#there was not enough - or none at all - evidence to support those claims

[your-local-grinning-cat]

Have you ever killed a man, Che'nya?

First of all, change your pfp all you want, I still know you are cake. But I love you so I will refrain from trying to eat your head anymore because then I wouldn’t be able to be your friend anymore and that would make me sad. 😿

B of all, why the flibbertygibbet did you combine that ask with that picture? Regardless of my upcoming answer, that picture makes me WANT to kill someone.

In conclusion of all, why do people keep asking me that? There is no evidence to support any claims that I have killed anyone. I can say, with a clear conscience, that I have not killed a man, Aether.

[beloveds-embrace]

How about for the dukedome au they find someone taking advantage of their ‘peoples princess’ duchess kindness….

Anger!! Fury!! But none of it would be visible on them, of course. Maybe it’s someone who wants to plant and show themselves as a guide to you, maybe they start by saying your duties in the duchy aren’t managed well or something along those lines but obviously they can and are all too willing to help!! And surely one like you wouldn’t be rude or refuse gentle coaxing from them, right?

Even if you are smart enough to look between the lines.

But why would any of your four men allow anything like that? It’s downright insulting to you and to them.

Maybe the idiot starts the discussion during a council meeting, thinking doing it in public would garner them more support.

But the second they even insinuate that the charity work you do, the the money allocated for it is being misallocated?

John doesn’t even give them the chance to continue before he shuts the entire discussion down.

“Her work speaks for itself.” He says. “Every penny goes where it’s intended. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?”

And of course, they don’t. It doesn’t end there for them, even Simon makes a simple comment about how since they don’t do charity work, they might not be well-versed in how it’s carried out. The tea Kyle brings for them, personally brewed by Johnny, is also just a touch too bitter and too hot yet no one seems to have the same issue. They don’t dare complain because the look Kyle gives them is evil.

Sufficiently cowed, they don’t open their mouth against you ever again.

[quarterdollar]

SEVERELY obsessed with the character insight here. so obsessed that i typed a long-ass post of analysis, in which i support the argument that volo really isn’t a complete sociopath, he’s just a big emotional short-sighted hypocrite.

as we know, volo’s endgame goal is to subjugate arceus and recreate the world from scratch, implicitly so that whatever pain and heartbreak he’s experienced/witnessed no longer exists. this is of course an intentional parallel to cyrus’s desire to create a world without spirit in response to the emotional pain he experienced in his childhood. while we do not have a concrete explanation on what exactly the painful events volo experienced were like we do with cyrus, he talks about them enough that it’s clear that they impacted him significantly. that is to say i think he’s expressing his thoughts and feelings sincerely when he brings the topic up, he isn’t lying or trying to misdirect you in any way in regards to that.

i bring this up because a big portion of cyrus’s character that to this day flies over many fans’ heads is that he is defined by ironies and hypocrisies. he wishes for a world devoid of any emotions specifically because he is dominated by them—he confesses as much during his rant in the distortion world:

cyrus also famously has a crobat on his team, which evolves through high friendship, despite his steadfast belief that spirit—of which friendship is undoubtedly a part—is an ugly, vague, incomplete thing. in addition to this, usum all but explicitly confirms that the journal of a child who befriended a rotom was written by him. so, in conclusion, cyrus has a heart and is easily swayed by good emotions as well as bad.

so now we come to volo’s new dialogues in pokemon masters. i think that they have made it clearer that like cyrus’s emotional actions, his obsessions with history & preserving memories through photographs are meant to be genuine hypocrisy on his part, rather than intentional obfuscation of intent. think about it—a man who’s dominated by curiosity & love for history also claims to want to remake the world so utterly that all of that history is rendered completely destroyed. yet even in the depths of his post-defeat breakdown he still maintains that defining curiosity of his:

and now i ask, what is curiosity, if not an expression of love for the world around you? despite claiming to want to destroy the current world and all evidence of its existence, volo also still wants to know absolutely everything about it, past and present. it’s inherently contradictory. and this brings me to the recurring themes in his pokemas dialogue: how he not only appreciates photographs as a way to create a tangible record of history, but as a way “to capture and isolate the best moments”. those happy moments worth holding onto and looking back on in the future. see also the photograph of him and togepi in the original game, never commented on, taken for no apparent reason other than the fun of it—or more specifically, as these dialogues suggest, to isolate that moment in time in a tangible form. that is an act of love and of sentiment.

so, what’s the conclusion i’m getting at here? well, because of the ambiguity of his character in the base game. i’ve seen that volo is often interpreted as being a manipulative sociopath motivated solely by his desire for control. everything he does before the postgame is entirely a lie, absolutely none of the facade was genuine, etc. and don’t get me wrong, he is a control freak with a god complex! he does railroad the player into doing what he wants! he is not honest and he is not a good person. but, i think there is very much an intentional irony to him the same way there is with cyrus, in that his road to hell was paved with good intentions. he has the capacity for genuine kindness and i personally believe that his descent into villainy was spurred entirely by an earnest appreciation for the world around him and a desire to eliminate suffering.

as a closing statement, i want to bring up a quote from volo himself regarding calaba of the pearl clan:

i don’t think it’s that volo feels nothing for his pokemon or for the people around him—rather, i think he simply loves the world very, very much.

[anamericangirl]

The Israel vs Palestine conflict is such a long-spanning and insanely complicated thing that there's literally college courses that revolve entirely around the subject. There's people who have been studying it for 70 years who still barely understand it. There's historians with PhDs trying to piece together anything they can that could help them figure out a means to potentially instill a ceasefire or even peace altogether who have failed time and time again for decades if not literally centuries.

And yet people with 7 years of Twitter experience think they know enough about the conflict to pick a side and vouch for the destruction of the opposite side.

The amount of times I want to say "Shut the fuck up you fucking stupid idiot, you know literally nothing about this conflict, you have no idea what's actually happening, I bet if I asked your opinion on the Two State Solution you wouldn't even have a fucking clue what that means" on a daily basis reading these actual braindead moronic 16yo Twitter users' dipshit opinions who keep citing celebrity blue-checkmark Twitter posts as evidence to vouch for the eradication of a middle eastern country they don't even know a fucking thing about is STAGGERING.

I'm in my mid-30s and I stay out of politics on all sides because I am not qualified in any way to form opinions on matters so serious that they may or may not result in people being killed, and it fucking pisses me off that people half my fucking age are telling me that I should support Palestine or Ukraine or vouch for the genocide of Israel or join ANTIFA or BLM or put #FreeTaiwan in my fucking twitter bio.

You actual braindead stupid fucking morons have absolutely no clue what any of these conflicts actually mean, none of them have anything to do with you, go back to bitching about girls in video games being too sexy and shut the fuck up about actual real conflicts because you're a fucking moron if you think you know anything about what you claim you're in support of.

I swear to God if I see one more Twitch player playing Fortnite ranting about the Israel Palestine conflict and telling people that donations during their stream go to Palestine, Ukraine, Taiwan and LGBT activism centers, I'm gonna go feral. It is so unbelievably belittling to people who have spent their entire life researching and educating themselves on these conflicts to be able to build an understanding, that a dipshit who collects loli bestiality porn and plays Metroid Prime on Twitch thinks he's on the same level as those researchers.

PREACH! It's so fucking annoying how everyone suddenly thinks they're experts on this conflict when before October 7, 2023 none of them even knew it was happening and they're just cringey ass brain dead parrots saying what they're supposed to say without doing their due diligence to at least get somewhat informed on the matter before boycotting Starbucks, using hashtags and swapping the Ukraine flag for the Palestine flag and thinking they're doing something.

What really gets to me is when influencers I follow, like apolitical ones who are grown ass adults, jump on the bandwagon and are actually orchestrating fundraisers for Palestine and it makes me so fucking mad because they absolutely have no excuse for that. I just want to scream at them "hey! you know literally every cent you raise is going straight to Hamas and no Palestinian will ever get a single penny!! It's all going to buy weapons to kill Israeli civilians. YOU ARE LITERALLY FUNDING GENOCIDE AND TERRORISM YOU ABSOLUTE BUFFOON!!!" I don't have a shred of respect for people who talk about all the terrible things happening in Gaza but don't have a single word to say about the atrocities Hamas commits daily in Israel. Not one of them has condemned or even mentioned the attack on October 7th. Fuck every single one of them.

[uboat53]

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

INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

HOW TO ADDRESS IT

Given that, how can we approach this tactic?

