#the accusation here is all the more egregious for the fact

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

If any society as a whole really cared about uplifting and supporting rape survivors as much as we like to pretend we do, or even half as much as we like to make excuses for abusers and rapists, perhaps women wouldn't feel the need to keep the abhorrent crimes perpetrated against them to themselves for years for fear of being re-traumatised by the legal system and the court of public opinion.

[blog-name-idk]

The Plot Twist | 04

Written by @blog-name-idk and @eserethriddle

Summary: Once upon a time you would have jumped at the chance to live the idol girlfriend life. The cameras, the action, the whirlwind romance. But what was once a dream has now become your worst nightmare, and you fully intend to fight the universe as it repeatedly conspires to set you up with your seven perfectly good soulmates from Bangtan Sonyeondan.

In which we punt Y/N into all the fanfiction tropes and you do your feral best to subvert the love story.

Because nani the fuck, you are The Plot Twist.

Pairing: OT7 X Fem!Reader

Genre: Soulmate!AU, crack, humor, idol!AU, light angst, slow burn, romantic comedy, just a fun silly old time

Rating: 18+

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Chapter 4: "You like Pac-man, right?"

"How dare you!"

You’ve just finished entering the final character to G0d$l@yeR_69 when you look up from the post-game leaderboard screen.

"Pardon?" you ask in confusion, slightly alarmed by the speed in which a masked man is walking towards you and the Pac-man machine. Even with the mask, the exaggerated furrow marring the man’s forehead is more than enough for you to discern that he is less than pleased. You square your shoulders, in case you need to defend the precious apparatus. Well, that and protect Lee-ssi, but mostly the Pac-man game.

"You're G0d$l@yeR_69?" the man squawks, voice irate. He gives you a once over and bristles further. You can almost imagine his fluffy hair rising like the feathers of an offended bird, and he… kind of sounds like one, too. You struggle to stifle your snicker when he gestures broadly to your grown stature, incredulous even as he finally discerns to himself, “You’re not some pint-sized punk!”

“And yet here you are, humbled all the same.” you respond haughtily, dusting off the imaginary lint off your burgundy dress. “Based on your reaction, I take it you’re ‘Jin the PacMan God’?”

You pause.

Wait.

Jin?

In fact, this offended cockatoo of a man actually looks… familiar. Broad shoulders, nice eyebrows, and –

Your blood pressure skyrockets as you realize exactly who is yelling at you. Unfortunately, your temper rises faster than your self-preservation.

"I'm sorry, BTS Jin is the same stupid kid who calls himself 'Jin the PacMan God?'" you blurt before you can stop yourself. "What self-respecting adult wastes so much time on an arcade game?"

He raises an eyebrow at you with a pointed stare, and you shrug. You don't fit into that category. You certainly don't respect yourself.

"A grown woman calls herself G0d$l@yeR_69?" Kim Seokjin jabs in return, crossing his arms, now looking more sulky than angry.

"Well, it's accurate to lore," you retort with an uncaring flip of your hair, doing your best to look bored rather than reflect the panic beginning to clog your throat. His genuinely offended gasp would have made you laugh if you weren't currently running through the possible exit routes in your head.

And then Jin says, "Well, you must be cheating!"

The egregious accusation dispels all thoughts of escape from your head. Your pride and integrity as a gamer have been insulted, and you narrow your eyes at the self-proclaimed pro-gamer before you.

You’re fully prepared to defend your honor.

It's on.

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Jimin doesn't get it.

How could he be unlucky enough to get sidelined a second time in a row? He wasn't even late this time! But because there had been more men than women (a bit heteronormative for his tastes, but that's the current state of most official speed-dating events), he and a few others had to wait aside for a rotation. And then somehow, everyone had already decided to pair up before he even got to meet anyone!

Perhaps it's karma and he's being punished for telling his Jin-hyung that he sort of kind of definitely looked like a certain pink Moluccan bird species when he was all riled up and red-eared.

With a sigh, he leaves the building, shoulders slumped. He can't quite bring himself to call Jin yet, and so he decides to walk aimlessly for a while. Perhaps some fresh air will cheer him up.

It's a bustling street, and he nervously brings his mask up higher on his face lest he be recognized. No one seems to be paying attention however, and the people going about their daily lives remind him that despite his woes, life goes on.

An arcade catches his eye, and he shrugs to himself. A few rounds of killing zombies or racing fake cars will take his mind off things. It's a school day, so it's unlikely the place will be packed.

When he walks in, he hears a familiar screech, accompanied by the sound of a boot stomping on the ground.

"Yahhh! How did you do that?! That's not fair!"

What is Jin-hyung doing here? And what is he yelling about?

Curious, he follows the voice past the shopkeeper who looks torn between concern and amusement, to where Jin is ranting at someone obscured by his frame.

A p(r)etty sigh.

"I'm sorry this is so difficult for you to get through that coconut haircut of yours, but has it occurred to you that I'm just better?"

Huh, that voice is also familiar.

"That’s just prepos–"

"...Hyung?"

The voices cease as the two arguers turn to look at Jimin, and he feels his breath catch in his throat.

You look particularly lovely today, with a form-fitting burgundy dress that shows off much more soft-looking skin than the business or lounge attire you wear on the rare occasion he actually sees you.

And his Jin-hyung, next to you, all rose-colored cockatoo.

It's more than enough to set Jimin off-balance.

"Oh! Hi, LN-ssi!" he hurriedly squeaks, cursing his voice for cracking. What are all his voice lessons even for?

At least you can't tell his palms are suddenly sweating. Your eyebrows rise and Jimin realizes you never did tell him your name, that he just saw it on your mailbox and it stuck in his brain. Oh no, do you think he's a stalker now?

"You know this phony?" Jin cries, oblivious to the internal crisis his dongsaeng is currently experiencing.

Jimin's brows crinkle. Phony?

Your head whips to his hyung at his words, your eyes narrowing.

"I believe you saw proof with your own two eyes," you say icily, though your gaze has a fire that makes Jimin gulp. "Maybe you should get them checked? Sometimes they can fail with old age."

Jin's jaw drops, and as a constipated sound of outrage leaves him, you take the opportunity to brush past and march to the exit. Jimin, still confused, steps aside automatically to let you pass and you give him a reluctant nod.

"Jimin-ssi."

As you leave, Jin turns to Jimin to demand answers, but he barely hears it over the fluttering in his tummy.

It's the first time you've ever addressed him by name.

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The twelve-year-old boy opens his hand, revealing hard candy wrapped in shiny, yellow paper.

"You like Pac-man, right?" he asks, smiling brighter than the sun.

You accept his offering, sure your own face is radiant enough to power all of Gwangju. You can't say you have strong feelings for the buttery treat, but you do for the little boy who fills your days with laughter and sweet memories. You could spend forever playing with him at the park by your houses…

Except your parents get the brilliant idea of starting their own restaurant in Seoul. You are heartbroken when the decision to move is made, but you do your best to support their dreams, even if it comes at the expense of your only friend.

Out of sentimentality and denial, you save the shiny candy wrapper, holding it when you're sad, as if it's a talisman that can ward off the lonely ache in your chest. It's hard being the new kid in a big-city school, and though you present your mother's strong facade when your new classmates tease you about your satoori, it hurts. You have to be strong.

After one particularly bad day, you decide to drop into the local arcade, because all it will take is one smile from your appa to disintegrate your cracking veneer. You're a big girl, basically an adult at a whopping eleven years old! You're not a baby anymore, you just need some extra time to set yourself right.

You weave through the attractions, passing racing games and claw machines when something catches your eye. A familiar yellow character smiles at you from a game cabinet, and for a moment you feel like he is still there with you.

You walk up to the Pac-man arcade machine with newfound resolve and a sunny smile to match.

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“Sometimes I wanna drop by Gwangju,” Jung Hoseok begins, taking his seat at the dining table next to Taehyung, “But then I remember they already demolished the playplace from my childhood and think, huh, maybe not. Thing is, they sold really good tteok there.”

“Pan-fried tteok?” Taehyung leans back, remembering the taste of his own favorite rice cake flavors from Daegu. “My hometown had that, too.”

“Sometimes the cart owner-ahjussi would give us candy with our orders. I miss it a lot.”

Hobi's eyes take on a wistful look, and Taehyung pats his shoulder.

It must have been some really good candy.

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"Honey! I'm home!" you call, setting your briefcase on the floor as your husband rushes up to you wearing a cute apron that has nothing on his sweet face and sweeter smile.

"I just finished dinner," he says, greeting you with a kiss on the cheek that makes your chest fill with the glow of a million fireflies.

"What, mudcakes again?" you ask fondly. You thread your fingers with his, uncaring of the dirt on his palms, giggling at the pout on his face.

"You said they're your favorite!" he complains petulantly, though he doesn't pull away.

"They are," you agree, squeezing his hand in yours reassuringly. You beam at him, and his cheeks turn pink. "If it's something you made, it's my favorite."

You're suddenly tugged towards him and you squeak in surprise as wiry arms crush the air out of your lungs.

"You're my favorite," he mumbles into your hair, and it's the happiest you've felt in your entire nine years of existence.

