#like it’s not productive for theory even

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The far right grows through “disaster fantasies”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/25/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano">https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/25/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano

The core of the prepper fantasy: "What if the world ended in the precise way that made me the most important person?" The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their "leadership skills."

The ethnographer Rich Miller spent his career embedding with preppers, eventually writing the canonical book of the fantasies that power their obsessions, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times:

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3637295.html

Miller recounts how the disasters that preppers prepare for are the disasters that will call upon their skills, like the water chemist who's devoted his life to preparing to help his community recover from a terrorist attack on its water supply; and who, when pressed, has no theory as to why any terrorist would stage such an attack:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared

Prepping is what happens when you are consumed by the fantasy of a terrible omnicrisis that you can solve, personally. It's an individualistic fantasy, and that makes it inherently neoliberal. Neoliberalism's mind-zap is to convince us all that our only role in society is as an individual ("There is no such thing as society" – M. Thatcher). If we have a workplace problem, we must bargain with our bosses, and if we lose, our choices are to quit or eat shit. Under no circumstances should we solve labor disputes through a union, especially not one that wins strong legal protections for workers and then holds the government's feet to the fire.

Same with bad corporate conduct: getting ripped off? Caveat emptor! Vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Elections are slow and politics are boring. But "vote with your wallet" turns retail therapy into a form of civics.

This individualistic approach to problem solving does useful work for powerful people, because it keeps the rest of us thoroughly powerless. Voting with your wallet is casting a ballot in a rigged election that's always won by the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that's never you. That's why the right is so obsessed with removing barriers to election spending: the wealthy can't win a one-person/one-vote election (to be in the 1% is to be outnumbered 99:1), but unlimited campaign spending lets the wealthy vote in real elections using their wallets, not just just ballots.

You can't recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Practically speaking, you can't even recycle. All those plastics you lovingly washed and sorted ended up in a landfill or floating in the ocean. Plastics recycling is a hoax perpetrated by the petrochemical industry, who knew all along that their products would never be recycled. These despoilers convinced us to view the systemic rot of corporate ecocide as an individual matter, chiding us about "littering" and exhorting us to sort our garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/14/they-knew/#doing-it-again

We are bombarded by real problems that require urgent solutions that can only be resolved through collective action, which we are told is impossible. This is an objectively frightening state of affairs, and it makes people go nuts.

At the start of this century, in the weeks before 9/11, a message-board poster calling himself Gecko45 went Web 1.0 viral by earnestly bullshitting about his job as a mall security guard, doing battle with heavily armed gangs, human traffickers, and ravening monsters. Gecko45's posts were unhinged: he started out seeking advice for doubling up on body-armor to protect him while he deployed his smoke bombs and his partner assembled a high-powered rifle. Though Gecko45 was apparently sincere, he drew tongue-in-cheek replies from the other posters on GlockTalk, who soon dubbed him the "Mall Ninja":

https://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

The Mall Ninja professed to patrolling a suburban shopping mall while armed with 15 firearms as he carried out his duties as "Sergeant of a three-man Rapid Tactical Force at one of America’s largest indoor retail shopping areas." His qualifications? Mastery "of three martial arts including ninjitsu, which means I can wear the special boots to climb walls."

The Mall Ninja's fantasy of a single brave individual, defending the sleepy populace from violent, armed mobs is instantly recognizable as an ancestor to today's right wing fantasy of America's cities as "no-go zones" filled with "open air drug markets," patrolled by MS-13 and antifa super-soldiers. And while the Mall Ninja drew derision – even from the kinds of people who hang out on a message board called "GlockTalk" – today, his brand of fantasy wins elections.

On Jacobin, Olly Haynes interviews the political writer Richard Seymour about this phenomenon:

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/disaster-nationalism-fantasies-far-right/

Seymour's latest book is Disaster Nationalism:The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, an exploration of the strange obsessions of the right with imaginary disasters in the midst of real ones:

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3147-disaster-nationalism

You know these imaginary disasters: "FEMA death camps, 'great replacement theory,' the 'Great Reset,' fifteen-minute cities, 5G towers being beacons of mind control, and microchips installed in people through vaccines." As Seymour writes, these conspiracy fantasies are proliferated by authoritarian regimes and their supporters, especially as real disasters rage around them.

For example, during the Oregon wildfires, people who were threatened by blazing forests that hit 800'C refused to evacuate because they'd been convinced that the fires were set by antifa arsonists in a bid to "wipe out white conservative Christians." They barricaded themselves in their fire-threatened homes, brandishing guns and prepping for the antifa mob.