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

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

AN EXAMPLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

RESULTS

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

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

You Learn Something New Everyday... I Guess

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Reader

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: none really, just Matt being a little self loathing

Genre: fluff? very very minor angst

Summary: You have a theory about your local vigilante that your friends think is silly (spoiler alert; it's literally not)

A/N: Because I refuse to believe no one has ever seen Daredevil and considered the fact that he is NEVER LOOKIN AT SHIT

***

You spin the straw in your drink while half listening to Foggy and Karen talk to each other about something you lost track of a little while ago. Something about a case last you were paying attention but they tend to spend so much time talking about work even on nights out you can't always keep track of it all.

"So what're your thoughts about the whole thing?" Karen asks as you stare into your glass.

"Y/n!" Foggy nudges you and your eyes snap up.

"Yes! Sorry. What was the question?" You ask.

"Daredevil, what're your thoughts on him?" Foggy nods towards the TV in the bar that's apparently playing a news story about Daredevil's latest escapades.

"He doesn't see." You shrug looking back at your drink.

"Doesn't see what?" Foggy frowns.

"Sorry, that's not quite what I meant to say; I meant he doesn't use his eyes to fight." You say looking up again.

"Wait what?" Karen shakes her head.

"I dunno, the eyes in his mask look opaque but also if you've ever watched him fight he doesn't really... look at things. The whole time his head does this twitchy thing like when dogs hear a sound but can't see it, as if he's trying to hear everything better." You explain.

"Are you- suggesting that Daredevil... is blind?" Karen asks.

"Well it's hard to know for sure if he's completely blind or not but I'd bet that he's probably at least visually impaired."

"You think a vigilante is visually impaired." Foggy scoffs.

"I know it sounds absurd but I mean before the fancy suit and the moniker he was the man in black, he wore like a black cloth that covered his eyes he's obviously not using them." You shrug.

"Maybe he could see through it." He says.

"No- for it to be sheer enough for him to see through it, especially at night it would also probably be sheer enough to see him through, at least in the light, and he's got like an airtight lock on his secret identity. Even before he had the suit." You shake your head. "Maybe that's why." You add with a hum.

"Maybe what's why?"

"If he's visually impaired as I suspect he is, nobody would believe he's Daredevil! I mean he takes on gangs singlehandedly in the shadows of Hell's Kitchen all the time there's no way you'd expect a blind man to be doing all that. It would make the perfect cover story, plus if he gets injured I mean- he's blind nobody would question him saying he bumped into something or fell or even someone threw something and he didn't know. It's kind of genius."

"Look who decided to join us!" Karen smiles excitedly and you turn to see Matt standing between you and Foggy.

"About time loser! Why are all of you so obsessed with work?" You scoff.

"Hi guys." He chuckles.

"Hey man, you'll never guess what theory y/n here has cooked up." Foggy says.

"Hey! Don't talk about me like I'm some tin foil hat looney alright." You point a finger at him.

"Even you admitted how absurd it sounded!" Foggy says.

"Sure but I provided ample evidence to support my claim it's not some baseless conclusion I'm jumping to!" You say.

"It's circumstantial at best." Foggy says.

"Well this isn't a court of law Nelson we're at Josie's and I don't have to be an expert witness to draw conclusions here I think I've more than proved my stance."

"Not beyond a shadow of a doubt!"

"Excuse me we aren't running a criminal trial there's no reason I should have to work to those standards I think- what's the other thing y'all use? A preponderance of the evidence, I think that's more than sufficient-"

"Is one of you going to tell me what this is about or are you going to keep throwing around legal jargon in a bar?" Matt cuts your arguing with Foggy short with a question while Karen gets up to grab him a seat at your table. "Honestly y/n you spend too much time with us, when did you pick up all those phrases anyway?" Matt muses.

"I dunno Foggy likes to throw them at me and I like to be able to fight back." You shrug.

"Y/n thinks Daredevil is blind." Karen tells Matt, returning to her own chair.

"You think Daredevil... like the vigilante is blind?" Matt chuckles.

"See what I mean?" Foggy gestures.

"I don't know that I'd go with totally blind but I think he's visually impaired at least." You nod.

"How do you figure that?" Matt asks.

"Something about his helmet." Foggy says.

"Well that one I can't verify but before he had the devil suit, when he was just the man in black he was basically fighting with a blindfold on. Why would someone with perfect vision handicap themselves that way? Especially taking on criminals severely outnumbered every time it doesn't make sense. Oh and he does this head twitch thing like he's seeing with his ears and not his eyes. Like an animal when locating a sound they turn their ears to it first. It's the perfect cover honestly." You shrug. "Kinda like that kid in Queens."

"What kid?" Foggy asks.

"Another masked hero type, red and blue suit, they call him Spiderman over there." You pull out your phone to find one of the several viral videos of Spiderman you've seen. "To clarify, I don't think he's also blind or anything like Daredevil but I'm pretty sure he's a teenager." You say once the video ends.

"You think that's a child?!" Foggy looks at you incredulously.

"I mean I've seen a few of these clips of him, and between his build and his voice, because he talks in some of these, and his movements- there's almost no way that's an adult, but he can stop a bus with his bare hands so no one is looking at him and assuming a high schooler is doing that. I just happen to know a little too much about anatomy and physiology and he looks like a teenager. Again, another perfect cover, the least likely person."

"So- you watched that guy, do that, and your first thought was 'he can't buy alcohol yet'. Seriously?" Foggy asks.

"Well no actually I didn't think much of it at first but after a few clips, I started to wonder. I mean it's just a guess since his suit covers him from head to toe but I'm pretty confident in it." You shrug.

"You're insane. For this and the Daredevil thing." Karen nods.

"Excuse me for daring to consider all options." You say dramatically and Matt chuckles beside you but doesn't offer much on the subject. From there your conversation pivots topics and you all spend another hour or two talking and drinking before eventually calling it a night and going your separate ways home.

~*~*~

"Y/n." The voice startles you as you walk into your apartment and you let out a scream, clutching your chest as you take in the intruder by your balcony.

"Okay. I know you're a vigilante so you work outside of the law kind of by default here but you better have a damn good reason for breaking into my apartment, as in someone better be on their way to kill me right now or I am going to be so pissed off." You say after a moment because why the hell is Daredevil standing in your apartment?!

"No one is coming to kill you." He shakes his head.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" You cross your arms.

"I wanna know how you figured it out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You figured out that I'm- I don't see when I fight. How did you know that?"

"Better question, how did you know that I knew that? Although, I didn't know for sure until you just said that, but how did you know I thought that?" You ask. Daredevil pulls off his helmet and you gasp. "Matt?"

"Don't act coy okay, we both know you knew it was me already." He rolls his eyes.

"No I didn't! If I knew it was you, or thought it was you, I would've said so the other night when we were talking about the whole thing. You know I've never been one to shy away from sharing what I'm thinking- oh my GOD you're daredevil!?" You shake your head as the information sinks in. You don't know which piece of this you're more interested in, the fact that you were right about Daredevil being blind or the fact that he's coincidentally also part of your friend group.

"Oh come on, you spent twenty minutes arguing that you think Daredevil is visually impaired are you telling me it didn't cross your mind for even a moment that it was me?"

"Okay first of all Matthew, you're not the only blind guy this side of the Hudson you know. Going from Daredevil may be visually impaired to Daredevil is the only blind man I know personally is quite a jump considering it was just a theory. Not to mention fair skinned man average height, average build, describes so many men in Hell's Kitchen not to mention the rest of New York. Hell, Tony Stark fits that description and if he wasn't already such an obnoxiously public superhero on the other side of the city I'd believe someone suspecting him of being Daredevil too."

"So you never once thought it was me?" Matt scoffs.

"I mean it crossed my mind once or twice but it's not like I could know for sure. That helmet covers like 80% of your face and you work almost exclusively at night it's not exactly cut and dry to ID you. I mean you've already had a copycat come around once." You explain.

"Why didn't you ask?"

"What?"

"At the bar, the other night, if you thought it was me why didn't you ask me?" He asks.

"Well if I asked and you told me the truth anyone at the bar could've heard and, I know Daredevil has quite a few enemies. If you lied to protect your identity because we were in public well, we both know I expect honesty from you so why risk that rift? And then of course there's the possibility that I was wrong in which case all of you would look at me like I'd grown three heads- not that the whole 'Daredevil is blind' theory didn't already have them looking at me funny but that's besides the point. There was no good outcome for me asking in public. Plus there wasn't even a reason for me to ask you really, I didn't know enough to say you, Matt, and any distinct similarities with you, Daredevil besides the way you react to sound." You shrug.

