#or maybe i should just nuke my writing and put it on a different blog

[tired-and-swordless]

Im contemplating separating my writing and art into different blogs and changing my depressed-sock username to something else...

[proselles]

Welcome to my blog!! :)

This is an updated compilation of all stories I have written under the pseudonym roselles. I've been writing a fairly long time, under a lot of different names, but I've finally come back to this account, where I think I will stay. I think it is more convenient to post everything I write here, rather than make separate posts. Only works I post under roselles will be posted here.

I hope you enjoy my stories! Thank you for reading!

Jujutsu Kaisen:

Future Less Vivid

Status: 10/17

Summary: They’re tangled together on the couch when Satoru brings up the boy with the sweetgum hair.

“He’s sorta scrappy looking,” Satoru describes poorly. “Short.”

“Short?” Satoru doesn’t need to see Suguru to know he’s giving Satoru a look - the one where he wrinkles up his chin and mouth, the one that says stop being stupid Satoru. It’s a common enough facial expression in the apartment. “Satoru, it sounds like he’s six. They’re all that height. It’s not their fault that you’re ungodly tall.”

--------

There are a lot of secrets being kept in Tokyo.

Death the Conspiracy

Status: 1/1

Summary: (Dear whoever it may concern,

We regret to inform you that your loved one, Nobara Kugisaki, has passed away.)

--------

After she gets a devastating email, Fumi starts an unrelenting search for her girlfriend.

S4 EP1: Dead Giveaway

Status: 1/1

Summary: There’s a man that looks like Megumi on Nobara’s favorite guilty pleasure show, Extreme Cheapskates. They steal Gojo’s credit card to go investigate.

Meanwhile, Gojo resumes body-building.

Resident Evil:

A couple years the better of me

Status: 1/1

Summary: Both of their soulmates are dead by their bloody hands. Maybe it’s fate.

Albert Wesker v.s. the Institution of Holy Matrimony

Status: 1/3

Summary: “I cannot be co-parents-in-law with Wesker,” Chris insists, jabbing his finger at the man.

“If he were here,” Wesker shoots back waspishly, “I’m sure he’d tell you it’s no great dream of his either.”

They glare at each other. Chris resists the urge to pick back up where they left off in Africa and dropkick the fuck into an active volcano. Or, considering there probably weren’t any active volcanoes in his vicinity, nuke him into the next planetary system.

“What the fuck is a co-parent-in-law?” Muller finally snaps, banging his hand against the table.

---------

(chris is married to leon who’s adopted sherry and sherry’s marrying jake whose father is wesker and its all really petty)

My Hero Academia (old)

float on. - discontinued

Status: 24/?

Summary:

There's something exceedingly strange that's changing the world around him, but Izuku can't quite put his finger on what it is-

He probably should be able to. If he wants to live, that is.

Turns out that no one is to be trusted and the world is out to get him. He knew the last part, but the first part? Not so much, not as intimately. Maybe he had never gotten close enough to anyone to know. Maybe he had never really trusted anyone before. Maybe they had all betrayed him without his knowledge.

Maybe...

Through lies and murder, maybe Izuku could final carve his way out of hell.

Please don't stop smiling. Please.

Baiseman

Status: 1/1

Summary: Izuku’s soul mark broke almost seconds after it had appeared. It was a few months after his own birthday, on January eleventh, which told him three things about his soulmate;

One- They were born on January eleventh.

Two- They were watching for the soul mark just as closely as Izuku had been, if not for the same reasons.

Three- They didn’t want him.

[imaginesforthosewhoseekthem]

So I think I’ll take asks again

Hey all! I’m back. I’ve been thinking lately, I decided I wanted to be more motivated to write imagines again. I wanted to get more of a taste for writing back and I would always start here whenever I did. 

I have nuked the inbox. I’ve emptied out the entire thing because the asks have been there for so long that there is just no point anymore. I will make a short list of fandoms that I will do. Not a LOT, but enough so that there are options for people that are not in certain fandoms to have more choices. 

I am mostly just going to be doing general headcannons to start with, nothing for like the main plot of a story because I will be caught up in other things and I may not have time to research and this is really just to dip my toe back into writing because depression stops me from doing the things I love and I need to ease back into it.

So the fandoms I’m going to be doing are

Obey Me! (That one is probably the easiest for me cus I play that everyday)

Rusty Lake (If there are people that still want headcannons for that, I will deliver)

Monster Prom/Monster Camp

Seduce Me the Otome/Anything in general by Micheala Laws

Thimbleweed Park (I’m pretty obsessed with that game and I need more content of that here and other places)

Edna and Harvey

Coffee Talk (WHY...ARE THERE NO FANFICS ABOUT THIS ONE?! It is LITERALLY “Coffee Shop AU: The Game!”

Helltaker

These are the fics that will probably come up in the future as a DEFINITE maybe. I still need to play further into the games to know the story if I’m going to write them. So do not request these just yet, but I will keep them in mind.

Mystic Messenger (I’ve been doing pretty well at this so far. I got good endings in Yoosung, Jaheee and Zen’s Routes. I still need to do Jumin and 707 as well as V’s and Unknown/Seran/Ray. Can’t afford the deep story ones yet, so let’s just see how we do.)

Sally Face (I’ve done at least two of these and they haven’t been weird so far, so a long as it’s not sexual or oversteps some boundaries, that’ll be just fine)

The Arcana (I started playing this game to see what the hype was. I’m on the prologue right now and I don’t get it just yet, but maybe I will, I don’t know. But for fans of it, I will consider

Night in the Woods (I do own this game, but I think I should spend time with more characters and play this a few more times before I do.; That will take a while given how long Night in the Woods is

Little Nightmares (MAYBE. I know enough about the first game, I think this one should be on hold until I played the second. Even so, I’m not sure what exactly to write about this)

Welcome to Hell/Mystery Skulls Animated/The Vampair series. (I watch these animations CONSTANTLY. I dunno if anyone wants it, but It’s there to consider.

