like the listings on Surugaya had probably been there for years too, it's such a low demand item, and both came up pretty high in search results when actually looking for the necessary specific terms, and I don't think there are a lot of people out there looking for those specific terms. Also there were a couple more still on Surugaya that I didn't end up buying, I thought it wasn't really necessary to buy all 4 that I had found considering that my main purpose was initially just to see what made these things unique, but now in hindsight I wish I had bought the other 2, they were a lot more expensive tho, one was like 2000 yen, and the other was like, i think a bit over 3000 yen maybe? Still not like, super expensive, but like, I'm not rich and spending money makes me cry, plus I'm sure if I change my mind in 6 months they'll still be there UNLESS YOU yes you, the girl reading this :flushed: SNIPES THEM AND STEALS THEM FROM ME IN WHICH CASE I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU AND MY GHOST WILL HAUNT YOU AND KNOCK OVER ALL OF YOUR STUFF IN YOUR SLEEP!!!!

Realistically, there's not much of a reason to ever actually play these on PSP. All but 1 UMD-PG also has a release on PC (although for a couple of them it seems like their PC versions may be equally as lost as their PSP ports???) and they're more a novelty than anything, but like, they're a really fascinating novelty, everything about them is just so interesting, the way they actually function as a game using the UMD Video limitations, the fact that they exist at all really, considering that these are all completely uncensored eroge on a major wide-release console that isn't also from the early 90s. The fact that they're so rare and unknown is also really enticing, and is really the thing that drew me to them in the first place, I really don't like the idea of media being lost in general, obviously everything is going to get lost to time eventually, but I think the longer the lifespan of any kind of art can be prolonged the better. And like, there's no readily accessible information on these anywhere, like, at all, while I was in the middle of researching these, I guess someone else out there was also looking into this stuff because a mere month ago this blog post was written, which pretty much had found all of the same info I had, from the same sources, give or take a few minor things, which is some insane coincidental timing.

As of now, this is easily the most comprehensive single source of information on the topic online, and it didn't even exist until about a month ago. The UMD-PG format has existed for over a decade, and yet information regarding it has been so incredibly sparse over that entire time that there was no good singular source of information on it until 1 month ago, in 2024. Please go read that blog post btw, it does a far better job at compiling and explaining what little information there is out there than I could ever dream to, I genuinely would probably still be stuck at the same dead end in research as I was months ago if not for that post. If you are reading this AprilGhost, writer of "What's the Deal with UMD-PG?" you are my hero and the coolest person to ever exist and please don't read my other blog posts because then you'll think I'm insane and scary so just ignore those ok thank you <3.

Ok the last ISO is finally almost finished dumping so I can stop writing now. The full write up is gonna be so easy I already have like 90% of it written between this and all of the other PSP related schizoposts I've put on this blog over the past few weeks combined with all the notes I've been taking for months, this is gonna be soooo free!

The UMD-PG Journey Is Near It's End Pensive

Wow dumping PSP ISOs is way more simple than I expected, it's literally just changing one menu option on the PSP itself and then copy and pasting it onto the computer (and then waiting like 15 minutes) like it's literally been the simplest part of this entire process and that's like, saying a lot cuz PSP modding is fucking ez mode. I guess this is technically almost the last step of archiving the eroge, I mean I still have to upload it somewhere like archive.org but like, the part of getting the ISO itself is like, pretty much done now. Kinda anticlimactic but also like, I'm not completely done, I still plan to actual dive into these things work beyond just a simple glance at a main menu, but that's like, extra stuff, their existence is proven and archived whether I do that or not.

Now I can instead focus on being the only person in 2024 who enjoys making PSP custom themes :)

[maximusboltaqon]

well here's some random thoughts/notes on my rewrite

-i havent actually read very many of the comics yet, so my knowledge of triton is still very limited, and i have no idea what to do with him. i dont want any of the royal family to die too fast, as the first "issue" i feel should focus more on vox and his massive killing spree, and should be free of any "important" deaths taking that spotlight away. so i dont want to keep triton's role the same, buuuut he i might still have him be the first big death. any triton fans have thoughts on this?

