#gish 2020

[wilwheaton]

This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective. There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him. That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”

(1) June 27, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

[presumablydeadarm]

currently reading through so bizarre and niche drama from 2019. oh my :D

[qqueenofhades]

can you assuage my creeping fear about the debate between harris and trump? my brain is like. the media will be salivating over any chance to get the story HARRIS FLUBS THE DEBATE MORE AT 6 unless she's 100% perfect for it. i keep telling myself that she's an incredibly seasoned prosecutor who knows exactly what to do to unravel these sorts of people, she has plenty of time to prepare, he's completely gone over the edge into incoherence most of the time, but i also keep thinking of how, after weeks of her absolutely pile-driving the republican party, the media will be circling for any mistake, mis-step, or imperfection to blow out of proportion to make it seem like she's failing. i guess what i'm afraid of is the other shoe dropping? or the bubble bursting? i'm afraid of this hope?

i was barely aware of obama in 2008, too young to vote and not paying attention, so i don't know how this kind of momentum turned into the juggernaut that got him elected. i know you believe that the same can happen here, how did he take on the predatory press?

Well, first, we need to recognize that the media treatment of the debate WILL be wildly unfair, full stop. If Trump shows up and puts on pants, he will be applauded by the media, because they have the lowest imaginable bar where he is concerned and everything that would have been multiply-disqualifying for any other candidate makes them just shrug and find a way to make excuses for him. So yes, he will literally be congratulated if he shows up on September 10, because that is how the media works. See: three relentless weeks of bullying Biden out of the race after the bad debate, barely mentioning Trump's equally insane diatribes at the same debate, and now, when he's gone full-on demented and is raving about AI-generated crowds at Kamala's events? Nary a peep. Lol.

However, the main narrative that's emerging from the Harris takeover is that voters and the media are miles apart on where they actually see this race going, and without the media's favorite chew toy of Biden's shortcomings, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid focusing on Trump's flaws, even tangentially. See the mainstream media reporters whining constantly that Harris hasn't given them a press conference and congratulating Trump for lying to them nonstop for an hour; they simply have no frame of reference that's remotely useful, because they are so beholden to making Trump look like a normal candidate and focusing on Harris's "flaws" as if they are remotely comparable to his. But at the same time, there has been a far heightened level of pushback on this BS manipulation, and everybody can see through it, precisely because the media and/or the right-wing smear machine has tried this so many times before and their tactics are now completely transparent. Ordinary voters don't give a shit whether Harris WiLl tAkE qUesTioNs fRoM tHe mEdiA; they're too busy flooding her campaign with donations, attending her rallies, signing up for volunteer shifts, and so forth. In fact, the reason the media is trying SO HARD to kill her momentum is because they, like Trump, rely on doing so. The more they try and don't succeed, the more panicked they'll get. We have to prepare for that, and we have to have her back.

That said, we should recall that Harris easily crushed Pence in their debate in 2020, and Pence was actually halfway presentable at it compared to Trump (which is a low bar, but still). The way Trump "wins" is that he just repeats a lot of lies forcefully and over and over, which Biden was ill-prepared to counter because he has a far more deliberate and decisive speaking style (related to stutter/speech difficulties, temperament as a politician, etc). Everything that I have seen from the Harris campaign in terms of communication so far, however, has been the exact kind of clapback that makes Trump look stupid and which shows that they are very attuned to the kind of strategies that work against that nonsensical bullying Gish gallop. Therefore, I have to trust that they have INTENSIVELY studied what went wrong with Biden/Trump in June, and also empowered Kamala to do what she does in her fashion and which has been extremely successful thus far at knocking down Trump's BS. Also, she's just a better and more fluent communicator than Biden, she looks and sounds more energetic, and those stupid aesthetic Vibes are half of the battle when it comes to convincing the public.

Also, we should recognize that Trump looked deeply creepy on stage at the debates with HRC in 2016, and that was when he was downright sane compared to now. He stalked her, he stood behind her, he rolled his eyes, he bullied her, and people noticed that (he subsequently won the election, yes, but if nothing else, 2024 feels nothing like 2016). If he has to stand on stage with a black woman kicking his ass, after his appearance at the NABJ event in Chicago quickly became a touchstone for how badly he fucked it up, he is going to just look BAD, and when that's the case, people will immediately fit it into the existing narrative (that he's scared of Harris and deeply racist and unglued). You can also play your part in making sure it does. At least half of the Bidengate furor came from Democrats melting down and yelling about it afterward, and that led into the knives-out media coverage that spiraled for 3.5 weeks until Biden withdrew. We can, yknow, NOT DO THAT this time!

So: yeah. We have to be aware that yes, the media coverage of the debate will find absolutely every excuse to praise Trump and bash Harris, because that's just baked in. However, we can also understand that there's a wide-and-getting-wider CHASM between how ordinary voters see things right now and how the media is desperate to play it, and the more transparent they get, the more easily we are able to call it out. (See Lawrence O'Donnell's rant the other night.) We are going to have to keep doing that and not let up, but it's not going to go well for Trump either way and it's still an open question as to whether he even shows up after trying SO hard to dodge. It's not out of the question that he'll announce on September 4 that by Harris not showing up to the Fox debate she never agreed to and which exists only in his deluded mind, he doesn't have to do the same on September 10. He is a scared fucking orange chickenshit who KNOWS he's badly outmatched against Harris and whose entire campaign strategy at this point relies on lying low and trying not to make voters remember again how much they hate him, which is already backfiring. And with your help, we can make him MORE scared all the way to prison. Let's do it.

[sophieinwonderland]

An Anti-Endo's Playbook

Hello! Are you an anti-endo looking to convert people to your cause? Well you're in luck because I have the guide for you!

As more studies come out supporting endogenic systems, arguing against pro-endos is becoming harder every day. But let me tell you a secret, people aren't perfectly logical machines. We're emotional and irrational. You don't need science or logic on your side. Instead, your job is to exploit that irrationality.

Let's start with something simple.

Argument by Assertion "Endos Aren't Scientifically Possible."

This is your opening and is possibly the most effective tool in your toolbox. Just say something and repeat it ad nauseum.

