#why is the internet such a lawless place

[satorhime]

can tumblr please stop showing me ads that trigger my trypophobia i’m literally about to deactivate

[homunculus-argument]

I stay out of Discourse because tumblr is the place I go to chill and have a good time, and fighting people about shit only one of us knows anything about isn't it. But if it's brought to my doorstep, I might as well give you my two cents about tumblr discourse in general.

The first thing is that tumblr is a lawless, unmoderated wasteland. This means that you can say whatever the fuck you want, but also that anyone can respond by doing the same. And you can't stop them from doing that. If some complete stranger tells you to kill yourself, you have neither the power nor the duty to make them stop hating you. The way to make it stop is to just block them.

That being said, Words Are Not Toys. Don't just randomly throw them at people without being sure you know what you're talking about. People will throw words right back at you if they don't like you. Double-check if you were right beforehand, so you've got the receipts ready when (not if, but when) you get attacked by someone who can't fucking read and got offended by what they thought you said.

Anon hate swarms are annoying but mostly harmless, people who don't know you wishing you dead aren't anywhere closer to making that happen, they're just strangers seething in their homes about shit that doesn't impact them in any way. Just delete that shit. Nonetheless, it can get bad. I don't sic people on anyone, but I could not "call them off" any more than someone who does. I don't control the horde and neither do you. Best not fuck with it at all.

People here are mostly adults, and will assume that you are one, too. And sometimes adults are mean. You can't just roll over and go "oh noo, I'm just a baby, I don't know anything and you can't get mad at me uwu" after calling someone a genocidal facist with no other source than your own vibes about a post you misunderstood because you can't fucking read. Being 15 goes both ways, you can't expect people to take you seriously as an adult and authority when you're convinced that you're right, and then scramble back behind the shield of Bro I'm Just A Kid Why Is Everyone So Mean when they point out that you're wrong.

I'm not saying any of this is good, righteous or just, only that this is the way it is. Tumblr is a wasteland where people can and will just say whatever, and if you're too young or sensitive to handle that, please ask your parents to monitor your internet activities more closely. And if they won't do that for you, I'm sorry this had to be the way you find out that you are experiencing child neglect.

Don't play in the junkyard without a tetanus shot, and shoes.

[protemporescitor]

"But she ded tho" (a.k.a. the dumbest argument against Clerith) - A rant

To expand on my previous post, in which I posited the crazy, far-fetched theory that in a fantasy setting mayhap death is not the relationship brick wall that it would be in a more grounded, realistic one*, I just want to bring up a few points to further buttress this off-the-wall notion.

"Cloud can't be with Aerith. She's dead!"

We've all heard it a thousand times. It is the argument most commonly levelled against Clerith. It is also the worst (and laziest) one.

It's often delivered in a declamatory and glib fashion, as though it were some sort of obvious conversation ender. Q.E.D. End of debate. The ultimate gotcha. "Checkmate, Clerith fans!" the haters think to themselves, chortling and patting themselves on their backs for this profound insight. (Insert tasteless and juvenile comments about Aerith being "shish kebab-ed" by Sephiroth as desired.)

And all I can think is "That's it? That's your best argument? That's some weak tea, man."

Despite its myriad flaws, this idea continues to radiate throughout the fandom a good quarter century after the original title's release, as though it had never once been challenged. It is a feeble and untenable position, a house built on sand, and one that deserves to be thoroughly demolished. With Rebirth on the horizon, and all the shipping wars nonsense rising from the grave once more as a result, it is high time, if you'll forgive the expression, that we laid this cliché to rest once and for all.

(*Note: Even in a more "realistic" setting lacking any kind of fictional afterlife, this would still be a gross oversimplification of the story's themes of loss, regret, and yearning, as well as entirely ignoring the idea of love transcending death, but we'll set those concerns aside for the time being.)

Lastly, before we begin: This is not an anti-Zerith / CloTi screed. Those pairings both have an undeniable canonical basis. My aim here is simply to demonstrate that the notion that Cloud and Aerith are forever separated by death is rendered invalid by virtue of the type of setting that their story takes place in. (Something that, frankly, one would reasonably assume to be perfectly obvious. Alas, such is not the case. And so I find myself yet again pointing out the glaringly obvious.)

Now, without further ado, let's begin:

Part 1. Before (the Compilation) Crisis

In the beginning, there was the year 1997, and Squaresoft had just released their latest title. And lo, it was good. We spent days and weeks following our favorite polygon people around their embattled little globe. We fought, laughed, cried, and struggled up until the Meteor Crisis reached its crescendo, and the credits rolled. Gosh, what an ending! But what did it all mean? How did things REALLY turn out? Did we get a happy ending at all?

According to some, Cloud lived happily ever after with his childhood sweetheart, Tifa. According to others, he continued to roam the earth in search of his Promised Land to be reunited with his tragic lost love, Aerith. Yuffie swiped everyone's materia (again). Cid finally went to the moon. Red XIII opened a haberdashery in Costa del Sol, or something. No-one really knows for sure.

And so, the fandom began to spread to every corner of the internet in search of answers. Thus began the age of dissension. Opinions clashed across fanzines, blogs, and fanfic country alike. Wild fan theories abounded pertaining to special codes, methods, and blood rituals capable of bringing back our erstwhile flower girl. The fan-made media bubble surrounding the game turned into a lawless land of misinformation and vicious disagreement. None were spared.

A brief digression on why said rumours persisted for as long as they did (CAUTION: Massive spoilers for Chrono Trigger).

One side proposed a simple solution. A way to cut the proverbial Gordian Knot of our fandom. It was quite obvious, really. Just staring everyone in the face. The flower girl was dead, and that was that. Thus, there was only one possible conclusion to our narrative. Cloud's feelings on the matter were, of course, irrelevant. With Aerith out of the picture, the only logical choice left to him was to settle down with Tifa, and that was that. Never mind the themes of doomed, tragic love and the possibility, strongly hinted at throughout the game and outright confirmed during its ending, of existence after death.

Overall, direct evidence for said afterlife was scant, but not entirely absent from the story. As an example, at one point during her childhood, Aerith speaks to Elmyra, trying to comfort her, saying that the spirit of her husband wanted to come visit her, confirming that an afterlife presence did indeed exist. But for some, this simply wasn't evidence enough. And so the war raged on. Which brings us to…

Part 2. Advent Children: The smoking gun

Remember back when a certain portion of the fan base insisted that Gaia erased all the humans at the end of the story, on the flimsy basis that we don't see any during the game's brief post-credit scene? Well, that little theory was neatly undone by subsequent releases in the Compilation, showing regular ol' humans still roaming around Gaia in all their everyday human-ness. Hence, it is rarely brought up these days. Would that the pernicious notion of "but she ded tho" could follow in its footsteps, given that the same film roundly contradicts it in every way possible.

For starters, the film inexplicably bring two characters, Rufus and Tseng, hitherto assumed to be dead, back to life, probably in an effort by Square to shoehorn as many recognizable members of the cast into their animated feature as they could. But that's not all. Next we have three characters that everyone agreed were deader than doornails ALSO making appearances, first in flashbacks, and then directly influencing the world of the living. Zack speaks to and encourages Cloud during his struggle. Aerith reaches out to him (quite literally) from beyond the grave and assists him in defeating Bahamut. And of course Sephiroth pops back into existence just in time for his contractually-obligated boss fight near the end of the film. All three demonstrate quite clearly and definitively that death is not the impenetrable barrier to continuing interactions between the living and the dead in the world of Final Fantasy VII, as a certain segment of the fan base would have everyone believe it is.

To be blunt, I don't know what level of dense you'd have to be to keep up this so-called "argument" in light of this information. Advent Children reiterates what most of us already knew, that our story takes place in a fantasy setting* with a confirmed afterlife existence.

(*You'd think that the name of the series would clue people in.)

The notion that death represents, within the context of said setting, the ultimate end was already softly contradicted by the original game's narrative, and then (because that was apparently too subtle for some people) flat-out annihilated by the existence and events of Advent Children. It should have long since ended this nonsense. But somehow, it didn't. These revelations, obvious though they are, remain ignored for some reason. And so, the cycle of willful ignorance continues.