Seymour says that this "disaster nationalism" "processes disaster in a way that is actually quite enlivening." Confronted with the helplessness of a real disaster that can only be solved through the collective action you've been told is both impossible and a Communist plot, you retreat to an individualistic disaster fantasy that you can play an outsized role in. Every crisis – the climate emergency, poverty, a toxic environment – is replaced by "bad people" and you can go get them.

For authoritarian politicians, a world of bad people at the gates who can only be stopped by "the good guys" makes for great politics. It impels proto-fascist movements to electoral victories, all over the world: in the US, of course, but Seymour also analyzes this as the phenomenon behind the electoral victories of authoritarian ethno-nationalists in India, Israel, Brazil, and all over the world.

I find Seymour's analysis bracing and clarifying. It explains the right's tendency to obsess over the imaginary at the expense of the real. Think of conservatives' obsession with imaginary and hypothetical children, from Qanon's child trafficking conspiracies to the forced birth movement's fixation on "the unborn."

It's not just that these kids don't exist – it's that the right is either indifferent or actively hostile to real children. Qanon peaked at the same time as Trump's "kids in cages" family separation policy, which saw thousands of kids separated from their parents, many forever, as a deliberate policy.

The forced birth movement spent decades fighting to overturn Roe in the name of saving "the unborn" – even as its leaders were also overturning the Child Tax Credit, the most successful child poverty alleviation measure in American history. Actual children were left to sink into food insecurity and precarity, to be enlisted to work overnight shifts in meat-packing plants, to fall into homelessness – even as the movement celebrated the "culture of life" that would rescue hypothetical children.

Lifting kids out of poverty and building a world where parents can afford to raise as many children as they care to have is a collective endeavor. Firebombing abortion clinics or storming into a pizza parlor with an assault rifle is an individual rescue fantasy that escapes into the world.

Mall Ninja politics are winning.

[bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I realize it’s sort of connected to this chart:

This was a chart that puts into visual terms a system used by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower to decide what to prioritize and do when, and is supposed to help increase one’s productivity. I think Stephen Covey also used it in that Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book that my school was obsessed with for some reason. You can put Tasks You Need/Want To Do into each box, depending on how urgent and important you deem them, and then that will—y’know, in theory—help you decide what order to do them in.

Tim Urban of Wait But Why (he also has some bullshit “enlightened centrist” and Elon Musk-fanboy opinions I don’t agree with, but I love his series of popular posts and TED Talk about procrastination) suggests in this post that procrastinators’ matrices tend to look more like this:

We tend to live in Quadrants 3 and 4, avoiding Quadrant 1 until it’s absolutely necessary and we’re sent into a panicked frenzy of productivity. But the trick to this is, if you think “oh, clearly what I’m doing to procrastinate is my passion, so I’ll pursue that instead,” it turns from a fun, desirable Q3 or Q4 task into an undesirable Q1 one. It might be the exact same task, or similar, but now it’s urgent and a responsibility and people expect things of you and that’s scary…so now you’re avoiding the task you used to love!

OP seems to have experienced this with art, where it started as a Q4 task (doodling in class, to avoid the Q1 task of learning about Henry VIII) or Q3 task (updating their webcomic on a regular schedule) to a Q1 task when they made it their career. I’ve gone through it with writing: fanfic or random cracked-out stories I write just for myself? Fun! I wanna! My senior thesis, which is literally the same thing, writing short stories? Oh no, now it’s an assignment, and that’s to be avoided.

And like OP said, this means procrastinators are rarely just sitting idle, and they are getting stuff done! Even if it’s not urgent stuff, or stuff that looks important to you right now, it is stuff that is getting done. Of course, what this Q3 or Q4 stuff is can range from “mindlessly scrolling through Instagram” to “working on a successful webcomic and letting your creativity flow.” The other day, I found some free Latin textbooks online and found that I was doing the exercises in them as a means of procrastination—I was literally teaching myself a dead language instead of doing the psych homework I was supposed to be doing. My brain is broken. (Of course, if I actually took a Latin class, I’d probably start procrastinating on doing the exercises for THAT too…)

I don’t know what the conclusion is here—doing a Q1 job I hate to save mental energy for Q3/Q4 stuff I love? I don’t want to never try and seek credit, payment, etc. for things I love to do for fear that they’ll become Q1 things and I’ll start hating them. I don’t know, I’m only a college undergrad here. But I thought OP brought up a very good point that I’ve actually been using for a whole as a framework to look at my procrastination, and I thought I’d provide an alternate visualization that’s helped me too.

i feel like i had a massive breakthrough with understanding in hindsight how adhd has affected my relationship with art, and i sat there for about an hour just like

[ennard-is-near]

Hot take? It gets on my nerves when FNaF has mysterious lines just for the sake of sparking theory.

