#the only reason is not used more is because media fed and fed off peoples fear about it

[skywalker0204]

You will not get letting a machine drive for me while there are people driving other cars (besides that I won't drive an electric car until battery tech is way better and when most energy is generated by a clean dispatchable energy source like nuclear power)

The fact that Tesla autopilots abort self driving 1 second before a crash so the company can state “self driving wasn’t active during the collision” should be grounds to dismantle the entire company.

Like, seriously, if you’re making 4000 pound death machines, and you program this shit to work on a technicality? Your company should be dismantled. Gone. No recourse. Just terrible shit dude

[nu-carniviva]

A censored version of Nu: Carnival is coming to the app store... Which is not good

When this was first brought to my attention, I honestly didn't believe it at first. I mean, why would I? Nu: Carnival has advertised itself as an adult-only game since it's release. I rarely go on Twitter since it's a total shithole, but that's how I found out that the rumors were true. Nu: Carnival - Bliss, they're calling it. The overall plot, events, and gameplay will be the same. But many crucial changes will be done to the dialogue, CG, and audio. Long post ahead, but I'll be ranting about it below

Why is this a bad move?

There are multiple reasons as to why making a censored, teen friendly version of Nu: Carnival is a horrible decision. I might not get them all, but here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

It is literally impossible to separate the nsfw from the source. Whether the devs like it or not, they made an nsfw game. After the first half of the prologue, the game opens with porn. You are introduced to two characters at the time — Aster and Morvay. That right there is already an issue. Morvay is an incubus. He is a sex demon who wears leather lingerie. While there is certainly more to his personality, his is very existence is sex. Sex is what keeps him alive and fed. Morvay is very open about his sexual desires and the topic of sex as a whole. He doesn't find it shameful or taboo. So... What are they going to do with Morvay? He can't be removed since he's bonded with Aster. Censoring him will have him take a MAJOR hit. Now that leads me to the second part of this bullet point: sex is a crucial part of the plot. Essence is what keeps Klein stable. Eiden and his clan's job is to use their essence to fix the gem altars so said altars can keep the essence regulated throughout the continent. While there are several ways to replenish one's essence, the most effective way is through sex. Sex also plays a crucial role in expanding on the plot and the characters. Sex scenes aren't just there for entertainment, there is genuine lore within the dialogue. Through sex, Eiden bonds with his clan members in the most intimate and personal ways. He sees his clan members at their most vulnerable moments, and through that they share a deep connection. You can see when sex scenes go from Eiden and whoever the clan member is having sex just to have it to having sex because they genuinely care for each other and want to physically bond. I could delve deeper into this topic, but I'm sure you all understand by now what I'm trying to say. Sex is not just an accessory or perk. It's part of the worldbuilding

Minors will not be able to escape nsfw within the fandom. Since the game's release, the fan base has been entirely made up of adults. Since we are all adults, we freely talk and post about the nsfw parts of the game. You go on any social media platform where Nu: Carnival is discussed, and you will see nsfw. It's a very casual topic in the fandom, and in a way it's something that bonds us together… As weird as that may sound. My point is, making a censored version of the game is pointless, because the source itself in inherently nsfw and the fan base is full of adults making nsfw content which is usually uncensored since the artists expect for anyone in the fandom to only be adults

Minors in fandoms often bring drama... Hear me out on this one. Not to sound like one of those "grr minors dni I hate minors" people, but kids in fandoms often bring drama and discourse. As aggravating at it is, I have to admit that it isn't entirely their fault. When you're in your early teens, you're starting to discover yourself. You become very opinionated and defensive over your beliefs because you're trying to figure out who you are and where you stand in life. You're trying to gain independence and autonomy. It's normal... But it's very draining. Since Nu: Carnival has an all-adult fandom, there isn't a lot of drama at all. Sure, you're going to have stupid people saying stupid shit to start drama, that happens everywhere, but those people are typically ignored because it isn't too common. With kids coming into the fandom and starting unnecessary drama, it'll be so much harder to avoid. Not only that, but kids don't have as much media literacy as adults do. It's not an insult, but simply a fact. Nu: Carnival delves in a LOT of heavy themes in the game. Some of which are stated outright while others require you to read in between the lines to pick up on them. Since the fandom is all adults, it's easier for us to handle these topics and discuss them maturely

Why are the devs doing this?

My guess? Money. The devs are part of a company after all. At the end of the day, all companies want to make money. By making a game they can put on app stores, the game becomes more visible to a broader audience. People who have never heard of Nu: Carnival before will see what appears to be an innocent anime game when it's far from that. All it will take is a simple google search for people to see the the game is very much nsfw and not something minors should indulge themselves in. It's dangerous for both parties involved, both the minors and the adults

But hey, whatever's bringing in the money, right? Sigh...

[fookinhellcurly]

Larry discussions and why they matter

I got asked today by an older, new fan through the Larry Resources Compilation I made (also posted on Reddit):

"I am genuinely curious, though, like….. why does this matter?"

As a previous chill fan (a directioner, and a larrie, apparently god my brain gets foggy sometimes lol) who barely recounts my own Larrying back in the day (college was a whirlwind and a fever dream to me lol sorry) and came back after Liam's passing, I, myself, have consumed all these Larry information only recently. But from the get go, I knew my convictions.

There might be new ones here who'd come across my blog, so I thought I'd share my answer here as well. I ended up making a bulleted list, and it was the best way I thought I could address the question + the extra notes they left in their comment:

—

Baby larries and misinformation: Most baby larries likely learned about Larry through edits on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram reels. They then decided to dive deeper, which led them down the Larry rabbit hole and eventually to Reddit and Tumblr. However, much of what’s on social media is taken out of context. There’s a lot of misinformation being spread (especially from bluegreeners), which is part of why non-larries in the fandom get annoyed with us. Some fans take things to extremes without understanding the reality of what H and L are going through. This is why it’s crucial to encourage research and healthy discussions. New information (in a sense that we might have failed to discuss it before; recent example is this post I made about Harry's lyric change to "Louis ONTO my drawers" which happened in 2020) is discovered—or debunked—daily, so having a platform to share and discuss these findings is vital. This Larry research I made is extensive, yes, but TONS of information have been scrubbed from the internet for unknown reasons (i.e, about babygate). Some people are actively trying to bury the truth about Larry. Without blogs and accounts archiving this data over the past decade, we wouldn’t know half of what we do today. My goal here is to make navigating 15 years’ worth of information easier.

The bigger picture: So, what’s the point of all this? In my opinion, it’s not just about proving a point. It’s about understanding the awful and harsh realities of an industry that profits off our support as fans while exploiting the very people we admire. It’s about acknowledging that there’s more to H and L than the clips we see online. They were just kids with dreams who were abused and manipulated by their management. They had to fight to maintain their identities while achieving their goals. It’s heartbreaking to realize that despite progress, the queer community still faces immense barriers (extra: I read the summary of Rock Hudson's battle back in the day—it's a perfect example of how we cannot trust the narrative media feed us). H and L have spent years signaling and coding, trying to break through their closet, and only us Larries could see the signs. Meanwhile, the media and management continue to box them into heteronormative narratives. It honestly breaks my heart seeing Harry get accused of queerbaiting and Louis forced into this Louis Tomlinson™ laddy-lad image, a far cry from the vibrant, flamboyant, happy young man he used to be (his words: "He were a lot sweeter, this lad"). To be clear, I love Lou the way he is but I agree to what this person said, I wish we had seen how the grown-up version of 2010-2012 Louis.

The denials: If HL had cut this shit from the beginning. If they had explicitly denied that their relationship was, in fact, not real (No, they have not straightforwardly denied it because they always redirect or play with words when asked in front of the camera; and that includes L's denial this year), we would have accepted it. But they didn't. THEY fed us all these things to pick on for the past few years. The songs (god, the songs) and the parallels, the use of blue and green (they know what those colors mean to us—they would not use them lightly if they want us to not believe), the coded clothing and the signaling, the acts of defiance, etc.—what are all those for? It's crazy to think that H and L would "bait" us just for the sake of sales.

Finally, the point of not letting the "ancient texts" die and keeping track even in the present: You see, all of us probably became genuinely invested because of the bigger story. In hindsight, everything MAKES SENSE, but in real-time unfolding during the 1D days, when H and L were fighting the most, it was harder to make sense of these things. But because we have these timelines, analyses, and proofs that sometimes even take years to be established (i.e., the McDonald's x Carpool Karaoke 2015 where HL supposedly shared the milkshake—but the clip didn't see the light of day until 2020 came around), we finally get to make sense of a decade+ worth of legitimate stories. As you would observe, there would always be a couple of larries who would ask, "Why do you think they're still together when they haven't been seen in public for so many years?" I want to add my answer from this post:

"[...] I’ve established that being a larrie, like a true larrie and not a chill larrie, you really have to be strong with your beliefs. I know those two try to keep their peace for as long as they want to. And I know we’d probably still get more denials and stunts along the way, but we have to remember that those shouldn’t invalidate the TONS of proofs/receipts that already exist, nor ignore the signals those two send in return when they have to be involved in bs narratives fed to the public. […] There’d be days when it’d be harder to defend HL themselves even bcs of their actions and words that could hurt larries - so on our end, we don’t necessarily have to tolerate that and we’re allowed to be mad or doubt what we’re supposed to be fighting for (not doubting them per se; just the situation and the cause). Though again, for me, by the end of the day, I know there are million other reasons why we cannot bend the truth (and we larries ourselves have always strived to stay analytical and logical when dealing with proofs), and I’d still choose to hold on bcs I know they still need us to believe - even if they decide to keep things quieter like this year or not come out at all."

If no one keeps track of these things (because as subtle as they are, HL still drops hints even once in a blue moon), other people would probably fail to notice them. But they are still just as loud, though not in a way that some 'fans' appreciate (like comparing now with the 1D days when, of course, you’d see them in the same room most of the time). And that’s when hate comes in. Because they fail to see it, they decide to 'overwrite' the past—when the closet was glass and when HL was free to show us their truth. They try to erase the fact that Harry and Louis were forced into a closet: one being labeled as the charming, womanizer man who likes 'girls of a certain age,' and the other as the laddy-lad guy who was a partygoer and then entered fatherhood.

This is the reason why, even though the topics could be repetitive, I personally try to engage, help out, and contribute—it also encourages others to do so. We need each other to keep believing despite the BS we’re thrown. And while Larry has stopped signaling as much, I know they truly appreciate Larries who support them on the sidelines.

There are so many more things my brain probably wants to say, but I literally just woke up when I started writing this lol. I hope that made sense. Again, I am not mad or trying to be rude, but I think these things needed pointing out. ♡

—

That's it. Sums up my beliefs and my convictions as a larrie.