Sam and Max (Please don’t be weird with this one. I only consider this one to be funny with it)

And the things I will NOT do for the predicable future

We Happy Few (I know I started this blog around it, but I’m just not that into the game anymore. I wasn’t even motivated to keep up the separate blog I made for it and my mods for THAT gave up. So no. Sorry. I ain’t doing this. If I ever go back to it, I will SAY SO, but for now, no.)

Anything not listed above (I get some of you are in different fandoms, I was personally tempted to put the show Gotham up there, but I haven’t seen every episode yet. Plus some fandoms you have to tread VEEEEEEERY lightly to not get mauled by fans. And some of you wonder why I mainly stick to lesser known stuff. Plus we all have different tastes, I probably don’t even KNOW what you suggest to me)

The ask box will be left open for maybe a week, so let’s see what everyone wanted while I was gone

[pjlowry]

Question: You’re an atheist, and you die and are brought in front of God Almighty. Will you have something to say to him? If yes, what?

I answered this question on Quora by writing a small skit. Here it is for those who’d like to read it:

(Death occurs and yours truly ends up before the pearly gates)

Me: Oh damn, is that what I think it is?

(Looks over and there is a decent line in front of the gates)

Man in Line: Shhhhhh! No talking while waiting for judgement.

Me: Really? Okay…

(Walks over and gets to the back of the line.)

Me: I hope they have more than one window open, I don’t want to be here forever…

Man in Line: You’re not going to shut up are you?

Me: Oh, hell no. What else are we going to do?

Man in Line: I was hoping to wait patiently.

Me: That’s not very productive.

Man in Line: It’s not?

Me: Fuck no! We should talk and get to know one another, and maybe even think about what we want to say when we get up there.

Man in Line: I’m not going to lie to get into heaven!

Me: Who said anything about lying? I mean discussing it so you can remember all the cool things you really did. Like cramming for a final.

Man in Line: Well, that makes sense I guess.

Me: Okay, what’s your name?

Man in Line: I’m Raif.

Me: I’m PJ; nice to meet you.

Raif: So how did you get here, PJ?

Me: I went in for surgery. Last thing I remember is being put out before going under the knife. I guess that didn’t go as planned.

Raif: That is unfortunate.

Me: How about about you dude? How did you kick the bucket?

Raif: I was tortured to death by my own government.

Me: What? Damn man, that fucking sucks!

Raif: I was sentenced to 1000 lashes and I didn’t make it past 500.

Me: Lashed to death? Fuck me… that’s brutal. What kind of fucking government does this kind of shit?

Raif: Saudi Arabia.

Me: What the hell did you do to piss them off?

Raif: I set up a blog and posted unpopular opinions.

Me: Damn man, that’s not fair! What about free speech?

Raif: When it comes to certain subjects such as the monarch and especially Islam, you are not allowed to voice a dissenting opinion.

Me: Not fair dude, just not fair. Lashed to death for having an opinion. Just not cool in my books.

Raif: I was also sentenced to death for apostasy. That sentence was supposed to be carried out after my lashes were done.

Me: Wait a second, I read about you online! I was at a few of the rallies in Toronto to protest your imprisonment!

Raif: Thank you for your efforts.

Me: I’m sorry they didn’t work man, we tried.

Raif: It’s alright, I am at peace now and here with you.

Me: I’m not sure how long we’ll be up here.

Raif: What do you mean?

Me: We’ll… we’re both non-believers. It will be a very tough interview, I can promise you that.

Raif: I am not afraid of judgement, I did good while I lived.

Me: I believe ya man, I got your back. You seem like a great guy.

Raif: Thanks, but what about you?

Me: If this place takes any of the books seriously, then I’m toast… literally! Just the amount of times I spanked the monkey is enough to send me straight down.

Raif: I see, and is there any other activity that might warrant damnation?

Me: Oh, tons of stuff. Now that I think of it, you should probably let me go first.

Raif: Why?

Me: Because I’ll look so bad, that when you come after me… you’ll shine like a friggin’ altar boy by comparison. It'll increase your chances of getting in.

Raif: You think that could work?

Me: I’m sure they’ve got some kind of quota to meet… it’s worth a shot. I’d rather have one of us make it than none.

Raif: Why thank you, PJ.

Me: No problem man, I think you’ve suffered enough.

Raif: Here step forward, we’re almost there!

Me: Already? Damn, that dude works really fast!

Raif: Here, it’s your turn!

(Steps forward to the booth at the gate, there’s an old man with a very long white bears standing there.)

St. Peter: Name please.

Me: P.J. Lowry. Writer, Poet, Outspoken Atheist…

St. Peter: And a shit disturber. Yes, I’ve got you right here.

Me: Damn, I was hoping it was an accident and you’d send me back.

St. Peter: That doesn’t happen very often.

Me: I bet it was seriously messed up when it did, right?

St. Peter: Indeed. So surgery didn’t go well I take it?

Me: Apparently. I wasn’t exactly awake for it.

St. Peter: Alright, let’s have a look here. You have an interview scheduled in Room A. Just walk down this side of the gate until you reach it.

Me: Alright… do I need anything for this interview, like pen and paper?

St. Peter: You don’t… good luck.

Me: Thanks man.

(walks down the side of the gate that St. Peter gestured to so that the line could move along. He keeps walking until he reaches a hallway with doors.)

Me: This must be the place.