See, you don't need to be right. You just need to be confident and state what you want people to believe as a fact. Then repeat it again and again.

Propaganda experts might also call this The Big Lie.

People are social creatures and naturally trusting, so if you say something bold and confidently, they're going to be inclined to believe you. You don't actually need to provide any scientific evidence to support your case, or quotes from doctors, or anything else. Just keep repeating that endos aren't scientifically possible over and over again.

This might not sound effective, but there's a reason a third of the United States still thinks the 2020 election was rigged. If you're confident and don't waver for a moment, and keep repeating the lie, people will believe you.

But... what about the people that don't? What if an endo starts citing actual sources that contradict your claims. Normally, I might suggest finding sources of your own, but given the complete lack of support anti-endos have in academic papers, this may prove impossible. Luckily, we have more tricks up our sleeves.

Appeal to the Masses "Everyone Agrees That Endos Aren't Real."

As we all know, science isn't determined by scientists. Science is a democracy where anyone can vote. That's why even though scientists say we use all of our brains, we can know that the truth is that we only use 10% of our brains, because that's what most people believe and there have even been movies about it and stuff.

This is an the appeal to the masses.

Likewise, most people don't believe in endos. Or at least, that's what you say. See, you probably don't have any reliable polls on hand to back up that assertion, so we're kind of combining techniques here. We're appealing to the masses, but without evidence the masses agree with us, we just kind of have to assert it. As long as it sounds true, then people will believe it.

Like how I bet most people believed me when I said "most" people think we only use 10% of our brain. It SOUNDS like it could be true, and confirms our pre-existing biases that humans are kind of stupid, and that's really good enough isn't it?

What if this still doesn't work though? What if the endos keep demanding evidence?

Well, you can just give them too much of it.

The Gish Gallop: Source Overload

(Example)

You may be wondering, since I mentioned that there aren't any sources that support anti-endos, how this will work.

First, let's take a moment to understand the Gish Gallop. This debating tactic is most commonly associated with live debates where you throw out a bunch of nonsense claims that your opponent doesn't have time to answer because refuting them would take more time than you're allotted. Then when your claims go unanswered, it tricks spectators into thinking the claims are true.

This isn't generally as effective online where people can take hours to compose a response if they want... except...

The online equivalent of this is to overload your opponent with too many junk sources so that they can't debunk them all.

These do not need to support your point in any way. And you should NEVER screenshot them. Remember, your goal isn't to make the information accessible to your opponent. It's to keep the pro-endo occupied reading a 30-page document to try to figure out what it means and how it relates to what you're saying.

If the pro-endo does debunk your first paper, call them out for not addressing your other 20 articles too. Make them out to be ignoring evidence.

If they do call out this tactic and ask for a screenshot or quote of specific lines that back up your argument, respond by self-righteously telling the endo that it's not your job to educate them.

Speaking of education, what do we do about the endo sources?

Ad Hominems: Attacking the Researchers

Ad hominems are great for combating sources.

At the most basic level, you can get a lot of mileage out of throwing around the word "quack" a lot without finding any dirt on the researchers.

You might want to also claim the research is biased in some way. Say for example that a researcher has a hypothesis and they conducted an experiment to test that hypothesis. You can say that this makes the whole experiment biased and therefore should be dismissed because the research already had an expected outcome. Someone might counter and say that most scientists start with a hypothesis. But luckily, a lot of lay people won't realize that.

Let's say, for instance, that someone cites this paper on Vineyard Evangelicals who hear the voice of God as an example of non-traumagenic plural-like experiences.

Instead of addressing the merits of this paper or discussing whether hearing an autonomous and seemingly self-conscious voice identifying itself as God is plural or plural-like, you can look up to see if any of the 200,000 members of the Vineyard Church have ever reported negative experiences. Get one article with people calling it cult-like, and then accuse the endo of using "abusive sources."

Other Strategies For Dismissing Papers: Just Make Up Reasons Why Studies Are Invalid

For these, we're going to rely again on our argument by assertion, and assert some qualifiers for why a study should be dismissed.

First, accuse a study of being outdated.

Now, science doesn't actually have an expiration date. There is some research out there that may be outdated in the way that newer research comes out that disproves it. But in the absence of further research, old papers are generally considered useful, and it's not uncommon to see professionals today still cite sources dating back to the 80s or earlier.

But if you just throw out a number of years for research to expire, you can be sure that many people will take it at face value. But be careful with this. People might believe that 20-year-old research is too old. But it will be harder to sell them on something like "any research older than 5 years is outdated." That's going to be a problem when a lot of endogenic research is actually pretty recent, coming out within the last decade.

Another tactic you can try is to Attack the Domain.

As we're all taught in middle school in the US, only .gov and .edu sources are valid.

This is an oversimplification and is no longer applicable in higher education. But luckily, you're not targeting educated individuals. If you're making this argument, the ones you're probably trying to convince will be traumatized children between the ages of 14 and 17. And for this demographic, this argument is perfect. Not only have they never been to college themselves but neither have anyone in their friendgroup.

They have no concept of what counts as valid source in academic settings, and it's your job to keep it that way. Indoctrinate them young, and they'll stay yours forever.

Demonizing The Enemy: "Endos are Harming Real Systems"

This can take many forms.

At the basic level, you can do the anecdotal "endos are bad because they said mean things about me once." (Be sure to remove any context of things you may have said or did to them first.) There are plenty of endogenic systems out there in the world, and some are going to be cruel and abusive. Just like any other group.

These people are useful to your cause. If you ever had contact with abusive endos or pro-endos before, make sure that you write in detail about your bad experiences and specifically make it clear that they weren't an endogenic system who happened to be bad, but they're bad because they're endogenic. Also, if they're a traumagenic pro-endo, be sure that in your post you just refer to them as an "endo." The goal is smearing the entire endogenic community, and differentiating between abusive endos and traumagenic pro-endos will detract from that goal.

A well known example is the term "traumascum." Despite the fact that its coiner is traumagenic and most of the endogenic community dislikes it, it's important that when you make your emotional arguments to show why endos are bad, you only refer to it as being created and used by "endos."

