#i should look into biology controversies thats my thing

[pand1on]

reading my bedtime stories (controversies in the field of physics)

[the-pea-and-the-sun]

SOME NAMEKIAN SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY FOR FUNZIES

or: why do namekians look like that? : the sequel to "why does namek look like that"

disclaimer: im no dragon ball expert, or biology expert, this is all just for fun and my own personal satisfaction because thinking about alien biology makes me very excited. what im doing is a little closer to hard sci-fi than the type of sci-fi generally present in the franchise, and i am straight up ignoring some aspects of canon here to make a version of namekian physiology that feels more realistic and interesting to me personally, so this is more of an au than an analysis (but i mean. this is an extremely retcon-able franchise anyway) also im of the opinion that namekians are in fact not ken dolls down there, and im gonna talk about what i think they might have going on so JUST A WARNING in case that sorta thing grosses u out or whatever. i can and will speculate about namekian junk 👍also this ended up running kinda long so... click at ur own risk!

CANON STUFF IM IGNORING (for now)

namekians getting bigger

this happens in db and super hero movie. but im ignoring it because it doesnt make sense and isnt interesting enough for me to magical hand-wave it away. like supposedly it gives piccolo no greater strength than at his normal size yet it gives him more leverage when pushing cell?? also if hes the exact same strength that kind of implies to me that he has like …. the same mass too… which unless piccolo is SUPER dense already (and i dont see him breaking any floor boards.. but maybe thats why hes outside all the time) then his super low density would make him kinda…. weak… kind like how its easier to blow away an open sheet of paper than a balled-up sheet of paper. im sure there are some ways you could make this fun but the franchise just doesn't do anything interesting enough with this for me personally so im ignoring it

eggs coming out the mouth

this is a controversial one SORRY it just makes absolutely zero sense to me… they obviously at minimum drink and breathe out of their mouths why on earth would their eggs exit from there too… im also going to argue that even though they dont need food they do in fact have a digestive system so unless their mouth is the most horrible cloaca in the world they have more than one major orifice anyway (can you imagine having a tongue and teeth down there..) if this is really important to you then maybe this could be something certain namekians CAN do but generally dont, or its something that like . king piccolo can do specifically (because hes like. an evil demon or whatever. i dunno im not super familiar with dragon ball demon lore tbh)

also like... even if you REALLY wanna stick to the idea of namekians as a species that doesn't require food and never did, they should still have liquid waste. even plants have liquid waste. and since namekians dont seem to be shedding off big outer layers of skin on the reg (though this could be a neat concept, i like the idea of someone encountering a piccolo-husk) it makes sense that they'd have an additional orifice for shedding waste anyway. so it just makes sense to give that orifice one more job. even as narrow as namekian hips are, the egg has a whole lot more space than it would if it went through their fucking throat

NOW THAT WE'VE GOT THAT COVERED:

🟢⭐DISPELLING COMMON NAMEKIAN BIOLOGY MYTHS⭐🟢

or, stuff that's commonly assumed to be canon that i think is not

FIRST MYTH: namekians cannot eat and digest food, and have always sustained themselves off of exclusively water

they CAN sustain themselves off of water, but i think of them as being able to eat and benefiting from food in certain ways. there's been some examples of them eating, but im not really concerned with the fringe examples of namekians eating from video games, rather we know namekians either have or used to have the capacity to consume food because they have teeth! (and a tongue, and a uvula!)

and from the looks of it, some serious canines too! they dont just eat, they eat meat! given their ability to fight and create weapons, i think of namekians as likely being or having at some point been omnivorous apex predators like homo-sapiens. if you wanna believe that they don't actively need to eat anymore, then id like to think that some dragon ball magic had to happen to accelerate namekian evolution, because there's just way too many vestigial structures otherwise - if you're hand-waving the amount of energy required for namekians to be able to move around as much as they do, and assume that they photosynthesize or something like plants, and don't mate (which im about to argue against but we'll get to that) then...why would they even evolve to walk around at all? what im thinking is that namekians do need to eat, just very infrequently as we see in canon, and just used to need to eat a lot more. im attributing this change in namekians need for food to the big ecological disaster that gets talked about in dbz, so you could think of them as having pre-disaster biology and post-disaster biology, which accounts for namekians being able to sustain themselves on so little while also being a species that has so many body parts just for eating, and that eventually farms and has advanced technology. pre-disaster namekians ate frequently, possibly requiring a calorie content comparable to humans, and post-disaster biology occurred so that namekians could survive the kind of ecological disasters that guru lives through - and that they likely have to live through quite frequently on a planet with the kind of tides namek would have, being a planet with three suns and all. lots of tsunamis, earth-quakes (namek-quakes?), etc. so maybe a sequence of these disasters caused them to evolve to need very little food. so, like i said, if you'd like to think of them as needing no food, then the dragon balls would have to be involved for me to find that believable that since a mouth full of parts clearly meant for eating is just too evolutionary expensive to stick around as vestigial structures for any other reason.

but assuming they aren't completely vestigial, then there's a few different options we can consider, like that post-disaster namekians can survive without food and under extreme circumstances for a very long time, but they still gotta eat, like, once in a while. my current favorite theory is that they're a bit like tardigrades, and post-disaster they've evolved (or magic'd) into extremeophiles. that is that, they can survive extreme circumstances, such as going almost indefinitely without eating, but they enter a sort of cryptobiosis-like state where some of their functions stop working, such as reproduction and development. in other words, not eating won't kill them, but if a namekian wants to grow or have children, then they're gonna have to eat. they'd also likely rarely experience a hunger or desire for food because of this.

this would explain why all the namekians who are stated or implied to have had children look like they're carrying body fat. they're the ones who eat food! it just doesnt really make sense for that to just be the results of them aging... the fats gotta come from somewhere. and even for humans, atrophying due to aging comes as often in the form of losing weight as it does gaining it, but we've yet to see an older looking namekian who's thin. rather it makes more sense to think that these namekians were eating since they were planning to produce offspring, and rather than eat too little and have their egg come out underdeveloped, they eat more than they need to develop the egg and the rest of the energy gets stored away as fat, possibly never to be used since their cryptobiosis-like state where they don't need food is sort of a default for them once they're fully developed.

it would also explain why dende ages so much differently from both piccolo and gohan (besides retconning) piccolo just kind of jumps to adult form - much faster than both humans and saiyans, while dende's development kind of seems to freeze for a few years. their development, rather than being stunted, can just be frozen indefinitely if needed. (why dende is choosing not to develop i have no explanation for... he's just in no hurry i guess? or just isnt hungry? maybe there's some cultural explanation there) this goes well with namekians being a long-lived species too. if there's no food or very little food available until they're 100 years old, then they can just wait until they're 100 to finish developing and reproduce.

there's also something to be said here about how namekians dont have separate sexes but there are still kind of two types: "warrior" and "dragon clan" namekians, and maybe they have differences in development too, like warrior namekians needing to eat more often than dragon clan namekians, who might only ever feel the need to eat while developing or while producing offspring. although, i'd personally rather think of that distinction as more cultural than it is biological, as it's just more interesting to me that way. like, the natural genetic diversity that makes some namekians more equipped for fighting would cause them to choose or be chosen to become battle-types.

SECOND MYTH: namekians reproduce exclusively asexually

a lot of people assume this since asexual reproduction is the only type of namekian reproduction we see or hear about, BUT I DONT THINK ITS TRUE! they CAN reproduce asexually, but they have a LOT of genetic diversity, even more than most sexually reproducing species. so WAY to much to be an exclusively asexually reproducing species. just look at any picture of a group of namekians, they're clearly not all clones of each other.

toriyama said in an interview that they "may be hermaphrodites" and i like that! being a species of simultaneous hermaphrodites that can also self-fertilize goes well with the whole slug thing too, so thats the reproduction method that i think makes the most sense.

some species produce a small number of offspring at a time and invest more heavily into their offspring, and some species produce a large number of offspring at a time and don't invest very much into each individual, using the larger number as their reproductive strategy since the majority of their offspring will die off (think elephants on one end of the extreme, and spiders being the other end). given that namekians appear to only be able to have one child at a time, and seem to have tight-knit social groups that seem to care a lot for their children indicates a lot of investment into each child, so it just doesn't make sense to me that they would only be able to reproduce asexually anyway, as that tends to fit better with the reproductive strategy of having a large number of offspring who mostly die off. i think of sexual reproduction as being their preferred method, and asexual reproduction as being the alternative method they've evolved as extremeophiles, only choosing this method when there aren't any other namekians around to get genetic material from.

🟢⭐WHAT IM EXTRAPOLATING FROM THESE THINGS⭐🟢

knowing that namekians reproduce sexually means we can do some fun extrapolation about how they do about that ! (or, fun to me at least. are we not all excited about namekian junk??)