(walks up to door marked A)

Me: Let’s not forget our manners.

Door: Knock! Knock!

Voice: Come in!

(opens the door and walks in. There is a single table with two chairs. One of them is occupied by a man wearing a white robe and with a beard that was even longer than St. Peter’s. He walks in.)

Me: May I? (Gestures to the chair)

Man: Sure, please sit down.

Me: given your appearance, I’m going to to out on a limb here. God?

God: In the house, motherfucker!

Me: (Sighs) Alright, I got the top dog for my interview.

God: Do you have a problem with that?

Me: Of course not! I’m actually a little humbled, and even impressed to see you doing some of the grunt work and not delegating it all.

God: Ass kissing will get you nowhere, but good try.

Me: I’ll try my best, but force of habit.

God: I know… literally.

Me: Fair enough.

God: So, surgery didn’t go well?

Me: You think?

God: Sorry to hear about that.

Me: You and me both… any chance I could get a mulligan on that?

God: Fraid not, sport.

Me: Shit, and I had so many projects to finish!

God: I think your procrastination had more to do with that than I did.

Me: Last time I checked you created everything, so that includes World Of Warcraft, baseball, and social media…

God: I also invented alcohol, weed and heroin too… but that doesn’t mean you have to go to town on them.

Me: I have to admit, alcohol and Taco Bell were surprising good.

God: Thank you.

Me: So you created those things to test us?

God: I created a lot of tests. Television, the internet, donuts.

Me: All there to test us?

God: Yup.

Me: Fuck me, I must have bombed big time!

God: You didn’t ace it, that’s for sure.

Me: Well, tell me this much: what’s a passing grade?

God: A passing grade is 55 percent. If you did good for more than 55% of your life, you’ll squeeze out a pass..

Me: You mean just like I did for all those boring university classes?

God: Exactly.

Me: So hit me with it: what’s my score?

God: You scored…. 65%.

Me: Holy shit! I got a C!

God: Yes, quite impressive for a non-believer.

Me: You know everything, so you know why I rejected religion. As the being that invented my brain, can you really get upset that I actually used it for more than just a hat rack?

God: I suppose not.

Me: And speaking of using my brain, where the fuck have you been for the last 2000 years? You’ll show yourself to Moses and Noah to help animals and Egyptian slaves, but won’t lift a fucking finger to stop all the suffering going on in the world? Like seriously man, what the holy fuck?

God: To be honest, I just couldn’t hold it any more. And when I get back from the can… you fuckers are pointing nukes at one another and have royally screwed the environment. Do you have any idea how many years it took to make that place?

Me: A few billion?

God: Exactly, and look at the mess you guys made!

Me: Hold on, so you’re telling me you were gone for 2000 years because you went to take a piss?

God: Yeah, pretty much.

Me: It takes you 2000 years to pee?

God: You got a problem with that? I am a god so I do things differently!

Me: Okay, okay… not judging.

God: You should have seen what happened the last time I took a crap. I went to pinch a loaf, and of course when my back is turned an asteroid hits the planet and wipes out all of my fucking dinosaurs! I was only gone for 20 million years, and then poof, no more dinosaurs!

Me: That does suck.

God: Yeah, I know. After that I had to go right back to the drawing board, and that’s when I invented you buggers.

Me: Well thanks, I guess.

God: Thank you for being a decent chap, Peter.

Me: I tried my best. It wasn’t easy.

God: You got a C, don’t push your luck.

Me: Fair enough… so what happens now?

God: Now you go through that door and enjoy your welcome party!

Me: A party? That’s so cool.

God: Totally.

Me: You coming too?

God: Fraid not, PJ, I’ve got more interviews, and we’re kinda backlogged here.

Me: Oh… is there anything I can do to help?

God: Are you capable of judging people?

Me: Have you seen my twitter and tumblr accounts?

God: Good point… you’re hired!

[catescher]

Common mistakes in Worldbuilding (Part 2)

And here we go for Part 2! Later than I promised, because last week was rather busy. I’m looking forward to the weekend already again.

Previous Blogs about Worldbuilding

Blog Schedule

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Diversity

I’ll make this quick because this warrants an entire blog on itself (which I will write eventually). With diversity I mean diversity in culture, language, ethnicity, and so on. Diversity in all things imaginable. Elementary things to keep in mind are that people are never monoliths - they may share certain aspects in a country such as a common language or opinion - and that cultures interacting is a thing. If you want to create a homogeneous place, such as a country with only one ethnicity, you need to have a really good reason why. Did the country, for example, decide to segregate itself for some reason? Is it an environment where only a certain people are allowed in? In this case, you could make a case for an exception - mostly. But the fun, the tension begins when you start putting a black samurai into Bakufu Japan - or a white one for that matter (both who actually existed).

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash

Languages

Yeah, you shouldn’t if you aren’t Tolkien. Or a well-trained linguisitc who knows what he is doing. Some bad examples I read (and created) were bad attempts at mimicking Tolkien with different languages that just so happened to be non-sensical syllables smashed together with english grammar. This is not exactly how languages work. Just to remind you, I’m not exactly an expert either at this topic. My liguistic knowledge is limited to the two classes I had to take - and I hated every second of them. An easier way out of this problem short of studying Linguistics, is to simply mention the different language like GRR Martin does.

Photo by Aperture Vintage on Unsplash

As Time Goes By

A) CULTURAL STASIS And welcome to one of the greatest pet peeves I have: Cultural Stasis. Are you really going to tell me that for an incredibly long time, nothing changed? At all? No new medecines, no historical events happened, no new technologies? And then, your protagonist steps up and everything changes? No. This is just wrong. Shit will happen outside of your protagonist. Also ties in with my point about magic - time and magic both will change things.

