#just so nobody accuses me of being british

[deaddovedaughter]

in the same tiny apartment during allergy season

[bob-the-cemetery-ghost]

[I'm starting to get a couple of asks about my perspective on the whole Wilbur situation. So... I'll just... Say it here :P]

[I will always support and side with Wilbur. Not because I like defending abuse, or manipulation or whatever it was. It's because I've seen so many people's lives get ruined because they were accused of something like this and they killed themselvs over it because nobody believe them. It's also because I've noticed EVERYBODY sides with the woman in the relationship just because its a woman and everybody "knows" that they "cant do any harm" which is really fucked up. I'm not exaggerating I AM QUOTING. As far as I know Wilbur is just being accusing of something and is being forced to play along because he knows what someone popular can do.]

[Now about the response Wilbur made, I wish I could say its forged but I doubt it. Even then, I've heard everybody say that he "never even said sorry" and that he didn't even care and made it about himself which, if you don't know, REALLY is not like Wilbur to do. He would always take accountability for his actions, yes, but he wont make it all about himself for fame and popularity. I say its forged but nobody can know for sure.]

[Also also. Wilbur says that "its normal for bugs to be in British households" when its really not. A British household rarely has bugs in it at all... I think. Even then that's only on the southern side of Britain and Wilbur doesn't really have a Southerner accent. Maybe a posh accent if any. But even then its mainly wasps and insects and an ant IS an insect but for an entire colony to infest an entire house is rare.]

[Also also also, I noticed that the person who made all of these accusations was smiling alot, a few times they hesitated and were moving a lot which are a bunch of red flags that they're lying. Not that I'm saying they ARE lying but it is a huge possibility since we live in a world where women like to lie and ruin lives just for the fun of it or just because the male partner didn't do a few things for a while. I also noticed that everybody instantly jumped and attacked Wilbur about this just because they have been shipped together. The third red flag for me was that Shelby THEN told everyone that is had been Wilbur the entire time and that he was doing all of these things he had been accused of. People used recent videos of Wilbur saying things to back up the accusations. Shelby revealed ZERO bite marks at all and barely explained how much they hurt or if she had any marks of biting at all, she also never said anything about any infections or skin breaks because if she was hurting so bad then the skin would atleast be punctured or have a bite mark for a little while. She showed ZERO sign of any marks and even then was wearing a bit of exposed clothing showing her arms and a little bit of her shoulders and saw no bite marks.]

[So my take on the situation, Wilbur is innocent and he's in danger of being accused of abuse being backed up by more woman. Even his friends are turning on him. I will always support Wilbur and no matter what I will always side with him.]

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing where bigots accuse trans people of things and then when pressed for examples name people who aren't trans.

The other day I had some random youtube video going in the background because I needed background noise and I don't have TV or a radio, and someone got into an aside about one Jimmy Savile. That name rang a bell, because oh yeah, that's that name that TERFs are always incoherently shouting. I had never heard this name in any other context before (this may be surprising to British people but for real nobody in the vast world outside your tiny bigot-ridden island has heard of ANY of your celebrities outside of like, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Monty Python, Mr. Bean, and the leads from Doctor Who in 1980 and 2008, plus some people who got famous on American TV) so I started paying attention, but the person talking was kind of talking around the subject. So then I looked him up on wikipedia, and first of all, yikes, but also yeah this guy doesn't have the slightest thing to do with trans people, so what the hell?

See to hear TERFs tell it, the world was all sunshine and rainbows forever until the ever-moving target of "just a few years ago" when trans people suddenly started existing and you can't trust them, especially around kids, and then, yeah, they incoherently shout "Jimmy Savile!" Every so often one will be in an interview or something and not just shouting slurs at you in an unmoderated forum and there'll be some followup where they mutter about having absolutely no idea and being totally shocked but again like, none of that holds up? Trans people have been around for the entirety of human history and never actually caused any problems of any sort for anyone, this creep people claim to have had no idea he was a creep until after he died in 2011 had songs (plural!) on the radio about his well-known to anyone who ever interacted with him serial sexual assaults on children as far back as the the mid-1980s, and the particular TERF I most often trying to make some sort of connection here absolutely knew I was trans back when he was apparently trying to get into my pants in 2014, well after they I guess started scrubbing this creep's names off buildings and apparently before trans people existed according their weird sliding timeline.

Being, apparently, quite a few years older than all recorded human history, I also remember that bit where before really going all in on "corrupting our innocent children" BS and dropping other weird angles, there was this desperate flailing about where trans women were like, using our vile shapeshifting powers to sneak into locker rooms and punch people or whatever? In particular, I'm recalling the bit where it first became apparent to the last few hold outs that Rowling's an unhinged bigot, and some of those people had the presence of mind to ask her WTF it was she had against trans people anyway. To which Rowling responded with this non-sequitur about her ex-husband being a violent abuser. I remember at the time a lot of people were surprised, because they had no idea that Rowling's ex was trans. But see, people had no idea about that, because it's not at all true. Like the next day someone dug up the ex in question and asked him, "hey, are you actually a woman or something?" and he responded with a rather confused no.

And like, there's SOME logic to responding to the question "why are you making unfounded claims about a whole group of people being violent?" with "oh I know this person who's violent and I hate him," there's just this unspoken "and I feel like that's a pretty universal reaction, so being violent struck me as a good thing to claim about anyone I want people to hate," ditto with the CSA stuff, but it can't just be rational people with any clue what they're talking about like me who see these totally unrelated claims and go "OK wait though. If trans people are guilty of all these horrible evil things, why is it you literally don't seem to be able to name a single one, and keep just bringing up people who aren't trans?" Happens with sports too! They'll shout about trans people being super athletes and then when they can't actually find examples they point at random cis athletes.

I don't really have a larger point here, just, you know, it's a weird freaking tactic, and people don't call it out the way they should. So I guess I'll just awkwardly transition into begging for money again.

Patreon link.

[lukewholey-blog]

Thought of doing this Blog but not sure if I should due to how controversial it is as it’s about youtubers I used to like but not so much anymore. Its not a callout post or me going on about how much I hate this people, these people are just doing their jobs and I have the Utmost respect for those that are fans of these people and you have the right to still like them and their content. It’s just the stuff they do or the stuff they did that make me not be a fan of them anymore and hit ‘unsubscribe’. I wont link them their channels out of respect. If you like these youtubers and their channels that’s great. all the power to you. I thought it would be a way to get it off my chest and Explain why I don’t like these people so much anymore.  So without further ado here are my:

YOUTUBERS I USED TO SUBSCRIBE TO BUT NOT ANYMORE. 

5. The Completionist

Man, this one is the most heartbreaking. Jirard was one of my favourite Gaming youtubers where he makes you proud to be a gamer. I did feel his reviews were best during the Greg era as Greg was the comedic foil to Jirard’s straight man. And even after the fallout and the episodes he was in were re-reviewed for ‘New Game plus’, they were still good. Sadly after December 2023 where he was exposed and accused of Charity Fraud, his team left and his reviews went downhill to becoming just..basic reviews. No in-depth list of things to do and collect to fully complete the game and his ratings were just meh. His fanbase has been split with those that still like Jirard and those that hate him and want him to go down. I still like Jirard and I hope he recovers from what’s going on but with the state of his channel it’s hard to say. I finally unsubscribed to him as he only uploaded 2 videos in the last 4 months. No update video or at least his finale review of Diddy Kong’s quest. I will check in on occassion to see if the channel might one day bounce back. 

4. Projared.

I used to like this guy from the early 2010′s as he was sorta part of the new wave of online Video game Reviewers along with Jontron & The Completionist (as well as Caddicarus later down the line). I liked his Video Game Reviews and is a big fan of Final Fantasy. Then there was this massive controversy that he was accused of some things ,and everyone turned on him wanting to see him fail. I’m usually an Innocent until proven guilty kind of guy so I wasn’t sure if he actually did those things but everyone believed he did. Then Projared came out with a video proving his innocence and although he was cleared of what he did, everyone then started liking him and was on his side again and was like “it’s cool man, we knew you were innocent the whole time”. What dissapointed me was that NOBODY was on his side when the allegations came out. Everyone wanted to see him face justice. So now even though he still does videos I now find it awkward to watch his stuff without being reminded of the things he was accused of doing. 

3. Top Hat Gaming Man 

Another Video game Reviewer I used to like and also he’s British as I like to support British youtubers. I also like his reviews of Handheld consoles and games. But I know he needed to make money so he had to appeal to the Youtube Algorhytmn and that is Clickbatey Rant videos which I hate. You know, the videos where people shit on the things you love due to opinions and try to piss you off. Being a nintendo fan myself I started to dislike his anti-Nintendo vids such as where he says the N64 was overrated and yeah I get the problems the N64 has but he makes it out as if you should be ashamed of ever liking or owning an N64 as if it was the worst Nintendo console ever (which it isn’t). And even his fans agreed with him. I understand the problems and dodgy practices Nintendo has done but I think you should have the right to enjoy Nintendo games and consoles.I think the video where he drew the line was that he says the graphics of the 2019 Link’s Awakening remake was awful. I don’t even get why anyone would find it terrible. So the graphics of Animal Crossing and modern Pokemon games get a free pass then? I know it’s his opinion but I found it to be a bit of an insult. I Don’t think he does those videos anymore and I have my respect for the guy and his work but I’m not into his stuff anymore. 