SO namekians obviously have to breathe, we see piccolo breathing all the time - android 17 even points it out at some point - and like i said i think of them as having digestive tracts (again, whether you'd like to think of them as vestigial or otherwise is up to you) so it kind of just makes more sense for their internal stuff to be structured like us primates in the same way so much of their external stuff is. seeing the way piccolo breathes (and like. has a nose on his face) indicates that their respiratory systems are in their chests too, and their clothes seem to cover all the same bits we cover, so they probably have at least one other major orifice down there. either they have just one orifice for both expelling waste and mating like a cloaca, as amphibians and reptiles do, or they have more than one like we and most other mammals do. you could pretty much justify any genital situation you want, hermaphroditic slugs have penises*, and so do primates of course, so if you like the idea of piccolo having a dick there's justification for it 👍there's honestly ways to justify all kinds of genital situations. its the only external part of namekian bodies we never actually see, so if this sorta thing interests you like it does me, get creative! use ur imagination! the only thing that i feel would have to be pretty set it stone for me to believe it would be at least one orifice for expelling waste and eggs and for in-taking sperm (or sperm packages...yknow how it is with slugs) and this same orifice could also expel sperm as cloacae do if you wanna go no-penis route, it just doesnt have to. they could be mostly internal or mostly external, or internal until they're about to be used, or internal until a certain stage in development, whatever boats your float. again, many options here. i encourage you to imagine the version of namekian genitals that pleases you the most.

im also imagining that namekians can store sperm for later fertilization too (like slugs!), since it kind of doesn't make sense to me that such a small population would have so much genetic diversity after all descending from a single member otherwise. so im imagining that guru had sperm stored up from various other namekians before the big extinction, and that guru's first batch of sons had two genetic parents - that is, guru himself and whatever namekian's sperm he had stored. and possibly even more than two! some species can have three or more genetic parents, which would do a lot to help increase the genetic diversity of a population after a huge population wipe-out like the one referenced in the namek saga of dbz.

also, sexual reproduction means sexual selection! since we're assuming all namekians are the same sex, any primary or secondary sex characteristics would apply to all namekians, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be any selection. whether an individual in a breeding pair would choose to take on the male or female role would depend on a LOT of factors, for example being the male would be less costly, but if sperm can be stored it wouldn't guarantee it would be used, and in circumstances where few breeding partners are available, taking on the female role would be more advantageous (which, as we've established, is a situation namekians would be frequently subjected to). not to mention all the cultural circumstances that would influence which role is more advantageous at any given time. im thinking that most namekians would probably experience being both roles at some point in their lives, depending on these circumstances.

anyway, i find it fun to think about the traits that namekians would consider desirable in a mate. for a species like namekians, a lot of those traits would probably be cultural, which id like to tackle later in another post, but in the mean time i wanna talk about what physical traits that namekians might register as secondary sex characteristics. like i said their primary sex characteristics, like genitals and internal organs, are a bit of a mystery, BUT there's one trait that namekians have that i don't think can be explained any other way than as a secondary sex characteristic!

WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PINK MARKINGS!! there isn't really any reason for their skin texture to be different in these sections, and it's obviously not providing any sort of camouflage. they're super bright, and contrast directly with the rest of their skin.

also, it looks like its absent on babies! so... LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A SECONDARY SEX CHARACTERISTIC! im thinking that these markings are a sign of sexual maturity and health, like pubic and armpit hair in humans, or like peacock plumage. they also look kind of... muscle accentuating? the horizontal stripes serve to emphasize these curves a bit. which means that this is a trait that at least some namekians are selecting for. apparently some namekians find big muscles sexy... NEAT!! though given their variety, and given the fact that "warrior" namekians are in the minority, it's certainly not the only thing they're selecting for. as a long-lived species with no gestation period (because of the eggs), namekians would probably benefit from mating with a diverse variety of partners over the course of their lives. lots of fun material for cultural worldbuilding here!

🟢⭐OTHER MISCELLANEOUS IDEAS⭐🟢

~another fun reproduction option~

so... namekians dont actually have to be simultaneous hermaphrodites. dende doesn't seem to have any concept of sex, but it might just be because his concept of sex is inextricably linked to his concept of age, so the "two types" of namekian may just be old and young. namekians are hierarchical, and their hierarchy isn't linked to any sex they have at birth or assigned gender role from that sex, but it is based on age. this hierarchy could easily just be cultural, possibly a cultural consequence of the oldest namekian being responsible for preventing extinction of the species, but if it isn't just cultural, then their hierarchy actually kind of resembles clownfish hierarchy, and clownfish are sequential hermaphrodites. they're all born male, and then whenever the dominant female in a group dies, the largest and strongest (and generally, oldest) male becomes female and takes over. fish are also pretty much the only hermaphroditic vertebrates, so it makes sense to model namekians after them, too.

other people have pointed out that older namekians are colored a bit differently than younger namekians, but we never really see this happen gradually. that is, we never see a middle-aged namekian with a skin tone between these two tones, so there isn't really any reason to think that it's a gradual consequence of them aging. you can kind of assume from this then that the color change comes from a sort of second puberty, as a result of their sex change - or rather, sex addition, as they still have the ability to self-fertilize after this. so before they change their sex, namekians only have the ability to fertilize other namekians, and can't produce their own off-spring asexually, whereas after changing their sex namekians can produce their own offspring, and can self-fertilize but can't fertilize other namekians. also for some namekians, it also looks like the pink and red part turns yellow and orange, so that could be indicative of a part of their sex change too? we do see the pink on king piccolo, but it seems strange to me that it would "fade" to that color as a result of atrophy due to aging, so im thinking it might be something that triggers when they change their sex too.

~alternatative explanation for the canine thing~

if you don't like the idea of a species as peaceful as namekians being meat-eaters, i have another explanation for you! having teeth at all definitely indicates a species that consumes food, however those sharp-looking canines don't have to have evolved as a consequence of eating meat. there's at least one herbivore with big sharp fangs too!

CHECK THIS FREAK OUT !! water deers have fangs for the same reason other hooves animals have antlers! so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think of namekians as having their sharp canines for the same reasons. it could be a fun secondary sex characteristic!

ALRIGHT THATS ALL I GOT FOR NOW THANKS FOR READING!! I HAD A LOTTA FUN WRITING THIS feel free to argue abt any points made here btw!! if anyone's got any ideas about namekian biology id love to hear em!

[moth-in-the-moon]

I get what you mean. I might sound controversial here but Si Spurrier took Chuck Austen's spot in my list of bad Nightcrawler writers for awhile now.

After this tho ? This whole 6$ mess?? I actually prefer Austen to him. It's incredible.

Should have seen this coming, all the clues were there from the start : Nightcrawler's selective memory on everything he went through, none of his friends caring about him (100× worse than Austen on this one), that bit in Legion of X where we could see Nightcrawler's s3xual fantasies which included a woman that straight up looks like Rogue, the whole Mother Righteous deal, the Golden Child in Nightcrawlers (we went all later season Rick and Morty here) and of course the Margali fiasco, to which I'm still going "why just why" whenever I think about it especially after finding out Orchis actually has a magic user (new oc from Dark X-Men) who captured an alternative version of Nightcrawler + Madelyne Pryor before Fall of X went down (so like why tf couldn't they have another oc or just her be behind Legion of X's horn plot instead of the only good parent Kurt has??)

Just get Si Spurrier away from Nightcrawler forever. I'm begging here

Who are you and how did you find me

Outside of getting an ask that isnt from people I talk to on the daily, i assume, uh. Yeah what's been happening to Kurt has all kinda a big mess.

People can like the retcon and more power to them if they do, but I just. personally dont like how it messes with everything (a la Maximoffs arent Magnetos kids anymore, but somehow worse?) Full on explaination of my thoughts under the read more, be warned though, it might be a bit messy just based on it being me trying to collect my thoughts in a written form

Spurrier has made some very weird choices in the comics, definitly, though not all of them suck IMO.

(I'm probably the one person who thought about how Azazel has basically soul magic and how Kurt could thusly have magic aswell, meaning that Hope Sword being a magic weapon that kurt made in his soul (one which he should not have, but apperantly grew back) satisfied me and me specifically beccause AHA magical kurt!)

BUT YEAH NO, they messed up Margali ALOT, which, read the headline she is my girl, I liked seeing her again but WOW did they not understand her and what she does and the way they characterized her could be considered a form of character-assasination and possibly even. downright horrible considering the fact that she is a roma woman (though lets be real there are many issues with how writers treat the romani characters and as someone who is not romani, I wont speak on it in detail now, cause it's not really my place. but like man); Mr Sinisters rule 63 self was a whole thing, again as my headline says, do not like her., i think her character was handled horribly. Plus they made her like. the reason why margali does magic and as the number one margali fan in the world, thats bullshit. Margali has been sorcerer supreme twice, possibly even trice depending on how you read her being guardian of limbo so having her get to that point cause some fuckin Nathaniel Essex clone was like "teehee i actually gave you magic" and then making her take margalis magic and kill her?? It's bad. (also i dont like the way she looks, why would she look so different from other essex clones, its just. aesthetically weird to me); On the note of the nightcrawlers, I actually quite liked them as a concept, though I think they couldve gotten more creative with their designs. Please make them look like more than just character but hit with a blue coat of paint, theyre a mix of two genetic samples, not a full clone of one character. They are in a sense of biology, children of those two characters, dont make them look boring also dont like how two of them had a baby. they both have 50 percent kurt DNA. thats. thats not gonna be a healthy baby. Do like the baby tough, shout out to the god baby, her concept is way too funny to dislike.

