#we respect humanity on this blog fuck your sports

[rhisardthewizard]

What's truly wild to me, as someone who never really got into sports and who has never understood the ferver around them, is that they're fucking... games.

They're games.

They're absolutely, categorically NOT WORTH the attacks on the personhood of those trying to participate.

They're fucking team-building exercises being used for violence, and that's a really good reason to divest from sports culture.

Stop tying higher education to athletic aptitude, and that'll get rid of the (entirely unfounded) fear of trans people "taking" scholarships away from cis athletes.

Stop spending your money on sports merchandise, propping up a system of institutionalized sexism where excellent women athletes are paid and publicized way less than mediocre men in the same sport.

It honestly baffles me how the sports industry has been allowed to continue to exist. You all know you can just get a sports ball of your choosing and play the games yourselves, right? Go make friends.

Stop letting gatekeepy douchebags trick you into letting fucking GAMES be the social line we draw through the humanity of their participants, its the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen.

[corpsesrottinginacelestialgarden]

Welcome to our blog! This is our "get to know us" post. Our DNI is under the cut.

We are a system. When we put a name saying a specific thing on our posts, those are alters speaking with their respective names labeled. Our system is fictive-heavy. We will do our best to tag those posts as "Postal System Speaks." Our fictive alters may quote or reference their source material, talk like their source material for a joke, and occasionally talk like their source material briefly for creative/artistic reasons. They might even roleplay as the character of their source material from time to time. Most of us think role-playing can be fun, but we want people to understand that they are talking as different people in the system, not a singular guy roleplaying a bunch of characters.

We don't feel comfortable sharing everyone's names. The alters that are generally present most often on here (who will sorta share their names/sources) are several P1 Dudes, Postal 1 Demons, P2 Dudes, Redux Dudes, and Redux Demons. We have a lot of doubles, as in repeats of the same character source material for a fictive. (Made up example: having 7 different P1 Dudes.) We will not share their more personal names/nicknames publicly. Most are he/him unless otherwise specified. We often don't always know who is fronting, however. It's not always easy to detect.

We reblog and plan to post art and special effects makeup that may sometimes involve fake gore/blood/violence. We will do our best to add trigger warnings, but we may forget sometimes on accident. We're heavily into horror. If these things are an issue for you to see, you may not want to follow us.

We may be making and posting music+sound effects eventually.

DNI: Minors, racists, sexists, ableists, LGBTQ+-phobes, body shamers, fascists, pro-authoritarians, etc. Anything that involves being an "ist" or a "phobe" is a hard no.

If we accidentally interact with, like, or reblog something/someone from our DNI criteria, just know it was an honest mistake. In fact, you could let us know! We wanna be aware.

NO TCC/Columbiners! We literally can't tell the difference between who is simply studying and who is romanticizing/condoning things. There are too many folks being dishonest as hell about it on this platform, interacting with our posts. Block us, or we'll block you. Either way, we're not interested in your engagement. To the ones that condone: Go fuck yourself. Your favorite killer is not Postal Dude. RWS does not like you. We do not like you.

Likes:

-People who strive for authenticity and personal growth through a healthy sense of accountability.

-People who care about the importance of mental health and human psychology.

-Openly passionate neurodivergent people. Though, we like passion in general.

~Music~

-Metal (No subgenre is off limits. Fuck elitism. We love experimental genre mixing.)

-Grind, Beatdown Hardcore, Mathcore, Goregrind, Deathgrind,

-Goth Rock, Darkwave, Coldwave, Deathrock, Post-Punk, and pretty much any dark gothy ethereal synthy stuff

-Aggrotech, Dark Electro, Elecrtro-Industrial, and some other things we can't recall right now.

-Prog Rock, experimental rock

-Memphis Rap, Boom Bap, G-Funk, Chopped and Screwed, and Phonk

-We occasionally enjoy Pop.

-We like atmospheric/audio soundscapes and concept albums.

-We love listening to video game soundtracks. Our go-to is usually Silent Hill 1-4, Postal 1+Redux, or TES: Oblivion. We are also big on the God of War soundtracks.

~Games~

-Horror/Dark Thriller (We are complete goblins about all things horror). We go nuts for psychological themes.

-Action Adventure/ARPGs with well-fleshed out storylines. Old school Point and Click Adventure games.

-FPS, 3PS, and Twin-stick Shooters

-Stealth

-Puzzle

-Relaxing Sanboxy stuff

-This isn't a genre, but anything that poses major philosophical questions gets us going.

~Movies~

-Horror/Thriller

-Adventure

-Comedy

-Sci-fi

-Fantasy

-Documentaries

Dislikes:

-Sports

-The vast majority of current political discourse online. We have our own political beliefs. We just don't like getting into arguing and fighting with people over it online. Obviously, we dislike bigotry. We would describe ourselves as anarchists with a strong interest in humanitarian aid.

-People that disregard healthy boundaries.

-People that justify cruel or unjust behavior under the guise of being a "good person."

-People who refuse to acknowledge the difference between empathizing with/understanding a perspective and condoning it.

-If you romanticize serial killers or mass shooters in any capacity, get the hell away from us. We are not your friends. We have zero tolerance for this. No, Postal Dude, a character written with a deliberately anti-violence message, is not just like your favorite mass shooter. Get professional help, bud. We will not harass you nor encourage harm to you, but if you are forcing your views into the Postal fandom, we will say something about it.

-Proshippers: We will not harass or attack you as that serves no purpose, but we also will not tolerate you justifying harmful paraphilias.

-Syscourse: We are traumagenic. We find people/systems being incredibly cruel to each other on both sides of the argument. Abusing, harassing, and fake claiming is not ok to do. This stands no matter how frustrating or misinformed some people may be over system related information. Human psychology is still in its infancy in terms of understanding the complexities of many disorders.

[superstar49]

Hi!! Saw you were doing f1 hot takes so though why not sharing one I have.

Haters make this fandom less and less enjoyable. Idk why so many people act like hating is normal and an expected part of the sport, specially with the recent events its showing so many disrespectful and imo even disgusting behaviours of the fans.

I'm not condemning criticism, or even disliking a driver, everyone has a right to not like a driver but I think we should all trace a line when the hate is to much which imo is what is happening but most of the people act like it's okay.

This are REAL people, and HUMANS, yes maybe they're also rich boys who drive fast cars but still, they're NOT fictional people whom you can wish death and harass.

Also hating and harassing other fans for having an opinion or liking a certain driver is also fucking disgusting. Period. Idc you think the driver did something irremediable, it's still fucking horrendous to bash on other people for having a different opinion to yours. And if you want to be treated with respect, you need to also respect others, so then dont be surprised those people wont respect you, like I've seen lately.

Sorry for any mistakes my English is not the best! Im not taking here any side of the conflict that is happening on the fandom, so it about both sides. Btw nothing is directed to you, just to some people on this fandom that REALLY need to hear this :)

honestly yeah i do agree with this one, which might come as a surprise to some people who know me. i’m definitely a big hater about some drivers and i’ve got some intense opinions, but the difference is i keep them to tumblr or my personal messages with friends. it’s one thing to post about not liking a driver on a blog website that i doubt half the drivers even know about, or to talk shit with your friends in messages nobody else will see, but it’s crossing the line to go and post on twitter or instagram or tiktok, all of which are extremely public platforms that almost every single driver uses, and post death threats and the like. the truth is that driver hate has always been part of the sport, but it’s been on the side of too much for years now. and the hate against other fans, like you mentioned, is ridiculous. there are a couple of drivers on the grid that i really can’t stand, but i follow and am friends with plenty of folks who are fans of those drivers, and i’m not in their ask boxes or dms or text messages shitting on them for liking drivers that i’m not a fan of. it works the opposite way, too. if someone is hating on your favourite driver, just ignore them or block them if you don’t want to hear it. there’s no reason to harass people.

the big takeaway is, people just need to mind their manners and their business and understand what the limit is.

send me your f1 hot takes

[80-ursa-major]

i was going through blogs and saw an old hp meta and i mostly respect that person's opinion so i went back and reread the last 2 books and that was fun and now i have so many feeling i need to let them out

-the main one is that i don't hate snape? like he's an asshole for bullying kids but after seeing his entire life flash before my eyes there was no room for anything but pity. mind you not the aw poor bb pity but the damn life really is a bitch and then you die. like your family's shit and you're ugly and everyone hates and you can't let go so you end up perpetuating the abuse cycle and there's no redemption. you failed, the end. kinda amazing tbh that she wrote him like that i.e a brave dude who managed to do the right thing after he ruined everything but also a thoroughly unpleasant human being till the end.

p.s: is he even a bad teacher? most of his students pass, his detention is scrubbing pots and he makes mean girls tier remarks. Meanwhile the good guys send children to the forbidden forest and expose them to dangeorus animals without protection lmao

+ the always~ line is overused and criiiinge just like the ship itself. The real goat line is ''And my soul? Mine? It cut me deeply cause i was also dumbledore's (wo)man's through and through and i didn't care about his hitler boyfriend and his secrets and i even went as far as to make a note in the book (the only note) to plead with harry not to doubt him. and he was the only thing remotely close to a friend snape had cause he was the ony one who knew the truth but he did use him cause he wanted to save harry and the world and even fucking draco and it just sucks, it all suuuucks

++and it's not like draco got a redemption, his entire family was dogshit and still got away with everything. i felt this so hard cause thanks to churchil the nazi collaborators in my country never got their comeuppance so their descendants also hold positions of power now and keep eroding our democracy

+++still can't believe the one that got rehabilitated was kreacher, like i hated him so much for sirius but hermione was kinda right. and it was so sad when he must have waited and waited for them to show up and eat that kidney pie

-i remember i hated how my precious perfect hermione ending up with he's just ron but this time i didn't care much. his rapid fire cool AND considerate moments in the battle were very forced in my opinion and a little too little too late but eh whatever as long as she's happy.

+i think it's cause as a kid i wanted her with harry but now he was kinda annoying, idk he can be a pretty annoying kid. i mean it makes sense considering what the poor child had to got Through. But also he's basically the messiah with his love spiel and dying for everyone and i'm sitting here with my hurt cheek and a core that craves a proportionate justice that doesn't exist.

btw i'll never understand people who still complain about albus severus. it's a shit name to be sure but if you spend 7 years with harry it should be obvious this is a 200% in character thing to do.

++adulthood is realising krum was the best and deserved better and we deserved better instead of unrepentant asshole malfoys

-i still hate ginny and molly. molly was poor but had seven kids and the only one who would always get the short end of the stick was ron. it was just so pitiful with the wand, and the cloak and the rat. and she was so obsessed with being harry's mom she got pissed at sirius for being the cool dad (dude had his issues too obviously but they should have met in the middle) and she thought the sun shined out of harry's ass so she froze a teen girl she knew cause of something she read in the Sun. Kinda hated how she got the bella kill too

ginny went from nobody to best at hexing AND sports AND doesn't cry AND she's so hot everyone wants her and lmao what kind of cardboard dating game self-insert is this?Her sense of humour has asuch a mean streak too. And the way they treated fleur argh I felt like i was in an aita about the stereotypical evil mil and sil. and the people who say it was mutual cause fluer was snob? yeah she was and i ripped her one too when she looked down on my favorite chaotic magic murderschool but they weren't bullying her because of that? they were being mean cause they were jealous she was beautiful and men went gaga, because they thought that meant she was shallow and of course she wasn't good enough for their son/bro

and the trashiest thing was when they made fun of accents. these people who only knew english and had never tried learning any other languages! like come on dude

-i had forgotten how hedwig dies aaaaaaa i still can't believe it was so fast and then nothing it still hurts...

[littlewalken]

Mar 25

My blog my opinions.