"What?"

"It was watching you- as Matthew- react to sound that made me piece together the Daredevil thing." You say.

"And you still didn't think it was me?"

"Again you aren't the only blind man around here, I figured reacting to sound that way was just a common trait for people who have to rely on senses other than sight."

"You got everything all figured out don't ya." He shakes his head.

"Well come on I am kind of known for it." You smile and Matt chuckles in spite of himself.

"You're taking this better than I expected. You're not mad."

"That you're a vigilante in your free time? Of course I'm not mad. I've always encouraged you and Foggy and Karen to have lives outside of your job and while your choice is a little... unorthodox, I think everyone should have a hobby. If this is yours I'm all for it. Although it does feel kind of work adjacent since you're like a lawyer but I'll let it go." You muse.

"Foggy and Karen had... very different reactions to the news."

"Wait- Karen and Foggy know?" 

"Yeah- yeah they know. But, I had to tell them because of extenuating circumstances. You, you just guessed it."

"I mean technically it was more of an inference than a guess, plus I didn't even guess that it was you just that the red devil didn't need his eyes for a fight." You shrug. "I can't believe they knew and had me feeling crazy at the table." You chuckle.

"It wasn't their secret to tell. I had to be the one to let you know, they were just keeping their promises-"

"I know. I'm not even mad about it. It's just funny." You shrug.

"You are being very chill about all of this." Matt says.

"So are you like- not fully blind? Because I was operating with the idea that Daredevil didn't have 20/20 vision or anything but like I definitely wasn't thinking total blindness which- I thought you had. So is that not the case? Like are you not fully blind?"

"I am. Kind of. It's hard to explain." He grimaces.

"Well have a seat and we'll discuss i- actually, is your suit clean or did you just get done vigilanteing because I do not want blood or mud on my couch so you'll have to clean up, I can go find one of your accidentally left here hoodies if you need to change." You offer.

"Tonight's battles were pretty clean I think I'm good." He says with his hands up.

"To be on the safe side sit at one of the kitchen stools."

"Yes ma'am." He nods and walks over to a chair to have a seat.

"So- are you totally blind? Yes or no?"

"Technically yes."

"Technically?"

"The entire world looks like it's engulfed in flames. I can see silhouettes sometimes but they're are angry reds and oranges. They do not paint a picture at all really." He explains.

"Interesting." You hum.

"But, I've learned to see in other ways. Sound is a big one. I can even hear people's hearts beating."

"You can hear hearts beating?!" You blink at him.

"Yes." He nods once.

"Can you hear mine?!"

"Yes." Another nod.

"Woah. What do you use that skill for?"

"Number of enemies in a fight, counting the people in a room before I enter it, seeing if someone's lying to me." Matt lists off.

"Have you ever used it on me?"

"You don't lie to me." He shrugs.

"So that's a yes."

"It's a no. Not intentionally anyway. You've never given me a reason to even suspect you of lying." He says.

"So how else do you see?"

"Smell kind of, touch when I can. Sound is the main one though."

"You're like a bat." You giggle.

"Ha ha." His laugh is dripping with sarcasm that only makes you want to giggle more.

"Wait so- if you can do all this shit I take it you don't really need your cane then, do you?"

"Not- not really no."

"It's part of the cover then- isn't it?"

"Correct." He says.

"Hm, I assume this is also why you don't date, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's just that I imagine this Daredevil thing takes quite a bit of time, between that and the job that you never take a break from you basically have negative 2 hours of free time both of which you spend with either me or your coworkers. Plus I'm sure this would be one hell of a secret to try and keep from a significant other because it's not like you can tell them on the first date right? You never know who's working with your opps so you need to vet people so having to hide it until you know it's safe, which would probably totally suck." You rattle off your explanation.

"Okay first of all I date." He scoffs.

"You don't. You hook up with people sure but you do not date.  I was honestly starting to think you were some level of aromantic and I guess you still could be and that's totally fine by the way but not having time because you're a part-time vigilante makes sense." You shrug.

"I'm not aromantic and me 'not dating' isn't because of the Daredevil thing."

"Of course it's not." You say.

"You're being sarcastic aren't you?"

"A little, but hey you don't have to explain your lack of romantic life to me. I was just being nosy."

"What about you? You don't date either." Matt crosses his arms.

"I do date actually and the reason you don't know that is because you never ask but if you don't wanna talk about your not dating that's fine." You say.

"I have my reasons."

"I'm sure you do Matty, you're entitled to them. No need to defend yourself to me."

"It's not related to being Daredevil." He says.

"Do you want to tell me about it or no? If so, great let's talk about it, if not I've had a long day and I'm a little tired babes. You can go back out the window I assume you came through or you can use the door-"

"You." He cuts off your last sentence with a single word.

"Excuse me?" You frown at him.

"You are the reason I don't date."

"What did I do?" You blink incredulously.

"Nothing. I have feelings for you so I don't date other people. I'm Daredevil so I don't tell you that I have feelings for you because it's dangerous, because it was a secret I couldn't tell you, because I don't get the girl."

"You don't get the girl? Do you think you're the antihero in a movie? It doesn't work that way Matt. If you liked me the proper course of action is to say something to me don't make it into some big dramatic story arc that's doomed from the start, everything with you is self sabotage mission. Do you really believe yourself that undeserving of good things, of things you want, of happiness?" This isn't the first time Matt has done something in direct conflict of his happiness so you're not surprised, but since the thing in question regards you, you can't help but feel exasperated.

"I-" Matt trails off with a frown that makes his entire face squeeze. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"Why tell me this now? If you 'don't get the girl' if you can't have a relationship because it's 'too dangerous' or whatever silly reason you have for hiding it in the first place. Why are you telling me now?"

"You asked and I'm tired of hiding it I guess."

"Tired of hiding it. You didn't have to hide it."

"I didn't- do you honestly think that if I told you like six months ago, that I'm Daredevil and that Hell's Kitchen's notorious vigilante has feelings for you, do you think you would've reacted well?"

"I like to think I would, yes, but who cares that's not what happened. You told me tonight so, now what?"

"Now what?" He blinks at you.

"You're Daredevil and you have feelings for me so what happens now? Do we- continue as we've been? Do we see where this goes? What do you want now?"

"See where this goes? You'd want that? With me? To see where it goes?" He asks, he looks so lost that you can't help but sigh.

"Yes that's why I asked. Is it so unbelievable that I could also have feelings for you?" You ask softly.

"Well you didn't exactly say that-"

"I'm saying now. So- ask me on a date, or go home."

"Ask you on a date?"

"That's what I said Matthew. For a fancy defense attorney who graduated from Columbia Law, you are lost in an extremely too easy to follow conversation."

"None of this has been easy to follow okay? I never thought I'd get the chance to-" Matt trails off and shakes his head remembering your instructions. "Would you like to go to dinner with me tomorrow night?"

"Yes I would. Eight o'clock. Don't be late." You say with a smile.

"Eight o'clock. I'll be here. See you tomorrow." Matt nods with an adorable grin on his face.

"Goodnight Matthew." You hum.

"Goodnight." He says putting his helmet back on and climbing out your window.

"He could've used the door." You mutter to yourself shaking your head. You still can't totally believe you were right about Daredevil being blind but more shocking is that it wasn't even the biggest reveal you got this evening. Life really does come at you fast.

***

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Richard Dawkins

Published: Jan 3, 2025

In a recent interview, I imprudently said I was a “cultural Christian”, and I haven’t heard the end of it. I find myself unwillingly counted in the Great Christian Revival (translation, “We don’t actually believe that stuff ourselves, but we like it when other people do”) which is the subject of so much wishful thinking these days.

Of course I’m a cultural Christian. Always have been. Packed off to Anglican schools, I was confirmed when too young to know better. Large chunks of the English Hymnal were imprinted in my long-term memory, and duly pop out when I’m fooling around with my electronic clarinet. I know my way around the Bible, at least well enough to take an allusion when I encounter one. I love mediaeval cathedrals. I’ve never met a parson, of either sex, that I didn’t like. But none of that undermines my conviction that what they believe about the nature of reality is nonsense.

An irritating strain of the Great Christian Revival is the myth of the God-shaped hole. “When men choose not to believe in God, they then believe in anything.” The famous aphorism, which GK Chesterton never uttered, is enjoying one of its periodic dustings-off, following the vogue for women with penises and men who give birth. Whenever I sound off against this modish absurdity, I’m met with a barrage of accusations. “Frankly Richard, you did this. You defended woke BS for years” (of course I didn’t: quite the opposite but, for this believer in the God-shaped hole, discouraging theism is indistinguishable from encouraging woke BS). “But don’t you see, you helped to bring this about.” “What do you expect, if people give up Christianity?” Then there’s this, from a Daily Telegraph opinion column:

“New Atheists allowed the trans cult to begin. . . By discrediting religion, Dawkins and his acolytes created a void that a new, dangerous ideology filled.”