NOW, I will say, reading over the stuff again, i feel like its implying that Raven used a bit of the dna from the baron and azazel for the whole, having a baby thing???

WHICH, if I'm reading that right, might actually mean that they just actually did the most insane move of basically going "actually every bio-parent we've ever given Kurt is Kurts Bio-Parent" and I would actually respect that and it would change my opinion on this comic INSTANTLY because this kind of shark jumpery would be amazing.

But either way, I feel like retconning everything is really bad for everyones characterization, especially Destiny and Mystiques, part of it being the "oh we had to leave you cause future vision said so" feels very much like them trying to find an excuse for why they wouldnt raise their child

Idk it feels weird to have him be raven and irenes beloved darling child that they were forced to give up when you have mystique and destiny not really giving a shit about kurt, like ever previously in the comics.

To me it feels empty and almost like a cheap reference. It isnt something easily inserted in todays canon, years ago, when we didnt have all the baggage of years of interactions, you couldve easily added that fact and explained why they left him, but now, its a mess

Plus they JUST brought Az back in the comics in the dark x-men thing, which. feels like really bad timing, if they just let azazel fade from memory and then do the retcon like "yeah kurt just dreamt all of that demon stuff teehee", it'd be annoying but.

He's in comics.

Recent comics.

Why would you remind everyone of his existence, yknow, the man literally made and designed to be kurts bio-dad down to basically being a red Kurt with straight hair and without ectrodactyly. and then. retcon him being the father.

It feels so weirdly timed, did they not talk to eachother when planning these series??

Also I get that not everyone likes Azazel and his deal, which is fair, he's a kinda one note weirdo guy, but idk man. I like him. I think he's funny, I like villains like him being just annoying pests.

ALSO!! Spider-Kurt is actually one of my favourite things recent comics has done, because FUNFACT there's a character who we only ever see the tombstone off on battle world, from a different universe, called Amanda Wagner-Parker aka Spider-Crawler and. I am kinda obsessed with her?? Like. They actually just gave us a hinted at Kurt/Peter kid a tonne of years ago??? possibly??? like that??? and no one ever talks about her So them making Kurt be buds with Peter and hang out was actually catering to me specifically. That was a good idea. Kurt as spiderman with magic powers was written for my tastes and no one elses ever actually

Also uh, all comic characters are technically ocs so being like "ooo new oc from this" feels a bit dismissive to me, just say character

[kevkesblog]

Translation: Kai Havertz portait in ZEIT newspaper (January 2019)

NOTE: Hey guys! This time I tried something new. I translated an exclusive portrait the german weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT did with Kai in January. They interviewed him as well as Kai’s family. Its very candid and has alot of details. I hope you guys like it, since DIE ZEITs writing is usually very difficult - even for germans. And I apologize for spelling errors as usual. 

The original text in German

Kai Havertz: the peace itself

 (January 23, 2019)

People praise Leverkusens national player Kai Havertz, 19, for his serenity with the ball which put him on the radar of many European top clubs. His parents start to realize that he is likely becoming world famous.

By Jörg Kramer

The most promising german football talent these days picked a table very far behind in an restaurant somewhere in Cologne to order himself some spagetti gnocchi – inconspicuous.

There is no star posturing with Kai Havertz. The 19 year old could even go through as a normal university student; with his bright hoodie and somewhat cheap and not even special occurence.

And with his voice, which has this typical regional dialect, without the typical empty phrases that young football player use to often in order to cover up their meaningless sentences. But people know his face by now. So thats why he doesnt sit right next to the entrance.

He belongs to the celebrities of the football scene. European top clubs are scouting the young men in stadiums, team mates from Bayer Leverkusen praising him and forecasting him to have the potential to become a world star.

He already scored nine goals this season, decided some games by his own and played his first games for the national team. Havertz became the centre of his clubs game by playing at the centre midfield. His role only changed slightly and the importance of his role not at all, since Peter Bosz took over as head coach. He views this very relaxed and talks in an restaurant somewhere in the Belgian Quarter of Cologne about Leverkusen being the „perfect place“ in order to develop as a young player. And thats where he wants to give his all for the last half year ahead. Ooops!

His last half year? That was a slip of the tongue of course, he meant to say the next half year. Because his contract with Bayer is still running until 2022 without an exit clause. But things now are developing in a rapid way which runs parallel to his explosive performance currently. Its just a matter of the perfect timing that someone like him will end up going to Barcelona, Manchester or at least Munich – a choice between summer 2019 or summer 2020 maybe.

Havertz walks over his misspelled sentence like nothing happend. Once in Nuremberg in the middle of a turmoil of an rainy game, it seemed as if he stopped – as if he was reconsidering the situation with him having the ball. Like if somebody pressed a ‚Stop‘-button. And he chiped to ball in an cool and unemoitional and scored.

Coaches and team mates are citizing his body language, he says. So he works on looking more aggresive. He even participates on useless discussions between his teammates and referees after controversial decisions on the pitch, in order to get a penalty for the other team or some revenge. But it doesnt really look good him when he does it, he admits – even after a though tackle or when going after the ball. „I’m a player that shines with his tranquility.“ A nice sentence that gives away his elegante style of play.

Havertz remained an artist on the pitch. Every foul is a sign of weakness. Everytime he gets the ball, which is his job as an offensive player, he never runs into his opponents – he anticipates. „I try to imagine, which options my opponent has, what he would do if I were him.“ He then runs with a planned pass way and he gets the ball.

Havertz learned in the past almost two and a half years all systems and tatics of modern football. Starting with a radical system, almost a raid-strategy under coach Roger Schmidt, by which the goal keeper kicked the ball high and it flew wide over the pitch – almost always directly aimed at Havertz‘ head – because he is 1,88 meters tall.

Then the mixed system under Heiko Herrlich. He always had to look for his team mates before he passed. Now with Bosz, a planfull offensive style with flat passing. He runs through all the chapters. The first began on October 15, 2016.

It was a Saturday. A day where the Havertz family from Mariadorf near Aachen still couldnt realize that their youngest son, will probably end up living off football and perhaps even become famous. They cant really believe it up until today, says Anne Havertz, his mother.

On that day – October 15 – Kai was a youth player, in a big house next to the woods in Mariadorf having breakfast – when suddently coach Schmidt called. Lars Bender, professional Bayer-player who was supposed to play against Werder Bremen that evening, got injured and had to quit. Kai had to come to Bremen, immidiately! His mother drove him to Leverkusen. A special shuttle took him to Bremen. His whole family was sitting in front of the TV that night.

Kai was sitting on the bench as expected. Then, during the 83th minute, the commentator saw already more than the viewes and said: now we are experiencing a debut. Kai Havertz was ready to get subbed. In the real Bundesliga. Anne Havertz said: „Oh my god!“.

(Credit: Instagram: kaihavertz29)

Kai’s mother, who worked as a lawyer until she got pregnant with her eldest son, came to the restaurant in Cologne one day after Kai to talk about life as a family of an future world star. She brought her husband – Kai’s father, and her daughter Lea, Kai’s sister. The sister is studying marketing and digital media in the city.

People can reach his father in an emergency by dailing 1-1-0. He is a police officer working at the police station 3 in Cologne-West. He says he is really impressed, about how cool and routinely his football playing son manages post-game interviews and how we stays cool when people recognize him in public and everybody is watching,

The Havertz family is still perplexed about a football world where colleagues of their son, order their own cooks to cook for them at home. And whenever he puts his legs into an special bag in order to regenerate. Almost the whole family – except his oldest brother and the dog – are having apple pie and salate and looking back at the stages of his career, which started at Alemannia Mariadorf. Kai skiped two age-groups. He then played with older players than actually intended. Then he transfered to Bayer Leverkusen. All because the scout was tough but not intrusive like the other scouts. By the age of ten, Bayer drove Kai to training sessions three times a week.

4 year old Kai Havertz (Credit: kicker tv)

He was still among the smallest players in the team by the age of 14. Then suddently - a growth spurt which resultet in issues with his knees and his back. They were responsible for Kai loosing his fixed spot on the team. This was also the hard time because he left home and moved to Leverkusen. The club doesnt have an academy so he stayed at a guest family – the family of the stadium announcer from Bayer, together with two other players. A year later he moved into an apartement with his older brother, until Jan had to move to Nuremberg – he has a marketing job at adidas now.

A lasting memory: endless discussions within the Havertz family about the overarching question: does the boy need a german high school diploma (Abitur)? Will he pass the tests when he is travelling around with his professional teammates?

Kai Havertz attended the Landrat-Lucas-Gymnasium. An elite school of sports where he could skip classes in the morning for training. But he always had to catch up school stuff from the day. Once he played with Leverkusen at the DFB-Cup at Sportfreunde Lotte. He was subbed late, it went into penalities and after the team was eliminated from the cup he arrived home late – at 3am. At 8am he had an English exam.