I think I've found at least one mostly female sport with a steadily growing male division where you can't just put on girl face get rewarded for being stronger and faster than other people, and if there are trans athletes already competing in it they haven't said squat because they're too busy practicing and building the skills that sport requires.

Wasn't there like five minutes where a sissy all dressed up and skipping down the street to buy herself a lollypop at the candy store wasn't bothering anyone? She was minding her own business, not making a fuss, enjoying herself while playing dress up, it didn't have to be her identity, Monday morning she'd be back at work doing her job in business clothes not needing everyone to respect her pronouns.

As South Park says about drugs- there is a time and place for everything, it's called college, and the thing about drugs is people forget to stop doing them.

It also seems that a lot of people forgot that by 5-6 years old the average human realizes that other humans don't think the same way they do.

picture is unrelated

Fuck the whole moving process. Oh yeah, we want you to come live here, oops, our rent is $5 above your budget, is that gonna be a pwroblem?

Oopsie doodles, we waited until after you wasted your time to come out here that no one under 55 can live here, is that gonna be a pwoblem?

Oh dear, the entire ground level is a parking garage and you can't get in to anything without taking stairs because we don't want people with mobility issues living here, is that gonna be a pwoblem?

At least we have the blessing of having a place we don't have to leave until we're ready this time.

[daydreamerssaml]

Readings rants by Anti-Nestas of how she's a "bitch and I don't care what she's been through" then going to their blog to see them talk/reblog about the struggles of being intuitive and an empath like back the fuck up, this must be the start of a bad punchline, y'all are on some other shit 🥴

anyways once again

siblings fight much worse than the way the Archeron siblings did/do, a lot of people can relate to that

What happened to Feyre is not Nesta's fault nor her responsibility, it was her father's responsibly and he failed them, also didn't even try to get his kids to get along

The humans have experienced and heard such terrible things of the Fae, were slaves to them for centuries, the Archeron siblings grew up hearing these things, it is mentioned that some fae still go killing humans for sport, of course Nesta isn't grateful or owe it to anyone to be polite by their standards, that's a lot of unlearning to do and the inner circle didn't even try to understand that, they got defensive towards her from the start, kind of hard to try to get along with people when your world has been turned upside down and people are already against you

Nesta did try! I'm a firm believer that actions are more meaningful than words and Nesta's character seems to be that way too. She went to try and get Feyre, in the first book, she listened to Feyre, tried to get along with her better, respected her wishes to go back, she studied hard with Amren, went to the court of Nightmares, re-evaluated her way of thinking about war based off of what Feyre said and went to the high lords meeting, she recognized that without Feyre during those years of hunger, they would be dead. She went to war, exposed herself magically to the Cauldron that had clearly traumatized her deeply, helped heal their soldiers, was ready to sacrifice herself in the war. Nesta has been trying, she really did try.

In Acofas Nesta distances herself because of her mental health and she's done with being judged so much for anything she does, by her family, their servants from before, the rich people included in that life and their way of living, the inner circle, the town of people who know what part she played in the war. Nesta doesn't feel wanted for who she is, people are always trying to change her and the only reason she is given by her sisters for them wanting her at the town house is because they're family and not because they like Nesta and want her presence around. She knows the inner circle doesn't like her and it's so obvious, of course she would be uncomfortable with them, yet Feyre tries to force it on to her only because Feyre is trying to search for a sense of normality, Feyre never says out loud why she wants Nesta to go to that party, she just says it's for Elain’s sake.

I also want to mention when Nesta and Mor meet each other because people like to say Nesta was rude to Mor. Mor could've stayed in her seat and said she liked Nesta's dress from there, instead she took the liberty of getting into this girl's face, whom she's never met before, and start touching her dress even when Nesta stiffens and is clearly uncomfortable. Nesta says one damn sentence and Mor immediately gets on the defensive and drops her fake nice act. I'm sorry but if I met someone and they took the liberty of touching me like that and clearly pretending to be nice, I and most people I know would not play into it. Mor is also aware that the humans are a lot more reserved when it comes to clothing and could've jsut considered that and be mature/ joke about it. We as a reader are also aware that Nesta is a sexual assult victim, imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have someone you don't know touching your dress while another person makes a comment of how that person is most likely to take the dress right off you ( The Cassian and Mor banter), Mor doesn't know this, but as a reader you could understand why Nesta wasn't super cuddly and friendly.

[clonewarslover55]

I’m going to say it once again!!

Please reblog content creators works if you like them!! This is not fucking Instagram. Yes, likes give us a little support, but not like reblogs do. If you like and don’t reblog we feel like you dislike our content and don’t want to share it with your friends. (This does NOT mean just ignore it entirely either! I will hunt you down for sport if you’d rather ignore than reblog!)

So fucking reblog. Please :)

You’re too shy?? We literally do not care, any support is welcome no matter who you are. Seriously you have no need to be shy!! So stop being shy, because eventually someone is going to call you out for not reblogging. So you better start reblogging now before we throw you out into the open. 

Goes against your theme?? Same thing, we don’t care if you’re in a different fandom or something! Any support is welcome! Make a side blog! Do whatever you have to do. Plus, Tumblr is the land of bullshit, themes aren’t that important. 

I know this is rude but it seems to be the only way for any of you to fucking understand. Reblog content creators shit. Side blogs exist for a fucking reason! If you reblog my work I love you so fucking much and I’m sorry you have to keep seeing me bitch about this. 

There is a reason for all of this though. We know exactly why many of you don’t reblog. Not because of a theme, or because you’re shy. No it’s because of anons. You like your things tailored to what you want, plus it’s “free!!” So you don’t care about who makes the content. 

No one sees us content creators as friends anymore. No, we’re seen just as content creators who are only good for tailoring works to your specific needs. You how hard it is now?? You know how hard it is for people to only come in for extremely specific works, ignoring what we’re proud of and our many other works?? It burns us out, it makes us hate what we’re doing. 

So see us as more than your artist and writer minions. See us as actual fucking people with god damn feelings. See us as friends even, we don’t bite(at least not yet) 

And learn some god damn respect before we all burn out, giving up our passions because of YOU and YOUR selfish needs. 

Some of you anons are just fine, and even polite. But some of you are far from respectful and polite. Especially you who send in asks right after I post like five new things?? You especially make me feel like my work is terrible and that you only care about your specific needs. 

No this post isn’t calling any specific people out, so don’t get butt hurt. You know exactly who you are, and if you’re one of these people. If you’re one of these people then don’t even fucking tell me, I don’t care who you are. Just fix your fucking act immediately. 

Learn respect, basic human decency, how to read and view other works, and please please please reblog. 

Those of you who reblog, read more than two of my many works, treats me with respect, etc. I love you, and keep being great!! Please spread the word.

If you don’t reblog this because you’re offended by my language or just hate the word fuck, let me know. I’ll clean it up so you can reblog!!

Also please add any frustrations and whatnot you have my fellow content creators!! I’m tired of being quiet, and you should too. 

@cherry-cokes-posts / @cherry-cokes-world even has a slideblog!! Be more like them. 

[lcnguor]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: Mik      Age: 26       Contact: IM, discord, smoke signal, whatever.

Character(s) I rp: Nora, Spike. Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): Nora, most likely Current Fandom(s): Fandomless Fandom(s) you have an AU for:  pretty much everything I find around and hop on. My language(s): spanish, english.  Themes I’m interested in for rp:   Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: modern without supernatural, I do have some fantasy set up but eh. 

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?:   YES / NO   only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?:   YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?:  24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?:  IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting:  ask, IM, discord, singing telegram, smoke signals, messeger pidgeos -- whatever dude. I will most likely talk and ramble a lot, I do like plotting and I squeeze my brains out to think in ways to rp with ppl. and I really suck at approaching others. really...

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner:  Ideas and somewhat more enthusiasm than me. I tend to shy away or feel very much awkward right off the bat if the person approaches me with not much to say or give. And honestly, some people really intimidate me because I am too hard on myself, so giving a bit of a pat on the back makes me relax more. I deal with a lot of anxiety and I know people run away the second I show it. 

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?:  Mostly when I am doing the talk or coming with ideas or looking generally more interested. It takes effort for me to get on things and actually do stuff but if it’s not the other way around I end up thinking they got bored of me. I am one hell of insecure person. As for what I do, if after many tries of trying to reach another person and end up feeling rejected or ignored, then ... I stop. What’s the point of insisting if the other person would just be awkward or not spare you a word?

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?:  well, I usually ask first what the other thinks or have in mind, if nothing, I either suggest or start brainstorming with the other person. I know some who have dealt with me at first I seem like a dettached person but not having ideas really makes me feel like I have not much right to talk. I want to give yet without impossing or letting it twist my arm. I know for a fact nora’s lore really doesn’t help shit for most things. 

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: if the thread was meaningful and we were really into it , then I would ask but as for the most, I don’t really bother with it. Sometimes people just lose muse, and even if I was enjoying it, I don’t have the right  to force someone or ask why they stopped. thread dropping is normal, i guess.  - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?:  whatever they want. telling me or not is up to them, I don’t really mind. RP is not something SUPER serious like it should be just perfect. I try to convice myself of this a lot.

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?:  either because it was old as fuck, I couldn’t find muse or because it was lost in the void of tumblr’s amazing tracking system. - Will you tell your partner?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you?   YES / NO. - And why?:  if I do not have some idea of who am i rping with and what they have in mind, then it’s nearly impossible. being purely IC is really uncomfortable and could lead to a lot of misundertandings. - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?:  yeah. mostly yeah -- I mean, I will feel bad, I do have feelings, but I will take it with water. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way?  YES ( but I will feel bad anyways ) / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?:  connect with others, ramble a lot about characters, have fun. I’ve been rping since i was 12 ( back then it was not big deal your age apparently ) and having to connect with other people by making these plots and stories and just having a fun time is something that brings me joy. There’s so much that can be done. And exploring my muses with other muses influences is really helpful to fill the holes left due indecisiveness.

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios:  I wish people joined my lore more. Having muses that could be in the same story department as Nora in particular, would be hella and inspire me more. There is so much I have. Explore nora’s power is also something I want but it’s hard -- it’s very invasive and not many would really like it, feeling it’s meta. For now, I don’t really have other muses and Spike has her little crew outside tumblr.

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore:  umm, it’s hard to think in something in particular. But mostly stuff that collides with nora’s story/character. but there is a lot I am willing to explore.

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: casual starters are my fab. It’s easier to figure out how  to go or stop and think. plotted ones also work. as for what I dislike or cannot work with, things that force my muse to not act how they would? not giving me something solid is hard to handle. 

What type of characters catch your interest the most?:  I really like out of the norm muses, something that you see and say /oh , look at that/. Aesthetically, story wise or personality wise, something that goes out the usual troup most would use. I do have a guilty pleasure for opposite to my muse characters --- something that would really show the contrast with one another.

What type of characters catch your interest the least?:  Very basic ones? or those who try TOO hard to be special. A character that doesn’t fit in the context they are in, esp. in fandoms. HEAVILY divergent characters that just basically turn them into OCs. I know I sound like a bitch but I am the type who respect canon and the actual author behind the character too much. Also those that I don’t know much about? as in, the fandom never managed to catch my interest or smth in that line.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?:  I know where is the line between fiction and reality. And that what your character does it does not reflect as the person you actually are. I am pretty laid back and I understand people’s views and reasoning. idk. I draw a lot if I am super invested ?

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: I am super sporadic and can go from being super active to flat out dead for weeks. my mood swings a lot with the amount of attention I get, as horrible as it sounds. I am very anxious as a person for reasons ( not IRL mostly, just bad experience from previous partners ). I promise a lot but do little? honestly I will just bad mouth myself if I keep writing this.