And here’s Debbie Hayton on The Spectator’s website, writing (mostly reasonably) about a recent episode in which Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker and I resigned from the Honorary Board of an atheist organisation that’s been taken over by the trans cult:

“An atheistic organisation worth its salt would oppose these movements in the same way that it opposes established religion, so Coyne, Pinker and Dawkins are right to walk away. But maybe the key lesson from this sorry debacle is that it is not so easy to expunge the need for religion from human beings than atheists might like to think. If there is a God-shaped hole in us then without established religion, something else is likely to take its place.”

And from the comments following her article:

“Why is Richard Dawkins surprised that people who reject Christianity have rejected its moral values also? Those values have stood us in good stead for two thousand years.”

Christianity provides reasons for rejecting trans nonsense. Therefore Christianity provides the only reasons for rejecting trans nonsense. Some syllogism!

The scientific reasons are more cogent by far. They are based on evidence rather than scripture, authority, tradition, revelation or faith. I’ve spelled them out elsewhere, and will do so again but not here. I’ll just support the claim that the trans-sexual bandwagon is a form of quasi-religious cult, based on faith, not evidence. It denies scientific reality. Like all religions it is philosophically dualistic: where conventional religions posit a “soul” separate from the body, the trans preacher posits some kind of hovering inner self, capable of being “born in the wrong body”. The cult mercilessly persecutes heretics. It abuses vulnerable children too young to know their own mind, encouraging them to doubt the reality of their own bodies, in extreme cases inflicting on those bodies irreversible hormonal, and even surgical damage.

Far from playing into the hands of these preachers, my colleagues and I are opposed to all faith creeds, all non-evidence-based belief systems. This includes traditional supernatural religions, but it also includes younger faith systems such as that in which a man literally becomes a woman (or a woman a man) by fiat. Or by legal decision (you could as well legally repeal the laws of thermodynamics so we can have perpetual motion machines).

How patronising, how insulting to imply that, if deprived of a religion, humanity must ignominiously turn to something equally irrational. If I am to profess a faith here, it is a faith in human intelligence strong enough to doubt the existence of a God-shaped hole.

[ Via: https://archive.today/Mh8cV ]

==

[wonder-worker]

why did the wydevilles and richard III hate each other that much during edward iv's reign?

Hi! To get straight to the point – there is no evidence of hostility between the Woodvilles and Richard of Gloucester before 1483. On the contrary, their relationship during Edward IV’s reign seems to have been cordial and mutually cooperative. Elizabeth made Richard steward of some of her estates in 1469, increased his fee in 1473, and seems to have backed him against Clarence over the Warwick inheritance. Both of them clearly benefitted by Clarence’s downfall. Richard supported her sites of patronage, like Queen’s College, and he included her among those to ask prayers for when founding two new colleges at his northern homes, Bernard Castle and Middleham, in 1478 (we shouldn't see this as a mere formality, as his own mother was not included in the list). He also seems to have been on amicable terms with Elizabeth’s family: in 1481 her eldest son and her brother Anthony served under his command in Scotland; he raised Edward Woodville to a banneret; and in late March 1483 (just a few weeks before Edward IV’s death), Anthony had trusted Richard enough to nominate him as an arbiter in one of his disputes. Richard was also close to Katherine Haute, wife of Elizabeth’s cousin James, giving her a generous annuity from his estates. Historians have theorized she was his mistress as she shared the same name as his illegitimate daughter Katherine, but whatever the specifics of their dynamic, it does indicate closeness.  Also, as Rosemary Horrox points out in Richard III: A Study of Service, “the local interests of the duke and the Woodvilles coincided at several points, notably in Wales and East Anglia but also (briefly) in Richmondshire, where the queen’s mother, the dowager duchess of Bedford, held one third of the honour until 1472. Had the two interests been hostile, one would expect some evidence of local friction, but there is none”. Rather, Elizabeth and Richard engaged in independent land transactions with each other – for example, she bought the highly lucrative FitzLewis manors from him.

So while we don't know what they personally felt about each other, we do know that 1) there is no evidence at all of hostility on either side, and 2) the evidence we do have is one of mutual cooperation.

This is important to keep in mind when talking about the events in 1483. Most modern historians (Charles Ross, AJ Pollard, etc) have blamed Edward IV for his son’s deposition by claiming that he failed to reconcile the Woodvilles and Richard during his life, paving the way for tensions to erupt between their so-called factions after his death. Twisted leap of logic aside, this is ridiculously unfair: Edward cannot be blamed for “failing” to remedy tensions which literally did not exist during his life. He was not a prophet; he could not control events from the grave. There is no need to blame him for Richard’s shocking betrayal that we already know contemporaries were not able to foresee. During his life, Edward would have had every reason to believe that his wife and his brother would work together during his son’s minority. And he had good reason to believe this: while conflict between the Woodvilles and Richard did erupt in 1483, it was not inevitable and should not be viewed as such. Rather, in the aftermath of Edward’s death, Elizabeth Woodville seems to have expected to work with Richard. She took the king’s place in listening to his council, and Croyland reports that Richard was sending her deferring letters “[promising] to come and offer submission, fealty, and all that was due from him to his lord and king, Edward V, the first-born son of his brother the dead king and the queen”. Croyland also writes that the new king, Edward V, sent Anthony Woodville and Richard Gray, to “submit the conduct of everything to the will and discretion of his uncle the Duke of Gloucester”. We know that Edward V was planning on having an immediate coronation thanks to a letter he wrote to the burgesses of King’s Lynn, and according to Mancini, who quotes the young king, “as for the government of the kingdom, he had complete confidence in the peers of the realm and the queen [Elizabeth].” Considering what Croyland wrote above, the “peers of the realm” would have surely included his uncle Richard. Indeed, Anthony and Richard Gray trusted Richard enough to walk blindly into a trap; it’s difficult to understand how this was possible or why they weren’t better prepared if they truly disliked Richard (or, for that matter, if they had tried to exclude him from power). It’s possible - imo, very likely - that the Woodvilles would have been the most influential and dominant after Edward V’s coronation; that does seem to have been the view of contemporaries. But since the coronation never took place, and since Elizabeth and her family clearly wanted and expected to work with the council and peers of the realm – including (arguably especially) Richard – it’s not possible to read them as anything other than cooperative.  At the very least, based on what we know right now.

I don’t want this post to get too speculatory, because it’s not like we have video recordings of 1483 to know exactly what went down, but my basic point is that going by the information we have, it was entirely plausible for Richard and “the Queen’s kin” (which is what "the Woodvilles" were actually known as to contemporaries, both administratively and in chronicles) to work together. They had done so during Edward IV’s life, and the impression I get is that Eizabeth at least seems to have expected it to continue after his death. Presumably, Anthony and Richard Gray did as well.

I think there are two reasons most chroniclers and historians are so willing to believe the Woodvilles and Richard were "rivals":

One is hindsight: their explosive conflict in 1483 is retrospectively read backwards and applied to Edward IV’s reign as a whole despite the abundance of evidence (see: Anthony trusting Richard to arbitrate a dispute mere weeks earlier) that proves otherwise.

Historically speaking, however, the idea of a rivalry primarily stems from Ricardian propaganda that sought to vilify Elizabeth Woodville, reviving and doubling down on Warwick's earlier propaganda against her. She was framed as a disruptive queen and transgressive woman with an “ignoble” social-climbing family who dominated the government and "controlled" the king. His propaganda at that time also aimed to cast "the Woodvilles as the aggressors and [Richard] as the victim of circumstance", as Horrox has pointed out. Hence why you have Mancini claiming that Richard and Elizabeth hated each other and that her "jealousy" kept him out of court, or why Thomas More claimed that “the Queene and the Lordes of her bloode whiche highlye maligned the kynges kinred (as women commonly not of malice but of nature hate them whom their husbands love)’. This, as we should know by now, is nonsense. The conflict between Richard and the Woodvilles (most probably) originated in 1483 because of the existence of an unexpected minority and because of his actions against them, not by non-existent simmering tensions during Edward IV's reign.

Hope this helps!