But we're not done yet. We now move on to more tangential, but still relevant arguments against this line of "reasoning".

Part 3. Stop Hitting Yourself: Why "but she ded tho" is insulting to everyone

And I do mean everyone. Let's examine this, shall we?

It's insulting to Cloud.

To suggest that he loses interest in Aerith the moment she sinks beneath the waters, or that he is obligated to move on simply because she is no longer among the living, with no mourning period, no time to work through his guilt and grief, is to portray him as shallow and uncaring, something that goes against virtually all the characterization that he's been given throughout the story. The line of thinking apparently goes "Well, she's gone. That sucks. She was cute, too. Better move on to the next available piece of meat."

Sounds pretty gross when you write the quiet part out loud, doesn't it?

It's insulting to Aerith.

"Didn't even toss the b@#h a Phoenix Down, just dumped'er in the water LAWL"

I'm sure you've all come across comments like that at some point, usually originating from some errant redditor or blogger. Thinking themselves fine fellows and enlightened, above-it-all gadflies, they provide us at length with this and other prime specimens of 14 year-old internet edgelord "humour" that carries about as much edge as a perfect sphere. Remarks like these serve little purpose beyond confirming my suspicion that our fandom is indeed plagued with illiterates who can't tell the difference between the terms "revive" and "resurrect", and insist on conflating game mechanics with storytelling. And you wonder why some people are confounded by words like "flammable" and "inflammable".

(All right, I'll put the salt down. For now.)

"The party's designated white mage dies, oh no, that's so sad, boo-hoo, life goes on," I hear you say.

But boiling Aerith's role down to one of merely that of a temporary party member who kicks the bucket halfway through the story, never to be heard from again, both cheapens her purpose within the larger narrative and denies the clear effect that she continues to exert, directly and indirectly, on it and the other characters after her passing.

Though Aerith may have departed the world of the living, the story makes it abundantly clear that her influence on it has not ended. There are hints here and there that she still tries to assist her friends from the afterlife. As an example, when the party rediscovers Cloud in Mideel after assuming that he might be lost for good, a villager sums it up best with the following remark: "That boy must have one hell of a guardian angel."

It's only mentioned as a vague hint in the original story, but it is clear that some beneficent force is acting on Cloud and Tifa's behalf, aiding them in their survival and uniting them in the Lifestream in order to help Cloud recover his memories. Later supplemental material confirms that to have been Aerith's doing. If that's not enough to convince you, though, the original game's ending leaves little room for ambiguity as to Aerith's continuing influence. When Holy sputters and fails, she coaxes the Lifestream itself to intervene, burning away the calamitous meteorite, helping her friends put an end to the planetary crisis long after her own demise. I suppose the lesson here for silver-haired godhead wannabe villains is this: Strike her down, and she shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

So the idea that Aerith's participation in the story immediately comes grinding to a halt upon her death is both puerile and easily demonstrated to be false. But even if that were the case, downplaying her lingering influence on Cloud and the other characters in this manner would still be ignoring the creators' intent. Whether one interprets Cloud and Aerith's relationship as romantic or merely platonic, it is clear that her death, the loss of one of his closest allies, is something that wounds him deeply, and scars him forever. Two years on, he still pines for her company and desires her forgiveness for his perceived failures. She clearly occupies a special place in his heart, and her memory and legacy live on within him, spurring him on as he wanders the planet, searching for some way to meet her again, defying the impossible. (Which, as we all know, isn't going to happen. This is, after all, Final Gritty Reality we're talking about here.)

Ah, but all of this is a moot point, you say? Even if he did wish to be with her, preferring the company of the last Cetra over that of his childhood friend… well, too bad. That's no longer an option. We can spout all of this verbiage about "soul pain" this and "star-crossed lovers" that, but at the end of the day, Aerith is still dead, and that's that. At least, that's what ardent CloTi fans will insist, no matter what. So, what is Tifa to Cloud, then, by their own logic?

Which brings us to perhaps our most salient, and most overlooked point, at least as far as CloTi shippers are concerned. If all that wasn't enough for you, you may want to consider that it's deeply insulting to Tifa, as well. Grievously so, in fact. Quite possibly more so than any other character in this whole equation. And the reason why should be plain as day if you stop to think about it for a fraction of a second.

Here's the thing… if you can't articulate why you think Cloud would prefer to be with Tifa in spite of Aerith being alive, then you are essentially declaring her the "winner" by default on no other merits than the fact that she's still sucking down air. Stating "but she ded bro" means relegating Tifa to the role of a consolation prize. I don't think I could ever hurl such a staggering insult towards her as her biggest fans keep doing, without even realizing they're doing it.

Ask yourselves, is that really what you want for your supposed favourite character? To frame her as being doomed to eternally play second fiddle to her fallen friend? Cloud's "plan B"? The "side piece"? Someone who only stands a chance if her rival in love is literally six feet under? I'm sure she'd be thrilled by the high regard in which her own fans seem to hold her. (Hey, you said it, not me. It's not my fault if you don't take the time to actually consider the ramifications of what rolls off your keyboard. But by all means, keep insulting your own favorite character just to put down a ship you don't like.)

In closing, if we unearth the subtext and reframe it to highlight what people are, in essence, saying, it's this: "It's a good thing that she-who-shall-not-be-named bit the dust, because otherwise our beloved Best Girl Tifa (tm) wouldn't stand a chance."

It's a simple enough question: Why do you think that Cloud and Tifa belong together? What, in your mind, makes them a good fit for each other?

"Well, the competish is dead." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for your best girl, now is it?

Part 4. "Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose": A brief word on hypocrisy

In fandom, it's often the loudest and most obnoxious voices who tend to drown out the more reasonable ones, those of fans who are just minding their own business and grooving on the thing that they like. Which, unfortunately, renders this next part a necessary component of the greater argument that I'm trying to make. Multishippers and sane, reasonable CloTi and Zerith fans may consider themselves exempted from the following harangue.

The rest of y'all, buckle up.

The too-oft repeated refrain of "but she ded tho" entails a twofold hypocrisy. The first part is:

Case of Tifa: Fan hypocrisy regarding death.

Strident anti-Clerith fans, with their usual level of maturity, will often bring up Aerith's demise in a gleeful, mocking tone that can best be summed up as "ding dong, the witch is dead!" And if the shoe were on the other foot? If their Best Girl Tifa (tm) were the one pushing up daisies instead of Miz Gainsborough? Would they be quite so cavalier in their attitudes?

Who wants to bet that these fans wouldn't be making this "argument" so loudly if it was their ship that was in question? Consider this scenario: Suppose that the remake trilogy does the unthinkable and has Tifa die in Aerith's place. What then? Would they accept that "but she ded tho" is, at best, a double-edged sword, one that applies equally to their own favourite ship were their fortunes to be reversed?

Something tells me that's not the case.

But if you think that's hypocritical, you ain't seen nothing yet. This first point pales in comparison to…

The Zerith Exemption: Fan hypocrisy regarding the afterlife.

You know what my favourite thing about this whole debacle is? When people inform me that because they are separated by death, Cloud and Aerith have no hope of ever being together again. They will then unironically pivot to shipping Zack and Aerith, two characters who are together in the MOTHERFUCKING AFTERLIFE.

It's wild. How do you even compress that much cognitive dissonance into one skull? We're talking about mind-melting, Olympic medal-worthy levels of mental gymnastics here.

Now, before someone accuses me of being morose, I'm not suggesting that Cloud hop off the nearest cliff just to be with his beloved (Aerith would not approve of him throwing his life away, for one), just that when he reaches the end of his natural life (which may not be too long, given the cells eating away at his body), he can finally be reunited with her in the afterlife.

Many ardent CloTi shippers see themselves as bound by law to uphold Zerith as a shield against the dreaded Clerith plague. But to proclaim, implicitly or explicitly, that the afterlife encompasses one but not the other is not an idea that can be taken seriously. It remains an utterly bizarre blind spot, one that beggars belief.

On a related note, there is the infamous misconception that is…

Part 5. The ZaCloud Fallacy

While this is not directly related to my main point, I nonetheless find myself compelled to address this issue. There is a long-standing confusion that bedevils our fandom, one that has its roots in the Shipping Wars (tm). I am, of course, referring to the ZaCloud Fallacy.