Do you rp smut?:  YES ( tho mostly on discord ) / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?:  YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?:  both? - Anything you would not want to rp there?:  ehhhh, idk -- i don’t do as much to know what I don’t like here.

Are ships important to you?:   YES / NO / RELATIVE. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?:   YES / NO. Do you use read more?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?:  the very nature of human relations. I am talking about Nora big time here -- there is a lot to explore in her relations and how she reacts and acts towards someone is very very contextual. How much she fakes, how much she is sincere, how much she struggles or how relaxed can be. force her to show her real self, which is very hazy even for her as a task. Be very poetic deep and also very shallow. I particulary see her as a character that REALLY depends on her relation with the other muse -- but generally speaking for any of my muses: I love to explore them as a pair and as individuals. - What is your smut tag?: the unfamily friendly. ( new tag (?))

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: Anything? I am open to anything honestly. As long as it makes sense.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?:  Anyone who is denying their feelings, are peculiar as an individual or anyone who needs an insight of themselves and the world around them. Nora is a mentor type of character, she is here to be a support and help others explore themselves and learn. Also if you are a minor, she will most likely try to get close to help -- one must protect the good sad kids.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?:  Stubborn, very fixated with things. Who would not open themselves to other perspective without thinking someone is trying to change them. Also she would struggle a heck lot with psychopaths and sociopaths, or anyone that “doesn’t have a face” for her. - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?:  Curious people, struggling ones, kids in general -- people that are willing to listen to her opinions and try to improve in a positive way. Also those who are quirky in a way. 

- What interests your Muse(s) in general:  rabbits, literature, interesting people, the unknown, learning, relationships of all natures.  - What do they desire, is their goal?:  Live long without letting her particularity ruin her -- for her kind nobody makes it past the 50s and she wants that , to conquer her ability and prove that even with something like she is ( they are ), it’s posible to live and be happy. have a family of her own, yeah she is that cheesy. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?:  Their actions and the emotions that they are carrying on their back.  - What do they value in a person?:    sincerity, willingness, enthusiasm. - What themes do they like talking about?:  a lot of phylosophic stuff, deep topics -- as well to casual things of life. about people and society. - Which themes bore them?:  excuses and avoidance -- people who are willing to drop everything and give up.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?:  the attempt of suicide of her mother. and the successfull suicide of many of her peers. - What could possibly trigger them?:  any sort of threat or violence towards someone who does not asked for it. esp. her peers and family. - What could set them off, enrage them?:  Immoral ones. Those who are willing to stomp on others just to success in their goal. - What could lead to an instant kill?:  is not killing, but touch a hair of her family and you are done. same for her friends and protegees.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?:  gorgers, suicide, her tired face. - Is there someone /-thing they love?:   her family and dear ones --- to a fault. rabbits or anything related to it.

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:  any way is okay as long as is not threatening. - Where are they usually to find?:  during the night, in the streets -- during the day is either her workplace or her house. maybe a park near her apartment/location if she is feeling stuffy.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?:  she is not a good person , she is willing to manipulate people and is constantly trying to impose her morals. but she is also very sensitive even if she doesn’t show it --- Nora does look tired for a reason , and one of them is because she cries a lot . 

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by:  @skyvar​ Tagging:  @batoushoujo​ , @obtainedloss​ , @lorddiiavolo​ , @evanesense​ , @sunpierce​ , @necrotrigae​ , @maljefe​ , @ethaeria​ , @calpio​ , @veiliisms​

[fratboyvivimatthews]

I used to love your blog but now I don’t read anymore and unfollowed bc it’s all complaining or responding to hate. I want hockey

if i’m being honest i don’t know how to respond to this because i’m actually really hurt by this.

i guess i would like to start of by saying it’s my blog and i get to do as i please, and respond to what i want to respond to. to go with that i’m not the only hockey blog that does this. all blogs complain about stuff, we are all human after all. complaining is a humans fault, and i just happen to be human:)

secondly i’m a busy person. i’m a junior in high school. i’ve been studying for my act, and all my classes. plus i play sports! so i can’t post 24/7 like so many other people can. that doesn’t mean i have been writing though, because i have been! i have so many fics in my docs right now that i’m working on, and so many ideas for things to write! plus i have to spend time with family and friends so my live gets a little hectic during the fall through spring. i’ve also been sick for the past week...

but summer? i fucking crank stuff out for my followers! i posted how many blurbs, and how many fics that were over 10k? i wrote my angel in three days. that’s 10,595 words i wrote nonstop for you all in three days. not even three days! plus i put so much time and effort into my fics it’s ridiculous. i try to make every single one of them different, to have different ideas plots and little things that happens in them. so i’m always putting in overtime in these fics, and blurbs and anything i write because i want you all to enjoy them as much as i enjoy writing them.

look what i’m trying to say is i’m trying my best here. i’m a 17 year old with a school, family, and social life. i try to post hockey as much as i can, and i’m writing almost every second that i can. i write on the bus home from games and that’s saying something. so feel free to stay unfollowing me because i’ve been responding to hate, or i complain. but i hope you know that i’m sure you complain. i’m sure you respond to hate too. i just hope you know that if you stay unfollowing me you’re going to be missing out on so much that i have planned.

from the bottom of my heart guys i apologize for responding to hate and complaining. i’m sorry it hasn’t been hockey 24/7, but i’ve had a lot going on this year and i’m a busy person, so i need you to respect that i can’t post hockey all the time:)

[imaginethathaikyuu]

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

hey friends! so i wanna have a little fun to commemorate the beginning of june - not only is june my birthday month, but it’s also the month summer begins where i live - making it my favorite month of the year!

so to celebrate, i think it’d be fun to host my first sleepover!

starting saturday, june 1 at midnight EST (basically starting tonight), our summer sleepover begins! for 24 hours, normal requests will be on hold and i ask that you send me things like…

requests from the drabble list under the cut

request your own short drabble

requests for headcanons

send me your headcanons!

any questions about me, as personal as they may be

or tell me about yourself!

would you rathers, fuck marry kills, my top three anything, any game!

requests for matchups (rules will be under the cut)

who would you ship me with?

confessions, tell me a secret!

ask me for advice

unpopular opinions

talk about anime/fav characters

anything else you want!

i want this to be a fun kick off to summer. if you’ve never sent an ask, feel free to do so during the sleepover! i’m looking forward to interacting with you all and getting to know you all, and to all of you getting to know me better!

like i said, sleepover asks will be open june 1st starting at midnight (EST!), for 24 hours - all day june 1st! i’ll make a post announcing it’s began!

(im also using this as a distraction from really shitty things im going thru irl so please help me get my mind of of things:)

happy summer! (also if it flops its oikawa’s fault)

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

drabble list 

-blog rules still apply -if you wanna give me an easier time, specify a scenario you want with the number -please only request 1 character and 1 prompt at a time. (or, you can request multiple numbers for 1 scenario!) -SPECIFY WHICH LIST YOU’RE REQUESTING FROM.

fluff/angst

“When I look at you, I see my whole world, and that scares the shit out of me.”

“I had a bad dream again.”

“I haven’t slept in ages.”

“How drunk was I?”

“You could’ve - could’ve stayed. You could’ve helped me fix things.”

“I hate seeing you so sad. It’s just so dramatic how humans show emotions and being sad is such a boring one.”

I told you not to get too close to me.

I did care about you. I just had no other choice.

“Stay here tonight.”

   “I’ll keep you warm.”

“I can’t sleep, can I stay here?”

“How do I look?”

“I’m not jealous! It’s just…you’re mine!”

“I know they’re just stuffed animals but doesn’t it feel weird? It’s like they’re watching us.”

“It’s late.  Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“You’ve shown me what love can feel like.”

“You have no idea how much I want you right now.”

“I am home.”

“You’re worth it.”

“It’s cold, you should take my jacket.”

“When I’m with you, I’m happy.”

“Don’t be scared, I’m right here.”

“Just hold me.”

“Can I wear your sweater? It smells like you.”

“Your bed head is really cute.”

“I don’t know how to exist in a world without you”

“You are so fucking hot when you’re mad.”

“You make my heart do the thing and it freaks me out.”

“You’re my top priority. I never want you to think any differently.”

“I think I’m in love.”

smut/more angst

“I’ve never wanted anyone to fuck me this badly.”

“You’re not going out in that outfit.”

“You’re more than just a one night stand.”

“Like what you see?”

“We’re in public, you know.”

“Don’t be so rough. there can’t be any marks.”

“Watch me.”

“Could he make you feel as good as i do?”

“You’re n-not, um, w-wearing anything under that, are you..?”

“You taste like fucking candy.”

“The only way you’re getting off is on my thigh.”

“You make a sound and its game over.”

“Just let me finish this/this level and i swear I’ll go down on you until you cum at least three times.”

“I could just pull your bikini bottoms to the side, no one will notice.”

“C’mere, you can sit on my lap until I’m done working.”

“What? Does that feel good?”

“Say it.”

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard that you forget you ever even met that asshole.”

“You better shut that pretty little mouth before I put it to work, doll.”

“How quickly can you cum?”

“Don’t ruin the sofa.” “I’ll just have to cum inside you then.”

“Stop doing that or I’m going to cum in my pants.”

“I’m not going to touch you unless you beg.”

“We’ve been at it like rabbits, how are you still horny?!”

“Your ass is going to be seven different shades of red after that little stunt.”

“God damnit, now all I can think about right now is you licking my cock like its that ice cream cone.”

“Do you think they can hear us through the tent?” “Yes we can.”

“Spread your legs and smile for the camera.”

“This tight ass/pussy belongs to me. Got it?”

“You’re nothing but a little cum dump for me.”

“You cum when I say you can.”

“Did I say you could touch me?”

“Tell me how good it feels.”

“Touch yourself for me.”

“It’s almost too tight.”

“You’re going to cum again and again till you’re begging me to stop.”

“Who owns you?”

“Can I ride you this time?”

“I shouldn’t have to ask for you to spread your legs for me.”

“Do you like being used by me?”

 matchup rules

what is a matchup?      you tell me about yourself, and i tell you what character from haikyuu who i ship you with.

rules:

-tell me your gender and sexuality if either of them are important/matter

-describe how you look if you want to; your height, your hair color, eye color, your favorite feature about yourself

-tell me about yourself! for example: are you energetic? do you like to make people laugh? are you a homebody? do you have any hobbies? play any sports?

-tell me what you look for in a partner

-your zodiac sign - it’ll help me a lot

-anything else you think is important!

-try to keep it under 2 asks if you can - please tag your asks if there are multiple and if you’re on anon, with an emoji or number marks

thanks for requesting and for respecting the rules! once again, happy summer!!