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It's great to be back in Gwangju, away from all the insanity happening in Seoul. You can finally relax and live life rather than constantly look over your shoulder in the fear of running into another member of BTS.

Fuck you, fate! You're taking a break.

You knock on the old, familiar door, and it opens to reveal a kind, lightly lined face that breaks into a huge smile at the sight of you.

"Halmeoni!" you announce happily, stepping into your grandmother's arms and hugging her fiercely. She hugs you back just as hard, squeezing you with her deceptively spindly limbs as you melt into a hold that feels like childhood.

"We've been waiting!" she replies cheerfully before ushering you to the living room and calling your grandpa to come greet you. The house is the same as you remember, a comforting echo of days past.

"Oh! We ran into that boy you used to play with at the store earlier!" your grandma says just as you pick up your cup of tea. "The one you used to play house with!"

You laugh, thinking fondly of your childhood friend. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if he had been your soulmate, rather than a group of the seven biggest idols in Korea. Or perhaps not – the things that are so simple to children don't always translate to adulthood, and those memories hold an untainted innocence that you wouldn't trade for the world.

You bring the cup of homebrewed tea to your lips, only to choke at your grandmother's next words.

"I invited him over for dinner!"

You stare at the twinkle in your suddenly menacing grandmother's eyes. In just one simple sentence, she has transformed from the kindly, loving fixture of your youth to yet another cruel, scheming matchmaker. Truly your mother’s maker. Leaving Seoul might have saved you from idol-related phenomena, but clearly not from your family's attempts at grand (and great-grand) children.

Instinct drives you to your feet and you grab your purse, tripping over the rug as you rush to the door.

"I have to go," you call over your shoulder, uncaring of the baffled expression on your grandma's face.

"But you just got here?" she says in distressed confusion, and your stomach fills with guilt at the sadness in her voice. "We haven't seen you in so long, dear."

You still, hand on the doorknob and so, so close to freedom and safety. Eventually, you sigh, shoulders slumping as the resolve trickles out of your body.

"Never mind, I'm going to take my stuff upstairs," you say in resignation, grabbing the carry-on still by the door and carting it to the guest room. The wallet feels extra heavy in your purse, and when you're safely within the confines of your room you sit on the bed and pull it out.

You reach behind the ID card in the plastic slot of your wallet and feel the soft, crinkly edges of a fond childhood memory.

You like Pac-man, right?

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Hoseok still remembers the smile on your face whenever he gave you the extra candy he would get with his tteok in the park. As well as the thinly hidden devastation on your face the last time he saw you, and you told him your family was leaving for Seoul.

Despite him being older, he had always admired your courage and tenacity, the way you would charge head-first at the things you wanted. Your unwavering support whenever he was feeling down or uncertain. During hard times as a trainee, he would sometimes picture your determined expression and feel an extra spark of energy.

He really isn't sure what to expect, or even if he's in his right mind, coming to dinner to see his long lost… friend? Play-spouse?

Would you even remember him?

The door opens, and Hoseok's heart jumps at the sight of you. The tentative smile on your face fades into an expression of utter shock, and he belatedly remembers exactly who he is.

"Wh–what the–I–" you stammer, looking just as mortified as Hoseok feels. In his ruminations of childhood, he had completely forgotten his present state of being and how it might impact new encounters. "Can I help you?"

"Y-Y/N?" he asks tentatively. To his bafflement, you flinch as if he had screamed at you.

"How do you know my name?" you ask, stepping back with your hand on the door. You look five seconds away from slamming it in his face, and despite his misgivings, Hoseok's heart sinks. For some reason this cold reception feels worse than if you were a saesang.

"I'm… I'm here for dinner?" he says tentatively, proffering the seonmul he brought. The expression on your face is so reluctant that for a moment he takes a whiff of the bag in case the pastries from the most expensive bakery in the area have somehow gone bad.

With a spark of panic, Hoseok wonders if he accidentally went to the wrong address. The house is familiar, and you look similar to the little girl he remembers, but perhaps he's just let his hopes affect his memories. Why else would you look so shaken, other than a strange man showing up out of nowhere?

"But you're… you're not–"

"Y/N, what's taking so long?"

Relief fills him momentarily as your grandmother comes behind you, though it's tempered by the way you haven't relaxed.

"But this is… this isn't…" you stammer, face pale as you look between Hoseok and your grandmother. It hits him that you probably don't remember his real name, as you had been too young to pronounce it correctly when you had first met.

"You used to call me Hoba," he says with a smile, realizing that this is why you must be so confused – you've recognized him as Jung Hoseok of BTS, and thus not your playmate from so many years ago. "It's nice to see you again."

┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

This cannot be happening.

Not only is the smiling boy from your fondest memories Jung Hoseok of BTS, but he just somehow had a break in his schedule the same weekend you're in Gwangju, and he ran into your grandmother at the supermarket? You left Seoul to get a break from these ridiculous situations and not to end up having dinner with one of your soulmates!

What kind of contrived, unimaginative bullshit is this?

"These are for you," Hoseok tells your grandmother with a formal bow, offering the pretty, pastel pastry box you had refused to accept earlier. She beams approvingly while you pinch yourself. Hard.

Through the pain in your arm, Jung Hoseok is still standing in your entryway, a sunny nightmare you can't wake up from. The old wrapper, once a magical talisman to ward off gloom, is lead weight in your pocket.

"Um," he begins awkwardly, looking bashful. It is not cute. He is not cute. "And this is for you."

He holds out a fuzzy yellow ball you immediately recognize, and you stare at it in shock. Your chest is doing something very funny, like tachycardic arrythmia. Yes. Hilarious.

Hoseok evidently takes your silence as disapproval, and wilts like a flower deprived of light. "Uh, sorry, you probably don't like Pacman anymore…"

"I do," you reply faintly, reaching forward to take his gift. Only to be polite. That's it. Certainly not because his dejection makes your insides roil with guilt. "Thank you."

"Of course," he replies, looking only marginally relieved by your lukewarm response. "Oh! You dropped something."

He dips low to grab something, and to your horror, your wallet is open –

"Wait, is this–"

"I JUST LIKE THE CANDY!" you blurt in a near scream, feeling your entire body light on fire. This would be humiliating in the best of situations, and Jung Hoseok discovering you kept the wrapper from an old candy he had given you, like a sentimental loser, is decidedly NOT the best of situations.

His resulting smile almost blasts you off your feet, and you wonder if overexposure to sunlight can lead to cardiac arrest.

“Y/N-ah,” Jung Hoseok says, tentatively, but with soft affection. It is more devastating than you could have ever imagined. “I missed you too. Have you been well?”

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Masterlist | Next

[tevantarlos]

Feel free to ignore but I just have to get this out. I know this sounds mean but I´m happy that

a) Tim and Oliver lurk in fandom like no other and are seeing what people say about them and

b) Oliver had months of reprieve from the deranged people that make his following because they were turning all their guns on Lou. In fact he gained popularity because they convinced themselves (with his help, I add) that he is their champion and actually wants Buddie to happen. What does he think will happen now, when in a couple of weeks Buddie still has not happend? There is no Tommy standing in the way anymore and we will go right back to accusations of baiting and of people calling him fat and bald and almost too ugly for Eddie (yes, that happend). And when this happens and he has another whiny outburst on SM I will laugh until I fall over.

They droped the ball with every other LI before because they were to chicken shit to even try putting a stop to the endless harrassment. I think Megan West was the most egregious example of just leaving someone hanging and even encouraging the shit that went on online. They had a chance here, for the first time, to try to get out of this toxic Buddie brew they are in. If nothing else the way the relationship with Tommy was received, the way it garnered press by outlets other than glorified fan blogs like "Fangirlish" and gained them a new audience and the move to ABC all presented an opportunity to combat the toxicity by simply taking the fandom monopoly away from the crazies. But they just did not have the balls and now look at their pathetic attempts to make Brad happen on their IG. Engagement is low and what it there is the usual idiots screaming for Buddie and nothing else.

I hope it was worth it. I don´t see the show getting a 10th season, maybe not even a 9th. The spin off will be cheaper to produce, Peter talked about quitting before and the ratings trend downwards since S6. Not to mention the writing is absolute shit since Tim is back.

Maybe Oliver hopes that Callum Blue is the kind of guy that can get him a job after 911 gets canceled and is worth sucking up to. Last time I checked he couldn´t even get cast on a Hallmark movie so why not try, right? Buddie fans will not follow him either way, I hope he knows that.

Hey, hon. Thanks for the ask. Sorry I haven't posted this or replied before now. I haven't logged into my computer in a few days, have just been doing everything on my phone, and I didn't want to try to reply to this on my phone, that would takes ages.

I've been in the 911 fandom since two months after the last episode of season 1 aired. Oliver and 911 shot themselves in the foot by not shooting this Bvddie bullshit down from the very beginning. They've spent years leading Bvddie fans on, purposely having scenes with Buck and Eddie that cause the lunatics to see things that aren't there, because it gives the show more engagement.

