#no nobody was having a good time unless you were a racist rich asshole

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

For informations, a lot of jokes about France are literally the result of the propaganda put in place by the USA in 2003, because France was against the war in Irak. It is about humiliating a country and its population because our gov spoke up against the war in Iraq. It's a well-known fact here, and it's why we hate those jokes so much. Yes, let's humiliate a population because their gov made the GOOD CHOICE to not participate in a massacre. The jokes aren't words for words about the massacre of the Iraqi, but it's making fun of people for caring about their lives. It's been 20 years, and those jokes are still there.

An example: the "surrender" jokes are either about terrorism and the war of Irak (France "surrendered" to terrorism because France was against killing innocent to punish 9/11) or about WWII (the Nazi Occupation, which was very traumatizing and killed a lot of people. And it happened after french towns were bombed and people died in awful conditions. So fucking funny, right?)

This is about my country, so I know this, but it's probably also the case of other countries. A "harmless" joke is easily just fucked up propaganda. And, racism kills and I'm certain that mocking someone's accent does count as racism (sometimes). Yeah, maybe making jokes about your usamerican accent has no damaged, but that's not the case for everyone. (Jokes about the black usamericans accents would be racists, and probably classicist. And we know being black get you killed)

Also, people aren't making fun of dead children, btw when they make jokes about school shootings, but the fact that y'all cannot change shit in your country, that your children are dying and you dare act as the country of "freedom". That you are so ready to come to judge other countries when your own children are dying. These jokes often comes after an USAmerican makes a terrible comment or a poor taste joke about another country. Y'all love to throw rocks from your glass house and cry when they get send back to you.

Y'all can make jokes about other countries when it becomes illegal for you to make people work for more than 48h a week, something that is illegal since 1919 in France and y'all call us "lazy" for (making y'all the clown of your own joke).

making fun of americans is pretty much always ok if youre not doing it in an edgelord “you guys have so many school shootings” way or acting like we’re the only country that has racism. but like posts about americans and hamburger get me every time

[socialjusticeinamerica]

I go to concerts and events all the time and women use the men’s room no problem when their tiny restrooms overflow. The only time I ever noticed anyone complain was when a drunk women stumbled into a men’s room after a concert in Las Vegas. The men’s room was full of redneck assholes with southern accents, cowboy hats and boots. They immediately surrounded her and began harassing her with vile comments and graphic descriptions of how they were going to gang rape her. Security had to intervene to save her from those MAGA assholes. So much much for those country boys being good Christians. In New England nobody blinks an eye when women use the men’s room and if anyone started saying shit like that to woman they would have gotten the shit kicked out of their redneck asses.

Years ago history books would talk about regional peculiarities like Yankee Ingenuity and Southern Hospitality. I have spent a fair amount of time in the south, I have friends and family there, and in better times even owned property there. Let me tell you that Southern Hospitality is a myth. Unless you’re in a big city or a theme park or some other big tourist attraction, and you don’t have a southern drawl you’re going to be treated like Bin Laden showing up at Ground Zero. The rich modern day Confederates are the most elitist and bigoted people alive. The poor are some of the meanest, rudest, angriest, most hostile, and least Christian people you could ever meet.

Now that’s a blanket statement and obviously everyone doesn’t fit into that stereotype. There are plenty of normal people but very few of them will ever speak up for fear of the way they will be treated. This has been going on since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700’s. It isn’t something that can be blamed on The Southern Strategy, Nixon, Reagan, Fox News, the Tea Party, or the MAGA movement.

The North industrialized and modernized everything including banking, transportation, industry, and food crop agriculture. The rich southern Planter Class, the Aristocracy, relied on King Cotton, tobacco, and slavery. None of which was profitable or sustainable. The Planter Aristocracy soon became deeply indebted to northern banks and were at risk of losing their land, property livelihoods, and social standing. When the North and West started pressuring the South to end slavery and pay their bills the Southern

Planter elite decided to secede from the Union of States. They thought it was win-win, they could keep their slaves, escape their debt, and simply trade their cash crops with Europe. Well the Europeans switched to Egypt, India, and the Caribbean for their cotton and to a lesser extent tobacco. Only a handful of wealthy elites in each states could afford slaves in any quantity beyond one. The hillbilly rednecks were propagandized into believing they were defending their way of life and states rights against Northern (and western) Aggression. The west was populated by immigrant farmers who couldn’t afford slaves and came from countries where slavery was banned, never existed, and was condemned by European religious groups.

Long story short the United States, aka the Union or the North, had the food crops, the population, the transportation, the industry, the schools, the banks/money, and virtually every other advantage. The Confederacy was built on lies and propaganda spread by the upper class. They had nothing but bitterness and resent at the North and West that they still have to this day. Treating women and marginalized people with disrespect is ingrained into their DNA and so tightly wound into their societal fabric it may never come out. Even their LGBT community is racist AF. Now their were good people in the South, called Unionists, who didn’t agree with slavery, secession, or the Planter Aristocracy and many of them moved North and some even joined the US Army to fight against the Confederacy. Ironically some of them remained in the Army softer the Civil War ended and took part in the “Indian” Wars, after which they returned to the South as military heroes with their disloyalty to the Confederacy forgiven.