2. Mugimikey

I used to follow this guy from the early days of Youtube where he made Sonic X parody dubs and does really good voices of Sonic & Robotnik. But he really found his niche when he made Sonic Parody animations, and they were funny and disgusting. I liked his Robotniclaus videos and the Sonic Boom Parody set in a coffee shop. But then he only made animations based around one subject “Sonic Meets X” which I guess is to appeal to the Youtube algorhythm.  And I have to say it can get really mediocre if  it’s just ‘Sonic meets this character’ for 50 videos. But there was one I really didn’t like and that I felt he went too far in (which might be a bit hypocritical due to all the disgusting things Robotnik & classic Robotnik get up to in his animations) which was ‘Sonic Meets Mario’. Based on this erotic fan fic series called ‘sonic’s ultimate harem’ where Sonic brags to Mario about all the women he slept with. I know it’s satirical but I found it so awkward to see Sonic bragging about how he’s dating peach and he started groping and sexually abuse her in front of Mario. I do not like seeing Women being treated or touched like that in public and people seem to love it! So I no longer follow his stuff any more. I still check on his animations on occassion and he did do parodies on the second Sonic movie. 

1. Game Grumps

Oh boy, the big one. I used to love Game Grumps in the early-late 2010′s Especially during the Jontron era and the early Dan years. They were pretty much one of the last major Let’s play channels that are still around. The problem is that Arin is no longer remembered as an animator anymore which was what put him on the map in the first place and made the channel popular. Dan’s a great guy but he kinda acts like a confused Dad and both he and Arin are like a couple of boring old guys now. Also Arin hardly pays attention to the games he plays and in recent years they would play really mediocre indie horror games or rubbish simulator games. I was even put off by their clickbait titles where they don’t tell you what game they are playing, but they seemed to have stopped that. Also I feel their videos are too long and have guests on that nobody cares about (seriously who the hell is Wilbur Soot?) But I still respect the guys and still check in on them from time to time. I really like it when they play Visual Novels as it demonstates their voiceacting and I like their riffing too. But other than that they are pretty mediocre now and I can’t really stand how Arin can be so incompetent in playing certain games and trying to be ‘hip and cool’ as well. And I am so fed up with how they now mostly play Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy & Mario Party over and over and over with the occasional unique game thrown in.  If you like these guys thats fine and I respect you for that. 

EDIT: Even though I haven’t resubscribed to their channel I still watch Game Grumps depending on what they are playing. They still play retro games on occassion but I mostly watch them on Weekends where they play Danganrompa V3. Most of the week they play either boring simulator games, The same game show games or rubbish Indie Horror games. 

So thats the end of my rant. I don’t really hate these guys I just think their content dont really appeal to me anymore. I respect you if you like them and enjoy their videos. I’m just expressing my own opinions. 

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb: What’s the harm in a pseudonym? Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American—in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang in the vein of White Ivy and The Other Black Girl. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

Review:

What would you do if you found yourself with a manuscript to a book that you know would be an absolute gem... and you could... say it was yours... would you take it? Juniper Hayward is an author who wrote one book but never really made it, but the thing about her is that she is best friends with the best selling and talented Asian American author Athena Liu. Athena and Juniper have an interesting relationship, they both went to Yale at the same time, they had the same debut year, but they both went on completely different paths with Athena becoming a star and Juniper remaining a nobody. Athena doesn’t have any real friends except for Juniper... but Juniper is steeped in her jealousy. So when a night of celebrating Athena’s newest deal with Netflix and Juniper ends up reading some of Athena’s newest unpublished book, a masterpiece experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during WWI.... but then Athena dies in a freak accident and Juniper impulsively steals her manuscript. She takes it home, edits it, and sends it to her agent as her own work, because technically she did edit it and make it hers... right? Next thing she knows she is being rebranded as Juniper Song, a new name to make her seem more racially correct... along with an equally racially ambiguous ethnic author photo. Juniper is now leaning into the success, but someone knows something is wrong and there is evidence that threatens to bring down June’s stolen success. June is being haunted by Athena, she can’t escape her, and the accusations are mounting. How far will June go to claim what she thinks she deserves, how much will she justify? This was such a thrilling read, it kept me completely engrossed and absolutely at the edge of my seat as what was going to happen. Everyone in this story was morally grey, June, Athena, and the entire industry. Juniper and Athena were both complex and had a complicated relationship, the things they did to each other, the friendship they maintained despite being so different, the way they hurt one another. It truly had me captivated and I definitely enjoyed reading this one. I love the way R.F. Kuang writes and this one definitely was a fun one to read. 

*Thanks Netgalley. and William Morrow for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[orionlakehastodie]

I watched Harry and Meghan So You Won’t Have To

As a prologue, I find Megan Markle pretentious and her husband Harry a dimwit lights are on but nobody is home.

I mean if Meghan only owned up to the fact that yes she knew Harry, yes he was a handsome prince who appealed to her instead of being a not like the other girls TM, I don’t know him TM, I am such a manic pixie dream girl I don’t really care about the British royal family when in fact she was texting all her friends about their first date - breathe - I would have liked her more. Anyway, this is me laughing at the worlds biggest spoiled brats since Angelica Pickles

Episode 1

-Check the privilege count off the bat, Harry goes on to say that his wife and him sacrificed everything to be in each other’s worlds HA. Since when was living in a 40 million dollar Los Angeles mcmansion a sacrifice? The tone deaf privilege begins and I’m not even 5 mins in. Can Kourtney Kardashian tell this asshole Harry, there are people who are dying?

-Remember you were late? Omg I can literally see his last 2 brain cells as he talks to Meghan

-Meghan texting all her friends about her date with Harry and yet says she never knew him. Like?!

-Oedipus Rex much Harry - first you said your wife was like your mom like omg he is so dim he probably doesn’t know what Oedipus Rex is

-Harry recounting how sad his youth was growing up in palaces, summering in Spain, because he was photographed. Starving children in developing countries you hear that? Let’s all feel sad for the prince who lived on your taxes!

-First accuses William of marrying whoever fits the mold THEN says he wonders if he can find someone who can be a royal?! I can’t even if I had a dollar everytime they went boohoo poor me I’d be rich

-Oedipus Rex 2: Meghan is exactly my mom I can’t…

-Also it just hit me that he’s talking about Princess Diana hating being the subject of media scrutiny and yet proceeds to use every paparazzi footage of her and I am once again floored at how much this dimwit contradicts himself

-It has literally been 20 mins of his complaining about the media hounding him like… this is how privileged his ass is. He can complain about 1 think ad nauseam and I am freaking nauseated at how boring this is

-The press was photographing me nightclubbing POOR ME IT IS SO INTENSE. Grow the fuck up you are a fuck boy who was always in bars. That’s on you?!

-Prince of Lesotho with the subtle jab “massive negative press” LOL

-Also token POC that Harry is friends with to show that unlike his racist family he is friends with those of us with melanin! Fucker

-Prince Harry loves Africa and its people unlike his colonial fam that raped this land like omg

-Meg is so busy she only has a week free AND WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT ITS THE SAME WEEK HARRY GOES TO BOTSWANA LOOK AT THAT! It’s as if it’s fate and not like she had no job and was free to go wherever whenever GASP ITS FATE!

-We’re so private but look at our curated feed

-Overwhelming count 1, and omg remember when that profile on Meghan said she wanted the author to write her as whispering ethereally - I think she did that here - will someone tell Meg that she sounds like Emily Rose?

-I’m not like other girls +2

-Meghan’s friend is names Silver *pause for laughter* and she says her name 5000 times which good for her cause she used that name recall so well

-Meghan and Harry invented the rules of long distance - as if they didn’t have private planes and all the money in the world to fly commercial unlike other people in actual long distance

-Author Robert Hazell telling me that the royals are not privilege like I - the taxpaying people accuse them of having when they have no freedom and live in gilded cages and he does not envy them - HAHAHAAHHAHHAHAHAAHHAAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

That’s episode 1 folks. Join me again maybe next week. I need to get my brain cells recharged cause this show killed it.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

Ride the Cyclone Kids and Overwatch

me and my bestie @cypherbyte played Overwatch 2 together yesterday, and it got me thinking!

(i know teams are made up of five now, but shhhhhh)

Ocean mains Tracer

Noel mains nobody because he’s Not Good, so he constantly fluctuates between Heroes

Mischa mains Winston

Ricky mains Wrecking Ball

Penny mains Sombra

Constance mains Zenyatta and Orisa

Now skins!!

Ocean uses Rose

Noel doesn’t have any skins, fuckin loser (it’s me, i’m Noel) (in my defense, though, i had to make a whole new account, so i don’t have anything yet)

Mischa uses Yeti

Ricky uses Submarine

Penny uses Scuba

Constance uses Cultist for Zenyatta and Forest Spirit for Orisa

Noel is the worst player

Brother can’t shoot for shit

So he kinda just runs around aimlessly

He is their distraction 😌

After awhile, he’ll just default to Bastion during a match

He’s the Bastion that will sit right at the front of the respawn point in the turret mode and just shoot as people come out

Or he’ll sit in turret mode on the payload

He WANTED to main Windowmaker (just because she’s French), but, again, he is a TERRIBLE shot, so playing a sniper wouldn’t really work

Penny and Mischa are tied for best player, per usual when playing video games

Penny will run around and hack the other team, targeting usually the tanks, being an absolute menace

She likes to bully people into switching characters entirely

And then Mischa goes in and kicks ASS

Meanwhile, Ocean is blinking around wildly, trying her best to hit people, but her aim is HORRENDOUS

Constance is just trying to keep her team healed and alive

And then Ricky is rolling around

Mischa will fight with people over voice comms but also yells at the people who are misogynistic

He moans into the mic when people accuse him of being a white knight

Constance, as Mischa moans over the mic like he’s getting the greatest head ever at approximately 150 dB: this is the support from men we want

Tracer said “blimey” during a game, and Ocean’s dumbass thought she said “blindly” and was like “is that some British phrase or something??”

The others had to correct her

(based on me last night 😌)

Ocean: THE SUBTITLE LOOKED LIKE IT SAID “BLINDLY” OKAY

Noel: STUPID ASS

Ocean is only slightly better than Noel, but that doesn’t mean she’s good

She’ll call out that D.Va is using her ult and then try to escape the area, but she blinks into a lamppost and gets stuck, so she dies

This happens So Many Times

She’s CONSTANTLY getting caught on things while trying to blink

Penny, about a certain map: oh, i’m really good at this one as Sombra!!