Oliver and 911 know that Bvddie fans will never stop watching the show because they're so sure that at some point, 911 and Oliver will give in and make Bvddie canon because 'it's what they deserve'. At least, that's the bullshit I've read a lot of on Twitter and other places. What Bvddie fans don't understand, is they aren't owed shit.

I learned this the hard way when I was in the 100 fandom. I, and many other Bellarke fans thought that since we were loyal fans of the show, we'd be rewarded by getting Bellarke eventually. But just like Bvddie is never going to happen, Bellarke never happened. The writers and show runners had no interest in going there. They just liked to bait fans. Just like 911 does, with Buck and Eddie.

I personally feel like Oliver was relieved that all the hate was getting thrown at Lou and not himself, and he got a break from those assholes for a few months. But now that Lou and Tommy are gone, they're just going to go back to harassing him because Bvddie isn't canon and never will be, and those dumbasses can't cope.

Oliver knows that if he ever truly tells the Bvddie fans that it's never going to happen, he'll lose a large majority of his fan base. So, he just doesn't say anything. He encourages their twisted thinking and doesn't put them in their place when they're being assholes. Neither does Tim, so it's a monster of their own making. (The Bvddie fandom)

I can't speak on anything to do with the actresses of the other LI's. For many years since I started watching the show, I didn't interact with other fans much. The only time I did, was when I wrote fanfiction when I was a Bvddie shipper for 2 years, but after I found out what a bunch of toxic assholes they were, I ditched that fandom and am so glad I did.

Yeah, I check out the 911 IG page every few days because that's all I can stand. I can't look at it daily. All the Bvddie bullshit on every post claiming 'Bvddie canon, season 8!' It makes me roll my eyes so hard it hurts. Also, the way those idiots talk, like Buck and Tommy weren't in a relationship, like Buck is Eddie's one true love, and the other father of Chris.. God, I can't help but tell them how stupid they are for believing that. Especially since Ryan said in an interview that Chis has only one dad, and Buck sure as fuck ain't it.

The show will be lucky if it gets a season 9. This season is just not good, and I mean that honestly. Putting aside the BuckTommy of it all, it's crap. They focused too much on that Brad character which was a fucking waste of screen time. They traumatized Henren and their kids, had a plot that ended like within 5 minutes with Ortiz, had a decent start for Gerrard being a bad guy and dropped him for BRAD! Who the fuck cares about fucking Brad? No one.

When it comes to the IG posts, the first few days and maybe weeks after the BT breakup, both fans and GA made their feelings about the out of the blue breakup known, but after fighting the stupid Bvddie fans in the comments for a few days, most people backed off. I've gotten messages from people on IG who are BT and GA fans, who said that just like a lot of my comments on the IG page, their comments were removed for supporting BT, and for dishing out some of the bs that the Bvddie's have been doing for years.

Which once again shows that the people who man the 911 IG page, are catering to the most toxic assholes in the fandom. Every fucking post on the 911 IG has bullshit about Bvddie going canon, but people who talk about BT, or who even dare to criticize, in a nice way even, who criticize the plots being cut off, making no sense, the characters doing things that are out of character, they get deleted. But yet the lunatic's comments remain on the posts.

IF the show gets renewed for season 9, I'm betting it will be the last. This season so far has just been a shitshow. In terms of the writing for the show, and in terms of the Bvddie fans taking being complete assholes, to the highest degree imaginable.

I don't give a shit about Brad the character or his actor. I hate the character, he fucking annoys me. I didn't find any of this plot funny, just irritating and I want him gone. The mains were pushed to the background this season for Brad, some dumbass that's not some great character, but some idiot.

Also, Oliver is like a child. He only cares about praise and ass kissers. He says what will cause him to look good. I remember there was one time a few years ago, where he had some contact with a Bvddie fan and when the fan said that he was a dick for leading people on about Bvddie if it's not going to happen, he snapped back and said that he was just an actor doing this job and to stop being so mean to him.

In my opinion, he's a fucking moron who did it to himself. Him and Tim. As I said above, they could've gotten the assholes under control or even gotten rid of them from the start by being honest and just saying their stupid Bvddie is never going to happen. But no, they're too worried about ratings dropping, so they throw in Bvddie scenes every now and then to keep baiting those fans and they eat it all up.

Every time Buck and Eddie share a scene, those idiot's are all, "It's happening! Bvddie canon, y'all!" And then nothing ever happens, and those assholes get mad at being baited once again. It's been 7 1/2 seasons. If Bvddie were ever going to go canon, it would've happened by now.

[vvh0adie]

watching my friends leave tumblr is really sad

you literally can't win

at this point the writer's strike should just be a cultural movement

like ppl are writing for FREE and you're complaining about turn out rate and shit

we have lives and some of us (HELL ALL OF US) have some form of mental illness, so we can't be fucking cogs all day and churn out fics.

writing is suppose to be therapeutic and writers want to share that with you to ease the tension of this hellscape we live in

but some of these readers and even fellow writers are taking it too far with the bullying

like its mean and nasty. you don't know what someone is going thru.

instead of asking for updates how about check and see if your writer is mentally stable to do so. that right there is a booster, to have someone say "are you okay?"

and then the whole accusations of favoring a certain member/character. if that person is my muse or safe space then of course imma write for them. most solo writers i see don't even talk bad about other people. its a SOLO account. think of it as a shrine blog of writing if that helps. they're not there to trash, just share their writing for other's who might also share the same muse.

then you have readers who can't separate fiction from reality. just because someone writes a character with irl people faceclaimed onto them doesnt mean they actually think that person would be or do those things irl. i'll be the first to say that i only gave my characters bts faces cuz thats who im attracted to and they're who i imagine would be casted to play my characters.

then IN THE YEAR OF 2023 we still have ppl making fun of their peers writing and also THE FACT THAT ENGLISH MIGHT NOT BE THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE? that's nasty asf. majority of us dont even speak 'proper' english as our first language no way. you only shooting yourself in the foot. don't act like you dont have beta readers... like what are yall on?

and anybody who gets on THAT BLOG behind anon is an opp. not just to the writing community but in how you interact with the world all together. yall don't know how to talk to people anymore? it may have started as a place for critique and accountability but no one is bringing receipts or critical thinking anymore. its mainly for drama and not rehabilitation. yall serious scare me in how we'd see the reality of social change applied to the real world. like i'd be more scared to let yall around the prisoners with minor offenses cuz yall act like its the end of the world and that change cant happen. yall give nobody room to change ignorant stances but ignore the real egregious shit because you honestly dont have the bandwidth to take on actual fascist views.

also the plagiarism has got to stop too. if you need writing resources just ask. but practice makes perfect. so you're gonna have to write yourself. you may not like your writers voice but you will feel shitty in the long run when you don't feel like its you putting those words on the paper. it literally just prolongs your inferiority. make something you're proud of and don't hurt your fellow writers. we went thru the process just like you. we earned it. and most of us aren't gatekeepers, we will help you.

like its really tuff being on here sometimes. cuz if you not being hounded by readers its your own community praying on your down fall.

we have to do better.

[uboat53]

LONG RANT (TM) time? LONG RANT (TM) time.

INTRODUCTION

One of the most insidious tactics in politics is the tactic of making wild and false allegations. I'm not talking about traditional spin, where a politician presents generally accurate information in the most positive way for their position, we all do that at some level. No, I'm talking about wild allegations, usually made in only a sentence or two without any supporting evidence, that are so false that it's clear that even the person making the allegation couldn't have reasonably believed it.

This is a modified form of the Gish Gallop, a technique which weaponizes lies. Duane Gish, a creationist and inventor of the Gish Gallop, discovered that, while it only takes a second or two to tell a lie, it takes far longer than that to disprove it. He would, therefore, begin every debate by spewing a torrent of wild falsehoods, forcing his opponent to spend their entire time debunking them rather than making any argument of their own.

Similarly, people in politics today, particularly MAGA Republicans, will often make wild accusations knowing that people with short attention spans will hear the accusation but won't pay attention long enough to hear the rebuttal. Even worse, through a process known as the "spacing effect", a lie repeated often enough will embed itself in the mind of people who hear it even if it is actually rebutted.

HOW TO ADDRESS IT

Given that, how can we approach this tactic?

First of all, I want you to get out of the habit of just reading the claim itself; read the name of the person making the claim. People who use this tactic rely on other people just reading information and accepting it as true without checking the source. Get used to paying attention to who is saying what and start to test some of their statements. Granted, a lot of stuff that people say is hard to fact-check, but a lot of it isn't; check those things to see if they're true. This will allow you to put together patterns where you can recognize things like "hey, this guy tells a lot of lies" or "this news source doesn't report news that's good/bad for one side." Knowing this helps you better understand the information you're receiving.

Secondly, once you recognize a pattern of lies or even a single case of an egregious lie, get used to ignoring that source of information. You don't have to listen to something just because someone says it and you don't have to turn off your brain when you engage in politics. If someone lies a lot or even if you just caught them in one particularly bad lie, it's okay to take that into account like you would with other people in your life and stop trusting them.