A scorpion can not change its nature. And people who have been propagandized since the 1700’s by the wealthy elite can’t be expected to change their “traditions” overnight. Thanks to Republican oligarchs a disproportionate percentage of Southerners and rural people blame modern Democrats, who are now mainly in the Northeast and the West Coast as they were during the Civil War, for all their problems.

They’ll never understand that the modern Republicans and oligarchs are holding them hostage and denying them jobs, education, unions, prosperity, and healthcare. They have been conditioned to for two centuries to blame outsiders for their problems while supporting their oligarch oppressors. Denigrating women, people of color, and marginalized groups is a sadly a rite of passage for the majority in the Old Confederacy. They’re like the people of Eastern Europe who have been holding grudges for so long they don’t even remember why they they are collectively doing it. They need to be deprogrammed from that Confederate mindset first and then deprogrammed from the Republican/MAGA mindset but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon if at all. We’d have to win back the White House, the Congress, the SCOTUS, and the state legislatures first. Then we’d have to utterly smash the Republican Party and ban the oligarchs and their dark money from politics. Following that Herculean talk we’d have to invest heavily in public education across the South and rural West and return it to modern standards from the plundered mess the oligarchs and their privatized schools have created.

A second civil war may be looming and they are propping for it. Invariably they will lose for the same reasons they did the first time but it will be far more costly and have lingering effects that may never be reconciled. It won’t be a regional war like the first time but rather a bloody mess like the war in Northern Ireland with terror bombings and revenge killings. No single community will be safe. Sometimes I think we’d be better off letting Texas and Florida secede and take Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana with them. The remainder of the MAGAts would flock there and shoot themselves into third world status. The rest of the US would keep the military, the nukes, planes, ships, tanks, and all Federal property. There are blue areas in the sunbelt but as a whole I can’t see those states being reformed. Texas is a cancer since it’s been under Republican rule and Florida is pathetically imitating them. The in between states, with the exception of some blue cities are virtually third world states and as backwards as can be.

I mean no offense to the good people of the red states. My issue is with the Republican misrule over those areas and the backwards brainwashing they have subjected their citizens to. I feel deeply for the Democrats and other decent people there. But history has taught us time and again that unless a majority of the people want change it is impossible to force democracy on them. The Republican oligarchs have spent billions of dollars since the 1960’s to reshape this country and to maintain that Confederate mindset in the South. That’s not something that can be undone by electing a Democratic president and a handful of charismatic congressmen and women.

[elk-ambrose-scott-writing]

Top Five “Overrated” Classic books

*Disclaimer: I’m an opinionated bitch, but these are value judgements on the books (and the racist ass authors), not the people who like them* 

Genre: Garbage Gothic Tragedy

Author: Emily Bronte

Year Published: 1847

Plot in 20 Words or Less: A rich family adopts an orphan, love drama ensues, and nobody has a good time

Problematic-o-matic: Slurs against Romani people/travelers, romanticizing of abusive & toxic relationships 

Why (I think) it’s Over-rated: 

This book pushed some buttons for me. I’m a survivor of domestic violence, and Heathcliffe’s behaviour was so shitty and abusive that if I wasn’t reading it for school I would have set the whole book on fire.

Cathy was also toxic too, but Heathcliffe took it all the way to eleven. 

I wished the teachers would have trigger-warned us, and I kind of hate the prick for not doing that, don’t think I don’t see you Mr. A, you dickhead 

Beyond that, I didn’t like a single character in this book. Nobody. Not a one. Half of the characters were barely developed, and the ones that were developed were so unlikable that I hated them as much as they seemed to hate each other. 

I also thought the pacing wasn’t great, though that might be due to the differences in novels then and now.

Still, I thought this book was over-rated because all the characters sucked ass and I hated reading the book because of it.

Genre: Nonsense Science fiction, dystopia

Author: George Orwell

Year Published: 1949

Plot in 20 Words or Less: Big brother is watching you, and he’ll torture you if you hurt his feelings

Problematic-o-matic: Orwell was a grumpy old man who hated LGBTQ people, women, vegetarians (why), people who wear sandals (?) and communists. Didn’t appear to be racist though, so that’s...good. 

Why it’s Over-rated: 

This book had a lot of hype.  And I read it, and I hated it. 

I thought the pacing was terrible, and that there was a whole lot of talking, then a cringey, over the top saccharine romance (bleck) and then torture. 

That is terrible pacing. The whole story just grinds to a halt so Winston and Julia could fall in instalove. Ugh. Even now, instalove is a trope that’ll make me DNF unless it’s done expertly. This was not done expertly. 

My husband has argued with me that the point of the romance was to point out how the totalitarian state doesn’t allow love to exist and turns people against each other, but the fact remains that it was boring and dumb. 

Also, the ending is anti-climactic and a big let down. There, I said it.