[chadlesbianjasontodd]

Whyyy are you stalking players and going through their followings like a damn puck bunny blog smh embarrassing. Morgan didn’t say anything verbally to offend the gays why is this still a thing, half the league supports trump and fucked up politics, you’re just bringing in the typical white man-ness that comes with the league to try and beef up a situation that was already debunked.

did someone put all of my jokes about how people react to us being upset at a homophobic slur in a blender? did you go through the comments of everyone i blocked on twitter in the last two days and splice all of them together?? sincerely how did you manage to perfectly encapsulate every homophobic straight leafs fan reaction in an anon ask this short

anyway there’s a post ive been meaning to put out for a while now that’s gotten more relevant in the past two days, about public figures and reputation and why you’re not going to be seeing any “is this tv show my friend” takes from me. this seems like a good place to attach it.

you see stuff going around about how pro athletes’ jobs are just to play a sport, nothing else; i don’t think that’s true. being an nhl player or an nba player or an nfl player includes being a public figure, which means a certain level of appearing palatable to people who don’t know you. it is part of their job to look good in public, and it’s more than wearing a suit and signing autographs: it includes crafting an image of themselves that appeals to fans and sponsors. happily for them, there are people whose entire job it is to tell them what to say to reporters, what not to say to reporters, what they should and shouldn’t put on the internet, not to send any nudes, all that. a lot of what gets people in media trouble is being bad at the basic ‘don’t be a dick on the internet’ stuff that most of us do already, but if you want to actually get along well (and maybe have some privacy) you’ve gotta do more than that. you’ve gotta have a public face.

crosby just keeps everything locked down tight, which is an attitude i respect. ovechkin and even seguin these days have done well enough at crafting a media personality that people’s first or even second thought generally isn’t ‘he’s a big putin fan’ or ‘he’s a homophobe who’s bffs with that rapist patrick kane’. you look at ovechkin and you go what a wild guy! he’s hilarious! i love him! & seguin’s loveable rogue fratboy act has worked absolute wonders for him. then you have people like pierre-edouard bellemare, who are less famous and less grandiose about it but do a good job: bellemare stays quiet except for postgame interviews, uses his public twitter once in a while to promote charity work he does and that’s it. counterexample alex tuch is real bad at this (and hes a bad guy) but i’ve talked about him before so i’ll save it.

some sports organizations don’t think that an athlete being known as an abuser, a racist, a homophobe, is enough of a hit to their reputation to particularly care when their employees do such things; nevertheless, having a good name is part of an athlete’s job.

what athletes or actors or other celebrities think to themselves, what they do at home, what their family is like, who they’re dating – that’s not part of their job and it’s not my business. i don’t know these people! i don’t want to know them!

but what they attach to their public name. the way that they act towards people. that’s important and i do want to know. see, i have a certain amount of respect for people who are willing to fake it in public – they might be garbage human beings inside their own heads, but as long as they act right, then good for them. if they respect us all enough to put in the effort of lying, that matters. but when they don’t act right, or when they attach the unhappy truth to their name and their public reputation – when, for example, they yell a homophobic slur into a microphone during a hockey game, or they follow north america’s most famous professional misogynist with their official twitter account – that is my business, yeah. it’s everybody’s business.

does it matter whether or not it was rielly? no. not really. we know they’re all like this, however nice and rainbow tape they act during the month of june. so when it comes up like this we need to jump on it as hard as we can. once they’ve been scared into acting right, they can think whatever they want.

(also: anon, i’m not publishing your second ask bc i don’t want to expose people to more of this zero-calories homophobia lite nonesense than we’ve all already had to see, but if you say ‘homosexuals’ like a lutheran minister from indiana one more time i’m gonna show up at your house and i’m gonna bring a lot of derek jarman films with me)

[jamlocked]

Let’s talk about John

Seeing as @raeofalbion and @summeringminor asked for it, let’s talk about John. I feel it may be unwise, but on this blog WE DIE LIKE MEN.

I want to talk about the violence and why, contrary to some things I’ve seen, it’s just…I don’t want to say, ‘not as awful as it’s made out’ but I can’t, because it is. But the reasons behind it don’t seem as alien to me as they seem to be to others.

Okay. So, first off, let’s talk about the British cultural thing I mentioned on this post, that I feel is sometimes overlooked (understandably) by those overseas. And I’m not condoning his behaviour in any way as a result of this, just pointing it out.

See, in my generation, it was always perfectly normal to utter casual threats of violence. Keep in mind that John is about ten years older than me, or something – I forget what year S4 is supposed to take place in - so this is even more true of his generation. Even when I was a kid, it was perfectly normal to say, ‘shut up, or I’ll kick your head in’. My mother would tell me, ‘I’ll skin you,’ if I was cheeky. When I was a teenager, my mates and I were all, ‘shut your mouth or you’ll get a slap’…and the thing is, none of us ever did these things, it was/is just a way of speaking in the UK. Hyperbole. There’s a very definite line, and people would rarely make the jump into actually doing any of it. But this is why John making statements like, ‘I could break every bone in your body while naming them’ does not read as abusive to me, it just reads as a standard, ‘shut your face because you’re annoying me’ statement.

Another mitigating factor – John was in the army. Now, my dad was in the army. So was my uncle. My best friend in my twenties was a senior cadet instructor, and I very nearly joined up myself a couple of times. I also played rugby – as John does/did – and spent my teenage years surrounded by lads with pints in their hands, threatening each other with a kicking while still being the best of mates. I went on holiday with an ex-paratrooper who told me that the regiment celebrated the arrival of new recruits by stuffing them in a locker and chucking them down a hill. This mate spent his first two months as a para recovering from a broken leg, collarbone and arm as a result of this initiation. (The guy was also utterly mental in other ways, but that’s another – very army – thing).

My point is…if you’re British and of a certain age, if you’ve been in the services, if you like macho sports and hanging out in that sort of company…there’s a certain way of speaking and behaving. And John is an intelligent man and a doctor, so not fully subscribed to this – I think it’s made pretty clear that he’s an outsider in some respects - but he also goes on holiday with his rugby mates, he’s addicted to danger and adrenaline, and he’s only happy when chasing down criminals with a (pretend) sociopath. He’s not portrayed as a sensitive type. He’s just more sensitive than Sherlock to social niceties, and spends his time pointing them out to him. But in the context of his age, the country he lives in, his background job, his hobbies, his current chosen way of living…his casual threats of violence don’t seem out of place to me.

(I will add at this point that speaking this way seems less of a thing, nowadays. Most of my friends now are about ten years younger than me, Oxford graduates, generally Woke, and would never dream of talking like that to anyone. Hurrah for the younger generation!)

HAVING SAID ALL THAT. John’s actions in S4 – specifically when he beat Sherlock up in TLD – were reprehensible. I could write a whole other essay on why, ‘a relationship would complete you as a human being’ was just awful, and…maybe I’ll get into that in a bit, because NO NO NO. But we’re talking about violence here, and why he seemed to start S1 as a generally affable guy with problems, and ended up shoeing Sherlock in the ribs on the tiles of a morgue. Of course that was gross. He crossed a line that few people go over, and the worst thing about it all was that Sherlock just accepted that he deserved it.

But again, the seeds of this were in him all along, and you can argue that yes, it made his character go to a really horrible place, but also that it was an action born out of circumstances and was there specifically to highlight just how much trouble John was in at the time. It also served as a plot device, because the relationship between John and Sherlock – the nucleus of the whole show – had to break down to its lowest point before they could rebuild it for a glorious coming-back-together in the final episode. It’s a standard redemption arc, where both heroes start high, fall to the pits, and then come through it together, stronger. It’s one thing to have John freezing Sherlock out and Sherlock nearly killing himself with drugs to get him back…that’s a slow-burn falling apart, and it’s hurtful but it’s not exciting. When you’re making ratings TV for the majority of people who are not in fandom, and just want their excitement fix once every few years, then you need a crunch point. A visual representation of how bad things have become. So, you get John literally kicking a man when he’s down, blaming him for the death of his wife. It brings it home to a mass audience.

…damnit, I had so many other things in my head about this the other night, and they’ve all deserted me. Never mind, let’s move on to the big Lack of Apology.

I am one of those who would love, beyond all else, for John to have stood in front of Sherlock at the end and the end of that episode, and said, ‘I’m sorry for assaulting you. I’m sorry for blaming you for Mary, when she was her own person and made her own choices. I know you did your best for her’. That would have been lovely.

At the same time…I think it says a lot about their relationship that he didn’t say it. I don’t think Sherlock needed him to, no matter how much we know Sherlock deserved to hear it. I think this was an instance of Moftiss trusting the audience a little bit. Quite simply, the fact that John stood in front of Sherlock and admitted, ‘what it is…is shit’, and then cried – Sherlock and John don’t do vulnerability with each other. They take the piss and call each other names, and are downright insulting a lot of the time (‘I always hear ‘punch me in the face when you talk’…’you’re an idiot – oh, don’t look like that, most people are…’). Sherlock drugs John without consent (twice), and sets an imaginary dog on him in Baskerville. John quips about Asperger’s. They’re friends, but they’re not soft with each other. They’re British men of a certain generation (written by British men of a certain generation). So, John came to Sherlock after all the shit that happened, and he admitted that he wasn’t doing well, and Sherlock stood up and hugged him and told him he was a human being. Sherlock knew he was sorry, or he wouldn’t have come. John knew Sherlock has been beating himself up over Mary, or he wouldn’t be in the state he was in. They accepted each other back into their lives, and tacitly agreed to move on. They’re intelligent men, they knew what they’d been through, they knew they were both sorry. And from there, they go onto TFP, having each other’s backs once more and finishing the season running together side by side.

I’m probably missing loads of important stuff, because I haven’t watched S4 since it aired. But the feeling that has stayed with me since I watched it, is that nothing that happened in the first two eps was good between them, but nothing was particularly out of character either. John beat Sherlock up because he was wracked with guilt over thinking about having an affair, and then Mary died. Him beating Sherlock up was an eruption of that guilt, transferring it onto the easiest person to blame. And of course that’s an awful thing, but he’s supposed to be a human being. People do that shit all the time. The fact that Sherlock forgives him is a whole other kettle of fish (let’s not get into his whole lack of self-esteem), but what is true friendship if not seeing someone at their very worst, and loving them anyway? I don’t think – I hope – that no one believes John makes a habit of that, and beats Sherlock up once a week for the rest of their lives. It was a one-off thing that came from a very particular set of circumstances.

…okay, I’m going to shut up. This isn’t me defending John as a character, because honestly he’s always been one of the least interesting to me as a whole. But I do think he’s integral to everything that happens, and I see a lot of readings of his behaviour as completely OOC, or that somehow he’s a poor representation of friendship (I mean, he is in lots of ways but Sherlock’s often worse). I just…prefer to look at him as character, rather than some idealisation of How Friends Should Act towards one another. He’s not there to represent an ideal friend, or be an ideal person. He’s a foil to Sherlock who, let’s face it, is Problematic with a capital P. Yes, John functions better in society, but it’s a certain section of society. He’s a bloke who plays rugby and dates a string of women, and doesn’t remember details of their lives. He’s a bloke that chafes at domestic living (very clear in S3) and seeks excitement, so he texts another woman in S4. He’s not any kind of ideal. He’s just a bloke, and he falls apart when his wife dies, and it brings out the very worst of him. Sherlock accepts that, and they move on. It may be an unpleasant character arc, but I just don’t see it as being one that’s inherently OOC.

(But fuck Moftiss for ‘a relationship would complete you as a human being’, fuck them fuck them fuck all the way off.)

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day(s) 5/6 - Iquitos-San Rafael- Iquitos again - In Which I Live Out My Genuine Nightmares

This is going to be a very special (and very long) double entry, because a) the following two days were largely spent doing the same thing b) I am so far behind with this blog that cramming two entries into one seems like perhaps the only way I will ever be able to catch up and c) I didn't really sleep enough to properly separate the two days, anyway, so functionally, they really do count as one for me.

I remember being in no more than primary six or seven, when a man came to speak to our class about the Amazon rainforest. I don't remember who he was or why having a guest speaker tell us about the jungle was particularly necessary, but I do remember in vivid detail the things he told me. More specifically, I remember the things he told me about all the things that could - and most likely would - kill, maim or otherwise damage me, should I ever be fool enough go. Poison tree frogs that can kill you with a single touch, spiders as big as dinner plates that'll snatch your toes right off you, jaguars, scorpions, snakes, wasps, venomous ants, millipedes and even trees; the list went on seemingly forever and I distinctly remember, even at that young age thinking, very firmly to myself “fuuuuuck that.” - except probably a bit higher pitched. More recently, I remember being in Budapest zoo (an excursion featured in this very blog) and there being a very big sign at the entrance to their Amazonia exhibit, describing the area as simply “the green hell”, for much the same reasons. Both of these things have stuck with me for more than twenty and more than five years respectively and, to be honest, did combine mentally to rather put me off ever going to such a horrible, godless locale. It seemed almost unreal, almost like a fever dream, then (Not least of all, because I actually was running a fever, still being fucked into a paste as I was, by my jungle flu.), as I loaded my bags into the back of a tiny little tuktuk motor-taxi, to be whisked away to this nightmarish place, which I swore I would never visit, for actuals and reals.