AN EXAMPLE

I'm going to start with an example that I saw recently. We're going to look Jeffrey Clark. If you know him at all, you probably know him as the Justice Department lawyer who wanted to give Trump permission to send the military to seize ballot boxes after the 2020 election. Only the full-throated opposition of every other lawyer in the government stopped Trump from making him acting-Attorney General.

These days he's being investigated by several layers of law enforcement for his actions around the 2020 election, the Washington D.C. Bar is in the processing of disbarring him, he's been indicted in Georgia for his actions around the 2020 elections, and he's currently working for a think tank closely linked with the Trump campaign. Here's his Wikipedia article if you're interested in learning more.

On September 23rd, Elon Musk retweeted a post by Jeffrey Clark in which Clark complained that no one could find a transcript of any case that Kamala Harris had prosecuted, giving him a much larger audience than he had on his own. Let's look at that claim, shall we?

So Kamala Harris has been Vice-President since 2020, was a Senator from 2016-2020, was Attorney General of California from 2010-2016, and was District Attorney of San Francisco from 2002-2010. None of these are positions where a person would personally try or argue cases in court. However, she was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County from 1990-1998, a deputy district attorney in San Francisco from 1998-2000, and a San Francisco City Attorney from 2000-2002. All of these are positions where she may have tried cases herself.

This is convenient because these are specific places with specific dates. Court transcripts are public records, so all you'd need to do is go to the courthouse in question and request the transcripts. I haven't tried San Francisco, but the Alameda County Court website has a search function where you can search for cases by name. Once you have the case number, you can request the transcript for that case. All of that costs money and requires you to make a login, so I haven't done it, but it's something you could do for around $100 or less. I haven't checked the San Francisco Courts, but I imagine it's similar there as well.

And I'm sure Jeffrey Clark, Attorney-at-Law, knows all of this. I'm not a lawyer and have no formal legal training and I know all of this, so he certainly does. In other words, this is not just a clearly false claim, it's a clearly false claim that the person who made it KNEW was clearly false when he made it.

RESULTS

As we've seen, this isn't a pattern of lies (though Jeffrey Clark certainly has that as well), but it is a particularly egregious one. Mr. Clark made an accusation here that he clearly knew was false even as he made it. He lied about as thoroughly as it's possible to lie, but he did it in a way that he thought he could weasel out of.

You see, Mr. Clark phrased it as an innocent query, "I'm just asking questions", because he thought that, when called on the fact that he implied Harris' case transcripts were being hidden, he could just say that he hadn't said that. But we know that he would have known they're not being hidden, his purpose in asking the question was to imply the answer in people's minds without having to take responsibility for it. In this way it's actually much worse than just a standard lie.

You can also make some assumptions about Elon Musk in all of this given that he shared this post as well. Clearly he has retweeted at least one fairly major claim without fact-checking it. Looking back on a few other things he's reposted, it seems as if he has a pattern of doing this. If you're taking what he posts at face value, it's pretty likely that you're getting a lot of misinformation fed to you.

CONCLUSION

So here I've given you a test and an example of that test applied to a real-life case. I think I've made it clear that Jeffrey Clark is a person who lies very deliberately about things he definitely knows are false and does so in a way that he thinks lets him deny responsibility for the lie. Because of that, it's safe to say that you should not trust anything he says unless you can verify it with a reputable source and you may want to question trusting what Elon Musk posts as well.

But don't think that's the end of it, take this test and apply it everywhere! If you catch someone lying a lot, or if you catch them in a particularly egregious lie like this one, stop trusting them!

There are so many sources of information around these days saying so many different things that you'll never be able to sort through it all unless you start whittling your information diet down to the people and groups that are consistently saying accurate things. Much of the information we receive is hard to fact-check, so our best method is to fact-check the things that aren't hard to check and use them to determine the reliability of a source.

Curating a good diet of information starts with cutting out the worst and least accurate sources of information. Hope this helps!

[buffyspeak]

one thing i am noticing about emma is that she is not, tbh, as nice as i would once have perceived her as being. she's not like awful or anything, i don't hate her, but she's been fairly passive aggressive a number of times already. she says something rather passive aggressive early on to sue about cheerleaders not really being performers in the pilot, before we've really learned sue is Awful (in an iconic way, but awful) but tbf, sue being who she is and emma knowing her already, it's possible and even likely this subtle antagonism is well-earned by sue. in fact sue has not shown her Worst colors yet, but she is bragging about going over budget and causing the coffee machine to get taken, so.

on the other hand - much more egregiously, she has a pretty uncalled for moment with quinn and finn that's presented as being humorous but she straight-up implies that because they are (were) popular, there are no real problems they could have. this show leaned a lot more into this dry kinda mean and awkward (almost s1 the office-like at times, though less intense) in its 1st season, but this still felt like a Weird thing for her, as the school guidance counselor, to say to teenagers coming to her for help (which is her job) before they'd even started talking?

and it's not even passive aggression with terri. granted, terri confronts her about will privately, so it's not like this comes out of nowhere - but terri (while very flawed herself) is confronting her with TRUE things. she HAS been flirting with will. it's still ultimately his responsibility, being the one who's married, but emma basically asks him to say the reason she shouldn't get married to ken is because of him. give her some reason not to. i don't think will takes advantage of her feelings at times, but she is also an active participant in this dynamic. and for emma to come back at terri's accusations/confrontation with saying will deserves a lot better than you... emma WHAT are you basing that on. you've barely met terri. i think this is the first time you've had a 1-1 conversation, i'm fairly sure. your entire perception of terri is whatever you know from will and distant observation. and look, terri only comes across 'mean' in that scene because we're Supposed to like emma a lot more than we're supposed to like terri - but terri correctly points out that emma does not spend that much time with will in the grand scheme of things and gets to feel like the innocent nice woman that saves him from his horrible marriage whenever they spend time together - but the fact is that's a fantasy, and so is will, to emma. will and terri's marriage issues are NOT caused by terri alone.

which is not to say i'm out here as this like, huge terri stan or anything. her pregnancy lie is.... really bad. waiting for a few days before she felt ready to tell will about the hysterical pregnancy would have been perfectly understandable; literally buying a pregnancy pad and pretending to be pregnant and coming up with a plan to pass off quinn's baby as her is manipulative and ill-thought out. she can be very superficial and insensitive bordering on cruel at times. but in all hi esty, she comes across a lot more sympathetically than i remembered.

[sonofcelluloid]

Hi! Regarding that post about autistics being torn apart because of their precise and "robot-resembling" style of expression... can you perhaps post some examples of it here, I would love to see it

In regards to this post, I can only speak from my experience, and I don’t want to pull direct quotes from the fics I’ve seen “called out” for this, but I’ll try to extrapolate a little.

When an author uses a more technically accurate or formal word as opposed to what is considered causal or conversational, that tends to really piss allistics off and get them going on the AI witch-hunt. This could be as non egregious as saying “amidst” instead of “during” (a real example I saw someone be accused of AI over).

Autistics are so used to being misunderstood, we tend to use extremely detailed descriptions in an attempt to avoid this, which can come off to allistics as over-explaining. “Over-explaining” is the thing I see most often trigger allistics into making accusations of AI.

For example, the blurb: “She was physically and mentally exhausted from the day’s events. She’d never before had to reckon with so many life changes so quickly and her mind and body struggled to contextualize all they’d learned,” may not sit right with an allistic because they would prefer it simply said, “She was exhausted.” Whereas an autistic author might find it necessary to differentiate the EXACT reason for the exhaustion. A word like “contextualize” also jumps out to the allistic reader as being non conversational. To them, it reads like something a robot would say.

An example I remember from childhood is when my cousin made fun of me for saying, “I feel nauseous,” instead of, “I feel sick.” He thought I was using a big word to “try to sound smart” when I was just trying to be as precise with my language as possible so he would understand me. The use of bigger words can sometimes backfire and come off as disingenuous or “robotic.”

I suspect a big part of this issue involves the fact that some autistics have a hard time identifying the emotions they are feeling while they are feeling them, and as a result become very interested in emotion and explore it deeply in their writing. For an allistic, they don’t necessarily need clarifications when it comes to emotion, so the extra descriptions feel unnecessary to them and foreign in the sense that they believe the clarifications should be “common sense.”

At the end of the day, even though our minds are simply different, the criticisms of our use of language ARE ableist. There’s nothing wrong with the way we talk, it’s just different, and anyone actually familiar with the way AI utilizes language knows that it in no way resembles it. Where we are precise, AI is vague and rambling.

Sorry this got so long. Reading it back, I do see the irony in explaining “over-explaining” in this fashion, but I is what I is! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thank you for the ask<3

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 22, 2023

The Senate has confirmed three top defense leaders. Last night it confirmed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he retires at the end of the month. Today, it confirmed General Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and General Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant.

The Senate filled the positions at the top of our military by working around the hold extremist senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put on more than 300 military promotions, allegedly because he objects to the government’s policy of providing leave and travel allowance for service members who have to travel to obtain abortions. 

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post focused on the House Republicans today, though, when she wrote: “The GOP completely gone off its rocker—incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You'd think the reporting would reflect it.”

Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Today, right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote over a Pentagon funding bill, keeping what is normally an easily passed bipartisan bill from even reaching the floor for debate. McCarthy acknowledged to reporters that he is frustrated. “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

The extremists do indeed appear unconcerned about the effects of their refusal to fund the government, and since they have the five or six votes they need to sink the measures McCarthy wants to pass with only Republican votes, this handful of representatives are the ones deciding whether the government will shut down. 

McCarthy could pass clean funding bills through the House whenever he wishes, but he refuses. To do so would mean working with Democrats, and that would spark a vote to throw him out of the speakership. And so, rather than keep the members in Washington, D.C., to work on the appropriations bills over the weekend, McCarthy recognized he did not have the votes he needs and sent them home.

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” 

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

Extremist leader Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) responded to Trump’s statement with his own: “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution” to fund the government,” he wrote. “Hold the line.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted: “House Republicans refuse to fund the government to protect Donald Trump.” 

Trump’s accusation that President Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department against him and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the opposite of what has really happened. Not only has Biden stayed scrupulously out of the Justice Department’s business—leaving in place the Trump-appointed leader of the investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, for example—but also we received more proof yesterday that it was Trump, not Biden, who weaponized the Justice Department against his enemies. 

Nora Dennehy, who abruptly resigned from former special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, explained in her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state supreme court yesterday that she quit because Trump’s Department of Justice was tainted by politics. Before joining the probe, she said, “I had been taught and spent my entire career at [the] Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner.” 

But Trump and his loyalists expected Durham’s investigation to prove that there was a “deep state” conspiracy against him, and then–attorney general William Barr seemed to be working to support that fantasy, even though there was no evidence of it (as shown by the fact the investigation ultimately fizzled). Barr was, she thought, violating DOJ guidelines in his public comments about the investigation and in his consideration of releasing an interim report before the 2020 election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it,” Dannehy said. “So I resigned.”

The resistance of the extremists to McCarthy’s leadership is spilling over into foreign affairs as well. Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., where he met with President Biden at the White House and with leaders at the Pentagon, and spoke to a closed-door session for the Senate. But he did not speak to the House of Representatives. While McCarthy met with him privately, the speaker maintained that “we just didn’t have time” for him to address the House. 

As part of their demands, House extremists want to cut funding for Ukraine’s defense. This would, of course, work to strengthen Russian president Vladimir Putin’s hand in his war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told MSNBC that it is “absolutely essential” to Putin that Trump win back the White House in 2024. “I think it is Putin's main lifeline in order to find some way to salvage what has been a debacle in Ukraine for him," Brennan said. "If Trump is able to return to the White House...Putin could have a like-minded individual that he can work with, detrimental to U.S. interests certainly and detrimental to Western interests overall.” The intelligence community assesses that Putin worked to help Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and is pushing pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine propaganda now.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assured Zelensky that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and work with allies and partners to make sure it has the weapons it needs. Lara Seligman of Politico reported today that the Pentagon will continue to fund Ukraine operations even if there is a government shutdown. Military activities deemed crucial to national security can be exempted from being shuttered during a government shutdown.

And finally, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances. 

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.”  Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote. 

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[yueyehua]

this is probably definitely an unpopular and potentially controversial opinion, but i saw a take recently on npss and the female characters of dmbj that to be fair pops up often that i feel it’s a pretty prevalent one, so i just. decided to give my two cents on it that once again no one asked for

more under the cut because this got a little long

just to be clear, this a topic that has quite a bit of nuance and multiple layers to it, and perception entirely depends on both personal interpretation and your medium of choice. i’m also not saying that npss is some pioneer in terms of writing female characters because he’s not. but i also feel that saying he’s a blatant misogynist and that he can’t write female characters properly at all is a gross exaggeration and doing the ladies of dmbj a disservice

i’m also going to be talking about the books specifically here, since the books and the dramas/movies treat female characters differently not only because of plotline reasons, but because of the differences in the nature of their narratives. the dramas have quite a bit more of the accusations people tend to like throwing at dmbj like reducing female characters to flat, one-dimensional archetypes or fridging the dramas do have su nan though, but contrary to what a large part of the fandom seems to push forward, the dramas don’t and can’t represent dmbj in its entirety, and if you’re going to try and do that, you can’t leave out the books and vice-versa, but seeing how different both versions of the story can get at times i just tend to separate them entirely

as it stands, the only female characters who die in the books zhang haixing not counting because we technically don’t know what happens to her are a ning and yuncai, and i guess you can add huo xiangu to that, but she's part of the lao jiumen and chen pi ah si dies similarly so not sure that counts here really. and while you can argue for a ning at least that her death for narrative purposes was fridging, npss also used panzi’s death later on for similar narrative purposes, so at least in that respect he doesn’t discriminate

don’t get me wrong, the books aren’t perfect either, and you do get misogynistic comments from the male characters from time to time that make me squint, which is why i’m not trying to pretend dmbj is peak feminism, but they’re also not egregious or frequent enough comments, and in my opinion the main difference with the dramas is that the male gaze in the books is at least somewhat more justified, because where the dramas are necessarily presented from a third person pov, the books are wu xie’s first person pov for the most part. dmbj is essentially written as and treated as wu xie’s memoirs, and so everything and everyone is seen and filtered through the lense of his perception. and wu xie is a man, so that comes with its own set of ramifications. and even then ironically, wu xie is far from the only or the worst culprit when it comes to casual misogyny. pangzi has his fair share of takes, as do a number of other characters

but for all that the female characters are sometimes placed into archetype boxes by virtue of not only the narrative being from wu xie’s pov, but also the fact that the tomb robbing business is shown to be a male dominated one, and also just because npss himself is a man, that doesn’t mean those female characters aren’t complex and fleshed out characters in their own right to the same extent as their male counterparts of similar narrative relevance

i’m thinking of huo xiuxiu for example, who’s arguably the most prominent and recurring female character in dmbj, who from the get-go is very quickly made out to be not a pretty girl (or rather not just a pretty girl) but quick-witted the likes of which wu xie resonates with as a kindred spirit and draws a number of parallels with himself because he finds they share similar ways of thinking and problem solving. she’s capable, skilled, and sees herself as an equal to the iron triangle and the men around her, and yet none of this detracts from either her femininity or her vulnerability as the youngest lao jiumen member, and later as the one left behind to pick up the broken pieces of her own family. she’s a leader in her own right, and she gains support from xiao hua and wu xie in the years leading up to sand sea just as much as she lends them her support in later canon. all of this without ever being presented as a potential love interest and reduced to only that wu xie’s lack of interest in women in a practical sense as romantic/sexual partners is a topic for another post but it’s also a thing that contributes to not relegating most of the female characters to just that too

i’m not about to say npss is being particularly progressive, but it’s also interesting and nice to note that even in recent canon, just like the iron triangle and xiao hua, huo xiuxiu is well into her 30s and unmarried without it ever either being mentioned really or being an issue, which considering the cultural significance of marriage in china, even more so seeing as xiuxiu is the heiress and head to a powerful family, it’s worth noting she’s not treated any differently from the male characters who make the same equally culturally problematic choices. she’s too busy going with the iron triangle, xiao hua, and hei xiazi down into dangerous tombs (which is why she’s often featured in official merch as a main cast member alongside the iron triangle and heihua)

i’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty about every single female character otherwise this would get way too long but i could, but even someone like liang wan, who is absolutely portrayed as vain and sometimes unrealistically obsessed with her appearance and chasing after men, i personally find still has more depth given to her in the book in some respects, because as zhang rishan isn’t in sand sea the book, she has no romance plotline, and so not only does she get pov chapters, she gets pov chapters that flesh out her involvement with wu xie’s plan and the wangs by extension, and her goals, though never followed through on because npss didn’t tie up that loose end, i find are far more driven by something deeply personal. zhang haixing in tibetan sea flower is arrogant and condescending, manipulative as much as she is competent, and while pangzi especially responds to her behavior with borderline misogynistic provocations, it’s very clear that her character isn’t so much the fruit of putting her in the femme fatale archetype box as it is a consequence of her being a zhang. because both zhang haike and zhang hailou (aka ‘little brother zhang’) who are both men, are very much also like this. special mention also to the girls from the side novel a thousand faces because yes npss wrote a book that’s entirely about two women who may or may not be girlfriends

i could also talk about chen wenjin whose entire story runs very much parallel to wu sanxing’s and they both end up with similar endgame situations and are both tragic characters but this post is already long enough. there are more minor female characters who get their share of both “screentime” and development on par with their male counterparts, and for the sake of argument, some of these female characters have as much presence and/or depth given to them as a character like liu sang, who while being a fandom darling, is also very much a minor character. so what i’m saying is that while yes most of the characters in dmbj are men, and the main cast even more so (excluding xiuxiu), at equal level of importance, there’s about as much depth to a character like liu sang as there is to a character like liang wan, or a ning, and so at some point it begs the question of how much of the fandom’s perception of depth in minor female characters is colored by personal preferences rather than objective fact. are there female characters who are basically reduced to being a romantic interest and serve no real purpose other than to be the source of a man’s pain? yes looking at yuncai whose death is both sudden (while it does have some minor foreshadowing) and happens so far towards the end of the book that it almost seems pointless, and in the end only serves as the catalyst for pangzi’s own suffering and justifies his almost ten-year on-and-off retreat to banai

because again, npss isn’t out here making dmbj a feminist manifesto, and there’s room for criticism and pointing out a number of things if you wanted to. but he also doesn’t write bad female characters. they’re as much people as the men are for better or worse, and saying npss can’t write women properly is doing them a disservice. not to mention the fact the dmbj never leans into romance and that actually almost every single ‘canon’ romance is doomed in some capacity means women are rarely relegated to solely being potential love interests, which in a narrative dominated by the male gaze is actually nice?