[teleit]

I've fucking had enough

Tiktok PISSES ME OFF. It's unbearable. The number of media-illiterate people per square meter has exceeded my tolerance. At some point, I won't be able to stand it and will break my vow not to explain to idiots on the Internet why they are idiots - this will make me an idiot, because I will waste my strength, time, energy and nerves on useless attempts to hand over grains of common sense to empty-headed consumers who have never opened a book in their lives, and therefore are not capable of analyzing more complex moral dilemmas than My Little Pony.

HOWEVER

Stop driving me crazy with the "poor show!Luke was only five years old in Driftmark, an innocent baby, this is the worst death in the entire Dance of the Dragons" bullshit comments and tiktoks BECAUSE IT'S NOT

Yes, in the book, Lucerys Velaryon was five years old when he gouged out the eye of Aemond, who was ten. He died at fourteen, while Aemond was nineteen. This was not an adult killing a child, these were two teenagers with a five-year age difference. Still bad, I agree.

However, in their wisdom, unavailable to us mere mortals, the writers of HOTD stuck the chronology in a blender along with their fetishes, poorly executed agenda, sexism, racism, nepotism and a dozen other problems, turned it up to maximum and fed us the most vomit-inducing smoothie ever.

For some reason unknown to me, Aemond is officially sixteen in episodes 8-10 of season one. God knows why, but he left us and so we can't ask him. Lucerys is officially fourteen, so there's a two-year age difference between him and Aemond.

So in Driftmark, which takes place in 124 AC (again, unlike the book, which took place in 120 AC, but there's no point in complaining, believe me, I tried), Aemond is ten, Lucerys is eight. That's not a big age difference, right?

Moreover, since Jacaerys, Baela, and Rhaena are also sixteen at the end of season one, we get the following picture - Aemond is not fighting little kids, but his peers. He's 10, the twins and Jace are about 9-10, Luke is 8.

Yes, it was different in the book, but you know what else was in the book? A sound timeline, sound logic, complex characters, moral dilemmas, need I go on?

Lucerys was fourteen, making conscious decisions like mocking the man he had mutilated, knowing there would be no consequences, and running away like a coward when he was alone with the man. He was wrong about that. He still didn't deserve to die, but calling him an innocent angel wasn't right.

Aemond was sixteen, making conscious decisions like threatening his nephew to remind him that his ass couldn't be covered forever. He couldn't expect Luke to fail to discipline Arrax, who would provoke Vhagar. He could assume that an angry Vhagar would retaliate despite her orders. He was wrong about that. He still deserves blame for his actions, but if the fandom is so vocal about how a fourteen year old boy is not responsible for his actions, shouldn't a sixteen year old boy get the same innocence card?

But if we go back a little earlier, say six years, shouldn't a ten-year-old child receive the same treatment as an eight-year-old? Why is one boy, who had to fight off four peers, considered a monster, since he took a stone and insulted the offenders, and the second is a little defender, since he took a dagger to hit his neutralized enemy with it?

This wasn't the "hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby" situation the book portrayed. This was two teenagers, one with a bigger stick than the other.

[kinardsevan]

I was totally genuine because I would love your stuff on 911 proper! They're dropping the ball with everything atm, which is so damn frustrating, considering the setup they gave themselves this spring.

Much love! 🤗

Glad for the clarification! ❤️❤️

I can totally understand your feelings. Mine aren’t far off. I waffle back and forth basically by the hour over whether this is all a tee-up and there’s real intention behind it, or whether they truly did give up the best thing that they’ve had in years.

One of my biggest struggles on it all and how it doesn’t make sense, is the active effort to include Tommy/Lou in the social media posts and ABCs use of him in ads as well. I understand that the networks opinion isn’t the end-all, be-all. But I just can’t coalesce all that’s been fed to us to this point, both from a story standpoint, and from the use of Lou/Tommy in the grander scheme at large. It doesn’t make any sense in the narrative, regardless of the ideals that some people have about him being a plot point or “entry level relationship”. One of the quotes I think back on is when Oliver said he wanted to see these two go through the struggles do in their first year of a relationship. That quote alone was one of the things (along with the intentional use of “Evan”) that said to me “people want this to be a short story, but these factors point to Tommy being around long-term”. It goes to the issue that Tommy does not see Evan as “Buck”, when we have already extrapolated that Buck is a mask. We’ve known that since season 3 when he told Bobby that putting on his uniform makes him feel like he can do anything, and “Buck” was a name he took on FOR work. It’s a dignification that creates separation for him from others. By relation, Evan can be as stripped bare and honest as he wants. This is why the use of his first name has always been important. Maddie can see him stripped down and bare, metaphorically speaking, because she knows his trauma. She’s his sister so she gets Evan rights. Eddie used his first name once with the will. In the same context as being stripped down, this was important because he wasn’t communicating with Buck from the standpoint of coworkers, but as a close friend telling him that he had made a decision about the safety and care of his child, should something happen to him. I can’t remember if we’ve ever seen Bobby use his first name, but this has always felt less important because of the father/son narrative.

We’ve seen Chimney throw around “Evan” in weird contexts, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, so much as they have a unique relationship due to being coworkers, friends, and brothers simultaneously. I think that’s why anytime we hear him say “Evan”, it’s a bit of a play on fucking with him.

So when we cycle back to Tommy, who had only EVER called him Evan, using the name Buck is him forcing himself to create a separation. We also as a fanbase hear that and go “no, that’s wrong, it doesn’t sound right”.

At the end of the day, I cannot reason a fact to build all of this into a narrative (and I do mean ALL of it), include Lou in social media posts, have him be involved in interviews about the show… all to set it on fire 13 episodes after he returns. You’d have to have a damn good reason for doing so, like an actor wanting to leave or being so problematic that they need them gone. Now, a certain group would like for us to believe this, but we don’t have any actual proof of ANY of this narrative. That all said, we have to revert back to what we know and what we’ve been told. Which is confusing.

So. I’ve rambled again. And repeated myself in some contexts 😂 but I think I made my point? (If not I’ll obviously come up with more shit later 😂😂)

[wingfril]

My newest shipment just arrived so let’s talk about some (recent) lottery-only items! The picture above is from the most recent d.grayman playing card drawing, which you could’ve entered by subbing to zebrack comics.

They’re really pretty! I don’t know if it was worth $350 dollars though. There’s only 2 types of illustrations plus the card back and spades,

Funny thing about the prices — I’m pretty sure I’m the reason why the floor for this is 350 on mercari. When the drawing results come out, several people started selling the cards on mercari. I knew I wanted something that’s super exclusive like this, so I started paying attention. There were three sellers in particular competition against each other. over a span of around 2-3 days, the price dropped from ~100k yen down to 59k yen. Keep in mind that these drops were mostly happening while I was asleep being on the east coast. My ideal price would’ve been around 200 usd or ~30k yen, but I’m willing to pay more. Right before going to bed, I saw that the price has fallen to below 60k, and said screw it. Next morning, I woke up, and the main price competitor’s cards were also sold, and a few days later the third person, with a slightly higher price, also ended up selling. Since the price decreases happen primarily while I was asleep, and I knew that as soon as one sells, the other is going to get bought up too, might as well pay a little extra. I’m also 99% sure that at least 2/3 of the other sets on mercari was bought by chinese people, since I see their posts on chinese social media.

To be honest though, if I knew that there’s only two new drawings on these cards, I probably would’ve waited a bit longer before buying them. Oh well.

The other lottery item I had is from the vol 28 drawing.

They’re B5 sized manuscript replicas. They’re stunning — you can see so many details on these. Every stroke on neah/mana’s hair is clear as day. I’d like to frame them but *screams in nyc and paper walls*.

The other drawing item is a acrylic board of the vol 28 cover.

I’m still debating on buying that off of mercari. I think I will once the yen drops a little more, but we’ll see. I wouldn’t lose sleep over not getting it.

As a side note unrelated to dgm: the reason why I’m buying so much recently is 1. I realized that a few thousand literally makes no difference to me and my house owning goals (I LOVE NYC) and 2. The yen is incredibly cheap right now. Even though some Japanese collectors are price gauging, some of the items are not too much more expense than their originals price (there’s a few absurd outliers, which I’ll covered in two months… because I paid for some of the outliers and now they have to be shipped from China).

The Japanese fed has spent billions on trying to stabilize the currency, but to no avail. it’s really bad for any Japanese companies doing import, but it’s really really good for usd based consumers. As long as the US federal reserve and their interest rate remains high (and a bunch of other factors), yen is going to continue getting crushed against the dollar. There’s some items I’m eyeing on that I’ll probably only buy if the yen drops to at least 1:160 against the dollar. If you zoom into the last month of usd:yen, you can literally see when the Japanese fed intervened.

[ameliapples]

I see people on other platforms talking about cohost going down and I generally see the same few complaints being trotted out over and over as the reasons why it failed and was doomed to fail from the start. "It kept logging me out", "there was no app", "my timeline was always dead", "I got so little engagement", "I had to wait how long before I could post??". It's the stuff people have complained about with the platform forever, and while I think these complaints are generally a bit silly, they do arrive at what's probably the real reason we're all mourning the impending death of eggbug without realizing it.

A big part of what made cohost so different from other social media platforms is that it was the only platform where you had to actually want to be there. Every other platform is basically designed to hold you at gunpoint and force your attention and engagement 24/7. The gun in this situation being mostly fomo - everything is happening so rapidly, there's so much to keep track of, what if you miss something? what if it's something really big and you don't tweet about it within the first 5 minutes of it happening? what if you miss the next Main Character? there's a new one every day and they're forgotten as quickly as they arrive, but a month from now someone's gonna bring it up as a joke and you won't get it and you'll look lame and cringe! you don't want to look Lame and also Cringe, do you?

cohost never felt that way. If you were there, it was because you genuinely wanted to be. The site was designed to ensure that, even. You had to wait about a week after you made an account to ensure you weren't a spam bot before you could post at all. Once you could post, there was no algorithm. None. Nothing was fed into your feed that wasn't directly posted to a tag you follow or a person you follow. If you wanted to see something outside of that, you'd have to do the legwork browsing tags yourself. For budgetary reasons, there was never an app, so you had to either learn to set up a shortcut icon on your phone or else open it manually in a browser. It also logged you out every 30 days as a privacy and security measure. You had to want to jump through all these hoops to use cohost.