Genre: Tripe Science Fiction

Author: Aldous Huxley

Year Published: 1932

Plot in 20 Words or Less: In a drugged up caste based society, a vacation goes horribly wrong

Problematic-o-matic: This book is ableist and racist. Like, so fucking racist, holy shit. Also, Aldous Huxley was racist, and may have been a plagiarist. (more in the link below)

Why it’s Over-rated:

This is one that made me hella uncomfortable. 

I’ll be honest, folkx, the racism in this book took me right out of the story. You see all these people defending it, but white people need to be quiet in this instance and listen to what the people being hurt by this work are saying.

And the idea of free love, but only if it’s hetero, rubbed me the wrong way too. Free love means free for everyone, baby. 

The writing itself is fine, but for one thing; characterization.

I found the characters really hard to like; even John, who was probably the most likeable character, was a total asshole by the end. Lenina was just...there. You could have replaced her with a lamp and it wouldn’t have changed much. Bernard was so, so annoying. Helmholtz was probably the only character I didn’t want to see kicked in the balls by a donkey, and he was barely in the book. 

So TL;DR: this book is so goddamn racist, and everyone sucks.

Genre: A goddamn mess Adventure/Mythology

Author: Homer (the boring one, not the yellow one)

Year Published: 8th Century BC, translated into English in 1488 (and the world was worse for it)

Plot in 20 Words or Less: Supposed smart guy gets lost for ten years, doesn’t listen to directions, and gets all his friends killed

Problematic-o-matic: Racist against cyclopes, I guess? The Ancient Greeks general distaste towards women?

Why it’s Over-rated: 

This one is petty, but Odysseus SUCKS and the book is BORING.

Sure, he’s smart and stuff, but apparently not smart enough to find his way back to his house and keep his men alive. 

My dog found it’s way back to our house when I was a kid, and that dog wasn’t very smart. Odysseus can’t do what a dog can do, and that’s really sad. 

Also, while his wife is waiting for him, staying celibate, despite all the suitors coming after her, Odysseus goes off and bones Circe and stays with her on her island. 

Which is funny, because my ex was like “oh, he was looking out for his bros and keeping this crazy woman happy” and then he cheated on me, because he thinks irony is something you use to press your clothes. 

After that point I wanted the book to end with Odysseus being eaten by a pack of wild boars and then shit out on the front lawn of his stupid castle in Ithaca. I bet his castle was ugly too. 

This book would have been better if Homer Simpson wrote it.

Genre: Dumpster fire Coming of age fiction

Author: J. D. Salinger

Year Published: 1951

Plot in 20 Words or Less: Teenage boy whines for way too many pages and almost gets shot by a pimp

Problematic-o-matic: J. D. Salinger was an abusive dick, and this book got banned at one point. And serial killers like it. So that’s...cool. 

Why it’s Over-rated: 

Holden Caufield is a whiny douche.

This book is so goddamn boring and the best part about it is that it’s short. 

The only controversy is that Holden Caufield is an asshole, and acts like a self-centered prick and talks about sex and stuff, which by today’s standards is really, really tame. 

He’s pretty realistic to a lot of teenagers; he thinks he’s the smartest, the best, that he sees through all the bullshit and he knows the right way for everything. 

But I also read this book as a teenager, and like Holden, I also had depression. I thought his portrayal was insulting on both fronts. He was incapable of seeing beyond his own world-view, and he acted like a jerk to people, even when they were nice to him. Not all people with depression are nice, but this wasn’t just not being nice, this was going out of his way to be negative to everyone around him.

I just wanted to grab the kid, smack him, and tell him to stop moping around and go spend more time with his sister.

Read the Full Post Here and Argue with Me about Books: https://elkascott.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/el-listicle-my-top-5-overrated-classic-novels/

[nightcoremoon]

there's lots of tiny brained bad takes of the far left branding things as Bad™ based solely on their association to other things or certain aspects of part of their fanbase.

this isn't to discredit the shit idiot brain fungus plaguing everyone from centrists, the moderate right, the far right, and the alt right, and even some of the moderate left, where they label everything that isn't about a Cishet White Male American Capitalist Bootlicker who's stateist, ambiguously christian/atheist, neurotypical, able-bodied, has "aryan" facial attributes, is an insufferable asshole, and the like, as "SJW garbage".

but see, prejudice and judgment is bad even if it's not motivated by minority demographic. being a rude dismissive asshole is, you know, bad. maybe making fun of a furry or whatever isn't as bad as being a racist, but you're still a fucking dickhead either way. fuck both of you but fuck the racist more. I'll punch both of you but punch the racist twice (maybe a third time for good measure). do y'all understand what I'm trying to get at here with the tiers of badness? the shades of grey? the steps down the path of evil from "kind of rude" to "literally hitler"?

bigotry is not the only bad thing in the world. yeah it's one of the worst, but you can talk about other bad things without discrediting that, which I know is next to impossible for teenagers (or people who never bothered to mentally progress from such) to comprehend.

anyway what sparked this is all the fuckin joker memes. now I went into it expecting, you know, literally taxi driver 2 followed by a silly horror movie about a clown murdering people. which is what the joker of the comics is all about. if I never watched the movie and only saw, what, the killing murray scene, the stairway dancing scene, the trailers, and joaquin phoenix sitting in a padded room and laughing, that's exactly what I'd had gotten.