-alongside this, i also want signficantly more death. even though a lot of inhumans do technically die, the bulk are random unnamed ones never heard from before and never to be heard from again. i want named inhumans, actual characters, to die, and i want it to very clearly matter and have an effect on the characters. hell, have them go to earth, kill off daisy, iso, kamala, ect. it's called death of the inhumans, but only like.. 7 actual inhuman characters die. everyone else is just a hoard of nameless faces.

it's more of an "oh shit, thats a lot" moment to me and less of an "oh shit, the kree are commiting genocide." because these arent characters any of us know. 11,000 unnamed inhumans dying is horrible, but it certainly isnt written that way imo. so i want more added to these deaths, so that the title actual feels warranted. the actual comic is more of an "a couple thousand random guys die, i guess, but that sort of happens all the time in marvel, and its not even the main motivator for any characters by the middle" kind of thing.

-maybe new arctilian shouldn't be destroyed immediately. maybe that should be apart of bolt's "turning point", perhaps a little bit later, so that it holds more weight. the entire city is destroyed, and post issue 2, i dont think it's ever mentioned again? their entire city was collapsed and every single person living there murdered, and it's not really presented as being a huge deal. that should be a huge fucking deal!!

-i'm also very conflicted on maximus. as ive said, if this is death of the inhumans, i believe in going all in. this is death of the inhumans. not survival of the inhumans. not death of some inhumans. DEATH OF THE INHUMANS. but there's a part of me that very strongly wants maximus to live. now obviously im biased because im very, very attached to him - but if there's one trope i despise, its killing off a character as a form of redemption, and im worried having maximus go out would play into that. if maximus dies, i want him to die protecting someone or something.

but on the other hand, maximus is a very conflicted character, who's subtexually at worse and outrighted stated at best, mentally ill. he's dealt with a lot, jumping between villian to anti-hero, but around 2016/2017 onwards, he's basically always written as generally well-meaning, a bit of a socially-inept pain in the ass, but overall not an antagonist. even before this he's been written as someone willing to work with the heroes. at the time of death of the inhumans, maximus seems to have found a place where he accepts himself and his family, and the lot have worked out their problems.

to kill him off seems... incredibly and unnecessarily cruel. he's a character that's spent basically his entire life miserable and isolated. allowing him to just finally be happy, just to rip it all away and torture him relentlessly? it really rubs me the wrong way.

i despise how his comic death is entirely preventable, terrifyingly graphic, and yet could be removed from the comic and not much would really change. his death doesnt seem to impact any of the characters almost at all, if they react to it in the first place, and it doesnt really advance the plot, either. karnak could easily have pieced together vox taking their powers without seeing maximus' corpse. it could have been triton, causing a much more severe reaction out of karnak, seeing as he would have just killed his brother. it could have been any inhuman karnak knew, hell, it could have been like "that's my father's daughter's cousin's nephew" for all i care, the point is, maximus dying doesn't matter in the source material.

i am a firm believer in killing only for a reason, and having characters exist in the first place only if they serve a purpose. they must advance the characters, or the plot. if it doesn't do either of those two things, then what's the point? so to have maximus be so utterly useless in the story that he could be removed, with minimal edits to dialouge, and absolutely nothing would change? now look im no professional writer or anything, but like,,,, come on.

so if maximus must die, he absolutely must die doing something. it's very crucial to me that his redemption prior to this story is apparent. it's very important to me that his death means something his family. i want him to have more screen time, so that it's obvious he's a hero character, so that his death really hits. i think the best option is him dying protecting one of these family members, to really set in stone that he's putting then first, that he cares about them more than ruling or being right. i just can't decide who he should protect.