If you really want to go all-in on this, something else you can do is...

Blame Endos For All Ableism

For this part, you want to try to convince people that any fakeclaiming or ableism they've ever experienced is because of this small niche group of systems on the internet.

In actuality, fakeclaiming DID systems has happened for a long time. The Imitated DID narrative was heavily pushed in all the way back in the 90s. And many of the people fakeclaimed today are TikTokers who are IDing as traumagenic DID systems.

Don't let these facts stop you though.

For the first part, the good thing is that, as I said before, many of the people you're trying to convince are children. If you tell them that fakeclaiming is worse today than ever before, who are they to argue? They have no frame of reference. They're usually younger systems who have only known that they're systems for a few years.

For the second, you can just ignore it. Or better yet, just label all the "cringe" systems as endos, regardless of whether they are or not.

Is calling traumagenic systems "endos" fakeclaiming their trauma? Sure.

But really, you fakeclaiming their trauma is really the endos' fault. If they didn't exist, then you wouldn't be able to call people endos, now would you?

See how smoothly that works?

All Anecdotes of People Who Thought They Were Endogenic Are Proof Endos Don't Exist

Anecdotes are your best friend. If you can find a small handful of people who previously thought they were endogenic and turned out to be wrong, you can weaponize this against all endos.

You can use these anecdotes as both proof that endos don't exist AND that they're harmful to real systems at the same time.

This particular tactic has also been used to great effect by anti-transgender groups, using a small handful of detrans people as proof that transitioning doesn't work and as a means of limiting trans rights. The success of these groups at spinning that narrative is how you can know that this tactic is effective!

More Ad Hominems: Attacking the Opposition

Yup. We're bringing in more ad hominems. This is one of the most important tools in your belt. If you feel like you're losing an argument, you can just attack the person you're arguing with. Actually, you should do this before the argument even starts.

Discrediting your enemy right at the beginning, making people see them as a bad person, will immediately make people not want to associate with them and even make them inclined to disagree with whatever they say.

So try to dredge up anything you can on them to weaponize. Or just casually accuse them of being something-phobic or something-ist.

Calling them ableist is easy. You can shout out ableism accusations right from the start just on the merits of being pro-endo.

If they're a spiritual plural, you can call them racist. This works easiest with tulpamancers since tulpa has a Tibetan etymology. (And don't worry; you won't need to pretend to care about appropriation outside of this context, such as the tulpa appearing in creepypastas or media like Supernatural or X-Files, or Genshin Impact's Hydro Tulpa boss. This is about winning an argument, not being morally consistent.) But it can work with any sort of spiritual system. If you're feeling particularly bold, you can actually claim that all possession states around the world are closed practices and anyone who claims spiritual plurality is appropriating these cultures.

Also, if they use the word "sysmed," because this is derived from transmed, be sure to call them transphobic because they're appropriating trans words. Pay no mind to if they're transgender themselves, or how little sense it would make to appropriate their own language.

Bully into Submission

If simple ad hominems don't work, dogpile and bully them into silence. Invite your friends to join in. Bombard them with constant hate posts and harassment.

The goal here is not to convert people to your side, but to remove them from the conversation. Keep the accusations going. Make up rumors about them. Try to falsely report them to get them banned. You want to make them suffer so much that they never want to post again. To ensure, one way or another, that there is one less pro-endo in the world.

This will work best on people who themselves are traumatized and vulnerable. Luckily, there are a lot of people like that in the pro-endo community you can silence this way.

Be warned though of the emotional tank.

These people have personalities that can tank a shocking amount of abuse and emotional damage, and even turn abuse they receive around and use it as a talking point against your side. They take the old adage of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" to heart.

If you try to harass an emotional tank, rather than silencing them, you're likely to only make them stronger and more determined.

Speaking of traumatized people...

Try To Make People Associate Endos With Trauma

Remember to know your audience. And your audience is a group of trauma survivors.

If you really, really want to ensnare them, play on that.

Use it to your advantage. One super simple way to do this is to throw around cult accusations. Just saying endos are a cult will immediately trigger cult survivors and make them want to avoid the pro-endo community.

A more complicated version of this can be done if an endo mentions that we don't have proof that DID or OSDD forms from trauma 100% of the time.

What you want to say in this situation is that "to prove all cases of DID come from trauma, you would need to traumatize children."

You can add a line specifically accusing the endo of wanting to traumatize children, or just let the implication hang in the air.

Now, someone paying attention might recognize that such a study couldn't prove what it claims to. Just like if you did a study where you hit a bunch of people in the arm with a hammer and broke their arms, you couldn't prove that 'all broken arms are caused by hammers.'

But you aren't saying this because you think it's logical. You're saying this because you're trying to get your audience of survivors of childhood trauma to think of endos as people who want to traumatize children.

If you can properly trigger them, then that rational part of their brain will just shutoff and they won't question your premise or logic too much.

How to Keep People Once Indoctrinated

Remember, the conversion process is only the beginning. After that, you want to make sure that they stay anti-endo. A good place to start is to...

Make Sure Friendship is Contingent on Them Being Anti-Endo

Pull people into anti-endo servers that have strict rules against pro-endos and even neutrals. Post "pro-endos" in your DNI to make it known that you don't ever want to interact with any pro-endos.

At the same time, encourage them to cutoff pro-endo friends and avoid pro-endo spaces. Ideally, you want the convert isolated from anyone who might be able to change their minds in the future.

Once you've cut them off from all pro-endos, their only system friends will be in the anti-endo community. And if they ever step outside of that box, they'll be instantly banned from their anti-endo servers and blocked by their anti-endo "friends."

With this, not only have you converted them, but you can reliably keep them on your side forever. Or at least, until they're willing to destroy all their relationships with other systems online in order to get out.

Just Let The Endos Do It For You

Endos thesmelves will actually be your secret weapon in this endeavor.

It's a well-known fact that hate breeds more hate. If you fakeclaim someone, they're going to be angry, and will likely resort to personal attacks. Once your newly-converted anti-endo has been successfully indoctrinated, get them to make some public anti-endo posts. The more hateful and invalidating, the better. Preferably where pro-endos can see.