“Remember what you saw,” (4) “Off to that place again,” (6, Midnight Motorist) “The one you should not have killed,” (UCN) are all examples of this phenomenon.

To me it feels like a lot of theorists dedicate time and energy to solving these little mysteries and they abandon the bigger picture or worse, abandon entire theoretical timelines based on one line that doesn’t really mean much.

[dumblebumblebee]

no i genuinely think james wilson is insane and i will prove it right now. be amazed at my deductive reasoning.

in season two when wilson is temporarily staying with house as he looks for a new apartment, house ends up deleting a message from a realtor involving information regarding an available apartment wilson was interested in. we're led to believe that this is because house has realized that wilson staying with him means a cleaner environment and real food to eat, and he doesn't want to lose those perks.

but tbqfh i am almost positive that wilson did that on purpose. this man has his OWN phone, so why would he give out house's number for information that only pertains to him? he was 100% trying to gauge house's tolerance of him living there.

i mean, even in episode one it's explicitly stated that house shows affection through actions, rather than words. based on his actions, wilson knows that house cares about him, and also house likes to feel as though he is mischievous and one step ahead of everyone else at all times.

if house, for some reason (say, idk, delicious meals), changed his mind about wanting wilson to move out, would he really swallow his pride and ask wilson to stay? no he fucking would not. he could never admit that he actually is obsessed with wilson's cooking, because that is essentially saying that he's become dependent on something that someone who is NOT himself can provide.

so, instead of having a conversation like a sane person, wilson gave out house's number for information regarding his moving. This way, if house really wanted him to move out, he could shove the message in wilson's face. But, if not, he could start scheming like a cartoon villain for a devious little way to make sure wilson didn't have the opportunity. which is what happened.

wilson 100% orchestrated that entire interaction i am fucking positive

[forevergulag]

i never said that.

capitalism is an economic stage defined by the contradiction between bourgeois and proletarian, in that the bourgeois own the means of production as private property, and proletarians, propertyless, are compelled to sell their labor-power to the bourgeois for wages. it is not simple commodity production.

your analysis of the political-economy of capitalism is deeply lacking in a class perspective; commodity production and the existence of capital in itself determines nothing, and you must look to the social relations of production for any lucrative material analysis. the character of the modern production of commodities and capital is driven by said relations, not vice versa.

furthermore, the existence of commodities and capital, just like the existence of a state, can determine only that economic classes exist in a society. they do not have an innate unbreakable tie to any one class.

in a dictatorship of the proletariat, or an economic mode in which the proletariat are organized as the ruling class, commodity production, the reproduction of capital, and even bourgeois(as is necessary for proletarians to exist) are still present, and in certain countries like the PRC where a state-capitalist economic organization is employed the bourgeois are even aided and encouraged to grow by the proletarian state, yet fundamentally none of this implies the character of that proletarian state to be capitalistic.

since you seem to hate stalin so much, here’s a quote from lenin:

The proletarian state may, without changing its own nature, permit freedom to trade and the development of capitalism only within certain bounds, and only on the condition that the state regulates (supervises, controls, determines the forms and methods of, etc.) private trade and private capitalism.

-Role and Functions of the Trade Unions under the New Economic Policy

and an outlined speech from Chairman Mao:

and finally two works from Comrade Lenin:

The proletariat needs the state — this is repeated by all the opportunists, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites, who assure us that this is what Marx taught. But they “forget” to add that, in the first place, according to Marx, the proletariat needs only a state which is withering away, i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately, and cannot but wither away. And, secondly, the working people need a "state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class". The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that can unite all the working and exploited people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, in completely removing it. The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners — the landowners and capitalists. The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion — not as the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of “socialist” participation in bourgeois Cabinets in Britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century. All his life Marx fought against this petty-bourgeois socialism, now revived in Russia by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. He developed his theory of the class struggle consistently, down to the theory of political power, of the state. The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the particular class whose economic conditions of existence prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility and the power to perform it. While the bourgeoisie break up and disintegrate the peasantry and all the petty-bourgeois groups, they weld together, unite and organize the proletariat. Only the proletariat — by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production — is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie exploit, oppress and crush, often not less but more than they do the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation. The theory of class struggle, applied by Marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i.e., of undivided power directly backed by the armed force of the people. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population — the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians — in the work of organizing a socialist economy.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State And Revolution

[accirax]

Soooooo... remember when I said I was rewatching DRDT?