[cloobert]

The Steroid Olympics

There's been some talk floating around online lately about The Enhanced Games, including an episode of the Trashfuture podcast I'd certainly recommend.

I've become fascinated--not because I'm a right-wing tech-and-immortality fetishist, but rather because of the specific and insidious way the project uses progressive language to hide its true nature. It's evil in a fascinating and specific way that leans on progressive language to do its dirty deeds.

First, I should explain the project. "What if the Olympics let every athlete do as many steroids as they want?" is the basic pitch. Going deeper, it's part of a certain subset of global capital's fascination with what's called here Human Enhancement: the search for immortality and transcendent physical power. It's also, importantly, a project trying to justify itself and in doing so get rid of the stigma around steroid use in sports (notably not the stigma around steroid use in, you know, HRT.) Also it's a for-profit project co-founded by a pharmaceutical CEO whose companies specialize in Human Enhancement fare.

Look at the tiles on the website:

Pay the athletes. Science is real. Enhanced inclusive language. We'll absolutely look deeper, but there's already a very present sense of what a good friend of mind called crypsis.

There's an almost convincing facsimile of progressive language here. But the tiger is lurking in the grass.

Let's enter some of these tiles. See how a camouflaged predator works.

This is immediately insidious. There's a rhetorical conflation between antivaxxers and anyone who opposes to doping here. And remember, this organization is selling the fantasy of "what if athletes juice so hard they were superhuman."

And then we get into the sloppy propaganda-history. It's a lineage more wrenched into place than discovered, and that makes no distinction between war, bloodsport, and sport in a more modern sense.

Bufotenin (not bufotein) is the DMT-anolouge you get from licking toads. Perhaps not the same, conceptually, as anabolic steroid use.

Moving on from the bad history, we have this:

Cherry picking science, in addition to simple lies. Remember, this is The Steroid Olympics. "When used properly" is mutually exclusive with "this is a sports body that gives prizes for every world record you set", right? No matter how much this talks about safety, the basic structure is unsafe for players. And to be clear, steroid abuse of the sort these games are about is *extremely* bad for you. Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America by Abraham Josephine Riesman, the excellent history of Vince McMahon and the Word Wrestling Federation, spends many a word on the awful ramifications of widespread steroid use in the WWF. Use of the kind that's necessary to become "superhuman" in the way this site sells is tremendously dangerous, and the site cherry picks research to hide this.

However, this part isn't the most egregious.

The crypsis, the hiding in the grass, becomes central in the Enhanced Inclusive Language portion.

This is the kind of thing that would go viral on here maybe 10 years ago. A single deprecated theory on etymology being sold as the primary one to create a specific narrative. The word "dope" does, in fact, come from the Dutch. However, per the Wall Street Journal:

Notice also the "black athletes are disproportionately accused of doping." This is, by all accounts, true. But the issue there is pretty clearly not that doping is illegal. It's racism. And racism that would not be addressed by changing the language around doping.

This will continue in the next post:

[hislittleraincloud]

Aww, did Enough is Enough’s loser ass on Twitter make their way over here to harass you? Or how about haveawish? Maybe it’s inzaynitys? Oh wait! It might be PastoD11? Idk but it’s clear they have no lives and all they do is talk about Percy and Percy fans 25/8. It’s been more than a year now. They got what they wanted - him off the show and his life ruined. Idk why they don’t just give the fuck up and move into the next person to cancel since they care so much about victims.

I just woke up and all of this is Hungarian to me. I don't know who any of these people are, and frankly, I don't care. I don't even do TwiX much after I got suspended in 2021 (long story, but it has to do with a certain pathological liar who accused President Biden of assault and her minions; I'm back now and my mouth is even bigger after she tried to sue me for making fun of her 🤣).

But as I said before in the long response, I did do some reading around. The accusatory tweets are gone. There has been nothing, no progress, no charges, nothing. 🤔 I just mentioned the pathological liar who got me suspended from TwiX for almost 4 years, but she is still going on and on and on about her accusations of sexual assault, so where are these girls? And when Masterson was accused, those accusations never disappeared. Masterson, Weinstein, Trump, etc. So I just don't know. I don't know. As an actual sexual assault survivor (I've been raped twice in my lifetime), the minute I publicly accuse anyone is the minute I keep it in the public sphere.

Anyway, I also said I wasn't a White or Wavier stan, and I'm not. I'm not a stan of anyone from the show, even though I post a lot of Ortega posts (she's the one who's super relevant to the show, but I'm highly critical/analytic of what she say/does sometimes).

My mind here for this novelization is to talk about how it relates to actual canon, and having read the book while my Wednesday loop continues, I can say firmly and without a doubt that it cannot be considered canon since it fundamentally changes what we saw onscreen.

We did not see Enid dancing with Wednesday during "The Goo Goo Muck".

We did not see Wednesday "put a finger to Enid's lips" to shush her, nor did we see Enid point out the dumbwaiter to Wednesday during the Gates Mansion fiasco. We did not see this cuntery either:

(Are you fucking serious. I think Mejia is incapable of translating visual tension (or action) from the screen to paper. The fact that Wednesday is turned into an outwardly crying (out), shuddering mess concerned with Enid is an insult to Ortega's Wednesday.)

And we certainly SAW Enid kick the living shit out of Hyde!Tyler after Donovan distracted him, but Mejia ripped that away and instead had Enid running away after Donovan fired his shot.

Now this pisses me the fuck off; taking Enid's victory away from her is probably one of the more egregious things done (for no reason! That isn't even anything to DO with Wenclair, it was just lazy fucking writing, more book report writing again).

The Wenclair kids can have their fun, but the book simply cannot be considered canon. It's severely retconned fanon.

[bllsbailey]

Donald Trump Fact-Checks And 'Debunks' Harris’s Out Of Context Claims During Debate

People attend a watch party for the US Presidential debate between Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at The Admiral in Washington, DC, on September 10, 2024.

During the Presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump fact-checked Vice President Kamala Harris’s claim that he cheered on and invoked the 2017 Charlottesville riot, stating that her narrative has already been “debunked” by a number of mainstream news networks.

“On Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked,” Trump stated. “Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse, all these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see. It was debunked in almost every newspaper, but they still bring it up.”

The accusations against Trump during the debate stem from the 2017 Charlottesville, North Carolina, march where “White Nationalists” were “spewing anti-Semitic hate,” which Harris and Biden have consistently falsely claimed that Trump supported at the time.

“Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-Semitic hate. And what did the president, then at the time say? There were fine people on each side,” Harris stated during the debate.

In the August following the Charlottesville riots, Trump asserted: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

Trump also debunked Harris’s lie that claimed he said there would be a “bloodbath” if he does not win November’s presidential election. Harris deliberately took the comment out of context in an attempt to suggest that Trump would call for violence, should he lose the election.

“Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election, there will be a bloodbath if … the outcome of this election is not to his liking. Let’s turn the page on this. Let’s not go back. Let’s chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past,” Harris falsely claimed.

“It was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where the ‘bloodbath’ was,” Trump explained as soon as he was allowed to respond.

In the original quote, which Harris was pulling from, Trump stated, “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories,” speaking on the auto industry.

Additionally, Harris continuously claimed that Trump personally produced the policies behind Project 2025, a claim which Trump debunked live during the debate, stating that he had nothing to do with the project. 

However, on social media platforms, even when this fact is explained to Democrats, many tend to believe that there is a deeper conspiracy and hidden truth revolving around both Trump and the Heritage Foundation, and that Trump will impose all of the conservative think-tank’s proposals if re-elected.

It is also noteworthy to point out the ABC News moderators of the debate, David Muir and Linsey Davis, interrupted Trump five times to provide “fact-checks,” yet they did not fact-check Harris once on any of her false claims.

Meanwhile, the New York Post provided many such instances of Harris’s false claims, since ABC News moderators refused to do so. Here are at least three notable Kamala statements worth diving into.