When endos respond respond to the convert's hate post by sending hate of their own, it will only confirm that endos are actually hateful. It doesn't matter who started it. It only matters that you get an angry reaction out of the endos.

And the more the endos react to hate with more hate, the more the convert will double down.

The absolute worst thing for you as an anti-endo would be if endos stopped responding to hate with more hate of their own, and took a moment to consider if how they're reacting is actually in the best interest of their cause, of if they're just being baited into lashing out from hurt and anger themselves.

[uboat53]

LONG RANT (TM) time? LONG RANT (TM) time.

INTRODUCTION

One of the most insidious tactics in politics is the tactic of making wild and false allegations. I'm not talking about traditional spin, where a politician presents generally accurate information in the most positive way for their position, we all do that at some level. No, I'm talking about wild allegations, usually made in only a sentence or two without any supporting evidence, that are so false that it's clear that even the person making the allegation couldn't have reasonably believed it.

This is a modified form of the Gish Gallop, a technique which weaponizes lies. Duane Gish, a creationist and inventor of the Gish Gallop, discovered that, while it only takes a second or two to tell a lie, it takes far longer than that to disprove it. He would, therefore, begin every debate by spewing a torrent of wild falsehoods, forcing his opponent to spend their entire time debunking them rather than making any argument of their own.

Similarly, people in politics today, particularly MAGA Republicans, will often make wild accusations knowing that people with short attention spans will hear the accusation but won't pay attention long enough to hear the rebuttal. Even worse, through a process known as the "spacing effect", a lie repeated often enough will embed itself in the mind of people who hear it even if it is actually rebutted.

HOW TO ADDRESS IT

Given that, how can we approach this tactic?

First of all, I want you to get out of the habit of just reading the claim itself; read the name of the person making the claim. People who use this tactic rely on other people just reading information and accepting it as true without checking the source. Get used to paying attention to who is saying what and start to test some of their statements. Granted, a lot of stuff that people say is hard to fact-check, but a lot of it isn't; check those things to see if they're true. This will allow you to put together patterns where you can recognize things like "hey, this guy tells a lot of lies" or "this news source doesn't report news that's good/bad for one side." Knowing this helps you better understand the information you're receiving.

Secondly, once you recognize a pattern of lies or even a single case of an egregious lie, get used to ignoring that source of information. You don't have to listen to something just because someone says it and you don't have to turn off your brain when you engage in politics. If someone lies a lot or even if you just caught them in one particularly bad lie, it's okay to take that into account like you would with other people in your life and stop trusting them.

AN EXAMPLE

I'm going to start with an example that I saw recently. We're going to look Jeffrey Clark. If you know him at all, you probably know him as the Justice Department lawyer who wanted to give Trump permission to send the military to seize ballot boxes after the 2020 election. Only the full-throated opposition of every other lawyer in the government stopped Trump from making him acting-Attorney General.

These days he's being investigated by several layers of law enforcement for his actions around the 2020 election, the Washington D.C. Bar is in the processing of disbarring him, he's been indicted in Georgia for his actions around the 2020 elections, and he's currently working for a think tank closely linked with the Trump campaign. Here's his Wikipedia article if you're interested in learning more.

On September 23rd, Elon Musk retweeted a post by Jeffrey Clark in which Clark complained that no one could find a transcript of any case that Kamala Harris had prosecuted, giving him a much larger audience than he had on his own. Let's look at that claim, shall we?

So Kamala Harris has been Vice-President since 2020, was a Senator from 2016-2020, was Attorney General of California from 2010-2016, and was District Attorney of San Francisco from 2002-2010. None of these are positions where a person would personally try or argue cases in court. However, she was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County from 1990-1998, a deputy district attorney in San Francisco from 1998-2000, and a San Francisco City Attorney from 2000-2002. All of these are positions where she may have tried cases herself.

This is convenient because these are specific places with specific dates. Court transcripts are public records, so all you'd need to do is go to the courthouse in question and request the transcripts. I haven't tried San Francisco, but the Alameda County Court website has a search function where you can search for cases by name. Once you have the case number, you can request the transcript for that case. All of that costs money and requires you to make a login, so I haven't done it, but it's something you could do for around $100 or less. I haven't checked the San Francisco Courts, but I imagine it's similar there as well.

And I'm sure Jeffrey Clark, Attorney-at-Law, knows all of this. I'm not a lawyer and have no formal legal training and I know all of this, so he certainly does. In other words, this is not just a clearly false claim, it's a clearly false claim that the person who made it KNEW was clearly false when he made it.

RESULTS

As we've seen, this isn't a pattern of lies (though Jeffrey Clark certainly has that as well), but it is a particularly egregious one. Mr. Clark made an accusation here that he clearly knew was false even as he made it. He lied about as thoroughly as it's possible to lie, but he did it in a way that he thought he could weasel out of.

You see, Mr. Clark phrased it as an innocent query, "I'm just asking questions", because he thought that, when called on the fact that he implied Harris' case transcripts were being hidden, he could just say that he hadn't said that. But we know that he would have known they're not being hidden, his purpose in asking the question was to imply the answer in people's minds without having to take responsibility for it. In this way it's actually much worse than just a standard lie.

You can also make some assumptions about Elon Musk in all of this given that he shared this post as well. Clearly he has retweeted at least one fairly major claim without fact-checking it. Looking back on a few other things he's reposted, it seems as if he has a pattern of doing this. If you're taking what he posts at face value, it's pretty likely that you're getting a lot of misinformation fed to you.

CONCLUSION

So here I've given you a test and an example of that test applied to a real-life case. I think I've made it clear that Jeffrey Clark is a person who lies very deliberately about things he definitely knows are false and does so in a way that he thinks lets him deny responsibility for the lie. Because of that, it's safe to say that you should not trust anything he says unless you can verify it with a reputable source and you may want to question trusting what Elon Musk posts as well.

But don't think that's the end of it, take this test and apply it everywhere! If you catch someone lying a lot, or if you catch them in a particularly egregious lie like this one, stop trusting them!