Photo by Les Anderson on Unsplash

B) OLD SHIT (AND PEOPLE) Old means different things to different people. I’ve seen Americans call two-hundred year old buildings ancient - And then us other folk laugh at them and point at the nearest building which is at least twice as old and survived nukes and bombs (partially) in quite a few cases. To Cleopatra, the pyramids of Giza were as ancient to her as she is to us - she was the last queen of Egypt, a kingdom with more dynasties than some kingdoms had kings. Not kidding. In any case, what we think of as old might differ with the knowledge of history, our own age and where we grow up. Age is important - we as young children might think twenty is old but an five hundred year old elf might be just a child by its own people. We, as the writer and creator, need to keep that in mind and change the dynamics of the story accordingly.

On the Writing Level

Photo by James L.W on Unsplash

A) INFODUMPS - PLEASE DON’T

Technically a topic on its own, so I’ll make it short: Don’t. In 9 out of 10 cases, infodumps are bad. It’s like a chunk of butter - disgusting on its own if you bite into it, but if spread out on bread it’s good. Information should be spread out like butter on a piece of bread - not served as a chunk and stuffed into the reader’s face. I admit - sometimes an infodump is necessary. Take the prologue in the first Lord Of The Rings movie for example - for the movie as a whole to work and for everyone to understand said movie, the viewer needs information. Galadriel tells us what we need to know - about the ring, Sauron, Mordor, Isildur, and how the ring was lost and found. If we wouldn’t know about this whole backstory, chances are we would not understand why the story takes place at all. But it’s an awesome infodump - she does not only sit in Lothlorien, but Galadriel’s narration is overlayed with scenes from the war against Sauron for example - something still happens. We are shown what she tells us. Also, it sounds very strange if two experiences mages talk about how basic magic works. I mean, they should know this already, shouldn’t they? It can still sound weird if a mage explains basic magic to a new apprentice, but it is more justified.

Photo by Fredrick Kearney Jr on Unsplash

B) GETTING LOST (IN WORLDBUILDING)

Yeah, that happens. Sometimes. Often. Alright, all the time. Okay, worldbuilding is fun. It’s addicting. It’s like fiddling with Lego until not a piece is out of place in the finished model. But holy crap - You need to stop sometime and get down to writing. Really. If you want to write a novel, and you want to build the world of it until it’s done… It might take a while, if you even finish at all. So, sometimes you just gotta say “Well, that was fun” and start writing your story about your magical shopkeeper, no matter if Country X’s political system is finished into its last details. Or - as an other example - if your story takes place in one single country and barely touches on Foreign Relations you don’t need to plan every single detail of a country on the other side of the world. It’s simply not necessary for you in this moment. Maybe later, if your characters travel there you’ll need to flesh it out but if that happens in book 10 and you’re writing book 1 it doesn’t matter yet.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

A Farewell to Tossers (Or ‘Trump is Out: Hooray!’)

TRIGGER WARNING: COVID; Discussion of Racism; ‘It’s the Great Rape Satsuma, Charlie Brown!’

Well then. Trump is no longer President Elect of the United States and the world breathes a sigh of relief. At last, we can all stop worrying that the increasingly unstable leader of the free world is going to blow us all up with nukes because he mistook the big red thermonuclear button for the ‘send’ button on fucking Twitter! It actually feels nice to go back to worrying about more nebulous threats that don’t come with a fuck-ugly face and a dubious web presence attached. This being space-year 2020, we still have to cower in fear of COVID, the collapse of the global economy and a slow, choking death courtesy of a climate and planetary ecology that are frankly sick of our bullshit, but it’s still good to celebrate the fact that there’s one less dangerous, narcissistic prick with serious political power. The last four years have felt like a deeply disturbing docudrama answering the question ‘What if the Annoying Orange Ever Got its Hands on Real Power’, but the nightmare is over now. Well, I say ‘Annoying Orange’. He’s really more of a Rapey Satsuma, but let’s not split hairs of semantics. The tosser’s on his way out and that’s a cause for delight.

Now, obviously, this blog is somewhat overdue. Sorry, humans, but I just haven’t had the time to compose snarky think-pieces on major news items in real time. I’ve been busy being in love with- and making love to- an amazing woman (who’s also my sometime glamorous assistant over on my Youtube channel where I post magic vids), writing four novels, playing through the recent rash of Crash Bandicoot games and trying weed for the first, last and only time in my life (the only effect it had on me was to make me crave Mars Bars, which happens to me on a semi-regular basis anyway). However, don’t mistake my taciturnity for ambiguity! I am overjoyed that America has finally gotten rid of the psychotic Cheesy Whatsit who spent not quite half a decade shitting on the poor and disenfranchised while stumbling disastrously around the international stage like a very stupid, ill-tempered bear that’s suddenly found itself in the middle of a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Like most of my American readers and probably every sane, right-thinking person outside America, I greeted the news that he was on his way out with a fist-pump and a little dance of happiness. I might have twerked. I can neither confirm nor deny twerking.

But what lessons can we learn from this election and the fact that Trump clawed his way into power in the first place? Surely the last four years weren’t just the result of one nation’s collective brain-fart and their abrupt end nothing more than a spontaneous return to sanity? Well, no. The main reason Trump managed to grab hold of power was because he pretended to care about the American working classes. He didn’t, obviously: as soon as he got into power, he started taking away the social securities on which many of the poorest depend and dismantling their access to healthcare, because he’s a megalomaniacal rich dickhead. But he pretended to care well enough to convince an enormous quantity of people who felt alienated and disenfranchised by modern politics and- in particular- by a version of liberalism that seemed entirely focused on city-dwelling, self-consciously woke hipsters and regarded everyone else as a joke. A large part of the reason Joe Biden was able to wrest power back from the tantrum-throwing saveloy wanker was because he bothered to go out to the most impoverished parts of his country and remind that them that yes, the Democratic party did know they existed and did give a shit. Admittedly, he wasn’t the best candidate for working class voters- that would have been Bernie Sanders- but he was the best guy to get the message across in a way that wouldn’t seem patronising. So, Lesson One: ignore the gargantuan body of unskilled and menial labourers who power your country’s economy only at your own peril.