Before that though, I had a tuktuk to ride. These little things are basically the only way to get around Iquitos, other than a truly abysmal bus service, or just owning a bike; cars are essentially a non-entity here, being very difficult to actually transport over from other citites as they are, as Iquitos is entirely inaccessible by road. They're also quite fun – the tuktuk taxis, that is- I have to be honest, however not-in-keeping with the tone of this blog that statement is. Riding one is sort of like being the terrified non-player-character passenger in a Grand Theft Auto taxi driving side-mission, as your driver weaves carelessly through a sea of other motorcabs, paying no heed whatsoever to the rules of the road or the safety of pedestrians, hoping against hope that they don't lose interest in the task at hand and drive you off the edge of a cliff, or into a deserted field at night, to shoot you in the head with an AR-15 and take all your money.

All too soon though, we were ejected from our mental little death-wagon and ushered into a sort of garage, that appeared to be serving as the headquarters of Maniti Expeditions; the company that was due to take us jungle-side.

We took a seat and waited while the other members of our tour filed in. As it turned out, we were rather a small group. We were joined by a family of Pakistani-Americans from New Jersey, a Portuguese man, who I think was called Pedro, who was nice, though verging dangerously on the pretentious, and, of course – because apparently there is a God, but unfortunately he's just a bastard – the Indian couple from the night before. Of course they were there. Of course they were. Also, it turned out they were actually American, so that made my accidental racism one degree worse than it had even been before. Whizzer.

After a brief interlude wherein a man, whom I did not realise had just wandered in off the street, handed me a torch - which I assumed was just an extra they gave you as part of the tour, but after some time and a lot of him refusing to let me hand it back to him, realised he was trying to sell me, for a frankly ludicrous price, resulting in me having to physically force the thing back into his hands while shouting “no gracias” as politely, yet firmly as I could - we were loaded on to a shitty, rickety old bus and sent towards Bellavista Naney port with our new guide. His name was Alfredo.

Alfredo was, as you might expect a jungle tour guide to be, an interesting chap. He was a short, sturdy, sixty-five year old man, sporting a Peruvian national football shirt, a pair of quite small shorts with sailboats printed on them, a camouflage backpack with a Cannibal Corpse patch poorly sewed onto it and one hell of a coke-nail. He told us, also, not long after we had met that he had been doing Ayahuasca, that traditional Peruvian mind-fuck broth for the last fifty years or so of his life. This was our expert. This was the only barrier between ourselves and definitely dying at the hands of a cruel and dangerous jungle. A junkie death-metal-head. Great. (though, to be totally fair to Alfredo, he was only about 20% as fucking weird and unreliable as this description makes him out to be. In reality, he was very knowledgeable, friendly and really, clearly cared a lot about making sure we were all safe and happy. He was both a top lad and a ruddy good bloke)

We were rushed through Bellavista port by Alfredo, stopping only briefly to marvel at the culinary delights the small port had to offer

Like these buckets full of fucking grubs, for some reason. Apparently they taste just like butter

and before we knew it, we were boarding a small, rickety boat bound for jungletown in the least official looking dock I had ever been to.

Pictured: Not a dock

Just as I was going to take my seat, something pale darted across the corner of my eye. I quickly spun to face the movement and there it was, sitting, bold as brass, right next to where I was about to park my – frankly 10/10 – arse was a massive, white spider, about the size of the palm of my hand, staring up at me, human blood dripping from its fangs, hissing threats in some esoteric spider-language. Fortunately, I was too fucked with the flu to have any energy left to make a fool of myself by panicking and so, instead, quietly just moved down the boat, screaming myself hoarse inside. Alfredo, then noticing the spider himself, then scooped the horrible thing into his hands and very softly deposited it off the side of the boat as if it was nothing, thereby tacitly making a total bitch of me for being so scared of it. Thanks Alfredo. Prick. Fortunately, though that seemed to be the only spider that had snuck on board, as I remained unbothered by any of its kin for the duration of our (very long) boat-ride up the Amazon river.

The boat ride was, despite my malady and my intrinsic fear of ever being submerged in the Amazon river, for any amount of time and for any purpose, fairly incredible. The river is bizarrely fascinating to be on, even when nothing of any interest is happening, and once I had gotten over my terrible, terrible fear of the boat capsizing, or a piranha flying out of the water and biting my face, I settled in to really quite enjoying myself. Alfredo's talk about the river, much like the thing itself, remained interesting, even at points when he was pretty much just babbling a load of shit about nothing, and a conversation with the father of the Pakistani-American family (who was every inch the spitting image of a brown Todd, from The Last Man On Earth) revealed that he, too, was something of an absolute delight. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad, after all.

We eventually pulled in to San Rafael, the little community adjacent to our lodge and, after veeeeery fucking carefully removing myself from the boat, we walked for about ten minutes through very nearly actual proper jungle

Aaaaaah!

seeing some wild tamarins on the way and everything (which are apparently very rare to spot in the wild, so that was neat). By this point though, the heat was almost unbearable and lugging around  my heavy backpack with a swirling vortex of fluey malaise sucking me ever deeper into its terrible maw was really starting to wipe me out. Before long, though, we arrived at the lodge, which was really quite nice, though perhaps a little too similar to the Others' village in Lost, for me to be totally comfortable in.

Delightful, yet sinister, like if Ted Bundy could make balloon animals

I quickly scooted off to dump my bag in our... fairly modest room

Hey, cool, I’m definitely going to die here.

before, with little to no chance for me to rest, being dragged straight back out for a short taster walk, into the actual and for reals jungle.

The walk was definitely an interesting, if very tiring excursion, especially for a gross, snotty flu-man, which I very much was. I think, though that it was largely the novelty of being in a new biome that really did the bulk of holding my attention, as, presumably due to the lovely, but very loud and panicky American family's constant hoots of fear, we didn't see a huge amount in the way of wildlife. Especially not anything that might bite, poison or constrict you. Still, though, it was quietly quite comforting to not be the most scared person there. Grow up, Americans. God.

Around half an hour later and fifteen pounds heavier in mud caked to the bottom of my shoe and trousers, we returned to the lodge for a surprisingly nice lunch of mashed potato and beef. I couldn't really enjoy it, however, as my sinuses were full beyond bursting and the room was spinning horribly around me, as I ate. We were given, mercifully, around an hour to relax before the next part of our tour, which I spent soundly asleep, not even caring that spiders could and probably would be crawling over my exhausted, broken body as I did.

The nap turned out to be a good choice. I awoke feeling slightly more human, albeit by the scantiest margin possible. It wouldn't have mattered if I was literally dying though- I'd still have gone on the next bit of the tour; was I fuck missing a trip to Monkey Island, under any circumstances.

We boarded the boat once more; one tour member lighter - in the form of Pedro who had decided to go off with another, different guide to camp in the jungle for a night, though with the new addition of Karl, another American man and weird lookalike of his namesake Karl Pilkington, arriving late - and were away to Monkey Island. Fuck yes we were away to Monkey Island.

Monkey Island, as its name suggests is a rehabilitation centre for monkeys who were rescued from the black market's pet trade, and that's all brilliant and everything, but jesus christ, it was just a little patch of jungle with all friendly woolly monkeys running around and, jumping through trees and tumbling around and playing and coming up to you to hold your hand or climb onto your shoulders and it was everything I have ever wanted and I don't expect I will feel joy like I did while being there, ever again. Or any sort of joy at all, to be honest.

L O O K A T T H E M 

It was so good that for around the hour and a half we were there, I basically forgot I had the flu. That's how good it was; it was good enough to override my body slowly shutting down through fatigue and illness, like a lemsip for the soul. It was genuinely fantastic; the only thing that marred the experience, even slightly was the American family being a bit too loud and overbearing, pushing to the front of every experience, and so taking all of the monkeys' precious attentions for themselves, for the vast majority of the time. I suppose it can be forgiven of people for being a little over-excited about a god damned island full of monkeys though, so for once, I will bare no grudge against them. But let it me known, if anyone physically comes between me and a monkey, ever again, I will cut a bitch.

Way, way too fucking soon, though, we were pulled away from Monkey Island, in much the way its inhabitants were pulled away from the still-warm corpses of their mothers by poachers (...too dark?) and loaded back onto the boat.

We returned to San Rafael and, by this point, a combination of the heat, the flu and not being allowed to spend literally forever on Monkey Island in a perpetual state of utter bliss had ruined me. I badly needed a nap, again, for fear that if I did not take one, I might actually die, but alas, I was not to be afforded such a simple pleasure. Alfredo informed us, once we were back on land, that we'd be heading out into the jungle again, for an hour long night-walk to look for spiders and shit. I couldn't think of a more terrifying sentence for him to say, to be honest, but I decided that was probably actually quite unlikely that I was actually going to die and it would be quite an experience to miss out on if I just spent the time asleep in the relative comfort of my room, and so, like the solider I am, I nutted up and just did it.

I've genuinely had nightmares about being stuck in the jungle at night. If you'd have asked me a week ago to describe my top most terrifying real-world scenarios I'd never want to be in, that probably would have ranked in the top three. Actually experiencing it, however, really wasn't all that bad. I don't know if my mind and body were just too mangled to process exactly what was happening to me (I do remember spending a lot of the time, almost asleep on my feet, not fully knowing where I was, but being quite convinced that I was in a forest in Scotland), or if the lovely, but loud American family had just spooked all the dangerous animals in a fifty mile radius away with their unforgivably loud hollers and yelps, but I didn't find myself feeling at all anxious, or frightened, or...anything, really. It was just something that was happening to me before I could sleep.

Although in retrospect, it looks fucking terrifying

The walk progressed slowly, with little of interest being spotted, other than a couple of (admittedly pretty sick) stick insects and apparently an opossum (although I didn't see it, myself) and seemed to be winding down without incident. Then, ten minutes or so from camp, Sam's left leg stated burning. Panicking, she told Alfredo what was happening, who traipsed back to her, lifted her trouser-leg and saw, to Sam's horror, but his own light amusement that a not insignificant amount of fire-ants were swarming around her calf. Apparently she had stomped her little stompy feet through their nest and was now paying the price for her murderous hubris. Alfredo swatted the ants away as best he could and we continued walking (or in Sam's case, badly limping) back to the camp.

Once back, we ducked back into our bungalow to make sure neither of us had any more of the nasty little fuckers on us, which thankfully, we did not, and everything was great,forever. The End.

Nah, just kidding; we had an entire fucking colony milling around our socks and lower trousers. We very quickly and with very very little dignity, stripped our khakis off in a bit more of a girlish panic than I'd honestly like to admit, shook the ants free from the trousers, outside and just straight up binned the socks like the unwearable garbage they now were. When we were absolutely sure that we now ant-free (which took so much more time and energy than my body could realistically spare), we headed to dinner; another fairly nice affair full of chicken legs and mashed potato, so I'm told, at least. Genuinely, I don't know, I was so far beyond physically okay that the entire thing really was a bit of a blur for me. I do remember being given a pill by the Indian couple, which they claimed was a combination of painkillers and muscle relaxant and which knocked me out almost as soon as I returned to our room. At least I was too sick to care about spending a night in the jungle- the part of the trip I was most worried about, previously – so uh. Every cloud and all that, I guess. Also, the muscle relaxant didn't even one, as I had worried it might, make me piss the bed. So that's two silver linings, which honestly, is pretty good going, as far as silver linings are concerned.