but like. I fucking watched it because my dad wanted to watch it with me and he fucking loves all things batman (except Ben Affleck). and wolverine but mostly batman. he's a comic nerd. so yeah I went to watch it with him.

and it was legitimately terrifying from a purely psychological perspective. it's LITERALLY the best scary movie I've ever seen without being horror in the slightest. the acting, the writing, the score, the pacing, the cinematography, it was well put together without being a moffat level overproduced mess. it was a good movie. you're allowed to not care for it or not like it but to objectively call it a bad movie is not only a logical fallacy (eye of the beholder) but it also discredits the opinion of every single person who didn't hate it and makes you come off as a pompous fucking asshole rather than having different tastes.

it's about a guy with severe mental trauma in a bad situation trying to make the best of it and care for his family and hold down a job but he gets fucked over from literally every angle and eventually he snaps and makes a mistake and kills the misogynist rich asshats on the train. oh fuck. he could have gone to the police and said self defense and go through the court system but wait, society in gotham doesn't allow for a clean system of justice when you aren't rich. so instead he proceeds to be a major creepazoid turned murdering lunatic blaming everyone else for his own bad situation instead of the whole deal where he did stupid shit like taking a gun into a fucking children's hospital and stuck his fingers inside a child's mouth and stealing shit and falling further down the rabbit hole. until finally, he says fuck it and seeks revenge. the whole bloody mess that follows is his own fault. he chose to kill people. he chose to murder for petty reasons. he made his decisions and he suffered the consequences for it. all of the festering rotten crime in the city spawned by waynecorp's supreme negligence heralded him as a hero and so begins batman's story.

arthur fleck is not a fucking hero. he is a villain through and through. his circumstances were unfortunate but he made the wrong decisions. the world fucked him over and he said okay and retaliated. joker is exactly the fucking same as breaking bad. arthur and walter white are both evil people through their own decisions. but they were once normal people. and that's the point. the scariest monsters in the world are usually the white men angry at the world for their own shortcomings. oswald. ruby. dahmer. bundy. gein. manson. klebold and harris. white. fleck. they're all the filth stuck in the gutter of society that, if left unchecked, has deadly results.

I'm not kidding at all when I say joker was an important movie for myself personally to see exactly when I saw it. because that first half, I'm not gonna lie, it got me. the therapy didn't work and then it was taken away. he didn't eat most days because he had to support his mother. the people he worked with were dickheads, the people he commuted with were dickheads, his boss was a dickhead, people treated him like garbage on the streets. he couldn't remember the trauma inflicted on him when he was a baby but it still warped every aspect of his life. he had aspirations but lacked the skills. he was sad. alone. empty. he was suicidal. he was me.

then he started killing people and using the neighbor girl as a tulpa and I realized oh no oh god oh shit OH FUCK I need to change from this. and I did.

joker is a perfect template of how not to react to the world when it kicks in your teeth. it's a perfect template of a dark movie. just enough to sympathize with the bad guy but not enough to excuse his actions. the opposite of star wars with kylo ren. a good movie. a good character. an amazing actor. a terrible person.

if you watched joker thinking you're watching the story of the protagonist, you're right, but if you conflate protagonist with the good guy, yeah you won't like the fucking movie because it'll leave a sour taste in your mouth. you'll feel slimy. disgusting. unless you're a megadouche shitlord piece of human fucking garbage who wants to cosplay arthur fleck because he's so damn cool like walter white and eric cartman and rick sanchez and bojack horseman and tyler durden and all those FUCKING HORRIBLE LOATHESOME HUMANS TO NEVER EVER TRY TO EMULATE OR YOU ARE AN UNEMPHATIC ASSHOLE AND A MORON TO BOOT.

if you hated the movie, that's fine. you're kinda supposed to hate it. and if you loved the movie, that's fine so long as you understand what the message was. but if it's one of your favorite movies of all time ever made holy shit please go to therapy jesus christ.

still the point of this post is, discrediting the movie as a steaming pile of shit is incredibly ignorant. and as for the "good movies made by white men are only liked by other white men and are therefore bad movies" thing... if y'all can thirst over eddie brock in the trainwreck of venom and admit that the standards of good movie vs bad movie are all subjective, you're a goddamn idiot if you can't apply the same logic and reason to every movie just because some white boys like edgy clowns (even tho joker is way less edgy than pennywise but go off) in abusive relationships with harlequins. oh and assflash newshole, I'm not a white man.