The second, related lesson should probably be something along the lines of ‘maybe prioritise rigorous analytical thinking as part of your country’s education strategy from a young age’. Seriously, it might seem obvious to you or I that Trump is a dangerous bullshit artist, but he hoodwinked a lot of people. And no, they’re not just naturally, randomly stupid. Okay, some of them are- nature bestows a fresh bounty of total fucking clods on the human race with every new generation, after all. But the point is that natural idiocy doesn’t adequately explain why so many people voted for a twat who clearly didn’t have their best interests at heart. The ability to recognise predatory charlatans is a subset of the ability to think critically about information with which you’re presented. Both the US and the UK education systems fail spectacularly to give people the mental tools they need to do this early on, with a heavier emphasis on learning rote facts and formulas which- while useful- only help to build crystallised intelligence not vital fluid intelligence (one is just stats and dry information, the other is the skills you need to navigate modern civilisation). Because fluid intelligence becomes harder and harder to acquire as one gets older, teaching people critical thinking skills early on is really important. Neither the UK nor US education systems really start to seriously teach it until pupils are almost adolescent, meaning that by the time they get to adulthood, they just don’t have the ability to peer through the miasma of obfuscating horseshit that surrounds most political candidates and accurately assess who is going to fuck them in the gall-bladder least. Biden was able to win this time round partly because he was really good at putting his message in a non-obfuscating way that helped to mobilise people regardless of their level of critical thinking. That’s great for him, and anything that helped oust Trump is a good thing, but it doesn’t address the underlying problem. The underlying problem, of course, is that, so long as education doesn’t take analytical skills seriously, the political system will always favour candidates with big, simple messages over more nuanced politicians with complex and ambiguous views, regardless of who the most qualified person is.

If Lessons One and Two were about understanding why people voted for Trump four years ago and why the didn’t this time, Lesson Three is our big ‘fuck humans’ moment, because one thing the election of Trump made is clear is that racism is alive and well in modern America. Yes, many of his voters were hoodwinked. Yes, many of them were legitimately alienated. But a significant percentage of them were also just xenophobic, racist arseholes who voted for him because they thought he’d get rid of some Mexicans for them. It’s tragic that these attitudes still persist in the modern world, but they do. Worse still, I’m not sure how you could easily address it. Fear and hatred of difference- even if it’s a superficial difference like skin colour or accent- seems to be hardwired into some people. While we can work to build a world where these attitudes aren’t acceptable, so long as we humans think of ourselves as belonging to different nations and groups, it’s almost impossible to extinguish them entirely. We’re just not at the point we need to be at: the point where we think of ourselves as a species with common goals and needs, not a disparate collection of tribes and interest groups. Trump and his election to power were symptomatic of this problem. His recent de-election might help alleviate it for awhile. However, only time and repeated, positive mutual interaction between different groups of people (on both the global and individual level) can ever cure the disease itself. And that shit’s going to take time. There’s years of genocide and exploitation and war and rivalry and mistrust to make up for and, frankly, it’s still going on, which just makes it harder to drag the human race in the right direction.

Fuck, that got deep. This was meant to be a funny, celebratory blog about how we no longer have to put up with that prat Trump, and instead it turned into a lengthy disquisition on the failure of education and the problems inherent in how humans relate to one another through Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory (that’s the whole in-group/out-group/fear-and-distrust-among-nations-and-peoples thing I was going on about). Sorry, folks, sometimes life is just like that: you tune in for laughs and get punched in the dick with a dry, depressing polemic on our failings as a species. Happy 2020, everyone! Anyway, tune in soon for a review of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, which I promise not to turn into a didactic on the role of Nietzsche’s hypothetical superman in a civilisation that relies on the suppression of certain, key choices… aaaaaalthough…

[accidental-memory]

A timeline of every original Facebook post I’ve made that uses the word “war.”

== 15.March.2012 ==

Complete nonsequitor, but the next time someone says that there is a war on Christmas, I will gladly point out that we didn't start this war but we're winning it.

== 29.March.2012 ==

I would like to put something in context. I was a 9/11 Truther for a period of about two months. During that two month stint, I thought that there was sufficient documentation and evidence to point the finger squarely at the US government and say, "You did this; you killed thousands of your own citizens to bolster support for war." And at that time, the thought of someone being willing to go to those lengths to get what they wanted was the most dispicable thing I had ever heard.

Obviously since then I have read, listened to, and watched the evidence provided by the scientific community that soundly trounces the conspiratorial claims of the Truthers and of the awful Zeitgeist film.

And this document is possibly the most disgusting thing I have seen since that brief two month period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ8A9h_mVOY&fbclid=IwAR0itZxA-byAw-wyG5S46IjaXIRgYDEqZTTBchcbyqM9DuVgHh8yJE6_IYQ

== 25.November.2014 ==

[referencing the Wilson trial in Ferguson, MO]

The more I read about the trial the more I am getting angry. The prosecutor should be ashamed of himself for the lack of his ability to pursue even the most basic of interrogatory points.

So much of Wilson's testimony, esp. that which came from immediately following the incident, smacks of stereotypical cop cover-up language -- the "I thought he might have a gun" trope is used as soon as possible.