Well, here's the result of that! As I did, I made a Danganronpa: Despair Time Episode Guide, full of links to specific, labeled parts of each episode to make it easier to rewatch and reference. The document should be available to all, so hopefully it'll come in handy for anyone who's interested in theory writing. Since it's taken me a bit review the story, I've already been using the guide to put together some of my theories over the past couple of months, and man has it saved me some time.

As I say in my opening blurb on the document itself, if you notice that anything is wrong or unclear, feel free to let me know! You can use the comments on this post to point stuff out as well.

I hope that you find this useful! (the cost of admission is putting up with my terrible scene title jokes)

[lamentfulwarbler]

Chuuya Week Day 5 - Alternate Universe

(Drawn for @chuuyaweek2024 ‘s Chuuya Week)

-

Textless version under the cut

[void-writing]

chapter 45 of wistoria: wand and sword has me SCREAMING!

Like--

--Will, my boy, my lad, my lil guy. Respectfully--

--WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU!?!

Every new chapter gives me such whiplash, I love it. Kick her ass, Will!

[the-indie-owl]

MAJOR UPDATE, PLEASE READ THIS REBLOG!

Ok, so after doing such major researching, turns out, Pet Alien was actually a Toyline that came out 5 Years Before Space Goofs (even when the Show actually had came out after SG and SI) soooo kinda misleading and that Space Goofs *might* be the rip-off?

I dunno, I was just kinda wondering if the Recent Fans in this Fandom has ever heard of "Pet Alien" (even if some of the SG Nerds were actually PA Nerds in the Past Years) because this feels like a Simpsons/Family Guy comparison more than a Lion King/Kimba comparison (though I would at least sense as to why so many American/Japanese products get so many similarity controversy over the years).

Also, you guys might wanna check out the Pet Alien website to browse more of this Toy Franchise's lore because..

Yeah, I'm defiantly sensing a Brief Huge Connection Conspiracy Theory right there.

Question to the Space Goofs community.

Is any other Xilam Nerd deeply aware of Another French Kids Show about Aliens also being stranded on Earth exists?

Not exactly a "Rip-Off" but rather it's Another Show within a Similar Concept as "Space Goofs".

Just curious in case if any other SG Fan has heard of "Pet Alien".

Because honestly, I'm deeply surprised that these Two Medias didn't get into Another One of Those "Similar Franchises" Controversies.

[souenkun]

Did yorishima getting his arm possessed by a youkai came with a bonus of eternal youth or something 😭

[raggydollsscreenshots]

Posting screenshots from The Raggy Dolls every day until ITV puts it on ITVX: Day 76:

[wjbs-bonkle-au]

Hey you. You're new here, right? Well, I've been here all my life, and I know all about this backwater rock, as well as all the awful stuff that's happened here. For instance, let me tell you about... the Karzahni Embargo.

Few hundred years ago, some factory owner - can't remember her name - decided that sendin' her employees to Karzahni to be repaired was slowin' production too much, so she brought in the finest engineers from across the universe to figure out a way of keepin' her employees workin' in the event one of 'em got injured.

Now one of these inventors, a Ko-Matoran from the Northern Continent, he walks into the boardroom to present his idea, and the factory owner clearly likes what she sees, as she immediately greenlights it. It wasn't until a few weeks later that it became known to the public what this idea was; whenever a Matoran was injured, rather than being sent to Karzahni, they were taken away and... "fixed". I am usin' that term very loosely. Limbs gettin' replaced with tools, spines bein' patched up with control device... even organs bein' ripped out and replaced with mechanical equivalents.

Now, you'd probably expect the Xian council to immediately shut the factory down and immediately send the... "fixed" workers away for repairs. But remember, this is Xia. Instead, every member of the council immediately adopted this practise for their businesses. And then the lower-rankin' companies did the same. And so on, and so on, until it reached the companies that couldn't afford the implants.

That's when Glaivonn comes in. If you somehow haven't heard of him yet, I'm surprised. His company owns this entire district. He's one of those Titans from the Southern Continent, y'know them, they're the ones who name themselves after their favourite weapons. And as you can tell, Glaivonn really likes glaives. So much so that his company almost exclusively makes them. Or at least, used to. See, a factory fulla blades doesn't sound very safe, and naturally there's a lot of workplace injuries.