There are so many sources of information around these days saying so many different things that you'll never be able to sort through it all unless you start whittling your information diet down to the people and groups that are consistently saying accurate things. Much of the information we receive is hard to fact-check, so our best method is to fact-check the things that aren't hard to check and use them to determine the reliability of a source.

Curating a good diet of information starts with cutting out the worst and least accurate sources of information. Hope this helps!

[mittensmorgul]

2022 in Mittens Fic

It’s time again for the annual accounting of things I wrote this year! I’m pleased that while still a disappointingly low total for me, I still beat my total word count from 2021, so progress is being made, which I’ll always gladly take! Honestly anything is better than that 2020 total at this point lolol! I long since abandoned my goal of ever surpassing the 250k i posted in 2015, but that’s okay! I still wrote a decent bit!

For reference, past year end summaries can be found here:

2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | the closest thing I have to a 2015 wrap up post is the lil bit of text at the bottom of 2016′s post… even though my two most popular fics were from 2015 lololol

I managed a Pinefest fic, a DCRB fic, AND a DCBB fic this year, which is the first time I’ve ever managed all three, so go me I guess? And maybe I enjoy working to deadlines more than I ever assumed before? Or maybe I would’ve written even more if I hadn’t been pushing at deadlines (and letting myself slack off, even if rest is important and beneficial to writer brain, when I was far ahead of schedule...). But I’m overall pretty pleased with this year’s works.

I tied last year’s fic total, with six, but beat last year’s word count with 117,486, so go me! Not even counting the ~63k fic i’m working on for pinefest this year...even if it’s already written it’s not posting until February. Love rolling over a big fic into the new year every year like this. it feels weirdly like cheating somehow, yet I do it every year :’D

Also slightly cheating, but since I mentioned it last year, I still haven’t missed a week of my eternal rewatch podcast, @spngeorg which is still going strong! Uploading episode 91, 5.09 The Real Ghostbusters tonight! If my millions of words of written meta aren’t enough for you, you can now hear me being grumpy about this show out loud! (new episodes drop every Thursday night at or around midnight eastern time, if you’re interested you can start from the beginning on AnchorFM or wherever you enjoy podcasts!)

Let’s get to the fic! Presented in the order they posted:

Mr. Fix It (54,383 words, rated M) written for the Pinefest. It started with a photo of the shopping center sign that Mel sent me several years back, and the instruction “this is a writing prompt.” Amazingly, it was a great writing prompt! and a great art prompt, thanks to @lotrspnfangirl! Dean runs a repair shop called Mr. Fix It with Charlie, and Cas runs the bar at the other end of the strip mall, Steve’s. There’s shady real estate dealings, secret identities, and found family taking care of each other through it all.

lectio in equis (13,016 words, rated T) my first ever DCRB, and I screamed delightedly when I claimed @scarlettmichkat ’s artwork! Actually still kinda lowkey screaming about it. I LOVE this artwork. Like, wanna frame it and hang it in my living room love. Canon case fic, sort of, as Dean and Cas get to play cowboy for a day looking for a lost MoL chapter storage facility out in the New Mexico desert. Plus, Jesse and Cesar being the best retired hunters.

Baby X-File (2,698 words, rated T) Written for the final GISH hunt, a crossover scene between SPN and the X Files, canon-adjacent to both, to a prompt from my team captain who isn’t on tumblr... thank you Sammy!

honey wine  (764 words, rated T) annual deancasversary fic! They go to the rennfest, and medieval hilarity and fluff ensues

Heart Shaped Box  (43,504 words, rated M) my DCBB this year, canon case fic wherein Dean and Cas are the case. beautifully illustrated by @marvfortytwo​ and a cathartic walk through a series of memories. I mostly wanted to revisit . Set within days of Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty, because that’s exactly what happened in canon as we all know (I SAID, AS WE ALL KNOW).

The Ghost of Christmas Present(s) (3,121 words, rated T) annual holiday fic, Dean and Cas attempt holiday shopping together. hilarity and shmoop ensue.

And that’s my year in fic. Like I said at the top, I’ve already got more than half this total written to post in 2023, so it looks like I’m still not slowing down. Since I posted my To Be Written file’s stats last year, I figured I should do the same again...

lol... a year later, two pages and 1400 more words added... i swear at this rate i will never finish writing it all, which I find weirdly comforting.

Thanks to everyone who’s read, kudos’ed, commented, reblogged, rec’ed, and enjoyed anything I’ve written in the last year. I love you all. <3 See you in 2023!

[the-eyes-archive]

OLD! Pre 2020s

More Gish!

[uswnt5]

I feel like we spiraled about this back in April 2020 too, but I’m now laughing at Anna Beth Gish, who I only know of from PLL, commenting on this pic like maybe she knows the Re- crew too 😆

[laf-outloud]

sooooo curious what the end of gish means for random acts. it was the main revenue stream and Acts generator for at least the last few years. haven't heard about new programs from them.

It may be the start of divesting the charity, or at least shrinking their outreach. Running a charity is a lot of work and based on their published financials, they've already seen a significant decline in donations from the height of GISH and SPN. It may no longer be worth the work involved to keep the charity going.

According to Random Acts own reports, the contributions have gone down significantly since 2017. The numbers below are from RA's tax forms with the exception of 2021, since the form hasn't yet been published, but the contributions are listed in their annual report.

2017: $1,799,387

2018: $1,198,219

2019: $910,283

2020: $600,293

2021: $287,582

To go from 1.8 million to just 290K in five years is a significant loss, particularly for the work involved in keeping it going.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Being mad at CNN misses the point.

You don't want CNN to fact check in real time during a debate. You want fact checks to not be needed. A 2 hour block of time wherein people are exposed to unchallenged, unedited Trump is not the thing to have a moral panic about. Its too late to hide him, shame him, or otherwise debunk him in the eyes of the people you think cannot be trusted to spot his lies and to be appropriately offended that a criminal and coup leader has the nerve to run for President again. You want to live in a world where someone who has said and done the things he has done, who associates with the people he associates with cannot earn one vote, let alone tens of millions.

CNN has a cynical financial interest in agreeing to not fact check the candidates in real time if that's the only way both of them will agree to show up. It has a cynical financial interest in "platforming" a fascist.