Their team: *loses the game*

Ricky: you lied

Ocean has one (1) emote for Tracer, and that’s the sitting emote

When she’s on the payload, she’ll just sit on it (as if she’s not in the middle of a WAR)

Constance: guys, watch out, there’s turrets set up around the checkpoint!

Her whole team, walking directly into the turrets: what

The gang once heard this shrill screech and then turned to watch Noel, who was attempting to play Lucio, launch himself directly off the map

This happens a lot with him

Ocean: *walking around*

Ocean: *stumbles upon three tanks*

Ocean: *turns around and flees because she’s a tiny Tracer and isn’t about to deal with that shit alone*

They all HATE the map Midtown because they got royally fucked when they tried to play a match there

The other team was always right up in their ass the MOMENT they got out of the respawn point

They got nowhere near the checkpoint 😭

Noel: where’s the checkpoint at??

Noel: oh my god, it’s all the way over there

Noel: we’re not even CLOSE

Ocean doesn’t know character names, aside from everyone’s mains, so she makes up her own

Torbjorn? No, that’s “little man”

Sigma? Nope, that’s “peepaw”

Mercy = “pretty lady”

Pharah = “Pharmacy” (because it’s close enough for her)

Junkrat = “ugly dude”

Roadhog = “big man”

If you hear her fearfully cry, “MONKEY! MONKEY!” then she’s probably about to get her ass beat by a Winston

One time she screamed “HELP, FISTY MAN IS AFTER ME, HE’S GONNA FIST ME”

She was talking about Doomfist

Ocean and Penny: *playing around as Tracer and Sombra before a match*

Ocean: *crouching in front of Penny, who has the Scuba skin equipped, and makes Tracer say hi*

Penny: DID YOU JUST SAY HELLO TO MY ABS

[fruityyamenrunner]

As a simple matter of fact, if you say things that are clearly equivalent to bigotry against other races - you don't like how jewish people look, you don't like the way the shopkeeper runs his shop and you call it typical Jewish behaviour, or you criticise Israel (the Jewish state) you are liable to be (probably correctly) called "antisemitic", just as if you said you don't like how black people look or how chinese run their businesses, or you think India is a shithole.

I don't find this weird. I don't have any feeling there is something missing from similar accusations of "anti-black" or "anti-chinese" sentiment. I don't have any particular feeling that Jews are very different from other peoples.

If I were to identify an "internal Other" around me in the North of England, then it is certainly not the Jews, but Hindustanis of some kind. And I find racists and bigots playing out many of the same social dynamics described as being essentially and specially "Antisemitic" according to Otherness theorists. And I find something similar happening wherever there are similarly structured relations between people.

Whatever is happening is, it is clear to me, a phenomenon common to many kinds of cultural contact and *not* primarily a phenomenon about Jews. It is a historical accident that the people in question who provided a prototypic *example* for European theorists about this phenomenon were the Jews, and it is a historic misfortune that so many Jews have adopted theories about this phenomenon and made it their very own special burden.

What annoys me about argumentation like the above is that it is a way that Judaism seeks to maintain the infantile, fundamentally *religious* belief of the Jewish People as the Chosen People of Reality, with any racial hatred towards the Jews therefore necessarily depending on a hatred of some special *fundamental* narcissistic grandiose core of The Jews which, having adopted the theory as a religious tenet, those Jews faithful to Judaism will masochistically display to you, in a similar way to a faithful Catholic showing you some sentimental nonsense about Bleeding Mother Mary of Inconsolable Weeping, about which one is obliged to nod sympathetically, be polite, and repress any feelings of the hammer-and-idol variety.

This is basically a religious argument -- it is an extremely common religious move to look at a "prototype" and interpret it not as an arbitrarily selected "example" that is good for working with, but as a προτος τυπος that God formed with his own hand in Heaven, which we can now only form copies of. Thank you, Mr Plato!

I don't think the Jews are a chosen people. I don't think they're a προτος of anything. I have seen too many races believe themselves to be chosen, heavenly races, and engage in self-pitying wanking when they get covered in mud and the truth they aren't the centre of reality becomes too obvious, often at the hands of some *other* reality-centred race. The British are naturally my primary example here! There is something very pathetic about those dregs of empire you find from time to time who come up with similar strange theories about the special hatred that their former subjects have for Britain, how Rhodesia was done so very dirty, how nobody cared about them and see, now Britain herself is nothing but another Zimbabwe now, how what the youth of today needs is to go to Dear Old School to be beaten and buggered, to Bring Back National Service, how everyone should be good Anglicans to learn how to follow lies nobody believes in but which are necessary to keep people in their place what... and how obviously coloured these theories are by their *own* feelings.

The gentiles who conform best to Jewish theories of antisemitism as being "fundamentally" or "essentially" about the Other are, frankly, freaks -- occultists, people who find themselves so unloveable they half want to become Jews (and maybe do) so they can hate themselves, people with psychology, people who look through the Christian religion to find προτοι τυποι that fit them, and find "Antisemite" waiting for them among the clouds...

feel like theres something kind of weird about using the term "antisemitism" to refer to anti-jewish sentiment among like...the ancient greeks. similar to calling the ancient greeks homophobic. like yeah, kind of, but its not really the same thing as the modern phenomenon? its loosely shaped the same. but like in general i think modern antisemitism is fundamentally shaped by jews as an internal Other rather than an external other. like, the ancient greeks were xenophobic against jews, but this is because the ancient greeks were xenophobic. modern antisemitism is very different from your run of the mill xenophobia (cf the way modern american anti-latino sentiment functions as independent from other american xenophobia?)

[winterwrites23]

Has Ireland ever had a moment or situation involving North where he's like "oh no my baby is in trouble" instead of "oh no my younger brother is in trouble?"

Yes, several times. Ireland was ready to raise North as his own when he found him, but circumstances led him to the decision that it was better to raise him as his little brother instead. He actually made his brothers swore to never mention this to North no matter what, much to their disagreement (especially Scotland, who vehemently believed he was making a mistake and still hold it against Ireland to this day). 

Even if Ireland claimed it would make things easier for everyone and being like ‘trust me, I know what I’m doing guys’, there were moments where he couldn’t stop himself from going all ‘dad mode activated’ on North. 

Here are a few examples:

He would call Scotland whenever he had a bad feeling concerning North. Call it father intuition, but Ireland could tell whenever North was distressed, even if they don’t live together or tensions were dangerously high. Scotland, tired of being in the middle of a live-action soap opera, started to refer to him as the “estranged divorced dad”, much to Ireland’s annoyance.

When Ireland heard about the malevolent magical creature that tried to snatch baby North in England’s home, he all but brought an armada worth of wards and protection sigils. The brothers’ houses are already warded but Ireland took it to another level and turned England’s house into the equivalent of the high security Alcatraz prison. It took hours of convincing from Wales to tone it down a little bit to let the friendly faeries in (such as Flying Mint Bunny & co.)

It’s one of the main reasons Ireland gave North his necklace when he officially left the Commonwealth in 1949, an action that shocked the others since he never took it off since he was a child.

In modern times, with the arrival of cellphones, they prefer to text than call, or more precisely Ireland would call, but North would hang up but text him back a second later. So you could imagine the first time North intentionally called him. Ireland was ready to drive all the way up to Belfast when he got a call from North in the middle of a panic attack at dead a night.  

During WW2, the UK bros thought it would be best to send North with an officer/babysitter to Belfast to keep him safe and away from the war. Ireland was against the idea (same with the other brothers) and suggested taking him in since he was staying neutral (and didn’t want some random person to watch over North) but the British government didn’t budge on their decision, mostly because they didn’t want to risk Ireland ‘brainwashing’ one of their nations.

When the Belfast Blitz happened, Ireland was part of the group of firemen that were sent at the request of assistance from the North. And although he did help in organizing and helping to dispatch the firemen, his main objective was to find North. Luckily, North lived in the outskirts of the city but being a Nation, and a young one at that, the Blitz affected him heavily. Ireland was horrified to find that not only North was on the brink of death, but the officer that was supposed to watch over him was indifferent on his well-being, claiming that ‘nations always bounce back, he’ll be fine.’

Ireland decided right there and then to take North to Dublin, to hell the political backlash that would inevitably happen. He just looked at the officer dead in the eyes and said: “He may be a nation, but above all else, he’s a child. Do not forget he’s a six years old child.”  

So after several days of shouting, of accusation of kidnapping, of threat of invasion, and many more, the British government reluctantly accepted letting Ireland take care of North for the remainder of the war under the condition the officer would be present at all time. It was a compromise nobody was happy about but it was better than nothing. 

It was in that time that North and Ireland grew closer and where Ireland had the most trouble keeping the ‘treat him like your little brother’ line in check. Even with a hovering, apathetic douchebag over his shoulder, Ireland made sure to give North a few years of relatively safety amidst the horrors of war. 

So in summary, Ireland was more direct in his involvement when North was a baby/child. But as years passed, especially after WW2, he put a distance between them, a part to protect himself from the pain to let go (again) and to not let North get too close. Unbeknownst to him, that action hurt North more than he realized and caused a festering resentment from North for the next decades.

Now, in modern times, their relationship is much better and they’re on friendly terms. Sometimes Ireland would slip into his more paternal side because he always sees him as Seán first than Northern Ireland, but would quickly step back in fear to make North uncomfortable. But even if North would look at him weirdly or roll his eyes whenever it happens, a part of him doesn’t mind it and brings him back to nostalgic memories from those handfuls of years they lived together. 

[van-zieksy]

"...My learned Nipponese friend is obviously in training to be a clown, the way he regales us with such witticisms."