The family became a team. His mother and sister helped him with biology exams. One day the young football player said to his family, he has no power left anymore. „But he never said: I want to quit!“ his mother insists. This was a breaking point by which his parents thought about quitting and stop pursuing the Abitur. But suddently coach Roger Schmidt intervened and said Kai should pull through. The whole Bayer team will support him.

The Abitur became a factor of will power, a test of life. The school supervisor of Bayer, a former athlete herself, said something memorable: it will shape his whole life if Kai quits school now. Whenever something becomes difficult, if something goes beyond your pain barrier, he will always have this option to quit in his head, that you can just give up.

Kai Havertz choose the pain, the Abitur. Now he will always choose the hard way if the theory of his supervisor holds.

On this January afternoon in Cologne, he is being asked what other job he would have picked if it wasnt for football. He likes the job as a barber, for men’s hairstyle. He smiles. Some curls are hanging on his forehead from left to right. A Barber. He wouldnt have needed an Abitur for that.

He is a genius at football. He won the German junior championship with Bayer and scored 19 goals in 29 games. He got awarded as a Under-19-player as the best of his age with the Fritz-Walter-medal from the DFB. Kai made it onto second place on his position after Marco Reus from Dortmund in a list of the football magazine „kicker“ which they publish every half year – but seven spaces in front of Munich’s Thomas Müller.

Coach Heiko Herrlich says Havertz reminds him of Toni Kroos. Football critic Reiner Calmund compared him to Franz Beckenbauer. His head goals remind him of Michael Ballack. Mesut Özil was always Kai Havertz idol, because of his tranquility with the ball and his ability to read a game. Sometimes Kai misses the final conciseness in front of the goal, which was visible after the recent 0-1 loss against Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Having the ability to remain calm, even when you get tackled is the result of a deep confidence in your own strenghts: screen your surrondings – in short time if necessary – and then make the right decision. Joachim Löw praises Havertz „good orientation“, something he said about Özil years ago. What he means is a certain sense of space on the pitch – an inner compass. Something that has to do with attention and memory. Havertz, who is a master of navigation, doesn’t even need practice. Some creatures have special senses and are able to find orientation on earth through a magnetic field – like migratory birds for example.

Kai Havertz likes watching Champions League games. And while watching them, there is always a wish inside him to participate as well whenever the big games of the quarter- and semifinals are on. „I think you can only reach that level by going to a top club at some point“ he says.

Mother, father and sister Havertz say, they don’t expect things from him. Something they never did in his career. But if someone asks them, who will follow Kai in a foreign country to get used to everything – they start to think about it. They would alternate. One week his mother would visit, next week his sister and then his grandmother maybe.

Kai Havertz still has a room back home in Mariadorf. Back in the day he used to have posters from FC Barcelona. So it could happen maybe one day, that youngsters in Barcelona will have posters with Kai Havertz on them.

++END++

[explodingdisgust-blog]

The Muran Hordes I

Following on from: https://plus.google.com/114999809330885155321/posts/cXHoqpEPMYy (archive[dot]fo[slash]PN6WJ)

@marshax-marshmallow

I’ve said this before, ill say this again. On my Tumblr, or nowhere. I will address your points there, since it’s a place i’m active on and the formatting is better for me to debate things.

Sorry, did you forget something? Your old 'this is the internet' excuse? As I've said before, I don't give a fuck about where it happens. And since you bill yourself as being so 'controversial' and partisan in the particular way that any reactionary does, you are a fucking weakling by your own standards. Don't tell me that I don't know about the pride that contrarian reactionaries have when invading new spaces of discussion and spaces of thought: it's happened to liberal talking points (even in academic circles: is Peter Singer not an example of someone who is dangerously close to biological reductionism, the kernel of racism?); it's happened to 4chan (/pol/ was filled with Swarmfront shills); it's happened to YouTube with the rise of the 'skeptics' who have accelerated rightwards. So okay, LET'S FUCKING SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT. I’ll turn up in both places just so you don’t run away from what I’m saying.

Remember, though: you don't go to see reality; it comes out of nowhere and gives you a punch in the face - so don't cry about how you've got a nosebleed in this metaphorical sense. It is just like how I had completely forgotten that you were on G+. But here I am, dealing with you anyway.

People who are reading Birdie’s G+ most often aren’t here to read some rando’s papers on Marxism and Sexual freedom, and I bet Sophia doesn’t want these things spamming her notifications. My blog is where I express those kinds of things, some people read it, either out of hate or genuine interest. I agree that you want discussion and I want too, and thats why i’m saying we should take this somewhere its most likely to happen.

All you're telling me is that people don't want my walls but that says NOTHING about what they contain. Who's the fucking contrarian now, Marsha? Huh? Who's on the side of what you - and if you're right about them, all the others - want to repress? Again, so much for being so radical.

I know that this is not a dedicated thread in any sense besides the fact that I have set many of the topics but I don't care because I am here, right now, discussing this. If you really want discussion, you'll do it here with me right now. I can fuck off to Tumblr, yes, but you should know EXACTLY why I continue on G+.

You want to go into my pathologies? Fine, I'm one step ahead of you. I also do this right here because people are obviously going to see how ridiculous I seem. I mean, what the fuck? I'm posting small essays in several comment threads underneath posts which are associated with some pubescent lolcow's pathetic attempts at being funny, edgy and critical. Of course I'm going to seem like I'm a mug. THAT IS THE POINT. But you can't get rid of people like me and what I'm saying: I know that it will haunt all of you. I want you to go further and fill in what I haven't. You don't like my calls to discuss because you want 'fun' in your online bubble, but the very reasoning behind why something is 'fun' isn't a settled matter and I will confront you on that.

After all, even if I balloon into a major lolcow (if I'm not already one!), I know what might happen. Some of the users refer to some lolcows as 'cultcows' because they gain a cult-like following from their particular stalkers and trolls. You know being a cultcow can be turned to one's advantage with some major sacrifices, right? Like how Chris-Chan retains their fame? I have the pathology of a sort of 'sacrificial catalyst'; that is why I stay here. Not quite a martyr (so you won't see me getting the equivalent of '72 virgins' any time soon; I have much better things to do than submit to a disgusting cult and waste everything that I have), but far more willing to do something for what I believe in than cowardly little you. I have so many kinks to work out and numerous torturous self-imposed programmes to go through. I don't want any of your fucking guilt, but I can turn your own pathologies against you and watch you cry as I exceed your ability by your own standards. So go on, fucking outdo me. Have a great time. Make it a special occasion. ‘Controversial’ my arse.

So please, take your arguments there or stop talking to me, cause I won’t answer. Hell, you can even copy paste what you’ve said here so we can continue, but please. You dont even need to use your account afterwards.

You think I don’t know how this works? You’ll set your sex-obsessed friends on me and when you have no arguments left, you’ll spam the fuck out of me and then introduce me to all sorts of horrible people who’ll do their best to shut me down. I don’t even care any more to some extent. Prove me wrong, I dare you.

But of course, now that I’m here, you’re gonna have to actually tackle my earlier points. You don’t get to run away from those, either. And if you do get your friends involved, neither do they get to run.

Earlier posts from the G+ thread (first post first):

@marshax-marshmallow​ :

im glad you're finally standing for what you believe in, birdo everyone in this goddamn community thinks all dark humor makes terrible things look cool but it couldn't be farther from the truth, if you dont actually believe in what youre saying and treat everyone with respect, you're fine. also, if you have a rape fetish that's okay too, because as long as everything is in your head, you're not harming anyone. rape is a fetish because it's taboo, and if you think all rape fetishists think rape is okay in real life you are so terribly wrong. i cant express how proud i am of you

@explodingdisgust​ :