We owe this particular misapprehension to Crisis Core, a prequel/gaiden game that was released ten years after the original FFVII. Already, its existence can mess up the timeline, so to speak, as, strangely, people tend to treat it as a sequel rather than a prequel, and as though it were adding new and vital building blocks to the world of FFVII instead of merely distorting the original story while retreading it with a far less interesting cast of characters. It also retcons major elements of the original story that it shouldn't have (such as the events taking place in Nibelheim five years prior to the main narrative), lazily steals Clerith scenes only to rehash them with Zack and Aerith, and forces players to endure, at length, crimes against literature, courtesy of Genesis.

It's an odd prequel, to say the least, given how heavily it relies on the original story for context. Sequentially, it may take place before FFVII, but it can only be fully appreciated with the original in mind; it cannot be treated as a stand-alone story. The worst thing about Crisis Core existing is that playing it first can outright ruin people's perception of the original narrative by spoiling several major plot elements and even lessening them in the process. Crisis Core's writers are especially guilty of cheapening dramatic moments like Zack's last stand by transforming it from a quiet, tragic, harrowing scene about sacrifice to an utterly over-the-top and emotionally overwrought trainwreck. It all merely serves to add to the confusion, especially for gamers who started with this title instead of the original.

But if that were not enough, Crisis Core's reckless meddling with the story combined with the acrimonious and all-consuming nature of the shipping wars has resulted in one of the most nonsensical misconceptions in the entire fandom. During Crisis Core's ending, Zack implores Cloud to carry on his legacy, thus giving rise to the erroneous assumption that Cloud's behaviour in disc 1 is merely that of him "being Zack". Clerith-hating fans, in particular, pounced on this idea as a way to put a safe distance between him and Aerith, characterizing their interactions, whether platonic or romantic, as merely a case of Cloud utilizing Zack's memories and personality around her (Never mind that Zack and Cloud's personalities are as different as night and day).

It is a fundamental and willful misreading of the story, a gross oversimplification of a more complex and granular truth in service of a fan-originated meta-narrative, one that has been assembled in order to reach the conclusion that Cloud and Aerith's relationship is null and void, and that therefore the romance between him and Tifa remains unchallenged. (Never mind that the story is intended as more than just some playground tug-of-war romance). To maintain this lie is to do violence to the story by destroying Cloud's character arc and reducing him to a virtual non-entity until the very end of the game.

Having already been rebuked in regards to this pervasive delusion, certain fans have tried to hedge their bets by suggesting a second, more advanced version of this idea. ZaCloud Fallacy 2.0, if you will, which states that Cloud is only in Zack Mode (tm) when he's around Aerith. I don't even know what to say about that sort of nonsense. To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an assertion.

I'd go into this in more detail, but YouTube creator LinkOnTheBrink has already covered this topic extensively in their superlative video essay "How Shipping Can Ruin a Narrative".

It may seem like I'm trashing Zack or Zerith here, but I'm really not. That was never my intent. So let me be clear about this: I like Zack. I just hate Crisis Core and what it's done to this fandom. If you prefer CloTi and Zerith to everything else, I don't much mind. Ultimately, this isn't about shipping wars nonsense, but protecting the narrative from such nonsense.

And that leads us to…

Part 6. I Against I: Where the fandom went wrong

We all know that the infamous FFVII Shipping Wars (tm) are as stupid as they are inescapable. Anyone who's spent any time at all within this fandom has inevitably run afoul of them and their detritus at some point, whether they've chosen to participate in them or abstain from the whole debacle. But there's a reason why this acrimonious dispute has raged on for as long as it has. Much like Blade Runner fans would argue until they were blue in the face about whether or not Deckard was a replicant, fans of this story have been squabbling about CloTi versus Clerith for ages for similar reasons. (Zerith got roped in as a "political wedge", I would argue, as much as a pairing in its own right.)

It's more than just a war over shipping, it's a war over canonization, over character motivation and psychology. Of how we ultimately interpret the story and its characters. Given the vagueness of the story's ending, one can't help but wonder and speculate as to how everyone ended up afterwards. (Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus may have offered some answers, but they still largely sidestep these questions in a noncommittal, to-be-continued manner.)

The problem is that, for many fans, it isn't possible to simply say "It's my preference" and be done with the matter. Unlike most rarepairs and bananas pairings like Cait x Jenova, CloTi and Clerith remain hotly contested because they go beyond mere shipping, or even aesthetic preference, or which characters one most identifies with; they lie at the core of how we perceive the story and its inhabitants. In that sense, I don't consider it to be an entirely frivolous debate, just an unsolvable one.

So, what's the answer?

There's this long-standing piece of received wisdom about JRPGs vs. WRPGs, where the latter involves more freedom at the expense of focused storytelling, and vice versa. This idea might hold true to some extent, but it is not some iron law that must be obeyed without question. For a game like FFVII, choices that radically affect the narrative structure would be considered an aberration and not the norm. And yet, it might represent the only way out of this quagmire that doesn't involve throwing half the fandom under the bus in the process.

For me, Mass Effect and similar titles (e.g., Quest for Glory) have already presented an obvious solution: Let the players choose. (There is already some precedent in the form of the Gold Saucer scene, although it ultimately doesn't change the outcome of the story all that much.) It may not be a perfect solution, but I'd argue that it's far better than leaving one side out in the cold. At least this way, everyone gets something.

"Ah, but this is not feasible," I hear you respond. "Not for an Eastern-style RPG, at least. Only one of these pairings can be correct, and one must, above all, respect the creator's vision."

Yeah, look where that got us.

Part 7. As You Like It: Ship whatever you please (just stop this nonsense)

I realize that this little essay of mine has been digressive, rudimentary, rambling, extemporaneous, and scattershot. So let me try to reach some kind of meaningful conclusion here.

Much of this anti-Clerith rhetoric we've seen over the years seems to stem from a place of insecurity, whether it's murmuring "but she ded tho", claiming that Cloud was only ever Zack in disc 1, inventing a fictional sex scene underneath the Highwind from whole cloth, and so on… The thing is, there is no need for it. Clerith and CloTi both exist canonically. Even the game manual says as much, describing Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith's relationship as a love triangle. In other words, the love triangle is what's canon, and the rest is by and large up for interpretation. (Zerith also canonically exists, and we've known this since the OG.)

The true reason why this whole disagreement has gone on for eternity, I suspect, has less to do with any debate over canonicity alone than it does the sheer enmity and pettiness that it has continued to spark for so long. It has metastasized over the years, going from being a mere squabble over which pair is canon to an exercise in holding the other side in contempt. That endless cycle of disrespect and reprisals is undoubtedly where it all went wrong in the first place. (If I had a nickel for every time someone commented "but she ded tho" or "wHy iS zAcK bLoNd iN tHiS pIc?" when someone posts a piece of Clerith fan art, I'd have a pretty nice collection of coins by now.)

Obviously, we should all try to just click off when we encounter content that we dislike, but it's not always easy, especially when something we harbour a strong aversion to is so deeply enmeshed within something that we do enjoy. And so, our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. Before you ask, yes, I'm as guilty of that as anyone else.

Still, I firmly believe that the occasional olive branch can go a long way. So let me simply say that I have the utmost respect for Tifa and Zack. They are worthy characters in their own right. So create and share all the CloTi/Zerith fan works your little hearts desire. Hire a fleet of skywriters to declare Zerith your favourite couple. Throw a giant CloTi parade through the middle of Times Square. We don't mind. Honestly.

As stated above, whether it's CloTi, Clerith, or Zerith, you can stop fretting over which one is canon; they all are. The other three permutations (Zakkura, Zifa, AerTi) don't get much in the way of canon acknowledgement, but they probably should at this point.

In the end, this is about saving the narrative from the shipping wars, as much as anything else. To say that you prefer CloTi or something else to Clerith is fine. To assert that Clerith doesn't exist in any form, however, is where I begin to take exception.