I was up several times in the night. The jungle is (shockingly) pitch black during the evening and, much like the night before, I found myself awaking with a jolt every two hours or so, to empty my bladder and perform a full and thorough inspection of my bed, using the torch on my phone, to make sure no errant tarantulas had decided to become my erstwhile bedfellows. They hadn't, to be fair, but that doesn't make me hate them any less. Furry, spindly little pricks.

Despite this, I did sleep better than I had the previous night (albeit again, only by the slimmest of margins) and actually found myself, for once, being woken up by my alarm, rather than just being awake several hours before it was due to go off, anyway. Take that, alarm.

Our morning plan was to take the boat out once more, to watch the sun rise over the Amazon and then around to go river-dolphin spotting, which, to be fair, did sound appallingly lovely. The sunrise was mostly obscured by clouds, so wasn't perhaps as impressive as it could have been, though still managed to remain fairly bloody impressive

Neat, I guess.

and what the clouds took away from the gravity of the experience, Alfredo more than added back in by uttering the cryptic, slightly frightening and just very, very metal line of “...His eye opens” as the sun just began to peek over the horizon

BEHOLD!

By the time we had begun dolphin spotting, I had once again grown weary and while I was definitely thoroughly enjoying the experience, and managed, at points, to get incredibly close and take some pretty okayish videos of the ugly, pink little jerks

I have no way of editing videos out here, but if you wait until around the 30 second mark, you should see a big splashy boy

I was definitely not enjoying my nostrils turning into a snot-faucet and my head being slowly crushed into a singularity from the inside, so by the time we packed it all in and returned home, I was super glad to be doing so, despite feeling a little guilty for thinking like this. To be honest though, as amazing as this experience was (and indeed all the experiences the rainforest had to offer thus far – save for fire-ants, which can go fuck themselves), it was hard for me to really, properly enjoy them, as each time I got close to feeling like I was, the realisation that I am a comparatively rich, white tourist who paid for this experience set in, hard, and, in what has to be the most first-world-problemy way possible, did rather make the entire thing seem a bit...plastic. Not the monkeys though; they were legit.

Once home, we took a quick break; not long enough for a recovery nap, but just about long enough to relax in a hammock for a while

So relaxed...

before being ushered out onto the river by Alfredo once more. This time to go and meet some members of a local tribe. I wasn't particularly thrilled about this part of the tour, feeling that it was perhaps a little ...colonial and exploitative; parading us around this relatively primative tribe, oohing and ahhing at their grass skirts and shitty little home-made crafts and rudimentary hunting techniques and all that, but I did pay...quite a lot for this tour and didn't really want miss any part of it; especially a bit so awkward and unwanted that it was almost guaranteed to generate some dynamite blog-content, so I bundled myself back into the boat and headed off to tribesville.

We arrived at the small village and were directed to sit down inside, what I assumed was the main hut. We had been joined by another, different tour-group for what was about to ensue, which I was uncharacteristically thankful for, as it, at the very least, would dilute some of the attention that our group would get. After a brief talk on the tribe from Alfredo, which didn't exactly blow me away with any fascinating insight into their way of life (they're farmers who grow rice and bananas, they hunt for their food and use blowdarts), we then got another small talk in the tribe's native tongue from the chieftain; short, stern and stocky man, wearing a grass skirt and a large ornamental headdress, who was, hilariously, just called Richard, who essentially just went over the same things as Alfredo, but in a language that seemed to only consist of three independent syllables.

The tribe then demonstrated two of their traditional songs, both of which were accompanied by a dance, with which we were invited to join in (an offer which every single member of our group declined)

Not this guy, though. He was fucking loving it.

and both of which, with the best will in the world, were a bit shit. After a gruelling and genuinely awkward few minutes, the music abated and we were led to a different area to try our hand at blow-gunning, which, I'll be honest, I did rather enjoy, despite myself.

P-tew!

with no time to enjoy my definitely 10/10 blowgun prowess, we were directed immediately to the tribe's market stall, in which we were expected to spend our money on various bits of, to be totally honest, absolute garbage, which the tribe had made. Sam had brought very little money with her and I hadn't thought to bring any, at all, so we had a quick look around to see what we could buy with fifteen soles that was something either one of us would actually like and we weren't just buying because it felt awkward not to. It was then that li'l chief Richard approached us, his hand outstretched, rubbing his thumb against his middle and fore-finger – the international symbol for “give me money”

“Para la musica” he told us. For the music.

Great. Now apparently we had to pay for enduring their shit music which wasn't good and which I didn't enjoy listening to. Perfect. We (Sam) handed him five of our soles and he looked disgusted with us. We (Sam) apologised for not giving more and Richard walked away, unspeaking. I don't care if you are in some jungle tribe with all different culture and everything, rudeness is rudeness. Fuck you, Richard. Prick.

Now feeling a little like what little shine the experience had possessed, previously had very much worn out, we continued being made to browse the tribe's wares, until we finally succumbed to pressure and bought ourselves some tat.

Glad I spend money on this sweet little number

With everyone's pockets now entirely emptied and the lines on who was exploiting who blurred beyond all recognition, we loaded ourselves back onto the boat. Also, a little side-note here, but it was at this point that I watched a portly lady who was on the other tour, lean out of the window of her boat to take one final picture of the tribe, though instead managed to let her phone slip out of her hands and straight to the bottom of the river; an act which I singularly enjoyed infinitely more than I had the last hour or so of tribal interaction and having my money guilted off me. They should genuinely employ someone to do that on every tour, because, honestly, I nearly enjoyed it as much as Monkey Island.

Our next stop was one I could be fucked with almost as much as the previous; piranha fishing. I'm not a huge fan of fishing, to be honest, because I don't really like killing things (although, being in the Amazon does generally make you a little kill-happier. There was no way in hell I was going to scoop up each individual fire-ant on a bit of cardboard and pop them outside on the bungalow's windowsill. It was the boot for them), but we were told by Alfredo that the lodge's chefs would cook up what we caught and we could have them for lunch, which did remove some of the grey morality which which I was struggling.

Turns out I needn't have worried about any of that, though, because I was fucking terrible at Piranha fishing and didn't land a single catch. I couldn't get them to stay on the hook, no matter what I tried and more than likely emptied our group's reserves of spare bait, single-handedly in the process, like the saint I am. Sam, however, being a salty Geordie fish woman, was great at it and caught, as she kept boastfully reminding me of, as if ending the lives of innocent little snappy-boys was something to be proud of, no fewer than four fish. Five, actually, but one wasn't a piranha and was therefore too small to bother cooking (it was, however, too badly damaged to go back in the water and so had to be stomped to death, anyway. What a monster she is.)

After a while, even Sam's bloodlust was sated and we unanimously decided to pack in this whole fishing lark and go back for lunch. I got back on board the boat, over the piranha infested waters as carefully as I have ever done anything in my life and we returned to the lodge for what would be the final time.

We were afforded enough time, once back, for me to have another nap, which, at this point were the only things making me feel even vaguely alive or human, in any sense, before being served our last lodge supper. More mashed potatoes, jungle-beans, the piranhas Sam caught and a big chunky fillet of another, different (and anyone with tastebuds would say) better fish called Pacu and which looks like this

...yummy

I am told that this all tasted quite nice, but by this point, the flu had cruelly taken away my senses of both smell and taste, so I had no idea. I could just about make out that it was very salty, though, so that was something. Small victories.

With that, our jungle experience came to a close and after a strangely intimate hug goodbye with Alfredo, we and the Indian couple (who were the only other guests not booked to stay any longer than a single night) were plopped back on our boat and ferried upstream back to Belavista. A trip which I spent nearly the entirety of asleep, which I like to think was because I had grown so comfortable with being in the jungle, at that point, that I could relax fully in it, but more likely was because I had just been crumpled into a ball of misery and fatigue by my flu over the previous three days. Overall though, being in the jungle was a surprisingly good experience and one that I might even consider doing again at some point, should the opportunity arise. A solid 9/10, except for, as I've said, the fire-ants which can go fuck themselves.

Back on terra firma, we were wizzed via tuktuk first back to the company's headquarters, where we finally parted ways with the Indian couple – hopefully actually to never see them again this time, and then to our new AirBnb, in which we would spend out final few days in Iquitos.

Our new AirBnb, as it happens, was actually a collection of luxury riverfront apartments, in which, we had unknowingly booked the nicest room. We were checked in by the receptionist, Diego, who looked the spitting image of a brown Zach Woods and who was incredibly welcoming and helpful to an almost snivelling degree (not entirely unlike every character Zach Woods plays, now I think of it.) Diego explained everything there was to explain about the apartment in frankly laborious detail and, after dropping this info-dump on us and bidding us welcome, asked us point blanc

“what's my name?”

I suppose this was as some kind of test to see if we had retained the information he had just said, rather than a test of politeness, or some weird ego-trip. Regardless, I did not remember what it was. I was hard-humped with flu and generally disregard someone's name the first three times they tell me it, even when it is someone I know I'll actually see again.

“...What's. My. Name?” he repeated.

I laughed and told him I'd just be in the jungle for two days, so I'd forgotten. This seemed to be an acceptable enough answer for him and he immediately flicked back to his friendly, helpful self, creepily seamlessly. The entire interlude was really quite odd, totally out of keeping what the rest of what I'd seen of his personality and I'm almost certain, a preamble to my own murder.

Doing our best to put whatever psychosis we had just witnessed behind us, we settled in to our new digs. This apartment, a penthouse suite overlooking the Naney river, was about as different from living in the jungle as it was possible to get, and let me tell you, the change was one hundred percent welcomed by me.

The view is spectacular

...I mean if you’re into things like that.

The bed was comfy, the fridge loaded with pre-cooled water bottles, the kitchen fully stocked and the entire apartment almost entirely bug-free, due in no small part to its remarkably effective AC system, which really did turn the flat into a little icy paradise of excess, amidst a sea of poverty and sweat.

We couldn't quite settle in fully just yet, though. Sam insisted that we make a quick outing to the supermarket, because apparently she needed shampoo and apparently wasn't willing to go alone, for fear of being “mugged” or “abducted and killed” by a “crime man”, which to be honest, I felt was very selfish of her.

For the final time that day, then, I dragged what was left of my body out through the streets of Iquitos, to the supermarket and back, before finally being able to collapse onto our exceptionally soft airbnb couch, to eat a modest dinner of a single sausage and a couple of minty biscuits, while watching the Peru episode of an Idiot Abroad - because watching someone else suffer through what I just had was really the only thing that had the capability of making me feel any better at that point – and then heading directly to our comfy, comfy bed, which I believe I must have fallen asleep in, before my head had even touched the pillow. I have never been more done.

[headlesssamurai]

why u uploading nazis u faggot u just ruined this whole blog ooo myy goddd

I assume you’re referring to that flammenwerfer gif, which might be one of the only overtly Nazi things I’ve ever posted. Either that, or you meant something from the Helghast future space Nazis from the Killzone games, since I really like their visualization as badguys. Or, perhaps you were referring to the various Kerberos saga art I’ve shared, which again has some great visuals in addition to its weirdly attractive storytelling. Or! Maybe, just maybe, you were really, rrrrreeeeallly reaching and are referring, erroneously, to a quote I once shared by Professor Jordan Peterson (certain alarmist groups of fanatic activists seem to refer to him with shameless puerility and unimaginative regularity as a Nazi).