*Thomas Gray Marquis of Dorset's alleged boast that "we are so important that even without the king's uncle we can make and enforce these decisions", as quoted by Mancini, is often taken as proof that the Woodvilles wanted ultimate dominance during Edward V's minority. However, there are ... a great many problems with this interpretation. One, we don't know if Dorset actually said something like this: after all, Croyland never claims any such thing in his own chronicle. Additionally, while it was (and is) popularly assumed that Elizabeth and Dorset wished to exclude Richard because they started the council without him, this makes no sense in context: Anthony Woodville, Richard Gray and the young King himself were also not present at that time. Does it make any sense at all to assume that the council was insulting these three figures (again, including the actual King) by convening before they arrived in London? Then why is it automatically assumed that it was meant to be an insult to Richard? Why are more pragmatic reasons never considered? After all, there was a 20+ day gap between Edward IV's death and Richard's arrival in London - governance of the entire country couldn't exactly be put on pause until then. Long story short, it's possible Mancini could misunderstood Dorset's statement/intent or - more likely - that he was unknowingly reflecting Ricardian propaganda specifically aimed to present Dorset in a bad light (as an aggressor who tried to exclude Richard, with Richard merely claiming his "rightful" place). And either way, even if he did say something along those lines, Dorset was not the senior or most influential member of the family: that was Elizabeth Woodville and his uncle Anthony. So Dorset's words - if he actually said something like that - can hardly be taken as evidence that his entire family felt the same, especially since Anthony & Dorset's own brother Richard Gray clearly went to dine with Richard in peace. Especially since we know Thomas obeyed his mother: he went with her into sanctuary, and he apparently tried to return to England from exile as she asked him to after she made a deal with Richard.

**The Woodvilles and Hastings do seem to have been at odds. This didn't stop them from working together during Edward's reign (we have plenty examples of them cooperating, there is no evidence of a divide between them in Edward IV's charters as there was for the Woodvilles & Nevilles in the 1460s, Hastings praised Elizabeth in 1480 and clearly recognized her superior influence with Edward IV, etc), but - unlike the case with Richard - there is genuine evidence of hostility between them. We don't know if this would have mattered as much if Edward V was an adult, or if he'd already been present at London at the time of Edward IV's death. But either way, we shouldn't exaggerate this or act as though it meant Edward V was doomed. It was very normal for different parties/families to have conflicts during minorities; it had happened to pretty much all minor kings prior to 1483, it had never stopped them from working together before, and it sure as hell had never led to usurpation. Moreover, if the Woodvilles and Richard had been able to work together, animosity between the Woodvilles and Hastings would not have mattered. There are indications that cooperation between them was entirely possible: Horrox has observed that the commissions agreed upon by the first council after Edward's death tried to balance out their interests. Lastly, we ... probably shouldn't overexaggerate Hastings' position after Edward IV's death, imo. He was very important and influential, yes, but he was also not a member of the immediate royal family; it's a pretty massive stretch to automatically assume he would have been as relevant as Elizabeth, the Woodvilles, or Richard during Edward V's minority. This can be supported by evidence: after Edward IV's death, his council gathered around Elizabeth, not Hastings; Richard sent messages promising to arrive and swear fealty to her, not Hastings; the final authority when it came to the young king rested with her, not Hastings. Moreover, once Richard and Buckingham came to power, Croyland explicitly states that Hastings wanted to "serve" them and "earn their favor". In other words, he was not leading the council himself. His reaction to Richard & Buckingham and Elizabeth & the Woodvilles may have been the opposite, but either way, the impression I get of Hastings' position in both scenarios seems to have been exactly the same: he was important and influential, but he was not the one in charge. Of course, this is just my personal interpretation - my main point is simply that while the Woodvilles and Hastings may have had problems, at the very least, there is no reason at all to assume this would have affected Edward V's position as King. His deposition was entirely unexpected, and very much the result of Richard's own unprecedented decisions.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

The trick, by the way, of lying to a hard drive about what capacity it's supposed to be, to use it into the dirt, isn't just keeping the disk check from stopping you...

It's recognizing WHY the disk check wants to stop you when a drive has too many bad sectors...

Because the drive is failing. You can lose and corrupt files very easily. You can fry the whole drive. any writing and rewriting is slowly eating your disk.

So you only use it to store simple things that can easily be recovered if the file is corrupted like word files, and you save multiple copies of those files across the disk, and preferably have them all automatically back up, such as with partitioning.

And in my defense I was doing it because I needed a computer to do school work on at home. School work that only had to last to be handed in, and a text journal [well to be fair the failing hard drive might have been less corruptible memory than my own brain at various points]. Oh and everything was small enough to be backed up on floppies too.

I also used to do things like encounter text files with extensions my computer didn't know how to open, or that were corrupted, open them with program compiling software like the compilers used for school projects, and then copy out and reformat the text in a free word program that I -did- have access to. Usually notepad. I'd use find and replace functions to edit out a lot of the code that ended up in with the text when I could.

I would just hop word files between computer systems that didn't have any words programs in common this way like complex formats made by programs the school paid for, and that I didn't have at home, just didn't matter, and I never explained any of this to my teachers, some of whom were very convinced we would not be capable of working on some things at home.

Most often I ended up using it to open fic I had saved from a system that had a fancier word program that I didn't have on the computer I put together at home.

I used the get random motherboards from people that had been laying around for a year or longer that I had to look up the pin configuration for, or figure it out through trial and error and educated guesses.

Kids these days just aren't getting up to that kind of nonsense.

It's all ipads and smart phones.

Also maybe worth noting that my father taught me none of this. He worked on military air craft and made his own circuitboards as a hobby, and was a well paid system's administrator, but I had to teach myself all these things from scratch after leaving home with whatever computer access I could gain through the school and second hand parts.

Imagine what I could have done with guidance and support.

All the other people my age interested in these things were 'boys' and I was a 'girl' [tans masc here, but never mind that] and so when I did things like express an interest in using what I knew of programing to try getting into something like white-hat hacking, guys would make comments on how I "wanted to be a code kitten, hur hur" [someone who copies and pasts code without understanding it]... And they'd say things like "figuring out a motherboard's pin configuration without the original manual is impossible" and take my claims to the contrary as evidence I must be lying.

Imagine though if I had peers I could bounce things off of.

[cacturne]

helloooo how about 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 23 and 25 for Heron >:)

heron ATTACK‼️‼️ this got long so theres a readmore 👍

2. are they skilled in The Grand Game?

Yes and no, Heron took very well to the instructions given to her at the Winter Palace (never reveal any of your intentions, dance around a topic as much as possible, be polite and butter people up) as, to be honest, it was just an extension of what she was already doing to be a good Inquisitor (never reveal you are still the person from your past to some extent, dance around being or not being The Herald as much as possible to keep the religious folk happy, be polite and treat everyone with utmost respect) not to mention the starting representation she has as Qunari makes her work extra hard for the respect of others, so the social aspect of it she does have down. You could safely bring her to important Orlesian meetings and parties, in that regard (a godsend for Josephine LMAO)

The actual practical stuff she is not very good at, though. Planning things to take down a competitor, sabotaging the party, Heron could not do that (or do it and get away with it) without direct instructions from others. She doesn’t know enough about the inner workings of Orlais to feel confident in being able to do something herself without being caught or leaving a trail of evidence. Use her as a little trophy Inquisitor but don’t make her play the Game part of The Grand Game!!!

4. attitude towards Andrastianism?

Honestly, indifference? Heron knows about it well, The Free Marches is as full of it as almost any other place in Thedas, but she personally never grew up with it. After fleeing the Qun her parents did not really want anything to do with any religion anymore personally, and Heron adopted this attitude in turn.

Though there is no disrespect involved! A few other Tal-Vashoth in the Valo-Kas followed Andrastianism and she always treated them and any religious needs they had like the needs of any other.

After the events of Inquisition she feels a little weirdly guilty towards Andrastianism for kind of using it to improve the Inquisition’s reputation, but it’s only a bit of a nagging feeling that only comes up when the topic itself is brought up.

5. attitude towards the Chantry?

UNCOMFORTABLE. On the very surface they seemed fine enough but the older she got and the lower she dug it just became so much worse over time. Their attitude about mages, the way they “deal” with them, the way they seem to think that any other way of thinking is a personal attack on them, the way they want to “cover all of Thedas in the Chant of Light” ETC. itttt sucks!!! And Heron kind of hates it!!!

The Inquisition is her own hell dimension in that regard because Chantry support is almost necessary for them to be trusted in any capacity especially early on and Heron does not like having them be her biggest supporter one bit, even if it is their best course of action. She will still yield to it of course, but she will grit her teeth through it and try to distance herself and the Inquisition from them as much as possible.