Ultimately, I say ship what you like. All I ask is that you retire this sort of narrative-wasting nonsense. It's time we threw it into the garbage can of gaming history where it belongs. As for questions of motives, character interpretation, canonization, and so forth… if we cannot reach an accord, then let us at least try for a more amicable disagreement.

As for my fellow Clerith supporters, the next time you see the withered old canard that is "but she ded tho" being bandied about in the wild, feel free to laugh and treat it with the derision and contempt that it so richly deserves.

[grappleghosts]

What Could a "24/7" title look like in AEW?

There is something missing nowadays in the landscape of wrestling.

The sheer unconventionality, spontaneity, AND unpredictability. While having things set neatly for everlasting stories and laid out for us is great, sometimes it should be messy.

Think “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent”, but for the old squared circle. If there was a way to incorporate a level of campiness to cleanse the palette while not taking the focus completely away from the week-to-week grind.

For the sake of making my point, I will briefly mention the 'big W'. The history of this cockamamie idea lays there in the:

WWE Hardcore Championship (1998-2002):

Imagine a lawless land, Mad Max meets Jawbreaker. No disqualifications, countouts AND pinfalls anywhere. As long as a referee is present, the title can and will change hands. Which honestly is like a 'quickie' in the weirdest tinder way possible.

On the power tripping high of ECW's successes, Vince introduces the idea under the 'no holds barred' and '24/7' guise. While the 'Attitude Era' has quite an everlasting aftertaste, the belt served it's purpose in its short lived stint. If you want a more concisive history, I've linked this video from WhatCulture.

Years later (2019-2023) the legend himself, Mick Foley- brought the idea back into a new format . Calling it the 'WWE 24/7' championship, but keeping the same wacky rules. However, history once again repeated itself. In four years time, the idea and the belt was retired into internet obscurity.

Though, before its ultimate demise? We got some golden moments that showcased talents - whom we wouldn't usually see in the main spotlight.

See where I'm going with this?

Concept:

By all means, the rules would remain the same. However, this would open the door to title switches during AEW's online content like "Hey! (EW)"- hosted by RJ City, and "Close Up" - hosted by Renee Paquette.

(Images Credit: All Elite Wrestling)

Who could even compete?

Anyone from established roster members/current title holders (both from the men AND women's roster), to those that we don't see a lot during weekly programming.

Now, if we wanted to get a little crazy with it? I'd go as far to say even AEW personnel. I'm talking RJ, Renee, Nigel, Excalibur, Ian, Alicia, etc. Under circumstances that wouldn't necessarily mean pinfall. I'm talking loopholes, baby.

Hell, EVEN the referees themselves. Aubrey, Bryce, Mike, etc. Imagine the crazy twists that could bring.

Overall, these circumstances could bring an extra layer to pre-existing story lines. Hypothetically, mind you.

The potential:

With the concept itself, I really believe that it could open the door for cross-roster mingling.

Where the "big W's" mixed tag team challenge failed, I feel AEW could succeed. Why?

Being that the 24/7 rule speaks for itself, imagine the likes of say- Harely Cameron using her cunning skill to swipe the title off of Prince Nana. EVEN Shibata stripping the title from Hikaru Shida.

The mingling could even aid in story betrayals, if you're willing to stretch your imagination far enough.

These are the absolute wild "what if's" that pile up in my brain until I put them into place here.

I choose to be a bit of a space cadet, where reality makes it seem that these things would never be possible. But sometimes following the rules is extremely boring.

Who would you like to see or what stories do you think could benefit from a '24/7' title?

[paradoxseer]

There is nothing more crushing than people immediately hating you because you are a Pro/Multishipper. What happened to the Internet of my days? The lawless land where fiction was widespread and enjoyed, where kindness was prevalent and people were friendly despite what fictional blorbos you liked and shipped? I miss being able to feel safe and comfortable in fandom spaces. So many kids are flooding in in droves and the censorship and purity culture bullshit being spoonfed to their heads is turning what was so wonderful a community into a hostile place.

I'm fucking 27 but nothing is more demoralizing and frustrating when I'm being told to kill myself over Not Caring if you like A x B ship or B x Y ship. The amount of Antis that plague the internet who bully, harass, antagonize, and outright tell people to kill themselves over Fiction is absurd as it is crushing. What the hell has happened to being kind and non-judgemental as a rule? When did we start to allow this kind of behavior to run rampant? Why the fuck can't we seem to do something to correct it???

[beacarrot]

When some feeling is so big and high it doesn't even fit in the chest, let alone in lines in a notebook or on an internet blog. I get lost more than I'd like to admit, letting current events just pass by, have you ever heard of the girl who got trapped in her illusion? It's as if time doesn't pass for her, she's 15 inside her fantasy... that's me, and maybe you too!

I'm in my secret garden, where the only key to get in there is mine. The flowers are more colorful, the sun is brighter, time doesn't passes, the seasons are penetrating, the promises are silent, and the bridges of songs rescue our souls from the cold river.

I really like Tumblr for several reasons, one of which is that there are many "safe place" profiles. Besides, I feel free to post my adoration and passion for the things that I like and that make me happy, make my eyes shine, my heart race like a teenager in love!

One Direction is one of those things, probably the one that makes me most ecstatic.

I met the band when I was 14, I was entering adolescence, a dangerous territory, a lawless land, disappointments, broken hearts, complexes, I can't go into too many details, but a road not paved with only gold. But when this world hurt me too much, I needed to run, and live here and there for a little while, in my little secret world, in which I reserved my romanticism and unfinished analogies. I spend most of the year there, because I hate it here (just kidding, I don't actually hate it here, it was just an excuse to use a Taylor quote LOL)

One Direction (and the fandom) presented me with valuable things, treasures, magazines, CDs, thousands of Pinterest boards, fanfics, Wattpad, silly memes about the band, but they made me laugh a lot. The lyrics of the songs, the affection between the boys and their fans, every particularity of these special boys that warms our hearts!

Five years, five albums, five magical kids! (that's why five is my lucky number).

The band split up, but these five years and the legacy they left were so incredible, every show, every smile, every life saved, that I honestly believe they will still come back, but until that happens they deserve a rest, they deserve get to know each other.

But they made and make my adolescence worth it, for made me feel loved, I feel alive loving something as valuable as them. They remind me of my innocent and naive times, and that I don't need to grow up inside, and I'm grateful for every adventure with them, every time I turned on my computer and spent hours and nights reading fanfics LOL!

They are our teenage dream, they are our inspiration...it doesn't matter that we never touched them, we will be Wendy and they will be our Peter Pan.

And I will wait at the window for their return, to fly to the land of dreams, our private Neverland.

Happy 14 years of One Direction!

Signed: Beatriz <3

23/07/2024.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #12

I found out recently that a group of people that I thought were my friends were secretly laughing amongst themselves about how weird they think I am. They tried to hide it from me. They thought I wouldn't see. But then I did. I found out.

And you know? The part that hurts isn't so much that they thought I am weird and somewhat unpalatable. No, the part that hurts is that, if they had only talked to me about it a little bit, I could have dialed it back some. I could have talked about you a little less enthusiastically. Maybe held back my passion for making the world a better place, just a little. Taken up less space. Tried to exist in a way that is not so loud. Maybe called out bullying less often when I saw it.

The part that hurt wasn't when one of them said they'll avoid interacting with me. Or even when one of them said that they wished I would "chill". Or even when they said I am "too sensitive". The part that hurt was that they tried to make me think that things between us were cool and even went to some lengths to cover it up when one of them accidentally let slip that things weren't cool. What hurt was the backpedaling, the gaslighting, and… being led to believe that I was accepted and welcomed in the space with them, when I wasn't. I find myself wishing that they had just told me to go away sooner.

These people are good people. Beautiful people, even. I think they were just trying not to hurt my feelings. But since I'd rather receive harsh feedback than be gaslit and lied to, well…

It's like this: if someone tells me straight-up that I am annoying and disconcerting, it might hurt a little. But from there, I can then say, "Oh, okay. Which things should I try to do less of so that you can feel comfortable?" And I can adjust. If they make pretend like everything is okay and try to convince me that they like me when they actually don't, I am robbed of my agency as a human being, and I am left unable to make the necessary adjustments, because I don't know that there is a problem.