WELL, WELL, WELL. If it's not the contrarian little shit that I've been monitoring for the last few weeks. I've seen what you do and I've archived your precious Tumblr; do you think you can get away from your bullshit? Not when I'm around. "everyone in this goddamn community thinks all dark humor makes terrible things look cool but it couldn't be farther from the truth" Their sensitivities and lack of appreciation for the critical part of your contrarianism is not an excuse for the rest of your contrarianism to be upheld. You have made a serious position out of the 'opposite' of common Western-liberal-enlightenment values of 'decency'. I've seen your at-least-ironic racism in the first few pages of your Tumblr and I wonder whether you've changed at all. Of course, I remain quite pessimistic about that considering your 'innocent' and nonchalant response to RibChills telling you to stop sexualising her fursona. These fuckers throw the baby out with the disgusting bathwater whereas you cling onto both. I'll get to your excuses soon enough; don't think that I won't utterly demolish your entire worldview. "if you dont actually believe in what youre saying and treat everyone with respect, you're fine." Right, because respect is reducible to maintaining standards of decency while maintaining fetishes and horrific pathologies in one's own private space? And where did such ideas for such thoughts, pathologies and fetishes come from? You will tell me that it is 'human nature', that it is innate, but no biological structure (including the brain) can account for the limitless quantities and qualities of thoughts that we could possibly have. In fact, if you were to say that you were actually and inevitably controlled by brain chemicals or anything else that isn't you as a rational individual, then this idea of what you've said would be owed to such chemicals - but there is no proof that the brain structures or anything else that isn't at the level of reason itself can account for it and has simply been left hiding for all these thousands of years that human thought has been changing for.   ANY FETISH IS ABOUT REASON ALONE, and the particular manifestation of this one is contrarianism - a love of what one is denied by those who follow and construct the most dominant values in societies. But because reason is intersubjective and comes from other subjects - after all, no ideas are innate, they are all communicated otherwise right now we would be able to understand the greats of philosophy in our toddler years - it cannot be something that's simply private. It can get into the 'private' domain and it can run out - ideology is reproduced memetically by us as rational subjects. Everything becomes framed in terms of rape or whatever fetishes become dominant. Rape becomes accepted and eventually it seems inevitable (just like capitalism) to the extent that it would be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of that social phenomenon. But if people 'accept' the conditions of hypersexuality which come with the rape fetish, this is not necessarily a free choice because they are in the chains of what is socially-expected of them. Even though we are not conclusively-determined by our biology or by the laws of atomic physics, we ARE determined by movements in the social field which we too determine. The social field is inescapable and all-encompassing for rational beings (in our time, humans)! I advise you to read the works of Lacan and other psychoanalysts in matters like these. ALL of your empirical evidence about 'rape fetishists being decent people' or whatever's relevant that you want to prove only impresses those who uncritically accept the bourgeois-liberal idea of the split between the public and 'private' domains. Again, as I have shown, there is no such split. This is known to Marxists, who understand that we are not reducible to 'individuals and families' as Margaret Thatcher was an idiot to suggest. At the very least, a particular fetish is the dark reflection of the society in which one is brought up - and we are indeed brought up in a society where postmodern contrarians - neo-reactionaries and fascists of all stripes, 'progressive' or not - are in a frenzy of rebellion against ageing and self-destructive liberal values. Their solution is your solution: the uncritical acceptance of the simple negative of the old values. 'Sex is only a bit of fun, like you say, but we should embrace that instead of being all serious like you say!' And so it is with outright racism, sexism, all sorts of other things. You and the other cunts are the flies who buzz in the face of the old liberals - you are at war with yourselves over which of your identities can win out (e.g. Tumblr 'SJWs' and 'neo-Nazis' from 8chan would have serious disagreements over which groups' identities matter the most but they agree with the basic premises of a general segregationism; they feel that people are intrinsically hard-wired to behave in certain ways, for example). The paradox is that this is a very serious position for you. Yes, contrarianism is a conversion of an initial critical reaction to a  given set standards into another standard position which is the simple negative of the old one. You put all your weight behind supporting 'what exists and should not exist' instead of changing the field entirely and being too contrarian for your own contrarianism. Liberals cede political ground to such identity politics because they are forced to defend free speech and uphold the domain of the 'private', which is part of the excuse that the new reactionaries use against them. But you are not reading the words of a liberal here, Marsha. I AM A PROUD AND PARTISAN MARXIST and I am not afraid to hold you or anyone else responsible for what you say as a rational subject. I seek to qualitatively-change standards, taking the best from everything in a similar way to Lacan's borrowing from other philosophers. I know that 'standing on the shoulders of giants' is what we need to do rather than 'forget everything and go full reverse gear'. This is infinitely more horrifying for you than the old conservative 'get it out of my face' mentality: I HAVE FOUND REASON TO BE BORED OF CONTRARIAN FETISHES, EVEN THE CRITICAL DIMENSION THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE. The upshot is that you are throwing VERY DANGEROUS IDEAS into childrens' minds, stripping the ideas of all critical content that they might have while branding whatever remains as hip, contrarian and critical. You want people to accept what they are trying to repress and embrace it as if it won't do anything. Sorry, Marsha. IT FUCKING WELL WILL, and you know it. Go and fuck right off from this place or be ready for another wall of text. You're not going to get away without someone shattering your excuses one-by-one. I guess it's just the internet, huh?

@marshax-marshmallow :

can you speak common english? I understood half of what you said because you feel the need to constantly bring up the Big Boy Political Labels instead of calling things for what they are, not to mention the 'holier than thou' language you parade. No, me defending free thought isn't "a spit in the face of the old western liberal contrarian ideals" or whatever and you being a PROUD, PRO LACAN AND PARTISAN MARXIST has nothing to do with any of this. Cut that bullshit, go straight to the point. And if you want people to engage in your debate, make it easy and precise for them to understand, especially since this is *Birdie's Google+* Do that, on my tumblr, and i'll try to debate with you. But I doubt you could do that without getting off your high horse

@marshax-marshmallow :

+RainbowDashie Artist Wikipedia doesn't bring up unrelated issues and neither does it use long and eloquent speech redundantly

@explodingdisgust :

So because people have NO FUCKING CLUE as to how to use dictionaries, literature and videos, I'm going to have to fucking explain everything all over again. Fucking shoot me, I do not like doing this but I consider myself ethically-bound to do so not only because I am a Marxist but because I have to try to give a bunch of kids a critical leg-up, as it were. But I will remain here to remind you that your arguments ARE DEAD and there are no two ways about it. "can you speak common english? I understood half of what you said" Right, because you can't even use one of those dictionaries that's been written by liberals let alone confront the vast tomes of thought that I am currently studying. And of course, you can't even be bothered to tell me what it is about my post that you don't understand - your only hint is that you're unfamiliar with the terminology. To everyone who isn't mentally-handicapped or a bourgeois ideologue - this is precisely the laziness of the neo-fascists! If you're serious about your position, why the fuck aren't you gonna make a much harder and more detailed defence of it? "because you feel the need to constantly bring up the Big Boy Political Labels instead of calling things for what they are," You'll be shocked to hear this but I am indeed "calling things for what they are". I am doing my best to step away from much of the horrific psychoanalytic and political terminology in my explanations of such terminology when I do include them in my work so that I'm not appearing to tailspin in the dense bodies of thought which I have confronted over the years. For example, do you not know what I mean when I make the distinction between the 'public and private domains' given the ubiquity of this sort of liberal concept? It should be very clear that the 'private domain' is simply the social world of humans (or more generally, of rational beings - a category whose only known members are humans) at the level of individuals. Come on, did you understand my use of the Margaret Thatcher quote - her erroneous judgement that society is simply 'individuals and families'? Is that 'Big Boy' enough for you, huh? What about the 'simple negation' of Western-liberal-Enlightenment values - or more simply put, of 'conservative' values? I mean 'simple negation' here in a sense that anyone who's understood Hegel, Marx and Engels in even the slightest fashion can understand it: it is simply a particular 'not' of the prevailing values around a preconceived axis - that instead of rape fetishism being a taboo, 'it's fine and doesn't even harm anyone'; that instead of ironic racism being unspeakable, 'it's nothing like that; it's absolutely fine and it's just a joke'; that instead of repressing and trying to minimise sexuality and confining it to the private space of desire, 'it's completely fine to be hypersexual and it's fucking fun too'. It is not a complete change of values, taking the best from both the proposed worldviews and discarding parts of them where they are 'both worse' and constitute a 'double blackmail'. Your particular 'simple negation' accepts much of liberal philosophy and comes to reactionary, fascistic conclusions: the hypersexual and supposedly-hedonistic libertinism (look that up) of the private domain is to be brought into public view and then celebrated as something inevitable and fun, even among children. To go a bit Zizekian: the opponents that you recognise, the conservative defenders of 'decency', have taken the blue pill because for them 'none of this overtly-sexual rubbish should happen' and it represents the degeneration of Western values; you have taken the red pill, seeing 'reality' for what it is and celebrating it. The bluepilled and redpilled consider themselves to be opposites of one another. Marxists, meanwhile, do not recognise even many liberal conclusions which both the blue and red pills depend on: we construct and take a third pill even if it's just from bits and pieces of the red pill and the blue pill - it's something more than simply the two combined. For Marxists, the private-public distinction is very weak because the very stuff of reason that 'private individuals use' is shared between people - after all, how was much of it given to them? Were they born with it? If so, where is your empirical evidence about this and how does it prove that it can be owed to something that they were born with? If I'm wrong here, toddlers would say that they understand neurobiology or quantum physics without any intervention from us! Show me a study which says that they can do that. My claim otherwise is contrapositive (in a formal-logical sense and not a dialectical one); it is based on the lack of evidence for the opposite claim. See how far I'm willing to go to drive my points home to someone who essentially claims is that I am like an arrogant priest who is speaking to the hopeless and stupid laity? Frankly, if you don't understand my points, it is because you don't fucking want to understand them and you are consciously going out of your way to not investigate. You are also involved in this excuse of a discussion whether you like it or not. 