medusa feels too easy to me, as he's been written as having a thing for her too many times. karnak and gorgon don't feel right emotionally. triton, perhaps, as i think they might have a kind of bond - maximus did build that breathing mask for him, so they clearly care for and trust each other. but that would depend on what i do with triton. but personally, im torn between crystal and blackagar. crystal would tie in more to the comic, since maximus dies in the same scene he's trying to protect her - to have him die actually protecting her would be a quick change that still keeps the original writer in mind. but on the other hand, having maximus die protecting blackagar is very obviously the best option. predictable, hell yes, but to have maximus, someone who's spent years upon years fighting against, exiling, imprisoning, and attempting to kill his brother, finally learn to accept him, and have his last action be saving him, because he's learnt to let go of all that? to have him completely not give a single shit about possibly being king, to ignore the chance in his hands, because he only cares about his brother's safety? it would be a hard stance on proof of maximus' redemption, so im very fond of the idea.

-and onto the idea of maximus dying protecting him, i want bolt to really be effected by maximus' death, and blaming himself for his death is certainly a way to do it. the narrative of bolt feeling pushed and incredibly angry would work way better, i feel, if his final tipping point was maximus' death. it doesn't feel like that at all in the comic, even though vox keeps narrator-dumping about it, because it happens so early on. i want blackagar to give more than one tiny try at diplomacy and talking to the kree, but his every attempt drives a further wedge, and vox kills more and more. killing maximus (and kidnapping lockjaw/crystal?) would happen way later, and would act as the final straw, before blackagar is overwhelmed with grief and does his giant murder spree.

-also, for the love of god, stop forgetting their kids!! the comic SHOWS ahura and luna, so it's even more absurd that absolutely nobody worries over them. literally just change crystal's reasoning for going to earth. no avengers, she just wants to see her daughter. perhaps after bb gets kidnapped (if i keep that), medusa talks to ahura, if we really dont want to go to earth. and if the earth inhumans are dead, having ahura and luna's names listed by black bolt would add another huge punch to the gut. that scene would have absolutely slaughtered me if he were the last one alive. can you imagine if bolt did that while naming all his lost family, completely alone, and giving absolutely no shit because he wants nothing more than revenge, even if it kills him, because what has he to lose?

-if vox is going to gain the powers of those he "kills", then make him actually use them. seriously, does vox use more than lockjaw and bolt's powers?? they mention crystal's powers, but i dont remember him using any elemental abilities. he definitely doesn't use anything not of the royal family's. maybe mine control would be useful when trying to capture a guy who is not invernable to mind control, but hey, why use maximus' power when you can... teleport people.... or not use any powers at all......

[llycaons]

notes from notw read-along ep2 (pt 1), or: wow, fans of this book really need to branch out

listen to the podcast here

so one of the hosts is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins. we know this because he brings it up regularly, as if worried we'd forget

he starts off with a story about how he taught a class on Tolkein and casually dropped the fact that it was so well received he got an award. all essential to his point, of course, which is that a professor asked him a question. and now he gives us this question back. is this book like, good?

anyway mr. johns hopkins immediately calls PR a twat for having a pronunciation guide but since that's actually very common and normal in fantasy and widely appreciated amongst readers, he got some resistance from the other hosts. I personally like pronunciation guides!

I think he has a lot of substantial critique to give but he's so full of himself about it, which is hilarious given the podcast's critique of PR

fun fact: it's not 'the kingkiller chronicles" it's "the kingkiller chronicle" just the one. which yeah, it is just one in-universe. but damn that's annoying

so our story starts in the town of, I shit you not, "Nawerre" which is apparently pronounced like "noire" but looks a hell of a lot like "nowhere" to me

his inn is described as very generic, with meaningless words describing a flavorless setting but "the vibes are nice"

MC'S FIRST WORDS IN THE BOOK ARE "ACTUALLY" that's so funny

fun fact number two: PR said he wanted to make "an entirely new kind of fantasy" and "a story unlike any other"

HA

you know what's actually a story unlike any other? hunter x hunter. and even togashi drew inspiration from the work of araki and his stand magic. you can't act like you're not drawing on any previous work here pat your entire magic system is practically taken right from earthsea, a vastly superior work in every single way

because when uklg write she actually...says things

also, there's half a theme of stories about stories and framing devices...black sails did it better

so when mc's identity is sussed out the (super cool) mc delivers a monologue that had me cringing even as a 15 year old...behold the ultimate reddit copypasta

“I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.”