Barok just.... I mean I am still correct in what I'm saying, but damn, how do you even come back from that one?? Ryunosuke is going to need therapy for that statement alone.

Also I'm soooooo upset the games aren't fully voice acted, I would've loved to hear that!!

The more I play DGS the more I want a separate anime just for this whole era. I'm not even asking much. Just the cases and-

Okay wait I just clicked on my switch screen to prevent it from shutting down and he follows up with a toast to "my future career in the circus"???? Holy fuck, this man!!

Soooo I suppose you can definitely count me in for the Barok van Zieks Simp Club. I feel like I owe him my soul and part of my income.

Such an iconic statement that it even transcends timelines. Barok must be Edgeworth's ancestor, right? (Yeah, I know, the "you're the entire circus" thing is just a meme).

I can understand his thoughts, though. Think about it from Barok's perspective for a moment. You are the most celebrated Crown prosecutor in the country who only takes on high-profile cases, not that you care about your own status, but you do want to make sure that the good name of the British judicial system doesn't get sullied. This nobody from a different country who did not even properly study law and who does not have any real world experience whatsoever shows up in court to pretend to do real attorney work. This wannabe also makes his debut defending one of the most notorious individuals in town, who you definitely know to be shady (let's leave it at that, okay?). Surely this kid can't be trusted, right? What's he up to?

The youngster goes on to disrespect court procedures because he's not familiar with them, accuses people without any shred of evidence, bluffs, puts forward hypotheses merely based on ideas or feelings, disregards many of the protocols. Of course the prosecution is frustrated. Wouldn't we all be if we were part of the game? What makes Ryunosuke charming to us as the audience, makes him bothersome to the characters in the game that are involved in all of this. :D

I'm actually surprised that prosecutor Van Zieks just goes along with it, when he would have had grounds to ask this learned friend to be removed from the courtroom due to being unfit for court. Barok is very patient and even helps Ryunosuke quite a bit/mentors him, as well as cooperates with him when he technically doesn't have to, because in the end, this prosecutor only cares about justice. (Gosh, there's more I want to say, but I will refuse to use any spoilers because I know you haven't finished the game yet, so let's end it here).

You absolutely speak my mind! A well-made anime in the world of DGS would be so very amazing. Hearing our beloved characters speak (as you've mentioned), seeing them move. The character design is superb, the world is beautiful. I adore the whole franchise (some games/characters more than others), but this cast is my favourite. From Ryunosuke to Barok to Susato to Iris etc., I love them all! I am not the same since I have finished this duology. Barok is my favourite character in the franchise (surprise, I know), with Ryunosuke coming in second and Susato coming in third, which is quite the achievement against such all-time-greats as Edgeworth, Phoenix and Maya. :)

Enjoy the rest of the game(s)! 😊

Edit/P.S.: In case you read my blog here, I can only recommend you filter out the tags "tgaa spoilers" and "dgs spoilers", as that's how I tag my spoilery posts and reblogs. Other people may use the same or other tags.

[ieatmorecrispsthanyou]

The problem with ‘German Spy’ headcanons

So I’m not trying to start drama in the fandom, and I’m especially not pointing fingers or accusing anyone here (even though it may feel like it). I’m just going to address my personal views on why the ‘Captain or Havers is a German Spy’ headcanon I’ve seen is problematic, as I know most people might view it as harmless fun (it was probably intended that way, I know nobody was actively trying to harm anyone with that headcanon). TL;DR at the bottom

So what exactly is wrong with it? Well, as this takes place during World War 2, Germany was the Third Reich, aka Hitler and the Nazis, and the spy agency for Germany was the Abwehr. This means that any spies for Germany at that time were under direct orders from Hitler and his government. At the beginning of the war, the Abwehr collected information about Denmark and Norway which was critical to the successful Nazi invasion and occupation of those countries - causing the death of thousands of people and a brutal persecutionary regime. Historians say that 95 percent of the Abwehr actively worked “against the Allies” whereas only about 5 percent of them were anti-Nazi in disposition. This means that if someone says Havers or the Captain were a German Spy, they are implying that they are Nazis and agents of genocide.

Let’s think about that for a second.

The Captain, a fan favourite and many people’s comfort character, actively working against the British government during the war to spy for the Nazis, because he believes in their ideology. I don’t need to explain why the Nazis are bad, and why allying a well-loved character with their racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, fascist, genocidal ideology, which led to the death of literal millions of people, is not really OK. And not to mention, the Captain is canonically gay. The Nazis imprisoned an estimated 15,000 gay men in concentration camps, of which 60% are believed to have died. 

Now, here’s the next thing. Some Ghosts fans will be a member of minorities which the Nazis persecuted, or have relatives or friends who are. (Me, for example). Some Ghosts fans will have families who had to flee the Nazis, or may even have family members who were killed by them. Some Ghosts fans may still be targeted by neo-Nazi groups who share Nazi ideology. Not every Ghosts fan will, but some will. So if you see a German Spy headcanon, imagine them reading it and being reminded of the pain this event caused people who are related to them, or how Nazis would react to their own existence. Imagine them reading that their favourite character, who canonically fought against the Nazis, would actively persecute them or their relatives.

What many people seem to forget is that this really happened. The victims of Nazism are estimated to be around 20,946,000 people, real people, who had families and friends and lives, people who still remember them. The Nazis had real consequences on real people, it’s not a fantasy or far-off time where everyone affected is dead now. Allying the Captain or Havers with the Nazis is genuinely harmful and can bring up generational trauma for other fans. 

Now, like I say, I am not accusing anyone of anything. It’s unlikely most people making these headcanons are aware of the true extent of evil that the Nazis caused, or have done their research, or have even thought about the implications of their headcanon. I don’t blame you if you made this kind of headcanon - I’m not accusing you of being a Nazi, or saying you’re wilfully wanting to harm others. I’m just bringing your attention to the implications of this idea, which I haven’t seen pointed out yet. It’s OK if you didn’t know, it doesn’t reflect badly on you as a person, what’s important is that you learn why some things are harmful and headcanon respectfully. 

TL:DR: headcanoning Cap or Havers as a German Spy is allying them with Nazi ideology. The Nazis had real consequences for real people that are still traumatic today. Some ghosts fans will be members of the minority groups persecuted by the Nazis. So please be mindful of what you’re implying about people’s comfort characters.

Update: check the link below for more information on why havers couldn't possibly be a spy anyway, and how you can't wriggle out of this hole by saying 'oh but havers was the 5% who was working against the Nazis!' as at least TWO of the worst offenders have done in the reblogs of this post (completely missing the fuckin point)

[causeiwanttoandican]

'What you have done sir is quite frankly despicable': An open letter to Prince Harry

Sir, I am an ordinary citizen of the United Kingdom, a loyal and patriotic subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England.

By Christopher Smithers PUBLISHED: 17:00, Mon, Jul 26, 2021 | UPDATED: 18:11, Mon, Jul 26, 2021

Prince Harry popularity polls 'plummeting' says commentator

In the circumstances, it is entirely appropriate, with the utmost respect to you, that your attention is not only once again drawn to the unwelcome recent sequence of events largely precipitated by you and your wife, but also to the ensuing fallout that this has caused. Both you and your wife have opted to very publicly level wholly unsubstantiated accusations of racism, indifference and emotional trauma at thus far unnamed members of the Royal Family, your family, Sir.

Why you both feel the need to engage the media that you profess to loathe in this vendetta I cannot understand, nor can many millions of our fellow countrymen.

The British public at large were absolutely thrilled that you had found someone with whom you clearly share such a unique bond. Your future wife was welcomed with open arms, and on the day of your wedding you had people thronged together lining the streets of Windsor to show their joy at your happiness on your special day.

The weather was similarly glorious to add to the genuine mood of celebration for you and your wife.

In the ensuing years since that wonderful day at St Georges Chapel your popularity in this country has plummeted with the onset of widespread anger and disgust, increasing in intensity each time you decide to air your dirty laundry in public.

This is sadly an inescapable fact and one in which I personally take absolutely no pleasure in pointing out, along with many millions of people in both

this country and the United States.

You were born into a unique and enigmatic family, who have provided a haven and rallying point for the people of this country for centuries.

Your family is an incredibly significant ingredient in the glue that binds us all together, and for you to unilaterally attack and defame their integrity is quite frankly despicable.

Many millions of people have suffered emotional trauma in some or other way throughout the world, so this is not unique to you. This does not of course make the loss of your mother in any way insignificant or indeed less tragic. The pain and sense of loss that both you and your brother, the Duke of Cambridge, have endured remains raw, and was also deeply felt by millions of others the length and breadth of this country. This was proven beyond any doubt with only a glance at the crowds in London on that day of the memorial for your mother at the Abbey.

In your statement preceding your departure from frontline Royal duties you solemnly pledged to always uphold the values of the monarchy. Well, Sir, you have a mighty strange way of showing it!

How does your professed loyalty to the Crown square with your present outbursts of spite and anger?

Does your Grandmother deserve any of this? Does the memory of your late Grandfather warrant being dragged through the mud simply as a selfish act of misguided catharsis on your part?

I certainly do not believe so, and many millions of people agree with me.

You oftentimes make no secret of your disdain and loathing of the press, who you accuse of a constant imposition into your “private” life.

Yes, the press is a part of the everyday existence of public figures, and you are certainly no exception to this, but it goes with the turf.

The added dimension in your case, however, is that the only acceptable press coverage when it comes to you and your wife is only that which fits the narrative put out by your spin doctors in LaLa land.

The sad truth of the matter is that you are enraged you couldn’t have it both ways.

You couldn’t enjoy the kudos that you seem to believe is your right along with cashing in on your status as both you and your wife would have wished.

As I am sure your Grandmother, your Father and your Brother made clear to you at what has been dubbed the “Sandringham Summit” you cannot have your cake and eat it.

You are either in or you are out, the best of both worlds is just not an option.