The explanation that "concentrated marijuana" could have caused Brown to be aggressive is laughably founded only in drug-war-era fearmongering, rather than evidence.

Though I am still presently of the opinion that Wilson is not guilty of out-and-out murder (manslaughter more like?), and that opinion may yet change, there's plenty more he may be guilty of -- perjury, to start with.

Regardless of any of that, there is nothing here that says to me that there is a "lack of evidence" to indict Wilson. I think that he should go to trial.

I did my best to withhold my own judgment of the situation until I had a lot more facts. This is what I've come to, based on the information I now have.

== 12.November.2015 ==

Russia: "Whoops look at that we have a gigantic nuclear torpedo specifically designed to wipe out coastal cities. We're *so* sorry, we totally didn't mean to scare the world."

Me: "Meh what's the difference? If a nuke is used in a war these days the world ends so I just don't care if you've come up with another one."

== 11.March.2016 ==

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/donald-trump-mexico-isnt-war-220497?cmpid=sf&fbclid=IwAR3lvGaRjPDi9E-FBCDIM9eCfydHoL33e2ER-NUQh5-P8f3t_AqhZj83ze8

So if you can't get Mexico to willingly build this wall for us, or pay for it, then you'll, what, strongarm the entire country with the threat of military action? Hold an entire country at gunpoint so it'll do your bidding? Wow. If that's how you'll treat Mexico, I can only imagine how you'll treat the US. Apparently that's what a "revitalized military" means to Trump. If the parallels between his foreign and domestic policies and Hitler's aren't clear at this point, then you're not listening.

But Trump is right. Mexico won't play at the idea of war with the US. But I'll bet NATO will.

== 20.October.2016 ==

[a big rightwing stink about Clinton referencing the nuclear response time of the United States during her debate with Trump]

Just read an article trying to peg Clinton with revealing classified information during the debate about our nuclear response time. Let me quote the second to last sentence:

"This four-minute figure may be 'out there,' but it's certainly alarming how casually Hillary Clinton talks about sensitive matters of national security."

... So, it's not a secret? In fact, most documentaries about nuclear warfare and the cold war talk about it? You can learn it from a Google search? It's not a secret about our national security at all? Huh! Imagine that. So then why the hell did you feel the need to make the article at all?

== 23.February.2017 ==

BTW if there's any question on what the war on drugs is about, look at the resurgence in the use of private prisons by the DOJ coming hand-in-hand with the White House telling feds to start going after marijuana in states that don't treat it as a crime.

I'm not one for self-promotion??? but spread this shit. Make it front and center. Make this as naked an issue as you can; there's no covering this.

== 30.July.2017 ==

[a man from the Danny Wright Show on 97.7 The River, holding up a sign that reads, "Tell me the first major news story you remember as a kid!"]

For me, it was about the burning oil fields in Kuwait during the Gulf War. I know there are other things I saw, with Reagan and George HW Bush and the Olympics on TV, but I don't remember those stories.

Beyond that one, it was "Read My Lips: No New Taxes"

== 22.August.2017 ==

Anyone else unsurprised about Trump actively seeking wars? He is probing one country after another seeing which country he could attack and get away with it. The reason that he's not attacking North Korea RIGHT THIS INSTANT is because China has said emphatically that if we attack first then China will declare war with us, and that's not a war we want. So now he's trying out Venezuela. And Afghanistan.

Because he's unpopular and needs a war.

== 06.December.2017 ==

Using English, a language that has multiple ways of being interpreted and whose words' meanings change with usage, as the means by which one writes laws, is irresponsible. It leads to the intent of a law or constitutional amendment being lost to the change of linguistic interpretation.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Let's talk about just how many ways you can read this.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- What's a well-regulated militia? It was originally intended and interpreted as state militias. What are those militias for? "The security of a free State." State as in, the states? State as in, the nation (as the word is sometimes used)? A free state as in, a condition of freedom? Which one? The original intention, again, was for state-run militias (in other words, as part of state government) to be able to hold up arms in defense of themselves from the federal government, other state governments, or foreign governments. Imagine Virginia declaring war with Maryland to get an idea of exactly what kind of thing the founding fathers had in mind there. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms" -- in the context of the rest of the statement, the very clear meaning is that the people in question are those who are defending the state. It's now taken out of its context to apply to people generally, which is not even remotely what the original intention was. It's also used to support the idea of private militias, because if it's a militia then it must be well-regulated (which for some reason people now interpret to mean "it's got rules it follows, even if those rules are its own rules" despite regulations really being about the way the state regulates the militia). "Shall not be infringed" is referring to those standing state militias being free to operate without being impinged upon by federal oversight or regulation; but now it is interpreted to mean that any regulation by any government body is unconstitutional and private citizens should be able to own hand grenades and 50-cal sniper rifles.

The constitution, from the ground-up, should be rewritten with original intent in a more logically-aligned language that is not subject to reinterpretation due to the changing usage of a particular word or the changing grammatical syntax of a dialect.

== 12.December.2017 ==

So, you know how when a shitty person gets called out for doing something bad but there's no direct/immediate confirmation of it, so they create a story that contradicts the accusation? Like, "I don't cheat on my wife! In fact, this one time, my friend Steve several years ago was talking to me about how he wanted to cheat on his wife and I talked him out of it because I'm so upstanding!"

Apparently, yesterday, someone talked about "accidentally" going to a brothel in Vietnam during the war, with Roy Moore, where there were child prostitutes, and Moore, being the "upstanding" individual he is, got out of there.

Yawn.