"not to mention the 'holier than thou' language you parade." Fucking hell. You are serious when you say this? We are in dark times. MOTHERFUCKER, ANYONE CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING IF THEY CONFRONT THE WORKS THAT I HAVE DRAGGED MYSELF THROUGH; I AM NO FUCKING PRIEST. I DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO SOME SACRED TEXT THAT ONLY I HAVE THE SPECIAL ABILITIES TO DECIPHER. Because I have done what I can think of to explain myself, the onus is on you and the other boring contrarian ARSEHOLES to get the fuck over to the literature of the traditions that I identify with and use in order to understand 'the other half' of what I'm saying. If I knew that you would never be able to approximate what I'm saying, why would I bother to explain myself instead of condescendingly passing by and sneering at you for subscribing to an 'inferior' worldview? In fact, why would I even be here at all? And no, before you fucking pipe up about how I want to 'indoctrinate children' and throw other stupid accusations in front of me, I do not want you or anyone else to take what I'm saying as scripture. I want you to critique and extend what I'm saying; I want to construct a dialectic here. I am willing to spend hours of time flooding you with oceans of text not because I wish to wave my pride before you but because I want to discuss things and explain what I'm saying. I want people - including children - to be empowered using philosophy, science and all the other kinds of knowledge and standards of reason. "No, me defending free thought isn't "a spit in the face of the old western liberal contrarian ideals" or whatever and you being a PROUD, PRO LACAN AND PARTISAN MARXIST has nothing to do with any of this." WRONG. The traditions of Marx and Lacan do concern themselves with matters such as sexuality, ideology, 'free thought', small-scale politics and all of that. If sexuality, for example, was not a concern of Marxism, then there would be little or no discussion of it among Marxists. So why would Engels, not only a Marxist but one of the founders of Marxism, write THIS? marxists.org - Origins of the Family. Chapter 2 (IV) And why would Freud, a psychoanalyst who had much to say about sexuality, have his work incorporated into political theory many times over by the Frankfurt school of Marxism if Marxist politics have nothing to do with sex? And in Lacan's case, what about his 'equations of sexuality'? Go on, go to Google, Bing, DDG or whatever search engine you want and type in 'lacan equations of sexuality'. Even besides that, you are telling me that none of what I'm saying matters, but what I am discussing entirely relates to how best it is to consider sexuality. It is not separate from politics at all - the sexual IS political, it IS a performance, it's not simply a matter of 'up-and-down movements'. Why would we question why we fuck at all? Why would we even do it in the first place if it's just a load of movements? You can try to argue that it's a matter of biology, but one can ask: 'why should we humans reproduce? Why should society be about biological reproduction?' So no, SEX IS NOT OUTSIDE POLITICS, and it is thus the concern of Marxist politics and of political philosophy in general. In fact, the great irony about your sentence here is that it is a political statement even as far as discussing sexuality is concerned. I mean, seriously? Are your understandings of philosophy and politics THAT bad? Then again, I know that you are nothing short of a troll if your insistence on repeating your boring humour (e.g. ironic racism) and your recent Discord 'raids' are anything to go by - so you have a vested interest in not sitting down, shutting the fuck up and understanding my words. Never mind that the greatest troll is to seriously engage with my arguments and leave me with the much bigger task of having to find more material. Of course, what are you actually trying to say here? You are no 'free-thinker'. Instead, you are another boring contrarian who viciously upholds the seemingly-permissive, seemingly-inclusive 'simple negative' of prevailing ideas of decency! That is as far as you will go in being critical of the current state of the world. 'Accept your sins!' you scream. 'They are inevitable and natural! Why do anything to stop them? It's the internet, for fuck's sake!' Meanwhile, here is a Marxist asking for something much more radical - and it is going to horrify you to no end. MAKE SEX BORING AGAIN. I am no enemy of the freedom-chasing power of contrarianism; I encourage its use. But contrarianism is not free enough; it is still in the chains of thinking that it's the only possible opposition to the current ruling order. So in a way, it is not me that's holier-than-thou, IT IS YOUR CONTRARIANISM ITSELF, because it fails to unlock a new critical dimension and sneers before any attempts to go further than its own particular opposition to the status quo. But it also concerns Marxism in another way because it concerns (Marxian) Communism, the unique proletarian movement which seeks the end of class divisions and the end of capitalism. You want us to accept the logic of the private space, the fantasies of domination and mindless experimentation. Do you know what this is, Marsha? IT IS THE LOGIC OF THE BOURGEOIS CLASS. Nothing is off limits for the rulers of the world besides Communism. If they want to fuck a child, for example, they can bloody well go ahead and do it without being questioned. This is outrageous! We are allowing these people to do whatever the fuck they want regardless of the very real consequences including the social blackmails and lack of real choices that people are faced with despite legally being able to do many more things? Yes, Marsha, if something is recognised as being 'legal' by a government, it does not make it right. And even if a choice is 'guaranteed' by a given legal system, it is not necessarily put in place. If people are allowed to have rocket launchers and while one person can buy a rocket launcher and another who is otherwise the same as the first person can only afford a slingshot, who is more likely to destroy the other in a fight with their weapons? The politics of freedom is the politics of tearing apart the divison of the 'private' and public domains so that we no longer fuck around and do things without criticism. But in fact, this also frees the once-bourgeois in a sense because they can move on to do better and more effective things as dictated by reason, which does not represent the will of a particular person but all people including themselves. The bourgeois defence of what they believe to be this closed-off private space is nothing more than a defence of stupidity which is supposed to be 'kept away from the masses' but never truly is.

"Cut that bullshit, go straight to the point."

Sorry, Marsha. In trying to explain my points to you, I AM OBLIGED TO TYPE OUT THESE GIANT RESPONSES in case you misunderstand what I'm claiming if you

do

decide to engage with the arguments that I bring against you. There is so much to go through that you are going to have to sit down - perhaps for years - and read the works of those who are in the same traditions as I am. Worse still, you will have to read the works of others outside such traditions to compare and critique the various ideas which they discuss. Nothing is truly simple in the world whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, we live in times of clickbait, woefully-short attention spans and a lack of self-discipline (this is true even of myself!). You are going to confront your laziness even if you want to argue your own case in an effective way.

"And if you want people to engage in your debate, make it easy and precise for them to understand, especially since this is

Birdie's Google+

"

And what the fuck do you think I've been trying to do? Again, why would I even bother turning up? Get this: I know that I don't seem credible in the eyes of the hundreds of children who read her posts and I don't necessarily give a fuck - so if you accuse me of doing this to wave my fucking pride in front of you, you're dead wrong.

You can try to give me an Encyclopedia Dramatica - style diagnosis about 'the

real

reasons why I'm here' but anyone can say what I'm saying regardless of their psychology. I could've come here with a great big beaming smile on my face. I could adopt the same contrarian snark that you have. That you are confronted with an angry, grave and seemingly-parental scumbag is

irrelevant

because it subtracts nothing from the vast majority of what I'm saying. Motherfucker, do you know what an 'ad-hominem' fallacy is? Attacking a person rather than an argument which anyone can make does not attack that argument. If I said 'you're Brazillian and you come from a degenerate nation, your opinion doesn't matter', I would be making a stupid claim because I wouldn't have actually said why what you're saying is wrong - at most, I would've said something about the real social forces which led you to adopt this reasoning. So don't come to me with any ad-hominems of your own without engaging with my points themselves because it's not going to fucking work - even for your pride, especially now that you've tried to position yourself as a defender of freedom with all the dignity that comes with it.

"Do that, on my tumblr, and i'll try to debate with you."

First, I do not have access to a Tumblr page or account and I do not want to create one. Second, why NOT discuss shit here? Come on, what gets added to my arguments if I bugger off to Tumblr? Besides that, I am here because I would like to make a great big example out of you. You are 'sinfulmarsh', are you not? A crusader for 'free thought' and open 'acceptance' of (hyper-)sexuality, yes? Lover of all that's taboo, uncomfortable and other shit like that?

Well, fuck you. I am proud to turn up on some 'random' corner of the internet (which, in reality, is NOT 'random' at all but one that I've consciously-selected) and fire walls of text in your direction. If you don't like that, remember that 'it's the internet' and anything can happen; *

BY YOUR OWN STANDARDS OF REASONING

**, YOU SHOULDN'T BE MOANING SO MUCH. So much for being a contrarian, eh, Marsha? Where's your fucking 'free thought'?*

"But I doubt you could do that without getting off your high horse"

Your accusation is laced with with irony considering how your anti-intellectualism is itself an arrogant denial of my words having any worth whatsoever. You don't even bother to ask me any questions relating to the arguments themselves; do you think I won't spot that? FUCK YOU, Marsha. I am at least one step ahead of you because I know what it's like to be a contrarian; I've passed through this phase and I've become even 'worse' since. I know the tricks and the blind spot of your contrarianism; at its most general, it is the same as my own, and I am quite far beyond it as someone who seeks that 'third pill'. In fact, I am far more contrarian precisely because I seek to change values and standards. I have learned to weaponise my contrarianism! That is what is so unsettling for you about Marxists: we are you and more; we can emulate your modes of thought. We seek to take the best out of everything and turn it into something more.

---

@explodingdisgust​ :

Ah, look at this! Is 'eloquent' not a Big Boy word? Look at this motherfucker betray her own rhetorical standards. No shame, huh? And so the snake eats its own tail; the beginning of Marsha's dissonance is here. Meanwhile, for those of us who aren't busy trying to uphold degeneracy and soft forms of servitude:

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/195805-SL-cultism-exposed!!?s=d2444b96573a3897b1e106ae6f9bf772&p=2873207#post2873207

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3bBreSgaik

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@explodingdisgust​ :

And before anyone says that I've misunderstood them, remember that you don't get to choose how your statements are interpreted unless you craft your words very carefully. If I missed something, point it out. If not, explain yourself or get lost.