And what did you get for doing the effort? Peace. A social media environment that didn't feel like you were constantly stood in the center of Time Square with all the noise and marquees and heckling voices focused directly at you at all times. It didn't try to be a news site, or an advertising platform. No algorithm meant you only got what you actively chose to see, and nothing more. You could say in your head "lemme check cohost real quick", and you could be up-to-date on your timeline in under 5 minutes. It was a place you would willingly go to check in on friends or look at cool art or play around with html like it was 2004 again, not get sucked into for hours doom scrolling. Because there was no algorithm, no push for engagement, no numbers that publicly went up, no one was competing for attention or clout. No one I ever met on cohost was immediately antagonistic, or rude, or trying to dunk someone. People were chill, FRIENDLY even, in a way I have never seen on twitter or tumblr even back in "the good ol days". The adversarial, cliquey, petty nonsense we all expect from social media was almost entirely absent. It was peaceful, quiet. It was the only social media platform I've used to not give me anxiety, or a migraine.

So of course it fell apart. We live in a world where things require money to simply exist, and cohost was designed basically not to make any by virtue of having virtues. It refused to advertise, sell user data in any way, open a weird shop where you can put microscopic pngs next to your name, or force people's worst impulses in order to keep them on the site for as long as possible. It ran off merch purchases and cohost plus, which was meant to give you premium features but never got the chance to do much more than upping your file size limit on uploads. It was essentially a $5 a month donation. It wasn't enough, clearly.

So now it's going, but I don't really think saying it "failed" is right. If anything, it's made it clear what a failure the rest of the social media ecosystem is. Usually when a platform is dying, or looks to be dying (in the case of twitter, or tumblr post 2018), people immediately make plans to jump ship to a new one. But upon hearing that cohost was shutting down, my reaction, as well as that of a pretty large portion of the user base, was that we'd rather spend time on other things. Cohost was so different an atmosphere it seems to have had a healing property on people who used it. It wasn't perfect, moderation was spotty at times due to the limited staff, people had their blind spots and biases they sometimes struggled to work through. But it was better than what we've grown to expect. It made you realize how tiring the rest of the internet has become, and that you don't need to deal with it. You can better spend that time, doing things you enjoy with people you enjoy. Maybe even outside, if you can muster it. You might even meet some cool people out there, wearing cool patches, eulogizing a cool little website, with a funny lil bug shaped like an egg.

[sheepiemc]

Seven Stupid Reasons to Summon a Demon

Reason #4: need to scream about a bad book

CW: strong language (it's not anything too vulgar, MC just says fuck a lot because wrath - if this were a movie, it would be rated R for language)

Today was the perfect day to read. 

It’s been gloomy all week, today included, and you finally got a day off from work. You have this book that you’ve been meaning to finish for a few weeks now and by gosh, you intend to get through it today. 

When you first started it, you only got 20 pages in but you told yourself you just haven’t gotten to the good part yet. You’ve been trying to get to the good part all day but something else captures your attention. Like how your cat needs to be played with, or your plants need to be watered, or it’s a great day to make soup! 

Perfect soup day… 

Now you gotta make soup. 

And when your cat sits in your lap to take a nap, well, it’s not like you can get up and get your book that’s sitting on the coffee table oh-so-far away. There’s always something getting between you and this damn book. 

Next thing you know, the sun is setting (at least, you think it is; the gray clouds are so heavy you can’t really tell how low the sun is in the sky) and you haven’t made any progress. 

When your cat finally releases you to complain about not being fed yet, you are determined to at least make a bigger dent than before. Once the little prince has been fed, you settle on the couch and get to reading. 

And you read for a bit — 30 pages — before your leg falls asleep and you switch positions on the couch. Then, you keep reading — 40 pages — before the silence gets to you and you have to pick some music to fit the mood. Now, you can keep reading and you get to 50 pages — before you just end up staring out the window. 

You think you hear thunder in the distance but you can’t be sure. Not unless you sit in silence and stare out the window for 15 minutes without hearing any more thunder. Maybe it was a sound effect in the music you’re listening to. 

Your eyelids are getting kinda heavy but you slap your cheeks lightly to wake yourself up. You just gotta get to the good part! You get 10 more pages in before you feel your head lolling forward and your eyelids droop once again. You snap to attention once again and decide it’s time to take a phone break. You got as far as you did, you’ve earned it. 

After scrolling through social media for a bit, your curiosity gets the better of you and you casually Google: “when do we get to the good part” in the book you're reading. You usually try to avoid reviews of books before you read them because you don’t want other people’s opinions influencing your judgment, but this book is proving quite difficult to get through on its own. Maybe if you know something good is coming around the corner, you’ll be more interested in reading it; what you end up finding thoroughly surprises you. 

More than that, it boils your blood. 

“WHAT?” You say out loud, to no one in particular.

You’re fuming! 

“What the FUCK?”

You’re so mad, in fact, you have to let all this energy out somewhere! 

You need to vent. 

And you know exactly who you need to call in this situation. 

You march all the way back to your room, book in hand, to get that cursed book off its specific, and highly prized, spot on your bookshelf. You close your eyes and concentrate, taking in several deep breaths as you do. 

You open your eyes to a flash of green light and Satan stands before you in your room, with a look of surprise gracing his features. 

“MC, to what do I owe—” He notices your wrath bubbling just under the surface, which is unusual but not unwelcome to him, “—the pleasure?” 

You calmly replace the cursed book back on your shelf and hold the other “cursed” book up for Satan to see. “I’m tired of this stupid book!” 

“Ah,” Satan nods once and uses magic to pull up your desk chair to sit in. “Of course. Go on.” 

You let out a shout of frustration before you continue, “It just never got any better! After I gave it so many chances!” 

Satan nods in understanding. 

“The main character is just so annoying, she’s a serious NLOG. ‘Oh, I used to be like other girls, but now I’m not because I like sex and I murdered a guy once but he probably deserved it.’ Like, get in line.” 

At that, Satan chuckles but he doesn’t interrupt your train of thought. Your cat peeks his head in at the commotion and makes a beeline for Satan’s lap once he spots him. 

“And she has zero self-preservation instincts! Like she goes to confront a guy — who is definitely a vampire, by the way — ALONE, IN AN ALLEY, AFTER SHE WATCHED HIM KILL A GUY, and she has the nerve to question him about said murder?” 

“Huh, a human? Going up against a creature much more powerful than themselves? What a foolish person they must be.” 

“Hush, smart guy, I’m not done ranting.” 

Satan laughs, “Continue.” 

“On top of all that sheer stupidity, I find out that this other main character that was definitely advertised to be a vampire — he’s not even a FUCKING VAMPIRE, he only BECOMES a vampire at the very end of the book!” 

“No…” 

“YES! And it’s not because he wants to. It's to save his life! That means this fool is running around in out-of-fashion clothes and saying things like, ‘If you’ve been alive as long as I have…’ for the DRAMA of it all!” 

Satan tsks. 

“I feel like I’ve been cheated!! And there’s four other books in the series??? Why should I keep reading this garbage? Nope, I can’t do it anymore. I’m done.” 

You punctuate that last statement by throwing the book on the bed with a huff. 

Satan scritches your cat’s chin as he says, “You know what I think?” 

“What—” 

“I think you need new reading material.” He stands up from his chair and lifts your boy into his arms at the same time. The unexpected change in altitude startles the cat and he wriggles his way out of Satan’s arms and onto the floor. You both watch as he leaves the room to find a more stable napping place. 

Satan then looks at you expectantly. 

You look back at him, then at the TBR pile growing on your desk, then at the large bookcase overflowing with books already. “You know what I think…” You look back at him, “I think you’re absolutely right. Let me just get changed.” 

You shoo Satan out of your bedroom and change out of your house clothes in record time. When you emerge from your room, Satan presents his arm for you to hold. Who knew the devil would be such a gentleman? 

As you leave your apartment, you call to your cat over your shoulder, “Be good.” 

As you make your way to your favorite bookstore and café that’s a convenient walking distance from your apartment, you ask Satan, “Are you looking for some new human world reading material as well?” 

“Well, that, and it’s just nice to get out of the house once in a while.” He looks up to the sky. The heavy gray clouds are less noticeable because of how dark it is but you know they’re still there. 

You look up too, and say, “I hope it won’t rain on the one day I actually choose to leave the house.” 

Satan smirks down at you. “Now, what are the odds of that happening right now?” 

A roll of thunder sounds off in the distance and you stop dead in your tracks. Satan keeps walking but turns to face you when your arm leaves his. 

“You had to jinx it didn’t you?” 

His smile widens. “Do you think we’ll make it before it comes down?” 

You close your eyes and take a deep breath. “If I have to run, I’ll make you regret it.” 

He steps up to you just as you feel the slightest drops of rain land on your nose. “I’d like to see how you would make me do that.” 

A few more drops and you scowl venomously at him, his face only inches from yours. 

“Humans…” He chuckles and takes off running when more drops settle around you and you take off after him, laughing. 

You make it to the bookstore in one piece, albeit soaking wet. The familiar brown brick exterior is already warming you up before you’ve even set foot inside. A light tinkling of the bell in the doorway announces your presence in the shop and someone far inside friendly shouts, “Welcome!” as you cross the threshold. You pause for a moment just to take in the immaculate vibes of this place. 

The brown brick of the exterior continues in the interior. Bookshelves line the walls and tower over you, some books are up so high, you wonder how anyone is supposed to get those books off the shelf. String lights drape across the ceiling and add a moody glow to the atmosphere. At the far end of the store is the espresso bar and café, with its mismatched bar stools and dangling exposed lightbulbs. All the furniture here is lovingly worn and there are innumerable cozy corners where you can pick up a book and cuddle up with a cup of coffee. 

You take a deep breath and sigh, your mood stabilizing already. Satan takes your saturated jacket and hangs it on the coat rack by the door as you try to wring out the excess moisture in your hair. He walks further into the store — past you — and when you meet his eye, he winks. A gust of warm wind dries your clothes and hair instantaneously and your eyes widen as you look around to see if there’s anyone who might have noticed. Your panic subsides when you realize there aren’t many people here anyway and everyone who is here is too engrossed in what they’re doing to make a note of how a couple of strangers magically got dry. 

Before he can get too far from you, you tug on Satan’s arm. He turns around to look at you questioningly. 

“I just got a brilliant idea!” You meet his gaze with a wide smile. “What if we make it a game?” 

“A game?” 

“Yeah, we both go in and separate, looking for a book we think the other will enjoy. We’ll meet back up at the cafe and read our books and then we’ll determine the winner.” 

“Hmmm…” Satan holds a finger to his chin in thought. “And what does the winner win, exactly?” 