Of course none of this is made any better by being named The Herald of Andraste, without having any choice in the matter, and basically having everyone in her circle begging to just play along with being put on an impossibly high pedestal in front of the institution who thinks your entire existence is a danger. “What a week, huh?” “Inquisitor, it’s wednesday.”

6. attitude towards the Qun?

Heron thinks the Qun can do a lot of good to those who wish to follow it, but does not want anything to do with it herself. She heard many things from her parents personal experiences over the years which only really solidified this view. It’s not as inherently evil as almost everyone around her claims, but just as the notion of forcefully spreading the Chant of Light makes her uncomfortable so does forcefully spreading the Qun.

Overall though it’s met with the same indifference as Andrastianism. She doesn’t really think about the Qun much and while she is generally more curious about it since it’s more directly tied to her, that doesn’t really do much to change anything. Follow the Qun? Cool. Don’t want to follow the Qun? Cool. Hate the Qun outright for stupid fear mongering reasons? Uncool.

9. what is their love language?

Acts of service! Heron in her quest from respectable mercenary company squad leader to sanitized religious figure even your kids can like kind of managed to hit this middle ground in her personality that is very princely. Courageous and self sacrificing, understanding and kind to even the common man, effortlessly elegant yet dedicated and ruthless, diplomatic and respectable, also a bit of a dork sometimes but only friends get to know that one.

She isn’t clumsy with words, but she prefers to let actions speak regardless. Oh, can’t reach that? Here you go. Oh, carrying a lot? Let me take some for you, tell me where to put it. Oh, you are about to get arranged married to a guy you don’t like? Give me a day of studying the tradition and subsequently the rapier as i send out a request for a duel. Seeing people relieved to get some help in a world that does everything in its power to put more weight on them makes her happy, and she will gladly carry as much of their weight as she can.

She also enjoys physical closeness though, doesn’t necessarily have to be touch (though she enjoys that too) just being in the vicinity is enough already. Perhaps because that means she can keep an eye on them out of habit. Heron is nothing if not dedicated to her squad, Valo-Kas or Inquisition.

10. are they good horse riders?

YES you have no fucking idea how sad Heron was when she found out she could not take her horse on the ship to Antiva. Throughout the game she used the Free Marches breed because her parents used to keep those, and while she did not start out a very skilled rider she quickly improved and in turn she and her horse became almost inseparable when solo out in the field. A prince needs her steed after all. I also HC that was the horse she rode in on to the Exalted Council instead of the standard Fereldan brown.

This is actually secret Heron lore i’ve had in my head for ages without finding an outlet to talk about it so thank you. Heron is a tiny bit of a horse girl.

11. what are there religious beliefs, if any?

None! Though specifically in an Agnostic way. Heron doesn’t know if there is a Maker or anything of the sort out there and she certainly can’t know if there isn’t, so she will leave that question for when her time comes. Religion is not on her mind very often.

Though, if she had to choose a religion she was most inclined to, it would probably be the Avvar and their gods.

12. attitude towards Mabari?

She doesn’t really get the hype at first (cringe) because she has not really been in contact with any outside of fighting them but after Cullen gets one and it and Heron get properly introduced… she might secretly want one. Though you would have to pull this truth out of her. Or be clued in on it by the occasional longing stares she will give any she sees while out.

13. their thoughts on the Grey Warden order?

Heron feels they are extremely disorganized and badly set up (mercenary squad leader mindset) but that does not undo the good they have done and continue to want to do. She feels a lot of people were too harsh on them for a mistake that only cost them their own in the end, and happily lets the Wardens rebuild. Yes, what happened was not okay and an example of how badly the order is managed, but that does not mean these scared good men and women who were only doing what they thought was right deserve exile. She isn’t their number one fan or anything, but she does respect them and hopes that this lesson will help them avoid more incidents like these in the long run.

She does kind of side-eye everyone in Weisshaupt though, thinking they’re too uninvolved in their own orders affairs. A good leader should be in the field with their men, or at the very least be involved and communicating. With how Wardens talks about the place, neither of those seem to be the case which annoys her to no end (mercenary squad leader mindset again)

20. where would they like to be buried?

Wherever Josephine gets buried honestly #LoveWins but if that is not an option then back at her parents place in the Free Marches!

23. do they have, or want to have, children?

She does not have any children and is not planning on having any but is open to the idea. It’s just that the both of them are extremely busy currently with The State Of The World so there just would not be time for it until Solas is dealt with. Afterwards, though, Heron wouldn’t mind having a kid or two.. i mean, the family is going to need heirs anyway, right? And i mean, her old mercenary buddies would be over the moon about it. And i mean, her parents would certainly enjoy becoming grandparents… <- trying to not admit she wants children.

25. what did they plan for their life to look like before the events of the game happened?

Business as usual! Be one of the best assets in the Valo-Kas, maybe even take over from old Shokrakar once he finally croaks (affectionate). Her pay was good, her men were good, life was good, if nothing happened in that conclave she would have gone back and kept doing it until she was either cut down on the job or retired. While quite a ways away her retirement plan was going back to the Free Marches and setting up a farm, maybe take some of her boys who would also be retiring at that point and hire them as workers if they were up to it. Nothing like a good farm.

[sealofreconciliation]

The mechanics of Indra and Ashura's “reincarnations” (or; “Naruto and Sasuke got nothing out of being reincarnates other than being psychologically manipulated into trying to kill each other”)

An oft-repeated claim in the Naruto fandom is that the revelation that Naruto and Sasuke are the “reincarnates” of Ashura and Indra, the Sage of Six Paths' children, invalidates their, especially Naruto's, struggles at the start of the series, be it because that means they were fated to save the world or because they had a massive power-boost from birth.

How accurate are these criticisms, however?

In this post, i will be going over all the major points used to criticize Naruto and Sasuke's statuses as reincarnates being of significant benefit to them and making counter-arguments (using only manga canon, since the Indra and Ashura anime filler has some really weird and contradictory shit in it), starting with:

Their statuses as reincarnates means they were fated to save the world/be powerful shinobi

This is honestly the weakest point of the bunch, mostly because there's next to no supporting evidence for it in the series and what little we do get on the specifics all but debunks it; here's the only things Indra and Ashura's reincarnates are ever stated or implied to be destined to do:

As you can see, the only thing the series ever implies the Indra and Ashura reincaranates are destined to do are to kill each other and nothing else;there's nothing on them being fated to save the world or to become powerful shinobi themselves.

As a matter of fact, Hagoromo in the first and third pictures explicitly confirms there were multiple reincarnates prior to Hashirama and Madara, none of which ever became anyone of any relevance or power to the shinobi world, further confirming that being a reincarnate does nothing to guarantee you power in the Narutoverse. The argument that Naruto and Sasuke had any sort of beneficial destiny is a gigantic strawman of that plot point, and one that's easily debunked the second you try looking for evidence to support it.

Naruto and Sasuke were born with massive power boosts and special abilities due to being reincarnates

This is the stronger of the two main criticisms, if only because, unlike with the last point, there's nothing in the series to definitively disprove the notions that Ashura and Indra are reincarnated when their hosts are born or that the hosts receive a power boost from them.

There is, however, evidence against those notions, evidence strong and plentiful enough for me to make cases against those points.

Starting with the idea that Indra and Ashura “reincarnate” into their hosts at birth, Naruto in the third picture describes the experience like a ghost haunting, and both him and Hagoromo claim they can see/sense someone else (Ashura)'s presence and chakra inside of him, something that wouldn't make sense if it was a true reincarnation and Ashura had any significant amount of his chakra inside of Naruto from birth:

In addition to that, and this is the strongest piece of evidence against the idea that I&A reincarnate at birth, the manga goes out of it's way to all but confirm that the “change” Naruto had sensed in Sasuke's chakra during the Five Kage Summit was Indra choosing him as his host during those events:

While there's not enough evidence to prove this claim beyond a shadow of a doubt, i do think it makes for a very strong argument that I&A work more like transmigrants than reincarnates, choosing hosts they feel align with their ideals and have enough power to see it through; the idea that N&S were born as reincarnates of I&A is, while not as objectively wrong as the destiny argument, still a very shaky point to stand on that has plenty of holes in it.

Naruto and Sasuke gained powers when they became the transmigrants

This is both the strongest and weakest argument so far; it's the strongest because there's very little in the series that can be used to disprove that claim, and the weakest because there's not only very little in the series that can be used to prove that claim, but also no way to quantify how much power N&S got from being I&A transmigrants, let alone to prove that it was in any way significant.