I don't have an issue with big badass boasts but this is SO funny ohhh he ~loved women~ really impressive you know who else loved woman? gomez addams and he wasn't nearly as weird about it

iso yeah this is not effective for several reasons

first is that we don't know the context for any of these things because we just started the book. no, we haven't heard of him. because we just started the fucking book. and the guy he's talking to...does he even respond like he's impressed? I don't think he does?

well I'd rather die than go check because I hate this book so someone else will have to let me know

the second reason this doesn't hit is that he's the one telling his story. there's a difference between a legendary figure having tales told of them and someone telling you directly they're hot shit

between seeing what impact they've had on other people/actually seeing what massive things they've done and just...being an innkeeper saying "oh yeah I was this legendary figure trust me" I know which one is stronger

see: cql opening on the entire cultivation world shouting about the yiling patriarch being dead. the entire scene is in chaos and he's obviously the one that made it happen. he has a title. he has notoriety. everyone knows about him and hates him. when he thinks to himself "you dare kick me?" when he first wakes up, it's believable because we have the context of fearful cultivators telling tales about him over a decade after his death. he's widely respected, feared, and copycatted, because he WAS that much of a big deal

third reason this monologue sucks is that it's badly written. it flows well enough, but the choices of words vary in formality and scale, leaving some accomplishments far more impressive-sounding (university line, moonlight line) and leaving others sounding like absolutely duds (talked to gods, LOVED WOMEN)

even "spoken with gods" would have sounded better

a male character bragging about how good he is at sex with women is literally one of the worst traits he can have. unless he really just means loving them. which like yeah? I hope you love the women in your life? is this a thing to brag about?

PR trying to make a new guy going "he's really hot and cool and he knows stuff and he's so smart he outsmarts the teacher and he had red hair and he's a genius musician also and he's SO good at sex" in fact you've just described about 8 million power fantasies. nothing wrong with a fun oc like kvothe. but not much original about it either. rand al'thor meets most of those and he's the jesus figure in a far more impressive series

one of the issues in making a genius character is that imo you kind of have to show them being so smart because just saying "he's really smart guys trust me" kind of falls flat

for intelligent characters, consider death note: a gripping psychological thriller that's always interesting to watch because the characters are all doing 4D chess and trying to guess each other's next move and manufacture events to work in their favor. but it doesn't have to be a crime drama - having characters think ahead, be creative, problem-solve in a variety of ways, and come to conclusions quickly also works. shit, you can also just look at ritsu from mp100 escaping the claw base at the end of s1 with nothing but a spoon, some weak esper kids, and his wits. read any of mr. darcy's letters in pride and prejudice and watch how effectively he communicates his nuanced and complex thoughts

one of the hosts, bless her heart, gently forwarded the idea that it was kind of nice the protag went through a lot of trauma and came out really confident, and that she hadn't seen many protags like that. and I respect that inspiration through the fictional character and I know this story is dear to her so I'm not criticizing, but my goodness. there are so many protags like that chief. watch some shonen

I don't think I could be part of a podcast that tore my favorite book apart.

PR was asked during an interview "What woman screwed you over so badly that you came up with Denna?" and he didn't really answer but he did admit she WAS based on someone he knew which is. absolutely horrendous given the way she's written and treated and how she's like the only major female character in the book. what the fuck is his problem