Both you and your wife have the unfortunate habit of trying to portray yourselves as victims, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Your public outbursts seeking sympathy on the back of launching entirely misguided attacks on your family looks very much like a cynical publicity stunt based it seems on a litany of inaccuracies.

Your flirtation with wokery is likewise an entirely self-serving exercise in the promotion of “Brand Sussex”, loaded with gross hypocrisy in preaching to the world at large.

Your PR team and other strategic media embedded mouthpieces display breath-taking ignorance of our heritage and culture, a fact that you ought to know full well.

You have given up everything you have known up to this point in seeking a new life in the United States, although you were very definitely badly advised in making recent comments about the US Constitution first amendment, about which you clearly know nothing, and which was in fact an insult to your hosts.

You’re a guest in that country and you have no right to make remarks like that especially in view of your family background which maintains a totally apolitical viewpoint.

I could elaborate further on the grossly ill-advised course you have opted to pursue, but until such time as a good hard dose of reality sets in then there seems little point.

As disgusted as I am that I witness a Prince of the Realm from my country disparaging his family in such a disgraceful way, I nonetheless hope and pray that you find genuine peace and happiness one day.

I sincerely hope that you can overcome the demons of your emotional trauma and anger in finding a comfortable balance in your life.

Perhaps you should open your eyes wider, open your mind too and look a little deeper. You might be surprised at what you discover. But just stop with the nonsense of attacking your family.

One last point you might be well advised to take on board, Sir. You and your wife would be nothing and nobody were it not for the fact that you are the grandson of the Queen of England, the son, brother and uncle of future Kings of England.

Self-destruction doesn’t become you, so drop the hard done by rubbish and get a grip. You might just find it eventually pays off in positive ways that you least expected.

You have regrettably allowed yourself to blur the lines between celebrity and royalty, for which there is no excuse for you or even your wife for that matter.

[jerseydeanne]

'What you have done sir is quite frankly despicable': An open letter to Prince Harry

In the circumstances, it is entirely appropriate, with the utmost respect to you, that your attention is not only once again drawn to the unwelcome recent sequence of events largely precipitated by you and your wife, but also to the ensuing fallout that this has caused. Both you and your wife have opted to very publicly level wholly unsubstantiated accusations of racism, indifference and emotional trauma at thus far unnamed members of the Royal Family, your family, Sir.

Why you both feel the need to engage the media that you profess to loathe in this vendetta I cannot understand, nor can many millions of our fellow countrymen.

The British public at large were absolutely thrilled that you had found someone with whom you clearly share such a unique bond. Your future wife was welcomed with open arms, and on the day of your wedding you had people thronged together lining the streets of Windsor to show their joy at your happiness on your special day.

The weather was similarly glorious to add to the genuine mood of celebration for you and your wife.

In the ensuing years since that wonderful day at St Georges Chapel your popularity in this country has plummeted with the onset of widespread anger and disgust, increasing in intensity each time you decide to air your dirty laundry in public.

This is sadly an inescapable fact and one in which I personally take absolutely no pleasure in pointing out, along with many millions of people in both this country and the United States.

You were born into a unique and enigmatic family, who have provided a haven and rallying point for the people of this country for centuries.

Your family is an incredibly significant ingredient in the glue that binds us all together, and for you to unilaterally attack and defame their integrity is quite frankly despicable.

Many millions of people have suffered emotional trauma in some or other way throughout the world, so this is not unique to you. This does not of course make the loss of your mother in any way insignificant or indeed less tragic. The pain and sense of loss that both you and your brother, the Duke of Cambridge, have endured remains raw, and was also deeply felt by millions of others the length and breadth of this country. This was proven beyond any doubt with only a glance at the crowds in London on that day of the memorial for your mother at the Abbey.

In your statement preceding your departure from frontline Royal duties you solemnly pledged to always uphold the values of the monarchy. Well, Sir, you have a mighty strange way of showing it!

How does your professed loyalty to the Crown square with your present outbursts of spite and anger?

Does your Grandmother deserve any of this? Does the memory of your late Grandfather warrant being dragged through the mud simply as a selfish act of misguided catharsis on your part?

I certainly do not believe so, and many millions of people agree with me.

You oftentimes make no secret of your disdain and loathing of the press, who you accuse of a constant imposition into your “private” life.

Yes, the press is a part of the everyday existence of public figures, and you are certainly no exception to this, but it goes with the turf.

The added dimension in your case, however, is that the only acceptable press coverage when it comes to you and your wife is only that which fits the narrative put out by your spin doctors in LaLa land.

The sad truth of the matter is that you are enraged you couldn’t have it both ways.

You couldn’t enjoy the kudos that you seem to believe is your right along with cashing in on your status as both you and your wife would have wished.

As I am sure your Grandmother, your Father and your Brother made clear to you at what has been dubbed the “Sandringham Summit” you cannot have your cake and eat it.

You are either in or you are out, the best of both worlds is just not an option.

Both you and your wife have the unfortunate habit of trying to portray yourselves as victims, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Your public outbursts seeking sympathy on the back of launching entirely misguided attacks on your family looks very much like a cynical publicity stunt based it seems on a litany of inaccuracies.

Your flirtation with wokery is likewise an entirely self-serving exercise in the promotion of “Brand Sussex”, loaded with gross hypocrisy in preaching to the world at large.

Your PR team and other strategic media embedded mouthpieces display breath-taking ignorance of our heritage and culture, a fact that you ought to know full well.

You have regrettably allowed yourself to blur the lines between celebrity and royalty, for which there is no excuse for you or even your wife for that matter.

You have given up everything you have known up to this point in seeking a new life in the United States, although you were very definitely badly advised in making recent comments about the US Constitution first amendment, about which you clearly know nothing, and which was in fact an insult to your hosts.

You’re a guest in that country and you have no right to make remarks like that especially in view of your family background which maintains a totally apolitical viewpoint.

I could elaborate further on the grossly ill-advised course you have opted to pursue, but until such time as a good hard dose of reality sets in then there seems little point.

As disgusted as I am that I witness a Prince of the Realm from my country disparaging his family in such a disgraceful way, I nonetheless hope and pray that you find genuine peace and happiness one day.

I sincerely hope that you can overcome the demons of your emotional trauma and anger in finding a comfortable balance in your life.

Perhaps you should open your eyes wider, open your mind too and look a little deeper. You might be surprised at what you discover. But just stop with the nonsense of attacking your family.

One last point you might be well advised to take on board, Sir. You and your wife would be nothing and nobody were it not for the fact that you are the grandson of the Queen of England, the son, brother and uncle of future Kings of England.

Self-destruction doesn’t become you, so drop the hard done by rubbish and get a grip. You might just find it eventually pays off in positive ways that you least expected.

source: https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1442921/royal-news-Prince-Harry-oprah-interview-meghan-markle-apple-tv-show-the-me-you-can-t-see

[clouds-rambles]

Birthday Drunkards

You and Venti on a nice night out but it's just the two of you getting rowdy in the pub.

I turn 19 this weekend so I thought I would celebrate my birthday a little early. I'm looking forwards to going to the pub with my flatmates

Obviously you're leader of the winds but like it's not mentioned lmao

Pairings; Venti x reader

Warning(s); drunken antics, swearing, you describe venti as a nonce but it holds no weight, literally just british vocab at this point, yes this is what i'm like drunk

Keep reading under the cut!

"Two death after noons please~" Venti orders sliding some mora across the bar. Diluc raises a brow at the want of such a strong drink. "It's [name]'s birthday, so naturally we get to drink more" Venti answers the unspoken question. You nod along with him before running off to a table with your drink.

The hours slip by, the bright sun of the early evening dwindles into the early hours of twilight. Both you and Venti have drunk more than your fair share. You both wobble as you go to the toilet and wobble back. It's way too hilarious when Venti falls down about four steps and has to save himself with his anemo power. You would have helped if you hadn't fallen on the ground practically crying with laughter.

"I can't believe you fucking fell" you wheeze out as you hold onto the banister for dear life half fearing falling down a few steps as you laugh "You're so fucking dumb" you add with another wheeze. You can hear Venti laughing

"Bahaha I can't believe you let me fall!" he feigns accusations, you laugh harder and wipe the tears coming down your face. You notice a curious Kaeya approach the two of you.

"Well, what seems to be the issue here?" he asks a sly grin on his face. You look up to the Calvary captain

"This absolute nonce just fell down the stairs" you wheeze attempting to stand up. Venti looks up to Kaeya before laughing once more.

"Lets get you both back to your table before Diluc kicks you out" the captain half orders helping both you and Venti up.

The two of you sit back to the table, Kaeya sits himself on the bench opposite you with an amused smirk.

"Are you here to babysit us Mr Kaeya?" you ask with an exaggerated tilt of your head. Kaeya hums

"More or less, I enjoy an entertaining show once in a while" he responds in jest. Venti's eyes widen and he stands back up

"You know what that calls for?" he asks summoning his lyre "A song!"

You attempt to pull the bard back down and tell him that he'll get the two of you kicked out, but the grin on his face stops you. The tavern's attention is on the two of you. If your eyes weren't glued to Venti you would see Diluc facepalm and shake his head at the archons drunken antics.

"Play the one about pirates!" you yell up to him while poking his leg. The bard nods and plays his tune. It isn't long until the two of you are atop the table dancing and loudly singing the tunes to old sea shanties that nobody really knows but catch on easily enough to. The two of you shout calls into the tavern and are greeted with the responses of the song. The grin on your face doesn't leave for a long time.

At some point Venti has his movie moment as you're singing the song with him. His voice quiets down while you continue to belt the lyrics his fingers still playing the lyre. This moment he remembers why he's fallen in love with you, his first immortal friend. Your face lights up as you sing into the tavern, your expressiveness as you badly dance along the table your feet barely keeping to the beat of the song.