I swear this bandwagoning bullshit is exactly the same mentality as "hurr durr nickelback worst band ever" even though nickelback is ripe with musical talent underneath a few pop songs that they wrote for the record label as part of their career so they can make a fuckin living BECAUSE CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL and also because of all the misogyny that bled its way into the music industry in the 2000s but that's a topic for another day. 'joker bad' and 'nickelback bad' are products of the same mental decay that social media wrought upon us all, inflicting mass mob mentality and incapacity for individualistic rational thought. which is exactly why there's a war between camp 'joker is bad' and 'joker is amazing' and nobody acknowledges the group in the middle that's like 'joker was good objectively but also terrible subjectively and content-wise'. polar. I could make a political statement and also say how the neoliberals and the fascists are at war while the people in the middle are caught in the crossfire and forced to fight like pawns on a chessboard, but the moderate right, dumbass centrists, pastel commies, and pockets of the moderate left, but that just throws everything into chaos.

tl;dr learn to think for yourselves omg

[tessatechaitea]

Black Condor #5

Five issues and five pure cheesecake covers.

Crud-for-brains? I'd wager my life savings that Brian Augustyn was an early Adventures of Pete and Pete fan.

The guys on the cover are just four young dude-bros stealing from drug dealers. They burn the drugs and take the money to give toward good causes. And probably also to buy cool shit for themselves. They're only human! Probably. I haven't read far enough along to know what they're really doing with the cash. Black Condor will find out after he beats the shit out of three of them. Sorry. I've been gone for awhile. You wouldn't have noticed since my long absence fell between writing the previous paragraph and this current one. And unless you ran off to take a desperate shit right at the same moment, the time between these two paragraphs was negligible, minuscule (I decided to use both words because I'm so proud of my ability to spell my native language (I considered misspelling "native" and "language" but decided that was a boring old joke which has carried more water than Capri-sun (that's a new joke and it's not very good because it doesn't make sense. But at least it's new))). But I was caught up in playing a stupid computer video game about dungeon delving dice trapped in a horrific game show. Spoiler: the dice never get to fuck. But I'm back now because this is blog is the only thing that keeps me sane anymore. You might think that because this blog was my link to sanity, I'd be more earnest. You might think I'd want to be grim and serious and discuss political, social, and environmental matters with the gravity and seriousness they deserve. But that's all the stuff that's doing my head in. So I'd rather pretend that I'm angry at comic books. Here's a secret for the few of you reading this who made it to this specific paragraph out of all of my paragraphs: I wish I were friends with Scott Lobdell. I bet he's kind of an asshole but he's the kind who, if he was getting his ass kicked at a bar for being smarmy and pretentious and smug (smug because he's a rich writer whom a lot of thirteen year old boys (and men with thirteen year old boy minds) think wrote some of the seminal X-men stories), he'd completely understand if you didn't step in to defend him. He feels like the kind of guy who knows what he really deserves (a righteous ass beating) and wouldn't think the world unfair should he ever receive it. Then he'd probably buy drinks for the people who beat his ass, and I'd look him in the eye and shrug, and he'd laugh, and we'd continue to not mention that time we jerked each other off when we were fucking wasted on single malt scotch and peyote. Black Condor and Ned decide they need to find the girl with humongous afro before she hurts people who don't deserve it the way the color changing white supremacist Nazi rapists did.

What does he mean by "completely autistic"? In 1992, I'm guessing that meant nonverbal with loads of stimming and maybe the ability to play any piano concerto immediately after hearing it once.

Karin was experimented on by Black Condor's grandfather's Society but she failed to gain the ability to fly. She did, however, gain mental abilities as powerful as his own. He's concerned that, being autistic, she'll hurt people with her mind rage. Please. She almost certainly just wants to be left alone by everybody in society expecting her to think and act in a specific way that she can't think and act, nor would she want to if she had the ability. Just leave autistic people alone, normals! They don't need help. Just because your autistic kid isn't giving you the kind of unconditional love you were looking for when you decided to have a kid that you would eventually love only conditionally based on how they loved you doesn't mean the kid needs to change. That's on you and your needs. Maybe just find a way for the kid to express themselves (or not! Who knows sometimes?!) and let them do and act as they please. Unless what they want to do is fuck the dog. I'm not saying autistic people fuck dogs but I am saying we're all individuals, you know? Use your common sense! And if your kid is fucking the dog, autistic or not, don't let them near the dog! The Merry Men on the cover (oh hey! There were Merry Men in the Sky Pirate issue! Brian Augustyn either loves old tales of daring adventure or LSD) have been robbing drug dealers to help fund a homeless camp run by a priest named Gamble. The priest isn't involved in the theft; he chastises them about their plans to get money illegally. But they assure him the money isn't tainted and he decides to believe them when they dump thousands of dollars on his desk. Doing the right thing is hard when doing the wrong thing will solve all of your money issues. If you're a weak minded jerk, that is! I totally would never sell out for thousands of dollars so hopefully nobody embarrasses themselves by offering me loads of money to write positive comic book reviews for their publications. Father Gamble refuses the money because he just can't be sure it was honestly come by. I would be less suspicious of the money and more suspicious of the white college kids trying to donate thousands of dollars to a homeless camp. What's really going on in this camp?! Why are these young men so interested in keeping it funded so it doesn't get shut down? Four probably rich white boys risking their lives to help the downtrodden? Sorry but this is the most aggressively fantastic comic book I've ever read. And I'm not using the informal definition of "fantastic."

"Which member of this organization could possibly be giving all of this information to these white boys and why am I exposing my plan to kill them before plugging the leak?!"