Its also the only viable path I can think of to discredit the fascist. I firmly believe this. Those ~15 million people who sat on their hands in 2016 "cause Killery" or "Bernie was robbed" had to live and breath Trump for 4 years to be persuaded to show up in 2020. We can't go back and redo the Trump Presidency for these people. If Jan 6, the Secret Documents stuff, the torrent of abuse guaranteed to incite harassment, stalking, and possibly violence against his critics, juries, and court officers, or memories of his Presidency aren't enough to nudge these people back into the voting booth; then the only thing I can think of is to just let Trump be Trump in a neutral-ish setting where neither he nor Biden are in control of the narrative and hope for the best.

The pithy phrase that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is a rule of thumb not a law of physics. Journalism also alternates between holding the idiot ball and aiding and abetting authoritarianism for all the reasons that are widely discussed: corruption, incompetence, golden mean fallacies, legitimate human frailty, structural oppression of real journalists. etc.

But I firmly believe this, if we're at the point where we can't think of anything better than trying to keep the monster off the screens of the people we think may be too dumb or monstrous themselves to know a monster when they see one; then having a demagogue demagogue his heart out for two hours while a person who has been a politician longer than I have been alive* turns in a shockingly poor performance is the least of our problems.

*And I have existed in equal parts in the 20th and 21st centuries as of this writing.

Whatever theory of change or principled desire to contain contagion and avoid guilt by association is represented by getting mad at CNN for not being meaner to Trump during the debate is a fundamental misunderstanding of how we got here.

And again, CNN is guilty of many, many, many monumental sins against intellectual integrity and journalistic competency. That's one small piece of the problem. Because that's how you get to a debate where its pointless to fact check because its physically impossible to parse the gishgallop and I think the moderators also likely understand something the commentariat does not: the point of a gish gallop is to break and exhaust the fact checker because the lies contained in a gish gallop do not matter. Heck, the audience isn't even expected to remember them. Its meant to evoke a mood.

Devoting more time to them gives them more legitimacy than simply ignoring them and allowing their absurd antics to speak for themselves. If you're fact checking a gish gallop then the gish galloper has won.

I think I understand where this instinct comes from. In some small part it’s mistrust of other people who could be watching and be influenced by this spectacle. In a huge part I think it’s more about vengeance and hope. Vengeance in that by dragging Trump out of the safety of the mirror universe and the apocalyptic new apostolic epistemology that succors him, that the disgraced priests of expertise will redeem themselves by shaming the bad man and exposing him as a fool and villain. Then forever afterwards we can return to a mythic past or go forward into a utopian future where even if we have very different values and interests, we at least agree on the facts and deviations from reality will result in appropriate amounts of shame instead of election to highest office.

[lfmcn]

IMDb Puanı En Yüksek Bilim Kurgu Dizileri

Dizi ve filmler izleyicilerine farklı duygular yaşatır. Özellikle bilim kurgu türü, içinde bulunduğumuz çağdan bambaşka bir zamana, evrene birleri alır götürür. Bu yüzden de dizi severlerin her zaman en çok ilgisini çeken türlerden birisi bilim kurgu dizileri olmuştur. Macera ve fantastik hikayelerinde dikkat dikkat çeken en iyi, IMDb puanı en yüksek bilim kurgu dizileri sizler için derledik.

En Çok İzlenen Bilim Kurgu Dizileri

Muhteşem senaryoları ve başarılı oyuncu kadrolarıyla akıllarda kalan bilim kurgu dizileri şunlardır:

Black Mirror (2011- ) IMDb: 8.8 Black Mirror 2011 yılında vizyona girdiği andan itibaren piyasayı kasıp kavurdu. Uzun süredir devam eden dizi, her bölümde farklı bir hikâye anlatıyor ve oyuncu kadrosu da ona göre değişiyor. Aksiyon, macera, bilim kurgu, dram türlerinin hepsini kapsayan dizi, devlet politikaları, gizli senaryolar gibi pek çok detaya odaklanıyor.

Stranger Things (2016- ) IMDb: 8.8 IMDb puanı en yüksek bilim kurgu dizileri arasında yer alan Stranger Things’te ana konu olarak kaybolan bir çocuğu arayan annenin maceraları anlatılıyor. Fakat senaryo, 80’li yıllarda çekilmiş bir korku filmine değinerek daha ilginç hale geliyor. Yönetmenler Matt Duffer ve Ross Duffer öncülüğünde çekimleri yapılıyor.

Dark (2017- 2020 ) IMDb: 8.7 Dark, son yılların en iyi bilim kurgu dizileri arasında gösteriliyor. Netflix orijinal yapımı dizide bir çocuk gizemli biçimde ortadan kaybolur ve dört aile dram dolu bir hayat yaşamaya başlar. Bunlar ekseninde maceralar devam ederken son zamanlarda yaşananlar hem karakterlerde hem de kasabada yeni bir sayfa açar.

Westworld (2016- 2022) IMDb: 8.7 Dizi, son teknoloji donanımlara sahip yapay zekaların kullanıldığı bir oyun parkında geçen karalık olayları merkezine alır. Gelecekte yaşanacak vahşi batı maceralarını anlatır. Başrollerinde öneli isimlerin bulunduğu dizinin yönetmenliğini Jonathan Nolan yapar. Üç sezon devam eden dizi hala yayınlanmakta, her yeni sezonu hayranları tarafından merak la beklenmektedir.

The X Files (1993 – 2018) IMDb: 8.6 Başrollerinde David Duchovny, Annebeth Gish ve Gillian Anderson gibi isimler bulunan dizide iki FBI ajanının macerası anlatılır. Bunlardan birisi inancıyla öne çıkmakta, diğeri ise şüpheleriyle öne çıkmakta. Gizli güçler ve gizemli kişiler iki ajanın bazı olayların üzerine gitmesini engellemeye çalışır. Fakat bunlar kapatılan dosyaları yeniden kurcalamaya başlarlar. 11 sezon boyunca devam eden dizinin hem bölümünde farklı bir dosya olayı ele alınır.