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@marshax-marshmallow

I’ve said this before, ill say this again. On my Tumblr, or nowhere. I will address your points there, since it’s a place i’m active on and the formatting is better for me to debate things. People who are reading Birdie’s G+ most often aren’t here to read some rando’s papers on Marxism and Sexual freedom, and I bet Sophia doesn’t want these things spamming her notifications. My blog is where I express those kinds of things, some people read it, either out of hate or genuine interest. I agree that you want discussion and I want too, and thats why i’m saying we should take this somewhere its most likely to happen. So please, take your arguments there or stop talking to me, cause I won’t answer. Hell, you can even copy paste what you’ve said here so we can continue, but please. You dont even need to use your account afterwards.

[vanessessity]

talking to my own reflection pt.2

Let me tell you, sophomore year was a whirlwind. First semester was probably the most disappointing thing I have ever experienced. I was pre-med, so hopeful, with my Biology and Society major and I felt like things were really going right for me. I wasn’t going to change my career and plus, my mom would be ecstatic to hear that her dream would finally come true. So, yea. I was gonna be a doctor. “Was”, that is. First semester ate me from the inside out and spit me back out. I had to take general chemistry, retake my other biology class that I almost failed, I was faced with narcissistic deans who told me “You can’t get into medical school with that GPA. You’ll never get in, are you serious?”, I went to the pre-med advisor twice a week like she was basically my therapist, I was at the highest stress I have ever been in my life. The chemistry exam averages were 30-40% and you’d celebrate if you were within standard deviation of a failing grade. I didn’t understand anything this school was doing. Grade inflation is always talked about, but I’ve always believed that grades don’t really matter (I know I freak out about my GPA, but thats only when I think about applying to graduate school-and I mean, I’m a well rounded student). But the fact is, okay- you’re getting an A. Sure, that’s awesome. Obviously. But what have you learned? If you’re celebration comes from just the fact that you got a 35%, it surfaces a bit of doubt about how the university-the system, I should say-evaluates their students. Basically, I just didn’t like doing it-I didn’t feel like it was right. Like it was moral, almost. Though I did work my ass off for that bio class and got a final grade of a B+, so that was cool. But there was class that really had an impact on me first semester.

Controversies about Inequality. I hadn’t even known I signed up for it. It was just on my schedule, so I gave myself a high-five because it sounded quite interesting and so I went. I started to learn that it was one of the most popular classes at Cornell and it was super hard to get into. I didn’t even know what department it was. Sociology? I haven’t even- I didn’t even know what the fuck that was. I knew Ms. Robinson taught it in high school, but what the hell. What was I doing in this class? The professor seemed cool and excited to teach, the syllabus was pretty interesting and I was curious. I guess that’s all it took, really. I started really getting into that class. I attended a lecture-I suppose my first of its kind-for extra credit and it was the best talk I have ever been to (’til this day). It changed my life-my whole perspective on what everything was about. It was about mass incarceration and wow, did it move me. I remember getting home at around 9 or 10pm and I went straight to the internet to do more research on this horrible, horrible injustice of the system and lo and behold, I found a paper my professor wrote. She was an expert on mass incarceration. That was her field. Not only that but how mass incarceration affects black boys in school. Listen, this night was a pivotal moment in space and time and everything between that for me. Immediately, I emailed her (which I do not, do not, do not do. But, I did) and I thanked her for the opportunity to attend and I told her that I was super interested in her research and she emailed me back saying to come into office hours. So, I did. And I literally fell in love. She was-sorry, is-one of the most passionate, caring, thoughtful, most insightful person I have ever talked to. She spoke to me about her research and I left her office in awe. Sociology was a whole other field I hadn’t discovered until now and I was flustered. I loved it, but I was flustered. Thought the coming months, sociology was like that spec on your glasses you always tried to rub off but it just wouldn’t budge. Everywhere I looked, it was there. It really made me think about things in ways that was similar to how I actually wanted to. There was no “I got a 30%. Nice”. There was no “I have to study my ass off and then some and get a C”. Everything was genuine. Haskins really didn’t care about grades either to be honest, she always said she wanted us to succeed and she gave extra credit opportunities every other week, to be honest. There was a time at the beginning of one lecture where the undergraduate advisor in the sociology department gave a speech on majoring in Sociology and it was there that everything came full circle. Once I had time, I went into Prof. Cornwell’s office and poured out my heart-“I want to be a pediatrician. Sociology is so cool, but I’m going to medical school and I don’t know what they’ll think. I really want to do this”. And she pushed me to think about what I wanted. So, from then on, I decided I would switch my major to Sociology. From that moment, I started thinking about why I was doing things rather than its contents. “I have to do this to get into med school.” “Does this meet my requirements for med school?” “Is med school really going to take me with my GPA? Was my faculty advisor right?” But, why did I care? Why did I want to be a doctor so much?

Winter break came and I dropped the whole pre-med fiasco. It was just a waste of my time. I told myself, maybe in the future but definitely not now. Especially not at this school- I won’t feel accomplished. Well, I was majoring in Sociology… then what? I had to rethink my whole career path from the very beginning and I really had to dig deep and ask myself tough questions. Why do I care about sociology? What is it about it and why is it so interesting to me? Then I thought, wait. I just started majoring in it because it was interesting to me. That’s all, it’s that simple. That’s when I knew there was a second piece missing from all this. I immediately knew where my heart was and all it took was some little tiny steps here and there. Talking to Haskins, exploring sociology, majoring in it. I knew there was something else I had to add. My once star-crossed field of study became my focus-psychology. Always, always, always have I been interested-more than anything-in the field of psychology. It all came back to psychology. Why was I studying Biology and Society? To learn more about the brain. I didn’t care about anything else, I thought to myself I just had to get through the easy classes and then I would be able to finally learn about the brain and its anatomy, its functions, its biological processes, how it works, how it perceives information, how humankind needs it. That’s where my true intentions laid. I always knew, but I just didn’t have the courage to tell myself that it was the right thing to do. It was too easy for me, I thought. I need something that is challenging. But listen, pre-med kind of wanted to make me jump off a building and may in the middle of the road. Yea, it was challenging but I also was not having a great time. And my girl told me something that I haven’t really thought about. Maybe psychology was so easy for me because I actually understood the material and I was actually interested in it and I wanted to learn more about it. I never really thought about it like that and she was right. Of course, as always.

Second semester was really when I hit it off. I changed my whole spring semester schedule and I was so fucking excited. No more hard sciences (even though I will indeed miss biology) and I was on my social science grind. This was really it for me, I thought. I found my true passion-oh gosh. I forgot to mention a big factor in me choosing [cont’d at the airport] psychology as a major. First semester, I got accepted into an integrative neuroethology lab as a research assistant. The name is kind of extra I’m not gonna lie, I just use it to sound kind of pretentious, but  [cont’d on airplane] I just research how developmental early experience manipulations affect later prosocial behavior. I really got into it, I really did. My graduate mentor is awesome and I love her very much; she’s like my idol and reminds me of myself at times. So I really got into research and went to lab meetings every friday at 8am. If that’s not commitment, I don’t know what is. First semester lab meetings consisted of reading a book and discussing a chapter each week and I really enjoyed it (cognitive dissonance? maybe). Second semester each graduate student a some undergraduate students gave presentations about their data and results. Doing research and all of those meetings and getting into the nitty-gritty, I think it’s what made me go from a stable pre-med to an on-the-fence pre-med to an unsure pre-grad-school. It definitely had a huge impact on me and I can’t believe I didn’t mention it above, but yeah. I love it. So, next semester (fall 2017) I plan on being in two- but we will see what happens with that whole situation. Anyways, second semester lmao.

I found my true passion. Psychology with a mix of Sociology and a sprinkle of Inequality Studies was and is exactly what I needed to satisfy my academic hunger. The professors actually care about their students learning, they’re always excited to teach, excited about learning with their students and growing, they put in effort and make sure we are doing the same. I love it. All very down-to-earth individuals. Second semester I really rocked it in terms of my grades and studying. I still worked my ass off, don’t get me wrong. It was just smoother and more… me. I’m really grateful I went through the realization that I had and that it happened at the perfect time. I’m really proud of myself. I really am. So, yea. That’s that regarding my career path and choosing my journey. I actually just found out a few hours ago that I got two A+s (even though they were in tagalog and lab but hey whatever), so it’s starting off pretty good. Scared for the rest to come, but it is what it is.

But in terms of my social life, it definitely has been a bit weird. I got closer and closer with *. * pops up here and there but not that often. That’s fine. But anyways, yeah. I don’t really mind. Also made a new close friend, *. He’s always great. He’s honestly the only one who I’ve really had a genuine connection with. Made friends with *, she’s nice. I have a class with her next semester so I hope we stay in touch. She’s very chill and down-to-earth. I mean I don’t know, I like keeping my circle really close so like I said, I don’t really mind. Time alone is completely fine as well cause it keeps me in check. I feel as though I’m pretty socially balanced right now but a few friends won’t hurt.