“Kamala claim #1: “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.” Fact check: Our troops in the Middle East are absolutely in a combat zone, under attack from Iran, which the Biden-Harris administration has allowed to grow more aggressive in its use of proxies. In January this year, three US soldiers in Jordan were killed by a drone attack from an Iran-aligned group, and dozens of others have been wounded in similar strikes. Kamala claim #2: “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening.” Fact check: As the Daily Signal points out, Minnesota had a 2015 law that required doctors to report whether abortions resulted in the live birth of a baby. In 2021, it happened at least five times, but no measures were taken to keep them alive. In 2023, Gov. Tim Walz stripped out that reporting requirement as part of an abortion law that has no limitations on how late in a pregnancy it may happen. Kamala claim #3: “Let’s remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five young black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five. Took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.” Fact check: Trump’s 1989 advertisement did not call for the execution of the Central Park Five. He talked about a woman raped in the park, but did not mention the names of suspects or who they were. Titled “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back the Police,” Trump simply bemoaned how generally unsafe New York City had become, and that criminals needed to be held accountable. His cri de cœur preceded what would become a general backlash against disorder in Gotham that led to the election of Rudy Giuliani as mayor and more proactive policing,” the New York Post reported.

Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, was quick to call for a second debate.

“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” Dillon stated. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

Meanwhile, Trump is unsure if a second debate is necessary, stating he’s “less inclined to” debate again “because we had a great night.”

“They lost very badly, the first thing they did is ask for a debate,” Trump added. “They always ask for a rematch.”

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[ducktracy]

anyone on twitter who labels themselves "cartoonist" is a red flag. nothing wrong with liking old cartoons. i love old cartoons. but every person who draws their art like them has aligned themselves with right wing views or associates with right wing people these past four years and excuses it with "they make valid points" or "they draw good" and im sick of it. do better.

this is such an egregiously ballsy attempt at bait that it isn’t even funny.. BUT IT IN FACT IS! because it’s the only reason i’m bothering to respond to this.

i’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt because i do think there are some good intentions somewhere. it’s certainly good to be aware of those spreading harmful ideas and thoughts, and that does need to be shut down. i appreciate you being cautious, and i get what you mean in that there is sometimes an overlap with how someone draws and what they associate with. it doesn’t sound like you’re very familiar with me or what i do and say. so, if i’m a complete stranger to you, then i can see where there would be wariness.

at the same time, there is this wonderful little idea in life about correlation not being causation. i would really appreciate it if you didn’t make incredibly baseless and harmful assumptions about me based on… how i draw and what i’m passionate about? there’s some awful strong verbiage in here. “every person” who is this every person? how does the label “cartoonist” exclusively tie to old cartoons? can you point in the direction where you find me liking, endorsing, or spreading right wing ideology? i get that i’m not exactly known for my role as a political blog, but i have to say that i don’t exactly appreciate the comparison to the same people who’ve called me a dyke all my life.

i am very passionate about the label of a “cartoonist”, which is why i’m choosing to take the bait and respond. i am a cartoonist. call me whatever you want. an artist. an illustrator. painter? animator? storyboard revisionist? a drawer, even! whatever. but i resonate especially with the connotations of a cartoonist—ones not created out of baseless accusations in an attempt to get attention.

there are people who try to steer others away from using the label cartoonist—this is the first argument for… this… that i’ve heard against it, but there’s a feeling that it’s “unprofessional” or “immature”. but that’s what i am! i love cartoons! i study cartoons! i draw cartoons! i make cartoons! cartoon is such a fun word. it’s innocent, it’s mischievous, it’s earnest. the push not to call oneself a cartoonist because it’s immature or unprofessional makes me all the more attached to it. because it’s what i do. it’s what i AM. cartoons dominate most aspects of my life, to an extent that most people would be like “…that doesn’t seem healthy.” and i do have enough support and other opportunities to keep me busy that keep me in the range of grass touching, thankfully! but cartoons have a deeply profound impact on my life and have since i was a young child. i embrace it especially now seeing as i am living a dream i never thought possible: working on one of the most beloved cartoons and pop culture iconoclasts period and hoping to inspire the kids watching today the same way i was inspired watching it years and years ago as an impressionable little child.

anyhoo. if you are actually sending this out of genuine intent and not just to stir the pot, then i’m at least hoping you’re just young and misinformed or your intentions are just misplaced. i don’t disagree that there are shitty people out there who probably do call themselves cartoonists, but a cartoonist is someone who draws cartoons. it’s not some sort of elusive dog whistle—not that i’m aware of, anyway. if you are indeed sending this in earnest, i appreciate you trying to be wary, but this is a very, very shallow mindset and baseless assumptions like these do more harm than good. i promise i’m more on your side than you think.

if you have a genuine issue with me or anything i say/do, then please send me a DM or ask off anon, because i’m always looking for ways to improve and reflect and be more aware as a person. i’m certainly not immune from criticism, and am always open for discussion. sending such a baseless ask on anon says to me that this isn’t necessarily the case here.

i hate getting sanctimonious and too serious, so i’ll end on a lighthearted note. this is the kind of stuff i draw. i’ve been listening obsessively to Mel Blanc as Porky Pig sing a song called “Giddyap Lazy Willie” for two days straight now. i promise i am not the threat that you think i am. look at how silly this is. it’s gonna be okay.

[hyperfixationtimego]

hi that post about the Velma plot synopsis is literally very obviously an excerpt from a biased third-party article, not what the show is actually about. You can tell via the way the last sentence of the excerpt is worded, as it’s intentionally condescending and meant to portray the show itself in a negative light.

Not to mention, that excerpt gets a couple things wrong, actually. In referring to Daphne only as an “orphan,” it’s effectively omitting the fact that she has two adoptive mothers who are indeed present in her life and have good intentions, regardless of whether or not the effects of their actions are ultimately positive or negative. To be entirely clear, they’re a bumbling pair of lesbian cops who are bad at their job. like yeah acab whatever but my point is that Daphne isn’t the cruel, miserable one-note character that excerpt makes her out to be; it’s all just facets of the character that the show hasn’t even gotten the chance to fully develop yet, because we only have 2 episodes out so far.

And the implications of Fred’s portrayal as rich, white, and privileged…..yeah? i mean, he is? but again, that’s not the only facet of his character we get to see, and it’s very clear that the show has at least some plans in mind for his arc and character journey. You’re not meant to just hate him completely; I’m fairly certain the intent of his character is to watch him slowly change and connect better with the other mystery inc members as we get further into the show.

Because that’s the thing! I’m pretty sure the characters are meant to be assholes to each other right now!! This is a prequel - therefore, we already know they’re all going to end up being friends with each other. VELMA is just showing us that, in this continuity, they weren’t always that way towards each other. That’s the whole point of the show; it’s showing us the journey!

Is it perfect? Absolutely not! Not all of the jokes land perfectly, and I personally think the storytelling & pacing could use a fair bit of revision, but it deeply saddens me that everybody seems to be more focused on insulting the show and its creators rather than engaging in constructive criticism of it.

there are a lot of issues and controversies surrounding the show, I know, but I do have to point out that the exact moment it was revealed that three of the characters would be reimagined as POC, people started tearing the show to shreds, and we barely knew anything else about it! So forgive me for taking all the egregious hatred and disgust people have for it with a hefty grain of salt!!

Ugh, I’m trying to cram as much into one post as possible, but here, let’s talk about the TERF thing. The accusations I’ve (very suddenly) heard of Kaling’s bigotry are DEFINITELY an incredibly important thing to be aware of, and I have no intention of defending her or her behavior, but I am positively BEGGING you guys to look into these things yourself rather than simply taking some internet rando’s word as bible for what is and isn’t ethically pure to consume. I’m literally a trans person, but I’m not going to assume someone’s evil because I saw ONE screenshot of them supposedly liking a transphobic tweet; that’s not a reliable source of information!!! Research her and her actions yourself before coming to a conclusion!

If the things you find out about Kaling make you uncomfortable with engaging with the things she creates or contributes to, that’s entirely your call! HOWEVER, it’s also not an inherently bad thing to watch and engage with things made by people with contrary perspectives to your own; when you keep an open mind and engage with things critically, you’re exposing yourself to various viewpoints, styles, humor, & perspectives that, even if they aren’t necessarily your thing, are still important to understand and be aware of.

by no means am I telling you that you have to watch the show; I’m only asking for everyone to be a bit more open-minded and a bit more civil in their discussion of media as a whole.