Doctor Who (2005- ) IMDb: 8.6 Dizi, 12 sezon boyunca ekranlarda kalmayı başarmıştır. Tarihin efsanevi yapımları arasına girmiş, kendine has tavırları, garip ismi ve muhteşem bilgisi ile bilinen Doktor karakterinin hikayesini ekranlara taşımıştır. Rose Tyler adındaki kadın, gizemli bir karakter olan ve kendisini Doktor olarak tanıtan adamla tanışır. Fakat bu tanışma sıradan bir olay olmanın çok ötesindedir. Hem Rose’nin hem de bütün insanlığın hayatı tehlikededir. Read the full article

[keithsandwich]

I don't know how to set this so I will keep it brief ... I am IN LOVE with your wrotung style gish it is so good and smooth making you feel everything in that tasty morsel you gifted us 😻😻💗💘💞💖💕💓💝💌💌 How do you do it ? How you manage to capture emotions so beautiful and create steamy imagery in such short fics ? Grant us your blessing revealing the secret advices to create good smut 😻😻

Have a fantastic day 🙏🤗

Please keep up the Wonderful job 🙈😻😻🦌🙏💌💌

Julie, you're too kind 🥹

I'm not sure if I can tell you how I do it because 99% of the time I'm writing in English I feel like I don't know what I am doing at all. The struggle is REAL, so you don't know how much it means to me knowing that you enjoy my fanfics. Thank you so much!

But let me try to speak about my experience with writing in general:

I've started writing when I was 14 in a Chat RP. It's not the same as writing a fanfic, but I consider this experience a lot because other people there really guided me to improve my writing. I used to be extremely objective and brief, and because we were building scenes, little by little I understood I had to set up more elements: how my character is interacting with the scenario and with the other characters, how they are feeling, how those feelings are showing, if they are at all. So before starting writing I got used to imagine the scene and feel it, so I could describe it better. This is very, very basic, I know, but I remember those lessons to this day.

Other thing that helps a lot is reading. Very basic advice too, I know, but reading really do wonders. It can inspire you, it helps you build your own references and understands the multiple ways you can use the words to express yourself, besides increasing your vocabulary. This is where I fail the most with English, I think, because I read much more Portuguese literature than anything else in English -- and I am confident about my writing in Portuguese, while in English... eh.

Inspiration is essential as well. When I feel I'm blocked, I start looking for things that may be inspiring. Songs, movies, reading other stories, discussing an idea with a friend, a memory, taking a walk and seeing something outside... If you're actively searching for an inspiration, you'll find it. Here it's important to understand that the inspiration comes from the feeling something brings to you rather than the thing itself, so you don't have to look for something literal. Creating is transforming those feelings into new things. Sometimes I put the craziest songs in my character/ship playlists, just because of the feelings of it. I know if other people listened to them they would be very confused as to why I relate some songs to some characters 😅

This last point is a reminder to myself, as well: just write. I was terrified of writing in English, I really was. I only started trying in December 2020 and just because a great friend encouraged me and offered to proofread my stories. And she's always telling me to just write. Feel the scene, let the words flow, don't push yourself aiming for perfection. Just write. You won't go anywhere if you don't.

And God bless Google 🙌 I'm always there searching for synonyms and checking if what I have in mind makes sense.

[marithlizard]

This explanation of what went wrong makes sense to me. Trump is an incoherent lying madman who reminds me more of Hitler every day, but what he was doing in the debate turns out to have a name - the Gish Gallop.

"It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him." 

------

Outside of this debate, Biden's been sharp and focused enough, so I was shocked to hear how badly he did. This is why - he got rattled by an opponent who spits outrageous lies like a Gatling gun, and moderators who made no attempt to fact-check or challenge him. Trump literally claimed that Democratic states promote executing babies. He claimed credit for things he didn't do and blamed Biden for things he did himself. Even the people on his team are, I suspect, quietly hoping he will drop dead soon after taking office. That the media's attitude is "yes, he's a deranged wannabe dictator who will destroy our country and half the world, no surprises there. But back to Biden, didn't he sound awful? Should he step down?" is a whole new level of terrifying.

if i see one more article, post, or news anchor talking about how joe biden is old, i'm putting my fist through a window. i feel like i've gone through the fucking looking glass.

this is project 2025, trump's plan for what he'll do if elected. whatever you think is in there, it's worse. watch a breakdown of the highlights here. this man wants to unravel the fabric of our democracy for good - this all aside from his vitriolic hatred of poc, his determination to start ww3, and the fact that he can't string a sentence together without telling outrageous and easily verifiable lies. his administration will start their crusade to exterminate trans people on day one, and they won't stop there.

do not talk to me about how joe biden is old, as if that could ever matter to me more than my life or the lives of my friends and family. my little sister is 14, she's trans, and i don't know what to tell her when we talk about politics, because one of these people wants her dead and the other one is old and some of you are still acting like those problems are equals.

i can't fucking stand this. i'm not hearing it this time, we are not repeating 2016. refusing to vote is not an act of protest, it is an act of complacency, and our most vulnerable will suffer for your negligence. vote like your life depends on it, because for some of us, it really fucking does.

[uboat53]

Well, the Trump town hall thing has happened on CNN and I've read a few pieces about it and… yeah. TL;DR at the end.

First things first, CNN screwed up royally. Journalists had a hard time with Trump when he first came on the scene in 2015 but, by the end of his presidency, they were starting to get fairly good at it. Chris Wallace (for CNN, no less!), Leslie Stahl (for CBS), and Jonathan Swan (for Axios) did great interviews with Trump in 2020 and 2021 that were able to cut through his screen of nonsense and outright lies and present fairly true information along with a solid impression of the interviewee (Trump) to their viewers.

So what did CNN do wrong? Two things as far as I can see. First off, the interview was live. In a live interview it's easy for the interviewee to be aggressive and just run right over the moderator as Trump likes to do. It's also hard to fact check in a live interview since it takes longer to debunk a lie than to say it, and Trump is a master of the Gish Gallop.

Secondly, they allowed the crowd to be stacked with Trump supporters. If there's one easy way to undermine your own reporter every time she fact check's the interviewee (which, in Trump's case, will be a lot), it's to fill the studio with a crowd that will boo her and cheer every lie and falsehood.