You can tell you've interested him. Now, you just have to reel him in. You mirror his thinking posture, finger-to-chin and everything. “Hmmm… Maybe whatever the winner wants, the loser will have to give to them?” 

“Oh, MC, that sounds dangerous.” You catch a glimpse of something in his eyes as he smiles — maybe it's a warning?  

You shrug nonchalantly. “I like a little danger.” 

He bares his teeth in a wide grin. “May the best demon win, then.” 

“Hey!” You shout after him as he winks and heads off into the store proper. 

Oh, it's on. 

Now, this bookstore is fairly large for being squished between two apartment buildings. It’s longer than it is wide and two stories, with most of the first floor dedicated to the café and spaces for lounging. The bookshelves on this floor house the newly published books. The second floor loft is a labyrinth of bookcases — covered wall to wall in books of all genres — with a dedicated children’s section in the back. 

You think you saw Satan head upstairs, so you try your luck with the new books first. How do you pick a book for the demon who’s read everything? Well, you can start with books that have just come out. 

You pass some new history books, but what good would that be when you are almost as old as time? New memoirs and biographies? There’s only one human life of interest to Satan and you haven’t written a book (yet). 

You pick up a cookbook. That might be interesting. He likes to cook. But you don’t think you will win with a silly list of recipes, now matter how delicious they might be. 

You look at the art books and poetry books but knowing how fast he goes through books they might only hold his attention for a short time. You need something good. You pick up a book called Books Make A Home: Elegant Ideas for Storing and Displaying Books and crack a smile. He might take this as a dig at how messy his room is. As hilarious as that might be, you don’t think you would win with that selection. 

You finally look at new fiction. A thriller or mystery is more his speed anyway. But none of the covers or descriptions catch your attention. Maybe you should throw a curveball and get a romantic comedy? You pick one up that boasts a plot about the son of Lucifer trying to stop the apocalypse with a human woman and of course, they fall in love along the way. You quickly put it back and shudder at how Satan might react if you presented him with this book for your competition. 

Time to switch tactics. Maybe you should go with a book that you have read before but haven’t shared with him yet? With no luck down stairs, you make your way to the second floor, still no sign of Satan. Good, you don't want him to see you empty handed with how long you have been here already. 

You snake your way through the aisles, waiting for a book you recognize — or anything really — to jump out at you, catch your attention, and say, “This one right here will make Satan eat his words and admit defeat!” 

You find yourself in the young adult section. It's near the back where the children's section is but it's still separated by a half-wall; an appropriate place, right between being a kid and an adult.  

Ah yes, your teen angst days. You remember them well. You think about how Satan, in a way, has been going through his “teen angst” days for longer than you’ve even been alive. You wonder if he has ever read any of these kinds of books, or if he considers himself above that kind of thing, or maybe he’s “too old” for them. 

You scan the shelves and your eye catches a title on one of the higher shelves. It's a beautiful but impractical arrangement of the shelves. They’re so tall that you would need to call a worker with a ladder to get to some. The one you spot, however, is juuust out of reach that you think you can get if you use the lower shelf as a step. You reach for it on your tippy toes but it barely brushes your fingers. You adjust again and try to reach— when a larger hand with green nail polish easily reaches for the very same book you were trying to grab. 

You quickly turn and lose your balance, forgetting you stepped up onto the shelf to reach as far as you did. You surrender to gravity’s whims, but those same well-manicured hands grab you and steady you by the waist. 

“MC-!” You end up being slightly dipped in Satan’s arms. He searches your face for any pain or discomfort but is quickly reassured when you burst out in laughter. Once he knows for certain you are alright, he steadies you back on your feet and picks up the book that started this, as it lay forgotten on the floor. He stares quizzically at the cartoon devil gracing the front cover before you snatch it from his hands and hold it behind your back. 

“You weren’t supposed to see that yet.” 

“Is that the book you chose for me?” There’s humor in his voice, he sounds almost incredulous. 

“MAYBE.” You huff. “I haven’t made a commitment yet. I was still looking when you snuck up behind me!” 

He smirks at you, not falling for your frantic deflection. “You looked like you could use a hand.” 

“I’m certain I could have figured it out on my own.” You’re indignant and you're not sure why. Maybe because he was laughing at the book? You turn your back to him and look at the book you picked again. Was it silly to give him a kid’s book? “This book meant a lot to me when I first read it. It’s about a demon from hell getting a taste of human life. I learned a lot about life and myself from reading it, actually.” 

If you were looking at Satan, you would see his face soften at the confession. He tilts his head to the side and rests his hand lightly on your shoulder. When you turn to look at him, he snakes his hand down your arm to hold your hand. 

“I’m sorry.” He takes a step closer to you and brings your hand to his lips. “If you picked it out for me, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.” 

You feel your face bloom with heat from the unexpectedly sweet gesture. He gives you a teasing smile when you still don’t say anything. 

You look down, away from his almost smug expression, and focus on his hands. They’re empty. You look back up at him. 

“Did you not find one yet?” 

His expression doesn’t falter. “I left it at the register so we could pay together. I also got a few other things that interested me from downstairs.” 

“Let’s get going then.” You grab his hand tight and pull him along. 

You make your purchases downstairs and get something from the café. As you come back with both of your orders — one latte complete with kitty foam latte art and one caramel black milk tea — you find Satan sitting on a loveseat, reading the book you got him. 

“You’ve already started??” You put the drinks down on the coffee table in front of you and nearly trip over the bag of your books to get to his side quicker.

“Careful, MC,” he grabs your arm to steady you on the couch. “How else are we going to determine who won?” 

“No fair, you got a head start! And you know I don’t read as fast as you, Sa- Stan.” You catch yourself before you say his real name. You don’t think anyone’s paying attention — or really cares — but sometimes you get funny looks from strangers when you say that name in public. Satan cringes at the “nickname”. It bothers him to no end when you use it and that always tickles you. 

“Well, MC,” he says pointedly, reaching for something in the bag of books. “That's why I chose something that was reasonable in length.” 

The book he presents you is still easily over 100 pages in length but, compared to the other books he has recommended to you, this one actually is quite reasonable. You hold the book in your hands and consider it. You don’t have anywhere else to be. And this place stays open pretty late. You shrug, plop down next to Satan, and get to reading. 

Hours pass and Satan easily gets thru the book you gave him and several others he picked up for himself. He even got up once to buy another one after he went through his whole stack. All while you’ve been engrossed in the read Satan picked out for you. 

Line after line, page after page, chapter after chapter, you devour the book like it was made for you. If you didn't know any better, you would say it was enchanted, or that Satan did some funny business to the pages to make you keep reading — without stopping — until the very end. But you do know better, and you know that this book is just that good. 

It's really late now but you don’t care. You’re loving every minute of this. 

Until you get to the end. 

You stare at those last few words at the bottom of the page. Your mind is racing. In your haste to get to the end, you skimmed and skimmed paragraph after paragraph to find those words you were desperate to see. You couldn’t believe it. That can’t be how it ends. You don't know how long you stare at those cruel letters but you definitely aren't reading them anymore. 

You frantically flip to the beginning of the chapter and read through it again. Maybe you just missed something? Maybe it will be different this time. You hardly register the tears in your eyes before they blur your vision completely and you can no longer continue reading. 

You shut the book and study the front cover through your tears. So innocuous. Who knew this damn book would break your heart so thoroughly? Your grief quickly transforms into rage, directed not at the characters, or even the author — but at the damned demon that recommended the book to you in the first place, who was thoroughly enjoying all your precious reactions while sitting calmly next to you. 

You stand up and turn to him, without lifting your head. You look at the front cover one last time before you raise the book high in the air and throw it back to Satan as hard as you can. You’re not worried about hurting him — his reflexes are so fast, you’re sure he’ll be able to catch it. Besides, there are very few materials in all three realms that can cause serious harm to a demon — a paperback is not one of them. 

Unsurprisingly, he catches it before it makes contact with his face. “Did you enjoy it?” 

You look up in time to catch that smug grin plastered across his face.

“What… the FUCK?” 

You take a step towards him, fists balled with rage at your sides. You’re getting ready to square up when he says, “We’re in public, dear. You don’t want to make a scene, do you?” 

Despite his words, you can see in his eyes that he would really love for you to make a scene. You don’t want to give him the satisfaction but he’s already eating up your barely contained wrath. His easy smile never leaves his face, as if this was just one big joke to him. 

That’s it. 

You lunge for him, hands going straight for his neck. He catches those, too, of course, but with his hands occupied, he cant stop you from slamming your knee down on the cushion between his legs. Just a warning. That wipes the grin clean off his face. In fact, he looks almost impressed. He closes his legs around your knee to keep it from moving any closer. 

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” Even though your no match for his strength, that doesn’t stop you from trying to get him — to what end, you aren’t sure. Do you actually want to hurt him or are you trying to release your frustrations in a very unproductive manner? These are the thoughts you would be having if your mind wasn’t blank with rage. “It can’t end like that. It fucking CAN’T!”

And the object of your frustrations is loving every minute of this. You’re sure he’s humoring you when you get awfully close to reaching his neck. “Careful, darling. If you don’t calm down, I might transform and then we’ll both be in trouble.” You can see that warning from earlier in the night flash again in his eyes, like he wants to get in trouble with you. The vibrant green is almost glowing like fire. 

“How could you do that to me?!” You continue to struggle in his grasp. “How did you know how to hurt me so perfectly?” 

You start to smell sulfur before you finally slump against him, absolutely spent. The burst of rage and the time of night have finally caught up you, the smell of sulfur fading with your energy. He releases your hands and they fall uselessly to his chest. You lay your head there, too. 

“That was so fucked up.” You feel Satan’s chest rumble with a noise of agreement as he wraps his arms around you and rests his chin on the top of your head. You take a deep breath and let it out shakily, tears still flowing and staining his sweater. 

“Did you like it?” 

You let out a high-pitched, “Mmmhmmm”, not trusting your voice won’t crack if you try to speak again. Satan rubs your back. 

You take another deep breath and say, “It was so good but so… sad at the end.” He holds you tighter. 

“I know. If you don’t like how it ends, we can always write our own ending.” You lift your head from his chest and look at him. It's the same thing you suggested to him when he read that book that made him cry. You smile sadly at the memory. Looking into his eyes now, you find the hidden sadness, beneath the hot anger, beneath the cool mask that he wears. His eyes search your own. You wonder what he finds in them. 

Finally, you say, “It’s the sad that makes it good.” He nods in agreement. You wrap your arms around him and bury your face in his neck. He laughs. 

“I’m normal, I swear,” you say. “Can we just stay like this a little while longer?” 

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving for anything in all three realms.” 

And you two are at peace. 