And before you even have time to notice Venti pausing his singing for a brief few moments he starts back up again a grin plastered on his face.

The two of you don't leave until just after closing, Diluc makes sure you pay your bill before he leaves you with a bottle of wine as a birthday present. It's cute and you make a mental note to thank the wine master properly when you're so much more sober. Kaeya makes sure the two of you are fine to walk home by yourselves before he leaves with a lady friend.

The two of you hold each other around the waists singing happily as you both wonder through town to your flat. The both of you may have almost fallen over a handful of times but it's not enough to damper either of your moods. If anything, much like earlier, it causes the both of you to laugh.

Both you and Venti stumble into the flat, being sure to lock the front door. And with a trail of clothes to the bedroom the both of you happily pass out on the bed ready to confront the aching bones you'll both get in the morning.

Venti's other present to you could also wait until then.

[comrade-meow]

The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

I have a “big picture” brain. I’m unsatisfied with superficial explanations of current events and political trends, and only understand them once I’ve placed them in the context of deeper historic trajectories, social patterns and human drives. Without these explanations, I remain unsatisfied and questioning (and can’t be sold on false solutions either).

Transgenderism is one contemporary political trend that requires big picture thinking to comprehend—because there are no casual explanations for why, in less than a decade, people all over the world have started to accept a set of bizarre and contradictory ideas: that sex is a spectrum, that sex can be changed, and/or that sex is not real at all, only gender identity is—all to justify the political mantra, “transwomen are women.” This mantra is simply an assertion of male privilege, that men should be able to claim female identity if they want to, without needing sound justification. How did it spread so fast?

I have just finished writing a series of books called the Brief, Complete Herstory (2021) which offers a continuous narrative of history from the Big Bang to neoliberalism. It discusses pre-patriarchal cultures around the world, and the creation of patriarchy, church and state, capitalism, and neoliberalism. Only the last volume mentions transgenderism, but writing these books has helped me put the transgender trend, among others, in context.

One thing that is clear to me is that the idea that men can become women is not new—it began when patriarchal religions insisted that God, the creator of life, is male. Before this, if “god” had a sex, it was commonly female: she who birthed the world. The idea of god as male-produced all sorts of weird stories and myths to capture the imagination: like the one about Aphrodite being born out of Zeus’ head, and Jesus being born after an “immaculate conception” involving a male sky god and Mary, a sexless virgin (trans activists might call her an “incubator”).

Another thing that strikes me, taking this long view of history, is a succession of waves of “enclosure” or colonisation that cause enough social and economic fallout to prepare the ground for the next, more intimate, “enclosure.” The pattern begins earlier, but if we start with the enclosure movement of the 15th and 16th centuries, also called the “privatisation of the commons,” it is easy to place transgenderism in the context of a historic trajectory. I’ve discussed this before, in a talk on YouTube, but here I want to cast a wider net.

The 16th century saw the Protestant Reformation and the rise of modern capitalism while the Tudors reigned in England. The Tudors used the Reformation as a way of breaking from the Catholic church in order to act without, or against, the pope’s approval. After breaking from Rome, they seized church property, privatised the commons, and colonised Ireland. For centuries, peasants had used common lands to graze milk cows and gather water, edible and medicinal plants, and wood for construction and making fires.

The simultaneous confiscation of the commons and church property cast many people into poverty because the lands were a source of sustenance and, under feudalism, it was the church that had given aid and shelter to the poor. Women were especially affected by the double whammy of enclosure and lack of poverty alleviation. In her biography My Own Story, British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst traces her feminist awakening to witnessing women in the homeless shelters and workhouses that queen Elizabeth I eventually established to address the crisis.

Looking back, we can see that the enclosure movement provided the preconditions for Britain’s industrialisation. When common lands were privatised, they largely became lands for grazing sheep used for wool in the textile industry, the biggest industry of the early industrial revolution; and it created a class of people desperate enough to work up to 18 hours a day for a pittance in dismal conditions, in the factories or “satanic mills,” as the poet William Blake called them. Most textile workers were women. Urbanisation also took place in tandem with the rise of prostitution, with many women forced to choose between that, factory work or domesticity.

In her book, Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women(2018), Silvia Federici connects the 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts in England with the rise of capitalism and the privatisation of the commons. She writes that “women were the most likely to be victimised” by enclosure, pauperisation, and the “disintegration of communal forms of agriculture that had prevailed in feudal Europe,” because they were “the most disempowered by these changes, especially older women, who often rebelled against their impoverishment and social exclusion.” She notes that some women participated in protests, pulling up fences enclosing the commons, and explains:

[W]omen were charged with witchcraft because the restructuring of rural Europe at the dawn of capitalism destroyed the means of livelihood and the basis of their social power, leaving them with no resort but dependence on the charity of the better off, at a time when communal bonds were disintegrating, a new morality was taking hold that criminalised begging and looked down upon charity.

The premise of Federici’s book is that this very same correlation between privatisation and “witch” hunting can be seen with neoliberal privatisation. She shows how witch hunts have escalated dramatically following the neoliberalisation (or “re-colonisation”) of the African continent and the privatisation of lands there, for instance in Tanzania, where more than 5,000 women per year are murdered as witches and in the Central African Republic, where “prisons are full of accused witches.” In Indian tribal lands, “where large scale processes of land privatisation are underway,” witch hunts are also increasing, as they are in Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia. Describing the way witch-hunting frames the female sex, Federici argues that, “we have to think of the enclosures as a broader phenomenon than simply the fencing off of land. We must think of an enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature.”

Federici considers her analysis of the correlation between privatisation and witch-hunting to be ongoing, a work in progress—but I think her project is hamstrung. Her conclusions will remain sorely limited as long as she maintains the position that there is such a thing as a “sex worker” and a “transwoman,” because these ideas are central to the neoliberal “enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature” today. The term “sex worker” was coined by the global sex trade lobby on the back of women’s poverty and the normalisation of prostitution under neoliberalism.

In his book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2010), human trafficking expert Siddharth Kara shows that neoliberalisation leaves indigenous women especially vulnerable. He unveils a pattern of neoliberal government reform followed by land confiscation, leading to domestic poverty, and then prostitution in Asia, Europe and the United States. His book covers the period of the 1980s and 90s when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were handing out “structural adjustment packages” all over the world. These are financial loans conditional on land and infrastructure privatisation, cutbacks to health and welfare spending, and removal of legislation protecting workers and obstructing profit.

In The Shock Doctrine(2007), Naomi Klein argues that this neoliberalisation requires disaster to disorient people and render them sufficiently immobilised to have their rights stripped. Once implemented, just like enclosure and colonisation, neoliberalism creates its own fallout. As Klein explains, neoliberalism began to enter more intimate territory after September 11, 2001, when surveillance culture began to “enclose” our privacy in unprecedented ways. This led to an age where internet companies, which are best positioned to track and collect data, reign.

History shows us a continuous pattern that goes all the way back to the Tudors and before: disaster followed by enclosure creates more disaster that allows for further, more intimate, enclosure. This is precisely why Federici’s argument that we need to define enclosure more deeply and broadly, is so important: otherwise we cannot properly track the pattern and we will fail to notice when neoliberalisation starts claiming new frontiers.

Combine the internet age with prostitution and you have today’s growing porn industry—and porn creates its own fallout. As feminist author Gail Dines points out in Pornland(2010), the average age boys start watching pornography is at eleven years, and porn brainwashes them into objectifying women by linking the image of rape to orgasm. There is hardly a more efficient way to condition somebody than through orgasm. Social conditioning normally involves a system of punishment and reward by some external body—but when men learn to objectify women by watching porn, their own penises dispense the rewards. After that, nobody needs to offer them any other incentives to keep repeating the behaviour.

The fact that porn not only depicts rape but drives it is well established. We can see the link in high profile rape cases like those involving Brock Turner and Larry Nassar. Turner took photos during his assault, and shared them with friends; Nassar was found to be in possession of at least 37,000 child pornography videos and images. New Zealand women’s organisation the Backbone Collective’s report on child abuse "Seen and Not Heard" shows that for 54% of abusive fathers, pornography is a factor in the abuse of their children.

The fallout from rape is dissociation. The human stress response is designed to allow us to run from predators, or to overpower them if we judge ourselves as capable. It is not designed to deal with entrapment and cruelty, and when faced with these situations, women often freeze, our minds shutting off conscious awareness of what is happening, whilst the subconscious absorbs it for dealing with later. This mind/body split is at the root of patriarchy and patriarchal religion because patriarchy relies on it: it requires men to detach from their own humanity and cultivate the dissociation, body hatred and dysphoria that rape culture fosters.

The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

Trans activists assist this commodification of sex by excitedly censoring, blacklisting, firing, harassing and abusing women as “TERFs” (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”). “TERF” is a now well-known misnomer for feminists who have not forgotten what sex is, and, whilst trying to tear down the fences transgenderism erects around it, get in the way of the rollout of this new form of enclosure. With respect to her work, it is almost mind-boggling that Federici does not take into account this neoliberal “witch-hunting” that trans activists participate in.

If this terrifying trend exists as part of a broader trajectory—how far can it go?

The first volume in my Brief Complete Herstory argues that the most basic quality of life is sensitivity. Water has a miraculous capacity for storing information, for picking up the qualities of all it encounters. Even the smallest, single-celled organisms share with human beings the capacity to sense and respond to light, movement, and other environmental patterns and changes. Yet the more people are tethered to our phones and smart devices, our behaviour mined as “data” and sold to those who profit from predicting and manipulating our movements, the more numb and desensitised we become. I sometimes worry that as privatisation and dispossession advance in what Shoshana Zuboff calls the Age of Surveillance Capitalism(2019), this is the current frontier: our very sensitivity.