Also... I fear credit for the work I've been trying to do for you being taken from me by them. I fear an incoming smear campaign. Hopefully these are just baseless fears, but I already have so much experience being on the receiving end of stuff like this that it's difficult not to try to anticipate it, thinking like if I can foresee it, I can protect myself. But that's not how it works. That's never how it works. And at the end of the day... really it doesn't matter. I cannot stop them if they do, because it's the internet and it's basically lawless out here. And even if they do... it doesn't matter whose name is on it if it helps you. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whose name is on it as long as you're safe.

…I left the door open for reconciliation. It was said that attempts at reconciliation would be made. But it seems as though minds were changed, and the only thing that I can conclude from here is that when they said they would try, they weren't being sincere. Living as a sincere human in a world full of insincerity tends to set a person up for disappointment like that. But I don't really know what else to do; the wiring of my brain won't really let me say things that I don't mean. It'd be kind of like asking a fish to climb a tree (maybe you have fish that can climb trees in your world? but we have nothing like that here, as far as I know).

…But this is the reality of living in my world as an autistic person. I wonder if it's the same in your world. In mine, if you're autistic, you never really fit in anywhere. A constant, nagging feeling like you don't belong and like you're failing at life chases you everywhere, and it seems like the only thing for it is to run, run, run from one activity to the next to try to drown out the feeling that everyone around you would be better off if you never even existed in the first place. It's exhausting, but I'm well aware that this beast is not going to stop until I'm dead, and I'm doing my best not to be hunted down and devoured by it, piece by piece.

Some days, though, running from this beast feels a lot like trying to swim with iron balls attached to my ankles. Today, I'm alive, but what for? My voice usually doesn't reach anyone, anywhere when I speak. On those rare occasions that it does, people then typically act as though I'm speaking in tongues. There are a few precious instances where this is not the case, but… the overwhelming majority of the time, my voice and my existence in general is met with violence, in one form or another, if not with total indifference.

Part of me thinks that if the strangeness of my mind is going to be met with ridicule, revulsion, and rejection in almost every space in which I find myself, then as a member of a social species, and as someone who needs close, meaningful connection with others in order to thrive… what is even the point of continuing to try? Why not just sit still until the beast catches up to me and get it over with?

But then there's the part of me that knows that I have found close, meaningful connection with other people. I have my "tribe", so to speak, of people who don't seem to mind how vivid and colorful my mind is. I seem to be very loved in my everyday life, even if I don't usually know exactly why.

So then, why should it matter when I am misunderstood elsewhere? I suppose it boils down to this: I am afraid that it's only a matter of time before even those closest to me get sick of me and decide I'm not worth their time anymore. I am afraid that maybe those who claim to love me are just better at pretending than most of the other folks I've met.

…But that's just the adrenaline talking. And adrenaline is full of advice that is only good for when I am in unwholesome situations. I no longer live full time in an unwholesome situation. And I have a variety of coping skills at my disposal now to help me manage my adrenaline. All I have to do is focus on all the things I love, right under my nose. Also, I've got alarms to remind me to drink water. I have access to nutritious food anytime. I have a safe and comfortable bed to sleep in, and a space that allows me to have a consistent sleep schedule. It's not lost on me how astoundingly, astoundingly lucky I am.

I'm going to be fine. I'm just grieving. I really, really like these folks. They are good folks. And it stinks that my interactions with them will probably never be the same, if interactions even occur anymore at all.

I wonder how you manage your adrenaline nowadays. You haven't gotten to sleep in a bed or eat tasty food or drink any nice tea in goodness knows how long. And yet, here you still are, pressing forward, doing your best to create a kinder, gentler world, no matter what gets thrown at you. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from you. When you come back from whatever it is you're doing over at the Edge of Creation, maybe you'd share with me a few pointers.

Please stay safe out there, okay? I'm gonna stay safe, so promise me that you will, too. In the meantime, maybe I'll make a nice loaf of garlic bread for ya; it'll give me something to do, and maybe it'll give you a reason to return safely - something nice to look forward to. I know I can't actually give you any, but maybe sharing it with the people in my vicinity will be enough. Maybe the thought by itself will count for something for you. Maybe knowing that there is someone here who would make you garlic bread if they could is enough for you.

Just as I am, you are very loved. Don't forget it, okay? Even when things get really difficult, please try to remember that your existence by itself counts for something. You don't have to be "useful" or "palatable" first. You don't have to prove to anyone that you deserve to live and to breathe and to take up space and to be here; you deserve to be here whether others think so or not.

Until next time.

Your friend, Lumine

[littleeyesofpallas]

I've been asked before what my favorite entity in the Mangus universe is, and I frequently reinterpret this question as which entity would I be an avatar, or at least a follower of. And that requires a stipulation, that to have an affinity for an entity is not to think it's cool, and it's not for it to be your greatest fear, it's for it to be the fear you're most drawn to or otherwise occupied by. And in this capacity my answer has been, The Corruption. Because while I'm not generally scared of bugs, I do have a long standing series of hyper specific situational fears that all include bugs.

As a kid I went to a farm with my school and some tour guide commented on something about barbed wire leaving cuts on the cows and flies laying their eggs in the open wounds. And that shit stuck with me.

Back when the internet was a dark lawless place and shit like CP and snuff films were just floating around out there where anyone could drop you a link to them, I saw a video of a little kid with a horrifying large hole in his head where dozens of maggots were eating away as his flesh and clearly had been for some time.

I knew a kid in middle school wrestling who had to have his head surgically opened because somehow he'd gotten a beetle larva in his ear and it had matured into a beetle and was stuck in there causing him pain.

I have recurring nightmares of bugs flying into my ear, not because I'm afraid of the bugs themselves, but because every time I have the dream I specifically get stuck in the process of trying to swat the bug away and the active attempt to get at it causing it to retreat deeper into my ear and me being unable to get it back out.

Remember that scene in The Mummy with the flesh burrowing scarabs? I had a nightmare(?) Once where I caught a ladybug burrowing into my skin, and as I failed to squeeze it back out I realized I had dozens of little bumps all over my arm all moving around. So I took a long nail --no idea why that was the tool of choice-- and cut a ring around my forearm and peeled my skin off like a glove to reveal all the ladybugs crawling around in there.

(All that not even touching on my general anxieties about illness and disease and my constant paranoid certainty that my bones are just withering away and riddles with holes, my irrational fear of contracting tetanus regardless of whether or not I've been in contact with any rust, and the nagging thought that my skin is necrotizing and just full of inexplicably unprompted rot... But this is about the bugs.)

And now there is this stupid issue my apartment building is having where our land lord never schedules the damn exterminator on a day when I'm actually home to let them in so we've gone I don't know howany rounds without the unit being properly treated. And while there wasn't actually much of an issue for the better part of the past 3 years, now we've got a roach problem. And I spend every fucking night, starting from the moment I wake up, and the moment I walk in from work combing over our kitchen counters and the corners of the room expecting to find at least one scuttling about. It details any/every other thought process I'm having as I put my whole fucking life on hold in order to start this like 12 step scan and spray and chase and squish process. It's becoming frustratingly routine yet at the same time engaging.

And worst of all is that again I'm not fundamentally afraid or grossed out by bugs, I think bugs are cool, I generally avoid killing them if I can, I even used to take care of the bugs in the pet store I used to work at because no one else would. But mother fuckers cannot be allowed to nest and procreate in my goddamn walls. So for practical purposes they just gotta go, which means I have to be hyper aware of their presence, which has turned into anticipation, paranoia, and anxiety.

Jane Prentiss, just take me now

[manonamora-if]

"timeline is moving up just for safety" What are you talking about? Why safety? What timeline? Did I miss something??

Ah sorry, Anon. Cryptic tags and all...

I mentioned a few weeks ago wanting to branch out about where you could get updates about my silly games and stuff. Ever since Twitter just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and Tumblr's last couple of updates, I've been looking around for potential back ups and other avenues (especially for people who just want to lurk without wanting to create a new account). I've just been dragging my feet about it all...