Let’s see what else… well, I mean theres my relationship and where do I start with that one? I fall more in love with that girl every waking moment and then some. She’s been so good to me and I really can’t ask for better because better doesn’t exist when I’m dating the love of my life. She makes me so happy and I am so excited to be seeing her in a few hours. OH. This summer! This summer I have the amazingly perfect opportunity with a human development lab up in NAU and guess who’ll be by my side!! I am super, super excited for that as well. It’s honestly the perfect lab for me, studying neurodevelopmental issues in children and how it affects learning and attention. It’s so fucking great, I am so excited to be on board for the summer. AND they’re taking me to my first conference. Honestly, it was so so perfect. I can’t believe everything worked out the way it did. God is real, believe #that. So, yeah. I’ll be spending the whole summer with my girl and it’ll be wonderful.

I’m really happy with my life right now. I feel like I can’t complain about anything, except I keep on losing weight so thats not good and my mom will hate me cause I’m gay, but thats usual. But other than that, I am living my almost ideal life. I really can’t wait for the future and I’m extremely grateful for the things that God has given me this past year. It has been a whirlwind and I’ve been loving every second of it. Until next year, then.

[tumblunni]

MAN I tried messing around starting newgame plus on Digimon Cyber Sleuth, even though I’ve played more than enough already so I’m not really gonna play again so soon after finishing. And... WHAT THE HELL?? Seriously this is like a one game microcosm of how you don’t realise how much you’re being mistreated until you see how the other side lives. Specifically on the subject of weird minority stereotypes... The difference between the designs/animations/general presentation of the two gender options is REALLY BIZARRE?? I had no clue! Playing as the girl you just kinda think ‘yeah thats weird maybe’ but you dont realise the dude doesnt have the same problems. Like... she VERY MUCH suffers from the ‘miss male character’ trope. She’s the weird sort of ‘lol sexy genderswap deviantart fanfiction’ version of a female option. I thought I was just reading too much into it with how the girl is posed like a supporting character on the boxart and literally never appeared in any of the promotional material until the game came out... Its just so... ODD! Everything EVERYTHING about her is defined to be this overthetop stereotypical idea of ‘we have to let them know she’s the girl version’. She’s far more sexualized, she always does these ‘girly’ or ‘hot’ poses for LITERALLY EVERYTHING! Like, the dude’s animation is just running but she has to run with her arms wide out to the sides, skipping like a five year old and swaying her hips. And her standing pose also has the hands out, her toes inturned, her chest thrust forwards and this general sort of ‘tee hee hee’ thing?? It really REALLY started to bug me how her chest is ALWAYS thrust forwards, I started to get super anxious about ‘holy shit am I ever doing that when I walk and i dont know it? is this really how female bodies are supposed to work??’. Its like her resting pose is this thing and its extremely painful for her to fold her joints back into a normal mode. And she’s always always posing when the dude isnt posing AT ALL, even her selection screen image is her doing the ‘one leg bounces back while you kiss someone’ type pose, contorted into a wild accordion while he’s just looking at the camera. I jsut... didnt even realise what was bothering me so much about playing as this character, til i saw the total absence of it on the dude... SERIOUSLY! He doesnt have some overstereotypical super huge macho animation set, his design isnt made to yell ‘I’M MALE’, he isnt sexualized, he isnt the ‘one body type everyone in this gender has to have’. He’s a scrawny androgenous waif that could have worked equally well if you slapped the label female on that design, somehow to make him female they decided they had to scoop out holes in his waist and hips and shove them on his chest. While also adding a bazillion extra animations that make her walk around everywhere like that one damn gif of terrible ragdoll physics as some guy walks down a road. I did not understand that whole assassins creed controversy about ‘but women need more animations, it’d be too much work to add them’. NOW I UNDERSTAND. Why on EARTH do they think they need these animations?? Women dont have to do everything differently to men to prove theyre women, in real life literally nobody worries about accentuating stereotypical gender roles while doing COMPLETELY NORMAL THINGS. Women dont put huge effort into looking cute or sexy while they’re just frickin walking down the street or standing alone in the privacy of their own home. Its like these people know so little about women outside of hollywood femme fatale movies that they legit think that sort of walk cycle is biologically ingrained into one gender???? The fact nobody ever acts like macho bodybuilder walk cycles should be given to normal tiny teenagers in every situation makes it pretty clear the difference here... And seriously, what is even this universal THING that ‘male are default, you need to mark a character as different to show she’s female’? Which usually means making her more feminine than the real female actor playing her, like that even makes a damn lick of sense :P I mean seriously if we’re gonna talk actual biology, men are the ‘different’. A species cannot exist with only men, the only one sex species are all female. Or lack a sex, or contain both sets of genitals. Also there is at least one bird species that has two male genders as well as female. And male seahorses get pregnant, and male clownfish can physically transition into females as part of their natural life cycle. And all sorts of far more diverse things we humans can barely understand! And like... you can say ‘women are the different and men are the blank, because women have boobs and men don’t’. But you can also say that women are the default because men are the same thing with penises added. And seriously, boobs are just nipples that actually serve their intended purpose. Women have this extra function compared to men because MALE BREASTS ARE VESTIGAL! The organ still exists, it just sits there doing nothing and never changes at puberty. (Though even that is more fluid that you’d expect, there are ways to induce lactation even if you’re a cis man. i dont really know why anyone would want to do that, it wouldnt exactly work as well, but whatever.) Aaaaand OF COURSE this entire thing is a stupid argument anyway because it only talks about biology, which is not the same thing as gender. Not to mention that biological sex isn’t all cut and dry either, the human species has A LOT of different intersex conditions. You can even have people who don’t have significant enough outward symptoms to be recognised as intersex at birth, who go their whole life thinking they’re a cis male only to suddenly find out they had an undiagnosed hormone condition and are technically a trans man. There is most definately no magical biological guideline for how men and women act. Especially frickin stupid nonsense like overspecific cultural guidelines on what’s cute for a woman to do while running, geez. You really can;t just ‘tell’ that someone is ‘really a woman’ or ‘really a man’ cos of how they act, and thats why this stuff pisses me off even when the story isnt saying anything about trans people. I’m so used to seeing this overexaggerated japanese concept of feminine/masculine mannerisms being used on trans stereotypes, it bugs me even seeing it being done to cis women... gahh this has gone wildly offtopic and I’m just venting Everything Bad About Stereotypes rather than the specific thing about this specific game I need to logoff and go cheer myself up. OH BUT yeah this game also literally has a friggin ‘we can tell this man is really a woman because mannerisms’ scene :P which also dissappointed the hell out of me cos it seemed like a trans character and instead it was the cliche I Had Some Reason To Pretend To Be A Man thing... Also apparantly instead of acting like that male persona, the male persona was magical brainwashing virtual reality stuff. What a wasted opportunity! You could have told us a lot of stuff about her personality from comparing how she acted while under this other fake personality, and what it implies she hides from other people. Like ‘hey, maybe she actually can be confident as long as she’s wearing a mask!’ Nah, everything badass or tough or sassy she did was just mind control. And she’s not trans. And blehh being outed by ‘acting like a girl’... Its so weird cos the game actually does have one trans npc in a sidequest, and has trans themes with a few major digimon. In the sense that they were male in previous seasons and have designs considered ‘masculine’ but take female forms when disguising themselves as humans. (and the player-controlled versions of these digivolutions even have different masculine voices matching earlier seasons!) Gahhhh at least I can sit here hugging my ambiguously genderqueer alphamon headcanons and nobody can tell me those arent canon cos the question was never answered either way! I hate the cliche answer that ‘yes all alphamons are male cos they ‘look male’, this one was just a man disguised as a woman’, but still even if that was the intent, it means the character is trans coded! EITHER OPTION IS TRANS TIME protect me, alphamon protect me from super gender essentialist game how do you even EXIST in this game?? seriously even your human disguise was super fanservicey weird female stereotypes mannnnnn i guess I had a few problems with this game aside from the one stupid rape scene :P aaaaand the problem of the game clearly being written assuming nobody would play the female option, so characters still constantly call you ‘he’ and such the only good consolation being that the game accidentally becomes Hella Gay, though I would have preferred canon lesbians instead of this weirdness WHY CANT FEI AND YUUKO BE CANON IT GOT SO CLOSE TO BEING CANON THEN FEI DISSAPPEARED FROM THE PLOT FOREVER only reappearing as a postgame newgame plus bonus boss that makes it impossible to complete the damn Masters Cup damn you fei damn you awesome amazing hella gay fei whom i love you deserved to be in a better game you deserved to be the matt-esque rival, i will never forget that you started off teasing that role and then just vanished... HELL, CAN SHE BE THE PROTAGONIST OF A SEQUEL OR SOMETHING game entirely about her and yuuko’s amazing story of love! also alphamon wandering in just to yell ‘I AM CANONICALLY TRANSGENDER’, make everyone a cup of coffee, and leave aaaaa why did i spend so long rambling every single complaint about this game, games in general, gender stereotypes in gender, life in general... its weird how just realizing ONE THING about a stupid walk cycle animation made me realise my general nebulous feeling of uncomfortableness that I could never explain about this game :P I am really excited for digimon world next order being better than this!