[metayos]

On Yosuke's Homophobia, and Why I Think It Fits The Narrative

so i've talked before a bit about yosuke's feelings and motivations, and i've mentioned before that i downloaded the version of the mod that didn't include the camp scene changes. i want to explain why that is. i also want to cover how i think golden butchered some of yosuke's character.

all scenes mentioned will be dived into deeper when i get to them in the playthrough!

part i: yosuke is closeted

yosuke has a romance route. not just the lovely mod i will be covering on this blog, but code hardwired into the vanilla game that, while incomplete, paints a stark picture of the original intentions of his character. you see, in yosuke's romance route, he was supposed to come to grips with the fact that he's in love with souji, and to quote him directly, he "didn't realize [he] had such heat inside". i think this line is really important because it establishes that he didn't KNOW he could feel this way, so strongly, so powerfully.

i also think he didn't know he could love men at all. i think souji was supposed to open his eyes in this cut romance route, and i think, if we could see even a fraction of the dialogue and choices originally planned for these scenes, it would go far in portraying yosuke as someone who behaved poorly because he was afraid. not of kanji being untoward, but of being gay himself.

why is this? personally, i headcanon a bigoted father in his life, but we don't even need to go that far. think about it: he's a seventeen-year-old in the year 2011, in japan. he's not exactly living in an extremely understanding time or society. add in that he is queer and confused about it, and you have a perfect storm of potential bigotry to defend himself from his own feelings.

part ii: the narrative purpose of yosuke's homophobia

a lot of people claim yosuke's homophobia is a pointless addition to the story. i think in certain parts it's way more aggressive than ever called for, but that doesn't mean it serves no purpose. in fact, i think it serves a vital purpose: demonstrating how far he's willing to go to distance himself from something he's afraid of.

in vanilla persona 4, yosuke's most egregious bigotry is during the camping scene. there are very few other examples, and most of what exists is during kanji's dungeon. after that, we get maybe a few scattered comments--largely directed at, you guessed it, kanji--and then the group date, and then the crossdressing. nothing beats the camping trip in terms of sheer vitriol, and i think there's a reason for that.

after kanji's dungeon, yosuke doesn't understand what he's just seen (and to be fair, most players don't, either). kanji wants to be accepted, regardless of his interests or hobbies; he's scared of girls not because he's gay, but because girls tend to judge him extremely harshly. he works through this after confronting his shadow, and leads an amicable relationship with all his female friends. his effeminate shadow was a reflection of what he felt he was supposed to be ashamed of--not a secret harboring for dick.

yosuke doesn't get all that. he's too scared. he's just watched a man confront his inherent femininity in a way that came across as very homoerotic. the homoeroticism hit so close to home that yosuke was consumed by it, ignorant of the surrounding elements. this caused him to lash out as kanji first began to seek companionship with him and souji.

yosuke thinks being gay is bad, and wrong, and scary, and he projects upon kanji all his fears: are other boys safe with him, if he likes them? (is souji safe with him?) when kanji reacts violently to the accusation, yosuke pushing buttons kanji has just worked so painstakingly to deal with, yosuke tries to deescalate the situation without backing down from his stance. he can't show weakness here--if anyone knows he's okay with someone being gay, they might think he's gay, and that would be bad. again, society and ignorance have tempered yosuke's views into a sharp and dangerous point.

however, what's significant to me is after the fact: yosuke never behaves like this again.

the next time he brings up kanji's supposed gayness, it's in a light, joking manner that shows no fear at all. he doesn't want it to be a serious issue; he's just teasing, trying to mend bridges the only way he knows how (and kanji's far past it by then anyway). he knows he put kanji in danger, and knows he went too far, in my opinion. he realized he was being too aggressive towards someone he considers a friend, and no amount of fear is worth that to him.

compare and contrast with the group date scene: specifically, the version where you "boldly sit on the girl's side". you can flirt openly with yosuke, and while he gets extremely flustered, he's never mean. it doesn't change his opinion of souji, maybe because he thinks it's all a joke, or maybe--more importantly--because souji is his best friend. yosuke doesn't want to drive a wedge between them, and wants to brush the experience off as souji playing games, because then everything stays normal and fine. he's not trying to push souji away, like he tried to push kanji away during camping. he may not think souji is gay, but more importantly, he learned a lesson about being so vitriolic over the topic. maybe he thinks it calls more attention to himself if he's so aggressive... or maybe he feels remorse. regardless, he and kanji get on well for most of the game.

in the crossdressing pageant, yosuke does an... admirable job. he does a little falsetto, chides souji for being so comfortable, and otherwise is focused on himself and how embarrassed he is. i think he's so focused on how he must look to everyone that he doesn't care what's going on with the other boys. he wants to do a good job--hence the falsetto--but he's also humiliated. he can't joke his way out of the situation, and it shows.

yosuke's homophobia can definitely be a joke, but i find it to serve narrative purpose as well, in that in tells a story of who he is as a person... and demonstrates how he can move beyond it. and what would have been the perfect event to bookend this arc?

his romance, of course.

part iii: golden cocked it all up (kinda)

i like golden's gameplay changes, and i like adachi's s-link. that's about it. the "up close and personal" stuff pisses me off SO MUCH because it's in direct opposition to things yosuke says during his fucking s-link. remember when he's kind of rambling to nanako in souji's room and he says he's "not looking" for a relationship right now? remember that? golden sure doesn't!

as well as that, there are a handful of scenes added that have yosuke make homophobic jokes that don't align properly with his arc. i can't name any off the top of my head--only been through golden up to naoto's dungeon and only once, so far--but i know they're in there. overall, golden paints yosuke more as an aggressive and cocky asshole, and only by adding scenes... however, i have to give credit where it's due: golden didn't mess everything up. the nighttime talks with yosuke are largely a delight and fit well with his character. (i think the romance mod edits some of them but thus far i've only seen base game ones.) also when he defensively tells marie he's souji's partner, i love that.

the "up close and personal" crap bothers me the most, seconded by how aggressive yosuke is to teddie in some of the new scenes. he and teddie are friends; yosuke doesn't hate him. but that's a rant for later.

point is, golden's additions largely treat yosuke's homophobia as a joke, where in vanilla, while it did happen, it also serves narrative purpose for him to be that way.

part iv: wrapping up

i know homophobia is a sore subject for a lot of us, being queer people ourselves. i know it's not fun to see a character you love act so vile. i understand. but i really think that yosuke's literal fear of gayness adds to his character, rather than detract from it. it's just a half-told story, because his romance route was ultimately cut--there's no payoff to his bigotry. there's only the events happening, and then... the game goes on. yosuke never confronts those feelings or realizes anything about himself in an open way.

however, as a writer, artist, and avid roleplayer, i love to explore yosuke as if this were a fully-fleshed character trait. i love to delve deep into his emotions and motivations and come away with ways for him to move beyond his fears. i hope in writing this short essay i've opened some of you up to more critically examining his character and, rather than condemning him for his faults, searching his personality and actions for explanations and purpose in the things he does.

i think persona 4 is a very, very well-written game. i think there's a lot of nuance and a lot under the surface that people can't or refuse to see. i think the game deserves more meta commentary, and i hope to fill some of that niche with my deep dive into one hanamura yosuke.

until next time!

[jackmanifold-daily]

In defence of jackmanifold-daily

better call kettle

Earlier today a despicable, scathing callout was posted by our own mod luigra… it was a painful betrayal for all of us, but thankfully, I can categorically disprove each and every allegation and mistruth contained within this evil post. Smash that like button and lets jump right in

MOD STRAD

Okay I cant lie Strad definitely did that, more than once too. But there’s something that was… conveniently omitted. He got Food Poisoning from the foul dogs. 

Strad is the VICTIM here, and painting him as being the problem is just one example of the egregious twisting of the truth all throughout this callout. 

MOD SNALZ

Maybe I can’t prove that Jackity is a pure and unproblematic ship… but I can prove that the call comes from inside the house…blog, and the crew goes down with the ship…house *epic guitar riff*

In the image provided on the original callout post you can see the usage of the word “y’alls” … which doesnt seem too strange, until you remember that I am BRITISH and would never use the word “y’all” 

No, this tag was typed by someone else… mod luigra itself. My source? Trust me. 

MOD KEY(S)

Frankly, keys has literally never done anything wrong. Keys is a chronic haver of certified 🔑 moments, and is once again being victim blamed here, kinda weirdchamp, kinda gloopydoinky. Everybody wishes they were keys, unburdened by suffering and full of swag, this was clearly a callout spawned from jealousy.

MOD PEP

This is an OLD message, from long before pep had met our beloved keys, who changed their beliefs wholeheartedly. Pep does now ship jack manifold. The lgtbq community has forgiven pep cosmosisfold. People can change, man, thats so beautiful.

MOD TEA

Was that night not dark for us all? During the long, cold jack manifold lore drought? Did it not hurt most of all for poor tea???? Democratically elected owner of c!jack, who made this prediction, only a light joke, to be struck down unwillingly by the gift of prophecy…. also xe is sleeping and cant defend themselves??? You wouldnt call out a sleepyguy. So immoral. 

MOD CASEY

sigh… this is the worst accusation of them all. First of all, martyn is neurodivergent AND a minor. Which speaks for itself. Secondly, As circled in the image above you can see a difference in white colour, the wrong font for discord, the covered up original text. sloppy work tbh

Here you can even see the harshly named channel: martyn-hates-gay-people-and-women created by joy… who first sent this same supposed image… curious. Seems… sus.

MOD LUIGRA

Didn’t think I would made a defence for every mod here and leave the perpetrator out, did you?

No, listen well, good people of tumblr. Despite my clear evidence that the original callout post by the traitorous mod luigra is like, cringe or whatever, luigra is in fact… innocent too (gasp)

Joy is… literally a woman? The only woman on the server, which shows that we really need to do better, im sorry women. God forbid women do Anything. Also she goes through the horrors and maybe even the terrors every day, so, completely innocent. 

Let out that breath of relief, dear follower, you can continue enjoying the jackmanifold-daily blog free of fear, happy april fools <3 thanks for all the support, these guys are my best friends and im glad i got to meet them through this silly blog <33