Before the confused barista at the coffee bar comes over and says, “We’re gonna be closing in 10, so could y'all…?” 

You shoot up immediately and wipe whatever tear stains from your face that remain. “Oh my gosh, we’re so sorry!” 

You extricate yourself from Satan and pull him off the loveseat you were lounging on. You gather your things as Satan scowls at the poor barista. “It’s so late, I have to get home to my little boy.” 

Satan looks back at you and smiles, knowing exactly who you’re talking about. 

You scoot out the door, the bell above the door jingling one last time tonight, and make your way back to your apartment.

Once you are outside on the sidewalk, you slip your arm through his and say, “So, what did you think of the book I gave you?”

“It was… an interesting depiction of demons. I liked it, though it did feel a little preachy toward the end.” 

“Soooo,” Your hand finds his and you entwine your fingers together. “Who won?” 

“Well, let’s see, considering I didn’t cry and try to hurt you over how emotional I got over your book…”

“Alright, I get it, you don’t have to rub it in.” 

Satan chuckles. “Winner gets whatever they want, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” Embarrassment floods your system and your cheeks feel warm. Why did you say that? Why did you think you would win? Hopefully, he’ll ask for something easy for you to give him.

“Don’t worry, MC.” Satan laughs again. “I got everything I wanted already.” He brings your entwined hands to his mouth and kisses your hand softly. You rest your head against his upper arm and play with his fingers with both of your hands.

“I saw you read a lot of other books in there. Any good ones?” 

He proceeds to tell you all about the other books he got today, some were “absolute drivel” and others were “not too bad, actually”. But your favorite one was when he talked about a book about storing and displaying his books that will be “quite useful at home”. 

You smiled to yourself.

You know your demons so well. 

[in-death-we-fall]

Knot On Your Life

Record Collector #266 — October 2001

Slipknot’s recent Iowa album entered the UK album charts at No. 1 — unprecedented for a nu-metal band. Drummer Joey Jordison waxes highly lyrical

(google drive link)

Slipknot’s second proper album, Iowa, was the most eagerly-awaited rock record of 2001, and both critics and fans of the masked nine-man band from Des Moines weren’t surprised when it crashed straight into the charts at the top spot in early September. But to anyone not familiar with the crushing music of this most uncompromising of groups, the sudden glut of media appearances that followed this triumph might seem strange, to say the least. After all, these are people who urinate on stage, offer fans the chance to inhale from rectally-inserted tubes and regularly vomit onto their audiences.

Despite the band’s fearsome reputation, drummer Joey Jordison was on relaxed form as he chatted to RC from his Mid-Western home. In fact, he was willing to provide an opinion on most subjects — so RC fed him a topic, and off he went. If only all interviews were this easy, eh?

A Night In With The Knot

All round to Joey’s…

Imagine you’ve invited us to a party round at your house. What tunes would you play for us? If I’m having a party I don’t really play much metal — because the chicks get more naked if you play something light. Old Bee Gees, or Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, they’re all good party albums

I read once that you’re into the Cars and Fleetwood Mac. Oh, yeah. The Cars — I really like their Candy-O record, man, it was one of those records that really broke New Wave in America. They were one of the first bands to use the fuckin’ New Wave keyboards in their music, man.

The one-finger thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally! Like ‘Let’s Go’ with that cheesy line that they use, but it’s so infectious. We played it before a show one time — we cranked that entire song through the PA right before we hit the stage. The kids were so fuckin’ loud and pissed off! They thought we were gonna cut the cong but we played the whole damn thing (laughing), just to irritate them.

What about a bit of dance or hip-hop? I like the new Ludicrous record. And chicks often get naked when we play that new Nelly CD for some reason (laughs). I also like the Wu-Tang Clan and Ol’ Dirth Bastard’s solo stuff, and of course old Public Enemy, and the old NWA stuff. I’m much more into the old school — I don’t listen to any of that current shit.

Did you ever get into any grunge at all? For a little bit, although I was pretty strictly devoted to metal. I really can’t stand Pearl Jam though — I’ve never been a fan of them. Alice In Chains was always a metal band in hiding, with a grunge umbrella. Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger was phenomenal, too.

What about Faith No More? A band I still devote a lot of respect to. Faith No More really turned things around for me — The Real Thing really shaped my awareness of musical styles and using them tastefully. Mike Patton is probably the most talented musician and visionary I’ve ever heard in my life.

Most people might also be surprised to hear that I’m really into glam shit too, in my other band, the Rejects (chuckles).

What — Bolan and Bowie? More like the New York Dolls and Hanoi Rocks, but it’s all good music.

Do you dress up in the appropriate manner on stage? Make-up, lipstick? Yeah, we do. It depends on the mood. But like the famous song said, though, just because I wear make-up doesn’t mean that I can’t kick your ass!

The morning after the party, what mellow tunes would you play for us? Let me check my current crop of albums. I’d probably actually wake you up with some Amen. ‘We came here to fuck you!’ That rules, dude. I love that band.

An unlikely pairing: (above) the Cars, whose ‘cheesy’ synth lines do it for Joey, and (below) the Bee Gees, for whom ‘the chicks get naked’, dude.

Gloom And Doom

The murky depths of extreme metal explored…

The introduction of Iowa’s first song, ‘People = Shit’, is pure Morbid Angel. Fuck yeah! If you’re gonna pay tribute to something, pay it to a band that kicks ass. My favourite Morbid work is Blessed Are The Sick — I think it’s untouchable.

Altars Of Madness was really cool, too. Fuck, that’s old school, man, that’s going back. I think they really came into their own around the time of Domination, when they started using the seven-string guitars.

What other metal bands are you into? I also really like Raging Speedhorn, and I gotta say Immortal’s Damned In Black is one of the finest black metal releases ever.

I thought In The Heart Of Winter was better. Yes, that fucker too — all Immortal is great. They’re one of the prime black metal bands of all time.

Have you got Slayer’s new album, God Hates Us All? Yes — it’s phenomenal.

‘Payback’ is a great song. (sings line from song) Payback, you bitch motherfucker! (sniggers)

Do you like Nile? I love Nile. Black Seeds Of Vengeance — I love fuckin’ Nile! They rule, man.

Poppin’ Out

Joey talks Britney

It’s a good time to be into metal, isn’t it? Look at it this way. Metal always stays here, it’ll never go away, because of the legions of devoted fans, man, they never go anywhere. They are always fucking gonna be there. The music will never go away. It’s been tested time and time again.

On the other hand, cheesy pop like Britney Spears and N’Sync has got a lot stronger at the same time, don’t you think? That’s very true, it’s a good point. Those bands are really big sellers for their labels. They’re all geared towards MTV; then MTV is geared to the kids; the kids bitch at their parents constantly, and then they go out and buy the record.

Sometimes these kids don’t know any better, they don’t know you can go out and get into the underground tape-trading scene, because they’re fed that shit over fuckin’ television. Which is a drug in its fuckin’ self.

We wanna turn these kids on. A lot of them have heard Korn and Limp Bizkit, but they’ve never heard a blastbeat. It’s great that we can turn them on to the underground — like a kid might never have heard of Morbid Angel, and might think that I’m the first guy to ever do a blastbeat and double bass. Which isn’t true.

Is it strange when Slipknot are included in the same nu-metal category as bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn? No. I can’t bitch about it because we are in that nu-metal group. We do have elements of the nu-metal sound, but the fact is, you can tell we come from a place that is more genuine and way more old-school than that.

Grrr!

Reasons to be angry

At the Ozzfest, Corey (Taylor, Slipknot singer) said ‘We’re going to kill everyone in the rock music industry’. Is the relationship between the band and the business really so bad? He’s always talking about that. A lot of the press — obviously not you, because you know what you’re talking about — when we were done with our first record, they said that there was no way we could top it, and were already slagging the second record. And then there’s the fuckin’ leeches that fuckin’ steal money, and the people that misquote you, and people that start fuckin’ bad rumours — and before you know it there’s a whole new list of problems that come with fame.

I’ll gladly take those problems because this is what I’ve wanted since I was five years old, but (getting annoyed) it doesn’t mean that it fucking doesn’t fucking totally fucking goad men, and totally fucking brings me to a fucking boiling point … (tails off in incoherent rage, then takes a deep breath and calms down). So a lot of those things came out, and we had a lot of personal issues when we were on the road. And we;re doing non-stop shows, so every day there’s something going on.

Havin’ It Large

Party on!

Didn’t you go drinking a lot with Casey Chaos when you were on tour together? Yeah, we do these drinking matches. I always lose. I got him one time, though. It took him a while, but he finally got fucked up and fell down the back of this bus — and Casey Chaos never pukes, ever, but he threw up this time.

I sobered up really quickly after I pissed myself in my bunk, and I came back out and I’m like, I’m ready to go again! But he had to go to bed. I may have fallen down first, but I came back for the second round. That’s been the only time.

Can you still get up and play the drums when you’ve got a sickening hangover? Oh, absolutely, dude. I’ve done it a million times. I’m not necessarily proud of it. But when the mask goes on and I fuckin’ slip into the fuckin’ boiler suit, something just happens to me, man. Everything goes away, and it’s all about us and those kids for that hour.

The Past

The bad old days…

Do you ever listen to Slipknot’s demo album, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat? I never ever listen to it. I’m very proud of where we come from, man, and I’ll never forget where we come from, but … that was a totally different band back then, you know, and it’s not the same.

Did you know that people are paying over £150 in this country for original copies of MFKR, if they can find them? (shocked) Christ almighty. God damn, man … they must really like the band.

It’s a lot of money to pay for someone’s demo. Or do you regard the album as more than just a demo? It’s kind of a glorified demo. It’s glorified in that it sounds really good for a demo — it’s produced really well. But there’s only six people on that record, Corey’s not the lead singer, the guitar players are different — you know, the only original members are me, Shawn and Paul on that.

The first Knot guitarist, Donnie Steele, famously left the band after a religious conversion. Yes. He was like, I found God and this band is not for me.

Even though he’d been in Anal Blast and Body Pit beforehand — two extreme grindcore bands? I guess not. He really wasn’t down with the mask thing either — when it came up he was like, I can’t do that. So I thought, hmm, OK, you’re probably not gonna work out.

Then there was Cuddles … (yawns) Yes … … but maybe I won’t go into that? Don’t. We never talk about that guy (drummer Cuddles, a member of the band from 1997-8, is alleged to be suing Slipknot at the time of writing).

The Future

What lies ahead

You once said that Slipknot is just too intense a band to survive more than a couple of albums. I get asked about that in every interview I do. But it’s cool, because it’s the truth. I think if the band broke up right now — you can call this ego, call it what you want — we might even have some kind of legendary status.