I had to go on reddit to confirm that so please don't ask me anyone I'm not going back to a site that praises him for that answer using the word "indeed"

the remainder of the section details PR's control issues regarding how he wants people to read his story (by having kvothe interrupt and telling the audience how to feel)

for the record I remember I read this part of the book easily enough. I don't think I really enjoyed it, except for in the rare moments PR restrained himself, when he actually provided some emotional impact

for example, the mc talks about running away from gangs in the city as a young child. he says "one time, they caught me" and for once did not elaborate. and that actually had an effect on me because then you have to imagine what happened to him because he never brings it up again, which is understandable

but I did not enjoy this book. it was not funny or original, none of the characters were interesting or likeable, and the worldbuilding was only occasionally entertaining. it's a very bland story and I don't know why it's so popular

anyway I've seen crit role and I agree with the one host's assessment that PR expects people to center him when he speaks

massive ego, as we now know

in conclusion his fans need to watch more anime and then maybe they'll calm down. on the other hand, I don't know if I want people who are PR fans to be consuming anime

austen already has a ton of rabid fans they should definitely read austen

anyway...see you next time for part 2

[comrade-meow]

“Kill all Terfs”. “Shoot a Terf today”. “All terfs deserve to be shot in the head”. “Would you kindly suck on my womanly dick – preferably choke on it”. “Terfs can choke on my Girl Dick”. (These misogynists love the idea of women, especially lesbians, being forced to suck their dicks and preferably choke). “All terfs need to cease existing. All of them. Gone. Wipe them from the Earth. They are a plague to be purged”. “I’m not into mass murder but I’ll commit terf genocide if I have to, tbh”. “What if someone traced the ip of that emily person and went and killed her because i’d do that but I’m a bit far”. “That’s the only thing terfs deserve. being doxxed and killed”. “I wanna direct a snuff film where multiple TERFS get shot in the head but don’t die, they just suffer in agony”. “Murder Germaine Greer”. “Hope someone slits Germaine Greer’s saggy fucking throat”. “Rad fems and terfs make me extra stabby”. And on and on and on it goes relentlessly.

These are documented by the hundreds and hundreds at sites such as ‘Terf is a Slur’ and ‘Peak Trans’.

Not exactly the language of a liberation movement.

This violent misogyny, however, is all fine and dandy with a large section of the left. Especially males.

Who would have guessed that the left involves quite so many men who have a massive chip on their shoulder against women and women’s rights and advances in society and have finally found a way of letting out their previously suppressed inner violent misogynist, albeit vicariously through going along with this vile material? Where they can look woke – pro-trans – instead of obviously looking like the vicious misogynists they clearly are?

Not hard to see where people like “Comrade Delta” and co. come from then. (Comrade Delta was a central leader of the British SWP, their national secretary no less, who sexually assaulted and raped female members and who was protected by other leaders.) The British SWP, not surprisingly, has massively drunk of the trans ideology kool-aid.

And look at the International Socialist Organisation in the United States. ISO was the largest organisation on the US left for several decades, before imploding earlier this year. ISO drank massively from the trans ideology kool-aid and was viciously hostile to gender-critical leftists. And, yes, of course, it also turned out to have been harbouring violent misogynists.

Indeed, it was the discovery that members of its central leadership had been acting rather like the Catholic hierarchy – in this case harbouring and protecting men assaulting women, while the Church hierarchy protected priests who raped kids and nuns who bashed kids – that brought ISO down like a pack of cards in a puff of wind. (American ISO is the group that NZ ISO linked to in the States and whose postmodernist identity politics they have recycled in relation to women’s rights.)

But it’s not just a man thing. There are also lots of “third-wave feminists” – you know, the ones who have benefited massively from the struggles waged by second-wave feminists and leftists but who have nothing but contempt for the very people who fought and partly won those huge battles.

It’s third-wave feminists who dismiss the women’s liberation activists of the late 1960s and early 1970s who actually got struggles for the right to abortion, equal pay and opportunities in the professions and workplaces in general, off the ground, along with progressive trade unionists and left-wing groups. Third-wave feminists haven’t really done much fighting for women – their ‘feminism’ often seems to be more about molly-coddling super-entitled males who can’t grow up and cope as adults, especially men who claim to be women and want to gate-crash women’s sport, women’s changing rooms, women’s toilets, women’s prisons, women’s health resources, and even the definition of what a woman is.

When I was young you had to have empathy with oppressed people to be leftwing. You didn’t pretend to be them, just empathised and solidarised with them. But, apparently not now, according to the new left. Indeed, it positively helps to be violently misogynist and also dismissive of the people who went before and won you so much. And if they complain, pretend to be them and claim they are oppressing you.