It's completely unknown when Ashura chose Naruto as his host, so that's a dead end given how often Naruto gets stronger through the series; we do know Indra chose Sasuke during the events of the Five Kage Summit, being the reason his chakra got colder and Sasuke himself started going off the deep end, but even then Sasuke's best feat prior to the FKS was beating Deidara, after which he has very few good feats pre-FKS and multiple different power-ups, including getting his Mangekyo and multiple hatred amps every Uchiha gets, meaning there's no way to prove whether Indra was the reason he grew so quickly following Itachi's death or not.

The notion that Naruto and Sasuke got significant power ups from Indra and Ashura is honestly just an unfalsifiable claim, especially when there are multiple other ways they could have gotten stronger, and as such a very weak argument.

In conclusion:

N&S being transmigrants of I&A had fuck all to do with any sort of beneficial destiny or fate, as stated, shown and implied by the manga itself

N&S very likely only became transmigrants after 17 years of working hard to become as powerful as they did, to the point of impressing I&A enough that they chose them as the people they wanted fulfilling their ideas of how the world should be, as heavily implied by the description of the reincarnation process and Naruto sensing something different in Sasuke after the earliest point he started showing signs of being possessed by Indra

The burden of proof is entirely on the person making the claim that N&S got a power boost from becoming transmigrants, let alone that it was in any way significant, which can't be done because it's a borderline-unprovable claim

Tl;dr the reincarnation plot twist is based and good writing-pilled

[drdemonprince]

anautisticguide on TikTok responded to your PDA analysis, they make a lot of PDA autism content. Was wondering if you could elaborate more on their response and your points because I think this is a rly interesting topic.

To me, it's essentially the same not-actually-a-debate that rises up when somebody points out that how ADHD is both defined and experienced has a social and economic component and is not just a chemical imbalance (and in fact, there is no evidence of the dopamine theory for it).

People sometimes get very attached to an understanding of disability that is rooted in biology, because they believe that is the only explanation that grants them permission to not function up to society's punishing, impossible standards. When in reality, the fact of the matter is that neurotypicality's punishing standards are not attainable to anyone, and so nobody should feel defective or broken for failing to meet up to them.

People feel relief upon first learning that they're not "just" lazy, they have a disability -- but if their analysis of the problem stops there, they aren't going far enough. Nobody else is "just" lazy either.

People also like to say that they know that their disability is biological and not socially constructed, because they know that even in a world beyond capitalism that they would struggle to enjoy tasks that they value, for instance, or that they'd still always struggle socially. It's not logical for someone to claim that they know what a completely alternate version of themselves living in a different reality with different life experiences would be like. That would not be the same person.

There is no control group for any of our lives. We all only exist once, under the exact circumstances that have led up to this moment. So none of us can claim to know what a version of ourselves would be like in a world without capitalism or the trauma it causes. This kind of argument also comes up with truscum trans people -- who claim they are certain their dysphoria is entirely biological and that they would still have it in a world without assigned gender.

That is impossible to know. And it's a pointless thought exercise anyway. Trans people deserve accommodation whether their dysphoria is socially caused or biologically caused.

People who struggle to work or attain stability in life deserve accommodation whether they're in that position because of capitalism or because of a neurological difference. And in fact it's impossible to separate those two causes. Ableism is a tool of capitalism, because capitalism is a system of defining a person's humanity by their productive capacity, in other words by their abilities. So it's nonsense to try and separate the two and to say that something like PDA is not socially constructed -- by definition it is on every level.

And none of that invalidates the suffering and struggle of people who have been labeled as PDA or identify as having PDA. If the label has brought you or anyone reading this peace and relief, I'm glad you have found an outlet for questioning the unfair expectations put upon you.

But please, for the sake of yourself and for this movement, do not stop at just thinking that the problem is located within you. It is not. How you are is not wrong or bad or pathological. Needing support, structure, hope that your life is worth putting energy into, love, engagement, stimulation, and enthusiastic consent in order to take action is not a defect. You deserve better than thinking your need for autonomy is a pathology. You can be freer than that.

[cosmicjoke]

i am so sorry u had to deal with that anon, i hope you are feeling ok! :’) it sucks how shippers make their own reputation bad by not accepting another perspective/opinion :/ and to go to this extent over a fictional ship is just… something else😭 i’ll never understand how some can’t just enjoy their ship in peace and always have to prove it is canon and fight everyone else who doesn’t think like them, as if you can’t enjoy a ship otherwise?

anon just reminded me why i never took an interest in any levi ship, and i probably never will. i sooo wanted to say that i didn’t understand why anon suddenly started to hate on levi x oc shippers, but it’s obvious bc most oc’s are depicted as women and that is against their ‘canon’ ship and beliefs about levi😭 why care so much, levi can be whatever sexuality you want seeing as nothing was confirmed, so just take a step back, touch some grass and let people enjoy whatever they like :’)

anyways, once again im sorry u had to deal with all of that i can’t even imagine how tiring or frustrating it must be to always be attacked/asked about the same things constantly. i love your levi posts and i feel like you really analyze him very well! happy holidays :’)

Thank you so much, truly.

I've said again and again that I have nothing against any ship or shipping group. People can ship Levi with whoever they want. But these people who harass me over it, then accuse me of "talking" about it all the time, but the only reason I talk about it is because they're the ones asking me about it.

The thing is, is I just want to talk about what's in the actual story. Levi has no love interest in the story, either directly acknowledged or even implied. Everything this person sited as evidence or "proof" of Levi being romantically interested in Erwin, I addressed to the best of my abilities. They didn't want to accept it, and then they accuse me of being a hypocrite, trying to claim that all of my analysis posts are based on the same, speculative, inconclusive and flimsy material they base their beliefs on. As if breaking down text, expression, sequential order of panels, and patterns in the text and past character behavior is the same as taking an off-handed comment from Isayama in an interview from ten years ago or whatever and using it as proof of some super secret hidden romantic interest between Levi and Erwin. You can literally look at every post of mine analyzing AoT and find evidence supporting, pretty damn concretely, my conclusions in the actual text. And I'm hardly alone in that. There's many, many great AoT fans who write brilliant analysis posts about the manga/anime, using only the source material. But these people can never point to a single panel or word bubble or piece of text that supports this notion that Levi was in love with Erwin, or anyone, for that matter. They need to site promotional material to try and back up their claims, and extrapolate meaning from the panels and texts which isn't, in any discernible, concrete way actually supported by the text and panels. They literally need to twist Levi's words and actions in the most absurd, nonsensical, illogical manner in order to make it fit. That isn't how Isayama operates as a writer. Even when there's subtext, there's a clear, undeniable line between it and the action on the page. That's what analysis is based on, after all. There has to be a viable, evident reason for drawing certain conclusions.

Levi holding the serum against his chest, or touching Erwin's hand when he took the serum from him, or him thinking of Erwin when wondering who he could revive, none of that is enough proof in and of itself to support a romantic interest between them. I tried explaining to this person what those things actually indicate within the story. The last two don't mean anything. It's just how the panels were drawn. But the first, if this person had paid any kind of attention to Levi's actual relationship with Erwin, and how Levi regarded Erwin, and the reasons he was so loyal to Erwin, would understand that he thought of Erwin in that moment because he regarded Erwin as the leader that humanity needed, and that humanity's future was dependent on Erwin's survival. It's the entire reason Levi tried to stop Erwin from going to Shinganshina in the first place. I come to all of those conclusions based on the actual text and what we know about the characters leading up to that point.

I explained all of this to this fool in my initial reply to them, and they accused me of "brushing them off", lol.

Anyway, whatever. But thank you so much again for your support. I just can't seem to get away from these people, haha.

[stillness-in-green]

i think you did a meta of all for one not supposing to possess shigaraki previously… however early on all for one said -he will be the next me- so may i ask why you thought that? he only wanted shigaraki to be his vessel so shigaraki was not taught to think for himself until then… honest question! just curious

This is one of those asks that I’m not looking to do a full run-down on until I’m ready to do the full full run-down on it, and that means finding out whatever remaining plans AFO has for Tomura, including whether he gave Tomura Decay to begin with!  But to ease your curiosity, anon, and since you asked so nicely, allow me to hit a few points.