You mean, if you stopped at the peak of your form, before it got stale? Yes, like the Sex Pistols did. They did it right, man, they didn’t fuckin’ let themselves become parodies. And that’s what we plan to do with this band, once I know it’s not working. Because of all the hurt in the band, and the fact that there’s nine of us, I think if it went on too long, it would become a parody, man.

Will your records keep getting heavier and heavier, as they have so far? Well, lots of bands say their next record is gonna be the heaviest one ever, but they’re full of shit. They just say this so their fans will go out and buy it. But I can’t do that to my fans, man, because they’re the ones that got me here, y’know.

Interview by Peter Smith. Many thanks to Michelle Kerr at Roadrunner.

[fandomshatefatpeople]

I've been fat my whole life. Ever since I was a kid. And ever since I was a kid I've been mocked, bullied, ridiculed, insulted and even physically assaulted for being fat. To the point I ended up with an eating disorder and lost a lost of weight. Way too fast. In a way that wasn't healthy at all. But I still wasn't happy. Because I couldn't recognize myself anymore. And I felt like i was just doing this for other people. But it's just so hard for me to accept my body. It just feels like I'll never be happy with it no matter what

I'm so sorry we haven't answered this. I know that this is a triggering ask so I'm gonna add all the tags i possibly can followers.

I'm actually a lot like you Nonny. I was a chubby kid, then got my period at 10 because I was so fat. I had an eating disorder by 14 and while it didn't last long (the bulimia at least) I kinda got comfortable in my skin even though I slowly crawled back up to my previous weight I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. So the meds they put me on made me gain weight (50 pounds in 6 months). There after I did yoyo dieting and exercising flirted with bulimia again but it didn't work this time.

I'm not telling you this to trauma dump. I want you to consider my age and experience. I'm in my early forties. And its like... part of the reason I wasn't happy with my body was because I grew up with magazines and tv and movies constantly showing me thin ppl.

i don't think I stopped yoyo dieting until the cycle of yoyp dieting made me hit 250 lbs (I'm only 5'2) by then i was like 28/30ish. And like I think what changed was that I was watching media with like Donna from Parks and Rec, Shirley Bennet from Community. And they were never made to feel ugly for being fat. It was eye opening. (spoiler alert even though I'm not black Ugly betty was like more of the same thin ppl are the only that matter).

I don't think I really got comfortable in my skin until I joined pinterest about 7 or 8 years ago and got fed a steady stream of fat people in cute outfits.

Its still hard to find fat representation though. And I started looking into romance novels with chubby and fat protagonists about 5 years ago. Most notably the Brown sisters trilogy. They're all overweight and they all have these handsome men falling head over heels with them.

But like its one thing to admire people on pinterest with cute outfits. its a complete other thing to actually shop for yourself and give yourself permission to buy cute clothes.

One strange thing that happened about 3 years ago was that I gained like 40 pounds and all of my boring clothes didn't fit me anymore.

So this time shopped on lane bryant for cute dresses and jeans. and torrid, and hot topic. I started playing with makeup. (before I had like a uniform of jeans).

I'm not gonna lie people will *always* praise you for losing weight even if its because you're literally sick with an eating disorder or having health problems. (a friend of mine who did belly dancing lost like 30 pounds like really fast because all of the sudden she couldn't process meat anymore everyone fawned over her weight loss). she was literally starving and people wouldn't stop cooing over her skinniness.

I don't know what to think about society at large and their obsession with thinness. I've tried telling my family that I no longer want to keep clothes from when I was 250ish and they're all like "oh don't worry you'll lose the weight!!!"

I'm like bitch please. But its exhausting having people encourage you to lose weight. If you want you can message us off anon!!!

*hugs*

mod laina

[major-toast]

🏳️‍🌈 and 💖

Hi irene!

🏳️‍🌈: Which character who is commonly headcanoned as queer doesn't seem queer to you?

Lily Evans. As lovely as some of the sapphic ships around Lily seem, she does not strike me as a queer person. She is loving and supporting of her friends, no matter who or what - for a lack of better term - they are, because that is just her nature. And her love is fierce! How else could she have protected her son if not for a love so strong it turned into powerful ancient magic? Of course, there is nothing wrong with headcanoning her as bi, pan, or any other sexuality. Yet, I often noticed that straight ships like Jily or Lucius x Narcissa are demonised in favour of queer ships. While I do understand where this is coming from, given how flat and one-dimensional straight couples are often portrayed in popular media, I still tend to eye it with a certain wariness. After all, this too can erase a lot of depth and complexity these interesting characters already had. Frankly, I don't mean that everyone, who writes Pandalily or similar, has no idea how to write layered and complex characters, but there is a trend of taking what makes a straight (or any) ship interesting, watering it down to a nothing-brew, just to give these exact tropes to another, more digestable (queer) pairing. It often turns the characters involved into a flat caricatures of themselves. So, yes, I do not see Lily as queer since I firmly believe Jily already is a beautiful ship and this fandom already has interesting and complex queer characters to work with. There is no need to re-invent the wheel every now and again. Maybe this comes across as extremely bitchy, and I surely don't mean to offend anyone (ship what you wanna ship idc), but I have a burning hatred for watered down, one-dimensional characters, and often find myself at odds with some of the fanon versions I stumble upon. Of all characters, by the way, not only Lily.

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

I don't think this is a truly unpopular opinion within the marauders fandom, but a more unpopular one within the entire HP fandom as a whole. Nevertheless, the HP books aren't actually that... great. The characters are as flat as sheet of paper, often encouraging outdated stereotypes, and tend to be abused for the sake of a cheat out of controversy rather than actually developed characters. There are countless of plotholes, e.g. timeturners or other magical schools, and the plot in itself lacks nuance. There is a lot of potential to be explored, like wizarding politics, yet it is often kept at a shallow base level and reduced to a basic good-guy-bad-guy-trope. This leads me to my next point, actually. Most of the tropes JKR used can already be found in other works, especially of the fantasy genre, or are outright copied off common european folklore. JKR has also been accused of, allegedly, ripping off other people's work. So, make of that what you will. One of the reasons the HP fandom is still as popular as it is now must be fandom spaces like these, where creative minds come together to cut out new puzzle pieces to complete the picture JKR couldn't be bothered to finish. And, don't get me started on that god awful reboot. It will add nothing. It's just the same shit reheated and the earnings fed to JKR on a silver plate. It won't be great. Stop giving that women more money.

[uboat53]

Well, I've been writing this up piecemeal but this seems like a good time to pause and do a LONG RANT (TM) about what's been dominating political news lately.

INTRODUCTION

For those who aren't aware, the president had a bad debate. At the first debate he sounded confused and disconnected as opposed to his opponent who confidently spouted a torrent of lies without hesitation. Since that event, multiple people have come out with stories about him appearing confused, aloof, or otherwise stiff at other events. All of this has fed into the existing narrative, which has been pushed by conservatives and conservative media for years, that the president has suffered age-related mental decline and is no longer capable.

All of this has led to a predictable media frenzy and several large outlets, Democratic elected officials, and major donors have called on the president to withdraw from the race in favor of some other candidate. Given all of this, I thought I'd look at a few things. First, how I view the allegations of mental decline so far, what this means for the presidential race, and what I think of the general coverage of all of it so far.

AGE-RELATED DECLINE

Ever since Obama, we've had a bunch of old people as our major party nominees for president. Clinton was 69 on election day 2016, Trump was 70 then and is 78 now, and Biden is 81. At that sort of advanced age it's not unusual to have experienced some sort of age-related decline and it's very common for it to occur sometime in the next 4 to 8 years.

Those of us who have had older relatives go through it knows what it looks like. They confuse names, dates, and places, they have trouble putting thoughts in order, and, depending on their personality, they either retreat from conversation to avoid showing that they don't know things or they confidently spout wrong information. It's very interesting because, to a casual observer, they can still seem together, but if you scratch the surface a bit you find holes in everything very quickly.

So what can we say about Biden thus far? Well, he certainly seemed off balance and confused in the debate and there are anecdotal stories coming out about people who claim to have seen similar things at other events over the last several months. Biden's answer for his confusion at the debate is that he was jet lagged from a recent international trip and at least one of those other events that people have been telling stories about seems to have come after a major international trip as well, so it's possible that he just handles jet lag very badly. Of course, he's been doing a lot of international travel, repairing the damage that the Trump years did to our alliances, so that could just be a good way to hide it.

That said, I know people who consistently get really bad jet lag. Heck, I've been the guy with really bad jet lag before. Biden is also known for his speech issues, the "Uncle Joe" reputation where he says crazy things exists for a reason. They even made a short film about it in the Obama years (if you haven't watched "The President's Speech", go find it on YouTube and thank me later). Age-related decline is exactly that, decline over time, and I can't say that the current Joe Biden that I've seen not just in the debate and his recent press conference, but also in recent interviews and the numerous campaign appearances over the last several weeks seems all that different from the guy we saw in 2020, 2008, or any of the other times we've seen him in his long career in politics.

I'm certainly willing to hear more from people who interact with him more than I do, but no one seems to have anything other than pretty vague anecdotes at this point and, other than the debate, I haven't actually seen the issues. As far as I can tell, he's still weird, but in the same way he's always been rather than for some age-related reason.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE

To me, the age question is only relevant as it relates to the presidential race. Full disclosure: I'll vote for a corpse over Donald Trump because at least the corpse won't spend 4 years trying to take away the civil liberties of Americans while also making it easier for corporations and rich people to gouge and kill them and running up the national debt to funnel money to his cronies. In other words, I would very much like a Democrat to win and I'd support switching candidates to another one with a better chance even if Biden had no age-related issues at all.

So what DOES the data we have so far tell us? Well, we're far enough out from the debate and the wall-to-wall coverage of Biden's age that it's been factored into the polling and… it's not much. Trump got a bit of a bump and Biden got a bit of a dip after the debate, but they each moved only about 1 percent in the polls and it's already plateauing. For reference, Clinton rose 4 points after the first 2016 debate and Trump fell 3 points after the second. In other words, Biden's bad debate performance didn't move the needle much.

The polling data also doesn't seem to show anyone else doing better than Biden either. Biden is currently losing 47.5/44.5 to Trump, but Harris is down 48/46, Newsom is down 46.5/43, and Whitmer is down 46/42. And that's before any of the alternatives have been on the receiving end of focused Republican attacks. Moreover, if we look at FiveThirtyEight's election model, which has a fairly good track record, Biden's odds of winning have actually improved slightly over the last few weeks. (I should note that the race is still a dead heat, that slight improvement has still kept the race well within the margin of error but moved it from a tiny Trump lead to a tiny Biden lead.)