Given that, let's be clear who screwed up here and when. No one screwed up in deciding to interview Trump, he's the leading contender for the Republican nomination for President at the moment and, love him or hate him, his views are legitimate news. The anchor didn't screw up either, she was put in a bad situation and, as far as I can tell, she did her best with what was given to her.

No, the person who screwed up here was the person who decided that a live interview in front of an audience of Trump supporters was an acceptable format. This person was likely under the mistaken assumption that the job of journalism is to transmit the views of "important people" to their audience.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The job of journalism is to transmit truth to their audience as far as truth could be known. Somethings genuinely are up for debate, but, on things that the journalist knows are crystal clear, their job is not to just parrot an important person or allow them to speak unfiltered to their audience.

Sometimes journalism does mean educating your audience about the views of important people, but only in context and with other information. Sending a journalist to try to wrangle one of the most notoriously untrustworthy people in politics in front of a crowd of his own supporters is about as close to criminal malpractice in journalism as you can get.

TL;DR:

So, yes, CNN screwed up, but they didn't screw up by interviewing Trump and they didn't screw up in the interview itself, they screwed up by using the venue that is the least likely to provide accurate information for their audiences.

[the-eyes-archive]

OLD! Pre 2020s

Vector art of Gish and Tetris.

[saywhatjessie]

Not just one, but TWO requests?! Oh we are popular today.

I've gotten at least one tattoo a year ever year since I turned 20, so starting in 2014. I took all of these pictures just now so the ones that look old it's because they are old lol.

HERE WE GO

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Interrobang!? Baby's first tattoo. She started meaningful but not too meaningful. It's my favorite punctuation symbol on the inside of my left wrist. It only took twenty minutes and to this day it's the least amount of money I spent on a tattoo but I think that's because I got lightheaded and they had to give me a lollipop.

Squiggly line I went with my friends to get tattoos before a fan convention in 2015 don't worry about it we're moving on

Lake House Coordinates Matching tattoos I got with my sister for my college graduation showing the coordinates for the lake house we had as kids that we since had to sell. The most visible whenever I worked as a cashier and the one I have had to explain the most.

L'amore e l'arma (Pretend there's an accent on that e I don't feel like looking for special characters.) It means "Love is the weapon" in Italian. Love is the weapon is a NeverShoutNever song lol. This was a last minute tattoo for the last minute tattoo GISH item in 2017. It doesn't really mean a lot to me but it looks sexy when I wear tank tops so like. No regerts.

Tattoo of me getting a tattoo This is everyone's favorite. This was the 2018 GISH tattoo item. Some people tried to find clever ways to get around the wording but I'm like fuck no I'm committing put my fucking face on my leg. It's one of the funniest things I've ever done, it looks fucking sick, and I'm still mad to this day that it's not in the GISH hall of fame like lOOK AT IT IT RULES

Three of Wands This is a twofer! The second tatoo of 2018, it's my Forever Unfinished because the artist doesn't tattoo anymore and it's also the one I got done in someone's living room! Everyone needs at least one tattoo from someone with a tattoo machine that's done in someone's living room. Anyway, it healed like shit and there's supposed to be watercolor in the middle so I'm always seesawing between asking someone else to finish it or just getting the whole thing covered up. It's on the inside of my right forearm so that's like prime real estate. IDK, dude, it will look like this for the forseeable future.

Cat paw print Back to basiccs - and I mean the most basic - this is my cat's paw print on my ribs. Done by the same tattoo artist in the tattoo of me getting a tattoo, which is kinda neat. Yes, it's supposed to look like that: I took my cat's paw, inked it, and put it on paper and she just did an exact recreation. I think it's cute. He's not dead or anything, I just love him.

finger rings Yes, I SOMEHOW got a tattoo before everything shut down in 2020. I had no way of knowing things would shut down - I got this bitch in January - but I was SO RELIEVED when we started quarantine that I'd gotten my 2020 tattoo so early. It was extremely lucky. Anyway, each line represents one of my siblings. On my middle finger because it looks dope and also because they're my siblings so flipping them off is a standard greeting lol.

Destiel mixtape Ayyy lmao. This is the tattoo that's gotten the most internet attention for obvious reasons. Tattooed literally the day before the first Valentine's Day after November 5th. Like we were about to have a Destiel wedding and I walked into a tattoo shop like "Can you do this?" And they were like "I can do this right now." I regret nothing. I am mentally unwell lol. Just you wait, though: this baby's gonna extend out into an entire fandom sleeve. I have more than just SUPERNATURAL brainrot and I'm not afraid to show it.

Arachne: Goddess of Spiders I had one condition for this tattoo: I wanted her to be creepy as shit. I'm so sick of tattoo artists making monsters hot. Like if you wouldn't fuck a monster that looks like this, you're weak and your bloodline will not survive. The Arachne myth was the thing that first got me into Greek Mythology in third grade so I of course had to honor her. Also, I'm gonna get an Athena tattoo on the other side of my arm so like the ~dichotomy. This is the tattoo that all my tattoo people friends say is their favorite. It's techincally interesting and the first one that really fits on my body and also it's hilarious that I'm very sunshine and rainbows but I have this creepy bitch lurking on my arm. Everyone loves the Spitties (spider titties) but it's important to note that when my sleeve is down, all that peaks out is the Spidussy.

Sword and Olive Branch Finally we're all caught up! Yes, these are techinally two tattoos but they are a set and so I'm touring them together. I got so many guessed for the meaning behind this - war and peace, Athena theming, Things Gays Like - and while those are all good and in character for me, the most boring and true reality is that these are the two main elements on my family crest. My mom is Scottish, so a claymore. And my Dad is Italian and our family for generations owned an olive grove. It's literally just narcissim lol. The olive branch goes on my Greek mythology sleeve arm for obvious reasons and the claymore is on my fandom arm because it can double for a lot of swords in a lot of fandoms. I can multitask. They're still healing as you can tell from this pic but they look sick as hell. The olive branch is my first color tattoo so that's exciting :)

More tattoos will come in time and when I get more money but twelve tattoos at 28! I'm pretty pleased with that.