== 06.June.2018 ==

Prediction: Trump will, in fact, try to pardon himself. He will remain in office as long as he physically can, shouting decrees and making unsound arguments as to why his orders should be followed. And it will be up to the judgment of not Congress, not the Courts, but the military, to forcibly remove him. And it will be the start of a war.

The military will split between the faction that primarily heads the Pentagon that views it as upholding the constitution, and the faction that is in power due to Trump's administration that views (read: sells) it as a military coup.

Trump will call the entire thing a coup attempt led by his leftist enemies and he will attempt to muster a military presence to enforce his position as president. This would be our Reichstag Fire moment, and those loyal to their assumed leader will stand in arms against those in the Pentagon that wish to enforce the Constitution. The man who enters the power vacuum of the legitimate presidency will be Mike Pence who, aside from now being the man in power, has no reason to not back Trump's assertions -- maybe even lending him a ... oh, I don't know, a chancellery position or something?

== 08.June.2018 ==

The single wildest thing I've ever heard is, "This war criminal deserves deference because he's extremely old." (see: Kissinger)

== 02.March.2019 ==

1 second is enough time to land two, maybe three, footfalls while jogging.

10 seconds is about how long it takes to wash a dinner plate.

100 seconds is enough time to read two pages in a typical paperback book. Or, if you're me, one page.

1000 seconds is the driving time from the Poplar Street Bridge to Lambert Airport.

10,000 seconds is the length of time most people work before they go to lunch.

100,000 seconds is longer than it would take to travel by plane from St. Louis to Australia.

1,000,000 seconds is longer than the duration of the Apollo 16 space mission.

10,000,000 seconds is an entire season of television.

100,000,000 seconds is how long ago Deadpool came out (note: it is presently March of 2019).

1,000,000,000 seconds is the length of time between the start of World War I and the end of World War II.

[pinelife3]

Montezuma 2EEE

This is MF DOOM on the Jake One track 'Get 'Er Done':

Make no mistake son, it's Jake One, he makes beats well like I likes my steaks done with sauteed onions and hella worcestershire, a gush of beer to wash it down.

First of all, whew that internal rhyme! Worcestershire//gush of beer. Yes! I feel like only MF DOOM can do this shit. I read a really interesting write up on MF DOOM from Ta-Nehisi Coates recently. Coates seems like the nicest guy ever - he's so smart but also completely unpretentious. He writes for Marvel and The New Yorker and seems to easily move between those worlds. (I was in a comic book shop today and feeling kind of out of place but the bald, bearded goth guy behind the counter was super nice, and declared the book I put on the counter an “awesome read” and then he recommended some other stuff to me as well. This is a wildly irrelevant anecdote - was just thinking about comics.) Anyway, Coates talks about DOOM, but also his own experience as a hip hop fan:

I kept the assembled works of Wu-Tang Clan on repeat and stewed, convinced that somewhere around 1998 hip-hop had run out of things to say. I was not alone. Disaffected music fans began to refer to the halcyon days of the eighties and nineties—when every rapper had a d.j., and label owners didn’t vamp in videos, confusing themselves with artists—as “the Golden Era.”

We were the kind of fundamentalists that haunt every genre of popular music. By the end of the nineties, we had started seeking a sound that offered something other than guns, girls, and drugs. Some of us found neo-soul. Others got lost in our parents’ jazz records. And still others were radicalized and turned to U2 and Björk.

Not to be picky, but I feel like Wu-Tang talks about guns, girls and drugs plenty. But they also talk about the Shaolin, martial arts and poverty and I guess that's the difference. Anyway, I never knew why DOOM wore the mask, but he says:

I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about. Like girls being like, ‘Oh, he’s sexy,’ or ‘I don’t want him, he’s ugly,’ and then other dudes sizing you up. A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?

Huh. This other musician I like, Brock Berrigan (he makes really nice beats -you should check him out), always wears a chicken head mask - possibly for reasons similar to DOOM's. For me, that reasoning doesn't check out though, because aren't people obsessed with unmasking? I guess if nothing else it creates an iconic image around your act without that having to literally be your face the way it is with most other artists. ANYWAY, I guess lyrics don't need to be technically amazing like DOOM's to be entertaining - this dude Open Mike Eagle has some good lines. From his track "Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)":

I log into my Twitter page And start bending over like Gollum This dumb cred is like crack rock And I never seem to hit bottom

Sweet Gollum reference - I had to look this one up. The "bending over" kind of threw me: I thought he was maybe saying something about hoes on social media but then why would he��be bending over? Then I thought maybe he was saying he was gay and hoeing on social media himself but it still seems weird to invoke Gollum in that context, right? I like Gollum as much as the next person (i.e. a lot), but I would not be super keen to draw comparisons between his appearance and my own (although we do share the same sickly pallor and blue eyes - plus, I too have spent many years living in a cave). According to Rap Genius (and the line's context - I am truly an idiot for not getting it sooner. Maybe I just wanted it to be something sexual to do with Gollum) he's just saying that he's addicted to Twitter and the praise/attention it affords him, similar to how Gollum is addicted to the ring (and crouching).