One day, after comin' back from a trip to the... "scenic" Tren Krom Peninsula, one of Glaivonn's assistants updates him on what's been goin' on while he was away, and when ol' Glaivy hears about the worker "repairs" and how less well-off companies can afford them, he gets a very messed-up idea; he starts makin' cheap, lower-quality implants, and sells them to the factories that can't afford the good stuff. This goes very well. For Glaivonn I mean; not the workers. I once met a Matoran from a low-grade mask forge who had her entire left arm and part of her lung damaged in a Protodermis spill, and the replacements were on the brink of fallin' apart.

But not only does Glaivonn make the parts cheap; he makes them for other species, too. Now, for non-Matoran, Karzahni isn't really a concern; if a Bruiser or Vortixx gets injured, then they have to retire, or buy a new limb if they can afford it. But now a Bruiser getting their arm torn off in a crusher ain't a guarantee of retirement. Just drag 'em round the back, bolt a grabber-claw onto the stump, reinforce the spine, and now you've got a super-worker who can't quit their job.

You're probably wonderin' why this is called the Karzahni Embargo. Luckily for you, you're about to find out! So it turns out that Glaivonn had connections to the Xian council, and he managed to pull some strings to get them to ban all transfers to Karzahni. You may think this sounds good, and in theory it was since the Matoran wouldn't disappear forever, but this also meant that now, any company that couldn't afford even the cheaper implants would eventually be forced to shut down. Xia hasn't sent a Matoran to Karzahni for centuries, and they probably won't continue doing so any time soon.

Now then, is there anythin' else you want to know about? Next story won't be free. Let's say... 8 Widgets.

[post-story notes section]

The thing about Axonn's species naming themselves after weapons is a reference to this post.

Also this story takes place about a week before Teridax took over the Matoran Universe.

Honestly I like to imagine that Xia is actually more cyberpunk that Metru Nui. Like there are giant Blade Runner-style holograms advertising the latest ridiculous weapons the Vortixx have come up with, and basically-hovercars flying between buildings, and a "luxury district"* where all the company-owners and stuff live, with like Matoran and Steltian Bruiser servants and stuff.

*which will come up in a future post

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I have a question that I don't know the answer to. And I'm not sure if there's already an answer to this or not.

Why is Wally the only neighbor with no noes and no eyebrows? Was that like a way to make Wally seem like an outcast or something??

It droved me crazy with confusion the first time I realized this.......

And PLEASE don't see this as an ask of me "JUST noticing now". I noticed a month ago (ever sense I first started loving Welcome Home as a hyperfixation) but I kept it to myself because I was too embarrassed to ask to really know. And it's really ok if you don't know either.

oh yeah no to my knowledge we don't know why that's a Design Choice That Exists! could be to make him look a little more unsettling than the others (more out of place within his own niche to kinda mirror how he's Different despite filling the role he's made for & existing in the place he Should Be In) bc this is a Horror project, or just because no nose/eyebrows looked best on him-

but it might be something we're not In On yet! lore we haven't learned! we just don't know

[chiralcrystallization]

WHAT THE FUCK ...

That was a LOT.....

I need to let everything sink in, think over it, watch it again I-

Wow... Kojima you fuckinsunnovabitch , you mad bastard i-... wow..

[spiribia]

rough recreation of the set of murals I thought existed in treasure reef. I saw screenshots of these somewhere back in the day and thought i NEED to play season of abyss. But now that I’m looking for them I’ve seen nary a trace of their existence at all, so I assume it’s not real, or else this would be the talk of the town when it came to krill lore. Still, where….?

[bryanxlawrence]

Which, in theory does make sense! You want your product to sell, but if it lacks the quality, but the price is up, then no one will buy it. Sadly, that’s just how it works. Some companies won’t do it but that’s just some. Oh, it’s happened. Not so much recently but more of when I first started and even in school! So it all has to do with taste I guess. But thank you! I’m glad you approve! Yeah, some people get mad when someone tries their dish and there really is something off about it. It’s tricky to please everyone. You’re totally right about that! It’s like fast forward from here on out.

Exactly, they're just making things to make a buck, they don't care as much about the quality of the product, that doesn't matter to them. They just want to make things to get them out the door. For what it's worth, though, I can't see anyone ever telling you that your cooking is horrible! I've never had anything that you've made at the restaurant or in the food truck that was delicious and perfect! But I get you. When someone tells you that something could be better, you want to do better, right? Unlike some people, who just get mad. That's what I figure, it's like once Halloween passes, everything sorta goes fast from there on out.