Maybe that's racist suggesting that the white guy in the gang is giving the information to other white guys. But this comic book has already asked me to believe too many fanciful plot points so I'm glad Augustyn decided the white guy was absolutely the inside man. The white guys name is Herbie and his boss, Mr. Soto, already knows he's the leak. I'm glad Mr. Soto is as smart as I am. Or as racist. Probably smart though! They follow him as he's trying to meet up with the college Merry Men to warn them that they're in danger. Luckily for Herbie, Black Condor happens upon the scene as he's searching for Karin. And even though Black Condor doesn't give a shit about this guy and his problems, he figures even a reluctant hero wouldn't just stand by and watch some jerk get what's coming to them. After Black Condor saves Herbie, he has to take him to the hospital because he was pistol whipped. Meanwhile, the rich white kids aren't warned that they're about to die so they drive off into the trap to steal more money that Father Gamble won't be accepting for his charity.

What a dumb asshole! Even the most ignorant of ignorant jerks knows there were only three musketeers! Unless he's so familiar with the book that he's including d'Artagnan along with Porthos, Mythos, and Harpos.

I never read The Three Musketeers because I was born in the late 20th century and exciting stories to thrill young boys wasn't a popular genre anymore because we had Batman and Green Lantern. Although I did once play the text adventure version of the book. When I did that, I poked fun at the idea that the author of it was writing the game so that people would remember Alexandre Dumas and yet it's the only reason I know anything about him! Although now I know a little bit more about him because I Googled his name to make sure I was spelling it correctly and now I know what a fancy lad he was!

Now I want to listen to an audio version of his book where every few sentences, the person reading it just says, "Oooooooh, my!"

The Musketeers (maybe I was wrong to assume they were more like the Merry Men?!) manage to get away with only one of them shot in the ankle (the others weren't shot at all, if that wasn't clear). They decide the best way to save their own lives is to lead the gun men on a chase through New York back to Father Gamble's homeless camp. They already know he doesn't want any trouble so why are they taking this gunfight back there?! What is Father Gamble's hold over these young men?! Luckily for everybody in the homeless camp, Black Condor is there still searching for Karin. He'll save everybody's lives reluctantly! Unluckily for everybody, Karin is also there and the gunfire and chaos freaks her out so much that she has a mind-storm! That's the thing she had before that killed four of her attempted Nazi rapists. And that's where the comic book ends! Lucky for older me, younger me bought the next issue so I wouldn't be stuck with this cliff hanger! Lucky for younger me, older me doesn't have a time machine so that fucker has gotten away with some pretty abhorrent behavior which I couldn't correct by going back in time and punching him in the nose. Unlucky for him, he's going to be a virgin for a long, long time! Ha ha! Take that! Ow. Older me just hurt older me's feelings. Black Condor #5 Rating: B. A solid rating that I probably wouldn't have given this comic book back when I was twenty-one. I don't think I understood just what this comic book was doing and wound up only remembering it as a comic book about a reluctant hero. I didn't realize how much of it was Black Condor trying to live his now much more complicated life while also continuously doing the right thing. Even when he just wants to hole up in the woods and say "Fuck it!" to everybody and everything, he still shows the heart of a hero when he's needed by people nearby. And he's fucking sexy hot too.

[nightcoremoon]

re: Ok Boomer

I'm so fucking sick of the argument "not every boomer is responsible for the recession and saying ok boomer is an ageist slur". shut the fuck up boomer apologist. boomer is obviously very specifically directed towards the slice of rich white cishet christians with money who are responsible for the specific issues that slice of people are responsible for. saying "ok boomer" is not generalizing every single human over the age of 54 and saying that literally every single goddamn one of them is a big evil bastard who deserves to die.

I know nobody will listen to logic based on its own merits so here have some analogies that even the discoursers can't disagree with

when women say "ugh men" or some variation they don't mean that literally every single male human on the planet is a creepy rapist with no social skills or hygiene rituals or respect for women (although terfs legitimately do mean that but they don't mean men they mean all people who reflect Eurocentric ideals of masculinity and maleness but they're dumb n ugly and don't count). we mean that, at its core, often times men benefit from male privilege, perform misogynist microaggressions, do annoying things that testosterone makes you do, and behave in bad ways that society being what it is enables and encourages. sending gross dick pics, manspreading, mansplaining, not wearing deodorant at conventions or game tournaments, groping, etc. while it may be true that these behaviors do not apply to 100% of all men, saying "not all men" just detracts from the original point, especially considering that ONLY men do these things.