Either way, it’s a smidge unusual to me, given your use of the word “faggot” as a pejorative while simultaneously accusing someone of some sort of fascist affinity. Does that not seem even a trite bit hypocritical to you? Regardless, it would have been extremely easy for me to just report you for harassment and sending your juvenile message onto the proper authorities so they can decide whether or not your Adderall dosing ass deserves to be banned for hate speech. But aside from the fact that I’m not a narc and believe in free speech, even the hateful sort, I reasoned it would be more productive to use this as an object lesson regarding the social overuse of the term “Nazi” in today’s media culture.

I’m certain even a low-synapse, sloped-foreheaded junkie who breathes heavily through his mouth, like you, is able to grapple with the fact that the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (a group we refer to today with the German-coined colloquialism Nazi), was an extremist political organization which was active between the period of approximately 1920 to 1945, give or take a few months. The Nazi Party rose to power largely beginning as a massive overreaction of the renewed Freikorps culture to the growing threat of the German Communist Party in its Soviet-supported attempts to dissolve and replace the Weimar Republic, which at that time was the current government of Germany following Kaisar Wilhelm II’s abdication of the Prussian throne after World War I. The Nazi Party exploited the free German people’s fear of external threats by the Soviets, effectively transforming the Freikorps movement into a well-supported nationalist ideology which began to rapidly grow in power and influence under their Nazi banner. This first began as a sort of manifest destiny ideology, referred to as völkisch nationalism, very anti-corporate and not so dissimilar from communism, again exploiting the German people’s belief in their natural right to their own land with an almost mystic significance, but the Nazi Party began to absorb industries for its own gain and subsequently began to focus on anti-Semitic ideals since many large businesses and land owners in Germany at that time were Jews. This rapid growth shifted the balance of power within Germany from parliamentary to a more despotic rule occurred in just over ten years, and by 1933 the parliament of the Weimar Republic was a majority of Nazi officials (or those in their employ), losing power in all but name, as the ruling officials in Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm were now legally able to both pass laws and take military action without the permission of parliament.

What followed was an increasingly oppressive series of political, cultural, and military reforms in which the Nazi Party suppressed individual rights, enslaved and murdered thousands of “undesirable” or “corrupt” German citizens, and began a bloody, devastating invasion of almost all neighboring nations of Europe to inflict identical atrocities against the citizens of these states, shocking the world into one of the most costly global conflicts in human history. Much has been written about this period so I’ll not go into intense detail, but I will say that though most appear to be aware that this horrific series of atrocities ultimately led to the European theatre of the Second World War, few seem to be aware of the fact that the Nazi Party was heretofore considered by other nations to be a legitimate political organization.

Allow me to repeat that for posterity: other nations of the world, for the majority of its existence, regarded the Nazi Party as a legitimate government. Up until some of the invasion phases of their regime, other nations of the word including the U.S. and Great Britain met with Nazi officials, negotiated with them, had trade talks, and so on while all the while the Nazi Party was gutting and torturing its own people into submission. The Nazi Party had ambassadors to foreign embassies, a military with several branches and weapons development projects, a cultural oversight committee, a public services branch, a goddamn Olympic sports team.

The point I am attempting to drive home here is that Nazi Party were a very real, even recognized and respected government of Germany, for fucking years. They were fucking slaughtering people in their own country and none of us gave a shit about those poor free-thinking German citizens at that time. It was only after they started invading and oppressing other nations, and not even immediately so, that other states and nations began to maybe think the Nazis were a bunch of assholes who needed to be unilaterally opposed.

I want to be very, very clear about this so you understand. The Nazi Party was utterly despicable, not enough negative words exist to describe the potency of the evil they represented, and they serve as an example of the worst possible potential for humanity when extremism takes hold of us. But what’s most terrifying about their existence is that they were not some feared boogeyman terrorist organization in their time, they were a recognized government of a nation, with all the power and resources any nation has to offer. That’s what’s most shocking and baffling, not that such evil existed but that it was so casually allowed to happen and the public face of it was legitimized in the Nazi party, with a powerful military to defend its actions. I thus wish to articulate to you and anyone, anyone at all who would so freely and casually throw around the term “Nazi” in describing the cosplayer racists who attend skinhead Cub Scout meetings in their uncle’s basement, or using that term to describe anyone else ESPECIALLY if you’re just being dramatic and using that term to ignorantly describe someone who disagrees with your political position, I wish to articulate to you how irresponsible and extremely idiotic it is for you to use that term as some sort of shock-value buzzword.

Nazis, the ones with real power and influence, actually existed at one time and the world ultimately defeated them. Are Nazis the only assholes of their level of evil to exist? Fuck no. But that doesn’t make it any less irresponsible of you to pretend the the people you want to call Nazis today are anything close to the sort of threat these vile motherfuckers once presented to the free world.

I would thus encourage all of you to stop using that word, since it no longer applies in today’s world, not even to the dudes who claim to be “Nazis”. Have some fucking imagination. If you think someone’s evil, call them evil. If you think someone’s racist, call them racist. If you think someone should agree with you, figure out a way to actually argue your position properly instead of deciding to insult them. There’s a great deal of more accurate terms to describe whatever it is you feel the need to oppose but (aside from a notable exception which doesn’t apply here) Nazis, real Nazis are gone. There are thousands of books, movies, and video games about how gone they are, and how we got rid of them. Not to disappoint all of the alarmists. You’d think even extremist political idealogues could understand it’s better to find common ground than invent more reasons to hate and slander one another.

And, as Ellen Degeneres says, be kind to one another.

               侍    headless                                         

[flowerinthenet]

13 Things That Annoy Me At Hockey Games

I haven’t posted in a while. I started a new job and hockey season was A LOT, but I think during the off season I may need to revive this blog in order to fill my Hockey Cravings. I say offseason because The Dallas Stars done did me dirty again and are missing the playoffs. Obviously I will be supporting Vegas this year, but things won’t be the same without my Stars Boys. THEY’RE GOOD BOYS, BRENT.

Anyway, at the last Stars home game of the season I started crafting this list SO, without further ado, here is:

13 THINGS THAT ANNOY ME AT HOCKEY GAMES

1. People who wear the jerseys of teams that aren’t playing

Are you lost bud? It’s Senators vs Stars and here you are, bold as brass, wearing your goddamn P*trick K*ne jersey in THIS, MY ARENA. I’M SORRY YOUR TEAM IS BAD THIS YEAR – DON’T TAKE IT OUT ON MY SENSE OF ORDER. And NO just because Minnesota also wears green doesn’t mean you can escape my watchful eye. Minnesota is a SORE SUBJECT and in this house we respect The Dallas Stars.

2. People who look at you funny when you’re loud and into the game.

If you wanted a nice relaxing night out then you’ve come to the wrong sporting event my friend. I get that you have oodles of cash and season tickets are a status symbol for you, but I paid a lot of damn money (relative to my itty bitty salary) to be here and I’m gonna enjoy myself, dammit! I will yell in support of my boys. I will drink a beer or two. I will get tipsy and loudly complain about how our offense is being incorrectly utilized. If you try to complain about our goal tending I will argue with you. I am living my best life and your stinkeye will not deter me.

3. People who start goalie chants

I don’t care if we are playing the Blackhawks, goalie chants are a garbage way for garbage people to act. If you try to start one in my section I will chant over you before you can get a foothold. It’s just mean. Go buy an 8 dollar hot dog.

4. People who scream at the players

I’m all for loudly enjoying the game, but when you start to screech at the ice like a possessed grackle I have to draw the line. We’re in the nosebleeds. The boys can’t hear you and if they could I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate your nonsense.

5. People who manspread in tiny little seats

I get it. You’re tall and you have balls and these seats are made for children. But nobody’s balls are that big, buddy. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a larger lady myself and I manage to stay in my allotted space just fine. If you spread your legs into my bubble I will be spreading right back. Get ready for some uncomfortable Knee on Knee action until you get back the fuck into your seat space. Your knee should not be crossing the line the armrest makes into MY territory and you will learn this lesson, SO HELP ME GOD.

6. People who yell curse words or slurs

I understand if we have a beautiful chance to score, miss it, and a “FUCK” slips out a little louder than intended. And obviously if a ref makes a bullshit call, the appropriate response is “BULLLLLSHIIIIIIIT,” but when you’re purposefully screaming obscenities as loud as you can at the players, regardless of intention, we’re gonna have a problem. There are kids around and your ass is drunk and obnoxious. I’m sorry you don’t understand the game and you’re bored because you have the attention span of a hamster, but learn some etiquette. And if slurs are involved? Oh buddy. I’ve never been ejected from a game, but I’m willing to give it a shot if it gets you to shut your mouth. And I’m not just talking racial or queer slurs – if you use one of those, you’re as good as dead – I’m talking gender slurs too. If I have to hear some entitled white boy call a player a “bitch” or a “pussy” one more time I might just lose it. So be a decent human being, please.

7. People who wear jerseys as dresses

I know you’re sexy and you wanna show off your freshly waxed legs. I understand. But this is a WINTER sport. It’s COLD in here. And I know you’re cold too because you have 4% body fat and the seats in the boxes are leather. Just wear some leggings! You’re gonna be a lot happier! And you’ll still look hot, I promise. Tyler Seguin isn’t going to fuck you though, and for that I’m truly sorry.

8. People who wolf whistle the Ice Girls

Those girls are making minimum wage and spending half of every paycheck on their own cosmetics for games in order to wear bras on the ice and put up with every drunk, middle-aged piece of shit’s attempts at flirting. Just leave them alone. You’re not funny. I’m sorry your wife left you. Go home Dan.

9. People who yell at players and beg them for a puck at warm ups

I know Jamie Benn was GONNA give that puck to the five year old with a cute sign, but now that you screamed at him twelve times to give it to you, a 20 something asshole, he’s changed his mind! What’s this? He’s climbing over the glass to shake your hand? He’s giving you his jersey? AND HIS CAPTAINCY? My god, it’s a good thing you harassed him all warmups. What a day for you. I’m deaf in one ear because you wouldn’t shut the fuck up, but I guess that’s a sacrifice I’ll have to make.

10. People who try to get on the glass during warmups – even though there are no spots left

I got here at 6:00 PM, when the doors to the arena opened, so I could get a halfway decent spot on the glass for warmups. You don’t get to saunter in at 7:10PM for a 7:30PM game start and shove your way to the front. I’m sorry you weren’t prepared for this evening. It is not my fault and no you cannot squeeze in next to me there is NO ROOM for your TARDINESS. You take the hand that was dealt to you!

11. People who shout “SHOOT” or “SKATE” loud enough for the whole damn arena to hear.

The only time this was ever okay was when some guy in the terrace below us screamed “SKATE FASTER” with such relatable desperation that my friends and I could not stop laughing about it for the rest of the game. Unless you are that guy, doing us all a service as we suffer through this nightmare, please keep your Advanced Hockey Strategies to yourself. Yes I wish they would shoot too. Yes I know Hitch’s defense first approach has killed our offense everywhere but our first line. Yes I know you see a shooting lane from above that the players on the ice can’t see. I get it Scott. I understand. It’s okay. We’re all in this together. Now be quiet and suck back the soda in your 9 dollar commemorative plastic cup.

12. People who boo their own team

B I T C H. IF YOU CAME HERE TO BE A NEGATIVE FUCKING NANCY YOU CAN GET THE FUCK OUT RIGHT NOW. These are my BOYS. Even when they hurt me like this they are my BOYS. BOO THE OTHER DAMN TEAM YOU MONSTERS.

13. People who leave the arena early when we’re losing.

We all have to work tomorrow, Susan. We’re all disappointed that it would take a miracle to win this game now. But if you THINK I’m gonna abandon my TEAM in their hour of need, you got another thing coming. I am here til the BITTER END. So GO. Beat the traffic – but I know where your true loyalties lie.