Firstly, regarding why I talk about the possession plot being a retcon, there are a lot of things that lead me in that direction, all the way up through MVA, but the single most jarring plot beat in my eyes is the reasoning AFO gives for not taking Best Jeanist’s quirk at Kamino.  He says, “Your quirk wouldn’t suit Tomura.”  But who gives a shit whether or not it would suit Tomura when A) AFO was allegedly planning to completely take over Tomura, to the point where even his mind would be permanently subsumed, and B) if AFO didn’t want Tomura to have it at first, he could have just held onto it in his core body until after the surgery and sublimation of Tomura’s personality was complete, then passed it on over to his new self?

At this point, I can point to enough holes in Horikoshi’s writing that I cynically have to wonder if that was just an early example of Horikoshi lying to the audience because he needed to justify Best Jeanist—whose Pro Hero status needed to be preserved for later plots—not losing his quirk right then and there.  But if that’s the case, I still have to count it against Horikoshi’s foreshadowing chops.

Secondly, let me talk some about this claim: Shigaraki was not taught to think for himself until then.

I’m always a little baffled by the contention that AFO never taught Shigaraki how to think for himself.  I don’t want to pick on you specifically, anon!  I see this claim all over the place, have done for years, and In fairness, your words were that AFO didn’t teach Shigaraki to think for himself until then, by which I assume you mean the events of the main series prior to Kamino.  There’s no denying that AFO was teaching Shigaraki to think for himself in the first hundred chapters; AFO says as much aloud to Kurogiri and in his inner monologue shortly after his incarceration.

Also, you sent this ask well before Chapter 280 came out, so for the purposes of this reply, I’m going to disregard AFO’s claims in that chapter that Shigaraki’s mentality was always destined for obsolescence. As I said in my chapter post, a lot of the early evidence can be squared with the idea that AFO needed to cultivate a strong will/hatred in Shigaraki!  Virtually none of it squares with the claim that Shigaraki’s mind was supposed to be thrown in AFO’s mental recycling bin as soon as the surgery was complete.

That said, if we assume that AFO did need Shigaraki to have a strong enough mentality to steal OFA, why would he only start teaching Tomura to think for himself circa the beginning of the series?  Why not craft him to have a strong mentality (whatever that entails) from the start, if said mentality was going to be a key part in how AFO would finally get his hands on OFA?

To me, the obvious answer to that is that AFO was teaching Shigaraki to think for himself from the beginning.  Oh, he was sculpting Shigaraki’s thinking, sure, arranging the available pathways to make sure they all led where he needed them to, but I’m constantly seeing people make this claim that AFO raised Shigaraki to be a single-minded attack dog who believed himself capable of nothing but destruction, and I just don’t see that in the comic.

From his very first appearances in the story, AFO is shown supporting Shigaraki’s learning process.  In some of the very earliest flashbacks to their relationship, we see AFO encouraging Tenko not to be bound by meaningless social constructs like “ethics” and “conscience”; rather, Tenko should act as his heart commands.

Yes, he does tell Tenko that he has a native impulse to destruction, but a native impulse is not the same as a sole directive.  For a defining example of this, look at Chapter 239. There, Shigaraki has an auditory flashback to AFO telling him that he should adopt the mindset that he holds peoples’ lives in the palm of his hand, and it’s entirely his choice whether to close his hand and destroy them or roll them around at his whim.  That experience of mingled hatred and delight, he says, is true freedom.

We don’t know how old Shigaraki was at the time of that statement, but it’s entirely consistent with what AFO was telling him as a small child and his teaching methodology during the main timeline.  So, I have to disagree that AFO had only just started teaching Shigaraki to think for himself circa the beginning of the story.  He’s been teaching Shigaraki that all along!  He’s just been teaching Shigaraki to think for himself with all the moral guardrails taken off, that’s all, and encouraging him to remember that destruction is always a valid option.

(AFO's theory of education illustrated via funni meme squares.)

Now, what I do think Shigaraki is pretty new to circa the beginning of the series is going out and using AFO’s resources to enact villainous plans.  I’d love to know why that is!  My theory has always been that AFO losing that fight to All Might in the backstory caused a change in the AFO Fam’s dynamics, with getting Shigaraki’s training as a successor getting significantly stepped up.

Whatever the case, though, Shigaraki being relatively new to acting as an independent villain does not mean that AFO never taught him, like, basic observation and reasoning skills before his twentieth birthday.

Thanks for the ask, anon!

[acourtofthought]

I recently saw an Elriel post where, I guess the person was trying to have a gochta moment because they were saying things like, "If Eluciens and Gwynriels are SO confident in their ship, why do they bother trying to argue with us? It makes them look REALLY insecure."

There's arguing on both sides.

I've seen Gwynriels and Eluciens make convincing post, defending their ships and providing evidence on why they hope they're right. I've also seen Elriels come onto those posts and start arguments.

I've also seen some valid Elriel posts defending the ship and some evidence supporting it. Only for some Elucien or Gwynriel to come into the post and begin arguing.

No side in this ship war is guiltless of engaging in debates and arguments or just straight-up insulting others. Now, does everyone in this fandom do that? No, but it does happen, and it's clearly happening on all sides, so why even try acting like your side is spotless when none of us can claim that?

And honestly, from everything I've seen recently, EVERYONE is getting a little insecure in their ships, but that's kinda what happens when we're all anxiously waiting for a new book announcement. We want new content, and we're not getting it, so we're delving deeper into the fandom, and tensions are rising. That's normal when you have a large, divided fandom with nothing for us to focus on.

I agree with everything you've said. To your first points, it does go both ways. If they were so confident in their ship the other side wouldn't be sending threats to the author or Bloomsbury. They wouldn't need to theorize that Gwyn was evil, that Lucien's character will be killed off, that he's harassing Elain, etc. They wouldn't need to twist canon until it's unrecognizable if they were so confident in their ship. And they wouldn't need to send hate anons to Eluciens and Gwynriels Elucien's and Gwynriels often engage because they see certain E/riels making things up in an effort to claim their ship is happening, they see them distorting facts and spreading misinformation. To this day I still see the argument that Elain's scent is Jasmine, proof that she'll end up staying in the NC because it's a NC flower, while completely ignoring that Jasmine was first mentioned in book 1 while Feyre was in Spring. They ignore that the author said her scent was Jasmine and HONEY, a "promise of Spring". If E/riels were so confident in their ship why do they have to eliminate canon text? Why do they pick and choose and pretend the rest didn't happen? To this day I still see that Az is Elain's choice despite the fact that she returned his necklace and didn't interact with him on page for months and months after. Maybe it would be easy for Gwynriels and Eluciens to ignore some of that until the other side begins to write posts like "Elucien's and Gwynriels are delusional for thinking their ship will happen". E/riels shouldn't be calling names and throwing down challenges then act surprised when we engage. To your second point, you're 100% right on that too. I think most are not as confident as they pretend to be and I include myself in that. I debate, I present my arguments and I think I do a well enough job but I am not certain of anything. We have very little to go on and are at the mercy of SJM which means only she knows what's actually going to happen. We've all spent years writing posts and creating content and the closer we get to knowing whether we've been right or wrong all this time is creating more stress than usual.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Movie Poster 015 - Marihuana - Weed From Hell - 1936 by Johnny El-Rady Via Flickr: c. 1935-1936 Artist/maker unknown, American This was an exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, and written by his wife, Hildagarde Stadie. “In 1932, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established under the direction of Harry J. Anslinger. He proceeded to stir the public into an anti-marijuana frenzy, perpetuating the myth that users of the drug had embarked upon an irreversible descent into an underworld of crime and loose living. In his lectures Anslinger explained that marijuana use was the root cause of crime and unemployment in poor areas; for good measure, he also blamed the immigrant and working-class population for introducing the drug into these neighbourhoods. No evidence was produced to support such claims, yet this did not stop Anslinger's ideas from attaining the status of revealed truth. In the mid-1930's, the American Journal Of Medicine pronounced that "Marijuana users...will kill or maim without reason." The only significant challenge to such wild statements was made by the mayor of New York, who ordered an independent and impartial investigation into the effects of the 'weed with roots in hell'. When it became clear that the investigators had concluded that marijuana had none of the alleged mind-altering and crime-causing effects, Anslinger quickly destroyed all known copies of the report, preventing its publication. Exploitation filmmakers have always been quick to seize upon contemporary scandals and scare stories, and the 1930's saw a massive upsurge of films dealing with the 'tragedy' of marijuana. Marihuana: Weed With Roots In Hell, is a perfect example of the sensationalist and absurd propaganda produced in the effort to stop people using the drug.” www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4620650 The trailer can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zlHbL_m7Vc For those intrepid enough, here’s the entire movie: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNsrF8lAEhU