In other words, it's not clear to me that switching candidates would make it more likely that the Democrat defeats Trump. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all happy with a dead heat, I'd much prefer Trump be down by a landslide, but that doesn't seem to be about Biden specifically given that every plausible Democrat is behind Trump by a similar margin. Given that Biden has the advantage of incumbency, already has a national campaign built up, and has already suffered the full force of the conservative attack machine, I don't see a good case for switching to someone who wouldn't have that unless they have some other big advantage.

THE COVERAGE

To me there's a few angles I see in the way this story has been covered. First I'll take a look at the actual calls to withdraw, then I'll look at how it's been covered in the broader political media, and finally I'll take a look at the comparison to 2016 which… yeah, that's a thing now.

THE CALLS TO WITHDRAW

I'll admit, the calls for Biden to withdraw have been… vague, at least to my reading of them. They often reference the debate and the coverage since and some include a personal anecdote, but none of them seem to be heavy on specifics. I haven't seen, for example, a strong case made that Biden withdrawing would make it more likely that Trump is defeated, for example (see above).

More to the point, I feel like a lot of the calls to withdraw are about getting attention as much as they are about anything else. Don't get me wrong, George Clooney can probably whip up a media storm anytime he wants, but can any of you who don't live in Austin claim you'd heard of Rep. Lloyd Doggett before? How about Rep. Earl Blumenauer or Sen. Peter Welch? If you don't live in Oregon or Vermont, respectively, they're probably not names you've heard before. But, by calling for Biden to withdraw, they've ensured a good deal of national attention for themselves.

It's also the case that many (though certainly not all) of the representatives calling for Biden to withdraw represent swing districts. Even if Biden wins, any slight weakening of support could imperil their own re-election chances. I further note that several of the calls for withdrawal are clearly timed for political effect; Rep. Jim Hines released his statement immediately after Biden's press conference finished; far too quickly for the press conference itself to have factored seriously into his decision but timed perfectly to get the headline of "another Democrat calls on Biden to withdraw even after the press conference".

Now, I'm not accusing every Democrat who has called for Biden to withdraw of doing so for self-interested reasons, I'm sure a good many of them are sincere, but this is politics and our system is designed around self-interest; I'd be a fool if I didn't at least look for it.

It's also the case that those calling for withdrawal at this point represent a small minority of the party, 19 of the 213 Representatives and 50 Senators. So far it seems as if the majority of Democrats are, if not enthusiastic about Biden, content to have him stay as the nominee.

THE BROADER MEDIA

Now I've written some posts in detail about the failures I've seen in the political media and I'll let you read those if you're interested in that. What I do want to say in this spot here is that it very much seems as if the political media isn't holding to a neutral standard in this race, but is actively campaigning for specific results. Compare the wall-to-wall coverage you've seen over the last weeks to the polling numbers and data and it seems as if this story carries far more relevance to the political class than it does to the broader population of voters.

It also hasn't escaped me that major media outlets, The New York Times, for example, didn't wait for other people's reactions, but came out in favor of Biden's withdrawal from the race long before any fundraisers, elected representatives, or even polls had come out. If the editorial board of an outlet is the first to call for a political outcome, then it raises reasonable questions whether the outlet itself is actually reporting neutrally on that topic.

All of that brings me to…

THE LESSONS OF 2016

Just about everyone agrees that the media coverage of the 2016 election was one of the worst examples of journalistic behavior in recent memory; even most of the journalists themselves admit that. Journalists chased stories about Hillary Clinton that went nowhere for weeks, printing story after story about her e-mail server, her health, and numerous other topics that were gleefully ginned up by right-wing media and completely ignoring similarly damaging stories about Trump.

In addition, the media was caught off guard by how wildly and constantly Trump was willing to tell and repeat complete lies with forceful confidence and did not react with any form of reasonable fact-checking, but allowed the lies to be repeated over and over again to their audience until it was hard to tell truth from fiction.

Over the four years of the Trump presidency, the media got better. It started looking more skeptically at stories that originated in the fever swamps of right-wing media and only reported the ones that actually met journalistic standards of evidence, they started fact-checking more aggressively and regularly, and they started paying attention to all candidates, not just the one that people assumed would win. That got us through the 2020 election.

Since then, though, a lot of the insightful, capable journalists who led the way in setting that new standard have departed major outlets which have added more MAGA friendly voices to the more sensationalist journalists who remain. Many major outlets have also shifted in ownership toward wealthy individuals who prefer the FOX News brand of journalism.

In other words, the lessons of 2016 have largely been forgotten in much of the media today. Live fact checking has pretty much disappeared, journalists seem to dog-pile on popular stories instead of chasing real investigations, and ideas from right-wing media are leaking into the mainstream regardless of the quality of their reporting.

If you don't believe me that things are repeating, here is a sampling of stories from major news outlets that came after Clinton had a bout of pneumonia that led to her falling ill at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony. Tell me they don't feel at least a little bit familiar:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/11/hillary-clintons-health-just-became-a-real-issue-in-the-presidential-campaign/

She's fine by the way, her health and mental acuity have easily lasted the 8 years that she could have been in office.

WANT TO CONVINCE ME THAT BIDEN SHOULD WITHDRAW?

Simple, show me that someone else has a better chance of winning. Does someone consistently poll significantly better than him? Can you show some evidence that he has actually declined due to his age in a way that would affect his ability to win the election? Is there some other reason why another candidate could do better than Biden against Trump? I'm all ears!

The problem in my view is that those calling for Biden to withdraw have largely failed to articulate all of these things and, as much as I hate the fact that Trump has a good chance of winning this election, I don't see an option that leads to a better outcome at this point. If I can be convinced that there is a better option, then that's something I can go with.

CONCLUSION

I'm not convinced, based on the evidence so far, that Biden has any significant age-related decline as opposed to having the same issues he's always had, I'm very unconvinced, again, based on the evidence so far, that there is any better option to defeat Trump in the upcoming election, and it certainly feels as if many of the calls for Biden to withdraw have a strong self-serving element to them and result from the political media repeating a lot of the admitted mistakes of 2016.

I could certainly be convinced that Biden should withdraw for the good of the country, but I think I've put forward reasonable evidence for remaining unconvinced. Am I missing something? Let me know what you think.

[armoralor]

Queer Coding Pt 2 | "You only HC characters as queer for brownie points!" | Important Note: Wanting to feel included and cultivating your own joy in hostile environments is not a "performative act." Queer and trans folks are being legislated against at every turn, and real life can get heavy. No one is saying imagining fictional characters are gay is some kind of activism, none of it is being done for a pat on the head. Enjoying our free time by picturing ourselves reflected in media is a personal act, you don't have to make it about yourself (or act like your being bullied because of it). ALSO! Fetishizing queer and trans characters is not heroic or helpful to anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community. If you are cishet and find yourself hyper-fixating on queerness because it's "taboo" or "hot," do some personal reflection and reading. Additional resources and sources below. T*RFs fuck off.

Transcript: CRITICS: There is small, but loud, part of the population that is uncomfortable with trans and queer existence. Sometimes these folks are outright hateful and easy to spot, but many hide under the cover of liberalism or progressiveness while finding excuses to bash the LGBTQIA+ community for "justified reasons." The following is a small taste of the push back and hate queer fans get on their posts and some helpful ways to respond.

"Why does everyone have to be gay now?" Not all characters are gay, but some might be. It may feel like "everyone" is queer now because the previous number of queer relationships in media was zero. Going from having 100% of the representation to 95% of the representation feels like an attack when you're used to being center stage constantly.

"We need more positive heterosexual representations!" Cisgender heterosexual relationships are supported, perpetuated, and recognized by every major institution in society. Yes, patriarchal structures are toxic, but that does not mean queerness should be avoided in favour of more cishet focused media. The solution is bettering social constructs, no silencing the LGBTQIA+ community.

"Lesbians and bisexuals are transphobic + started the TERF movement!" Congratulations on perpetuating a false conservative talking point that has been disproven dozens of times! Lesbians have been statistically the most accepting of trans folks throughout history.

"You hate mothers and biological families!" Many queer and trans people have kids! Wanting to imagine your favourite characters are queer & trans does not mean there will be no kids in their life. At the same time, LGBTQIA+ folks not wanting kids is just as common as cishet people not wanting kids. None of this is an "attack" on cis women or mothers. Reducing people to their ability to procreate is fucking weird.

"This character is most likely straight!" Queer people are in the minority, we are very aware. That doesn't diminish the fact we like to see ourselves represented in the media we consume. Most people are right handed, but that doesn't mean left handed people don't exist.

"My interpretation of the source material is the most accurate and this character is obviously not gay!" Compulsory Heterosexuality is hard to unlearn, ever for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We are force fed narratives of what het relationships look like from a young age, and often project what we are most used to onto others.

"A queer person was mean to me, therefore I must form straight solidarity groups!" First of all, please reflect on your choices and consider what that would sound like against any other oppressed group. A queer person pointing out something you don't like isn't bullying, and banding together to "promote" straight relationships in "solidarity" is both embarrassing and bigot behaviour.

Sources: Hitchcock and the Censors by John Billheimer (2019); Everything but Named: Queer-Coded Characters in 19th-Century Literature by Marie Harra (2023); Queers in American Popular Culture by Jo Johnson (2010); Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Content on Television: A Quantitative Analysis Across Two Seasons by Deborah A. Fisher PhD et all (2007); Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1980); Unrequited: The Queer History of Hollywood by James Somerton (2023); Lesbians Being Anti-Trans Is a Lesbophobic Trope by Amy Ashenden (2023); Stop Using Lesbians Like Me To Justify Your Transphobia by Sadhbh O'Sullivan (2022); Trans Day of Visibility by Just Like Us (2023); Why Queerbaiting in Marketing and Media Is Harmful and How You Can Help Stop It by Colleen Murphy (2023)

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for making my close friends forget everything they had experienced over the past 100 years?