... until now. With this post being shared around all yesterday, I've realised I should put my ducks in order, sooner rather than later, just in case. I've been on the internet long enough to know that everything can disappear without a moment's notice. I've seen enough places close down and content being lost... you can't rely on one thing in the lawless place called the internetz. :P

This doesn't mean I'm going anywhere, btw. Until Tumblr becomes completely unusable and un-openable, I'll still be here, posting about my silly pieces, play games, and stuff...

Anyway, I've made a new navigation post with a bunch of new links to other places. And I'm waiting for the exports to be ready...

[barbwritesstuff]

Top 5 TV series!

I forgot I put that 'top five' thing into my queue and wasn't sure what prompted this message until I scrolled back through my blog.

Thanks for the ask, anon! I hope you're ready for some unpopular (and very dated) picks.*

5. Art Attack

Look, I was a lonely kid. For much of my childhood it was just me and my brother... and this very keen British man who taught me how to turn scrap paper, paint, and foil into my own spaceship cockpit. Ideas from this show allowed me to decorate my room as a kid, got me through high school art class, and saved my arse several times when I was a kindergarten teacher in South Korea.

One of the best informational programmes ever made. They should bring it back.

4. Air Crash Investigation

I'm sorry. I know it's cheap. I know it's tacky. I know all that. But I love this show. I love learning about and solving mysteries that aren't murders (sorry Sherlock), and the terrible acting makes it so much better. I can't watch this show with people, because I always try to guess the cause of the crash before the end of the episode and yell it out... and I don't know anything about planes to I'm usually very wrong.

Example:

Me: "It's the bulkhead! Check the bulkhead, you fools!"

Voice over: "The investigators check the bulkhead, but find nothing."

Me: "Yes! Because it's clearly the wings, like I've been saying all along."

3. Justice League Animated Series

I got into this series really late. I'd just moved out of home for the first time to go to film school and was having a hard time making friends. I don't know how it happened, but I somehow ended up watching the entirety of the DC Animated Universe during that time, which is impressive, because internet was expensive and terrible where I was living, so I had to go to the library, download episodes, and walk the 45 minutes home carrying my massive old laptop. It was a feat, but it was worth it. This show did what the Avengers couldn't, made me love superheroes.

2. Yu-Gi-Oh!

When I was 12 I was the best Yugioh player in my school. Sure, it wasn't a big school, and not everyone was into the game, but it was still a big deal for me, especially as I was also the only girl who played. The game has since evolved way beyond my skill level, but at the time, I was a god among mortals. 12 year old mortals, but still. I got up early every morning to see the latest episode, and then I went to school ready to d-d-d-d-duel.

Xena: Warrior Princess

I'm sorry. This show is just so nostalgic for me. For a while, I grew up on a farm with no actual TV signal, but we did have old VHS recordings of Xena and I watched it religiously. Lucy Lawless is amazing and this show is forever the best thing to come out of the 90s (and I say that while also, myself, being a product of the 90s). It has:

Monsters

Magic

Mayhem

Queer Love (not explicitly stated, but this wasn't queerbaiting, this was censorship, they were a couple by the mid point of the series, they just couldn't say it, so instead they made a lot of unsubtle sex jokes and came up with obscure reasons why they always had to kiss to save the world).

Aotearoa (New Zealand is the most beautiful place on the planet, I'm sorry if you disagree, you are wrong).

Tonal whiplash (not just between episodes, but sometimes in the same episode, and it was wild)

One very horny vampire episode

Xena can sometimes fly without any explanation

They met an early reincarnation of Jesus and he was a conman living in India?

You know that scene where Character A gets hurt and Character B goes absolutely feral? This.

Leather bikinis and ninja kicks except it's ancient Greece, maybe

The musical episode was the best episode

They fight on ladders a lot and I just think that's neat

*Disclaimer: I am into more modern and normal things but I'm in a nostalgic mood, so these are the things you get to hear about today.

[dine-on-nervine]

1: OLC, you have blocked me (thus choose not to "listen, listen", heh, and there's something giggle-inspiring about the phrase "I am offended by your saying that people are easily offended") but I'll speak to this anyway: You have just proven what I said about the easily offended. I don't condone sexual harassment. I think #MeToo is great, people need to stop hiding that they were abused; but what I am driving at is that a side effect of telling actual grievances is that minor inconveniences have started to become included -- the "easily offended" that complain if someone has an opinion or didn't give them their way unquestioningly. Every positive thing has an opposite though not always equal negative result in its wake. And what I said also is based upon how this place (and the Internet, and online iterations, and the world) used to be a bit more lawless and free, and I for one miss the fun. To the point of the post, this includes online dating and hookups. You're welcome to say "people would demand naughty photos unsolicited!" because it happened, I say that along with that "people would speak without fear" on the topics of sex as well as politics. I'm somewhat of a fan of video maker Emily King, who constantly points out that the reason why men can't talk to women anymore (and this includes even "hello, how are you?") is because culture has shifted to where if he does he's seen as a creep. [I would love to hear your thoughts on the women who go to the gym, set up their video cameras to film and later post their own workouts, then flip shit to any man who even gazes in their direction at the gym... despite the fact that thousands or millions are going to see the same thing directly and consentually from her online.]

2: CFT gets it. It's ironic how Tumblr has verged further into being an open forum for those of different sexualities and mental healths, yet at the same time has become less tolerant of them. How it used to be that average people would let their freak flags fly and post pretty pictures, then the site pulled back on that shutting those volunteers down, so now the people who show you their bits are pros on OnlyFans, or porn hounds who gathered pics and vid from elsewhere, rather than average people who want to make you smile or make a buck off the books. I'm sure Tumblr had reasons to screw up this and other aspects that made the hellsite so good, but the part about attitudes about humans? That's mostly from the users, Staff itself seldom gets nasty toward the different. (Hell, try to report a pro-ana blog sometime. Even the stuff that is against the rules sticks around.) Seems when it comes to identities, sexualities, and such there's a whole lot of "we can talk about who we are but wish you wouldn't." It's great that there are trans people, it's great that there are trans supporters, it's great that people can talk about anything trans here without fear, but it's not great that expressing "yeah, no, that's not my jam" will garner such an outrage... for example.

So much for the "pointing and laughing" since no one did either.

[ancestorsofjudah]

2 Kings 17: 1-8. "The Medes."

We are nearing the end of the Melachim. The Last King of Israel's name was Hoshea, whose name, ironically means "salvation" ended his reign in 721 BCE. Then, because the Romans didn't care for the Jewish positions on idolatry, slavery, and Shabbat, and a few lines in the Gospels, and finally the printing and mass production of the Gutenberg Bible in 1522, the religion, culture and thus the duty of the Kingless Jew began to wane.

Life on earth for Jewish people has been hell on earth, and no one can explain why it is justified or how to turn it around except this Book of Kings which contain the words of King David, "If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.”

It is in fact apostate for the Jewish people to fail to have a King of Israel.

Thanks to the internet, we now have the ability to be seen, heard, and ensure the correct interpretations of all the world's religions which we know are based on the Gematria in the Torah are kept the way God intended when He forged the Ark of the Covenant with us.

Let us now see how the last few paragraphs which document the final era of the Kingdom of Israel can help us do that today:

Hoshea Last King of Israel

17 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned nine years. 

2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel who preceded him.

3 Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up to attack Hoshea, who had been Shalmaneser’s vassal and had paid him tribute. 

4 But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was a traitor, for he had sent envoys to So king of Egypt, and he no longer paid tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore Shalmaneser seized him and put him in prison. 

5 The king of Assyria invaded the entire land, marched against Samaria and laid siege to it for three years. 

6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes.

7 All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods 8 and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them, as well as the practices that the kings of Israel had introduced.

Hoshea paid homage to the gods of Egypt, the Temple of Profanity instead of the gods of Assyria, the "level-headed ones."

The Assyrians are enraged by this and lay siege to Israel hoping to bring it back to its senses, and restore the Ark of the Covenant to the Highest Place instead of the whatnot and nonesuch of the Egyptians.

We see this today. Everyone listens to balding fat fuckers in tweed jackets talk about inredibly unbelievably lawless things and the world sways in the breeze of their words like summer trees. The Jews proclaim the Words of the Lord, and they are massacred.