From age 18 - 21 I was super into Fleet Foxes (I think they hold up. They're pretty irresistible, right?). They have this song "Montezuma" which finishes like this:

Oh man what I used to be Montezuma to Tripoli Oh man oh my oh me

I guess I'm an idiot because when he sings "Montezuma to Tripoli" I always heard "Montezuma 2 Triple E" and imagined it stylised like this: Montezuma 2EEE. Tripoli obviously makes more sense but it never even occurred to me that he was saying that. I thought he was referring to something mysterious and abstract. (Writing it out like EEE makes it look like a bra cup size. I don't know if they do triple cup sizes (they do!). Even doubles make no sense to me. Okay, so I've quickly Googled it. If you're curious: it turns out that a double or triple letter cup size indicates that the boob being cupped sits somewhere between two cup sizes - so a DDD breast is bigger than a DD breast which is bigger than a D breast, and all of them are smaller than E. That's what this website says anyway. But this whole framework really falls down with the AA cup, because a AA is smaller than an A. It should at least be consistent. I've been wearing bras for years (big shot coming through) and am only now learning about all of this. To be honest, I am incredibly guesstimate-y with my bra shopping: band size is pretty consistent but cup size swings wildly across the alphabet. Should probably get fitted but I feel awkward being fondled by a shop assistant. Plus, it's not like I walk into a bra shop and immediately think that the shop attendants have great breasts - why should I take their advice?) 

Montezuma 2EEE: I imagined some weird website which was techy and totally opaque to me, but also somehow involved Aztec emperors. I kind of want to make a weird, pointless website ("isn't that what this blog is, Kath?") because I have pinelife.net and nothing is happening there - I post all my Pinelife blog posts there too (which I know is a real waste of effort - my time is worth nothing so I don't mind wasting that) but I kind of prefer Wordpress' text editor to Tumblr's so it has that advantage. I found this really weird website (please please check it out) a while ago via the House of Leaves subreddit and found it so intriguing and exciting. I don't know why, but I had this insane rush of adrenaline while I was exploring the website. It was cool. Maybe I should make a weird, labyrinthine, pointless website of my own: it'll have shitty navigation, the font and background will be the same colour, possibly other things will be wrong with it too. It'd be something to do anyway. Maybe instead of making a book object I could make a website object - is that a thing? This might be a good way to waste some (more) of my time anyway. I do kind of want to make something. I’ve been bored with blogging for a while. Or, I don’t know - I enjoy doing it and looking back on my old posts (out of the vault: remember this one about cynicism and church? I was so proud of that. Weirdly, my favourite post from last year is this stupid one about pizza which was really low effort) but I don’t know if there’s anything I’ve written in the last year that I’m that proud of. The year went really fast and I feel like I’ve change a bit (or maybe a lot, I’m not sure). 

Montezuma2eee.com is available. Hmmm. I already have pinelife.net. Is it greedy to want another domain? I doubt Montezuma2eee is going anywhere (but I’d feel like quite the fool if someone did take it from me - I can’t really be the first to think it’s 2EEE - it literally sounds exactly like it). Anyway, I should play around on pinelife.net for a bit before making the $0.99 commitment to a new domain. 

Urgh. I’m an idiot. I nuked pinelife.net and all of the images I’ve uploaded to Wordpress there are gone and I’m lazy and never bothered to upload them to stupid tumblr, I just copied them and now they’re gone. I hate myself. Why didn’t I think for like half a second before deleting everything? Plus, there must be a better way to delete Wordpress beyond FTPing in and trawling through all my folders and deleting anything with a wp prefix. What happens if I just delete everything, like all the folders, and just start from scratch? I’ve forgotten how all this works. (This blog post is a real, rambling steam of consciousness. If I had any editorial credibility I would not publish this thing.)

Hey, talking about me trying to be creative: I was just hunting around my writing folder (basically untouched since 2015) and found this monstrosity I made to mourn the demise of Google Reader (wtf is/was wrong with me?). Jesus I have no memory of making this. Troublingly, I feel very pleased with this thing and its weirdness (obviously if I was genuinely embarrassed I wouldn’t share it here). This would have been 2013.

Also, I won’t post this, but I found an old poem I wrote (lame) in 2012 for uni which is all bullet points and features the word “pre-cum” in the first line. 22 year old me: why?

More? This is the start to a novel I was writing when I was 22/23:

Sirens by the swamp. The river doesn’t move in the summer heat: green carpet of scum across the surface. Two police cruisers are parked on the grass, another blocks the footpath. An officer unfurls yellow tape.

In a local 7/11 the Slurpee machine releases its hold on life and a stickiness of Cola flavoured low calorie slush spills forth. Potato salad is left to putrefy at a hundred backyard barbeques. In a thousand shitty sedans the steering wheel is too hot to hold. In a million armpits sweat prickles through dark hair to find cool air.

The body is partially submerged in the swamp. Obscured by slime and dark water, her hair is tangled in water grass, an eel nuzzles her cheek. From the waist down she is naked, seething with ants and flies. There is a tattoo of a dragon on her hip. If there was a lot of blood it’s now vanished into the mud. Someone has performed a riverside hysterectomy: it was not tidily done.

Sirens by the swamp. Five girls stand in the shade under the bridge: jutting hips, bare feet, iPhones, string bikinis, denim shorts. One pops gum as a police officer asks her preliminary questions. Another discretely photographs the crime scene with her phone. Their families are not expecting them for lunch. It’s Werribee and it’s Christmas day.

****

ppl made a new word for wh@ happened. they said th@ she had been uncunted. 2 b fair it was pretty bad nd even sum of tha sirens said they thought a line had been crossd. dead girl wasn’t even from werribee. actually th@s probably why she was dumb enough 2 go down by tha river

the thing th@ made me haha was th@ channel 10 made such a big deal about her being found by tha sirens b/c theyre young girls and tha news ppl tried to make out like its not a safe town 4 girls nd like girls shouldnt go out alone nd they tried to use tha sirens as an eg of young women in peril. but it was like oh man have u got it wrong. those river girls are bad

honestly werribee is fine so long as ur not fool enouf 2 go down by tha river. th@ is the ao for sirens nd eeeeevery1 nos not to go their less they want they dick sucked nd there future ruined. haha 4 real the news crews + police r lucky they didnt get uncunted 2