(ooc: this is major spoilers for this media also. Just a warning)

Me (??? f) and 6 other people including a pair of twins, two older men, and two guys around my age, were forced on a century-long journey to try and stop a world / universe-destroying force. We traveled across worlds, trying to collect something called 'the light of creation' that enhanced this force to an incredibly deadly degree and live in these worlds for a year before the world would either be consumed if we were to fail to collect this light or would hopefully survive this force as we were to move onto the next world. The reason we were able to do this so many times was because every time we'd escape from a world, our bodies would be reset back to where the journey originally began. So dying wasn't an issue as long as one person escaped from our ship. After some time we learned more and more about this force and were able to come up with a plan to give us much more time than a year to stop this force, a plan I disagreed with. However, when originally I brought up my own idea, it was overruled and shut down. So, we ended up breaking up the light into artifacts, powerful weapons that we scattered in a world very similar to our own which would give us many years and, what we hoped, would throw the force off our trail for good. Though these artifacts in this new world started wars where thousands of people had died and it didn't take long for me, and I'm sure the rest of my crew, to realize what we had done was wrong. Though there wasn't much for us to do, so I decided to take matters in my own hands. Now what had happened, I didn't mean for it to be as severe as it was nor go on for as long as it did. On our travels, we collected this strange creature that when fed media, songs, writing, etc. it could make everyone in the entire universe forget it / remember it in an instant and when drinking the water that it lives in you'll remember everything that you had one forgotten. So I did just this. As the journal keeper of our travels, I had every single thing that we went through written down, every journey, every word, I wrote it all down and fed it to this creature. However, some of the stuff that a few of my members had forgotten was regrettable. One of them was so involved with this mission of ours, that the only thing left to him was his name. Another, one of the twins, his sister went missing not long before I had put this plan into action and so I had to make him forget her completely. I couldn't have him go looking for her and get into trouble with the artifacts. I put the remaining people in places where they would be safe, and happy, and they were for a decade of time and during that time I tried to collect these artifacts myself, and one of them, my own, was easy to obtain but when I tried to get the others... well it didn't end well. I lost 30 years of my life to a torture game. I realized I couldn't do this alone. I set up a workforce, of people to come together to help me. See this creature had a kid, so if I fed the information again to the creature's kid but left out the parts about the artifacts then I could allow people to know about them without knowing about the century-long journey. This meant I could also get the people who remained of the 6 I could have access to besides the one I kept beside me, one of the twins, a human about my own age, and one of the older members of our crew. They helped me collect all the relics, becoming wonderful young men and creating bonds but recently shit went down. The force arrived and I put my plan into action and tried to put up the barrier but the rest of my crew all found the baby of the creature and now remembers everything. Reasonably, they're all angry, but I did it to protect them. I didn't want them to get hurt, and what we were doing to this world was wrong. AITA?

[alcarenka]

Every other tweet on my timeline rn being a clip of jannik and Anna sharing the worlds most awkward kiss like please spare me 💀

Seriously I am soooo fed up with all the kiss photos. To begin with, I was sooo uncomfortable to watch because you can CLEARLY see that the pro Russian Anna forced jannik to give her a kiss and all the stadium and millions of people around the world can see it.

But here in this account let's uncover the clear strategy that the pro-Russian has and that very few people realize it. To begin with, I was already expecting that the pro-Russian was going to kiss Jannik in front of a packed stadium and all the cameras looking at them (even I told the same to my friend when jannik was in the begging of the third set). When it happened, I have to say that I didn't expect it to be so awkward and so clear in seeking minutes of attention from her.

The pro-Russian had more than calculated this move because she knew that if the kiss happened, everyone would talk about it and the kiss would go viral. Wow, right now, the kiss is going viral and has even appeared on Vogue USA pages like Insta. She knows very well that she is with one of the most famous and influential athletes in the world today, so she knows that if she kisses him in front of a stadium full of 23,000 people and in front of the cameras that transmit the content to millions of people and stadium, that means that she is also going to be famous. It should also be noted that Jannik is the protagonist at that moment and with that kiss she has stolen the spotlight that should have been Jannik's at that moment. I am not the only person who clearly sees that if she is not the center of attention, she will do whatever it takes to be so.

With this public kiss that has been seen by so many people, it benefits her because all of this is a PR move, to have more minutes of fame and attention and therefore obviously to earn money and followers. With this calculated move and that she knew its repercussion, she can win covers and exclusives with magazines, interviews or contracts with brands. With this, she continues to earn money, followers and fame and she also knows that she will gain more fame because the kiss will appear in all the magazines (of the gossip for example), in all the news of the world, in newspapers and in all the digital or physical portals of the world.

Also, what a coincidence that the pro-Russian Anna only uploads a repost to her best friend's story recording Anna and Jannik's kiss on her Instagram stories. Don't you find it strange that she does that first before congratulating her boyfriend on social media for his second Grand Slam? For me, coincidences don't exist, and I repeat to myself that she does all this for PR, fame, money and followers.

Also, we have to say that this kiss will feed the “power couple” or “couple goals” narrative towards them, which I repeat, makes her gain more popularity and more followers. In my opinion, I don’t believe any of the power couple or couple goals narratives because we live in a world where we like to pretend things or post things about our lives that aren’t true. Well, the same thing happens with this narrative, they try to sell us a couple with a perfect life and two “good” and “perfect” people, and then we start to idolize that couple. Then, when they break up is when we realize the reality of the matter, that the couple’s private life was not as idyllic as they constantly sold us or that the two people in the couple are not perfect people either. And also for those reasons, when they break up we say things like “I don’t believe in love anymore” because we have idolized famous couples so much that we try to replicate them.

I keep saying that she is not in love with Jannik, she is only in love with the fame and money that all this can bring her. And by the way, Anna's friends, family and team (including Anna) are going to make the most of this. They are going to try to live off Jannik as much as possible because he is the goose that lays the golden eggs. And with everything I have said and the evidence I have, I put my hand out and I don't get burned. I know what I'm talking about because I've seen these PR strategies to gain money and followers in a lot of famous couples in my country and that many media outlets (traditional or non-traditional) have uncovered and have ended up being reality.

Anna, you are not fooling me and time will prove me right 😘💋

[wanderrnest]

@mercurialcreatur3 Answering here because it was too long for replays on the previous post i reblogged. sorry for my English.

What you said is the most painful to me. People walk among us after they went through these unspeakable horrors, and people still find ways to deny or underestimad it. This is equivalent to Holocaust denial for us. Except now, unlike Nazi Germany, even Hamas terrorists themselves filmed things and uploaded them, sometimes even to victims' social media. There are photos and videos that I wish wouldn't be true, but they are. When there's a terrorist investigation where he said they were told to murder, behead, and rape. There are videos of sexual assault. They found sexual assault evidence on dead bodies. I'm choosing not to go more graphic, but there is so much more graphic. Many people can't tell you what happened because they're dead, like entire families; we won't hear their stories (again painfully similar to the Holocaust, where in some cases there was not one left to tell); they only left butchered bodies behind them, but even that is not enough. read on shani louk, it's one exapmle out of many. look on Hadas Kalderon that her mother and niece were murderd and her two children are kidnapped in gaza without her. they uploded one thing to her daugther's tik tok - "goodbye". it's diffrenet when you know the faces and you hear the first hand stories.

Hamas is a terror organization; it thrives on propaganda. You are fed with propaganda about Israel that comes straight from their scripted messages and false information and the dehumanizing of israelis and jews. The amount of misinformation in the pro-Palestinian circles and the Muslim world is truly off the charts. Israel did not use photos of Palestinian children. Hamas burned babies and beheaded and raped Jewish people and paraded with their bodies. It's a fact; it's documented; people saw it. i can't even think about making this up because it's too terrible to even be imagined; it's hard for me to even say it. It's people's families! I can't believe I have to try to convince a fellow Jewish person that it's not a lie, that innocent Jews actually were brutally murdered. It may seem hard to believe, and you refuse to believe the photos, but is it really that hard to believe when it's literally their declared written goal? Slaughter Jews? c'mon What else do you need? why would you choose to believe the messages of a terror organization?

Yes, she said they treated her nicely; she's like 85. I'm so glad she is physically unharmed, and I believe she wisely managed to interact with them (which to me, shows more about her humanity than theirs, since kindapping a 85 years old or breaking into a house of an old lady and holding a grenade up her head (different story of rachel adri) pretty much cancels ones humanity. not to mention shooting elders in the head. I guess some of them were interactable (also, please don't forget that her HUSBAND is still there, which might be a reason for her words). but it doesn't make their crimes against humanity any less terrible, it doesn't bring back 1,400 people who are brutally murdered. they didn't treat nicely the other elders they shot, the women they raped and murdered, the babies they burned or beheaded, and the children that are still held in Gaza. their morals are entiraly diffrenet then ours in ways we cannot comprehend. they justfiy and call to do all those things to jewish people, in all ages, including rape.

Those people also understood really quickly that bragging about all their horrifying acts wouldn't give them the West support that they love, they are not stupid, so they try to minimize damage, and it's working.

As much as I'm not a fan of the Israeli government (before it all happened, I protested against it every week; again, a leftist), and I'm the last one to defend it, but this is still not some version of Russia with fake news and censorship. We are a small country with a mandatory army, where everyone knows someone who knows someone who's been affected, who was there in some way or another, during or after. Our media is still free and diverse. Please believe me; I know what happened an hour's drive from where I live. If the TV news leaves out details, and it does, it's in order to keep us sane because the ideas are too much to handle and are feared to cause massive hysteria, but everyone knows anyway. Sometimes it's even scarier to watch the news reporter knows something but stops themselves from giving the details because it's too terrible to air on TV.

Honestly, there is so much evidence and testimonies and there will be so much more. i hope that even if not now, one day you'll understand the horrors; I don't know what else will make you believe after all that. I understand you are for the weak now, but if we were weak now, we wouldn't be alive. We were weak on October 7th, and we aren't going to be weak again. Gaza could've been free without the terror organization that rules it. That was the intention from the beginning when Israel withdrew completely from Gaza, giving Palestinians autonomy. Once it got controlled by a terror organization, it naturally got complicated and violent. But we can't protect them from their own now; I'm sorry. We'll have to protect our people from being murdered. we have no way of "freeing" anyone without sentencing our own death (casual reminder of the sea of muslim countries around us, that wouln't miss a chance to join our destraction). And it feels like it's comfortable to you as a Jew that doesn't live in Israel to underestimate this need and join your friend by judging from afar, but you aren't in this danger. anyway i hope you won't be beacuse antisemitism is getting worse and worse everyday.

But if you'd be here, and these horrors were at your doorstep, believe me you'd understand the need to defend yourself. that's why i'm so anxiously try to make you understand. Israel is not comitting genocide, i'll say it again and again. it fights a terror organization thet hides behind their civillians, and it would not have done that if this terror organization stopped murdering israelis. we have no interst in killing palestinians just because they are palestinians. none.

this is the propaganda.

and if anyone from our dozens of neighbor muslim countries truly cared about palestinians and not just interested in destroying us and the western values, they would actually help them and not encourage hamas.

This comes from a leftist who, until very recently, believed wholeheartedly in a two-state solution. i don't know what i think now.