In the above verses, the King of Assyria decides it is best to deal with the Jews first, to help them get their shtories straight and then, after they get their medes right, "the measurements of God, and measured by God".

The Values in Gematria for the above verses are:

v. 1: In the twelfth year... the Value in Gematria is 5232, הב‎ג‎ב‎, the back. As for the back of what, we need to look at the front:

The front is Ahaz, King of Judah, "what is grasped abpout God's Glory", Number 3288, גבחח‎‎‎, "laughter".

The back, Hoshea, "salvation son of all that is of God", the Number is 1944, אטדד‎, atdad, "you are dead."

v. 2: He did evil...the Value in Gematria is 3986, גטחו‎ , getho, "the ghetto".

Hoshea allowed immense poverty of the soul to take over the Kingdom. And everyone, even the hos are now dead.

v. 3: Shalmaneser king of Assyria ="Peace in chains."

the Value in Gematria is: 5049, האֶפֶסדט‎, the offset. To offset is to engrave rather than write. This means only persons who have been engraved with the correct understanding of the Torah may communicate it to another nor should anyone consume a weird bizarre interpretation of any portion of the religion:

"…in order that the law of the L-rd may be in thy mouth. (Exodus XIII, 9).

The Sages explain this verse to mean that the Law may only be written on the skin of a kosher animal whose flesh is permitted to be placed in one’s mouth."

v. 4: Hoshea was a traitor....So the King of Egypt= "sued as an equal."

The Value in Gematria is 10428, אאֶפֶסדבח‎, "the catering of the father."

=They stopped observing Shabbat as Jewish law requires.

v. 5: Sieged for Three Years, AKA forced the proper observance of the Name of God, AKA the Third Decree. The Value in Gematria is 4041, דאֶפֶסדא‎‎, daphesda, "lost."

v. 6: Deported to Hala...

Hala=rust/filth

Gozan=racism

Habor River="joined together in the river pit"

Towns of Medes= "persons who are the measure of God."

The Value in Gematria is 8452, חדהב‎, hadhab, "the gold."

Underneath the racism and the filth, is the basis for mankind's redemption, the gold, a direct reference to the lining of the Ark of the Covenant.

v. 7-8: All of this took place because... the Value in Gematria is 9972, טטז‎ב, tatzb, "the design."

God hates racists, idiots, bloodshed, and the misuse of his name for the purposes of corruption. The design for the Torah, the topography of this planet and the interior of the human being contained plans for other things. You are all damned if you cannot figure this out.

This deepest but also surface recognition of God, in addition to the removal of the Mormons, Republicans, Evangelicals. Russians, and Hamas et al from the path of the human race are therefore today's imperative.

To just think- if the government of the United States of America would enforce the law and do this for us, how rapidly life would reform, how it would seek out its most luscious and lovely forms, all without a care in the world?

These persons, like Jews are in search of meaning through the forced evolution of faith. Theirs, however is circuitous and leads back to the ravine. Racism, dirt, filth, war, and blood, these are the objectives of their faiths. A Jew travels up, in a spiral updraft towards Ha Shem. Unlike the rest, who knowingly fall into the ravine, the Jews knows he attains to the Infinite.

The Melachim states this is a cause that must not end or be interrupted and why there must always be a King of Israel.

[relaxxattack]

Hello, question: why don't we want internet celebrities to come to tumblr? I mean I understand not wanting companies or huge celebrities here, obviously. but I don't get the aversion to relatively small people with internet followings, like the minecrafters and that. Not trying to be rude or argue at all, I'm just a bit confused.

minecrafters like dream, due to their massive reach and audience, are also celebrities, to be frank

and the reason is that if tumblr becomes big again, if it becomes a place where all the famous people do their marketing, tumblr itself will change to reflect that— they might make make ads actually targeted, they might implement an algorithm, they might even make our follower count public.

the reason we love tumblr as a site is because none of that gross marketing shit is here. we don’t get bombarded with posts from literal brands as we scroll, we don’t have to watch what we say because celebrities or politicians will report us or throw a fit if we bad talk them. tumblr is a secluded community. imagine twitter is a big city with lights and electronic billboards and police officers— we don’t want that here.

tumblr is a barren and lawless land, and that is how we like it.

[philosopherking1887]

Another rant about Neo-Rousseauianism on the Left

Why do people in the online Left have to set up this false dichotomy between “people are inherently evil” (i.e., selfish, competitive, aggressive) and “people are inherently good” (i.e., altruistic, cooperative, caring -- since those are the meanings we all tend to assume these days)? Showing examples of people being altruistic, or evidence that ancient humans cared for the vulnerable in their communities, doesn’t prove that that is the pure, sole essence of human nature; it shows that that’s part of human nature.

Human beings everywhere, in all cultures and time periods, have always shown a mix of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behavior. Both tendencies exist in all groups; (almost) all individuals have both tendencies within them. Why is it so difficult to draw the inference that both are equally natural, and neither is a mere imposition of the artificial conditions of civilization (or capitalism, or Western colonialism, or whatever)? Then you won’t be ~shocked~ when people sometimes are selfish and violent, sometimes for no good reason -- i.e., when it’s not somehow determined by their social situation (or they’ve been “corrupted by society,” in more overtly Rousseauian terms).

Why does this bother me so much? It all comes back to what my professor in a history seminar on the French Revolution said about how Rousseau’s philosophy led to the Terror, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, but which has come to make more and more sense as I spend time in Leftist spaces on the internet. Rousseau claimed that human beings are naturally good, but living in society, particularly in corrupt social structures that makes some people dependent on others, corrupts their natural inclinations to sympathy and leads to envy and the desire to dominate others. If we can just institute perfect social structures, then, everyone would return to their naturally innocent, benevolent state. (Rousseau’s own views are a little more complicated, but this is more or less how the Jacobins read it.)

But what happens when people continue to show selfishness and the desire to dominate within a social structure that has been (in theory) perfected? What’s wrong with them? Ideally, they can be ‘reeducated’; but if they persist in not being appropriately good-natured, they must be dangerous anomalies, and there’s no choice but to extirpate them from society, to purify it. This was what happened during the Terror, when people appeared to the Jacobins to be working against the good of the people (as they understood it): they must still be corrupted remnants of the old society, unsuited to have a place in the new.

Left Anarchism rests on the Rousseauian assumption that if you just leave people to their own devices, they will all be benevolent and prosocial; that what actually makes people bad is the existence of laws and institutions, and if no one has institutional power, then no one will harm or wrong anyone else. But we have zero evidence that this is true, and it honestly just seems like a perverse interpretation of human history. Under lawless as under lawful conditions, people still show a mix of benevolent, self-interested, and malicious impulses and behaviors.

The idea that humans are or should be naturally good, not naturally a mix of good and evil, encourages the idea that people should be punished not just for breaking explicit laws, but for behaving immorally (or even just having those inclinations), because it shows that they are somehow intrinsically wrong or corrupted, a dangerous deviation from wholesome human nature. And the only mechanism available to sanction anti-social or ‘immoral’ behavior in a society without laws and institutions is vigilante or ad hoc mob violence. Who decides what’s deserving of punishment? Who decides what the punishment is? Anyone and everyone. It has the potential to collapse into a kind of totalitarianism, where everyone has to fear their neighbors -- but now they have no clear way of knowing what will incur punishment. (And frankly, we already see this kind of thing in microcosm in the self-cannibalism and purity politics of online spaces dominated by certain strains of Leftist ideology and social justice rhetoric.)

A system of laws is preferable to anarchism for exactly the same reason that it’s preferable to authoritarianism and client-based systems of affiliation and loyalty (feudalism and its smaller-scale variants): it minimizes arbitrariness. Generally speaking, people have a way of knowing what they can do and what they’ll be punished for; they’re not subject to the whims of individual rulers or vigilantes. Most people will follow the laws because they want to be cooperative, or just because everyone else is doing it. But some people need the threat of predictable sanction so that their self-interest will guide them to behave in ways that are beneficial to the community. The rule of law rests on the assumption that people are a mix of altruistic and selfish, cooperative and opportunistic. Ideally, institutions moderate the ability of opportunistic individuals to wield power arbitrarily. They are built to harness a combination of the altruism and self-interest, the generosity and ambition of individuals to work for the good of the whole society.