furthermore, when POC say things about white people to vent their frustrations about white privilege and institutionalized racism, they don't mean that literally 100% of every single white person ever is a big evil racist kkk nazi monster who should die in a fire, simply that it's a problem that happens way to fucking often and only white people perpetuate these. while it shouldn't be ignored that different ethnic groups can often be prejudiced against each other, it's not pertinent to the current point. and regardless, acknowledging that ONLY PROVES THE POINT MORE. a black person saying "ugh @ wypipo defending saying n*gga without the hard R as if it's any better and that endentures them to be able to say it" isn't ignoring the fact that mexican, chinese, native american, etc etc people are frequently antiblack racist and also make the same arguments, but it's PREDOMINANTLY white people doing this. and, devils advocate, even if it wasn't predominantly white people, that would just further enforce the point that them saying "white people" isn't a literal absolute blanket statement. ITS ALL FUCKING SEMANTICS YOU DENSE ILLITERATE IDIOTS so can other white people please stop with all the "not all of us do that" bullshit? all of us will at some point inevitably eventually fuck up and pretending we don't is just recklessly irresponsible, immature, and cringe to the max. I was raised by racist white people in a racist white neighborhood in a racist predominantly white town in a racist predominantly white state in a racist predominantly white country, as was most white people in america. If I'm not free of institutionalized racism neither the fuck are you. what was I talking about? oh yeah, ok boomer.

to get back on topic, when we queers vent our frustrations with cisgender or heterosexual people, we KNOW that there are some cishets who aren't nasty evil hateful pundit assholes. we KNOW there are cishets who have no problems with being gay or trans or whatever. we aren't physically pointing out and attacking YOU SPECIFICALLY unless we say your name. some of my closest friends in high school and onward are cishet and they were my own personal support network through coming out as bi and trans. if I say "stinky straighties" they're clearly excluded or "ew cis" it's not a coin flip reverse hatred that applies the same way backwards. when we want to shatter garbage social constructs and bullshit societal idelaogies from white western christian colonialist europe, we don't want to shatter The Bones of every person who hm idk doesn't experience attraction towards people of the same gender or identifies with the gender they were assigned with at birth. it's more about the cishet mentality if anything, which affects and is displayed by individuals.

I could go on. "Not All Goyim" "Not All Ableds" "Not All Neurotypicals" "Not All Allistics" "Not All Cis" "Not All Straights" "Not All Whites" "Not All Men" "Not All Boomers" it's all the same stupid garbage tired nonsense melodrama from crybaby little bitches with victim complexes. Jewish People aren't all Antigoyische, Disabled and Neurodivergent People aren't all Reverse Ableist, Queer and Trans People aren't all Heterophobic or Cisphobic, People of Color aren't all Reverse Racist, Women (/Nonbinary) aren't all Misandrist, and Zoomers or 90s Kids or Millenials or Gen Xers aren't all Ageist,

JUST FOR SAYING A GODDAMN MEME

ok? we understand now? good.

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #14 (1980)

This is what happens to Cerebus because he still hasn't taken my advice to stab everybody he meets before they become a huge annoyance.

I'm not suggesting everybody stab everybody they meet so that they'll never have to deal with any non-stabbing drama because then everybody I meet would be trying to stab me. That sounds like a bad social contract. A good social contract is to not talk to anybody at all in public unless they work in the service industry and also maybe don't make such aggressive eye contact with people on the street? I'm just trying to get from Point A to Point B with as little human contact as possible. I wouldn't mind interacting with people except for one huge problem: most people are way more terrible than they realize. And the more enthusiastic and social a person is, the more likely that they're the real life version of Red Sophia or Elrod. On a similar note, I really love this thing where we're all wearing masks. Now if we can just develop a virus that spreads through eye contact so we're all forced to constantly wear dark glasses, I'll be pretty fucking happy about the state of the world. I mean I'd be happy with the state of the world in regards to what I have to deal with when I go outside (which is people trying to talk to me and looking into my eyes). I don't mean I'd be overall happy with the state of the world which is fucking terrible because a bunch of assholes think teenagers telling them they can't say retard on the Internet is worse than Donald Trump and the GOP's self-serving style of governing where they think taxes shouldn't be used to make the country better but should just go back into the pockets of corporations and Wall Street pricks and other politicians and the already extremely wealthy. Also, a lot of centrist Democrats think the same way. They're only more acceptable because they mostly aren't racist, sexist homophobes. Now that all the snowflakes have stopped reading and went to hug their guns in consolation of my mean Internet words, I can get to the review. In "A Note from the Publisher," Deni claims this is the funniest issue of Cerebus to date. Since it's Cerebus' first visit to Palnu, I'm not even questioning her claim. It's almost certainly true. Dave Sim's Swords of Cerebus essay is a textual stroking of Prince Valiant creator Hal Foster's dick. Sim's mostly talking about Foster's art style but he obviously decided to mimic some of Foster's story telling style as well. See, Prince Valiant was a continuous story that ran (or has run? Is it still going by his son or grandson or something?) for decades, a story which chronicled the life of Prince Valiant and, eventually, his children. Cerebus is a comic book that didn't run for as long but whose continuing story was easier to follow and had a drunk aardvark as the main character. So there are some similarities there, right? This was also the first issue of Cerebus after going to a monthly schedule. Dave Sim would now have to do 300 issues instead of the 150-something he had been planning. Ha ha! Sucker.

This would have been a most opportune time for Cerebus to start his stabbing people upon meeting them practice.