If we listen to spiritual teachers and visionaries throughout the ages, the seat of human sensitivity is the heart. Indigenous cultures have always recognised this, and herbalist Stephen Buhner taught me that this is not a metaphor: our bodies are surrounded by an electromagnetic field generated by the heart, and this field is five thousand times more powerful than that created by the brain. In The Secret Teachings of Plants(2004), Buhner writes that this means that the “[a]nalysis of information flow into the human body has shown that much of it impacts the heart first, flowing to the brain only after it has been perceived by the heart.”

If this is true, then in an era of desensitisation, the heart is the new frontier of enclosure. Can it be captured and domesticated? Or is there a freedom in the heart that simply cannot be enclosed?

One thing the long view of history shows us is that freedom does not exist in the hands of politicians who will deliver it after they tidy up the aftermath of the latest crisis, as they like to promise. I would also suggest it shows us that not only is the very idea of a patriarchal state incompatible with human freedom by definition—the tactic of negotiating with governments to have our “rights” and freedoms delivered has proven ineffective through centuries of trial and error. History shows us that governments are irredeemably deaf to the voices of women, and when they appear not to be, it is short-lived. Between the era of enclosure and the present day, women won the right to vote. Today, we may officially still have that right, but as womanhood is redefined beyond meaning, so has the relevance of the vote to our lives.

I am not saying that people should not lobby governments to promote the recognition of their rights, or that changes in the law have never benefited those who fought for them. I am also not suggesting that you can save the world by sitting under a tree and searching your heart. What I am saying is that in an era characterised by noise and desensitisation, there is no better time to tune out for long enough to discover whether you do carry within you a freedom immune to enclosure—because if you do, if this is part of our make up, surely there could be no better advisor in the decisions you, and we, need to make from here. There cannot be a better guide in the defence of freedom than freedom itself.

[joezworld]

Mind Reading, Soul Stealing, Red Eyed, Diesel Electric Monsters!

June, 2000

A new millennium dawned on the Island of Sodor, and with it came many changes that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

British Rail was no more, and the North Western Region was now the North Western Railway, free to operate as it pleased.

One of the first things that The Fat Controller did was purchase a new express train.

Gordon was apoplectic at this news, but the Fat Controller explained that this new service was to be a through train to London - steam engines hadn’t been allowed on the mainland rails for decades, and under British Rail, a new locomotive would take the coaches to and from London. Now that BR was no more, it was more economical to purchase a dedicated trainset and avoid the locomotive change at Barrow.

Furthermore, Gordon would still be rostered on the midday express and the Limited, both of which only went as far as Barrow.

Pip and Emma had visited Sodor once before, and had been well received by the other engines. However, once it was revealed that Gordon would be displaced from some of his trains, some engines became suspicious...

The engines had speculated that the Fat Controller would purchase a new diesel locomotive to haul the train, and were very surprised to discover that he had instead bought a high speed train!

-

"Ah canno' put ma buffer on it," Douglas admitted. "But they're doing something! Just look at how they act - the lasses must be scheming or something!"

"Ah'm tellin' ye - they are up ta something!" Douglas said to the other engines in the shed.

"And wha' might that be Douggie?" Asked Donald. Unlike his brother, he had no issue with the diesels, and was confused as to why his brother was so vehemently against them.

"Those two have been nothing but polite and cordial this entire time, and- oh bollocks." Duck began, before his eyes widened in realization. "Do not tell me that you have been listening to Oliver again!"

The other engines groaned - Oliver's escape from the mainland had put him in contact with some of the worst diesels that BR had ever fielded, and he still didn’t trust them as a result. Furthermore, his relatively isolated duties on the Little Western meant that his only real contact with diesels was limited to BoCo, Bear, and Delta - three engines who had all 'escaped' from the mainland in one form or another. He held a pessimistic view towards other diesels, and most of the engines had learned to tune him out as a result.

Apparently Douglas had not. "Ah have - and he's right! That's how it starts - they come in all peaceful and nice, and then Boom! All diesels all the time! Ah saw it happen once and ah'm not about to let it happen again!"

"Oh my god" said Donald and Duck in unison. They were going to have words with Oliver the next time they saw him.

-

Across the yard at the newly-built diesel shed, the diesels were listening to Douglas' ranting.

"Well, I'm glad that we haven't actually done anything to upset him." Pip said after a moment.

"I was worried that we'd said something." Emma chimed in from the back.

Bear rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, let me be the first to say that I am glad that you aren't actually evil monsters out to destroy steam traction."

Everyone laughed at that, and evidently did so just a little bit too loud, because...

"AH KNEW IT! They're conspiring against uz!" Douglas shouted from inside the shed.

The diesels stopped laughing and stared at the shed, while the steam engines began berating Douglas.

That brought a fresh wave of shouting from within the shed, while the diesels looked at each other incredulously.

The other engines weren't audible, but Douglas certainly was. "Well maybe no' on purpose! But ye don' know what these new things ken do! They might 'ave mind control powers or something!"

"Mind control powers?" Bear said with a raised eyebrow. "Where does he even get that from?"

"Is that normal?" Said Pip, suddenly concerned about having to work with these engines on a regular basis.

"Not especially." Said Delta. "But when it does happen, they're like this until they suffer a karmically appropriate pratfall, at which point they realize that they've been stupid and apologize."

The others stared at her.

"What?" She protested. "Why do you think I never get too big for my wheels if I can help it? I've read the books! I know what happens to the rest of you!"

Bear and BoCo exchanged a significant look, while Pip looked thoughtful.

"So, that pratfall," she said slowly, a sly look spreading across her face. "Do you lot feel like speeding up when it happens?"

-------------

And so they did.

Henry and James were soon involved in this scheme by virtue of being 'involved' with Bear and Delta, and spent the next several days figuring out exactly what Oliver and Douglas were saying about Pip and Emma. They eventually compiled a long list of imagined abilities, including mind control, telepathy, soul-stealing, invisibility, and the ability to lie with a straight face.

(The steam engines disputed that last point, but all the diesels agreed that it was the only thing on the list that was true.)

-

A week later, they first sprang their plan. Douglas was idling at the big station as Pip and Emma loaded their passengers. He made a conscious effort to ignore the HST set, which was helped somewhat by Bear backing into the track in between him and them.

Then things began to go strangely.

"Oh, not much. How about you?" Bear said in response to nothing.

Douglas looked around to see who he could be talking to, and found nobody else.

"Very interesting." Continued Bear. "I'd never considered that before. Is that new?"

After a moment of silence: "I see."

A pause.

"I wonder how that would work on this Island?"

Silence.

"Really?"

More silence.

"Well I would have never guessed!"

Douglas began to wonder if he was losing his mind when Pip's guard blew his whistle and the HST rolled away towards Barrow.

After a long moment, Douglas spoke up. "Bear, who were ye talking to?"

"Pip?" Bear said, confused.

"No ye weren’t!" Exclaimed Douglas. "Ye were talkin' to thin air!"

"I was not! We were having a most interesting conversation. I'm surprised you didn't hear it, considering we were right next to you."

"Ye said nuthin!" Douglas protested.

"I think you need to get your hearing checked." Bear said as he pulled away with his goods train. He broke into a wide smile as soon as he was out of sight.

--

Next it was Oliver. He made a rare trip beyond the Little Western to collect a train of China Clay from Wellsworth. BoCo was asleep in the station's bay platform when he arrived, so Oliver quietly collected the clay wagons.

As he waited at the signal to leave, Oliver noticed that BoCo was mumbling in his sleep.

"No... mustn't... listen... to... evil... no one... controls... me..."

"BoCo?!" Oliver yelped, suddenly concerned by the diesel's mumbling.

"Huh?!" BoCo sprang to wakefulness suddenly, and Oliver would have sworn that for a split second, there was a red glint in BoCo's eyes. "Oh, hullo Oliver. Fancy seeing you out on the main line."

"You were talking in your sleep!" Oliver said, forgoing any pleasantries.

"I suppose I might have been." BoCo confessed. "I haven't been sleeping very well recently - none of us diesels have."

As Oliver began even more concerned than he had been mere seconds ago, the home signal on the main line dropped to 'clear', and Pip and Emma roared through the station bound for Tidmouth.

As they passed, Oliver jumped slightly - Pip, who was facing him, glared at him as he passed. It was especially unsettling because modern diesels had their end-of-train lamps built into their eyes, so Pip's pupils were bright red as she glared back at Oliver and BoCo.

"She's up to something..." Oliver said to BoCo.

BoCo said nothing in return, and when Oliver looked over, he almost jumped off the rails - BoCo's eyes were the same red colour as Pip's and he was staring into the middle distance.

"She isn't up to anything Oliver..." BoCo said hollowly. "Why would you say that...?"

Oliver squealed in terror, and fled onto the main line as soon as his signal dropped.

BoCo waited until Oliver's train had vanished from sight before turning his lights off and laughing hysterically.

----------

This continued for some time - Oliver and Douglas would see one of the diesels, and the diesels would act strangely at the mention of Pip and Emma.

By the end of the week, Oliver was jumping at shadows, and Douglas was telling his conspiracy theories to any engine that would listen.

"So then Delta gets this faraway look in ‘er eye an' she clams up!" Douglas crowed one morning at Knapford station. “An’ there was no other engine there! She musta’ been talking to them while they wuz invisible!”

Thomas was spellbound. "And then what happened?"

Henry was not. "And then Douglas discovered that there was a reasonable explanation to whatever just happened and learned not to tell tales to impressionable tank engines."

"Ah am not! They. Are. Up. Ta. Somethin'!" Douglas railed at the green engine. "Look, there's Bear now! Let's just see - he's gonna do somethin' if we watch him close enough."

Bear tooted his horn in greeting as he rolled by with a slow goods train. Seeing Oliver and Henry, he quickly flashed his red lights and dropped his engine down a gear as he rolled between Henry and Douglas.

"Play along!" He whispered to Henry as he went by, the noise of his engine masking the words.

Henry blinked. That was an unexpected move... He watched the goods train roll by - it didn't feel right, pranking Douglas like that.