And if the laws and institutions aren’t working for the benefit of the whole society? You change them; you don’t tear them all down on the assumption that the mere existence of institutions is what causes oppression and injustice, and that an egalitarian utopia will materialize as soon as all the Bad People (the billionaires, or the cishet white men or whatever) are guillotined (or eaten, or shot into the sun). There’s not a single class that can be identified and pruned out as the source of all evil in society. There will still be selfish, opportunistic, competitive, violent tendencies within people after the ones currently in power have been executed; you can’t rely on Fundamentally Good Human Nature to reassert itself in the absence of those Few Bad Apples.

You think there shouldn’t be billionaires? Great, I agree on that. But the solution is not to execute the people who are currently billionaires because they made all their money by exploiting people and they were immorally hoarding all their wealth instead of giving it away to people who are starving. You know what that sounds like to me? The revolutionaries beheading Louis XVI not because he broke any identifiable laws, but because “no one reigns innocently.” You can’t execute people for being immoral. You make laws so that people who are inclined to behave immorally can’t do massive harm to others without incurring predictable penalties. You rewrite the tax code so that it’s impossible for anyone to become a billionaire without breaking the law. You change employment laws so that employers can’t exploit their workers in the ways that were necessary for the owners to become billionaires. If the billionaires broke existing laws to amass their wealth, make sure they’re prosecuted “to the full extent of the law,” as they say. But the sentence for committing financial crimes, tax fraud, employment violations, etc. is unlikely to be the death penalty. Can you prove that bad working conditions caused deaths? Great, maybe you can get ‘em on negligent homicide. But there’s no sane, rational, sustainable system that can license summary executions for people who caused a lot of harm by doing bad things that were legal, or didn’t carry the death penalty, at the time they did them.

[ottiliere]

nobody asked but here's my essay on why dirk would use 4chan:

Channers tend to have a sense of superiority because they’re isolated from the rest of the internet, and yet influence(d?) it so much, while having a reputation for being a cesspool. If you are cringe on 4chan people WILL make fun of you. They are ruthless. If you post like you haven’t been using the site for years or haven’t “lurked” enough, people WILL make fun of you. If you look like you’re possibly active on another site people WILL make fun of you. For comparison, reddit is more of a melting pot. On 4chan, every board has its own unique culture, and most of them hate each other even while using the same site. Ex: people on /a/ making fun of people using /v/ (and basically nobody serious about 4chan uses /b/ anymore) etc. Everyone has their pool of frequented boards, their main “stomping grounds,” and considers the rest of the site, and usually the boards they use as well, garbage.

But, even with this superiority, there is this need to be “self aware” about the fact that you are certainly a loser, because well-adjusted people don’t post on 4chan. You have to post like you’re the smartest, the least well adjusted, extremely based, very humble, the worst, the best, extremely genuine, not genuine at all, the “most autistic”, the “least autistic”, the one sane man among a crowd of fools, a fool yourself- resolved to your own audacity, and most of all, funny.

It’s not lawless. There’s codes of etiquette and social rules you have to follow that also change from board to board and with context/how the thread is going, but nobody tells you them, at least usually not in the form of insults. You largely have to learn from observation and osmosis, trial and error.

In the end, it’s really all about looking cool (or fitting in, depending on the board) to whoever is listening, and what is and isn’t cool (or fits in) changes with each board and thread (and even across the same threads with the discussion) so you need to be able to be flexible enough to adjust yourself on the fly to be consistently cool/“in.” So, sometimes it IS cool to be civil and to have genuine discussions (people can be shockingly helpful/nice to each other on there) while at other times, it is not, and god forbid you look like you’re trying too hard to look cool and smart— it has to look detached and effortless, unless it’s entertaining and funny (though keep in mind, it’s much easier to get people to laugh at you, rather than with you, which is just another facet of the site’s humour that some accept and exploit.)

People write channers off as people who post whatever they want under the guise of anonymity, and that’s partially true, or even fully true for some, but at the same time, everyone is a lot more hyperaware and careful about how they speak and what they say. It just looks insane to an outsider. And despite all this hostility I’m mentioning, among those who feel like they “belong” on the site, and know all the rules and in jokes, and play the game properly, there’s very some genuine senses of comradery amongst them.

Dirk would thrive in an environment like this... He would love using the website where he has to walk on eggshells, the website makes him feel like he's in a special "in-group" and has a sense of control. IT'S A CESSPOOL and he loves to put himself in a shit place. His behavior would reflect the weird antagonistic camaraderie he shares with Caliborn (who would also use 4chan btw. he would berate and stalk dirk and Dirk would feel comforted by it).

This whole thought process stemmed, btw, from a convo with a friend on whether dirk would be a redditor or a channer. If people use both they try very hard to not look like it on 4chan because openly looking reddit is a fast way to get mocked and especially if you’re on boards with a smaller community (ex: anime has “generals” which are threads for 1 fandom) people sometimes are able to recognize people posting in those boards posting on the same fandom subreddits and on there you’re NOT anonymous. and that’s a quick way to become an infamous in-joke.

in terms of his usage differential, I think dirk would be less open and "chatty" on reddit because it’s not anonymous but it’s a good way to get information. probably a commenter more than someone who makes original posts, if he uses it (can see him trawling through mechanical subreddits for hyperspecific help on projects).

edit that I added onto a later reblog: the more I ponder this the more I realize that while dirk would MAINLY use reddit as an information hub, the only subreddit he'd actually be active on is r/sanctionedsuicide. he'd argue on there for hours. pro-choice of course. before the site shut it down... the most ''positive'' online community he'd ever be involved in

[doesntseemfxir]

stupid question but how do you visualize the mstk world? like,,, do they have modern technology like cars or do they all like,,, walk everywhere😭

It's not a stupid question at all and I'm totally happy to explain because fuck I do so much worldbuilding for my AUs and then I just never get to talk about it haha

I decided to put it under a cut because the answer got kinda long!

So basically, we've got four settings that have been mentioned so far. The place where Wanda and R meet and hang out together is the Frays which is pretty much a no man's land of sorts between angels and demons. Because it's pretty much lawless, most people avoid it which is why it's easy for them to hide away there!

Wanda, as most angels, lives in the Heavens because well yeah, duh haha. They've got strict rules, but younger angels like most teens and adults like to bend their restrictions and play around and stuff. Think of it like... idk, a strict Catholic school where if you get caught, you're getting punished, but they're still living beings and like to be mischievous (unless you're an innocent bean like Wanda who just tries her hardest to be a good, pious angel).

R lives in the Underworlds aka Hell. Again that's pretty obvious considering she's a demon. Think of that as like... idk a normal place, but you could do whatever you want. That doesn't mean EVERYONE is out there committing crimes, but if you wanted to, you could? No one is gonna reprimand someone for doing anything because you're already damned for eternity.

Then we've got just like.. Earth where it's just the world as we know it. Angels and demons can go there, anyone can and it's technically the real midpoint between the Heavens and the Underworlds so its like layers of the Earth to it's core but uhh mmm Heavens Frays Earth Underworlds

And if you're like Wanda or R or some other type of immortal being, you can walk through them at will, with the exception of demons and damned creatures being banned from the Heavens. Wanda can go to the Underworlds, but she wouldn't be able to return back to her home, and some beings do choose to live in the Frays either because they want less restrictions in their life, they've been ostracized from the Heavens, or they just wanna live in like.. the country?? Think of the Heavens and the Underworlds as cities and the Frays is like.. rural area (this is important for reasons I'm not saying yet). This AU is happening in modern times so they have phones and cars and technology, but like.. Wanda can technically fly, she's got wings, but she happens to live near the Frays so she tends to take long walks and wander off. The internet exists, but the Heavens get like, the best way I can put it is censored internet?? Like they can't get pornhub and they don't have like, stores with anything like "bad" in them. Most heavenly beings get their banned stuff from going to Earth, getting them from creatures in the Frays, or off their demon friends. I hope this was coherent and it's probably a lot more info than you ever wanted/asked for buuuuttt now I've got it here for anyone who cares or asks in the future!