[theonyxpath]

Via Satyros Phil Brucato:

Janine was a homeless junkie I found dying one night along the path of my post-midnight constitutional. What could I do? Let her perish? Of course not! I took her home and did what any conscientious scientist would do: used my G8-Z26 purgative treatments while stabilizing her physical condition with Dr. Johnstone’s now-famous bioregeneration matrix. I admit she’s not the sharpest scalpel in the drawer but given the condition I found her in last year, I doubt she ever was. There’s no excuse for sloppy work on my part, of course, but Janine’s still alive, and I consider that a victory…

Hola, folks!

When I first conceived of Gods, Monsters and Other Familiar Strangers in 2013, I had initially pictured it as a collection of good, bad, and neutral NPCs to drop into your Mage 20 chronicle. During the intervening years and projects, however, I began to envision a more coherently thematic book – a collection, true enough, but one that featured a coherent theme, hinted at potential metaplots, provided additional rule-systems for non-mage characters, and approached those characters from a broader perspective than a simple, “Here’s a bunch of folks you can marry, fuck, or kill.”

Bringing in several additional authors – Hiromi Cota, Atalanti Evripidou, Jason Louis Feldstein, Antonios Galatis, J.F. High, and Isabella M. Price – we began to shape the slightly retitled Gods, Monsters & Familiar Strangers into a larger and more comprehensive sourcebook. Featuring constructs, consors, Avatars, familiars, spirits, Loa, and many other entities, this book also contains a revised and expanded collection of Special Advantages, spirit Charms, and companion construction rules. Although the past year or so has hit most of the book’s contributors with an array of personal and professional complications, we’re nearly finished with a book that is – in the grand Mage tradition – larger and more ambitious than we had initially intended it to be.

The following excerpts come from that bigger, better book. Enjoy!

The Banner Dei Brute Squad

When the Ecstatic jam band / performance troupe Banner Dei formed on the last night of 1999, that troupe found immediate, enthusiastic support from fans who’d been there that night. The Brute Squad, as they were dubbed by then-bandleader Tricia “Thunderheart” Rykomanski, held the fire-line against unskilled would-be performers who’d be more likely to set themselves on fire than add anything to the performance, pounded out improvised percussion on anything that would make some noise, and then stayed all day the following morning in order to help Banner Dei and their friends clean up the post-gig trash-piles and load the gear into whatever vehicles they could find. Since that night, both Banner Dei and the Brute Squad have cycled through dozens of members. The core of both groups, though, remains stable: Banner Dei blows minds, and the Brute Squad gets them in and out of gigs intact without leaving a huge mess behind. Under the guidance, since 2010, of Kore Valkyrie Smith, the “Banner Brutes” provide drop-in support for Banner Dei’s members and former bandmates. Either collectively or as a group, those Banner Dei personnel can send up a flare, text message, phone call or blog post and have members of the Brute Squad on the location as quickly as a bunch of mortals can arrive. Because the Brute Squad consists of several dozen unAwakened hangers-on scattered across North and Central America, Northern Europe, Japan and India, and because Smith happens to be really good at resource-management (and has backing from several noted Ecstatic philanthropists), a team of three to 15 Brute Squad folks can show up within a day or less with a little advance warning, or be on-site when needed if they know at least two days in advance where they need to be.

Once dispatched, the Banner Dei Brute Squad can handle trash collection and disposal, crowd control, violence-free de-escalation, light medical attention, and set-up / tear-down logistics for stage gear and musical equipment. Most Brute Squad members can also dance, spin fire, perform acrobatics, play musical instruments, or contribute other skills to the performance itself. Kore and her co-leaders train Brute Squad personnel in the essential skills before those people are allowed to back up the band and its people, and though Banner Dei and its support team have rather liberal attitudes about sex and drugs, there’s a strict code of conduct that expels any Brute Squad member who abused his position or can’t be bothered to respect a given “no.” So far, most folks associated with the Brute Squad have remained trustworthy and reliable; Kore’s very good at vetting people, and the few who step out of line and take advantage of Ecstatic hospitality tend to wind up gibbering mindlessly by the side of a road if they’re ever seen again at all.

Traits-wise, Banner Dei’s Brute Squad features a colorful collective of Subculture Devotees (as per that template) whose training lets them haul gear and calm crowds with minimal fuss. Although the oldest members have looked age 40 in the rearview mirror, most Banner Brutes are in their mid-20s to early-30s. Regardless of age or gender, these folks combine tattooed badassery with Zen-focus people skills. Most have traveled extensively throughout the mortal world, and a number have spent time in the Otherworlds as well. Despite appearances, these are friendly people who blend old-school manners with new-millennium social consciousness. They rarely possess paranormal powers themselves (Kore probably does, but if so she doesn’t brag about it), but occasionally bring along mystic goodies they’ve found or been gifted with at various events. The majority of them speak at least two languages, and some enjoy learning as many tongues as they can recall.

Arriving in dust-crusted cars (many of which have been modified for all-terrain use), all Banner Brutes sport a tattoo that marks them as approved and official members of the group. This design – a Hulk-green banner with a white lightning bolt slashed across its surface – glows in the dark so Brutes can find each other in the dark. If a Brute gets booted for good cause (as opposed to retiring from the group on good terms), his tattoo burns away in an agonizing flash of bright green fire, leaving the thunderbolt behind as a permanent scar.

Joe Dread

He’s the face of fear, though he has no face. He can look like anyone yet resembles no one. Joe Dread is the embodiment of terror that wears a human guise. He lurks in alleys, shouts from cars, and walks loudly down the street behind you when no one else is around. Some people, though, make a friend of Dread. For them, he’s family, and his gifts to them are legion.

You’ll never see Dread clearly. That’s the point. His dominion is the unknown factor at the edge of what seems certain otherwise. At times, he’ll crouch on your shoulders when you’re trying to get things done, or loom over your bed on a restless night. Dread is an imp. Dread is a stranger.

Dread looks just enough like one of Those People to get you fired up about them, yet he can look like you as well. He’s the fiend whose face is everyone’s. Dread knows no ethnicity or class because terror haunts us all.

Some folks view Joe Dread as part of Big Owl’s brood – a servant, perhaps, or a human manifestation of the fear-god himself. That might be true, but there’s no way to be sure. These days, Dread is everywhere: screaming at you on the internet, lurking behind your best friend’s grin, knocking on your door and the then disappearing before you answer, smashing your car window just for fun so you can wonder what he took or fear that someone might be inside the car, waiting…

As a totem entity, Joe Dread gifts his chosen with Intimidation, Stealth, and Torture. He knows how to hurt folks and likes to share his secrets. For Joe, the threat of pain is sweeter than pain itself; thus, the favors he confers focus more upon what might happen than on violent acts of certainty. He’s not about beating someone to a pulp, but about getting them to fear what being beaten to a pulp feels like. Dread’s chosen people are similarly frightening, not because they use brutal force but because the potential for force always seems to hover around them. Inflicting such fears really is a kind of science, so Joe’s an exception to the rule that Technocrats cannot bond with totem spirits. His kinsmen among the Black Suit and PsychOp ranks don’t view him as an ephemeral entity, though; to them, he’s just a guy (regardless of gender) like them, who happens to be extremely good at his job.

Despite his colloquial name, Dread isn’t bound by gender. A man who fears women would meet Jo Dread instead. She sneers at him, tears him down, leaves a blank space of rejection in the center of his world or else tells that world that he’s really no one at all. Names are just conveniences we attach to things we wish to classify, and Dread reminds us we have no control. Even those who Dread befriends realize that life is full of terrors and their lives are no exception.

Manifestations: Loud noises, sudden shouts, feelings of anxiety, shadowy figures, whispered threats, posts and comments on the internet, sudden acts of random violence. Associations: Terror, anxiety, suspense, phobias. Brood: Elementals of cold wind, “bad luck” or fearsome animal spirits (spiders, black cats, crows, owls, snakes, and so forth), people who use fear to their advantage. Abilities: Intimidation, Stealth, Torture. Bans: Those who embrace Dread cannot comfort other people or ease their fears unless they do so as a tactic to scare that person even worse afterward.

Baron Samedi, the Cemetery Lord

Everybody dies. Even gods, it is has been said, must die eventually. And when we die, it is the Baron – Baron La Croix, Ghede, the Cemetery Lord – who will greet us on the other side. Tipping his top hat, puffing his cigar, laughing at mortality’s little joke on us, Samedi embodies life as well as death, and can bestow either one with a snap of his fingertips.

Wrongly viewed by outsiders as a demonic figure, the Baron represents balance, not cruelty. Amidst the horrors of slavery and poverty, his presence seems oddly comforting. All things end, the Baron reminds us. Even suffering. Especially suffering. This doesn’t mean he’s not above poking fun at humanity, of course. Among Loa and devotees alike, he’s infamous for crude jests and sexual humor. You might as well laugh at it all, La Baron says. The alternative is misery… and who wants to go through life like that?

A large man dressed in a mockery of the white man’s fashions, Baron Samedi heads the Guédé Loa family: a clan of entities whose provinces are death and fertility. His wife, Grandma Brigitte, appears as a blazing skeleton-woman who guards the crossroads and cemeteries of the nighttime American South. Le Baron has a thing for crossroads too – a territory he shares with Papa Legba… usually over a bottle of good rum and a lot of filthy jokes at humanity’s expense. Manifesting most often with his signature top hat, tailed coat, and a face either painted with skull-like make-up or replaced by an actual skull, Samedi speaks in a high, often loud, nasal voice, swears continually, and smokes up a storm. He often wears dark glasses, with plugs up his nose like any well-dressed corpse should have. His devotees, when ridden by La Baron and his kin, smear themselves with crushed hot peppers and raw rum, taxing the limits of the flesh because what’s most important is the state beyond this mortal shell.

Straddling life and death like an enthusiastic lover, Gedhe always speaks the truth. Because he transcends mortal limitations, he ignores the bounds of propriety, too. The head of his cane has been carved into the shape of a cock, and he loves to wave it around. Samedi is, after all, a deeply sexual Loa, too. Some folk call upon him when they want to get laid in non-fatal fashion, and his devotees have a reputation for being frighteningly seductive yet downright crude. Samedi loves to party, but he’s always watching the clock… not his, but yours. A trickster godhead, he’s got the blunt honesty of the grave. Sex and death are his dominion, and he enjoys indulging both.

Thanks to his province over death, Samedi tends to attract necromancers to his path. These folks often wind up wishing they’d knocked on someone else’s door. Although he often plays the fool, La Baron does not suffer fools at all, most especially not if they’re white folks who think they understand voodoo. In addition to the frenzied dance called the banda, Papa Gedhe loves to mess with people’s minds. He can read minds, too, so it’s a bad idea to try and fool La Baron. Coffins, poisons, graveyards, and near- or actual death are signatures of his rites, and would-be devotees need the courage to face both the grave and what lies beyond it if they wish to beg Samedi’s favors. Offerings of rum, cigars, black coffee, roasted peanuts, and bread (baked black if you can manage that) attract La Baron’s attention, but you’d best be ready to meet Death face-to-face if you wish to work with Samedi. Though often associated in popular media with zombis, Samedi actually prefers to keep dead people dead. Behind his rough humor and fearsome façade, Baron Samedi hides a secret compassion for the poor souls walking this hard earth. Demise, he knows, is not a torment but the blessed relief from life itself.

Manifestations: Skulls and skull-faced men, gravediggers, skeletons… very profane skeletons. Associations: Crossroads, death, sexuality, graves, top hats, phalluses, black or purple clothing, cemetery dirt. Brood: Ravens, black dogs or roosters, gravedigger spirits, Southern American Goths, and the Guédé Loa as a whole. Abilities: Intimidation, Medicine, Occult. Bans: Don’t lie. Seriously, don’t.