The goods train hadn’t even gone past yet, and he could already hear Douglas ranting about how Bear was a "red-eyed scheming devil!"

Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. He thought as he listened to Douglas make blameless accusations about his fiancé. To hell with it then.

"What did he say?!" Douglas bellowed after the train passed. "Ah heard 'im say something to ye Henry! What did the devil say to ye?!"

Henry, trying his best to keep his face neutral, looked at Douglas in shock. "Oh hello Douglas! When did you get here?"

Bear's train cleared the signal block, and Henry steamed out of the station, leaving Douglas raving about "memory alterin' beasties!"

The engines looked up as Donald steamed up to the diesel shed. 

“Ah knoo ye lot are doin’ this - knock it off before ma brother completely loses his marbles.” He said firmly. 

“Is he going to stop saying that we’re mind controlling demons?” Bear retorted. 

The steam engine sighed deeply. “Ah want ye to know that he wasnae sayin that before ye started, but ah’ll talk to ‘im. Mebbe we can work something out.”

He steamed back to the sheds. Within a few minutes the sound of Scottish-accented shouting burst from the sheds. 

This continued for some time, to the point where Henry had his driver pull him out of the shed to escape the noise. 

Eventually, both twins emerged from the shed, Donald looking aggrieved and Douglas much more subdued. 

“Ah’m sorry.” The twin eventually said. “Ah think that ah might have let this whole ‘new diesel’ thing get to me a bit more than ah should’ve.”

There was some muttering from Bear and Pip before BoCo shushed them. “We accept your apology Douglas. Sometimes we can all go a little overboard -”

“I don’t.” Interrupted Delta.

“You hid from the Thin Clergyman.” BoCo glared at her before continuing. “We all can go a little overboard at times, so I’m glad that we can now put this behind us. Friends?”

“Friends.” Douglas said after a moment.

“Good!” Cried a voice from inside Donald’s cab as Siobhan poked her head out. “Now that we’re done torturin’ me Da’ for being thick, I wan’ to know somethin - how did all of you manage to make yer eyes turn red like that?”

“Oh, this?” BoCo said as he turned on his red lamps, making his eyes glow red. “It really is just something we were built with.”

The other diesels blinked theirs as well to show that it was not an unusual thing to be equipped with. 

“Oh that is so creepy.” Siobhan shivered. "I love it!"

--

“Oh no.” Oliver gasped as he watched the diesels flash their mind-control rays at Donald and Douglas. “They got to them.”

“What do we do?” Whispered Thomas from the next platform over. 

“I don’t know!”

-------

After the truce between Douglas and the Diesels, life became much more peaceful on Sodor. 

Unless you were on Thomas’ branch line. 

Because only Thomas and Daisy regularly travelled down to the big station at Tidmouth, the rest of the engines on the line learned most of their news from the main line engines when they met at Knapford station. This meant that information was slow and sometimes unreliable on the best of days. 

Now that Thomas actively believed that Pip and Emma had mind-controlled the rest of the engines, that information stream became warped and distorted very quickly. 

Matters were made worse when Daisy was sent to the works for several weeks to have her engine rebuilt. To keep up with traffic, The Fat Controller sent an engine to assist, and Oliver was the first to volunteer. 

The branch line quickly descended into hysteria.

Looking back on this series of events, it is mind-boggling that none of the big engines noticed, however, they had assumed that Douglas had told Oliver that it was all a prank, and that Oliver was an engine that could be reasoned with. 

Furthermore, Gordon, now displaced from the morning and evening express, was insistent on trying out other passenger runs to see if he enjoyed them. This meant that the engines who normally pulled those trains were also displaced from their duties, meaning that the engines who usually met Percy, Thomas, and Daisy’s trains on a regular basis were instead arriving at Knapford on random days and times. The sudden paranoia of the branch line engines was therefore overlooked or dismissed as ‘tank engines being tank engines’.

Matters were made worse when Daisy returned from the works, allowing Oliver to return to the Little Western. 

Daisy was due to return around lunchtime, and so Oliver took his train to Tidmouth, and then immediately continued on with a train to Arlesburgh, while Daisy took the return service to Ffarquhar. 

The other engines on the branch were busy with trains at the north end of the line, and didn’t know that Daisy was returning that day. From their perspective, Oliver was ‘vanished’ by ‘them’, and replaced with a diesel interloper. 

The fact that Daisy had been on the branch line for almost fifty years at that point was immaterial. 

“How do we know that you’re really Daisy?” Percy asked late that night. “What if you’ve been mind-controlled by them to make us into your thralls?”

“Because if I was,” Daisy hissed, acid practically dripping off of her tongue. “I would have done it already. Go. To. Sleep!”

No more was said that night, but the other engines continued to view Daisy with suspicion. 

Daisy, now thoroughly unamused, began asking the big engines if mind control was something that she could actually do - just so that she could get some peace and quiet! 

This did not ease the branch line engine’s concerns at all. 

Daisy found that sleep was much harder to come by as a result.

-

Things eventually came to a head when an extremely sleep deprived Daisy backed down onto the milk van a little bit too hard. The shunter had failed to set the van’s brakes, and it rolled away down the hill towards the next station. 

Percy and Thomas had, as the result of a lost bet, switched jobs that day, which meant that Percy, Annie, and Clarabel were halfway up the hill behind Daisy when the milk van rattled into view. 

“Horrors!” Percy cried as his crew applied the brakes and jumped clear. 

The damage to Percy’s front wasn’t catastrophic, but it was bad enough for the breakdown train crew to put him on a flatbed so he could be taken to the works to be looked over. Clarabel, who was behind Percy and took a nasty bump in the collision, accompanied him. 

Wendell was sympathetic as he collected them, but Percy was still wary, especially because his flatbed had been coupled up to Wendell facing backwards, meaning that neither he nor Clarabel could see if the diesel had been mind-controlled. 

Wendell’s shocked laughter when Percy told him this was not encouraging. 

-

The trip went normally until they arrived at Kildane. There, another engine was waiting, and attached itself to the back of the train. Percy and Clarabel eyed it suspiciously. It looked like a diesel, but one they had never met before, and had a strange metal contraption on its roof, which it lowered before they set off again. 

“Hi!” The engine chirped as the train set off. “I’m Abbey! Who are you?”  

“Percy...” He said cautiously. Clarabel stayed silent.

As it turned out, Abbey was an electric locomotive. She wasn’t new to the island by any means, but she had arrived after Percy had begun working on Thomas’ branch full-time, so they’d never met. She was very chatty, very curious, and had no idea what Percy and Clarabel were talking about. 

“Mind-Control Rays?” She laughed as they rolled towards Kellsthorpe Road station. “How would that even work?”

“I don’t know, but what I do know is that if their eyes turn red and then they look at you, you’re done for!”

“Red eyes?” Abbey looked thoughtful. “Do you mean reversing lights? We have them built into our eyes so we don’t need lamps!” 

“What?” Percy was baffled. 

“Yeah! It’s something that all engines have nowadays.” Abbey’s brows scrunched together in thought. “I think that mine has an emergency backup battery... let me try...”

After a moment of squinting, the pupil of Abbey’s left eye flickered into a very familiar red gaze. 

-

Wendell was not paying attention to the conversation behind him at all, and was startled to attention when Percy and Clarabel began screaming. 

“What in the world is going on?!” He shouted, trying to look behind himself and see what was happening. 

“I don’t know!” Cried Abbey. “They just started screaming!”

The commotion drew the attention of Wendell’s driver and second man as well, which meant that nobody on the train noticed as the Kellsthorpe Road home signal suddenly dropped to ‘Danger’ as they drew nearer to it.

The train rumbled past the signal without stopping, and approached the station at speed. Wendell finally looked forward, and saw members of the station staff waving their arms at him as they tried to right a massively overloaded porter’s trolley that had fallen over on the foot crossing. 

“Diesel and Oil! Stop the train! Stop the Train!” He shouted, drawing his driver’s attention, who applied the brakes as they entered the station. 

“I want you to tell me what happened one more time.” The Fat Controller said as seriously as one could while standing ankle deep in tin foil. The station was covered in the stuff, as was Wendell, Percy, Clarabel, and Abbey.

“The porter’s trolley was a consignment of tinfoil going to a restaurant supply store in town.” The stationmaster started. “It came in on the last train, and then it fell. We tried to make them stop-”

“I threw the signal! I did!” The signalman interjected. “They just didn’t see it!”

“No, we didn’t.” Wendell’s driver admitted, shamefaced. “We were trying to see why -”

“Percy was screaming.” Finished the Fat Controller.  

“Yes sir.”

“Why was Percy screaming?” 

“We don’t know sir.”

“Abbey might!” Wendell chipped in while trying to blow flecks of tin foil out of his nose. “She was talking to them when they started screaming.”

-

As it turned out, Abbey knew exactly why Percy (and Clarabel) had been screaming, and was willing to talk about it at length. 

The Fat Controller's eyebrows rose into his hairline and stayed there as Abbey kept talking. Percy and Clarabel remained silent, although it was impossible to determine whether it was out of fear, stubbornness, or embarrassment. 

“Mind Control powers? Really?” The Fat Controller wanted to be upset, but just could not manage it. “Where on earth did that come from?”

“Oliver sir!” Percy finally spoke up. “He said that the diesels were taking over the island with their evil powers!”

A surprised sounding "oh no!” rose from the next platform - Henry was waiting with The Limited, and had heard most of Abbey’s explanation. 

“Do you have something to add to this?” The Fat Controller asked Henry, unsure how this story could get any more ridiculous. 

-

Henry did have something to add. 

-

“Sir, are you all right?” His assistant asked as they returned to the car. 

“I’m fine.” The Fat Controller managed. “I just need a moment.”

He shut the door to the car behind him, and as soon as he was alone, he laughed until he cried.