I knew at some point I was going to have to admit this so I might as well begin with it: I don't think I've ever sat through an entire Marx Brothers movie. It's possible I have but I just don't really remember because it happened so long ago. But I need to also reveal this: I loved Groucho Marx as a kid. I've revealed before that I had a grandfather fetish as a child. I loved hanging out with old men and I loved watching old men on television. Going in Style was one of my favorite movies and I simply adored Art Carney. I also loved The Shining because it was about a young kid who got to hang out with one of my other favorite older guys, Scatman Crothers. Groucho Marx in You Bet Your Life fit into the old guy category. I don't think he was as old as the oldest men I loved but, as a young kid, he certainly seemed ancient. I think the duck that dropped down when somebody said the secret word helped a lot. But I would watch reruns of You Bet Your Life whenever I found them on television because it was like hanging out with an old man, my favorite pastime from around four to ten or so. As for Groucho's movies? I've definitely watched parts of some of them as I stumbled on them on television and realized he was in it. But I've never made the effort to start one from the beginning and watch it all the way through. I should probably rectify that. Cerebus has wound up in Palnu thanks to a short diversion in a comic strip that appeared in The Comic Buyers Guide. He wound up marooned on an island with Lord Julius' son, Lord Silverspoon. Upon being rescued, Lord Julius decided to reward Cerebus for saving his son. I don't have the issue of Swords of Cerebus with that story so I can't comment on how annoying Lord Silverspoon almost certainly was. Cerebus' reward is to be put in charge of Lord Julius' security forces and granted the title of "Kitchen Staff Supervisor." It doesn't make any sense because Lord Julius invented bureaucracy. He realized the only thing that can really keep a leader safe is to make sure that nobody else knows what the fuck is going on.

Oh, see? I suppose I could have just read a few more panels and realized Lord Julius explains it himself.

As Kitchen Staff Supervisor, Cerebus' job is to keep assassins from assassinating Lord Julius. Aside from that, he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted. Unless he only thought he was free to do whatever he wanted and whatever he wanted was whatever Lord Julius was manipulating him into wanting. Lord Julius is a master of getting people to accidentally do the thing they didn't think they would ever do that Lord Julius also didn't want them to do but actually secretly did want them to do. Basically anybody who has recently spoken with Lord Julius is actively doing Lord Julius' bidding, whether they know it or not. For some reason, Cerebus decides to take on the role of Kitchen Staff Supervisor even though it's the most boring thing he's ever done in his life. At least it's entertaining for the reader because nearly every line out of Lord Julius' mouth is a solid gag. And since I haven't really seen any of Groucho's movies, I can't say how many of the gags were stolen outright! I have to assume it's all new material and only Groucho Marx parody. Some people, in an attempt to never be fooled by anybody, never believe anything at all. I am not one of those people. I believe everything I hear until somebody slaps me and yells, "How can you believe that obviously falsified tripe, you fucking moron?!" Assassins try to poison Lord Julius and Cerebus tracks them down to an underground group trying to free the city from the clutches of Lord Julius. When the assassin, Cerebus, and Lord Julius wind up in the same place, Cerebus outs himself as a spineless centrist.

The Centrist loves to believe that not taking sides is the only logical conclusion to any matter that doesn't seem to immediately affect their lives.

Some people are probably wondering how that previous caption is a negative criticism. "Um, yeah. Seems about right. If it doesn't affect me, why should I offer up an opinion!" And yet when a situation exists where one side is full of abusive and manipulative people controlling the reins of power and the economic purse strings of the country and the other side is being bullied, cheated, and abused by that side, not taking a side is siding with the powerful and the abusive. Even if your life hasn't been affected. Of course, Cerebus doesn't need to take a side here. I mean, he does take a side: he sides with the people who have all the money. But he doesn't really care is the point. You'll see he retains this philosophy of rich people winning every argument later when he's Pope and gives out his wisdom that "God loves rich people which is why they're rich and hates poor people which is why they're poor." Pretty much the philosophy of evangelicals in the U.S. Cerebus survives the battle with the assassin and then gives Lord Julius some free advice about running the country. So Cerebus kind of does agree with the assassin but also the assassin wasn't paying him anything so he deserved to be thrown five stories to his death. Lord Julius says, "You can rest assured that I'll give the matter all the attention I feel it deserves." Is there a better way to tell somebody to shove it than that? It's so elegant! In Aardvark Comments, Dave Sim answers a letter on how to go about self-publishing. And so his role as Independent Comic Book Publishing Mentor begins! In his list of things you'll need to get together to successfully publish your own comic book, he kindly leaves out "talent." Obviously Dave understood how to go about getting something published but he also put in the hard work and had the talent to produce a comic book that began well above mediocre or average. I can't imagine a lot of self-published books began at this high of a plateau. And even if they were eventually capable of Cerebus quality, how long are readers going to give them to get there? Probably not even two issues, would be my guess.

The Single Page had a comic called "Sex Education" by April. I thought the first two panels were cute.

Cerebus #14 Rating: A+. As with Elrod and Red Sophia and The Cockroach, Lord Julius' first appearance is a banger. Dave Sim never once falters with Lord Julius' repartee. Solid gags throughout. Sim really is a master of dialogue and, to think, it only gets better.