In acting like ungrateful spoilt brats, a chunk of younger leftists mimic the capitalists who have contempt for the workers whose labour-power provides their profits. British gender-critical transexual Miranda Yardley has, not surprisingly, called this layer of youthful faux radicals “the pampered offspring of neoliberalism”.

The people who write the vile stuff in these tweets actually believe they are on “the right side of history”, another of their bizarre ideas repeated by a bunch of people, mainly men, on the left. Sorry lads, but violent misogyny will never put you on the right side of history – rather, it puts you well and truly in the cesspit of history.”

[jesuisgourde]

love your collages! any tips on how to make them? do you print any of the material or you find them all in magazines etc?

Thank you!

A have a massive collection of clippings (4 XL accordion folders plus a few smaller single slot folders) that I've amassed. Most of the images I use are from magazines or art/photography books that I buy from thrift stores or used bookstores. I really only print things when there's something really extra specific that I'm looking for (like when I was working on @lesmiscollageproject and wanted specific things for the scenes I was interpreting). For a long time I only had one much smaller folder that I used, but in the last couple of years I haven't picked up my camera as much, and I started getting more into collage than photography. Last year I went on Craigslist and put out an ISO post for National Geographic magazines. I ended up buying 9 boxes of magazines from the 60s-80s for about $20 from a couple who were moving. It’s bougie as fuck but there’s this magazine called Kinfolk that has really cool artistic photos in it a lot of times, so I sometimes buy that. I also keep my eye out for anything interesting on the ground, which has been surprisingly lucrative. I also work in a used bookstore, so some stuff that I have comes from clippings or postcards or notes that people leave in books they sell to us. In each of my big accordion folders, I also have a smaller folder where I only keep clippings of text, just so I don't have to hunt for all the tiny clippings I have of like a single word or sentence.

(Extra sidenote: now that my collection is so large, my folders are separated by what type of clipping is in each. So I have one for black & white photos of people, one for color photos of people, and then one each for color or B/W photos of scenery/abstract images/any image without people.)

Before I moved to Chicago, the city I was living in had a "maker store" called Tinkertopia that was basically a creative reuse store. The guy who owned it sold all sorts of weird industrial scraps or bits and bobs that people would use in projects, like scraps of felt, or a whole barrel of corks, or keys, or color chips, or pieces of piano keys/hammers, or old photo slides, or bits of broken jewelry, etc. So I also have a lot of stuff from that shop that I use, although most cities don't have a shop like that. (Random story: When I moved across the country I learned that it's impossible to sell a piano, so instead my housemates and I smashed it apart and gave the guts to the Tinkertopia owner because I knew he sold piano parts.)

In terms of actually making the collages, sometimes I sit down with an idea already in mind (the one with all the flowers is based on a Jean Genet novel, for example) but usually I flip through all my clippings until something catches my eye and then build from there. Sometimes I go through my text folders and pick out a line or two and build from that instead of an image. The "patina of roofs" one was a phrase that popped in my head the first week I moved to Chicago, so I made that collage based on it. But usually my collages are just dictated by the whatever first image catches my interest, and then what I build off of it.

Also, in terms of tools, I have a cutting mat that is great because it's plastic, which means I can wash all the glue or paint off of it (but I didn't own one until last year and mostly just used a piece of cardboard when I was gluing things). Matte mod podge is your best friend because it dries clear and not too glossy and you can brush it on and be really accurate. And Exacto knives are also great if you want to get really accurate cut-outs. I do the majority of my collages in my journals, but I've also done collages just on printer paper/construction paper, on a random piece of baseboard I found in one of the houses I moved into, on a brick I found by the train tracks, on canvas, etc. I really like collage because you can pretty much use what ever you want and whatever you have!

But yeah! My collage materials collection started out very small, just photo/text clippings from some Nat Geos and a couple of old photography books and maybe a few random nonfiction books from Goodwill. That's a really good starting place!